I was a voracious reader in my day and read many books that had been banned at one some point. I read most of them just for fun, or to satisfy a quota to read “so many” books per card-marking period. I read “Huck Finn” in 5th grade. Perhaps I was too young to understand… Read More

My father taught me to say prayers at bedtime: “Now I lay me down to sleep/ Bless my Lord, My soul to keep. If I should die before I wake/ Bless the Lord, My soul to take. God bless Mommy and Daddy and Ricky.” It was years before I realized that was not a Jewish… Read More

I began wearing glasses at the age of 8. I couldn’t read the board clearly and knew something was amiss. I had become near-sighted. But my beloved teacher, Mrs. Zeve, wore glasses and she made it seem OK. I got pink, metal frames that weren’t too ugly. My second teeth; big and crooked, came in… Read More

Mother was very insecure and depressed. She didn’t like to cook, had a maid for much her of life, didn’t know how to do laundry or iron, wasn’t good at domestic chores. She got by. Her entire life, she never drove on a highway. She didn’t like her own looks and projected that displeasure and… Read More

This week we are asked to write about our forebears’ refugee/immigrant experience. I wrote what I know about how my maternal grandparents came to this country several years ago and will link to that story at the end of this essay. I wanted to tell a more urgent story, given that this story will go… Read More

Through our years as active art collectors, we attended many art auctions, but rarely bought anything. An exception were the two works we bought from the Mass College of Art in 1994 done by celebrities that we hang in our bathroom, just for fun. We both love Gregory Peck and Steve Martin, so these were… Read More

I consider March to be the beginning of year three of the pandemic. It was in March, 2020 when the virus began to affect my life. My last in-person event at the Rose was a lecture by acclaimed artist Fred Wilson, followed by a select group going to dinner in Waltham on March 3, 2020.… Read More

David was a very shy youngster, so shy that his nursery school teachers wanted him to do a transition year. We thought that was not in the best interests of a child who was already interested in reading and math, so instead, we found a small private school for his kindergarten year. There, his best… Read More

Russian athletes have systematically cheated for years. The Wikipedia page is too long and complicated to try to condense and enumerate the many faults, going back decades for this story, but let me give you some “highlights”. For years there was state sponsored systematic doping. They have been stripped of 46 Olympic medals. The most… Read More

When I was a child, we traveled mostly to visit relatives and stayed with them. Starting in 1959, we did spend one week in August for five summers up in Charlevoix, a very nice resort on Lake Michigan in northern Michigan. We stayed in The Schutts Guest House, a large house with a broad lawn… Read More