Molly Jong-Fast’s new memoir, “How to Lose Your Mother” conjured up memories of the 1981 film, “Mommie Dearest,” where Faye...
CA Fires, A New Diet, A New Play & More!
California’s Fires I’ve been following the horrific California fires, and grateful that my son who lives in Santa Monica has been spared evacuation and fires near him, but I can’t stop thinking about the long term implications of California’s raging fires. Does it mean as the climate activist, Bill McKibben, asserts that California [...]
Pat Taub
Awakening to Bliss
GUEST POST by MARGIE MARTIN CAMPBELL Have you ever felt blissful on a hot summer afternoon when the air was so still you could only get a very small breeze by swinging in the old porch swing? The one that Grandpa built all those years ago before you were born. Sure, the house windows are up with screens in place to “let a little air [...]
Pat Taub
Goddesses: Then and Now, A Gripping Memoir & More!
A Lovely Video The other day, needing a source of lightness and inspiration, I re-watched the film, “The Goddess Remembered.” It’s a documentary that tells the story of the Women’s Spirituality movement that flourished here in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. The historical perspective on the goddess era is beautifully told through [...]
Pat Taub
Finding My Bliss
GUEST POST by EMMA MACAILLEN I am unsure that I ever find my bliss. I think it finds me. I do sense that there are preconditions in order for it to present itself. Perhaps I need to get out of my own way in order for that to happen, or at least “out of my mind.” I think bliss is a state of the awakened heart. I have glimpses [...]
Pat Taub
The Journey Home to Self: Spirituality Late in Life
Aging has brought a renewed interest in the spiritual questions I grappled with during my late night college bull sessions. Is there a God? Can prayer make a difference in one’s life? What is my spiritual path? In my middle years I was too busy raising children and building a career to grapple with meaning of life questions with the [...]
Pat Taub
An LA Birthday, Lisa Savage’s Run, A Good Read & More!
My Birthday in LA In what has become a birthday tradition, last weekend I traveled to LA to spend my birthday weekend with my youngest son, Jonathan, who lives in Santa Monica. We ate at wonderful ethnic restaurants, saw a bad play, an iffy film, but a wonderful LA Philharmonic concert at the Disney Center, led by the Phil’s star conductor, [...]
Pat Taub
Wide-Awake at 4 AM!
It seems that practically every woman I know, myself included, has trouble sleeping. Insomnia is the new hot topic. Sleep tips abound on the Internet and in popular lifestyle magazines. For many of us the issue isn’t so much falling asleep but waking up in the wee hours of the morning, and not being able to get back to sleep. Conventional [...]
Pat Taub
Remembering Friends Who Changed My Life
One of the hardest aspects of aging for me is losing dear friends–friends I looked forward to spending time with in my dotage. In this post I’m paying homage to them, grateful for our close connections and for the invaluable lessons they gave me. Diana died just a few months shy of her 60thbirthday; Zoe was 63 and Ray [...]
Pat Taub
Global Climate Strike: Young and Old Together
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL On a gray morning, we climate strikers massed together in downtown Portland, Oregon–and I was getting claustrophobic. Unlike the lively but small turnout of youth activists in downtown Los Angeles I wrote about for WOW last March, the turnout for the Global Climate Strike here, as around the world, was huge. [...]
Pat Taub
Goodbye Susan, Hello Lisa!
Lisa Savage, 62, a public school teacher from Skowhegan, Maine had been contemplating her upcoming retirement in the standard ways–a chance to travel, take up a new interest, and more time with the grandkids–when she received phone calls from several Green Party activists asking her to consider a run for the US Senate in 2020 against [...]
Pat Taub