I’m staring at my blue/grey appointment book, sitting forlornly on the computer table. It’s small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. Stamped on the cover in gold letters is the year 2020, just below the place where I’ve attached one of my address labels. In normal times, I’m terrified that it might wander taking with it the road map of my entire work life, so I’m hoping that address label will...
About a week into self-quarantine, way back in March, I realized that one of my teeth was loose. I could tell from the odd taste in my mouth that something was brewing that was probably undermining that tooth. I knew that although my dentist’s office was closed, there was some provision for emergency service, so I called. One of the dentists on the team returned my call and listened to my...
Bernie Sanders did not invent the idea of tuition-free college. I, along with generations of fortunate New York City students were its charmed beneficiaries until budget pressures snuffed it out sometime in the 70s. But while it lasted City College and its sister campuses in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens were the gateway to the American mainstream for generations of Jews and other immigrant...
On the brink of high school, for the first time there were choices to be made. Either head for the neighborhood institution to which we were zoned and remain safely surrounded by your childhood buddies or take the exam for one of the special high schools. The elite three – Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science had a license to cream the best and the brightest. That choice was...
By the time I reached junior high, which covered grades 7-9 in New York in the 50s, my sister was in the homestretch of her high school years. Both of us had been placed in special classes in junior high, known in her day as RA (rapid advancement) and in mine as SP (special progress) which maintained and intensified the earlier ability grouping. These programs enabled us to skip our eighth-grade...