That's Greta Garbo. Every once in awhile I'll see someone who says she's fed up and wants to be left alone. I think it's a Greta Garbo line, I 'vant to be alone, but it's not hers exclusively. Greta doesn't own it. A person can have a million reasons for wanting to be alone, but one of the more inte...

MORE than a little wing, there. We’re at the Midway Park and Fly for an overnight check-in and Chris, a man-of-girth parking attendant, has lifted my carry-on to the shuttle. "Wha’cha’ flying?" he asks FD. "AirTran." "AirTran it is." Yes, AirTran has wooed us away from American, at least when ...

Terrorists from Pakistan attacked institutions, innocent people, in Mumbai last November; a group of about sixty armed Muslims, ready to die to make a statement, responsible for at least eighty deaths, more than 250 injured. Not that I want to dwell on suicide and death, it is not the winter upper y...

My number four son said to me the other day, “You could just write about songs, nothing else, and would never have to worry about material.� He likes that song, How to Save a Life and keeps trying to give me a Cold Play song, I Used to Rule the World. He's succeeded. But. . . I never have to wor...

No sooner do I write Feb and it published. This feels like a Communist plot. (If you're under forty there's probably no humor in that line. Maybe you have to be under fifty, come to think of it.) This is my effort to thank those who link over to me. I always forget someone, no, maybe a few, so if th...

You see who is on top on this blog. It is a competition. Let the voting begin. Jessica Teller's photography can be found at Wers.org . I had no idea that I could have skipped the whole school thing and still called myself a relationship expert. Everyone is doing it now, and frankly, if I had known t...

It's delicate when an adult-son-stuck-living-at-home-with-parents politely asks, "Uh, Ma. Is your post today long or short?" "Depends on your perspective, I guess. On a second read, not having looked at it since I published it late last night, I thought every word of it too long. Maybe it's better n...

Every once in awhile I'll get a g-talk message from A Mother in Israel. She'll say something like, "Shouldn't you be asleep?" You have to love that. She's up because she's 8 hours ahead. And she knows what time it is in Chicago. So I was about to do that, go to sleep at a proper hour. The fish tank ...

That's my nephew. He could be a movie star, seriously. Except that this is not a poster for a movie. Here he represents the Israel Defense Force. He's a poster boy for the IDF. You know this isn't a political blog. It's not even a religious blog. I like to think of it as a way to communicate with pe...

Used to be a diary was a little book with a cheap key that you locked so nobody could read what you wrote. I surfed the atmosphere this morning and read many of your posts about the inaugural (didn't always comment, sorry about that, but I was there!). I guess as a therapist I'm thinking that anythi...