Thanks for the Memories How do I say thank you to four gals I’ve never met but feel I’ve known forever? – the Sacramento ringleader,  lawyer,  activist,  singer,  has a song title for every occasion – the big-hearted brunette from the Windy City,  blogger,  passionate educator,  kid whisperer – the Jersey girl now California techie,… Read More

The Plug-In Drug Most of my friends have been TV bingeing for years,  and during the pandemic lockdown it certainly was the activity of choice. But I’ve never been much of a TV watcher,  and I couldn’t agree more with Marie Winn when in the 1970s she wrote about the problems inherent in watching  too much… Read More

My Snowy Year in Buffalo In the mid-60s I was newly married and heading up to Buffalo, NY for a year while my husband completed med school.  I had just gotten my graduate library degree and applied to the Buffalo Dept of Ed for a school librarian’s job. I was interviewed at the school superintendent’s… Read More

Dear Younger Self What a cutie!   But seriously I’m here to give you some advice. Be a more adventurous eater,  try the sushi. Don’t fight with your mother so much,  you’ll find out later she was usually right. Practice the piano so you can play something besides Fur Elyse. Don’t abandon your theatre dreams… Read More

Behind the Mask Like all families,  ours at times has been an unwilling friend to darkness.   A medical officer in WW II,  my dad served on troop ships bringing soldiers to theaters of war and returning with the wounded and the dead,  and on a Stateside army base during those dark days I was… Read More

Holiday in Limbo It’s hard to believe but with the passing of the generations I’m now the family matriarch. It’s not my great-uncle Sid leading Seder but my husband,  not my aunt Babs cooking Rosh Hashanah dinner but me,  not my dad carving the Thanksgiving turkey but my son. But will he this year?  A… Read More

Skate Key Home from school,  a hurried snack,  bread with both sides buttered,  chocolate milk,  an apple offered but rudely refused.   (“Don’t be fresh young lady!”)  Skates strapped over shoes,  no purse,  no house key,  no hanky,  just a skate key on a ribbon around her neck,  then out the door.  (“Be careful!”) Down… Read More

The Troubadour  I’ve written about my childhood summers at my grandmother’s small Catskill hotel.  (See My Game Mother and My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel)  Here’s another memory. Once or twice every summer when I was very young,  an elderly man whom we called the Troubadour came to the hotel to spend an evening entertaining the guests… Read More

The Matzo Ball Spelling Bee On May 30, 2013  Arvind Mahankali beat out almost 300 other youngsters to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.   Arvind,  a 13 year-old 8th grader from Bayside,  Queens and son of Indian immigrants,  was the first New York City winner in almost 20 years.   Interested in words and… Read More

Good Causes When we moved to Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood in the mid-1970s I was a young mother on maternity leave at home with a one-year-old,  and every day,  weather permitting,  we’d find ourselves  across the street in Carl Schurz Park.   The park was named in 1910 for the German-born Secretary of the Interior at… Read More