I’ ve never been able to understand the American passion for eating steak, big, thick slices of beef cut across the muscle grain and broiled or fried. Of all the Western civilized nations, Americans alone seem to revere meat for meat’s sake–often consumed half raw without the leavening qualities of herbs or spices (except [...]
Back in the 20s and 30s, when I was a tweenie, I grew up at a time when people tried to gain self-mastery by optimistic auto-suggestion. These were disciples of a French psychologist/pharmacist, Emile Coue, whose mantra was, “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” They repeated this at the [...]
Never dreamed I could be handling the digital, and not merely the analog. I just got my first digital camera and learning to use it, I can sense for the first time the excitement of taking pictures. I aim the tiny camera at Aurora Borealis, our cat, and the cat herself thinks she’s [...]
It’s no consolation to learn from The New York Times of a few weeks ago that tens of millions of baby boomers are having memory lapses, better known as senior moments These indicate the decline of the brain’s acuity. To give these boomer lapses an appropriate name, we might call them midlife lapses. I used [...]
For centuries, women have acquiesced in having their feet crushed. Different nations and cultures are guilty. The Chinese are infamous for binding the feet of their women; European and American designers produce shoes with high stiletto heels that get higher and higher. The more the pain, the more cramped the foot, the more fashionable the [...]
Along with other good things, the famous music club, the Knitting Factory, which has always rented in downtown Manhattan, is coming to Brooklyn!
For years we’ve lived in Brooklyn, a bit sheepishly. It was the borough manque; everyone laughed at the mention of it; after the Dodgers left, it died. Nothing but dreary houses and [...]
It’s small things in a household that make you happy. I’m thinking of toothbrushes. Such a mundane item can unmake a marriage, depending on how much tolerance a husband or wife has when both unintentionally use the same toothbrush.
For years hubby and I have been mistaking toothbrushes. How many millions of miniscule germs we’ve given [...]
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 [...]
Regardless of the attack today on John McCain by columnist Charles M. Blow (New York Times, 6/28/08), in my book John McCain is Mr. AgeBuster #1.
Generally, he is being vilified for being too old. But nothing I’ve seen so far is as nasty as the Blow piece. It includes a host of negatives: he is [...]
