Mom Has Cancer. Her Son Reacts.
My friend Julie Levine had everything I lacked: A charmed childhood, beautiful kids. I might have envied her had she not been the nicest person I ever met. And, therefore, a magnet for cancer. (On an Internet bulletin board I once frequented, we joked that compassion and a zest for living were risk factors.) Julie is eight years younger than me, so I assumed she would someday speak at my funeral. Especially once I received a diagnosis of stage III ovarian cancer in 2001. Julie came to my hospital room. She took me to chemo. She and her mother came to my house bearing brisket, fudgy peanut ...
Open Letter to My High School Class. Especially Paula.
In my four decades since graduating, I have avoided high school reunions. But this year we're coming up on the 40th anniversary, and you know how everyone likes round numbers. And, unlike ten years ago, we now have facebook. Just a month ago, my maiden name was nowhere to be found on the Internet. I didn't want to be found by people who knew me during that painful time in my life. My father was an engineer, and he made an excellent living. Despite that, we lived in a run-down Dallas neighborhood. But the district lines of Bryan Adams High School were so expansive -- graduating class of 1,116 ...
Wisconsin Protesters: Can You Spare Some Solidarity?
Sorry, Wisconsin protesters. I want to root for unions. But I can't. That's because they're only for the working man and woman. They don't seem to care about the unemployed and the legions of Americans forced into part-time work. As depicted in the British comedy "I'm All Right Jack" -- I'm all right, and to hell with everyone else -- unions are narrowly focused on union workers. That's the hidden reason sympathy has declined. A lot has happened to the working man and woman in the last 40 years, and none of it good. Unions have not been paying attention. Unions brag it was they who put an ...
Middle East Erupts: Orchestra Seat to the Revolution
If the powers that be had realized the global implications of the Internet when it was invented, they probably would have found some way to kill it. Take a look at these early pages and the very first World Wide Web site. Then take a look at this CNN footage of the intrepid Ben Wedeman in Benghazi. In just two decades, the earth has shifted. I suspect the 1989 slaughter of unarmed protesters in Tiananmen Square could not happen today, or at least not without severe international repercussions. Same with Rwanda. One wonders how much sooner Hitler and Stalin might have been stopped if the ...
Scott Brown: Could Erin's Law ('Get Away, Tell Today') Have Helped?
As a child, I learned how to duck and cover in case of a nuclear attack. My mother told me not to run with scissors, lest I "put out" my eyes. And instructional films, similar to this one, warned me not to walk off with strangers. Why these strangers were coming around in the first place, or what could happen to me if I succumbed to an invitation, I had no idea. Erin Merryn aims to change all that with a simple, memorable phrase: "Get away, tell today." Merryn, who testified before the Illinois Legislature in 2010, states her case eloquently: Currently in the state of Illinois, schools ...
Valentine's Day: Love 2.0
Love calls, like the wild birds It's another day A spring wind blew My list of things to do away -- "Spring Wind" by singer/songwriter Greg Brown We now know love is little more than a chemical imbalance. (Thanks a lot for the buzzkill, science.) Which explains the crazy behavior observed among those afflicted. People really do fall "madly" in love. Anthropologist Helen Fisher put it this way: There is no human culture on Earth that has been proven not to know the phenomenon of romantic love. Due to ethical concerns, much of what we know about love comes from animals. Researchers found a ...
Judging Mark Kelly: Gabrielle Giffords Would Want Him to Fly the Shuttle
Give him some credit. Give her some credit. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, shot in the head on Jan. 8 in Tucson, Arizona, has made so much progress in a Houston rehabilitation center that her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, decided to leave his wife's side and join his crew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, scheduled to launch in April. And here come the critics, right on time: Mark Kelly is selfish, he's ego-driven, he cares more about his career than he does his wife. How can he even think of abandoning her in her fragile state? Hey, people! Mark Kelly is going back to work, like thousands of ...
Mobs and Democracy: The Facebook-Twitter-YouTube Revolution
You may think you've seen this movie before. Just two summers ago, in fact, in Iran. Never say never, but I'm saying never. You've never seen anything like what is unfolding today in Egypt. Just when it seemed humankind was doomed (pick your poison: pandemic, climate change, famine, drought, nuclear war) up pop Tunisia and Egypt. Overnight, it seems, the world has entered a new era. As The New York Times put it: It was a spectacle that would have been unthinkable less than two decades ago, when Middle Eastern governments strictly censored any subversive images. Now, it seems, all ...
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the State of the Union, and the Empty Chair
On display during the State of the Union speech was the vacant chair that would have been occupied by Ariz. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who could not attend because she was in a hospital recovering from a bullet wound to the head. Recuperation could take as long as a year. The empty chair got to everyone, myself included. What got to me even more was the photograph of her husband, Mark Kelly, holding her hand in the hospital as the couple watched the speech on television. I could imagine what might be on the left side of that cropped photo. Nine years ago I lay in a hospital bed with a ...
Peace Corps Turns 50 Amid Charges of Rape, Murder and Cover-Up
On the night of March 11, 2009, a 24-year-old Peace Corps volunteer named Kate Puzey was tied up and knifed on the front porch of her house in West Africa. Her throat was cut. She was killed the way you would slaughter a goat, Puzey's cousin told ABC's "20/20" in a Jan. 15 broadcast. Kate Puzey was the 23rd volunteer to be murdered in Peace Corps history. The killing took place just days after Puzey e-mailed her Peace Corps supervisors about a fellow teacher and Peace Corps employee. He was not an American, but rather a villager, or Host Country National. Puzey believed he was raping the ...
POPULAR
- Nancy Pelosi Confirms House May Skip Up or Down Vote on Senate Health Bill
- The Five Most Racist Obama Cartoons?
- Huck Finn, Censorship and the N-Word Controversy
- Soraya M., Stoned to Death for Being an "Inconvenient Wife''
- Kathryn Rogers: 6 Things to Know About Rush Limbaugh's Bride-To-Be
- World's Best City for Men? New York City No. 1 in Survey
- California Same-Sex Marriage Trial: An Uneven Matchup
Follow Politics Daily
News From Our Partners
- Female soldiers fight the brass ceiling
- Catholic tribalism and the contraceptive flap
- The two Americas clash at CPAC
- A birth-control compromise could divide the right
- Unions in a “death spiral”? Not on my job site
- More Stories »
- Romney Edges Ron Paul in Maine Caucus
- Romney Beats Santorum in Conservative Straw Poll
- Obama's Budget Sets Up Fight With GOP
- Bishops: Birth Control Change Not Good Enough
- Ron Paul: I've Got 'Good Chance' in Maine
- More Stories »
- Former Bachmann spokeswoman joins Santorum team
- Sen. McCain to Negotiate Release of U.S. Aid Workers in Egypt
- Paul: Skipped CPAC to Try and Win in Maine
- The Phantom Menace: A Deal On the Payroll Tax Break
- McDonnell Sees "Great Path" for Romney
- More Stories »
Top News
More News
More on Aol
Local News
More Blog/Sites
Sites and Services
HuffPost Politics