It seems my last blog stimulated a bit of controversy. Some emotions ran awfully high, which surprised my naive self. Some commentors condemned the book I mentioned, The Female Brain (which they admitted they were not familiar with … some sort of prejudice seemed to be operating …), as they condemned me, too, for blogging [...]

Just finished the book The Female Brain. Wow … I can see that I needed more insight into what you ladies are dealing with … and am so glad for the increased knowledge! Every 28 days or so, your brain is bobbing in a sea of fluctuating hormones. (Although I haven’t read her book The [...]

Saturn’s orbit is approximately 29 years, so your third Saturn cycle begins around age 58. Now that I have reached this stage, I call it my “third act” … and it’s about sharing, supporting and teaching. Now, of course, these “stages” are not precisely timed. Many people (especially these days) continue the “earning” stage well [...]

Your second Saturn Cycle begins around age 29 or 30. By now (depending upon your emotional maturity), you will have learned as much as you could about what you like and what you are good at  (and, for some of us, who you want to live with). The first Saturn cycle stage of life is [...]

Recently I gave a talk to the student body of NW Academy, a special Portland high-school for the arts. The title of my talk was “Do What You Love and the Freedom Will Follow.” In it I mapped human life into three stages, corresponding to the astrological phenomena known as “Saturn returns” (see wiki on [...]

How is it that you can feel grateful for an experience that leaves you feeling seriously dispirited — depressed even — for a long while? Such was the result of my tour of the infamous Auschwitz Death Camp in southern Poland, an hour outside of the city of Krakow. I signed up for this tour [...]

Finally, I fulfilled a long-held dream to visit Poland, the land of my foremothers (yes, this half-Irish O’Brien is also half Polish). I write from the charming old city of Krakow in southern Poland. Krakow’s main feature is its large central square, which is still surrounded by elegantly preserved 15th century townhouses and shops, including [...]

Recently, I interviewed the author of a new book everyone in America should read as soon as possible. Titled Plenitude — The New Economics of True Wealth, this book by Boston College sociology professor Juliet Schor is a positive and practical treatment on how we can re-orient our values away from a monetary-based way of [...]

Recently, when I was in Southern California to interview Daphne Rose Kingma, author of “The Future of Love,” I had the great good fortune to meet with with Suzanne Whang, who had interviewed me on Karma Air some months before. What a dynamo! Not only is Suzanne a beautiful, wild and crazy, comedienne and actress, [...]

A few weeks ago, I blogged how I was invited to audition for author of an advice column in Oregon’s “Alternatives” magazine. A number of you submitted questions for me to use to try out on. I wrote up my replies and forwarded them to Alternatives, and they liked them and, guess what, I got [...]