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The case for trains: 10 reasons for, 1 against, 1 neutral. The trip to the station is short and cheap. The number of train cars is flexible, accommodating holidays, rush hours, etc. The chances of becoming deathly ill in the petrie dish known as an airline cabin are erased. You… Read More

Today I will write mostly about toilets. I’ve seen quite a few in my time, beginning with outhouses and holes-in-the-ground in the Maine woods in the 50s, but today will begin with the most amazing toilet I’ve ever seen, a public toilet on the streets of Paris. It is… Read More

Art and artists Today we walked for about five hours and at the end I felt like a novice in boot camp. It was worth it – the street music was fantastic, and we ate in the restaurant “Le Train Bleu” at the Gare de Lyons. It was ornate… Read More

Report from Paris: Poetry, I am in Paris. I didn’t want to come . I envisioned walking through museums viewing paintings that I had known (or near enough) for decades. Sigh. It would be fine. I wanted to be out in the country, enjoying the dry summer heat,… Read More

Giving Up Baby – Susan   Some of my women freshman students at Montclair State University chose abortion as the subject for one of their essays. As glibly as saying you can get takeout when you don’t feel like cooking, my students advised women in a crisis pregnancy… Read More

I graduated from Montclair High School in 1959, and here are the stories of two women who graduated around the same time – both of them became pregnant shortly after high school and gave up their babies for adoption.  The first story is about a childhood friend, Miriam. As… Read More

We are renting a condominium right on the water at Sea Ranch, about 150 miles above San Francisco. I have been going to sleep when I get tired instead of when a particular television program ends, usually about 9:30 or 10:00. In the early morning, I turn over in my… Read More

This is a photograph of my grandchildren looking out on the Pacific Ocean. They have their backs to us, and that is appropriate.  As Kahlil Gibran writes in his poem On Children: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of… Read More

When I moved to an 18th floor apartment in semi-urban Hoboken from a large house in suburban Montclair, I brought with me a nondescript chive plant in a cheap orange pot which was supposed to be reminiscent of clay but was only plastic. I stuck it out… Read More