Helaine Olen, POUND FOOLISH & Les Leopold, HOW TO MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR

Helaine Olen talks about her exposé of the personal finance industry, POUND FOOLISH: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry and Les Leopold discusses his new book HOW TO MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America’s Wealth.

Writers Voice Earth Day Special: Amy Larkin, ENVIRONMENTAL DEBT & Katharine Applegate, THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN

It's still Earth Day on Writers Voice! Amy Larkin discusses her terrific new book, ENVIRONMENTAL DEBT: The Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy. And Katharine Applegate talks about her new novel for kids of all ages, THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN. Written in the poignant voice of a gorilla, it’s based on the true story of a gorilla held captive for thirty years in a suburban mall.

Listen to this week's episode here.

The Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign Has Colleges Weighing The Stakes

Today is Earth Day. Yesterday, I attended a screening of the terrific new film Do The Math, featuring 350.org's Bill McKibben and the growing Climate Resistance Movement. 

The film discusses the exciting new fossil fuel divestment movement that is sweeping campuses around the U.S. and elsewhere. I wrote the following post about the movement for CSRwire several weeks ago, but today is a good day to post it here.

Dying Lessons

In reading over my last post, I realize I still haven't explained the "raging inside" comment in this series of posts about my mother, Frances Alenikoff, during her last days and after. Maybe I'll get to it this time. Maybe I won't.

Rage can be so boring. You've got to have just the right distance from it so it doesn't come across as self-indulgent and tiresome -- but still be engaged enough to be able to write about it in a true voice.

So, dear reader, I'll serve up the ire when the time is right. But today, I want to talk about dying.

The Ripening of Mourning

Frances on her 91st birthday with me and my granddaughter

The last time I posted here, it was two and a half months after my mother, Frances Alenikoff, passed away. In that post, I came right up to the hardest edge of grief -- and ended before crossing over into it. My post ended on a loving note -- it's last word is "joy."

But when I wrote that post, I was raging inside. It wasn't pretty and I wasn't ready to share. Now nearly ten months have passed since Frances' death and it's time. A commenter to my last post jumpstarted my stalled will, so here goes.