At a recent event where I was speaking on writing and publishing a memoir, one man raised his hand and seriously asked me if I was a millionaire now that my book was published. That was a surprising question, especially if he had noticed that I was wearing well-worn Nine West shoes, NOT Jimmy […]
Category: Confessions of.a Do-Gooder
Please Don’t Fool Me With Bacon
It happens every year. I wake up on April 1st completely aware that it is April 1st, yet completely incognizant of the fact that it’s April Fools Day. I never expect it. If you want to fool somebody, I am the perfect target because it is not in my nature to distrust. If you look […]
Unpopular Culture
I missed the whole thing! While everyone was laughing at Starbucks and picking on Chairman/CEO, Howard Schultz last week for his well-meaning, but wildly unpopular, attempt to create public discussion by asking baristas to write “Race Together” on paper coffee cups, I missed it. By the time I visited Starbucks a few days ago, the […]
Give Me a Happy Ending
I recently read that American readers are far more interested in a happy ending than, for example, European readers, who more readily accept less tidy endings. I can’t speak for the entire American reading public, but I admit without doubt or hesitation that I WANT A HAPPY ENDING. I don’t just want it. I crave […]
It’s a Rand McNally Illiterate World
I laughed when my sister-in-law, Brooke, recently posted a hysterical rant on Facebook in which she tried to understand how her teenage daughter, who has lived her whole life in the same place, still can’t find her way around town. “So…Madison has a permit,” Brooke said. “Terrifying.” It seems that when my dear niece, Madison, […]
The SECOND Coldest Month?
For the past month, I kept hearing that February 2015 was well on the way to being the coldest month in the history of Pittsburgh weather recordkeeping. After more days of sub-zero temperatures and colder fingers and toes than I had ever experienced or wanted, I was looking forward it. Imagine that? After growing up […]
My Mission to Correct My Recent Admission to College
There was a big fuss a few weeks ago when Carnegie Mellon University accidentally sent emails to 800 students congratulating them for being accepted into the university’s prestigious graduate computer science program. Ironically, it was a computer glitch that brought delirious joy to 800 people, who found out a short time later via another […]
The Verdict
Since the perky, smiling tipstaff kept warning us not to talk about the case, we didn’t. The other jurors and I had been filing in and out of the cold courtroom several times over the past day and a half, but every time we sat in the jury room together, waiting for the next court-related […]
The Trial
If you think you have a lot of drama in your life, spend a day in a courtroom. No matter how up or down you think your life is, you may discover that anyone who has to sit in front of a judge or jury has a life that is likely more up/down/diagonal and sideways […]
Pick Me! Pick Me!
Without numerous well-worn copies of Weight Watchers Magazine, the first 3 hours of my jury service would have been interminable. Jury duty is mostly about waiting. This I learned last week as I waited for the judge to arrive to give a brief, well-memorized speech, waited for the prosecution and defense attorneys to […]