My oldest sister went off to Radcliffe College in September 1962, just as I started seventh grade. I was fascinated with Radcliffe – the apple trees with circular benches around them in Radcliffe Yard, the nine old homey-looking brick dorms around the lush green Quad – and with the bustling Harvard Square area. It seemed… Read More

Looking back at August-September 2001 brings to mind the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The two weeks prior to what we now just refer to as 9/11 contained some of the best times of my life, and then, of course, the… Read More

How is the Ku Klux Klan still a thing? In old movies we see those white-sheeted ridiculous-looking figures riding on horseback through the countryside, carrying fiery torches, setting the shacks of poor black people ablaze and leaving burning crosses to light up the night. But this is in the past, right? Wa-a-a-ay in the past!… Read More

On March 10, 2008, I had my annual mammogram. Never a pleasant experience, but tolerable, and I dutifully went every year without giving it much thought. That year was different. A few days afterwards the imaging center called me and said they wanted to do another mammogram of my right breast, so on March 20… Read More

The first time this prompt, “What We Watched,” appeared, I wrote a story about the television shows I loved growing up, TV shows of my youth. That was the very first story I posted on Retrospect, and it started me on a wonderful adventure which has continued through 60 stories so far, with many more yet to… Read More

In 1978, a newly minted lawyer, I got a job with the California Attorney General’s Office. There were lots of hip, young lawyers there, since it was viewed in many legal circles as a training ground for the big-bucks private law firms. There was great camaraderie among the younger lawyers, with drinks at a nearby… Read More

1967. The Summer of Love was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I was going to turn sixteen at the end of August — which meant that I had been claiming to be sixteen for months. I thought I was very sophisticated and wise. Retrospect readers may have already seen… Read More

A Saturday in April. Sophomore year of college. Three days later Nixon would invade Cambodia. Less than a week after that, four students would be killed at Kent State, and the Harvard campus would go out on strike for the second spring in a row. But all that was still ahead, and at this point… Read More

In the summer of 1965 I decided I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. I was turning 14 at the end of the summer, and it was my second year at a leftist work camp called Lincoln Farm. One of my favorite aspects of camp was the singing we did — at campfires,… Read More

We didn’t go to many beaches when I was a kid, because my mother didn’t like sand, and dreaded the possibility of having it tracked into the car or the house. So we generally spent our vacations at places with lakes or pools. We did go to Atlantic City once a year for a medical… Read More