Or how I came to fall in love with my husband and start our family on solid ground — I had hoped, when I married Larry 20 years ago, that one of our children would inherit his magnificent hair, so voluptuous and appealing that just putting your fingers in it communicated a sense of abundance, of largesse. But none did. Rose has medium-thick hair to which she periodically applies…

Where the Season Finale of ‘Succession’ Hurt Most — Beware all who enter here! This piece spoils the finale of the HBO Max series Succession. I recognize that Shiv is just as venal and despicable as her two full brothers, but the gendered way she was broken and humiliated in the fourth and last season finale of HBO’s Succession…

And how the world shrinks for little girls — I’m a little bit of a love generator. I’m often full of good feeling and delighted to interact with the people around me. I find people of all types engaging and love to talk with them about their life experiences if they’re open to it. When I was a child…

Genetic mutation sparks gender war — I read “The Power” by Naomi Alderman five years ago and devoured it. Yet somehow I missed the news that it’s been turned into a series. I heard about that on a Wednesday night, binged five 55-minute episodes on Thursday, and followed up with three more on Friday night. Then…

Ignorance of how to love makes this unhappy world — bell hooks starts her book All About Love: New Visions lamenting that we don’t have a good and commonly agreed upon definition for love. People say it’s inexplicable, indescribable, an overpowering feeling that can’t be corralled or defined. That’s a terrible drawback in a society full of lonesome and disaffected…

Amazon documentary shows a writer’s life well lived — I missed the Judy Blume wave. I was in high school when her books became popular. Some featured middle school or younger protagonists, so I thought they were beneath me. But I heard of her. Every woman writer in America has. And every girl reader, or mother of a girl…

And I want the same for you — I was delighted to read in this Guardian story that there’s a simple way to get an abortion. A hand-held manual aspirator could be used by your primary care physician in the privacy of her office to help you “regulate your period” as they often do in India, where abortion…

And a woman will probably be blamed — When Cash App founder Bob Lee was found stabbed to death on a dark deserted street in San Francisco, tech boors like Elon Musk were quick to blame liberal policies and lax policing. But it wasn’t left-wing politics that killed Lee. It was the patriarchy. Police arrested a “friend” of…

My granddaughter learned it in preschool — I read Becoming Cliterate recently and liked it a lot. So much, in fact, that I went out and bought three more books about female sexuality*, and then bought all four books for my daughter and daughter-in-law. But as sometimes happens with me, my initial enthusiasm exceeded my follow through…