What makes an older woman sexy? I fell asleep the other night wondering this, having contemplated the subtle erosion of the various bodily bits which supposedly evoke sexual urges.

But before I launch into my exegesis, I must make a minor (and defensive) detour and query the same about older men.  What do we find sexy about Jeremy Irons or Clint Eastwood?  Isn’t is their self-assurance?  Their ease?  Why is it considered that they look great when their hair turns silver and lines define their face, yet this doesn’t apply to women?  I know, this is a huge topic, and a bit of an old saw and frankly I’m really...

We don't know how many other R&B educators there are out there, but we suspect few.  Tom Nolan brings the energy and soul that he works with on stage to his role as Dean of Students at the Crossroads School in Los Angeles.  Tom Nolan is a perfect fit at a school that prizes creativity, and a few decades of students concur. 

Part I of our interview with Tom

When I learned a good friend of a good friend of mine, who happens to be well over 50, had been flying on a trapeze, weekly, over the past decade, I knew I had to witness it and then show the good readers of Realize that things you never thought possible at our age can be done with agility and grace.  Joni Wehrli gives us a voyeuristic thrill and talks about how the art of flying influences the art of painting; for her it is not only a source of exhiliration but of inspiration for her work as well.

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There is a place we can go, when we allow our minds to go silent, a place full of delight and joy.  I have glimpsed it before, mostly walking in nature.  But in this case, residing for four days in the foothills of the Sierras, it comes to me in spades.  Because here, beneath cobalt blue skies and between bosomy hills draped in dry yellow grasses and peppered with pines and manzanitas, is where my Zen retreat is taking place.

I soon learn this state of joy can happen anywhere, even facing a blank white wall.  For there is an essential joy residing in our natures as well as in nature herself.  That joy is waiting patiently beneath...

In an online chat venue, I encountered a post to the effect that Every rational person should have a Bucket list.  But after chatting up the subject with a number of Realizers, I’d modify that to something like, Every rational person should have an opinion about a Bucket list.  The Internet opinionator probably equated making lists with doing stuff.  Even my husband Bob, who, to date, has steered clear of the whole bucket meme, admitted it’s a fair point. “Since the clock is ticking,” he said, a to-do list in-a-bucket wasn’t a bad idea – assuming one really wants to do the enumerated...

I never looked to my father for advice about women when I was growing up. And I certainly didn’t after I left for college and my siblings described how our mother chased him around with a paring knife when she learned about his little fling with his secretary and he packed up and left. As an enthusiastic English major and lacking any advice to the contrary, I still held out hope for transcendence—what D. H. Lawrence called the “star equilibrium,” the perfect balance in the relationship between a man and a woman. 

And I suppose I’ve found it in a marriage that is now over 40 years old and is as comfortable as a...

This month American college seniors will collectively sit through more than 2,000 commencement addresses.    Per tradition, speakers will paint bright pictures of the world the young will inherit, urging them to hang onto their love-of-learning, to think outside-the-box, and be brave in the face of all that will be strange and new.   

As it turns out, however, while things may indeed be strange, not all things will be new. Despite 2013’s slightly rosier hiring forecast, the majority of this year’s fresh faces will not vault directly from dorm to career.   And...

How many times can you lose your mother? This phrase repeats itself in my head.  It is not a metaphorical question. My mother has had Alzheimer's for almost 15 years.  

My own journey alongside her illness has led me through strange territory.  Mostly unguided, mostly alone.  The one phrase I encountered in my occasional inquiry into the nature of the disease still resonates - that for those closest to the individual, there is a phenomenon which is akin to a succession of little deaths and, for each one, an attendant period of mourning.