“Before I explain what I mean by survival, let me clarify that the mastery I speak of is not simply the control of breath and body, but of thoughts, speech, behavior towards others,…

“The tumult of raging nature that I watch with fascination incongruously stirs a memory of a Greek song I learned as a child where Thunder is a giant woman whose bracelets rumble as…

“My parents saw the value of teaching me four languages from the moment I began to speak. The European convent school I attended in Yokohama taught English and French from the first grade,…

“With so much turmoil in our world, I was at a loss as to what I would write this month, but then I heard a children’s choir sing Benjamin Britten’s ‘A Ceremony of Carols,’ and…

“I saw stretching out before me endless days of dealing with those demands, of setting aside my life for a person who terrorized me as a child. Something within me demanded that I…

“You might wonder why I’m recounting these ancient myths about women. Why now? Because they matter, now. Because the subjugation of women continues to this day. Because it is time to look at…

“Recalling this, I sat in silence for quite a while, looking out at the Pacific through my rain-swept window, and it seemed somehow significant that Georgia chose to leave this world at the…

“Because I knew all this, because I’ve seen what villains of Trump’s ilk can do, because I know that creatures such as he attract followers of the vilest levels of humanity, and fools…

“Perhaps the sociopath did us a favor. Perhaps, in all his efforts to destroy this country, he revealed the depth of the infection. One cannot heal what one cannot see. And, judging from…

“There is no room in this world for ‘us and them.’ This world demands an attitude of ‘us,’ all of us within one human race. It demands our ending the demonization of ‘the…