My last trip on Amtrak to New York City was in March 2020. I sat next to a friendly lady in my age range for an amiable chat. I enjoyed one of my frequent stays with my grandchildren on the Upper West Side, taking them to daycare in the morning and picking them up afterwards. Other than those weekday responsibilities and maybe a few loads…
As a recent Boston College Law School graduate, engaged to a handsome hairdresser on the North Shore, I accepted a one-year judicial clerkship in Superior Court – Criminal Session in Newark, New Jersey, my home state. Judge Harrison, my mentor, assigned me to escort Lady Kenyon, a visiting magistrate from England, on a courthouse tour. She was an engaging and elegant woman who took an…
Fall has always been my favorite season, the start of my own yearly cycle with a late August birthday; the beginning of the Jewish New Year, a family celebration with an important element of spiritual introspection; and the beginning of the school year with its promise of more exposure to our historic, scientific, and cultural world treasure. 🍁The name “fall” first shows up in mid-16th…
BLOSSOMING In the spring of 1956, when I was eleven years old, my Aunt Jean took me and my younger cousin Donna to Washington, DC. I had been on a big trip before, to a vacation in Florida with my grandparents, but this was on a different level, a mission to see the capitol city of the United States. Dressed in brand new pastel-colored topper jackets,…
🚌 I’m quite independent getting around the city bus system with my pass, similar to my Metrocard in Manhattan. On an excursion to the Shuk (downtown open market), my son Mordechai (f/k/a Max) and I stepped onto a bus with standing room only, the usual combination of many secular but majority religious people on board, including mothers with strollers, Torah scholars, and schoolchildren. I couldn’t make my…
I imagine the sound of a train in the far distance, blowing its horn as it covers the miles, moving through the plains under the moonlight. If a freight train, it is a hundred cars long with the mountains on the far horizon, hurtling towards the Western states with its industrial cargo. If a passenger train, it moves like a silver streak to stop at destinations…
Celebrity Sightings: I’ve never actually met a celebrity one-on-one. But walking around New York City over the years, I’ve seen a few who live there or stay temporarily while on film sets or in Broadway productions. Sightings are fairly common. But residents respect the privacy of their famous neighbors going about their everyday work and personal business. They don’t crowd around them for questions or…
First, it helps to be in Rome, standing at a marble counter with a fresh brewed espresso, a framed black and white of Sophia Loren staring at you to add a voluptuous note. ☕️ ☕️ ☕️ Or maybe Paris in the fall, walking through the Louvre until exhaustion by portrait and landscape confounds you. Then, on to Angeline’s for refreshment, the…
The summer in Wenham had been uneventful. Hot and humid weather for most of July 2019 slowed down the pace of life. Weeding lagged in the garden. Most summers I have been able to tame the flower beds and spread a handsome layer of dark brown mulch. This year, I couldn’t keep up with the crabgrass and so it spread vigorously after each rain, choking…
My college friend Barbara and I took off to Europe two years after college graduation, in early summer 1968. By then I had moved from New Jersey to Boston but we reunited for the trip. This was my last fling before entering Boston College Law School in the fall. We bought one-way tickets to Amsterdam and checked into a youth hostel on the bank of…
In my senior year of high school, I signed up with a progressive Jewish youth organization for a summer work program in Evanston, Illinois — our mission, to build a storage barn for a fresh air camp. I had never spent the summer away from home. I packed a box of stationery and postage stamps to write to my parents and to my high school…
I’m on the island of Kauai for the month of February, staying with my daughter and family in a condo on the South Shore. They don’t live here but are fortunate to be on family leave from their busy working lives in New York City. When they invited me to join them, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I spend most of…
ROUTE ONE INTO THE DEEP SOUTH—JANUARY 1955 When I was ten years old, I left New Jersey to hit the open road in the back seat of my grandfather’s gray Buick Special. Whenever we visited my mom’s parents in Glen Cove, Long Island, my “Zayda” took us for Sunday drives. But this was different—this was big. My mom Rose and my little brother Stuart would fly…
UNE FEMME TRES CHIC Is this Paris? No, it’s New York City on a September afternoon. Walking at my leisure, free to take in the street life, the buildings, the signs, the storefronts, the ornate facades and wrought iron grill work, I see Frenchness everywhere. WEST 73RD BETWEEN COLUMBUS AND AMSTERDAM I’ve collected several books of photography over the years that for me embody the signature sensibility…