How to make your dollar most effective — It’s Giving Tuesday. There are a lot of worthy causes. There is a big marketing push following Black Friday and Cyber Monday to remember your favorite non-profit. This is called Giving Tuesday. …

Every day can be special. Determine now to make it so. — It’s coming, like a tsunami, gaining size and momentum right after Halloween. The holidays are rolling out in stores everywhere — displays, trees, toys! After 35 years in a dead marriage, my four kids scattered across the country, I find myself contemplating another Christmas alone. It is not a pleasant…

Writing Prompt #43: Aging & Food — At this stage, I can no longer eat much late at night. If I do, I feel the food sitting in my stomach as I sleep. And it doesn’t feel good. What looks tempting at 8 p.m. turns into a Major Regret at 2 a.m. This is only one of…

I struggle with it during my annual exam — The annual exam, the coochie check, the dreaded internal. It’s important. It’s every year. It’s NO fun. My ob/gyn confirmed, no one likes this. It is a necessary evil. As I was being escorted from the waiting room to the cubicle of last remorse, we passed the restroom. Do I…

Written in response to a prompt from Malky McEwan for E3 — It was 2014 and I was teaching Freshmen English at a community college, nestled in what many consider to be a crime-ridden urban area. My class was diverse — Black students, recent immigrants, many were the first generation to attend college. One of the few White men in my class…

She acts more like a 6-year-old than the 88-year-old she is — My mother is slowly succumbing to dementia. Is it Alzheimer’s? You might ask. We do not know. That can only be determined after death. I do know, she is delightful yet different from the woman she was once. As we prepare to move them to an assisted living facility, we…

How do you change your weight or career? I explain the cycle of change in these easy-to-follow steps anyone can do. — Have you ever been desperate? So desperate you have no place to turn. No one who seems to understand or care. I have. I sold everything from my 30 years of raising children and moved 1,000 miles away to attend tech school. …

Congratulations to Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin, but most of us are living what her research proves — gender pay inequality has been around since the 1800s. — Claudia Goldin, a professor of Economics at Harvard, has won the Nobel Prize for research in Economic Science by studying the gender pay gap throughout history. I am in awe of anyone who receives this prestigious award. AWE. It is awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred…

It’s not that hard to make your own and it’s easier to digest — I will blame it on Frank. He came into work, boasting about his daughter making a loaf of fresh bread. I could just smell it. That got me started on the sourdough express. Sourdough is a process of fermentation that breaks down the grain, making it more easily digested. …