“My grandmother has trouble with her phone too,” the sales representative said. “My advice is to call your cell number once a month to avoid letting it fall into sleep mode.” Who knew?  My cell phone goes catatonic if I don’t talk to it enough. Needless to say, my transitio

In the dark days of winter, I admit there are occasions when curling up like a sow bug to stare at my navel seems to be the best response to the world. For two days, for example, my computer was on the fritz. When it eventually beamed back at me with renewed life, the news headlines s

A friend who knew I was unacquainted with the work of children’s writer Shel Silverstein gave me one of his books recently: “The Giving Tree.”  Amused I breezed through it, even read it aloud as if to  entertain the child inside me.  But when I closed the cover, I

Meg Wolitzer, author of The Uncoupling, recently observed that one of the virtues of being disorganized is that in sorting through her piles of “stuff, ”she sometimes rediscovers unrelated lost treasures.” (“The Secret Delights of Disorder by Meg Wolitzer, More, 10/12, pg. 184

One normally doesn’t tout the quarterly edition of an alumni magazine as scintillating reading, but I’m often surprised by what I discover in mine. Nestled among the names of those who are working on PhDs, or writing books or having babies, or doing nothing because they have died,