The Matzo Ball Spelling Bee On May 30, 2013  Arvind Mahankali beat out almost 300 other youngsters to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.   Arvind,  a 13 year-old 8th grader from Bayside,  Queens and son of Indian immigrants,  was the first New York City winner in almost 20 years.   Interested in words and… Read More

Good Causes When we moved to Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood in the mid-1970s I was a young mother on maternity leave at home with a one-year-old,  and every day,  weather permitting,  we’d find ourselves  across the street in Carl Schurz Park.   The park was named in 1910 for the German-born Secretary of the Interior at… Read More

Judy’s Last Gift  It’s not hyperbole to say my friend Judy was the most thoughtful and giving person I’ve ever known.  Rather than randomly kind,  Judy was always kind. I met her a few months after I started dating my husband Danny.   He and I had driven from New York to Boston to spend New… Read More

In the Abstract In the early years of the 20th century a handful of European artists including the Russians Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimar Malevich,  the Dutchman Piet Mondrian,   and a lesser-known Swedish woman named Hilma af Klint began producing art with no attempt to represent external reality.   Rather,  they used shapes,  forms,  color,… Read More

Rolling Stoned at the Garden I’ve told you about my dalliance in a New York coffee shop with Paul McCartney (See My Favorite Beatle),  so now let me tell you about my night at the Garden with the Rolling Stones. Our friends Mary and Frank own a deli and bakery on Mott Street that supplies… Read More

Saying Farewell to a Special Guy My father Arthur was a very special guy.   He was widely knowledgable yet possessed an endearing naiveté;  a scientist by profession,  he was an artist and musician by avocation;  annoyingly stubborn at times yet always generous of spirit;  a profound thinker and also mischievous;  a punster and a… Read More

The Fortune Cookie Candidate  As the most important presidential race of our lifetime approaches,  and we hold our collective breath,  I remember another trying time and another election,   although one that was relatively angst-free. When I was an undergrad at NYU Heights in the early ‘60s I really threw myself into college life.  … Read More

A Sign on the Doorpost Our post-war Manhattan apartment building recently underwent a major renovation –   new elevators and new lobby furniture;   in the halls new carpeting,  wallpaper and lighting;  and new saddles,  bells and knobs for all our apartment doors. The construction company hired for the job sent a friendly crew of… Read More

Cantor Gladys Gladys and I both lived uptown,   she on Manhattan’s westside and I on the east.   Yet we first met not in the city,   but in Lakeridge,  the Connecticut community where we both spent country weekends.   And once we discovered we both loved Scrabble,  we’d play together as often as we… Read More

Give Me the Low Tech Life What was life like before computers?   Well for one thing we had to look stuff up ourselves. And in those days to change the channel or turn off the TV you actually had to get off the couch,  annoying as that sounds. But at least back then you… Read More