One of the things I was determined to do when I retired was to perfect my French. My husband’s parents were multi-lingual, he heard French spoken at home, and he speaks it fluently. But although I studied French in both high school and college, my mastery of that beautiful tongue was poor, and my husband hadn’t the patience to help. (See Parlez-vous francais?) So I enrolled at New York’s Alliance Francaise and took classes there for an academic year. Then as summer...
My father Arthur and Conkeydoodle’s father Jack were first cousins, so I guess that makes me and Conkey second cousins – or maybe first cousins once removed, we never could quite figure that out. But Conkey was 11 years my senior and had been my babysitter at times, and so actually she felt more like a big sister to me. Of course her name wasn’t really Conkeydoodle but Esther and we’d laugh over the fact that neither of us could remember how I gave her that nickname in the...
Bronx Girl “The Bronx? No thonx!”, wrote the poet Ogden Nash. As a kid growing up in the Bronx I didn’t get it. I didn’t realize my borough had a bad rap, and I certainly wouldn’t have understood why. The Bronx was my home and I loved it. (See Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home) I even went to college in the Bronx, but then grad school and marriage finally took me out. But altho I was living elsewhere, I spent four decades of my working life commuting back as a public...
Once years ago I heard that a lecture on transcendental meditation was to be given at a local community center. Intrigued and eager to learn about the benefits of meditation I went, and when the lecture ended I struck up a conversation with the young woman sitting next to me. Her name was Joan, we were about the same age, and like me she was recently married. Happily we exchanged phone numbers and a few days later Joan called and invited me and Danny to dinner. On the appointed evening...
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...
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!
