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One of our grandchildren was married yesterday.  A wonderful day.  They had organized and planned their wedding pretty much without any help at all.  The invitations were very simple, just a page they had created and copied.  Ours was addressed to Grandma and Grandpa…which is good.  That’s who we are. There were two unusual comments on the invitation.  The first …

“Dear Great Pumpkin, I am looking forward to your arrival on Halloween night. I hope you will bring me lots of presents. Linus van Pelt” Even though Charles Schulz, creator of the immortal Peanuts has changed his residency to the heaven-side, his kids, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Peppermint Patty and Linus still show up in our newspapers, which is a good …

June is upon us. Graduations! So far, one a week ago and another this Saturday.  The Los Angeles Times occasionally publishes something useful and interesting and today’s article in the California Section entitled, “Graduation Talks Gain Wider Reach,” was excellent.  They kicked it off with this quote from Barbara Kingsolver: “If you run out of hope at the end of …

The May issue of Sunset Magazine has a section devoted to camping, a portion of which was entitled, “Every camper’s nemesis: the raccoon.”  Having camped for many years before realizing that “camping” really means a hotel without room service, I’m here to say we never saw one raccoon.  Not one.  And we know why.  They’re way too smart to be …

You’ve read one of those adorable books that well-meaning people write for children about crickets and other unpleasant varmints?  Tailored, of course, for the wellmeaning people who buy them for children because they are so adorable…the varmints, that is…well, the children, too. Examples: “The Very Quiet Cricket”, “Oscar and the Cricket”, “Cricket Man – A Novel”, and, of course, that …

I was an adorable two year old when I was uprooted from my Brooklyn digs and transported to the hills of the Bronx.  My parents were convinced that the altitude in the Bronx was far superior to anywhere else in New York.  My Dad could never really explain this theory but he stuck by it for more than forty years.  …

“My name is Brandon and I began Humans of New York in the summer of 2010.  I thought it would be really cool to create an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants, so I set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers….” Brandon Stanton If you’ve never heard of Brandon Stanton or “Humans of New York,” take a look at …

I sat in the Maine Medical Center hospital room at the foot of her bed while Jackie, my closest friend for nearly 40 years, quietly passed away.  As with everything else she did in her life, it was accomplished with dignity and little fanfare.  It was such a smooth transition that I just sat there for awhile, thinking I had …

It was like another world – away from everything we did or knew in our everyday lives.  This holiday was special.  All my relatives had their own take on what this holiday meant as well as what was allowed or forbidden on the Sabbath. My Mother, Rose, had her own religion that suited her lifestyle, and no one could tell …

Thereʼs a shift that happens when you refer to one place as home and a former home becomes something a little less.  It still has an important place in your heart, but itʼs not the anchor anymore. I have written about my journey to and in Rosarito and have talked about my personal growth because of it.  My husband, Gerry, …