Suprise Me

O’Shaughnessy’s Ode has always arisen in me to describe what being a poet means. I am one, since the age of eleven I write.  Have to. Whenever the blood flow swells in me, whenever the thought erupts or the passion breaks through these mesmerized human threads, I write.  Johnny next door was a few years… Read More

Baby Girl Downstairs in the open loft apartment, I hear above me my daughter and her husband and my new grandbaby  having one of those rapturous conversations that involve  cooing and squeaks soft-voiced tender words and, sweet giggles and chuckles that wrap the love  of the deep presence with and around  this moment. That Alive, … Read More

The Lady with the Torch Like many New Yorkers I’m sure,   I don’t take in the local sights unless out-of-towners are in town!   So when friends from China were visiting recently we decided to take them to the Statue of Liberty where I probably hadn’t been since I was a school kid. Tickets to… Read More

In 1976 I was the founding editor of St. Louis, a high-gloss monthly magazine. Libby Ferguson, the publisher was a wonderful woman, married to an eminent heart surgeon, who had purchased a country-club throwaway called Replay and set about repurposing the magazine’s mission as a profit center and literate guide to the city’s political and… Read More

The violence exacerbated by Mayor Daley’s draconian crackdown on protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention helped to elect Nixon, a far worse alternative than Humphrey. Read More

Retreat  A dozen or so years ago my cousin Kathy called me in New York from DC and asked me to join her the following month for a Jewish women’s retreat. Because geography had always kept us apart,  spending a weekend with my cousin was appealing and a women’s retreat would be a new experience… Read More

My grandfather loved horses and gambling more than he loved my grandmother, so he spent a lot of time at the racetrack. Read More

British Summer Time I confess I’m rather chauvinistic about New York.   The city’s been my home pretty much all my life and I love the hustle and bustle,  the theater,  the 24/7 vibe,  the people-watching,  and I don’t even mind the noise and the traffic. Don’t get me wrong,  I love to travel and… Read More

I interviewed for a year, but it was a start-up and they weren’t ready to hire salespeople. I was looking to leave the software company I worked for and come to this one, as the product was a good fit with what I already knew. In fact, it could serve as a friendlier front-end to… Read More

Ever lose somebody without saying goodbye? A friend goes off to war, he wasn’t drafted, he enlisted, it’s been awhile, you’ve gone in opposite directions. No rancor, just divergence, then gone. A girlfriend slides into her father’s car to drive home too late. You lean down, kiss her through the window. She’s so pretty, her… Read More