Barbara Writes

Where is the outrage? Texas has just put a bounty on women’s heads, has just declared open season on women seeking an abortion, and other...

For most of my adolescent and adult life, I’ve taken to writing letters to newspapers when something, usually political, gets me mad. At...

UP IN SMOKE: A Meditation on Addiction When I told my eldest grandson, hereafter referred to as EG (for Eldest Grandson) to protect his...

I suspect that many of you have seen this picture posted recently on my Facebook page, and I thank all who responded. Now I’d like to...

July 4th is a holiday that I’ve always approached with ambivalence. I’ve never been a flag flyer, and have preferred to leave...

My family celebrates. We celebrate everything; we do birthdays, Christmas, Chanukah, Passover, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving…we even...

Way back in the 1970’s, my cousin Erica gave me a poster. It had a drawing of a confused looking little guy on it, holding a bouquet of...

I recently received a genetic test kit as a gift. I dutifully spit into the test tube, and sent the saliva off to be analyzed. I’m third...

It’s been another tough week; an unusual kind of tough for me. As a former “red diaper” baby, used to fighting for minorities, oppressed...

So, look…I’ve always been a political animal. Among my earliest memories are riding atop my father’s shoulders at a “Save the Rosenbergs”...

So, there my mother was in Elmhurst, an elegant grocer’s wife, taking her children in to Manhattan weekly for music lessons, where we...

The new year is always a time of reflection to me. I’m not into resolutions, having broken too many of them. Nonetheless, it does feel...

In my last blog, I left you on a bitterly cold February day in 2011, as my reluctant husband, Liam, and I drove out to Far Rockaway, to...

My last posts have been about my city (New York, of course), and my neighborhood, the West Village. That got me started thinking about...

Summer’s over. Pandemic’s not. No more easy porch socializing, outdoor dining, quasi-normal activities. My haunts are closed. I sing and...