Until it closed in 2004 and the building was razed to make way for a new luxury high use, Doctors Hospital stood on East End Avenue two blocks from our apartment. Opened in 1929 as a small, private hospital, originally for maternity cases, it was soon favored by celebrities and over the years counted Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, and Eugene O’Neill among its patients, while also serving our upper eastside neighborhood. One weekend some years ago I was serving my family lunch...
I’ve written about my years as head librarian at Jane Addams, a New York City public vocational high school. (See Magazines for the Principal and The Diary of a Young Girl) Here’s another story. Because of our large student body for many years our school had two sessions and all students and faculty were either early or late. It happened I was on late session the year of the great Jane Addams library flood. That fateful morning as I parked in the teachers’ lot I thought it...
Recently I spent a day in the ER. I had a Zoom book club meeting the day before and was eating a tuna fish sandwich as I sat at my computer chatting with my book club friends. I made the tuna salad myself and in fact my husband was eating it downstairs while I was upstairs Zooming, and he later told me he thought it tasted fine. But it tasted off to me, and a few hours later I felt sick to my stomach and that night spent more hours in the bathroom than in bed. The next morning I still...
In March 2020 on the cusp of the Covid pandemic my husband was scheduled for surgery, but the prospect of him spending even a few days in a large New York hospital was worrisome. Luckily the doctor discharged him one day post-op, I took him home, and the next day we left Manhattan and drove to rural Connecticut to what had been – until then – our weekend house. Thus we began our Covid quarantine as full-time country folks, and in fact we didn’t return to the city for over...
Going to birthday parties has always been great fun for kids. When I was young I’d wear a pretty party dress and my mother would take me to the birthday kid’s house, with me proudly carrying the wrapped gift. Then we’d put on paper hats, play games, and eat cake and ice cream while the celebrant’s father took home movies as we shyly waved at the camera. A generation later things were quite different. The birthday parties I took my son to were usually themed...
Welcome to my blog World Thru Brown Eyes! Enjoy the read and please leave a comment and tell me how this old world looks thru YOUR eyes!
