During Women’s History Month, the tendency is to celebrate famous women in the arts and politics, often ignoring those less famous women who have made an indelible impression on our lives. This year I’m celebrating Women’s [...]
Pat Taub
During Women’s History Month, the tendency is to celebrate famous women in the arts and politics, often ignoring those less famous women who have made an indelible impression on our lives. This year I’m celebrating Women’s History Month by sending love notes to family members, neighbors, teachers and others to whom I owe a debt [...]
Pat Taub
This past weekend I drove to the mall for holiday gifts. Entering TJ Maxx, I was flabbergasted by the towers of holiday merchandise, which spilled over into the narrow aisles, making for tricky navigation. Overwhelmed by this crass commercialism, I made a few purchases and raced to my car. Back at home, over a cup of tea, I revisited past [...]
Pat Taub
When I think about what has made my life meaningful, it’s come from those experiences where I woke up. Events that rocked my world when I was confronted with truths that ran counter to how I was living my life. As a young woman I was awakened as a result of living through the Viet Nam war and the second wave of Feminism. As the Viet [...]
Pat Taub
What if you had a chance to pose lingering questions to important people in your life who are now deceased? Poet Victoria Chang did this very thing, writing letters to her deceased parents, which she compiled into the book, “Dear Memory.” Chang, in trying to come to terms with her sketchy knowledge of her parents’ upbringing [...]
Pat Taub
This past weekend I hunkered down with treasured artist Maira Kalman’s latest book, Women Holding Things, a collection of playful drawings of women holding things accompanied by Kalman’s witty commentary. This delightful book prompted me to make a list of some of the things I hold along with those that will free me up if I stop holding [...]
Pat Taub
I have friends who insist the women in their families didn’t provide examples of independence and/or positive aging. This observation can be skewed by the fact that our mothers and grandmothers didn’t live in our enlightened era where women are consciously aging with an awareness of ageism and sexism, and where the anti-aging industry [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL “Barbie” is the Talk of Summer 2023. I saw this hyped movie as a break from move-in housework, as I’ve just transitioned to the Barbie heartland of Southern California. Some laughs and a mild satire of the iconic doll were all I expected. Instead, my mind was blown by this ambitious dive into the representation [...]
Pat Taub
GUEST POST By BARBARA BENGELS I have to make sure that the Mets aren’t playing whenever I call my dear friend Anna Lea. She’s 92 and a late comer to baseball, has only been obsessed for the past thirty years. Some of my college students are equally engrossed, even asking if they could miss an occasional class which “interfered” with [...]
Pat Taub
As we move into Women’s History Month, the tendency is to celebrate famous women in the arts and politics, giving short strife to those less famous women who made an indelible impression on our lives. For Women’s History Month, I’m honoring relatives, neighbors, schoolteachers, and others who took me under their wing to model courage, [...]
Pat Taub
One of the most valuable lessons aging has bestowed on me is the importance of shedding anger. The less anger I hold, the more inner peace I possess. I’ve learned to release a lot of my anger by developing new narratives to replace those that made my blood boil. My new story path originated through writing about my mother. When I submitted [...]
Pat Taub