Judy’s Last Gift  It’s not hyperbole to say my friend Judy was the most thoughtful and giving person I’ve ever known.  Rather than randomly kind,  Judy was always kind. I met her a few months after I started dating my husband Danny.   He and I had driven from New York to Boston to spend New… Read More

In the Abstract In the early years of the 20th century a handful of European artists including the Russians Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimar Malevich,  the Dutchman Piet Mondrian,   and a lesser-known Swedish woman named Hilma af Klint began producing art with no attempt to represent external reality.   Rather,  they used shapes,  forms,  color,… Read More

Rolling Stoned at the Garden I’ve told you about my dalliance in a New York coffee shop with Paul McCartney (See My Favorite Beatle),  so now let me tell you about my night at the Garden with the Rolling Stones. Our friends Mary and Frank own a deli and bakery on Mott Street that supplies… Read More

Saying Farewell to a Special Guy My father Arthur was a very special guy.   He was widely knowledgable yet possessed an endearing naiveté;  a scientist by profession,  he was an artist and musician by avocation;  annoyingly stubborn at times yet always generous of spirit;  a profound thinker and also mischievous;  a punster and a… Read More

The Fortune Cookie Candidate  As the most important presidential race of our lifetime approaches,  and we hold our collective breath,  I remember another trying time and another election,   although one that was relatively angst-free. When I was an undergrad at NYU Heights in the early ‘60s I really threw myself into college life.  … Read More

A Sign on the Doorpost Our post-war Manhattan apartment building recently underwent a major renovation –   new elevators and new lobby furniture;   in the halls new carpeting,  wallpaper and lighting;  and new saddles,  bells and knobs for all our apartment doors. The construction company hired for the job sent a friendly crew of… Read More

Cantor Gladys Gladys and I both lived uptown,   she on Manhattan’s westside and I on the east.   Yet we first met not in the city,   but in Lakeridge,  the Connecticut community where we both spent country weekends.   And once we discovered we both loved Scrabble,  we’d play together as often as we… Read More

Give Me the Low Tech Life What was life like before computers?   Well for one thing we had to look stuff up ourselves. And in those days to change the channel or turn off the TV you actually had to get off the couch,  annoying as that sounds. But at least back then you… 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

My Aunt,  Dede Allen I’ve always been very proud of my aunt Dede Allen.  Movie buffs may know her as a stellar film editor and a pioneer in what had been a male-dominated craft. Dede worked her way up in the film business,  starting as a production runner at Columbia Pictures,  then editing commercial and… Read More