Catskill Weekend J was my husband’s college roommate and the two have been very close since then.   In fact J and his wife K are among our closest friends –  we’ve vacationed and travelled abroad together,  traditionally spend New Year’s Eve as a foursome,  and are always there to share each others’ joys and… Read More

Getting Woke My folks, and my uncles and aunts were always politically active and die-hard liberals ,  and as children my sister and I and our cousins were used to hearing political rhetoric around the dinner table. Yet despite that red diaper babyhood,  I was seemingly apolitical and remained so well into my own adulthood… Read More

Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home My hometown?  Like many of us I guess I can claim more than one –  born in Charleston, SC but bred in the Bronx with idyllic summers spent at our family-run hotel in the Catskills.  (See My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel,  The Troubadour, Hotel Kittens, The Cat and the Forshpeiz, and My Game Mother)… Read More

The Summer of My Discontent This was to be the summer I really worked on my tennis game,  and planted my garden earlier,  learned to play Mah Jongg,   and caught up on all those unread New Yorkers. And this was to be the summer I finally mastered the  barbecue,  and took out my old… Read More

The Alphabet Wall When our son Noah was in kindergarten I bought a sheet of colorful, stick-on alphabet letters in both lower and upper case.   But as the kitchen fridge was already covered with magnets and  photos and the kid’s artwork,  I decided to stick the alphabet letters on the tiled wall in the… Read More

What Did You Do in the War,  Daddy? When our son was young he asked us if we were at Woodstock.  We had to say No,  but we didn’t have an answer when he asked,  Why not? He was disappointed and I’m sure we went down a notch or two in his esteem. He never… Read More

Kente Cloth I live on Manhattan’s upper eastside across the street from Gracie Mansion,  the beautiful 1799 Federal- style house that overlooks the East River and is the residence of New York’s mayor and his family. On any given day I might see cops,  TV cameras, and angry protesters in front of the Mansion,  or… Read More

The Lady with the Torch Like many New Yorkers I’m sure,   I don’t take in the local sights unless out-of-towners are in town!   So when friends from China were visiting recently we decided to take them to the Statue of Liberty where I probably hadn’t been since I was a school kid. Tickets to… Read More

Soul Collage I retired over 10 years ago and since then I gained over 20 pounds,  and try as I might,  I couldn’t seem to lose them. It’s understandable – at my age loosing pounds and inches is hard,  I’m not a gym rat (in fact we have a treadmill in our apartment which collects… Read More

B. Smith I was so sorry to learn of the recent death of restaurateur Barbara Smith at age 70 after a decade-long and very public battle with Alzheimer’s.   She and her husband chronicled their years living with the disease in their book Before I Forget. I had followed Barbara’s career since she was a… Read More