Retro-A-Rama

Lab Love x Two

The other evening I had an experience worthy of an O’ Henry story and my heart is just about bursting with joy.
As many of you know I’ve been in the difficult process of letting go and selling many of the belongings I can no longer fit in my new home.
One of these items is my lab Stanley’s old large crate, what I called his “clubhouse” which he rarely ever used and no longer needs.
As with most…

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Mum’s the Word When it Comes to Fall

I hate Mums.
There, I’ve said it. Yet I just returned from the local nursery loaded down with a dozen or so pots of this despised plant.
As summer annual flowers begin to fade, the vacancy in my terra cotta pots was becoming dispiriting, as their limited singular season was soon over. Many of my spring plants are now in hospice, displaying the telltale signs of being near death, scraggly, leggy,…

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Memories Not For Sale

Bit by bit, pieces of my life have been going off to live in new homes as I sell off some of my belongings that I can no longer keep.
Yesterday I said goodbye to my antique dining room chairs that graced my dining room table for 20 years.
This one tugged at my heart.
Not mere utilitarian furniture to me, the chairs are the seat of so many, many memories.
Chairs my mother sat in, smiling at me…

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9/11 Twenty Years Ago

September 10, 2001. It was 20 years ago …the day before the world changed forever; and one in which my own world went through a life-altering change of its own.
I had just moved into a newly built house in Huntington, Long Island from my beloved N.Y.C. It had been a decision fraught with doubt, as I was an urban creature through and through. That day, still shell-shocked from the new reality of…

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Abortions Back to the Past  Heartbeats and Heartache

Nearly a decade to the day from when Roe v Wade was passed, I had an abortion.
It was a blustery day in late January 1983 and the N.Y.C. weather echoed my turbulent feelings.  I was 12 weeks pregnant and until a week before the procedure, I had not a clue. As a single 27-year-old woman the choice to terminate this unintended pregnancy had not been easy.
I never expected to be expecting.
Still, I…

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Personal Sacrifice for the Greater Good is the American Way

If a segment of nobody-tells-me-what-to-do-keep-the-government-off-my-back American’s still whinge at the thought of a mask mandate while shedding crocodile tears about the discomfort, inconvenience, and infringement on their freedom, how in hell would these self-serving “patriots” feel if suddenly Uncle Sam said they couldn’t imbibe in their daily extra-large sugar-loaded Dunkaccino?
Or were…

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Chaos. Desperation. Lies. Again

It was pure chaos.
Swarming crowds. The frantic scrambling of bodies. Flailing arms and legs intertwined and indistinguishable from one another as they morphed into one large mass of human desperation in their effort to flee to freedom.
Anguished women and men their faces etched in raw fear hopelessly clinging to a whirling helicopter as strongly as they clung to the hope and promise of a better…

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The Deadly Reality of Denial

Our country feels like it is burning out of control.
Aflame with inflammatory rhetoric there are those strongly questioning the usefulness of masks and vaccines during a dangerous pandemic, while others scoff at the reality of climate change.
In both cases the deadly accelerant used is denial.
Fueled by foolish politicians and hazardous misinformation, it is a combustible situation.
While…

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Andrew Cuomo – Goofus or Gallant?

 
Andrew Cuomo’s resignation seems to have deeply divided camps when it comes to an elected official’s accountably and consequences.
With my own mixed feelings about his stepping down, one thing is clear it certainly isn’t black and white the way things were when I was a child.

Everything I learned about right and wrong behavior lead straight back to Goofus and Gallant.
Next to Romper Room’s…

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The Toxic Workplace and the Entitled Male. Governor Cuomo  Getting Personal with the Personnel is Not OK

There was a time when sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace were laughed off, dismissed as good-natured fun. “Boys will be boys,” said with a shrug of the shoulders. “It’s just who they are,” whispered in ladies’ rooms with a roll of the eye.
The very same excuses a defiant, delusional, and self-described misunderstood Andrew Cuomo offered up in 2021 after being accused of sexually…

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