Clearly no one knows what leadership has gone undiscovered in women of all races, and in black and other minority men.

we are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud

We do what we see and what we're told. If we haven't been raised in a family or in a community where women are treated as full human beings and men don't have to be superior anymore, we continue to think that it's not only natural but inevitable.

A portable friend to all readers-especia lly but not only women-who need to learn that the Golden Rule works only if it's reversible: We must learn to treat ourselves as well as we wish to treat others.

Some women and men seem to need each other.

Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence - and just as adventurous.

Too much of our lives corresponds to the 'lost-wallet' theory of life. You lose something, spend a long time finding it, and then feel grateful to be back where you started.