At the tender age of 59, I’m a volunteer for a presidential campaign for the first time in my life. It’s changed how I view just about everything about the election. I’m like an awful lot of women in this country. Not just other Democratic women, but like disaffected, demoralized…

When I lived in California, on or around New Year’s Day, I often found myself hunched over a large piece of foam core, with a glue stick, a stack of magazines and a pair of scissors, creating a Vision Board. To it I would paste photos of that year’s dreamed-of…

The town I live in, just over the mountain from Lake Tahoe, is famous for three things: being the oldest “settlement” in Nevada, the Genoa Bar — a sort of alcoholic Disneyland — and deer. Yes, I know your town probably has deer, too, and they eat your roses. But…

I lived on California’s Monterey Bay for nearly 40 years, within walking distance to the beach for half of it. When my husband first proposed a move east of the Sierra, I rejected it out of hand. Because…ocean. Nevada doesn’t have one. At least, not right now. But Nevada had…

I had to fly this week, after a long hiatus. And something about it felt…weird. On my return from Chicago, I had a layover at LAX (You Can’t Get There from Here is the Reno-Tahoe tagline.) And I finally put my finger on it. I’d voluntarily gotten into yet another…

On a sunny March afternoon last year, I took my 20-year-old niece Francesca for a little Nordic ski outing south of Lake Tahoe. Fran had never before put on a pair of skis, cross-country or otherwise, but she took to it like a duck to (frozen) water. “How often do…

Imagine that it’s 1931 and you’re an American woman married to a cheating bastard. (Go ahead, I’ll wait. This may be easier for some of you than others.) Let’s say you want to leave Mr. Screwmore. But this is the 1930s. …