I have a notorious black thumb. I killed a philodendron in my college dorm room and those things are indestructible. I killed all my house plants, so replaced them with good-looking silk ones. No fuss, no muss. But that is indoors. The great outdoors is less and more capricious. Back home in Newton, MA, my… Read More

I recently heard Nicco Mele, head of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, speak. He doesn’t use the term “Fake News” to describe the hi-jacking of truth by our president, Russian hackers, trolls and bots who spread lies or disinformation via Facebook and Twitter, or the abundance of verifiably false… Read More

(Note: this prompt first came up on July 23, 2018, which is when this story was originally written and published. I have added some new anecdotes and made some edits. It should be noted that as a high school teenager, I was not paying much attention to the political world around me.) The radio alarm… Read More

Charlie leered at me, “Hey doll, did you pop out tonight?” Charlie was Charles Werner Moore, a much-respected director, actor, and acting teaching at Brandeis (though I wouldn’t take a course with him until the following year) and director of the first Main Stage show my freshman year at Brandeis. He never learned young womens’… Read More

We are lucky to spend our summers in the historic town of Edgartown on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, seven miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. We own an old home right in the old village, a few steps away from Main Street, abuzz with activity all day on the nation’s birthday.… Read More

Truth be told, I was always slender, but my weight varied by a few pounds in college. Then, along with my friends, I’d go on the Atkins Diet…no carbs, only protein and 8 big glasses of water a day. The weight would fall off me. I’d eat eggs, hamburger (you couldn’t get good meat at… Read More

I met him when I was 9 years old. My older brother was Nanki Poo in the Intermediate production of MIKADO at camp that summer. Clarence “Dude” Stephenson directed the Intermediate and High School productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, as well as other plays and musicals at the National Music Camp (now Interlochen Arts… Read More

In the eternal “nature vs nurture” debate, I can assure you that both play a big factor in how one’s child turns out, but babies are born with certain traits that cannot be denied. David was born 10 days after his due date; I labored for 37 1/2 uncomfortable hours and he was whisked off… Read More

March 5, 1895. That is the caption in my photo album. These are my grandparents, Samuel Sarason and “Lizzie” (Fruma Leah) Prensky (changed to Prentis by her younger brother Meyer in 1925) on their wedding day in St. Louis, MO, as referenced on the bottom of the photo. I love everything about this photo. I… Read More

We live in a large, one story, L-shaped house. Though 70 years old, we are only the third owners. It is a contemporary, and was built as a retirement home by “Mom” and “Pop” Schwartz, who made their fortune in corrugated boxes. It sits on a corner lot, one block west of Boston College. The… Read More