My father was the youngest of eight children, my mother, the youngest of four and I am their youngest. That makes me the youngest in a large generation of cousins, some old enough to be my own parent. We are a diverse group of people, yet we all get along, have each others’ backs and… Read More

Among the bedrock principles of Judaism are “repairing the world” and “doing righteous deeds”. These inform the imperatives for social justice and charitable activities, so practicing Jews heed these and find ways to do meaningful work. My family became more involved in temple life as my brother, five years my elder, approached his bar mitzvah.… Read More

I had a somewhat tortured gynecological history (never regular periods, an ectoptic pregnancy in 1981, leaving me with one working Fallopian tube, followed nine months later, with the same IUD in place – the doctor never told me to remove it – by another pregnancy which Dan and I chose to abort for health reasons),… Read More

Dan didn’t like surprise parties. He didn’t want one for his 30th, so a bunch of his work buddies convinced me to hire a belly dancer to come to the office for his 32nd. He still hasn’t forgiven me. As his 40th approached, our lives had changed. We had two young children, I no longer… Read More

What happened to Melania’s anti-bullying campaign? Perhaps her husband bullied her into shelving it. He seems to have the market cornered as the biggest bully in the country right now. He certainly has the loudest megaphone. A friend told me that he read a story written by an elementary school classmate of the Orange One’s.… Read More

Trump, Warren, Biden and Sanders are all in their 70s. Bernie just had a heart attack but “feels fine”. My father did too after his first one, until the big one came that killed him at age 76. Jimmy Carter, still swinging a hammer for Habitat for Humanity while battling cancer, aged 95, says they… Read More

David took a job with Google DeepMind and moved to London in January, 2015. Google put him up in a two bedroom apartment for two months while he looked for a place of his own. Not wanting to let the second bedroom go a-begging, we went to visit the next month. It had been a… Read More

I  joined Advanced Systems, Inc. in mid-April, 1978. It began with a two week training program in Elk Grove Village, IL,  where the company was headquartered. I sold follow-on contracts for video training and ancillary products to the data processing industry to existing clients (this was so long ago, it wasn’t called IT yet). Some… Read More

I stayed home after David was born for 18 months. We had moved twice and were now in our “forever” house. In fact, 33 years later, we still live there. Two months after moving in, we began extensive renovations and I began to think it was time to go back to work. I had been… Read More

I awoke to a distressing email from my beloved mentor, former Rose Director, Carl Belz. It said something to the effect: “I left quickly for Spain and today my pocket was picked. I have no money. Could you please wire some money to…such and such a number”. The email was sent to a large number… Read More