Suprise Me

We are fortunate to own a historic home in the village of Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard. Holmes Coffin House. It has a plaque above the door and for many years, was down the block from the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, which has since moved to a large campus in Vineyard Haven, but the street retains the “Cooke… Read More

The Beatles break-up began in 1969, the year I graduated from high school. I wished it weren’t so, but it was inevitable that they would go their separate ways, just as it was inevitable that high school would end, and everything would change. Read More

White Shoulders – for Aunt Frances I’m from a small family and have always felt close to my aunts and uncles.  Now, like my parents,  they’re all gone. (For more about my family see  Call Me by Their Names) My parents were each the middle child of three, and both had strong bonds with their… Read More

Virtual Seder like it's 1999. Read More

I would be remiss in my discussion of the Newark Public Library if I did not mention Philip Roth's novella Goodbye Columbus. Read More

I suspect that had I fallen for the Mavis scam they would have done nothing and billed me for brake replacement. Read More

Call Me By Their Names My parents named me Dana after two relatives they never knew – my father’s grandmother Dinah who perished in czarist Russia,  and my mother’s uncle David who drowned as a teenager in the Rockaways. I like my name and never minded that it’s a bit uncommon, but it’s always disconcerting… Read More

Dashed hopes for a sexual threesome one night in 1970, and what rats we men are. Read More

In the early 60’s, I had a morning newspaper route. In five years, only a couple people didn’t pay their subscription. Honor was still a virtue. But one man didn’t pay and then moved. On collection days when I knocked on his door, even with his car in the driveway, no one answered. I was… Read More

As the train progressed ... people boarded with fruit, produce, and the occasional chicken and goat. Read More