Dear Sibyl, My father was abusive to me growing up. Not very frequently was the abuse physical (the verbal variety dominated), but it was enough to instill a fear of him into me that I’ve never been able to shake. When he got angry, he took it out on me, I assume because I was [...]
I watched an episode of “Futurama” recently (this isn’t an uncommon occurrence), and in it the whole staff of the Planet Express is stranded on a barren island that has begun to go through robo-evolution, starting with prehistoric robot sludge and yielding robot dinosaurs and then robot cavemen in a matter of hours. Fry, Leela, [...]
The last few weeks, my Sibyl inbox has been empty. I was tempted to conclude, “My work here is done. Everyone is fixed.” Then, I encountered a whole bunch of pretty flawed and twitchy humans who could use a good Sibylizing. Therefore, I’m going to provide you all with a little encouragement to write in [...]
Dearest Clara, Sometimes when I travel for work, I have that sensation of needing to get outside right then and there. Often when I travel, the routine involves heading from airport to hotel to office, and then back in reverse again, that it seems like I can go days without fresh air. It happened to [...]
Strong female characters—or even mediocre female characters—can be in short supply in Hollywood, on both the big and small screens. It’s something I’ve become more aware of as the years go by, and it’s a bit dismaying. Recently, I’ve discovered that one of the best quick-view gauges by which to determine whether a film has [...]
I first became acquainted with this historical woman of the day because she was one of the only sources for describing a bunch of historical men. Isn’t that the way the historical cookie always crumbles? Anna Comnena (1080 – c. 1153) was a Byzantine princess, the daughter of Emperor Alexius Comnenus I, and an eyewitness [...]
Like many of you, I was riveted this past week watching the story coming out of Cleveland unfold. The rescue of three young women who had been held hostage for ten years by a brutal perpetrator is both utterly surreal and devastatingly sad. It is virtually impossible to integrate the details of this story. The [...]
Dear Sibyl, My husband and I met our senior year of college and got married a few years later. We’ve now been together for almost a decade and I still feel lucky that we happened to meet and that circumstances allowed us to grow as people and build a life together. Our families, both immediate [...]
