Next Act with Lois Gross

Bloggers / Next Act with Lois Gross

Stand Up, Miss Jean Louise. Miss Harper Lee Has Passed!

Jo-Anne No Comments 2412 views

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” On Friday, February 19th, we lost Nelle Harper Lee, the author of two books. The first book, To Kill a Mockingbird, was a masterpiece. The second, Go Set a Watchman, was fatally flawed. The difference between the two was not just the disillusionment wi...Read More

Bloggers / Next Act with Lois Gross

The Newest American

Jo-Anne No Comments 2333 views

When you move to a new place with very few personal contacts, it’s not unusual to become friends with the people who happen to cross your path. We met Anna the day that we signed the lease on our apartment. I am very fond Anna. She is a twenty-something woman of Colombian birth. Let me assure you that, when she chose to make her home in the U.S., w...Read More

Bloggers / General Interest / Next Act with Lois Gross

The Significant Part

Jo-Anne No Comments 2229 views

“By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.” ― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights   I am doomed. I didn’t write “amen” and share the picture of the baby with birth defects, the starving animal, or the amputee veteran who heedlessly came in contact with an IED. I...Read More

Bloggers / General Interest / Next Act with Lois Gross

The Fifteen Ways I Know I’ve Gotten Old

Jo-Anne No Comments 2378 views

I am a bonafide Baby Boomer, born in 1950, five years after the “boom” started. What this means, from a decidedly egotistical standpoint,t is that I have always felt as if the world’s focus was on my age mates and me, and I have always felt eternally young. Therefore, it came as a great surprise to me that age is catching up to me. Besides the usua...Read More

Bloggers / Lifestyle & Retirement / Next Act with Lois Gross

Learning from Experience

Jo-Anne No Comments 2080 views

One of the hardest things about writing a blog is coming up with a topic that you can write to completion. Your options are actually a bit limited by the kind of feedback you intend to get. You can write nostalgically which is usually safe and popular with readers. As Baby Boomers, we have certain commonalities that reap immediate and happy respons...Read More

Bloggers / Lifestyle & Retirement / Next Act with Lois Gross

Thanksgiving v. Vegetarians

Jo-Anne No Comments 2105 views

The holiday season is upon us! Yes, I know that according to the retail industry, the holiday season has been upon us since Memorial Day, but that’s a whole other rant. According to the calendar, we are now in November and right there, on an old-fashioned, printed calendar, November 26 is adorned with a symbolic turkey. In light of current politics...Read More

Bloggers / General Interest / Health and Fitness / Lifestyle & Retirement / Next Act with Lois Gross

Namaste

Jo-Anne No Comments 2612 views

I have signed up for my first yoga class. After years of doctors telling me that all I need to do is learn relax and everything else will fall into place, so I make the leap, or more accurately, the stretches. As a new retiree, I am still trying to figure out new past times for my abundance of leisure time. Several decades after my hipper friends, ...Read More

Bloggers / Lifestyle & Retirement / Next Act with Lois Gross / Senior Living

It’s A Rear End Sale

Jo-Anne No Comments 2403 views

I like to think that I have a good sense of humor.  I loved Woody Allen until he stopped being funny and became repetitive.  I can recite the entire script of Waiting for Guffman and usually do, so you might want to avoid watching it with me.  I can be annoying.  In fact, I adore every Christopher Guest mockmentary ever made.  I’m a little iffy abo...Read More

Bloggers / Lifestyle & Retirement / Next Act with Lois Gross

The Heat Is On

Jo-Anne No Comments 2404 views

It’s been a hot summer, not just here in South Florida where everyone warned us we’d melt, but also in just departed New Jersey and pretty much all across the country.  105 degrees in the Pacific Northwest?  Please, people, you can’t deny climate change, this summer. I don’t know how people lived on the sand spit that is Florida before air conditio...Read More

Bloggers / Next Act with Lois Gross

No Notoriety

Jo-Anne No Comments 2368 views

It’s another morning in America and, likely as not, you are waking up to the early morning news announcing a mass killing in a place previously thought to be safe: a church, a movie theater, a school, a military recruiting site, or a military base.  If you are as old as I am, you may remember the Luby’s Cafeteria shooting in Kileen, TX in 1991. Cer...Read More

A Review: Go Set A Watchman, by Harper Lee (NY: Harper Collins), 2015 A Review: Go Set A Watchman, by Harper Lee (NY: Harper Collins), 2015
Bloggers / Next Act with Lois Gross

A Review: Go Set A Watchman, by Harper Lee (NY: Harper Collins), 2015

Jo-Anne No Comments 2292 views

It’s done.  I finished the book and neither my worst fears nor my greatest hopes were realized.  This unearthed early work by Nelle Harper Lee, the book that predates her masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird, is not the worst book I’ve ever read nor is it by any means the best.  But never have I read a book with such trepidation about how its very ex...Read More

Eating On The Good China Eating On The Good China
Bloggers / Lifestyle & Retirement / Next Act with Lois Gross

Eating On The Good China

Jo-Anne No Comments 2701 views

When I was growing up, our “good” dishes came from dozens of soap boxes and from savings and loan incentive programs.  Someone other than me must remember when banks wanted your business so much that they incentivized you with small appliances and china, right?  My mother collected “Fields of Wheat” china.  She also managed to have a set of Fields ...Read More

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