I pride myself on being a born and bred New Yorker. I may have been living outside the city longer than inside; in fact, I’ve lived elsewhere for over 30 years now, but things like attitude and accent creep up on me at unexpected times. We were in a restaurant perusing our menus with Lisa […]
If one more person asks me that question I will be forced to do them an injury. It especially irks me when my children ask me that. We’ll be having a perfectly lovely conversation along the lines of, “Remember when we all went on safari?” and I’ll sit there with a silly smile plastered on […]
The one thing that is as sure in our house as the sun coming up is that Snoopy needs his daily walk. Some dogs are happy to sit outside in the yard, others prefer a short stroll around the block, but beagles need proper walks so that they can sniff out every living thing that […]
Pack, ship, give away. Forty years dwindled down to four words. This summer Mom and I went from room to room, closet to closet, drawer to drawer repeating that mantra, answering three seemingly simple questions that embraced our hardest choices. How do you decide which one of your 40 years to pack, ship, or give […]
It all began when Steve and I saw the studio apartment that would be Mom’s home. We had already been concerned that she would feel that it was too small after having lived in an apartment. So when we saw a studio that belonged to a lady who liked stuff — there were things crammed […]
June is my favorite month of the year. It’s just so very June. You can put away your ice scraper without fear of a surprise squall, lock up your mittens, and store your bulky sweaters. In June the summer hasn’t formally started so it’s still there in front of you to dream about. You can […]
Today I introduced ten new vocabulary words that were harder than usual because my class likes challenges. The words may be difficult, but we shall persevere, both because of their attitude and because persevere is on the list. They liked that word. They felt that it described them and their quest for a GED. All […]
There are times in my life when I’m thrilled to get more of anything, but most of the time I, like the architect Mies van der Rohe, believe that less is more. I don’t like things when they are overdone, overblown, overdressed. That being said, there are still too many times when I get caught […]
I looked at our carts brimming with thin, flat boxes and thought about how many times this store had solved our furniture problems. IKEA, I just found a store named IKEA and suddenly that name … you get the picture. I may make fun of it and claim that the name, roughly translated from the […]
Last week my class discussed the new anti-bullying law. Some of my students had kids who were enduring bullying hell; others had experienced it themselves. We came to the sad conclusion that at some time everyone has found themselves in the clutches of a bully. They agreed that the experience changed the way they felt […]
