Suprise Me

I always thought it was a sillly competition. Why did people expect you to declare allegiance to only one band, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? I loved them both! I see now that I bought 13 Beatles albums and only 10 Stones albums (and I have photographed both sets on my living room carpet),… Read More

I wanted to join that company. Read More

This is not my story. It is the story of my friend and longtime neighbor, “L”. Last year L approached me to ask for my help in documenting her story of escape and struggle. A refugee’s story. In 1959, at age nine, L and her parents fled Castro’s Cuba. It is a story I never… Read More

Shelf List I was a librarian for almost 40 years,  most of those spent working in school libraries with several summers in a small public library as well.    (See The Diary of a Young Girl,  Magazines for the Principal,  My Snowy Year in Buffalo and Rainy Night on the Highway) I loved my time in… Read More

It was a fall afternoon when Ron and his friend appeared with the acid and what the hell, we had nothing better to do. Read More

College Girl – for Aunt Hannah “One is never too old to learn.”  Hannah told us when she announced she was starting college in her 80s. My husband’s aunt Hannah was the gentlest soul I’ve ever known.  No one in our family can remember her saying a harsh or an unkind word. Hannah and her… Read More

Literacy for Incarcerated Teens  When I retired after my long career as a high school librarian,  my friend Karlan called me.  Karlan was recently retired herself after working for New York Public Library as a young adult librarian. “I’m heading a new organization called Literacy for Incarcerated Teens / LIT “,  she said,  “it’s a good… Read More

(Note: this prompt first came up on July 23, 2018, which is when this story was originally written and published. I have added some new anecdotes and made some edits. It should be noted that as a high school teenager, I was not paying much attention to the political world around me.) The radio alarm… Read More

I don’t know what the definition of “crush” is, offhand. Certainly, it’s an intense infatuation, a deep, deep feeling. But I think there’s something more, a notion of unavailability. . . . . But there's unavailability and then there's unavailability. Read More

In sixth grade I was a bonafide punk rocker and wanted a haircut to match. I was living in an upwardly mobile community where fitting in and excelling were the norm. (This is perhaps why I was drawn to punk rock; I never quite bought the materialist zeitgeist.) I was at a friend’s grandfather’s house,… Read More