One of the aspects of watching the Mets on TV is that, in addition to watching the action on the field, you get to watch the fans in the stands watching the game. When the Mets are away, watching fans takes on an especially heightened level of aggravation, annoyance, empathy or joy. So it has been watching the Mets play in Chicago. (I like the …
Mr. Moskowitz, my seventh-grade Math teacher, was a nice enough guy, and a pretty good teacher. One thing that annoyed us, as students, were his “surprise quizzes”. The quizzes invariably came on Mondays - but not every Monday (otherwise where’s the surprise?). Mr. Moskowitz liked to challenge us. For example, he would give us a sequence of number …
I first felt it about a week ago. An evening breeze and the question of whether I should have taken a light sweater with me. A few days later, it was there in the morning. The crispness that was the bellwether of things to come. The acorns from the oak trees up the block. Plummeting cars like hail forcing neighbors to move their cars from their …
When I was a teenager, I printed business cards for myself and my best friend that said "Nachas Machers". (My father was a printer so I had access to my own little letterpress printing press.) It was important for me to give my parents “Nachas” -- that special warm pride that only a child can give to his or her parents. Parents get Nachas from t …
As I stood on the ballfield at the Gotham picnic/softball game a few weeks ago, I had a feeling that brought me back decades to the ballfields of my youth. Being in the group between the two "captains" who are picking sides. I remembered the thoughts that went through my head when I was a kid. Whose team did I want to be on? When would I be chosen? …
A few days before leaving for our annual visit to Martha’s Vineyard last week, I received a voice message from Steve and Kim. We've been visiting the Vineyard for many years. We stay at the Outermost Inn in Aquinnah and are there at the same time every year. So are Steve and Kim. We were looking forward to seeing them again this year and I was …
Yesterday morning I found myself in front of a little outdoor garden sitting area -- four benches in a small circle by the beach overlooking Vineyard Sound. Bricks, many with names and acknowledgements line the floor and the area is enclosed by beach plums. In the center there's a boulder engraved with depictions of a lighthouse, a male and fem …
There are a few bagel stores in our neighborhood. Two within walking distance, although you'd pass one on the way to the second. Several others are a short drive. I am not sure whether any of them are significantly “better” than any other; however the loyal fans of any one of them swear that others don't compare to theirs. And there are differ …
I've heard the expression that "getting there is half the fun". Although I anticipated writing this blog from Asheville, North Carolina, I never thought that I'd be writing about getting --or almost not -- getting here. We booked our trip some time ago. Fly to Charlotte and a scenic two-hour drive to Asheville. The Forces had other ideas. Got to …
In case you haven't seen this yet, someone tried to charge his cellphone on stage at a performance of “Hand to God” on Broadway. Details are unclear, but apparently a man in the audience jumped onto the stage to plug his cellphone into one of the electrical outlets on the set. The only problem was that the outlet was a prop in the scenery -- n …
