The day after Obama claimed the nomination, a German newspaper ran a picture of the White House on its front page with the headline, "Uncle Barack's Cabin." (Onkel Baracks Hutte)

The cleverness! The outrageousness! The irony delighted me. When Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet...

"Does age bring awakening?" I ask myself as I stand in the drugstore checkout line, clutching a box of Depends. My sister, Terry, and I are about to move our 93-year-old mom out of the condo where she's lived for decades to a home for people with memory impairment.

I knew Obama was in trouble the weekend before the Ohio-Texas votes. I was at a calling party organized by MoveOn.org. About 50 of us had spread out through a friend's home in Colorado and were using our cell phones to call voters in Forth Worth, Texas, urging them to...

"It's 7 p.m, and the Democratic caucus is in session!" the leader cried over a bullhorn.

Pandemonium erupted - cheers and war whoops - in the overcrowded school where I was attending my first caucus. I'd moved to Colorado, a caucus state, 5 years ago, but in the 2004...

The new book by Gary Taubes is making me ponder what I know about eating, weight and disease. In Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes asserts that there's no scientific evidence that cholesterol and fat cause heart disease, or that overeating and laziness cause obesity. Nutrition, he says, purports to be...

After a week in Dublin, the mother and child reunion tour moves to a town in Sicily, Taormina -- built on a cliff above the aqua sea with a snow-capped volcano behind it. After settling into our room, Rachel says she wants to make no plans and have...

On May 4, I ordered a wheelchair so I could get on a plane and join my 22-year-old daughter, Rachel, in Dublin. She was in Europe studying Spanish between college and grad school, and she'd invited me to travel with her for two weeks. This was a gift, since...

Right now I'm in New York for the publication of Leap!. It's the first time I've lived here since the 70s, and it's teaching me that the classic model of life stages may need to be revised.

Joseph Campbell described the hero's journey as: the young...

Where the hell is my favorite hair clip? The black velvet one I bought in China while visiting my son? I remember taking it off, but it's not in its usual place. Methodically I scan every surface, open each drawer. Material possessions don't merit this kind of frenzy, but...

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who's 82 and my favorite person to dance with, told me there's one thing that determines whether you suffer or have joy as you get older.

Take a guess?

Change. How you deal with change. Do you roll with it, or cling to the...

One of the questions I tackle in my new book, Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of our Lives?, is: what happens to love and sex? Both, I've found, can grow more intense and expansive as long as we're healthy.

My mom met the love...

A torrent of emails came in when my new book, Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of our Lives? was excerpted in Newsweek and on the Huffington Post. The notes were cries from the heart.

"Thank God," Ruth wrote, "someone has put a name on...