Starr Light

  Dear friends and family, In honor of my 50 th birthday, I am raising money for the Women’s Medical Fund (WMF), an organization in Philadelphia that provides access to abortion. Help me raise $1000 for the WMF .     http://rebecca50.givesmart.com     Throughout my life, I have been a supporter and advocate for reproductive and sexual freedom:   condom education and availability during the emergence of the AIDS epidemic, abortion rights in the lead up to Casey , access to birth control for the women at my Jesuit law school, and general advocacy for a woman’s right to choose.     As I approach the end of my reproductive years, I now have the freedom and power to fight these fights for the benefit of others.   And while it is exhausting and dispiriting to know that reproductive rights are facing yet another robust legal challenge, regardless of the legal status, women will continue to seek abortions.   My role now is to help the ...

This is the way the world ends, This is the way the world ends, This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang, but a whimper.  --T.S. Elliot, "The Hollow Men," 1925.        I started this blog, reflecting on the lessons I had learned from my own traumatic accident 15 years ago, knowing that these reflections would help me and my family weather the pandemic. My writing has been sparser than I intended, but it has been true that my past experience helped shape my approaches to Covid-19.      Among the many lessons I’ve learned, is about endings:   o    There will be an end to our isolation and to the pandemic.   But, once Covid-19 becomes endemic, our experience of this year doesn’t just disappear, and our sense of self will have changed. o    The one-year mark is hard – whether overtly or not, the repetition in the calendar reminds us of time passing.   Sometimes the passage of time can feel crushing....

June 1, 2020 The Narberth Human Relations Commission (“NHRC” or “Commission”) condemns all acts of racism and discrimination.   We recognize that the events of recent weeks, including the killing of George Floyd, have intensified the pain and suffering that people of color, especially Black people, have long endured. We join others across the country in searching for real and meaningful ways to confront racism, discrimination, injustice, and violence.   Right now the Commission is here to support our immediate community. Our Commission was created by the Narberth Borough government in 2017 as a mechanism to uphold and promote Narberth’s commitment to anti-discrimination.   The NHRC was established to receive and mediate complaints of discrimination in the areas of: employment, housing and commercial property, public accommodations, and access to post-secondary educational institutions. We embrace that responsibility and have worked since our establishment to create...

As I have written elsewhere, I have two sons. In order to distinguish them, I will call them “Seven” and “Five.” Today Seven, apparently needing some personal space, announced to Five, “Get in the toybox.  I’ll sit on top.  Let’s see how long you can stay in there without complaining.” To be fair, they took turns being inside the box - which has ample holes for fresh air.   The record, so far, is one whole minute, but the entire game lasted for about 20 minutes. And, we all enjoyed some personal space. I give them a lot of credit for coming up with a creative way to get what they needed.

Passover, the eight-day fe stival celebrating the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery, ended tonight. For me, this year’s celebration was inspiring. The Seder, the traditional and ordered meal held the first two nights of Passover, is held in our homes.   Most years, only the host of a Seder has to accumulate the myriad symbolic elements. This year, as portrayed effectively on Saturday Night Seder, everyone was our own host and we all did our best, improvising as needed. In the lead up to the holiday, my younger son’s preschool class hosted its own Seder via Zoom.   His teacher urged students to use a lemon for the maror , or bitter herbs, which symbolize the bitter taste of being enslaved.   My son, without skipping a beat, declared that lemons are sour, not bitter, and that he would use a grapefruit instead.   Why not? It was uplifting to see so many people working hard to perpetuate our traditions.   There has been so much talk and hand...

I am a survivor of a traumatic accident. In 2006, while surfing on the West coast of Puerto Rico, I was hit in the head by another surfer.  I was in the water treading on a reef break, having just caught what – as a relatively new surfer – was a gnarly wave. She was mid-ride, and likely didn’t see me. She hit me square in the forehead with her board. Newton's second law of motion is often stated as F=ma.  In this case, consider the mass of a long board with adult rider; and the acceleration of a wave propelling the board.  Only then can you can gather the nature of the force with which I was hit. What followed in the short-term was an airlift from the West coast to the island’s only trauma unit in San Juan where I underwent emergency surgery to repair a massive dura tear and to patch what would later be diagnosed as a complete blow-out fracture of my left eye orbit.  What followed in the medium-term was three years of emergency hospitalizations, diagnoses, maj...