Author Archives: blogginggrandma

In my earlier blog entry, “Requiescat in Pace,” (November 18) I remembered some of my own dear dead, including my husband, Professor Morton Klass.  I alluded to a lifelong argument we’d had that started the very first night we met … Continue reading →

In the novel, “The Scarlet Letter” the Reverend Arthur  Dimmesdale exposes himself in public. Satin was the shining hero of PARADISE LOST. That was certainly why he was called Satin. Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx and freed the … Continue reading →

“Twelfth Night Or What You Will” – with an all male cast. “This is how Shakespeare was meant to be seen,” wrote the New York Times critic, Ben Brantley – and he was absolutely right. After more than two centuries … Continue reading →

When someone I care about dies, when I learn of a death – and since I am now 86 years old, I lose people frequently, particularly contemporaries – here is what happens.  My brain immediately retrieves some eccentric trait or … Continue reading →

This is a sincere and ashamed apology.  I have been so busy with my own preoccupations: complaining, teaching, writing fiction, and now, blogging – that I have done the unpardonable.  I forgot that Monday, November 11th was Veterans Day. Armistice … Continue reading →

I know it’s rushing the season, but I would like to give thanks today on this blog.  I need to thank the incredibly large number of thoughtful New York Times readers who took the trouble to respond to my earlier … Continue reading →

On November 6, 1927 a little girl was born – me – to impoverished Orthodox Jewish parents who needed a boy.  They already had a girl.  One girl is enough, but you take what you get.  They got me. I … Continue reading →

In the 1930’s when I was a child, my father could not find a job, so we went on Home Relief.  We moved into a cold-water ground floor apartment in Williamsburg, a crowded, Brooklyn slum. There was a two-burner heater … Continue reading →

I am, I’m pleased to say, a contemporary grandmother.  I married, had children who married, and they had children.  In that singular way, I accomplished this incredible feat. I’m pleased to say it because it confirms that I am still … Continue reading →

It’s been 50 years since the young anthropologist, Owen Lynch, first came to dinner in our small, dark Columbia University apartment and played with our young children. He‘d returned many times since – often fresh from a trip to India … Continue reading →