No sky no earth – but still, snowflakes fall ~ Hashin

It was a very risky idea, given how much he wanted Beats headphones ($200 headphones for a kid?) and a Wii.  But this past week I gave my tween-age son his holiday present, choosing to surprise him with the gift of an experience over a thing. Here’s what came out of his 5-day art class […]

I think it’s the perfect gift for the holidays.  But how will my son react when he finds out where I’ll be sending him for the next five days? Recently I took a cold, hard look around our NYC apartment to assess the cause of its great untidiness.  I discovered that the Chief Clutter Culprits […]

I realize this title might sound a bit provocative, like the outcome of a game of Truth or Dare gone terribly awry. But this month I participated in museum-sanctioned nakedness and submerged myself in a one-of-a-kind exhibit dubbed the Giant Psycho Tank — a sensory deprivation pool of heavily salinated, skin temperature water. If you’ve […]

Bright and early this morning, my 8-year-old son and I walked over the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn for our annual NYC Marathon ritual. This fall rite involves hot chocolate for him and a cappuccino for me as we stake our positions in a patch of sunlight near the 11th mile marker. If we time it […]

Many years ago I worked in a drab office full of cubicles where there were no secrets. One morning my colleague poked her head over the divider to tell me that she was having a visitor later that day — her best friend from college who, she confided, had inoperable brain cancer.