Does anyone go into stores to shop for clothes anymore? I haven’t been to Lord & Taylor or Macy’s (favorite emporiums of yore) in years. All wardrobe shopping is done on the phone, from catalogues or on the Internet. Of course, certain items like coats and dresses may require a trip. You never know from a page how they will  look on you!  But, say, if shoes in a catalogue appeal to you, they’re easy to order and ready for return in the box.

I enjoy distance shopping–hooray, Technology!–mainly because it eliminates trekking through department stores.

A number of the well-off older folks (WOOFS) of my community, the ladies especially,  make a pleasant life for themselves. Some are widows of successful men and live in comfortable, 19th century brownstones. The more energetic take trips to Europe and other foreign parts and do community work in the public interest.  You see them lunching with friends and family at the Heights Casino, sitting at a window table overlooking Montague Street  They are a rounding out of the generations, and enrich the Brooklyn scene.

I am embarrassed to admit that the 1960s, a decade of rattling political and social change, was lost on me (less so on Henry, since men are generally more politically aware). We were newly married (1959) and we spent the first years of the decade in the serious business of trying to have a baby. In our 30s, older than most newlyweds,  we focussed  our attention on that. I wasn’t conceiving and went from doctor to doctor, and even had an unnecessary abodominal operation to see if something was amiss. Nothing visible, but I did  have several miscarriages.

Finally in l963 Patty was b orn, and then our attention focussed on her. We were living in Manhattan on the upper West Side, where the streets were  inhabited by tramps and beggars, hardly a place to raise a child. Where to go? Buying a house with tenants in Chelsea did not work out and we sold it. Finally, buying a smaller place in Brooklyn Heights, and taking the lower floors and garden for ourselves, worked well (and still does).   When Patty reached school-age, a new  period of child focussing began.

Before we knew it, after this period of early  motherhood, we were into the 70s.  The 60s were over, p;erhaps the most defining decade of our time, and I had no active part in the events that evolved.

One consolation: the majority of Americans who did not partake were leading ordinary lives, working, looking after families, to keep America on course. But I feel deeply indebted  to the youngsters of the 60s who demanded, and brought about, the needed social change.

A new way of bringing literary short stories to public attention is mind-boggling. (Oops! I was about to say mind-blogging.) Short stories will be available for sale at Amazon’s Kindle store at $3.99 each and will be sold exclusively on the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader. The staff of The  Atlantic, a literary magazine that once published short stories, will choose and edit them (they will not appear in the magazine).

Thus, The Atlantic, in my day called The Atlantic Monthly, is back in business, via the Internet, in selecting first-rate literary stories and having them published.

After 70, it takes two to live comfortably. Ideally, a husband and wife. But it can be a friend with friend, or two lovers, or two relatives. Someone you can depend on to share good moments and bad moments, help make coffee, prepare  dinner, go with you to a movie or play. Life can be easier and more pleasurable.

Would I be lucky enough to find these satisfactions without Henry? with someone else? I’m not so sure. Or he, without me? I’m not so sure.

It seems to me that a personal blog and memoirs are similar.  If you’re attracted to writing a blog of a personal nature,  as well as writing memoirs, you might be using the same material for both–feelings, reactions to people and things, reminiscences. and so on. Readers who pick up the memoirs–after having read your blog–might react with an “I heard this all before “  attitude and lose interest.

Perhaps there’s some wisdom in choosing one or the other, I’m not sure. Any reactions?

I read a newspaper  article recently about  an American woman and her visit to a tiny village near Naples where her family came from. She fell in love with it, and with her  relatives whose embraces never ceased. The village and houses still looked as they did centuries earlier.  Living and working in California, she decided to buy the two-room stone  house where her mother was born, and keep it as a second home. In time, she fell in love with a local Italian who, for some reason, couldn’t marry her. But she continues, when her job permits,  to return to the village,  to her tiny abode,  and live in the ancestral surroundings.

Her village sounds exactly like my mother’s,   But rest assured, dear reader, I won’t abandon you and  go and live in Alvignano, the small village northeast of Naples, where Mamma was born and looking pretty much as it did centuries before she was born.

Note to Ja Hin, author of “A Good Fall,” a new book of stories, in which he presents the Chinese living in Flushing, NY’s Chinatown,  the second largest  Chinese community  in New York.

I told you so, told everyone about it. I’m with you. This is my experience. The Chinese of Flushing, NY, unlike the Chinatown of downtown Manhattan,  form a microcosm of a small village in China itself. They are  self-absorbed, self-knit, unaware of  outsiders, uncaring, running businesses, shops and  restaurants for one another, with no attempt to attract visitors. Seemingly bound together in exotic space, they ignore gawkers and conduct their lives in inner-oriented fashion. 

Readers, go take a look.

There are few, if any,  instances today  of nations banning the installing of a crucifix or other identification on top of houses of worship. So why now are the Swiss, known as a foremost country of religious tolerance, rejecting the construction of a minaret, an identifying prayer tower, on a mosque? The justice minister of Switzerland, when questioned, said that the ban reflects fears among the Swiss of Islamic fundamentalism tendencies.

Every religion has it s own tendencies, for goodness sake. If other countries reacted similarly, we could find ourselves in an era of fearful religious intolerance.

My daughter Patty’s new mother-in-law is Dutch, born in Holland. Everyone calls her Adi.  At the wedding, on asking her what the name Adi meant, I walked into a murky brew of Dutch girl-naming customs that left your blogger reeling. As she painstakingly explained the method of name-giving, I was in a state of immeasurable confusion. 

One thing is certain: when I see her again, I’ll be sure to avoid the subject.