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 …
I'm not one to self promote. Growing up, our house was about doing the right thing all of the time, laugh, be humble and respect all who live. So it's a bit out of character for me to write this. Today is an unusual day. I'm not even sure if this has happened before. I looked and didn't find an instance but logic tells me it did - today is my bir …
Nothing personifies our Gotham mantra more than our Season of Giving initiative. It is truly Better to give than receive, but what goes around comes around and it did last night at our Holiday Party! The Party was a rousing ("Best Ever") success with over 60 Gothamites in attendance. So much transpired that space may not allow me to …
Last week, our grand-dog, Tonka, died.I think about his life. His adoption by Mea and Charles in Seattle twelve years ago. He watched as our children’s relationship flourished to marriage. The moves in Seattle, the move to Washington D.C. The birth of our two granddaughters.My daughter, Mea, shared: “About Tonka I would say he was with us day in an …
I have enjoyed Tony Bennett’s singing and his optimistic personality for many years. I saw him perform in person only once, but it was unforgettable. He was so full of joy and so connected to his audience. His deep feeling for the American Standards came through in every word he sang and every move that he made. Bennett was famous for doing a tw …
