Suprise Me

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the news media became a national unifier. Would the same be true today? Read More

Would you destroy a piano to make a music video? Keith Emerson would. Read More

We met at the bottom of the crater and began to hug each other and dance. Read More

Outpatient The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is heartbreaking as millions flee their homes and we watch helplessly on the TV news. At the turn of the 20th century,  with the Jewish influx of the time,  both my maternal and paternal grandparents emigrated to the States from Eastern Europe,  my father’s parents from Ukraine. They all… Read More

Ethel and the Turkey Leg  Since my friend Ethel died recently at the age of 85,  I’ve been thinking about what made her such a special soul. Ethel and I met in the 1980s at Jane Addams,  the South Bronx vocational high school where she taught cosmetology and I ran the school library.   Like… Read More

When I saw the original classic Disney cartoon (1950) of Cinderella as a child, I totally bought into her song of "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes." Read More

Years ago, we attended a fundraiser for affordable housing (an ongoing dilemma) on Martha’s Vineyard. The evening began with a reception on a large property where the Clintons had stayed while he was still in office, then fanned out to smaller parties across the island for special dinners and entertainment. We attended a “magic” party…we… Read More

How did I happen to read that book?  I don’t remember anyone giving it to me or seeing it in the house, so most likely it was in a school library, maybe thoughtfully displayed by a librarian, or maybe just calling to me from a shelf. In any case it was not like anything I had read and it spoke powerfully to my own adolescent yearning to make sense of existence. Read More

For as long as I remember, I have always been blasé about fame. Or other people’s fame. Not possessing it myself, who knows how I’d feel, although we read often enough that the truly famous pay grievously for their fame in the loss of privacy. Others, I know, can think of nothing more exhilarating than… Read More

I didn’t eat for several years. My mother prepared dishes that were unable to go down my throat, dishes consisting of soggy and over-cooked frozen vegetables, dishes with cream corn from a can–not even worthy of bluegill bait–and shriveled peas, dishes with roast beef so over-cooked that it would not only suck out all the saliva in your… Read More