One of my wifely jobs is cutting hair off the insides and outside of hubby’s ears. As time passes the hair gets bushier and hubby gets testier. “Careful! You nearly nicked me,” or “Ouch! You jabbed me with the point of the scissors.” “Don’t cut near the hairline. You know my barber.”
The Sicilian barber he [...]
My mother who has been dead 30 years spanned two centuries, the 19th and the 20th. She was born in a small village northeast of Naples in 1895 and died in New York in 1978. Her descriptions of the Italian village, and of her relatives and neighbors who contributed to her growth, peopled my [...]
I saw a piece in the Courier Journal, a local Brooklyn paper that covers the Park Slope neighborhood, called “Sex in the City of Brooklyn,” with the subtitle “New Babeland debuts in Bergen Street.” It is a new high-end sex shop, and there was a photograph showing pictures of sex objects hung all [...]
It took me 70+ years on God’s earth to appreciate animals. Would you believe that? A Depression child, I was never given a dog or cat. What was edible went into our mouths, not a cat’s. Animals were luxuries we could not afford. Like cars, they existed to be wished for, admired, not to have.
It [...]
The time may be ripe to call red wine an AgeBuster. Scientists believe that a natural compound–resveratrol– found in red wines may slow aging. According to one authority, couch-potato mice can be turned into athletes after being treated with this compound.
Personal notes on winedrinking: Red wine was no stranger to us in our Italian-American [...]
My great grandmother Carmela was a small parenthesis of a woman, blinded, with minimum hearing and bright eyes that seemed lit from behind. At 92 she was still living with her daughter Rusina, who had cared for her since Carmela’s husband died in Italy before the family emigrated.
Holding my hand, my [...]
At church this morning I was reminded that St. Ann, Jesus’ grandmother and mother of Mary, conceived Mary after years of childlessness. Ann was in late life when she became a mother, having refused to accept the conventional wisdom that young stock makes the best mothers. (As a late bride, I too hoped for a [...]
When I was a young editor and working on the magazine Family Circle, the editor-in-chief Bob Jones gave a big party at his home in Westchester County. The whole staff, as well as husbands, wives and children, were invited. The house was built like an ultrafancy log cabin, with all the bling-bling of modern living. [...]
