Days of cursive might be history

May 4, 2008

I can tell which of my three sisters has sent me a card by the handwriting on the front of the envelope.

Recent columns

• How parents keep kids in line

  April 29, 2008

  I was right. My parents were tougher on me than they were on my three younger sisters.

• Men pitch in more at home

  April 22, 2008

  A report prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families suggests that men's contribution to housework has doubled over the past 40 years, and they tripled the amount of time spent with the kids.

• Debunking negative ideas about the next crop of workers

  April 20, 2008

  My generation of parents considers this job to be open-ended, and the gainful employment of our children is no longer the finish line.

• Videos of beatings a lesson for kids

  April 15, 2008

  The harassment of teachers and the intimidation of students by classroom bullies is nothing new.

• Putting a good face on aging

  April 13, 2008

  The Los Angeles Times reports that, after years of steady growth -- especially among the middle classes, the cosmetic surgery industry is suffering nips and tucks because of the shaky economy.

• Do pick up these books of 'Don'ts'

  April 8, 2008

  The little British publishing house that brought us the Harry Potter series and saw its stock, literally, explode, appears to have struck another vein, although a very different one.

• Poet plucks at petals of her life

  April 6, 2008

  In the opening pages of her memoir, The Florist's Daughter, Patricia Hampl sits determinedly by a hospital bed, holding her mother's unconscious hand while writing the obituary of this difficult woman with her other hand.

• Middle class to blame for current economic crisis

  April 1, 2008

  Apparently, it is the middle class, not the greed heads in banking and on Wall Street, that is responsible for the current economic crisis.

• Earnings escalator grinds to a halt

  March 30, 2008

  Jessie, my college-aged daughter, once declared herself to be "unemployable."

• Politics and sex: a heady brew

  March 25, 2008

  My husband used to say that I could never run for public office because I inhaled during college. The press would find out, and that would be the end of me, he said.

• Lessening fatigue of cancer survivors

  March 23, 2008

  The terrifying discovery of the lump in their breasts. The surgery, the chemo, the radiation. All of that was behind them, maybe six months behind them, maybe five years behind them. But behind them.

• STDs still a threat to many teens

  March 18, 2008

  We must have thought we had this whole teen sex thing beat.

• Fla. sun casts long shadow on future

  March 16, 2008

  Iraised my hand once too often at a charity auction and was the winning bidder on a week in Naples, Fla., at the gorgeous home of a generous donor, located inside a gated community and right on a golf course.

• $5,500 is a lot for a romp in the hay

  March 13, 2008

  As the Eliot Spitzer-prostitution scandal followed a now-familiar script this week - hastily called news conference, terse apology to family and the public, stricken wife at his side - and ultimately culminated in his resignation yesterday, a nation inured to this kind of public drama had only one question left unanswered.

• Firm gives real look at colleges

  March 11, 2008

  In the new Disney film College Road Trip, a hyper-suspicious, over-protective police-chief father portrayed by Martin Lawrence takes his long-suffering daughter on a costly road trip to visit the college of her choice, Georgetown, which is halfway across the country, instead of the college of his choice, Northwestern, which is just around the corner.

• Study fails to credit women

  March 2, 2008

  Research reported in The Archives of Internal Medicine and The New York Times suggests that men can survive to "extreme old age" -- which, for the sake of argument, is considered 90 -- if they don't smoke, manage their weight, control their blood pressure, get regular exercise and avoid diabetes.

• Don't let date nights become predictable

  February 24, 2008

  Being a family-life columnist has its perks.

• Pinching pennies pains us all

  February 19, 2008

  It was an odd place for an economics lesson - in the chair at my hairdresser's - but she was telling me that in the 27 years she has been cutting hair, she had never seen such tough times.

• It's neat to see kids' own habitats

  February 17, 2008

  Parents Weekend is that long-standing college ritual in which parents, who dropped their freshmen off just weeks earlier, get to return to campus and see the kids in their new habitat and assure themselves that they are just fine.

• Sisters bonding over kids' weddings

  February 10, 2008

  Four sisters born within five years. Eleven children born to them within 10 years.

• When a wife had to be well-dressed arm candy

  February 3, 2008

  I've always felt that I was born in the wrong era.

• Couple likes Baltimore enough to move here

  January 27, 2008

  Debra Thomas and her husband, Terry Shepard, found Baltimore in the answers they gave to one of those preferences quizzes you might get from an online dating service.

• Students traveling, but so are parents

  January 20, 2008

  My friend Betsy called me from in front of her stove, where she has been cooking for her four children for too many years to count.

• We got the one tear, and that is enough

  January 13, 2008

  For the first time in the history of crying, it actually helped a woman in the workplace.

• Average age of gardeners on the Web is increasing

  December 30, 2007

  This is gardening's hot-stove season, when, just as in baseball, planning and daydreaming replace the action in the field.

• The phases of her life can be spelled out in cars

  December 23, 2007

  "But mom, that van defines you," my daughter, Jessie, said during the family's latest round of musical cars.

