Bronx Girl “The Bronx?  No thonx!!”  wrote the poet Ogden Nash. As a kid growing up in the Bronx I didn’t get it,  I didn’t realize my borough had a bad rap,  and I certainly wouldn’t have understood why.  The Bronx was my home and I loved it.  (See Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home) I even… Read More

Cincinnati  The great African American baseball legend Jackie Robinson was subject to unimaginable prejudice.  Teams would bring up their Southern minor leaguers to taunt and insult him. One day during a game in Cincinnati,  a border town to the former slave state of Kentucky,  Robinson’s Dodger teammate,  Louisville native Pee Wee Reese walked over to… Read More

Broken Ankle  I’m the type who tends to play it safe.  In fact I can’t remember any really dangerous deeds done or risks taken. Although I once jumped off an elevated deck thinking the drop down was shorter than it actually was.   It resulted in a compound ankle fracture keeping me wheelchair bound and… Read More

The Gs Louise and I were both living in the women’s graduate dorm at Columbia in the 1960s while I was in library school and she in the social work program,  and we soon became fast friends. Within a few years after grad school we each married,  happily our new husbands hit it off,  and… Read More

Diversity,  It’s on Tap On Nov 19, 2022 a 45 year old Army vet named Richard Fierro was with his wife Jessica,  their daughter Kassie,  and some friends at Club Q,  a gay bar in Colorado Springs.  They were on the dance floor when a man armed with an AR15 -type weapon entered the club… Read More

Rainbow Row,  Charleston SC Brass Ankle I was raised in the Bronx, New York in 50s and 60s when the demographics were such that families in the  borough were predominantly Jewish – like mine – or Catholic.   In fact my friend Kathie, whose family was Moravian,  tells me she was often the only WASP… Read More

A Crack in Everything  “Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” I love the lyric but it took me awhile to get the songwriter’s message. I thought when I got married my life would be perfectly… Read More

Passed Out in the Library The last thing I remember was locking the door of the high school library at the end of the day.  And then inexplicably I found myself seated at my desk, confused,  and with an aching head. I had no memory of walking back to my office and sitting down at… Read More

Malcolm I never imagined that after decades of friendship we and Malcolm would become estranged,  but regrettably it happened. He and my husband Danny roomed together in college and remained very close.  Mal was the most sophisticated one in their crowd  – he bought his clothes at Brooks,  went to Dunhill’s for his pipe tobacco,… Read More

Teacher Strike In September 1968 I was a newly minted school librarian working in a New York City public high school when my union,  the United Federation of Teachers (UFT),  then led by Al Shanker,  voted to strike.  I joined the picket line. The strike followed a confrontation between a newly established community-controlled school board… Read More