Suprise Me

I'm glad my mother was at home for me. I liked having her there all the time. Read More

Board games with dice, mah jongg with dice, and the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York. Read More

"...the chimera of Security" Read More

Kente Cloth I live on Manhattan’s upper eastside across the street from Gracie Mansion,  the beautiful 1799 Federal- style house that overlooks the East River and is the residence of New York’s mayor and his family. On any given day I might see cops,  TV cameras, and angry protesters in front of the Mansion,  or… Read More

In the summer of 1978, I took a group of students to Taiwan for a work-study trip.  Among them was an older female ROTC grad with the officer’s rank of Second Lieutenant.  With me posing as her husband, we entered the American Military”s Officers Club. A hub for the social and political elite, its members… Read More

My worst dreams have become a reality as we struggle through these endless days of #stayathome. Read More

As if a career in music isn’t perilous enough, American musician Robin Goldsby and her bassist husband take on a few critters roaming the German countryside.  Thwack. Or is it thwump? Skittle, scratch, scrape, thwop. It’s a quarter to three and there’s no one in the place except you and me—thonk—and Dumbo? Has a baby elephant… Read More

Rowboat When I was young my grandmother ran a small hotel on a lake in the Catskills,  and I’ve written about the idyllic summers I spent there with my family.  (See My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel,  My Game Mother, Hotel Kittens,  The Cat and the Forshpeiz,  Playing with Fire, and The Troubadour) One happy memory of those… Read More

At first I couldn’t think of any experience that would rise to the level of road rage. Annoyance with another driver who did something stupid, sure. Maybe a little cursing under my breath, or an occasional blast on my rather wimpy horn. But nothing that I would really call rage. I joked that I was… Read More

Never get in a fight with the youngest kid in his family. It took years to make that deduction. Finally, it came to me when someone said, “My big sister hits harder than that.” I was the oldest in my family. Not only could I not take a punch, but I was afraid of hurting… Read More