Both my camera and my bicycle hail from roughly 1979. I still print my own black-and-white pictures in the darkroom. I write postcards. I own a VCR. I also spend a lot of time bemoaning the likely extinction of the printed word. I shudder every time I see someone with...

Last night I was hot. I had done a 30-mile bike ride in the afternoon, and I was exhausted, but I was just too damn hot to sleep.

At 1 AM, after two hours of lying awake in a pool of my own sweat, I was in a groggy, insomniac...

Everyone is internet dating. Except me. My reasons for this are many, including still being bruised from a recent break-up and knowing from experience that I never find love when I am actively looking for it. It has to creep up and surprise me.

But my main reason for...

You have probably learned by now that a Facebook friend is not a real friend. Sure, you are Facebook friends with some of your real friends, but the principle does not work in reverse: one is not a real friend simply by virtue of being a Facebook friend.

I...

I finally got to see Kristin Scott Thomas's award-winning performance as the vain matriarch Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina in the current production of The Seagull on Broadway, and I must say that to my Chekhovian tastes, Scott Thomas was the weak link in the cast.

It's not entirely her fault....

You've heard the rumors about European women's uncanny ability to stay slim even while eating buttered croissants for breakfast (France), sausage and beer for lunch (Germany), or deep fried seafood for dinner (Spain). Perhaps you've even done research in the form of spending a week in Paris, ogling the lank...

In the early summer months, the big news in garbage was Naples: the demand for garbage disposal had overwhelmed the city's resources, and mountains of garbage were rotting on city streets. Before I left for my vacation in Naples in July, I heard several snide garbage-related comments from my friends....

I have been told that I bear a vague resemblance to Carrie Bradshaw, of Sex and the City fame. Not in appearance, perhaps, but in manner. So now I would like to claim my Carrie Bradshaw moment, and ask the world this well-worn question: Can men and women really be...

If you're like me, perhaps you don't think of yourself as having a certifiable phobia of flying, yet you spend a good portion of every flight contemplating your own death.

If you're feeling particularly vulnerable, you may even imagine your way into possible death scenarios: What would it feel...

When I decided to move to Germany last year, a number of people in my life -- particularly Jewish people of an older generation -- reacted with something like paranoia. "Germany? Why would you want to do that?" one friend in her late-40s asked. Another, a middle-aged literature professor,...

It's good for a city girl to get her hands dirty. To kneel for hours in the grass, yanking out weeds with sore hands and a garden hoe. To come up with a handful of dirt and find that she's holding a writhing earthworm. To work all day in the...