Suprise Me

...it is also comforting to believe that consciousness does not end with physical death. Read More

I began wearing an anklet when I'd outgrown little girl ankle socks and graduated to cheap mesh stockings in shades of a summer tan, worn over smooth legs. I went to Woolworths and used my allowance to buy my first anklet. My sister and I both wore them, copying one of our beloved aunts who wore a fancy one that had a tiny flower with a pearl in its center, with her name engraved on it. Read More

But one work changed me forever. Read More

I first heard this old Irving Berlin song (which you can hear below) during our 8th week Operetta concert at the end of camp, in August, 1969. The concert was devoted to his songs. It seems to perfectly sum up this week’s prompt, though, as I will explain, it does not apply to me. Berlin… Read More

Dan needed his Brigham’s vanilla ice cream! I had finished all the grocery shopping for Thanksgiving days earlier. The last place I wanted to be at 4pm on the day before Thanksgiving last year was a big supermarket, but Dan wanted his Brigham’s! So I dutifully trekked the mile to the Star Market, grabbed up… Read More

At my elementary school, which I attended from 1956 to 1962, we never hid under our desks or heard the phrase “duck and cover.” We had our own fallout shelter to protect us from the Russians. The school was a large building, three stories plus a basement, which took up (in my memory at least)… Read More

I rarely go to the beach, and when I do, I am generally either working on my suntan (I know, very dangerous, but I still do it) or cooling off in the water. I can’t remember ever bringing a book to the beach either as a child or as an adult. But I do like… Read More

  In 1946 George Orwell wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” He went on to complain of the ways political speech had largely become “the defense of the indefensible”. After 75 years his words seem more appropriate than… Read More

Frenched! I was 11 years old the first time I went away to camp.   Until then I’d spent wonderful summers with my family at my grandmother’s small Catskill hotel.  (See My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel,  My Game Mother,  The Troubadour, and Playing with Fire) But my grandmother had just sold the hotel,  and in… Read More

Was there anyone on the panel who could not give equal weight to the testimony of a police officer? Read More