Suprise Me

My birth certificate name is "Jonathan David", relatively common among English-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, and prevalent among sons in my father's ancestral line, anecdotally descending from a 19th century Vilnian rabbi of blessed memory, named, via transliteration, Nosson Dovid. Read More

We welcomed a sexy teen to stay with us. Read More

Read More

When I was twelve or thirteen, my family moved to New Jersey, and I became friends with a group of little girls who were all good at, and experienced at, babysitting. I wanted to earn money, and I wanted to be good at the job too, but I wasn’t. I didn’t have any younger siblings… Read More

Seeking motivation, the author opened his current lit file and scrolled past folder after folder, doc after doc. Jesus, he thought, this is one big pile of writing, all these little black characters wiggling across a white screen. He recognized travelogues from Cuba, some published, most not; sketched-out narrative postcards about growing up absurd in… Read More

I used to joke that I had motor oil running through my veins. Thanks to my great uncle: Uncle Meyer, as I’ve written about before, most of the Sarasons came north from St. Louis to Detroit to work for GM (my father worked in Flint for the Chevrolet Division starting in 1937, but after WWII, did… Read More

And so ended my MRI trip down memory lane. It would be a long and winding road to repair what time had done to me. Once — as the Beatles reminded me — I was just 17. Now I am 71. Read More

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution." – Albert Einstein 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

I was a voracious reader in my day and read many books that had been banned at one some point. I read most of them just for fun, or to satisfy a quota to read “so many” books per card-marking period. I read “Huck Finn” in 5th grade. Perhaps I was too young to understand… Read More