Did Facebook Bring Down Susan G. Komen?

The interwebs – and the San Francisco Bay Area, which is quite literally Facebook territory – have been abuzz since news of the social networking site’s IPO broke Wednesday.   Within hours, anyone with a mic or a keyboard was thoroughly a-riff:  Would the projected $5 billion trigger a new housing boom?  Would it save the […]

Read Full Post »

This Just In! Facebook Makes you Sad!

In case you occasionally channel your inner adolescent, you oughta stay away from Facebook.    It’s not because — as in the days when the Mean Girls were the scourge of seventh grade — you will be judged.  It’s because you will  judge them — and find yourself falling short by comparison. Compare.  Contrast.  Fail. You […]

Read Full Post »

Facebook Face-Off: Doth Thou Protest Too Much?

Clicking through my Facebook friends, one could be forgiven for assuming I do a lot of socializing at preschools. One would be wrong, of course: the truth is that countless of my pals have replaced their profile pics with snaps of their wee ones; their status updates with diaper-status updates. Continuing along, one might also […]

Read Full Post »

Happiness Redefined. Thank you, Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott and I are friends.  Okay, not personally, but I follow her on Facebook.  (We did have a moment a decade ago when I shook her hand after she gave a talk up in Berkeley. But anyway.)  When her latest post popped up in my news feed this morning, a bunch of bells went […]

Read Full Post »

Could Women Against Guns Be As Powerful as Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

Do not let the outrage die. In the wake of the horrific mass murders in Newtown, Conn., we’ve read plenty of newspaper articles, listened to numerous TV commentators, read hundreds of Facebook posts, all with the same message:  we need to talk about gun control. And yet. My biggest fear is that, once the grief […]

Read Full Post »

On Presidents, Apron Strings, and Second Shifts.

I’m starting to wonder if this presidential election might hinge on apron strings. In the wake of the last debate, we’ve all been caught up in binders and trapper-keepers and funny Facebook memes – along with some hijinks on Amazon, where a bunch of smartypants hijacked several binder pages.  I think we’re missing the point. […]

Read Full Post »

How The Pursuit of Happiness Makes Us Crazy.

The last time our family got together — finding all of us in the same zipcode at the same time is a rare and wondrous feat — we hunkered down in a suite at the Holiday Inn Express (Backstory not important). With no bar or restaurant in sight, our family of foodies trekked to the […]

Read Full Post »

Mommy Wars? Media Myth!

I think it’s time to send the Mommy Wars off to bed once and for all. Best-selling novelist Deborah Copaken Kogan would definitely agree.  Kogan was one of the featured break-out speakers at last week’s Sun Valley Writers Conference and her talk on the myth of the mommy wars provided food for both thought and […]

Read Full Post »

A Fine Mess: Why We Need to Ditch the Clutter

Sometimes what we need to do is clean house. I’m not necessarily talking about making your bed or doing the laundry — although either one is a good start — but channeling your inner minimalist and ditching the clutter.  Both literally and figuratively. I’ve been thinking about this lately as I watched a friend make […]

Read Full Post »

Have It All? Why We’re Asking the Wrong Question.

I woke up this morning to a message from a former student who’d sent me a link to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s cover story in the new Atlantic.  If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a brilliant piece that lays out the reasons why women still can’t have it all — and what we as a society […]

Read Full Post »