Anne Meara: An appreciation

Today, there are plenty of professional comics who are smart and funny and unapologetically attractive, and who don’t need to deprecate their femininity. They owe a debt to Anne Meara; so do all funny women everywhere, even those who have never taken the stage.

Judy Weightman

May 25, 2015 · Essays · 2 minute read

Remembering Mom's feisty example

When in doubt, do something

Remembering Mom’s feisty example for how to handle life’s curveballs.

Pamela J. Forsythe

May 09, 2015 · Essays · 4 minute read

On learning to talk — and listen — to each other

The muscle of translation

We learn others’ languages to remember that we are not the hubs of the universe, that different people have their own disparate experiences, their own idiosyncratic modes of expression. When you learn a second language, you glimpse your own strangeness.

Anndee Hochman

May 05, 2015 · Essays · 5 minute read

The Sandtown-Winchester protests in Baltimore

Turning despair to hope

How would the world be different if more of us treated each other as if we were from the same species?

Maria Thompson Corley

May 02, 2015 · Essays · 5 minute read

The integrity of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian

In defense of Kimye

Enough with bashing Kanye West and Kim Kardashian — they're living the American dream.

Paula Berman

Apr 28, 2015 · Essays · 5 minute read

Mz. Fest production of ‘Shit Men Have Said to Me’

Remind me why it’s your business?

A short play in development about “how men and women communicate” predictably revolves around the quandaries of sexual harassment, but there’s a lot more to this picture.

Alaina Johns

Apr 28, 2015 · Essays · 5 minute read

Poetry in the end

Poetry isn’t a cure, and it isn’t a miracle. But there are words, phrases, whole poems that — in the grimmest, loneliest, most broken moments of my life — have offered me a tiny lozenge of light.

Anndee Hochman

Apr 21, 2015 · Essays · 5 minute read

'Gett' and 'The Heidi Chronicles'

Women and choices

The choices that women are making — in work, marriage, family, and sexual identity — are both brave and definitive, as shown in today’s film and theater.

Carol Rocamora

Apr 12, 2015 · Essays · 4 minute read

The Five Stages of Tax Preparation

Let's hope that identifying the Five Stages of Tax Preparation will lead to a formal recognition of this problem and a road map for sufferers everywhere.

Alaina Johns

Apr 07, 2015 · Essays · 5 minute read

On the loss of a brother

Riverside

Kile Smith, at his brother’s house, reflects on a death.

Kile Smith

Apr 03, 2015 · Essays · 6 minute read