Call Me By Their Names My parents named me Dana after two relatives they never knew – my father’s grandmother Dinah who perished in czarist Russia,  and my mother’s uncle David who drowned as a teenager in the Rockaways. I like my name and never minded that it’s a bit uncommon, but it’s always disconcerting… Read More

Minyan – for Uncle Sol I don’t think of myself as an especially spiritual person, but after the death of my husband’s uncle Sol,  I had a religious experience. Sol,  who died just short of his 96th birthday,  was a surrogate father of sorts to my husband,  and grandfather to our son,  and a much… Read More

Yad Vashem I’m not a religious person but I’ve always been proud to be Jewish and deeply connected to my faith – and moreso when I’m in Israel. The summer before he graduated from high school,  my son Noah spent 6 weeks there at a scouting program run by the Israeli army called Chetz V’Keshet… Read More

Look for the Helpers – for Laurie My sister Laurie spent the last two years of her life in a Rockville, MD nursing home –  at 59 she may have been the youngest patient there.  I was Laurie’s medical  decision-maker then and eventually her court-appointed legal guardian. Laurie was strikingly beautiful, her looks and her… Read More

Birthday Calendar When I was a kid I thought it was very special that the year I was born – 1944 – was a leap year and that it had not one but two 4’s in it! And I was proud that I was born in the leap month of February,  but I did wish… Read More

Aunt Miriam, Diva My glamorous and beautiful great-aunt Miriam Elias lived a rather scandalous life,  or so goes the family legend! Miriam was born in 1897 near Kamenets Podolski, Ukraine in a small village near Odessa.   Her village,  she once told us, was very much like the fictional shtetl Anatevka  immortalized in Fiddler on… Read More

Reading witn Hattie,  Baking with Julia When our son Noah was young he watched all the usual children’s TV shows of the time.  His favorites, as I remember were Sesame Street,  Mr Rogers, and The Electric Company. Watching The Electric Company,  Noah delighted in Morgan Freeman’s character Easy Reader, and Hattie Winston’s character Valerie the… Read More

Parlez-vous Francais?   When I retired after my long and happy career as a New York City high school librarian I had many options.  I could apply for a waiver and return to work part-time at a city school, sharing the week with another librarian as some colleagues did.  I could apply to the public… Read More

Wisdom in the Weeds When I retired friends asked me what I would do with all my free time. ”Oh,  I don’t know,”  I told them,  “probably just more of the same things I enjoy – theater,  travel, tennis.” ”Why don’t you try something new,  try gardening,” one friend suggested,  “it’s great physical exercise and surprisingly… Read More

Mr October Super Bowl,  World Series,  or Final Four stories   – they’re all the same to us sports widows. A few years ago my friends Pat and David and I were planning a reunion for our former teaching colleagues at Jane Addams,  the small inner-city high school where we first met in the 1980s.… Read More