Suprise Me

We could hear dull, throaty roars in the distance.  We were more than happy, thank you very much Mr. Guard, to be accompanied across the field.  Would they be willing to have us take their picture the next day, once there was light, if we gave them a copy?  Indeed, they would. Read More

Summer 1967 It’s the Summer of Love in San Francisco Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. Meanwhile, across the country, A high school girl, not quite sixteen, End-of-summer birthday, Tall and thin, with curly hair she irons straight, And glasses which she seldom wears Feels too old to go to camp, Off to a summer… Read More

Three-Ring Circus A working woman who’s also a wife and mother can sometimes feel like a juggler in a three-ring circus. I was working at a job I loved when I discovered I was  pregnant,  and I happily applied for a maternity leave to start two weeks before the baby was due.   (See My Brown-Eyed… Read More

Why did my parents give me the most popular girl's name of the Fifties? I guess they just liked it. Read More

One day murder came to town 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

Miss Garcelon decided, for whatever reason, that she was going to teach a bunch of six-year-olds about the human body. Read More

This is the only place I have ever lived where any decent snowstorm causes people to panic and abandon their cars all over the streets. Read More

He climbed up the slide like a superhero, reassuring the child not to worry saying, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here for you. I’ll go down with you.” Read More

I had just returned from a tour of Alaska with a rock and roll band. It was June, 1980 and we were about to descend into the Reagan Era. The glow of the late 1960s had contracted into the dire and apocalyptic 70s and promised to flow headlong into Iran Contra. Our friend Carmelita, one… Read More