This past weekend I traveled from my home in Portland, Maine to Oneonta, New York to attend the 90th birthday party of a dear friend I have known for 50 years. I wasn’t prepared for the time travel my visit set off. I kept bouncing around from the present to the past to the future and back again. I met Dave, the birthday celebrant, when [...]
Pat Taub
Almost two years into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, 60,000 have died, not counting all those buried under the rubble. Among the causalities: 1,000 men, women and children gunned down while racing to grab meager boxes of food, along with the deliberate murders of 1,000 doctors and nurses and 232 journalists. Now things have cruelly escalated. [...]
Pat Taub
Practically everyone I know is feeling overwhelmed by Herr Donald’s rapid-fire attacks on all we hold dear, which includes police state tactics in arresting migrants, gutting federal funds for housing, daycare, medical benefits, and public schools, while supplying bombs nonstop to perpetuate the live-streamed genocide in Gaza. In general [...]
Pat Taub
In our increasingly unsettled times, I treasure my close female friends who offer support and solace for navigating the road ahead. When I told a friend I was blogging about women’s friendships, she good-naturedly commented, “If grown women had pajama parties, they wouldn’t need therapists.” She was referring to the close connections [...]
Pat Taub
To all in despair over T’s Big Bad bill with its cruel cuts to health care and food stamps in favor of record increases to ICE and the military, along with T’s nonstop support of Israel’s ever escalating genocide in Gaza, let me offer a different perspective. If you just focus on the headlines, you’re missing the cracks, where [...]
Pat Taub
I have a friend who’s been telling me for years that she’s going to take Italian lessons. Another friend has a long-standing dream to visit Japan. For just as long, every time I pass an art supply store, I revisit my dream of taking up watercolors. We’re members of the late-in-life dream club whose engine is stalled. But it doesn’t [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL After pouring out my heart to a dear friend about my anguish over the Gaza Genocide, I asked her, “What are you thinking and feeling about all this?” “I feel exhausted,” was her honest, sad reply. “I get it,” I told her. We all only have so much capacity for family, friends, community, and political activism. [...]
Pat Taub
My heart is heavy as I take in the reality that Gaza is uttering its last breath. Israel is forcing starving Gazans further and further south luring them with food drop-offs, which have become death traps. To date 400 Gazans have been murdered rushing for a bag of flour. The handwriting is on the wall. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza is imminent. [...]
Pat Taub
Molly Jong-Fast’s new memoir, “How to Lose Your Mother” conjured up memories of the 1981 film, “Mommie Dearest,” where Faye Dunaway played Joan Crawford, Hollywood’s narcissistic abusive mother. Jong-Fast is writing about her famous mother Erica Jong, author of “Fear of Flying. Jong, while narcissistic was not physically abusive, [...]
Pat Taub
Fashion commentator Emily Chou observes “Every time you dress, you’re making choices and even an “I-don’t-care” message is a clear statement.” We all want to be thought of in terms of our ideas and talents, but because we live in a visual culture, it’s almost impossible to avoid having others form a first impression based on [...]
Pat Taub