None Dare Call it Normal

None Dare Call it Normal The email landed in my box with a nearly audible thud. Dear Stella, It’s time for your online follow-up visit to the Brain Health Registry! Just like your first visit, you’ll be asked to update your information by answering questionnaires and re-taking brain tests. Your participation is vital to furthering the […]
A Quilt is More than Fragments

A Quilt is More than Fragments By age 92 my mother was no longer independent, though she lived in the house my parents had bought sixty years before. My brother and I were far away, and Mom depended on the kindness of neighbors and a bit of hired help to shop for her, do her […]
What to Expect When You are Seventy

What to Expect When You Are Seventy Having been in my seventies for all of six months, I am only marginally qualified to write about this decade. But never having been reticent about sharing an opinion, whether informed or not, here is what I know so far. If you’re a Crone in Training in your […]
Drugs after 60 – And Not The Fun Kind

Drugs after 60 – And Not The Fun Kind I react badly to most medications – sometimes badly enough to warrant a MedWatch report to FDA. A bit ironic, given that I spent my career in biotech writing submissions to FDA for product approvals. But knowing what I do about medical regulation, it did not […]
4 Things For My Next Life Bucket List

A Next Life Bucket List “I have a next life bucket list: More sex, better singing voice, the ability to tan.” –Billie Berlin, interviewed in Aphrodite’s Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica after Midlife I don’t believe in reincarnation. I don’t believe in much, actually, except an objective external universe and that our task on […]
Roe v Wade – The Voices Project

Roe v Wade – The Voices Project The Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson in June 2022, reversing the 1975 Roe v. Wade decision that established abortion as a constitutional right. When women say, We will not go back to back-alley abortions, that raises the question: What was it like back then, before Roe? […]