Celebrations call for that special or very special drink that has as its base alcohol. We toast good times and try to get through the rough spots with a taste of the bubbly or a shot of harder whiskey beverages. It is our special drink, or that's what it used to be. Sociologists will tell us that the incidence of alcoholism, in fact, has traditionally not been found in cultures that seemingly must

The alert showed up in my email from The New York Times yesterday evening and the headline was shocking, even if, as many have said, it was somewhat expected. Whitney Houston was dead in Beverly Hills at age 48, far from her roots in the rough-and-tumble town of Newark , NJ. The cause, at this writing, is still unknown, but the media has been working feverishly to snap up any details of her last

Watching the ad for who knows what product on TV, I saw elderly men and women dressed in loss-fitting workout clothes and with their caps to the side; typical teen or rapper gear. They were rapping along and jumping around and I understand it has been very popular, but I'm not seeing it as either amusing or adding to an image of elderly who deserve our respect and who, I believe, are being portrayed

Children need to be taught the rules of their culture and the training needs to be accomplished in an environment of understanding, acceptance of error, modeling and encouragement. Recent research has shown that children raised in homes where they were the objects of parental ire or corporal punishment don't do well as they progress into adulthood. In fact, they may fall behind other kids. Why?

How do you pick a therapist? I am speaking, in this instance, about someone who offers therapy services known as psychotherapy, not a therapist for anything else like physical rehab. Did you look on the internet, watch a TV ad, listen to a radio announcement, a TV program, did you get a friend's recommendation? What were the things which helped you make the decision and choose someone over someone

All of us are going to be elderly some day, but some of us will be in a far better situation than many of today's elderly find themselves. Scammed by flimflam artists who get them to take out mortgage refinancing, some of them find themselves being removed from the homes they so carefully saved for many years ago and in which they raised their children. They may even have been raised there themselves,

Today, I saw an item regarding people who are doing plastic surgery and how one woman was left with thick scars on her face and other damage that had to be repaired. She had gone to someone who advertised himself as "board certified" but she never thought to ask if it were in plastic surgery. Turned out he was an ear, nose and throat certified physician, not a plastic surgeon and it brought something

Many years ago, I attended what was probably one of the most unique, yet sad events I've ever gone to in my years of writing. It was the auctioning off of the contents of a venerable old bookstore in Philadelphia, PA. I had heard about the bookstore from people in publishing who thought of it fondly as a place, like just a few others in NYC, where you could browse for hours and never be interrupted

Home, schools and playgrounds have sprung up as an ever-growing culture fled the cities for the clean air, the open spaces and the green lawns of suburbia. Left in the cities, as Park and Burgess wrote in 1925, would be concentric rings where poverty would be found as the elderly and the poor became locked within its confines. Those more fortunate, younger and with more financial resources would take

Things don't seem to have changed much since I worked in a community mental center and a psychiatric hospital where we saw legions of young patients who had managed to burn their brains out on products you can easily get in the supermarket, hardware store, major department stores and gas stations. They were and are called "huffers" and if you've ever dealt with someone who huffs, you won't soon forget