• Women's sacrifices, taken to the extreme

  December 16, 2007

  Christopher Buckley's dark satire Boomsday imagines a Social Security crisis that pits the generations against each other, and a public relations campaign to persuade older Americans to do the "right" thing and check out early. There are even financial incentives and free Botox if you schedule your suicide.

• Tenacious as ivy, socialite-gardener remade her life

  December 9, 2007

  In 1924, at the age of 51 and with her marriage crumbling and money nearly gone, Norah Lindsay, a beautiful English socialite of the second tier, began a career as a garden designer, working for the aristocrats who were her friends.

• Your vision of retirement could be all wrong

  December 2, 2007

  Boomers, I think, anticipate their retirement in ways our parents did not.

• Entering world of 'managing' injury pain

  November 25, 2007

  They say growing old is not for sissies.

• When kids visit, frame questions with care

  November 18, 2007

  The holidays are upon us and, if we are lucky, our grown-up kids will make it home from college or careers and spend some time with us, the parents who still think if them as children.

• Arguing against the rush to retire

  November 11, 2007

  Like you, I have been working and raising children for a quarter century and, of late, I have been daydreaming about what it would be like to retire from both jobs and have some fun.

• Parents can only light the way for grown children on odyssey

  November 4, 2007

  After social scientist William Galston presented his report on what our twentysomething children are up to these days, he was swamped with e-mails, phone calls and dinner-party button-holing by panicked parents.

• New 'odyssey' stage disconcerts parents

  October 28, 2007

  A social scientist defined it. A respected journalist named it. And parents are buzzing about it.

• Humbling to see what history has forgotten

  October 21, 2007

  I recently returned from a trip to Italy, where I attended the wedding of the daughter of a dear friend and where I pondered, among other things, the meaning of old.

• Va. Tech students write quiet words of forgiveness

  May 1, 2007

  There were 33 shrines on the campus of Virginia Tech, lovingly built of flowers, letters, candles, photos and gifts. One for each of the 32 students and teachers who died April 16, and one for Seung-Hui Cho, who shot them all and then himself.

• The deconstruction of Harriet Miers is filled with sexism

  October 11, 2005

  When the first news stories about Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court all used the same quote from President Bush describing her as "a pit bull in size 6 shoes," I decided I would listen carefully to this debate.

• Youths sound off on sex, advertising and athletes

  July 26, 2005

  DURING THE Summer Olympics in Athens, the eyes of the world were focused on Baltimore's Michael Phelps, and sometimes it was because his swimming suit rested so low on his hips, it looked like there might be a wardrobe malfunction at any moment.

• Clinton redux revives that sense of betrayal

  June 22, 2004

  SEEING BILL CLINTON in the spotlight again is like - forgive the analogy - seeing an old lover after not enough time has passed.

• Stewart's attitude was on trial, too

  March 9, 2004

  MARTHA STEWART's conviction in federal court last week must stand as a warning to all future Marthas.

• No reason to recant support for Arnold

  October 7, 2003

  ACOUPLE OF weeks ago, I wrote a column saying that if I were a Californian, I would vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• Schwarzenegger's zest for American dream counterbalances past of sex, drugs

  September 16, 2003

  IT MIGHT COST me my feminist membership card, but if I were a California resident, I'd vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor - even if I'd have to wait a few more months to do so.

• Word war: `Marital' becomes `martial'

  December 10, 2002

  MY HUSBAND and I lead the split-shift, tag-team, crisis-du-jour lives so common among couples with teen-age children, and our paths are guaranteed to cross at only one moment: Sunday night at 9 o'clock for the latest installment of The Sopranos.

• Sniper is wrecking the games students play

  October 22, 2002

  The killings by the sniper in the white van have thrown the athletic lives of children and families into a holy mess of official overreaction and bureaucratic indecision.

• With everyone a target, fear is hard to avoid

  October 9, 2002

  IT IS DIFFERENT this time.

• Parents feel high school angst again, through teens

  October 6, 2002

  IT APPEARS THAT I am not popular in high school. Again.

• Lindh rage gives way to sadness

  July 23, 2002

  THE CASE OF John Walker Lindh has been resolved to the apparent satisfaction of both parties.

• Mourning loss of son's competitor

  March 19, 2002

  KEVAN Fletcher, a top-notch wrestler for Patterson High School, was found shot to death inside his East Baltimore rowhouse earlier this month, and a pair of teen-age acquaintances have been arrested and charged with his murder.

• All we can do for safety is embrace each other

  September 30, 2001

  IN THE IMMEDIATE aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon explosions, I had one thought, and I bet it was almost universal.

• Our routines will keep us busy, but the sadness will stay with us

  September 14, 2001

  IN THE AFTERMATH of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, we are being told that we must recognize that life in this country will never be the same.

• And now, for a -- of local flavor, we bring you a taste of Art Donovan

  January 31, 1993

  Hey, Jim Kelly! Try some warm olive oil on top of your head, ya big crybaby.