Suprise Me

On my 70th birthday my brother welcomed me to my eighth decade! While he was accurate, that declaration gave me pause. The summer after my senior year in high school I was in a local show, written, directed and produced by friends (including two who went on to conceive MyRetrospect decades later). There was some… Read More

He [Wiilliams] was a tall, striking man, and he had a distinctive trait when he sang: he didn't make gestures of any kind. Rather, he stood completely still, with his arms at his sides, and let his voice carry the message, and what a voice it was, strong and flexible, and he could do anything with it, even sing a few lines of Everyday in a near yodel. Read More

Other than possibly a bicycle I got for Christmas when I was 11 or 12 years old, I cannot recall any gift I ever received as being so special that I’ve kept it, or remembered one so fondly that I’d consider it my best ever.  It might just be that I did not pay enough… Read More

Melting (Soup) Pot One afternoon taking a break between chores I stopped for lunch at the 2nd Ave Deli,  one of my favorite eastside haunts. After a leisurely meal I was waiting on line to pay my tab when I overheard the following conversation at the take-out counter: Young Asian woman:   “What soup do… Read More

I wanted to capture the roaring, rude dynamism of the late ‘60s and early '70s, a world in flux – not as it appeared from a distance to a disinterested newsman, but as someone immersed in the zeitgeist. Read More

As exam week progressed, we could hear clack, clackety-clack, ding!!, clack, clack, from the living area and dorm rooms in the entire wing, along with the crinkle of bags of potato chips and Cheetos. Read More

Another friend had a bumper sticker—“Live simply that others may simply live”—that still seems like good advice. Read More

Each year, everyone complained that we were not spending enough time with them. Read More

The executive team fought unionization ferociously--  we were fomenting discord and destroying the clinic, and how could we do this to the community? Read More

We asked what they needed most and they requested a transportation vehicle. Not an ambulance—that would be too much of a target. Read More