Opinion: $65K for Healthcare - A Stepford Hospital Experience
Several years ago, my partner had to undergo a medical procedure that required an overnight stay at the hospital. His urologist warned us that this was coming and did his best to answer as many of our questions as he could.
Read full storyCommentary - Social Media: The Headache I Knew Nothing About
Welp, it seems that I’m just not all that special after all. I’ve been noodling around the fringes of social media for nearly two decades now and here I thought I was immune to the poison. In fact, I’ve bragged about it both in person and in writing. Newsflash: Nope.
Read full storyCommentary: Manhattan is Sinking...Literally
It’s been pretty easy for me to sit back and smugly watch Florida sinking into the ocean while hurricanes swat it around and its politicians stand on upended boxes to keep their feet dry while blaming drag queens and queers for the state’s problems. Easy and I’ll admit it, fun.
Read full storyOpinion: My Subsidized Life
And my sincere gratitude to the tax payers making it possible. As my three-year healthcare insurance dream comes to an end, I want to pause and thank the tax-payers of the State of New York - of which I am one, btw - because for three years I have had the enormous privilege of having healthcare insurance that worked beautifully. Being on Medicaid has been like being a European for three years, but as of Halloween (for real) I'll be back to being an ordinary American for whom health care is an expensive possibility.
Read full storyOpinion: Nice Work, Leaves
The ingratitude of trees — and us — for leaves every autumn. There they are each spring without fail. On every twig on every branch in every place where deciduous trees grow. Buds that will unfurl into leaves.We take their shade for granted all summer and then grumble about having to rake them up each autumn.
Read full storyCommentary: Words to Live By
Think of this as a particularly helpful and moderately entertaining TED talk, but one that you have to exert the extra effort to read instead of having it spooned directly into your brain via ear holes. K?
Read full storyOpinion: Taming Twitter with Birds
I have the distinction of having been one of the first thousand or so to line up and board that questionable online leaky vessel, Facebook. I joined in 2004. I'm also among the last thousand or so to hold my nose and join Twitter before it began morphing into something....else.
Read full storyCommentary: Preserving Friendships
Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized how close I was to detonating something that couldn’t be un-detonated. But there they were. It should have been totally innocuous but somehow talking about Roger Waters has become yet another lightning rod.
Read full storyOpinion: "Aiming for Perfection: The Impossible Utopia"
A place for everything and everything in its place. Just the thing to get my little Germanic/Scandinavian Capricorn heart to go pitter-pat. I love order. I love having everything fit into its assigned place perfectly.
Read full storyOpinion: The Greatest Human Failing
Funny how much trouble is caused in this world by people who refuse to mind their own business. Well, not funny actually. It wasn't funny growing up in the bosom of Small Town America and being at the business end of damaging gossip and nasty speculation. Where I grew up it was a given that people were not going to mind their own business. Moving from the micro to the macro, we have the ridiculous near-daily protests and bans of drag story hours or brunches blended with a dash of American politicians telling China to watch its step…in Asia.
Read full storyOpinion: Reality of #NotAllMen: A Queer Woman's View
Let's start with the bit that will get skipped or ignored but has to be said regardless, I'm obviously NOT talking about all straight men. Got that?. After all, not ALL the straight men in this world are emotionally stunted, seething women-hating, walking talking time bombs just waiting for that jerk ahead of him to not use his turn signal.
Read full storyOpinion: Ukraine is Burning Rainbow Flags and Proclaiming "White Lives Matter"
Chances are very good that most people haven't seen the video posted here. However, let’s just imagine for a moment that a march happened in October 2020 in Moscow that featured a huge White Lives Matter banner and angry people burning Ukrainian and Rainbow flags. It's safe to say that there would be wall-to-wall coverage on the front pages of every major newspaper across the United States and Western Europe.
Read full storyOpinion: This Is Your Golden Age. Enjoy It.
On a Zoom call recently, a friend mourned having missed out on how "AWESOME!” life was in 2019. I’m willing to bet he didn’t think so at the time nor did any of us. The failed real estate developer was still in the Oval Office as daily bad news cascaded from every direction. Will we one day also look back at the idyllic early days of Omicron and think, now that’s when life was really easy?
Read full storyCommentary: Victim or Volunteer
I’d asked him to do the dishes and he asked if he’d dirtied any of them. I was taking his clothes down with mine to put into the laundry as he settled onto the couch having come over to my place again for the weekend. I began yelling at him about how we never spent time in his pigpen of an apartment and when he came over to my place he expected me to cook, clean, and “entertain”.
Read full storyCommentary: How the Old Folks Shopped
And the New Folks still do at Cleveland’s Famous Westside Market. Growing up in what was essentially Ohio's answer to Mayberry, USA, going to the market meant walking two blocks down Wooster Street to Underwood's Supermarket. That was for the day-to-day needs. And once a week Mom would take the station wagon up to the Kroger's to stock up on all the stuff she'd need to cook three meals a day for a family of six. That was food shopping in the last third of the last century.
Read full storyOpinion: This is How the Free Press Dies
On the first day of that Intro to Journalism class, the professor — an award-winning, internationally renowned investigative reporter and author of best-selling books, spoke with great solemnity about the “calling” of journalism. The man meant it. I really really wish I could ask him what he thinks of the almost inevitable extradition of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, to the United States on charges under The Espionage Act.
Read full storySatire: Keyboard Warriors, Ukraine Calling!
This Call To Action isn't just for those big strong men who need to carry their sidearms and assault weapons when they go for an oil change or to pick up tampons for the Missus. This one is also for the countless keyboard warriors whose social media accounts are draped in blue and yellow. Слава Україні!
Read full storyCommentary: The Burners Are All Right
The folks out at Burning Man now are having the time of their lives. The weather will never be truly predictable, but our reactions always are and that goes triple for any weather out in The Black Rock Desert. In a word: hysteria.
Read full storyCommentary: The Appropriate Use of My Taxes
The Paper of Record tells us that providing for the hundreds of migrants arriving in the city daily will cost "The City" $12 billion. The City, in case anyone's wondering, translates to We, The Taxpayers. Before anyone starts griping about that, however, let's keep in mind that somehow we've managed to send anywhere from $75 billion to $113 billion to fund that mess over in Ukraine (depending on your source, some sources put it at $200 billion but after the first set of nine zeros it all gets very murky).
Read full storyOpinion: When Therapy Goes Sideways
Because I’d left home without ibuprofen, I stopped at a corner bodega and bought one of those little two-pill packs of Advil. When I arrived, I asked if I could get a glass of water to take my Advil.
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