Suprise Me

In the fall of 1976, I lied on an application in order to get a job as a janitor at Massachusetts General Hospital. Read More

My first experience with death was my grandfather’s, when I was eleven years old. Both of my maternal grandparents (Nana and Papa) lived with us in our big brick house in New Jersey, and had for as long as I can remember — possibly since before I was born. My grandmother had one of the… Read More

I have learned that all “tweens” go through tough adolescent years; it seems to be a universal truth. Mine seemed particularly brutal, as we moved from Detroit to a near-suburb, I skipped a grade at this crucial period, the new girls were far more sophisticated and I had a particularly ugly adolescence with buck teeth,… Read More

Pianist Robin Meloy Goldsby recalls a handful of unique, international weddings, as seen from the other side of the Steinway. Here comes the bride . . . Read More

I love parties! I almost always have a great time at them. Certainly college parties are among my fondest memories of those years. But for me, the good ones don’t seem to make for interesting stories. So here’s a story about the worst party of my life. 1966. The drinking age in New Jersey was… Read More

As introverted and retiring as I am now, I was much more so back in 1975. Read More

Then came a series of questions about rock music, meant, I'm sure, to be my downfall. Read More

Sorry, I can’t think of a song for this story, it’s too solemn a subject. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in Birmingham, AL, for the quarterly meeting of the Environment Sector of the Electric Power Research Institute.  After breakfast at the hotel, a group of us piled into a van to… Read More

She had been taken to the ER after attempting suicide, and would be in there for some days. Would we take care of her dog? Read More

When Dave returned to the phone and told me the call had been from a “John Steptoe,” I thought my roommates were playing a practical joke. Read More