Every day, we hear stories of cover-ups.  Today’s (on National Public Radio) featured a local politician taking it upon himself to use New York State funds to quietly “pay off”  survivors of a colleague’s abuse rather than have this colleague face what he deserved ei… Read full post »

In 1968, when I was 13, my parents took my sister (16) and me to Boston so that my sister could see colleges.  I wanted to stay in the motel that was on the Boston outskirts  and read “Bonnie and Clyde” but my mother made me go on the college tours/… Read full post »

I went to no ordinary High School.  My high school appears in a T.S. Elliot poem and is a throw line in “Sweet Charity”.  My high school has marble ball rooms, parquet floors, heavy velvet drapes.  My high school makes “upward striving” parents drool and happily/… Read full post »

I promised her so I had to make good.  Feeble attempts at stalling failed.  My “No appointments during your Thanksgiving break”, cost me $50.00 for the Plan B pill she required upon her return at Christmas.  I paid for Plan B in cash afraid my husband would freak out if he/… Read full post »

Following the revelation not too long ago that JFK had yet one other inappropriate relationship very long ago, Nora Ephron pubished an op-ed piece in the New York Times about her time as a white house intern.   I kept a copy under my desk pad and I whipped it out when… Read full post »

I have my mother's house.  I own it with my sister.  She wants to sell it, I want to keep it.  In that situation, should it come to be , a court would force a sale.  I could buy her out if I had the money which I do not.  I visit my… Read full post »

On August 30, 1973, “pre-global warming”, there was no hotter place on earth than Manhattan’s upper west side. It was orientation weekend for Barnard and Columbia colleges and, as a last minute legacy admit to Barnard College, I was there. Back then, air conditioning existed only in… Read full post »

How can having a great college on your resume be embarrassing? When you didn't deserve to be there, in the first place. I had gotten into two perfectly respectable colleges. I did not get into my first choice and the wailing from my bedroom would have broken any mother's resolve.… Read full post »

Nothing says “Thanks, but no thanks” like a job interview for a 56 year old woman like me who is trying to improve her lot in life. It is not like I have been hogging the great jobs all these years. Thirty-four years ago, I started out as the junior secretary… Read full post »

The Bay of Pigs happened when I was a six year old child on vacation with my parents and my sister in Miami, Florida. We stayed at the Aztec hotel next to the King Neptune on Miami's resort strip. The Aztec's exterior was a blinding white stucco; its interior a… Read full post »