Month: March 2001

  • keeping up with kids

    It is spring, the season of transition and my family is in tune with the season. Two are engaged, one moved back home and began paying rent for the privilege of living at home. (I startled him when I announced that returning to the nest would cost him a few worms, said he’s have to…

  • DNA does not lie

    Six months ago I left a political congress feeling quite insulted. I had been assigned to a committee with a mechanic who said he had not felt right in a man’s body. He thought wearing a fussy dress and having a sex-change operation made him a woman. With his ultra feminine mannerisms, reminiscent of a…

  • gender benders

    Six months ago I left a political congress feeling quite insulted. I had been assigned to a committee with a mechanic who said he had not felt right in a man’s body. He thought wearing a fussy dress and having a sex-change operation made him a woman. With his ultra feminine mannerisms – reminiscent of…

  • laws do not protect the mentally ill

    For six long years my friend’s son refused any and all help, embarking instead into the tumultuous, incoherent world of severe mental illness. Haunted by a host of fears, he became a hermit in the forests of their family farm. Fearful of even the food his sister left in boxes on the trails he traveled,…

  • Beware the sleep police

    If one Virginia state legislator had his way, me and my kids would be in big trouble. The senator’s bill proposed the “Spaces such as the kitchen, living room, dining room and family room shall not be occupied for sleeping purchases.” The senator was trying to protect the property owners who lived beside financially hard-pressed…