Suprise Me

Hotel Kittens As you may remember I spent childhood summers at my grandmother Esther’s hotel in the Catskill town of Liberty,  NY.  (See My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel,  My Game Mother,  Playing with Fire,  and  The Troubadour) You may also remember that one of my beloved childhood pets – a cat with a beautiful… Read More

We lived at the edge of a forest in Massachusetts. The hay field across the road served as a planetarium surrounded by stone walls and maples. From there, the night sky unfolded for us: an unusual moon, the northern lights, an eclipse, but now. . . who could predict? “Tonight!” My old man shouted. “Sputnik!… Read More

It is fair to ask “why do I write”? I ponder that myself. I thought about this question for some time before beginning to write this particular prompt. I never wrote much before being approached by my childhood friends to be a beta tester for their new baby boomer website MyRetrospect. I wrote when an… Read More

My mother and her two sisters had excellent manners. They always knew what to wear for any occasion, how to behave, how to write a lovely thank you note. Very proper women. And these they taught to their children as well. I used to call them the “white glove ladies”, as you can see from… Read More

Good gawd how we tried. Read More

  Ah, waiting rooms. Those fluorescent-lit purgatories where childhood dreams went to die a slow, magazine-fueled death. Remember those giant, uncomfortable chairs swallowing you whole like a bad couch on “Laugh-In”? The only escape? Dog-eared copies of National Geographic filled with pictures of naked butts and confusing maps of exotic lands (where, presumably, dentists/ doctors… Read More

As this prompt was actually my husband’s idea, I thought I’d give him credit where credit’s due. He happens to have quite a hat collection himself — at least fifteen (not including caps). The featured photo, taken by him, is one of them. I do love a man in a hat.   Read More

Damn, I thought, this guy has to be a musician... Read More

Whether Oscar Wilde or Chrissie Hind in “Message of Love,” said it, I have always found astronomy an escape into imagining the universe beyond our mortal realm.  I was able to get through physics and chemistry because of science teachers who truly loved their subject, but astronomy was the one that caught on for me.… Read More

Moon River was almost cut from Breakfast at Tiffany's; fortunately they kept it in and it won the Oscar for best original song. Read More