Suprise Me

January, 1981: “Ladies! Listen up! It’s ‘Team Time with Deanna!’ Grab your buddy and head to the center of the floor where we’ll meet and greet, dance and prance, and burn away that winter blubber.” Deanna is a thirty-five year old exercise instructor and seasoned resident of Queens. I am a twenty-three year-old out-of-work actor/pianist… Read More

I was not nearly as concerned with the minutiae of planning my wedding as I was with the marriage that would follow.  In 1975, I married the love of my life (Don) following an almost three year engagement.  Three years in which we finished college degrees, endured parents on both sides who did not want… Read More

I come from a long line of galoots. They began American life in 1849 as farmers in Pennsylvania. They fought on the Union side during our first Civil War and then headed west to Placerville, California, where my great-great grandfather, John established a frontier business as a harness maker and soon opened a boot shop.… Read More

All of us of a certain age remember the “duck and cover” drill, as if ducking under our desks would shield us from nuclear fall-out. We labeled it the “kiss your ass goodbye” move. After World War II, as more countries, particularly our mortal enemy, the Soviet Union, obtained nuclear capability, some built their own… Read More

How I progressed from zero cooking to pretty good. Read More

I came across that Oscar Wilde quote early on, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” Made sense to me and I put it into practice in every area of my life that I could. So I have usually taken the easy path, the comfortable, the delicious way quite… Read More

(This story was originally written for the prompt: Changed My Life). As described in Over-Educated, Under-Qualified, I did a lot of data entry on my first job out of college. My title was “Program Librarian”. After entering the handwritten code from the programmer, either into card decks via a key punch (VERY old-fashioned), or typing into… Read More

I know my attitude is wrong. People are entitled to jury trials, and I would probably be a good juror (except for Trump). Read More

“Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there's no more music in them”                                                                                                  Louis  Armstrong Read More

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