Suprise Me

"When I was seven years old I took painting lessons in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Read More

A. Adriana, my close high school friend. Q. Who do I know who was on Jeopardy!? Read More

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate that having a good sense of humor is an essential trait. Several years ago I copied down this quote which I recently found in the notes section of my phone: “Those who lack humor are without judgement and should be trusted with nothing.” Clive James said, “A sense… Read More

She passed for 16 so she could work in a garment factory. She never saw the inside of a school room but had wanted to be a doctor. ... She was a woman grounded in tradition who never stopped looking to the future. 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

We ate in the kitchen at a big round table that had plenty of room, even when there were seven of us there. Read More

I just did an inventory:  81. Read More

Kitchen Radio Back in the 50s it seemed – much to my childish angst –  my parents were the last on our Bronx block to get a television set.   But of course we always had the radio. My dad was a self-taught classical pianist and we had what was then a state-of-the-art hifi system… Read More

Revelations  Fame well deserved came to a young African American choreographer one night in 1960 when he premiered a new work at the 92nd St Y.  The choreographer was 29 year-old Alvin Ailey,  and the piece was Revelations. Inspired by what Ailey called blood memories of his rural Texas childhood,  and by Negro spirituals,  gospel,… Read More

P.E. does not provide the expected relief on the first day of school in a foreign country. Read More