I love wonderful stories, whatever the medium – books, audiobooks, movies, and TV – and I found a new one recently on Netflix called “Maniac.” “Maniac” is a 10-episode, 2018 Netflix miniseries original, based on a series created by Hakon Bast Mossige and Espen PA Lervaaq for Norwegian television. But the American version couldn’t be more different from the original. The Norwegian series is about a mentally ill patient in a hospital whose baffling, real-life behavior is in res

Kudos to those creatures of morning who can shower, dress, and be off to work before their first cup of coffee. Me, within moments opening my eyes and rolling out of my sleepy cocoon, I’m making my first cup. Coffee is what makes getting out of bed worthwhile. When it’s time to get up and I feel the lure of drifting off into the warm, ineluctable embrace of unconsciousness, it’s the thought of coffee that saves me. Every day, some 90 percent of Americans ingest some sort of c

Last week, I had the honor of being included in a workshop that focused on my late sister’s work – peace research. My sister, Randy Forsberg, was an expert on world nuclear arms and disarmament, as well as a peace activist. She authored the proposal that helped launch the Nuclear Freeze Campaign of the 1980s, influencing citizens and politicians to take action against the world’s increasingly dangerous nuclear arsenal. The huge 1982 New York City Nuclear Freeze demonstration.

Never have the weeds seemed more lush than this Labor Day weekend. They are crowding the sides of the roads, the cracks in the pavement, vacant lots and occupied territory. Their vitality is overwhelming the neighborhood. How appropriate for Labor Day, the upstart of 1885, a celebration to honor union workers. What greater laborer than the weed? If the rose is the hothouse grandee, tended and waited upon, then the weed is the true worker of the soil. Muscling into every crevi