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A decision can be a collection of disparate ideas with very different consequences. How do we bring the two together? This can be harder for some than others.  You're thinking ahead to fall and winter. Maybe, you need a new warm coat and have options based on size, materials, warmth, cost, reliability. You narrow it down to a puffer coat since it's cold where you live in winter. You want black but who needs Canada Goose that costs a small fortune. You go online and choices bubble to the surface; reviews of puffer coats are mixed. You still can't decide....

"Try before you buy." This is a smart tactic not for investing in stuff but when considering a new relationship, romantic or platonic. When you meet someone for the first time, how do you dig deeper to break the ice and find out more personal information that may help you decide whether you want to get to know them better? At the same time, most of us want to avoid being too intrusive initially.  An article titled, "Cold Open: Break the Ice by Looking Inside Someone's Fridge: How your leftovers can spark a meaningful conversation" (March 01, 2022) by Kevin...

Who can think of having fun when we’re worried about Supreme Court decisions, random shootings, the continuing war in Ukraine, rents going up, interest rates rising, the stock market’s ups and downs? You get the drift? It’s easy to remain discouraged.   However, let’s shift gears fast. Why let gloom and doom dictate our daily routines. We can’t control what’s going on in the world. So, as the weather heats up, it’s time for some balance and outright joy.  Summer seems a short season. One minute it’s here and everything is blooming gorgeously and the tomatoes at the farmer’s market are...

Sometimes, we get maudlin thinking about how quickly we move through life. When we look back, we realize how time flies by so quickly.  It seems like only yesterday when Barbara moved to St. Louis and met Margaret, Barbara's kids and then grandchildren were born, or Margaret's three kids graduated from college, got their first jobs and then her husband passed away. It's longer ago that we graduated grade school, high school, college and married.  We write the date of a new year on a check and think, where did the year go?  What happened to all those special moments...

Nostalgia is old news. What does change is our attitude toward looking back. Reminiscing tends to get rosier, we discovered, when we went to St. Louis recently for a signing of Not Dead Yet at the Schlafly Library hosted by Left Bank Books. Here's a link to the talk, emceed by St. Louis Jewish Light's editor, Ellen Futterman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWyUfGzmAaE Getting on the plane to St. Louis got us out of our COVID bubble. For Barbara, it was the first time she had been on a plane in more than three years and revisiting St. Louis in six years after living...