Not surprisingly, I can check the boxes in terms of attending the Vietnam protest marches during our college years: the rally on the Boston Common in October 1969, various marches and meetings at Harvard in the spring of 1969 and 1970 and, of course, the massive March on Washington in May 1970. But my participation… Read More

This is a great prompt.  And it is also very difficult, at least for me, to respond to.  So let me try to deconstruct it instead.  Though I do this with some reluctance. The last time I tried something like this, it was on a consumer protection final exam in the second semester of my… Read More

To me, the essence of a truly embarrassing moment is that the mere recollection of it, even years later, causes one to cringe.  I have one of those. So much so that I can truthfully say that this is the first time I have ever disclosed it to anyone else (parents, spouses and sibling included). … Read More

Well, no awards for originality this week.  Not only is Mad Magazine referenced in the prompt, it is the prompt’s featured image (that great cover of Alfred E. Neuman carved on Mt. Rushmore).  But that only means that great minds think alike (wink, wink, Retro administrator) because, at least for us Boomers, there was no… Read More

This story is part of my family lore, passed on — and quite possibly embellished — by my mother’s younger brother Paul.  Uncle Paul was quite the raconteur, and also a bit of a wheeler-dealer, so it must be taken with a huge grain of Kosher salt. The story concerns Uncle Paul and his older… Read More

It is not as though I have not saved a fair amount of my stuff, dating back at least from high school.  And I have not (consciously) thrown any of it out over the years.  Indeed, when I retired at the end of last year, I had to set up additional file space at home… Read More

This week’s prompt has not exactly motivated the Muse of Creativity to come and seduce moi.  Sure, smells are evocative — I mean, they are one of only five senses, right? — and I have hardly been immune to their evocation.  But do I have any truly original memories of smells? Who among us non-olfactorally-challenged… Read More