MAYBE IT'S ME

Is an older woman who travels alone to a foreign country brave and independent ... or is she nuts? Come with me to Mexico, swim with me through some pretty scary underground caves, dance with me on Día de Muertos and tell me what you think.

How and where did most Jews learn to ski and skate and play tennis and golf? Not at the country clubs and resorts that banned them. Who was the first American Jew to earn Olympic medals in a Nordic sport? Tune in and learn about the role that Borscht Belt hotels such as Grossinger's played in teaching immigrant Jews the skills they would need to become, well, American.

Bingeing on the old  Mary Tyler Moore Show took me back to my own first job--like Mary, I worked in a newsroom--and led me to ponder what we've lost and gained in decreeing that any type of workplace intimacy is verboten.

Were you forced to take a foreign language in high school? Do you remember sitting through hour after hour of language lab? So many people now speak English, why should we Americans bother to learn Spanish or French or German or Chinese or Urdu? And why on earth would anyone approaching their final years on the planet care if they could correctly conjugate the verb hacer ? 

I really, really want a dog. Why don't I get one? If I do, will you pay for all its vet bills? Does everyone need to be a doggie parent to a furbaby? Can't you just own a mutt? 

Have you ever had a hard time convincing someone that something is wrong with your car, your house, or your computer and they really do need to fix it? Of course you have. I can't help you fix whatever needs fixing, but I invite you to compare your frustrations with mine.

Believe it or not, I've been told I had cancer SIX TIMES. Luckily, five of those diagnoses were wrong. But why were so many doctors so eager to tell me that I had a fatal disease? Is that any better than the way it used to be, when everyone--including doctors--were afraid to so much as utter the word?

Did you play a musical instrument in elementary school? Did you give it up? Why? Do you wish you had continued taking lessons? Is it ever too late to try again?

Are you--or someone you love--in denial about how much you're missing because you can't hear most of what other people are saying? Why are you so reluctant to make a trip to Costco and buy a pair of hearing aids? Why was I? 

What's it like dating the star of a reality TV show like The Golden Bachelor? Is there any hope for a woman in her sixties or seventies who still wants to find love before she dies?

Did you know that bridge was once the most popular game in America? EVERYBODY played. And now? Hardly anyone. So, why did I become obsessed with playing bridge? Why do any of us pursue the hobbies we pursue? Or do our hobbies pursue us? Why are we so afraid to admit we are who we really are? Why are some of us so afraid to admit we're average?

Why on earth would anyone miss the funky Catskills hotels and bungalow colonies where Jews vacationed for most of the 20th century because they weren't allowed to check into most gentile-owned resorts and didn't have the money to travel anywhere else? What do movies and TV shows like  Dirty Dancing  and  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel  get wrong? As someone who grew up there, don't get me started!

Are you spending a ridiculous proportion of your time in doctors' offices, at the gym, or in various beauty and wellness establishments? If we devote sall our time and energy to trying to stay healthy and youthful-looking, what is the purpose of being alive? Is there an age when you should just give up?

I signed up for what I assumed would be a very basic art class, strictly for beginners, but there on the stage stood a very handsome, entirely nude man I was expected to draw. What happens when we finally get up the courage to try to do something for which we've been told we have absolutely no talent? (Warning: this episode contains several instances of the anatomically correct word for what was h...

My mother saw disaster lurking everywhere. Why did I take so many decades to believe she--and so many women like her--had a lot of reasons to be afraid, not only for herself but for all of us? 

What happens when you finally get the toy of your dreams ... when you're in your sixties? Will an Erector set help your little girl become a physicist? What do we really want from our parents?

We're forgetting just how horrifying it was to live through the covid pandemic, especially if you were elderly, disabled, or otherwise at risk. We're forgetting how many loved ones we lost, how many survivors were left with lifetime damage, both physical and emotional. Given that the current administration has decimated our defenses against any future pandemics, I felt the need to offer a reminder...

Why have I battled dybbuks, injuries, sexism, and the infirmities of age to continue playing competitive tennis? What has Title IX meant to women of my generation? And, if you'll excuse me for being corny, what can tennis teach us about how to live our lives?

I've been terrified of dying all my life. Now that I'm in my sixties, I'm even more frightened. So why on earth would I decide to jump out of an airplane?

Since my earliest years, I've been told I couldn't catch a tune in a gallon bucket. Nothing scared me more than singing in front of another human being, let alone an audience. So, what prompted me to take a class in which I would be required to do just that? Why do so many of us take other people's judgments about our abilities as fact when we could, if provided with a kind and generous teacher, l...

My father was a dentist, so I was restricted to one sweet a day. But our house was stuffed with candies, cookies, cakes, ice cream, and other treats. That's the world we're all living in today ... filled with temptations that constantly assault us, even as we're advised to indulge only in moderation. Which is a good way to drive a person nuts. (Deliciously rich and perfectly salted nuts, coated in...

Why would anyone give up a cushy summer job in an air-conditioned office for a sweaty marathon waiting tables at a busy Howard Johnson's ruled by a hard-hearted jerk of a manager? Why do so many of us, when we're figuring out who we are, envy the lives of our classmates, which seem so much more desirable than our own? 

Why do we take so long to appreciate our parents for who they really are instead of scorning them for not being who we wish they were? Here's my version of a Father's Day tribute, a few weeks early ...

Dating is hell for everyone. But if you're a feminist in your sixties dating men in their seventies who mostly still view women the way they were taught to view them in the 1950s, you might find yourself wondering if you should spend New Year's Eve with a guy who claims to value you for your intelligence and independence, only to discover what he actually wants to do is tie you to the bed and puni...

When I was young, my parents warned me against going anywhere alone. But how was I to accomplish anything I wanted to accomplish in this world if I stayed home ... or waited for some guy to accompany and protect me? Just as my parents feared, some pretty bad things happened. Today, we tell our daughters they can do anything a man can do. Yet the #MeToo movement has filled them with the same fears...