It’s hard to believe it’s been over two months since we started our unplanned coronavirus quarantine, and I’m still reeling with dismay and disbelief. And in March I was so sorry to learn of the Covid-related death of Terrence McNally at age 81. McNally had been one of America’s greatest contemporary playwrights and apparently had chronic pulmonary disease and had overcome lung cancer. In my college days at NYU, I took a modern drama course with a professor whose partner was a new...
On our last trip to Paris we planned to spend an evening catching up with our friend Jane. An artist and writer, she had gone to Paris to live and work a dozen years earlier. Jane met us in the elegant dining room of our hotel and we were having drinks when my cell phone rang. “Hello, this is Rabbi Zeller replying to your message.”, said an unfamiliar voice. “I’m sorry I didn’t call back sooner, but the factory was closed for Passover. How can I help you?” Then I...
Like everyone of my generation I had a favorite Beatle, and about a year ago we actually met. My husband and I were having lunch at Lexington Candy Shop on Lex @ 83rd, a favorite local coffeeshop. The place prides itself on it’s celebrity patronage with signed photos on the walls of Woody Allen and others, and stills from a scene in Three Days of the Condor that was actually filmed there. At lunchtime the coffeeshop is usually crowded and we were lucky to get two stools at the...
I met Renee 25 years ago when we were both working as librarians in the Bronx – she at New York Public Library, and I at Jane Addams High School. Renee had been trained as a book discussion leader, and as part of NYPL’s outreach to schools she came to the neighboring Lehman High School to run an after-school faculty book club. Luckily for me, I knew Paula, the Lehman HS librarian, and she invited me to join the club. Renee was a superb, very well-prepared...
When I was a child my grandmother owned a small hotel in the Catskills where my family spent idyllic summers. Sadly when I was 11 she was no longer able to run it and it was sold. But when I think about the hotel it seems only yesterday we were all there together. (See My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel, Dec 21, 2013, Hotel Kittens – for Grandma Esther, Oct 20, 2016, Our Special Guests , June 1, 2018) My father worked in the city during the week, and...
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