Last year, the year of lockdown and confinement, I was finally able to achieve a longtime goal: to walk the entire Camino de Santiago–a journey of about 480 miles. And then I decided to climb Mt. Fuji, a short hop of only 46 miles. I am currently traversing the Southern Island of New Zealand, on… Read More

First, to set the scene: My dad and I are sitting on the couch on a Friday night (a Friday night that we don’t go to the synagogue for Shabbat services), and it’s time for the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports’ Friday Night Fights on TV. My dad, first in his family to go to college… Read More

My mother started making hats right around the time I became a teenager. This was not coincidental, I believe. It was a good time for her  to find something to do. Not the happiest of stay-at-home mothers in the 1960s, she desperately needed an outlet. First she helped form a singing group of PTA mothers.… Read More

I imagine the smoke-filled room: a group of fat cats sit around a table. Their shirt sleeves are rolled up, they puff on stumpy cigars, their foreheads are slick with sweat. It’s getting late; the hours tick by while the discussion gets heated. Voices get louder and the shouted comments are laced with profanity. Fists… Read More

Little Rock, Arkansas is the home of Central High, the Clinton Library—and the only dedicated purse museum in the United States. Although not a traditional art museum, I think the ESSE Purse Museum exhibits a different kind of art: symbols of the lives of women in a one-of-a-kind collection of clutches, crossovers, and cavernous carryalls.… Read More

Let me just clarify at the outset: I have been stress knitting for months now, ever since this lockdown, shelter-in-place, doomscrolling life we are living began. I need something to look at so my eyes don’t cross (or close) while I’m knitting away. I say this because I have binge watched a staggering amount of… Read More

December 14th, 1997. One of the longest droughts in California history ended the night my daughter was born. The rain started sometime in the afternoon. I couldn’t tell you when, exactly. We were waiting to find out what was wrong with her and why she had failed her first test: the Apgar. One of the… Read More

In the Spring of 2016, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by one of my favorite teachers at Saint Mary’s College– Alex Green. Although I was a little bit nervous, Alex is such a great interviewer that I got comfortable onstage with him immediately. We were there to talk about my recently published memoir,… Read More

As the story goes, the property on Valencia Street was zoned for retail. But the new tenants wanted to open a tutoring center. Naturally, the solution was to start stocking up on pirate stuff. The Pirate Supply Store at 826 Valencia is really a front for a place where kids in San Francisco can get… Read More

And the winner is: My aunt Ruth!  I’ve written about my Aunt Ruth and her buttons here and in my book. She inspired me to start my own collection when I was a teenager. I kept them in a small box inside my grandparents’ secretary desk. On more than one occasion, I talked to my… Read More