I saw the notice on facebook, of all places, where it had been posted by the mayor of Sacramento, whom I follow. The city had just created an Ethics Commission, and all interested Sacramento residents were invited to apply. So I thought, why not? I found the application online, filled it out, and submitted it… Read More

As I often do when I am writing a Retrospect story, I started out by googling “songs about [name of prompt].” For Ageism, I could find almost nothing; apparently it isn’t a topic that songwriters are inspired by. But I did find a reference to “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” as being the first… Read More

The Gershwin song “I’ve Got A Crush on You” doesn’t really get the crush concept right. The lyrics say “You had such persistence, you wore down my resistance, I fell, and it was swell . . . . I’ve got a crush on you, sweetie pie.” So she’s singing to him after they get together.… Read More

What is bullying? I struggle with the term. Maybe it’s one of those “I know it when I see it” type of things. Stopbullying.gov, an official government website (it says so!), defines bullying as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. . . . Bullying includes actions… Read More

Full disclosure: I have not read, or even heard of, North Country Nurse by Robert Ackworth, but when I saw the picture of the little pocket pasted in the book for the checkout card, and the adjacent sheet to stamp in the due date, it made me so nostalgic for the libraries of my youth that… Read More

The scamming emails seem to come in constantly. Fortunately, they generally go into my spam folder and I never even see them. Here’s one of the most recent ones: Greetings, I was searching through a local business directory when I found your profile. I am Soliciting On-Behalf of my private client who is interested in… Read More

When each of my first two kids was born, I stayed home for a year, and when I went back to the AG’s Office (part-time) they went to a daycare center. That seemed to work pretty well. But with the youngest, we thought it made sense to have someone come to our house, because she… Read More

Long-time Retrospect readers may recall my story Bridge Over Troubled Waters about how I played bridge for many years, mostly in high school and college, and my conclusion that I was a much better bridge player when I was stoned. I ended that story with the following passage: “Once I had my first baby, 32 years ago,… Read More

My nephew, a New York actor who is currently appearing in Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, recently posted this story on his facebook page. I loved it so much that I wanted to share it here. With his permission, I am reprinting it exactly as he wrote it, along with one of his photos… Read More

At first I couldn’t think of any experience that would rise to the level of road rage. Annoyance with another driver who did something stupid, sure. Maybe a little cursing under my breath, or an occasional blast on my rather wimpy horn. But nothing that I would really call rage. I joked that I was… Read More