Suprise Me

Fifty cents an hour: That’s what I got for pulling weeds from a brick patio and clay tennis court, which I was also expected to water and roll.  My employer: my father.  Still, it felt good — to actually earn my weekly allowance. photo by Test Prep Seminars But what felt even better was to be… Read More

I grew up with guns.  When we were young, my brothers and I had cap guns, which made a loud noise (the caps had dots filled with gunpowder) when we could convince our parents to buy rolls of caps for us.  In elementary school, just ten to fifteen years after the end of World War… Read More

We were jet-lagged but happy to be in Paris in spring again. But the first full day we were there, instead of wandering the streets, taking in tulips and new leaves and La Vie en Rose, my husband and I were pounding the cement catacomb labyrinth under the Gare de Lyon. We wanted a week-long… Read More

[T]he slack mainsheet clipped the corner of my eyeglasses . . . neatly somersaulting them off my face. And into the lake. Read More

Kinky Boots I’m not a big shopper or a fashionista,  but let me tell you about some perfect boots I bought back in the 1970s when we were living in London for an all-too-brief,  magical time.    (See also Laundry Day in London,  Inks and Derek: Art and the Cricket Scores,  Valentine’s Day in Foggytown,… Read More

It is his scent that comes back to me most strongly: a mixture of leather, Barbasol shaving cream, and cigars. Read More

Won't you please move closer? Now, say, "Cheese"! Read More

I loved to read as a child and would often take trips to my local library, the Sherwood Forest branch of the Detroit Public Library, as well as my school library. I remember the first book I ever read there: “Elizabeth Enters” about the recently deceased sovereign. Even as a second grader, I enjoyed learning… Read More

The meaning of Altered States brings to mind a drug familiarization lecture I once attended, presented by a DEA Agent. To gauge our beginning level of knowledge, he asked a few questions of the group.  One was, “What is a narcotic?”  Several answers were shouted out, all met with a short explanation of why they… Read More

Looking over the ways I have celebrated the New Year, it’s hard to remember why it used to be such a big deal. Read More