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 salt and pepper) or a sauce.

My father was a prime example of this type of meat eater. Oddly so, because he was not American-born, but Italian. In Italy meat is not plentiful as here, because it is a narrow country without land for animals to graze on. He acquired the passion after emigrating. Not able to afford tender cuts, he happily consumed the tougher ones, like top round that has flavor but is tough beyond belief. He devoured it barely chewed. Such meat can be a killer.

And a killer it was. We could not keep him away from the stuff. One evening, after consuming a big slab of top round, he got a heart attack–he had heart problems–and was dead by morning.

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 start and end of every day according to a specified ritual.

I heard the mantra mentioned a lot on radio and by teachers and it took root in my thinking. Because I really believed it, and still do. Each day has a lesson if you stop to think about it. Each day, I learn something new and am amazed. Each day, my vision widens. It wasn’t til my 70s that I saw a cat and realized how beautiful and perfect she was. I had seen thousands of cats but my vision was limited until my daughter presented us with Aurora Borealis, our first feline. Each day brings something new, and I am grateful for that, as it expands our horizons and, hopefully, makes us better at living our lives.

If you’re oh-so-modern, get some go-carts in your new store in Brooklyn and hire a couple of drivers to take customers from one department to another. And yes, theres a paucity of directional signs. Get some up and customers will get there even faster.

By the way, enlarge your cafeteria and the chance to lunch on your Swedish meatballs. The line was so long one Saturday it began to resemble a swatch of embroidery thread as customers wound back and forth in line. We got tired waiting, got in our car and drove to a nearby restaurant for Italian meatballs.

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 digital as she provides amazing expressions that only the tiny Canon can catch. Revelations caught and seen in an instant!

Before the digital, everything seemed time-consuming, heavy and impossible to store. Now with the tiny  Canon  enclosed in my hand, the world is light and everything seems weightless.

Nick from New School University in Manhattan is teaching me how to blog. He is 24 and I am over three times his age. He both studies and works at NSU and he answered when I called for part-time tutoring. He said he would do it. A true find! He does not holler when I ask him, with apology,  to repeat the instruction. He explained that as a young teenager he worked at a camp for seniors and realized their limited memory  intake. Being of a gentle nature,  he repeated things ad infinitum. As he does with me. Three cheers for Nick! I caught him in the Nick of time.

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 to worry myself sick over them. The first time it happened was in my late 50s. Leaving the house on an errand and having walked a block or so, I suddenly couldn’t remember what I had come out to do. It was the first of many such incidents.

The Times goes on to say that Boomers are trying to fight them by taking matters into their own hands, ingesting brain health products like ginseng and bacopa, and doing brain fitness exercises, such as Nintendo’s Brain Age 2, a video game of math and memory exercise.

My reaction is that to tax my brain with all this added baggage will make it less acute than ever, and I’d rather cope with its handling my everyday needs.

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 look.

Belief exists that the abuse of women’s feet, both in Asia and the West, was brought about by men. Chinese males found large feet on women distressful to look at, so they bound them. Western man also finds large female feet unchic and designs shoes with stiletto heels that harm the arch by thrusting the heel high in air and toes hitting the ground. In this cockeyed position, it’s hard to see how big the feet are.

But please note that the shoes our men design for themselves fit properly and they have healthy feet. The shoes are spacious and look like boats, but men don’t mind as long as the feet are comfy.

P.S. I stopped wearing high heels at 40, cutting out the monthly visit to the podiatrist. I have been wearing flats since then and now, at 70+, my feet are healthier than in the past.

I’m beginning to feel a little like a vintner, not a merchant rich with money but someone rich with decades of accumulated experience who can review them, study them, and draw out the best of the cache. And hopefully, with this treasure, see my way with some degree of equanimity towards the future. Hopefully this period will be my vintage years, a time of maturity and wisdom.They may thus turn out to be the best years of my life.

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 a big, bare park. Then, saying you lived in Manhattan, you really had it made. So it was a bit hard for hubby and me when we made the switch from Manhattan to Brooklyn. We learned to mutter Brooklyn under our breath. Our worst enemy was the cabbies who refused to take us out of Manhattan even a half mile into Brooklyn.

Not any more! Brooklyn is IT! It has become the new Manhattan, the new upper East Side, Greenwich Village, center of the art scene, maker of great beer, night-life heaven (including the Knitting Factory), and it is being  rediscovered as the place to go for Nathan’s hotdog and a swim in Coney Island.

Hurrah for Brooklyn1! We’re proud of you and remember, hubby and I were among the first to make the break from Manhattan for you in ‘66!

Dorian Leigh, whose career as the world’s most famous supermodel began in the mid-1940s, died yesterday at 91. For me she epitomized the excitement and glamor of living in New York in the post WWII years. In that period, I struggled my way out of a cloistered family in New Haven, came to New York, and started work on my first job, which was secretary-would-be-writer, on Vogue Magazine.

She, on the other hand, was a multi-faceted talent who had majored in English at college, studied calculus at NYU, worked at mechanical drafting, as well as designing airplane wings and copywriting. Interested also in modeling, she found her way to the Harry Conover Agency where her looks were quickly spotted by Diana Vreeland of Harper’s Bazaar. The magazine immediately placed her on the cover of the June, 1944 issue. According to one report, she appeared on seven covers of Vogue that same year. Over her long career, my guess is she made trillions.

The end of the war brought hope and ambition to all of us. We were at the top of the world, anything seemed possible. A few, like Leigh, made it very big, others like myself were able to fulfill their dreams on a much smaller scale.