My aunt Babs and uncle Paul and were high school sweethearts who met as kids in the Rockaways. Family legend has it when he was in medical school at NYU and Babs was at Skidmore College up in Saratoga, Paul was missing her so he couldn’t concentrate on his studies, would cut classes to play Bridge, and had to repeat a year. But Paul eventually buckled down, he and Babs got married, and though my cousins Debra and Robin weren’t yet born, when Paul graduated from...
Passover is a joyous holiday when we Jews celebrate our freedom from bondage in Egypt. Every year at the Seder we retell the story of our ancestors who followed Moses across a desert in search of a new home in the Promised Land. The Bible tells us that these ancient Hebrews left in such haste they didn’t wait for their baking dough to rise. Thus in their desert wanderings they ate the unleavened bread known as matzo. And so every year during the eight days of Passover, we Jews eat...
Our filmmaker friend Arnie Reisman is a regular panelist on Says You, a witty NPR radio show about words. I’ve learned a lot from Arnie and his literate pals. For example, did you know that the dark, cavernous corner of a woman’s handbag is called a poke- nook? Remember that word. Now do you remember last winter I blogged about losing one of my green gloves when I pulled it off quickly to answer my cell phone? (See Lost Glove, Nov. 30, 2013). At the time I worried that...
My husband is an excellant linguist and speaks French beautifully. His Hungarian-speaking mother and German-speaking father met and fell in love in Paris in 1937, and two years later they fled Europe together on the cusp of World War II. They took their common language – French – with them, and Danny learned it as a child. It happens I studied French in both high school and college, but I must admit I’ve always spoken it poorly, or as Danny would ungraciously tell...
You may remember I blogged about a time some years ago when I was sure our pussycat Smokey had been mysteriously sealed up in the wall like the poor guy in Poe’s story, The Cask of Amontillado. In fact I had accidentally locked the cat out in the hall – thus the muffled meows! (see MISSING PUSSYCAT, January 4, 2014) Well recently I was in missing-pussycat-panic-mode again, this time convinced that our beloved cat Jackie was lost in the Connecticut woods! It was a...