Stories written by Joan Florek Schottenfeld
The last week of the school year. Time to find inspiration, energy, new ideas — time for a field trip. When we received a flyer from Roxbury Community College advertising its “College for a Day,” it was the perfect opportunity for us. I had never visited RCC, and I very much wanted to see the […]
I used to love flying — the whole idea of getting away to something and somewhere new. Even the time spent in the airport was fun. Once you checked in you were already on vacation, poking around the airport stores, buying snacks that you wouldn’t usually eat and magazines that you would never read outside […]
As I sat through two graduations during these past few weeks when so many of our children were graduating, the strangest word popped into my brain: plastics. You may remember the 1967 film The Graduate. Dustin Hoffman plays a recent college graduate who was unsure of what to do with his life. At his graduation […]
My husband, Steve, runs a business from our house, which means I never get to see him anymore. Well, okay, I do pass him in the hall or the kitchen, but lately we’ve become ships in the night. When he used to work a typical nine-to-five job, our weekends were reserved for family and chores. […]
A spring day can’t possibly be lovelier than this. The sun is warming the temperature up to the 70s, the few clouds in the sky are the fluffy cotton candy kind, and the birds haven’t even stopped for a breath. And I am lucky to be sitting in my favorite place: my back porch. Snoopy […]
The last time we bought a new mattress was during the Norman Invasion. We didn’t have many choices back then; it was straw or straw as I recall. So when I told Steve last week that I believed that the reason I was waking up every morning sore and achy was not because a squirrel […]
What a day! The sun is out, no clouds, no wind, 50 degrees. And it’s February. This is my idea of a winter that I can live with. For years I’ve said to anyone who will listen, “I wouldn’t mind the winter so much if there was no snow and the temperature stayed in the […]
I get up at 5 a.m. every day to catch the 6:39 commuter train into Boston. That insane wake-up hour gives me time to shower, dress, eat, and make it to the train with seconds to spare. Since I’m barely conscious at that hour, I prepare everything I need for the morning the night before. […]
A while ago I confessed that though I love Shakespeare, Arthur Miller and Chekhov, at the end of a long, stressful day all I want is a television show that helps me escape. I want to be entertained, taken completely out of my world, and if you can make me laugh, that’s a bonus. So […]
My mom always compares herself to Maggie Brown, otherwise known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown. Molly was traveling on the Titanic when it hit the iceberg. She refused to leave, helping others to board the lifeboats, and had to be convinced to get into Lifeboat No. 6. She was dubbed the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” by […]