Suprise Me

Henrietta was an awkward name for a tiny child ... so the family called her Yettie. Read More

"I'm at a payphone trying to call home/All of my change I spent on you." Maroon 5 sang this song in 2012, and I had to laugh. Read More

Aunt Miriam, Diva My glamorous and beautiful great-aunt Miriam Elias lived a rather scandalous life,  or so goes the family legend! Miriam was born in 1897 near Kamenets Podolski, Ukraine in a small village near Odessa.   Her village,  she once told us, was very much like the fictional shtetl Anatevka  immortalized in Fiddler on… Read More

My devotion to my cousin Alan Jackson, and great sorrow when he died young, in 1981 was documented in Action Jackson. I was equally devoted to his young wife, Sissi, with whom I tried to stay in touch after Alan’s death, lost for a while, but reconnected for good in 2000. She and her family visited… Read More

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HER kindergarten teacher had taught the class the wonders of white-bread-and-French's-mustard sandwiches. Blecch. Read More

If home is the place “where everybody knows your name,” where you have friends that date back over 50 years, Evanston is my home town. Read More

How to Raise a City Kid Years ago when our son was a toddler many of our friends began fleeing to the suburbs.  They couldn’t imagine raising a child in Manhattan with all the dirt and crime. “But think of  the culture!”,  I would say. At the Met Museum five-year-old Noah,  wide-eyed at Arms &… Read More

Saying goodbye to a furry friend is never easy, even if you've only known him for a few days. Read More

What was it like for my neighbors to have an FBI agent knock on their doors in December 1970 and ask questions about me. Read More