I have had my share of the usual rites of passage: no bar mitzvah, but two weddings, some funerals (not mine), and a ton of graduations.  Of these, and passing the inherent sadness of funerals, I can quickly identify which was the worst experience for me: my law school “graduation” from Columbia Law School (“CLS”)… Read More

Talk about prescient.  Before this prompt was posted (I swear it), in writing my “Lost and Found” story about how to find lost stuff, I noted the following: “A seeming digression which isn’t really a digression. In fact, it is really the whole point of this story. If any of the other Retro members reading… Read More

I am a very methodical, organized person, or at least try to be. A place for everything and everything in its place kind of guy. Read More

Say what you will about Woody Allen, he wrote a movie about invisibility among fame, “Zelig,” that not only resonated at the time, but created an eponymous term for a phenomenon that has endured. (Think also “Machiavellian,” “Quisling” and “Benedict Arnold.”) (Zelig and friends.) And so, when I consider the concept of fame from my… Read More

I have always loved gardens and flowers.  Looking at them, that is; I’m absolute rubbish at growing them, or just keeping them alive.  So not a green thumb, but a black thumb.  Hence the featured image. In college, I was so bad about keeping plants alive (try as I might), my roommates presented me with… Read More

A few days before my Harvard College commencement in 1971, there was a loud knock on the front door of our suite when I was there with most of my roomies.  To refresh recollections from one of my earlier stories, the featured image is what we looked like then.  (I’m No. 29 in your program,… Read More

First of all, I need to make clear that I agree with all those studies indicating that birth order among siblings does — or at least can — have an impact on the siblings.  I saw this up close with my former wife and her younger sister, my wife and her two younger sisters and… Read More