Some people are devout travelers. My friend Harry combined his love of travel with his gift of gab in a career that started as a traveling salesman and turned into life as a Costa Rican citizen and businessman. Zach, a hippy kid, interrupted his education for a year of traveling in India on a shoestring, […]
Mature Content
Posted inColumns
Mature Content: ‘Don’t worry about it!’
Editor’s note: Some quotes in this column are paraphrased. Those of us living in America’s moderate- and left-leaning political spaces expected a bad year, and 2025 didn’t disappoint. The Trump-Kennedy Center, Trump-class battleships, masked (secret?) police in unmarked cars abducting our neighbors, the military patrolling city streets, yo-yo tariffs, more mass shootings, the continued dismembering […]
Posted inColumns
Mature Content: Joseph and Gerard
George Santayana was right when he wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 1960, my friend John and I drove to Miami for spring break and came home with a tiny alligator we named Gerard Swope. We wanted to be cool. We thought having a pet alligator would make […]
Posted inColumns
Mature Content: A liberal’s hopeful lament
In the mid-1970s I worked for a welfare director named Dave Kelly. Lumber was the regional economic driver and our county’s biggest employer. With mill workers on a prolonged strike, many families applied for food stamps. Dave told his staff that income was the only eligibility criterion and instructed them to grant all income-eligible families. […]
Posted inOpinion
Mature Content: Turning 85
This month’s Mature Content, a column about aging and life from the perspectives of older people, has been hard to write. Though I dislike admitting it, it’s because I’d rather not face what I’ve been dreaming about most nights and thinking every morning, in that middle space between being asleep and being awake: the number […]
Posted inColumns
Mature Content: Another last chance
You’ll be reading this towards the end of the Jewish month of Elul, a few days before Rosh Hashonah (the universe’s birthday) and maybe two weeks before Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement). The 10 days between are called “The Ten Days of Awe.” Here’s how these 39-days work. Yom Kippur, a day of fasting […]
Posted inColumns
Mature Content: Extractions of the heart
I awoke feeling sad about my appointment to explore having some teeth pulled. I love my teeth and don’t want to separate from them, but these thoughts were soon pushed aside by thoughts about another loss I’m even less ready for. My youngest granddaughter decided to complete her senior year of high school in Salt […]
Posted inOpinion
Mature Content: My billionaire chatbot
Cynics say that Donald Trump gets financial support from billionaires because they think a Trump presidency will make them even richer. But I’m pretty sure that Republican billionaires, like most of us, believe their actions help society. I’d love to interview some of them but what are my chances? So, I had ChatGPT create John […]
Posted inOpinion
Mature Content: Motherhood
Mother’s Day just passed, and I’m thinking about the mothers I met during my 35 years of work on behalf of neglected and abused children. Patricia’s was the first case I assigned to myself after Humboldt County, California, hired me to develop its new Child Protective Services program. Her little girl was in foster care […]
Posted inOpinion
Mature Content: A loon in interesting times
One day, during the time of COVID, as my granddaughter and I walked she told me about her family’s spirit animals. And she, of course, asked me about mine. Until then, thinking about such things was of no interest to me. Jokingly, my immediate response was, “I am clearly a loon.” She didn’t yet have […]