Not Enough Ways to Remember a Dad
BY LISA ROMEO Since my father died, I've noticed that when people talk about gone fathers, small things bubble up. The conversations I love begin, "Remember how he loved…he liked…he hated…" I am struck...
View ArticleWanting What You Have
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL Something magical can happen when you see the same ol’ same ol’ with different eyes. And so goes the theme of the movie “The Lovers.” Long-married Southern Californians, “Mary”...
View ArticlePaying It Forward: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
BY JILL MATLOW A few weeks ago, I experienced some disappointing circumstances that made me question the universe, something I rarely do. I mentioned these circumstances to a member at my yoga studio...
View ArticleThe Truth About Being Older and “Younger”
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL "I wouldn't want to be 20 again unless I could take my 50-year-old brain with me," was once said by 70s gap-toothed supermodel Lauren Hutton, 73, when asked if she would go back...
View ArticleThe Road Not Taken –‘Til Later
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL Once in a while, something good can come out of a TV commercial. Last January, my 22-year-old son Luke began an engineering internship in Seattle. When planning his late June...
View ArticleDid you get my text? Where did you go?
BY JILL MATLOW As a baby boomer, I’ve witnessed how much technology and the way people communicate has evolved so much over the last few decades. Growing up in simpler times, my fellow baby boomers and...
View ArticleHow To Be Bold
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL “I coulda, woulda, shoulda been bolder.” That’s what I’ve been thinking about my career ever since I started watching a new show on Freeform called The Bold Type. My...
View ArticleMy Unexpected Turn Up the U Curve
By HOLLY ST. LIFER My mother died fast of pancreatic cancer when I was 17, and I’ve lived most of my life since waiting for the worst. But when I entered my 50s, for no reason I could conjure, I...
View ArticleThe life of the party or the homebody: Which one are you?
BY JILL MATLOW Party like it’s 1999 or homeward bound? When invited to a party, are you like me, excited at the prospect of meeting new people, or more like my friend Carol, who immediately starts to...
View ArticleHow To Have The Last Laugh
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL It’s her way or the freeway.“ There is a pecking order. It goes me and then all of you,” says Los Angeles club owner “Goldie Herschlag,” (Oscar winner Melissa Leo), who heads...
View ArticleDon’t Wait To Say Good-Bye – September 11th continues to hold powerful...
BY KATHLEEN HEINS September 11, 2001 began with a crystal clear blue sky in New York City. It was certainly not a day that you would peg for unimaginable horror. A native New Yorker, I was living in...
View ArticleRemembering The Prime Of Your Life
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MER:KL Your dead husband comes back as Jon Hamm? Well, hello. Marjorie Prime—Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer-prize nominated play-cum-movie—is set in Montauk, circa 2050 in the beautiful...
View ArticleGo Down Swinging
BY KITT WALSH We Boomers are the generation that protested the Vietnam War, got tear-gassed and locked up in RFK stadium, insisted on being recognized as Ms., not just somebody’s Mrs., fought for...
View ArticleAlways Look At The Whole Picture
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL “Your friends sound like dicks.” This is not the admonishment from a father to a son, but from son to father in the new film Brad’s Status. Suburban Sacramento dad, Brad Sloan...
View ArticleLost In Space
BY JILL MATLOW The other day I turned around and was staring into a big black hole. You probably think that metaphorically speaking I was deep in thought, ruminating about my problems and staring off...
View ArticleGiving Reboots The Boot
BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL Everything old is not new again. It’s the same old story in HDTV. Or streamed on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. I confess that when Gilmore Girls returned with four 90-minute...
View ArticleAnother Day In The Trigger Happy Capital
BY DON PORTOLESE Twenty-six more dead at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on top of the fifty-eight killed in Las Vegas just over a month ago. Let’s see… carry the one, and that comes out to be...
View ArticleTMI And The Art Of Oversharing
BY JILL MATLOW In the 1970s, if someone mentioned TMI to me, I immediately thought of Three Mile Island. For those of you too young to remember, Three Mile Island was the location of the most...
View ArticleThe Brotherhood Of The Traveling Coat
BY JILL MATLOW Do you remember the movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? It tells the story of a pair of jeans that fit four best friends who were all shapes and sizes and follows these...
View Article2017: Our Year of Sexual Reckoning
BY DON PORTOLESE BREAKING NEWS: Yet another individual has come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by the comedian, Louis C.K., only this time it has hit much closer to home. Lawyers for...
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