My post Thanksgiving blog shared the latest iteration of a Happy Holidays in song playlist to allow folks to enjoy musical cheer throughout the holiday season. Ahead of this new year we embrace, I offer an updated “Songs To Ring In The New Year” with a few added selections. You can view the list with each song linked to its YouTube video – 27 …
Happy Christmas! It's a very special day. Children are running down the stairs to open presents and people are smiling. I wish everyone joy, peace and happiness! And BTW, the James Webb Telescope was successfully launched this morning but it's just the start. The telescope has to go through about 344 steps and travel a few months to get to a …
Our granddaughter Maggie came home from college for the holidays last week and stayed with us due to illness in her home. Her stay was highlighted by our parenting her through previously scheduled LASIK eye surgery. Was she nervous? Was there anxiety? Were there thoughts of backing out? Of course! She’s so down to earth. So human. So natural …
This past Tuesday was the Winter Solstice - the “shortest day of the year”. It was also the first day of winter. Winter conjures up visions of cold and snow. For me, beginning yesterday, the days will be getting longer and we’ll enjoy a little more sunlight every day. I’ll focus on the sunshine and look forward to Spring Equinox. Happy Holidays.
For over 40 years, The Kennedy Center Awards have celebrated America’s cultural icons. This year’s cast of honorees are terrific. In alphabetic order they are: the opera singer Justino Diaz, Motown’s creator Berry Gordy, singer-actor Bette Midler, Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, and singer Joni Mitchell. Every December, CBS has broa …
We have all had at least one, or now maybe two birthdays since the pandemic began. Celebrations have turned into gyrations of creativity and honestly it has been fun to watch. So many of you played an important part in celebrating my birthday this year. While it was certainly not the picture I had in my head of a birthday celebration outside a …
Anyone who knows me knows I love to travel. The last time I travelled outside of the US was in February 2020. We had planned and taken a family trip to Italy. We left evening the day after COVID-19 was detected in Italy Since that time we have restricted our travels to the US. But now we have decided to venture past the US. We will be trav …
I suspect folks who attended the Gotham Happy Hour on Friday might expect one of my musicals blog. Suspect they need to wait until the proverbial next year, to apply the well-used cliché. Instead, I prefer to hail and welcome a significant change in the fraternal Order Knights of Pythias. The Order, founded in Washington, DC, in 1864, became the fi …
Have you noticed it? Everyone has a heightened sense of anxiety. Lack of social interaction, polarizing politics, mutating viruses...it's no wonder. We all have coping mechanisms and many are taking it out on their fellow humans by acting aggressively with little tolerance for their opinion or even consideration. I believe we are truly living i …
The best word to describe the afterglow generated by last week’s annual Holiday Party is the Yiddish word Kvell, which I jokingly described as a “Legal term” during the party, but is more accurately defined as “to be extraordinarily pleased; to be bursting with pride, as over one’s family.”So many operative/descriptive words:I was extraordinarily p …
We have to remember many, many dates. Birthdays, anniversaries, and others. I sometimes test myself with the birthdays of our seven grandchildren.There is a new date that must be stored in our memory bank: the date of your second Covid vaccination (or the single dose of Johnson). It’s the date that is needed, along with other information, to confir …
My wife and I saw West Side Story (with only 1 other person in the theater) at a Monday matinee on a big screen with great sound, lounging on recliners. I remember being taken to the Robert Wise directed WSS by my parents in 1961 at the “old” huge Syosset Panavision Cinema. I remember enjoying the gang stuff and the fighting. The colors were v …
This is about masks. I wear my mask on the LIRR and subway as I am supposed to. The LIRR was crowded this morning. Not shoulder to shoulder, but no excess of empty seats. So, I sat down. These days I’ve learned to look at the mask status of the person sitting next to me beforehand, but for some reason this morning I just sat. It felt so p …
I am extremely lucky to have a very close “office family,” which includes Gotham adoption attorney extraordinaire Faith Getz Rousso. We genuinely all enjoy one another’s company, help one another, and look out for one another. We do have a prankster in our midst. While I was a way on vacation in October an elaborate prank was concocted against m …
Yesterday, the City (of New York) was to collect fallen leaves put out for collection in Paper Leaf Bags or open containers from residential. Originally there were two dates for collection but the one for the weekend after Thanksgiving got nixed with little fanfare. So I fulfilled my "obligation" to gather the leaves not yet bagged to put out for …
