Suprise Me

Russian athletes have systematically cheated for years. The Wikipedia page is too long and complicated to try to condense and enumerate the many faults, going back decades for this story, but let me give you some “highlights”. For years there was state sponsored systematic doping. They have been stripped of 46 Olympic medals. The most… Read More

Skee Ball When I was a kid my grandparents lived a few blocks from the beach in Far Rockaway,  in Queens,  New York.   I loved visiting them  – and especially in the summer when Rockaways Playland was open for the season. Created in 1902 by roller coaster designer LaMarcus Adna Thompson,  Rockaways Playland had… Read More

My first experience with death was my grandfather’s, when I was eleven years old. Both of my maternal grandparents (Nana and Papa) lived with us in our big brick house in New Jersey, and had for as long as I can remember — possibly since before I was born. My grandmother had one of the… Read More

When Dan does something, he gives it 100% and that was the way he again took up bicycling in 2018. He had his first bike accident the day he got his fancy new bike. The tubeless tires fell apart, so that accident wasn’t on him, though he was still taken to the ER and I,… Read More

One balmy night, the full moon high, I walk into town, flip-flops slapping softly, and grab a seat on the patio at the local watering hole, the Tahiti Nui, where sits Shelley, my new drinking buddy. Halfway through our second or maybe third drink, up walks a guy she knows, Mike, who has a cute… Read More

Piano Man – Remembering Herb My memories of that summer between college and grad school,  when I took a camp job with my friend Liz,  are bittersweet. Liz and I were co-counselors for a bunk of kids,  and I had also signed on as drama counselor.   When we arrived at camp I was introduced to… Read More

We are the world, We are the children, We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving. Oh, there’s a choice we’re making, We’re saving our own lives, It’s true we’ll make a better day, just you and me. This song, written by Michael Jackson and sung by an ad hoc… Read More

Pick a card. Any card. How many times has a kid asked you to do that? Read More

I didn’t know Maria well. She was a senior and I, a freshman, in the autumn of 1970. She was thin with a puff of blonde curls surrounding her pleasant face. We had mutual friends and we were driving to one’s house at the western end of the Mass Pike late one Saturday evening, exactly… Read More

    Ah, stress! The ever-present uninvited guest at the banquet of life, refusing to leave even after polite (or impolite) hints. Now, some folks, bless their little cortisol-pumping hearts, seem to thrive on it. They’re like squirrels on espresso, bouncing off the walls with deadlines looming and their smart phones exploding with emails. Me?… Read More