With my mother, Helen Marks, at my parents' 50th anniversary celebration My mother, whose 85th birthday we celebrated in January, remains one of the wisest and most well-read people I know. She often writes by hand, and recently remarked on the very thing that makes this process so transformative: “My hand knows what it wants to say when my brain doesn’t. I think there is some outlet that is connected to your deepest feelings.” When I asked my mom how she would explain this p

I’m sitting in my Vermont home office with our nine-week–old kitten on my lap, back from a two-week foray in the Bay Area to visit my sons and longtime friends. After living here for three years I’ve gotten used to the lack of billboards, which might explain why I was struck by the barrage of them as we drove into San Francisco. Another reason? These billboards were all about AI. In just two years, artificial intelligence companies have gobbled up the office spaces formerly u

When my older son Noah was preparing to leave for college, the realization that our family dynamic would forever change hit me like a...

About two years ago, I noticed my once-thriving freelance writing business beginning to wane. When opportunities did arise, the hourly...