Suprise Me

After our Brandeis graduation in May, 1974, Christie relocated from Chicago to Boston that autumn. She stayed a year before her father summoned her to work for him at Playboy. She worked as a freelance writer, doing pieces for Boston After Dark and a long piece on Robert Pirsig and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle… Read More

Library Lesson I was an English lit major in college and on track to teach high school English.  But an aunt and a family friend were librarians and they both encouraged me to consider that field. It sounded perfect for me,  and I applied to the graduate library programs at Simmons in Boston and at Columbia.… Read More

The winter of 2014-15 was the snowiest we remember in the Boston area with large storm followed by large storm. Then the sun came out, causing some melting of the snow on roof tops, giving way to terrible ice dams from the build up of snow on roofs. We learned the hard way how damaging… Read More

A soft, blue velvet regaled The Los Angeles night. The concentric circles of the Hollywood Bowl’s procenium glowed with a warm, eggshell white. White-jacketed waiters served last suppers on trays and scuttled away. Onstage, two microphones bracketed a single, straight-backed chair. Without announcement, a man in white tie and tails walked from stage right, carrying… Read More

My oldest sister went off to Radcliffe College in September 1962, just as I started seventh grade. I was fascinated with Radcliffe – the apple trees with circular benches around them in Radcliffe Yard, the nine old homey-looking brick dorms around the lush green Quad – and with the bustling Harvard Square area. It seemed… Read More

Each time, shortly after I saw a rainbow, something bad would happen. Thus began what my husband and I called "the year of calamity and death." Read More

Malcolm I never imagined that after decades of friendship we and Malcolm would become estranged,  but regrettably it happened. He and my husband Danny roomed together in college and remained very close.  Mal was the most sophisticated one in their crowd  – he bought his clothes at Brooks,  went to Dunhill’s for his pipe tobacco,… Read More

You can learn a lot of things in scouting, and a few you just try to forget. Until it's time to shock your kids and grandkids. Read More

Princess Summerfall Winterspring (Not exactly a “four seasons” story,  but I plead poetic license!) I’m sure generations younger than mine find it hard to believe many of us had no TV in our early years.  In fact my family was the last on our Bronx block to get one.  And so every weeknight at 5:30… Read More

    Meditation. It’s all the rage these days, like kale chips and adult coloring books. Everyone’s hopping on the bandwagon, chanting “om” and levitating off the floor… or at least that’s what the Instagram influencers want you to believe. But for the rest of us, busy bees drowning in a never-ending to-do list, meditation… Read More