Suprise Me

I remember feeling passive and helpless when it came to dating. Read More

The yen of some folks to mix the presence of a dead body with the innocence of a child—“Come here sweetie and kiss your Great Aunt Sally goodbye.”—is another mystery of our cultural past. 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

I am living in a time warp, totally unmoored from any sense of day or even month. Read More

As the 1960s sunk into the next decade, I decided to leave San Francisco, to “get my head together.” A friend knew I had carpentry skills and suggested I contact a woman who owned property in the Colorado Rockies above Boulder. She needed a handyman. A cabin was available. That seemed attractive. To get away… Read More

Then: Waiting in the railway crossing shack with the gate keeper, hoping for a Boston & Maine diesel to come along. Now: Wishing I could feel the earth shake as a steam locomotive rolled past with a full load of freight, throttle wide open to make the grade.   Then: Watching my mom crank the… Read More

Bring your children to experience wandering among shelves of actual books before it is too late. And don’t forget to visit and support your local library. Read More

My sympathy for women and gays began with my birth. My mother, Rose, was disappointed that she birthed a male child—as documented by my birth certificate. My first photograph showed me as a three-year-old child in the driveway dressed in a skirt.. Rose used terms of endearment that had a feminine flavor. Etymologically, the “ie”… Read More

This excerpt from Even in Darkness occurs when Klare returns from Theresienstadt, the concentration camp, to reestablish a life in her home town of Hoerde. She begins to lose those she'd fought so hard to save, not realizing that redemption is just around the corner. Read More

Was it a lark; did I do it for class credit; was it some misguided show of patriotism? I have no idea. Read More