Suprise Me

Being from an Italian Family was well…… a culinary journey and a eating endurance contest. I grew up in a what was called as tenament in Fall River, Massachusetts.  If you do not know what that is, it is simply a duplex stacked one on the other.  We lived above my grandparents until I was… Read More

When I got pregnant with my daughter, I worked at the law school on the UC Berkeley campus, known then as Boalt Hall. I described my position there as “petty bureaucrat,” doing payroll and other administrative duties. It so happened that nine women on the staff became pregnant that year. Rumors circulated among staff that… Read More

A sulfurous smell of decay seeped into my mask. I looked around in vain. Read More

A summer camp counselor realizes the impact he has on his charges. Read More

As kids, we started thinking about the next Halloween on November first. Over the next several months, ideas were floated, refined, discarded, and resurrected. These were the most important decisions a kid could make in those days. As a parent, I had to wait patiently while my kids repeated this cycle of indecision, hoping that… Read More

Occasionally I learn that they are dead. Read More

In 1967, I left my hometown in Michigan to move to Chicago with Fred, who would be starting medical school. Before I moved, I received several dire warnings from the women in my family. My great-aunt Sarah shared that she had read several cases in The Jewish Daily Forward’s “A Bintel Brief” about women who… Read More

Belle Potocsky and Zalman Beckenstein were married in the “old country”; Bialystok, Poland (part of Imperial Russia) in 1902. I have a dress that Grandma wore to a ball when they were courting. These were not “shtetl” Jews like in “Fiddler on the Roof”. They were educated and erudite. My grandmother’s dress is a beauty,… Read More

Jews were told to remove their shoes and then shot by the Hungarian Arrow Cross and pushed into the river. As one of our guides said, “They disappeared.” Only their shoes remained behind. Read More

Every 4th of July I spent in New Jersey I became exceptionally popular. This one time a year, everyone wanted me to be part of their group ... Read More