Around this time last year, I had serious doubts about whether I would ever be able to visit another school or classroom again, either because the virus would take me down or because my presence would create an unsafe situation for me, for kids and for staff. The arrival of the vaccines has brightened that dire picture considerably so today another barrier fell. I made my first visit to a school...
My parents never owned any of the places they lived in. From the time they came to this country they lived in tenements in New York City. When they married, a favored migration route of the day brought them from the Lower East Side to the newly developing residential neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Real Estate developers are masters of branding so the neighborhood they landed in was called East...
When I encounter certain astonishing events in our natural world, I ask myself “What would a Martian make of this?” At the top of my list is the way trees drop their leaves in the fall and suddenly stand bare against the sky. Equally magical is the spring releafing. That latter process has been complete for some weeks now but I can still remember my surprise driving down our street one day...
“Cataract surgery? Piece of cake. You’ll be better than ever afterwards.” I got that message in one form or another from several friends. They may be right in the end but right now, three days out, I’m typing with one eye closed and my view of the screen one step better than driving in a heavy fog. When I had my post-op visit the day after the “procedure,” I was shocked that all I could make out...
Note: Last week I said I was not ready to deal with the situation in Israel/Palestine and Gaza and wrote instead about running. We were – and continue to be –overwhelmed with news from the region, and I’ve wrestled with whether I had anything to say that hasn’t been said already. I’ve chosen to add my own voice because silence can be misconstrued as complicity. For American Jews like me who have...