How do you put 70 people of diverse backgrounds and interests in a room at the Friar's Club for an hour and a half lunch and keep it in the family? Well, that's exactly what Nancy Schess (and all those who attended) did yesterday at a triple meeting of the New York Women's Group, The Bandit Group and the New York Health and Aging Resources Group. …
A lesson in how it works. Last Sunday there was a Fredslist posting from Warren looking for a nurse in Delray Florida for his mother. I saw the posting and got an email from Debbie highlighting it and asking me to forward it to the Advocates. I did and also emailed Warren with my suggestions for how best to proceed. But that wasn't the end. Fl …
Flo and I were cleaning her mother's house in anticipation of the closing. The house that Flo and her brothers grew up in. The house where her parents spent almost sixty years. There was a lifetime in that house. I was packing the breakfront and I came to the crystal. There was a set of tall water glasses, wine glasses, and both large and small st …
Last week I heard a psychologist on the radio talk about how stressful Thanksgiving has become. She focused on the difficult choices people have to make about where to be for the holiday. As families grow, in-laws, and other complications lead to impossible choices and conflicts. I think that thanksgiving includes understanding and forgiveness …
Recent events in Paris bring me back to September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. For several years, beginning in the late 1990's, we visited Paris with friends for a long weekend in December to celebrate Flo and our friend’s birthdays. In those early years, I found Parisians to be less-than-welcoming to Americans. The cause -- whether it was the …
The Downtown Marriott in Chicago has a nice bar in the lobby. A great big screen with six different TV screens dominates one side. Six different sporting events on one screen. The bar is a real gathering place. We were sitting at the bar. I am not sure whether we said something or the man sitting next to Flo started the conversation. It's easy …
For quite a while, I had fantasized about writing this blog. It would have been after a Game Six or Game Seven clinching of the World Series by the Mets. But that, as it turned out, was a fantasy. The “would have been” did not materialize. We were in Lenox, Massachusetts last weekend while the Mets were hosting the Royals at Citifield. There was …
New York has Mets fever and I’ve been part of it. Last week, I bought a Mets hat to send to my daughter, Mea, who lives in Washington, DC. I was in Manhattan and decided to wear the cap for the day before sending it off to Mea. I was on the street for less than three minutes when, crossing Seventh Avenue at Thirty-Fourth Street, a young wo …
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 …
Although I am a Mets fan, I routed for the Yankees on Monday night. On Tuesday, I heard the last sportscasts of how the Yankees did and it won't be until next season that I'll have to wait to hear about the Bronx Bombers before hearing the sportscasters talk about my Mets. So here we are with the wild card teams decided and the playoffs are unde …
The sign read “No Parking - Friday Midnight - Monday 6am”. She parked on Thursday evening and found a ticket on her windshield on Friday morning. The ticket was issued at 12:06 a.m. on Friday. We all know what Midnight means....or do we? That moment between one day and the next. Lawyers tend to try to avoid confusion -- opting for “11:59 p.m.” or …
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? …
