I’m starting to wrap up my own life and legacy as a 71-year old grassroots activist, concerned citizen, and practical philosopher. Over the years, working on a wide variety of issues, especially in my cronehood, I’ve stumbled across a variety of missing links, gaps in our knowledge, obscure resources, and unknown activists. Taken all together, they’ve helped me […]
Spirituality
DEDICATED TO MY PARENTS, who pulled the plug on our household television (c.1956) and never looked back. I was 5 or 6 years old, probably in first grade, with an older sister (8-9), younger sister (2-3), and one still to come. Unfortunately, I never got to delve into their deep reasoning. Nor were they particularly […]
Last Friday night, the beginning of the Jewish sabbath, was Christmas Eve. Being neither Christian or a religious Jew, I nevertheless appreciated a certain numinous atmosphere that develops every Friday night and holiday eve. I settled in for a quiet evening, deepened by the worsening COVID pandemic, by the puzzling lack of camraderie in my […]
This is the story of how I became a raging feminist before I was an hour old, how I lived with it for years (without knowing the source), and how I came to know it 55 years later. I offer this personal story not because it’s especially dramatic (it’s not) or as a role model […]
A recent podcast on gender identity, women’s public authority, and related issues led to a strange Twitter exchange between me and the guest, an attorney. The guest was one of the first in the U.S. (along with a co-author) to publicly alert the United Nations to the dangers for women and girls of substituting “gender” […]
Being 70 years old, I have observed or participated in many discussions in mixed company over the years, especially about public issues and philosophical questions. Such discussions take place in classrooms, meetings, parties, family gatherings, as well as on TV, radio, and social media. Over the years, in too many of those conversations I ended […]
There are two items in this newsletter, one short, one long. The short item has some practical tips for preparing our Evanston land for the winter—and for next year’s growing season and beyond. The other, longer item contains some practical tips for rethinking our local, statewide, and national feminist strategy — a rethinking that is […]
As a 70-year old Midwestern secular Jew, born feminist, there have been surprising moments in my intellectual and political life where my “progressive, left” perspective has come face-to-face with the “conservative, right” viewpoint, as if we were standing in the same place. This has made me wonder if the human political spectrum is actually a circle, […]