Vicky Shorr

L.A. is a city, but once you get into the hills here, it sort of goes away. True, there are the encroaching developments on the fringes, gated non-communities, with names that are evocative lies -- "Shadow Mountain Drive," "Ridgeview Estates."

But once you're on the path, they're at your back,...

You see it in every drug ad, and in a lot of the articles in the New York Times Science Section: "Talk to your doctor." "This is between you and your doctor." "If you experience bleeding, memory loss, black-outs, tell your doctor," and so on.

And my own reaction is:...

Many of their original owners have seen the light and jumped to the Prius, but the SUVs are still on the road, and in some ways, it's even worse than it was. Because anyone who's driving one these days, at least on the L.A. freeways, is either poor or stupid,...

"Shouldn't we just walk?"

It was only two stops down to the Museum, but the weather was iffy, neither of us had a good coat quite yet, and the subway station at 96th Street just plain looked good. It was the Friday after Thanksgiving -- "Black Friday,"...

When friends abroad ask us normally vocal, not to say loud-mouthed, activist progressive Americans about Obama's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, authorizing indefinite detention of persons the government suspects of terrorism, there comes a silence, so thudding it is almost loud. And it is not just us -- it...

My New Year's resolutions are usually elaborate and abstract. I won't be lazy. I will confront my demons. I will take up yoga. Sleep more, or was it less? Read Proust.

But this year it's quite simple. I resolve to no longer use the term "Trailer Trash." Ever again.

It's not that I haven't flown first-class. Not, of course, that I'd paid for it, but neither does anyone else up there. In my case though, it was neither a matter of dogged diligence in accumulating miles, or questionable use of some firm's stockholders' funds that got me my seat....

It's funny that the curlers still work. But they're old, at least 20 years, so still from the days when things lasted. I didn't remember buying them -- probably hadn't. Someone probably left them here, since it's been way longer than 20 years since I've had to think about fixing...

When I was growing up, our insurance man was our friend. He was tall, blond, and most importantly, from a child's point of view, had only one eye. He'd lost the other in the War.

I remember him coming by once after a drunk driver hit my...

The election in Brazil is over. Dilma Roussef has won. For the first time in Brazilian history, a leftist woman will be President of the Republic.

But progressive leaders of the Amazon are far from celebrating. In fact, they are in the process of launching nine lawsuits against...

Abortion might be illegal in Brazil, but that doesn't mean you can't get one -- a million people do every year. The rich pick up the phone and go into a fancy clinic. The poor go to the drugstore and buy an ulcer pill.

The pill is called Cytotec and...

We rolled off the Pasadena Freeway, Mapquest in hand. Turned right, then left, went a ways, another left, and the sign said, "San Marino." The houses were getting bigger, along with the lawns and trees. Stately, positively, some of them -- "Now it's starting to look right," my husband said....

The traffic is terrible, worse every day. It was always bad, L.A.-style--this is a modern city just like L.A. is, and the place grew with the car so there is no real center, just endless sprawl. What kept it under control till the 90s was the simple fact that there...

"On the bright green hills of Rio,
There grows a fearful stain.
The poor who come to Rio,
And can't go home again..."

That's how Elizabeth Bishop saw it in the '60s, and of course it's worse now. The "stain" is bigger, there are more poor, and...