A Foodie’s Five Observations on Halloween

Photo Credit: Dean & Deluca

Yesterday, as I raced through the Stop & Shop in Brookline searching for paper goods and cleaning supplies, I paused to gaze longingly at a display of bright orange baked goods. The cookies with Halloween smiley faces and cupcakes with bright orange frosting were no doubt made with vegetable shortening, not butter. Reminding myself that stuff looks a lot better than it tastes, I moved on, chosing not to degrade my palate by picking up one of the molded plastic containers.

Trust me, if something’s made with sugar, I’ve tried it. With Halloween still more than a month away, my five observations are largely, though not exclusively, related to sweets:

(1) Starbucks is a Mecca for Halloween goodies -- the Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte at 260 calories, the pumpkin bread at 330 calories per slice, the Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffin at 490 calories if you buy it in New York, and 370 calories elsewhere, and the thing I’ve been most trying to avoid -- the pumpkin scone at 480 calories. Be assured the baked goods are packed with enough butter and cream to make them temptingly good. Thus far I’ve been disciplined enough to settle for a Clover brewed Guatemala tall, and when discipline fails me, a Banana Strawberry Vivanno.

(2) I assume concerns about food coloring are leading to the demise of the bright red candy apples on sticks that were an autumnal staple of the tiny candy stores of my youth in Jackson Heights. It seemed to gall my mom that after chipping away at the hard candy coating, I had little interest in eating the apple. Aside from being something of a health nut, my mom is a child of the Great Depression, and can’t bear to see food being wasted.

(3) Kits for making apples on sticks dipped in caramel and nuts for the do-it-yourself crowd can still be found in produce departments. But the gourmet palate will settle for nothing less than the super-sized, toffee and nuts versions I’ve seen in years past in the Bloomingdales and Nordstrom’s on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. This purchase, somewhere in the neighborhood of $15, can be rationalized as a relatively inexpensive way to get one’s garage parking validated. (Hat tip to my daughter-in-law Jane.)

(4) The aforementioned Jackson Heights of my youth – the ultimate urban neighborhood with nothing but tall apartment buildings and no security systems -- was a trick or treating paradise. Unaccompanied by adults, my brother and I scoured the terrain between 77th and 81st Streets, large shopping bags in hand. On one occasion, Mom’s friend, Julia La Scalzo, helped us get made up for the occasion, deciding that my gypsy costume needed a rhinestone embedded Maltese cross. (Julia always pulled her window shades down when opening her jewelry box amid concerns that nosy neighbors might get designs on her finery.)

(5) During all my years at the house in Chestnut Hill, I stocked up for Halloween at the Star Market, now going into year two of a renovation that has the place closed. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the place had its grand re-opening in time for all those suburbanites to get the candy essential for greeting the children of one’s neighbors? I struggled over my selections, ultimately choosing bags of mini Kit Kat bars, Milky Ways, Three Musketeers, and Forever Yours. After placing the bars into our largest plastic mixing bowl, Dennis and I would sample the candy, while taking turns answering the door to hordes of little ones in costume – accompanied by parents reminding them to say thank you. I’ve never seen any trick or treating in our Brookline condo complex, and no longer have any excuse for buying Halloween candy.

May I suggest for my Halloween wish list?

5 Easy Steps to Writing Alumni Notes

A confession: My hidden vice is reading alumni notes. My voyeuristic pleasure derives from the fact that I don’t even know the people whose lives are being described in snippets of joy, tragedy, hope, and prestige. Though I’ve never been asked to be a class correspondent, here are 5 alums I would seek out in my effort to deliver a column worth reading:

(1) The professional kvetch. This alum is usually home recovering from a back injury sustained while lifting a new grandchild, slipping outside the family’s primary residence, a Park Avenue co-op apartment, or eco-traveling in the third world. With the exception of writing a whiny note, this classmate reports being in too much pain to sit at a computer.

(2) The bearer of sad tidings. This is the alum asking everybody to pray for classmates in the last throws of death, not grasping the fact that if the alumni notes are part of a print publication, those classmates' tombstones will have been unveiled by the time anybody gets a chance to pray. The more religious of these alums will follow up with a request that we pray for the repose of the souls of various other alums.

(3) The serial traveler. Having just celebrated his wedding anniversary on an 8-person barge on the canals of Champagne, France, this alum previously described biking through Namibia or exploring the Galápagos with his grandchildren. He plans to return to Bhutan for the month of October, after which he will be hosting a pre-reunion cocktail reception at his townhouse on Fifth Avenue.

(4) The martyr. If she’s reporting on the aches and pains of running the Boston Marathon, she notes that she’s delighted to spend the next two months in physical therapy because she raised $8,000 for Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Or else she’s sacrificed a week at her vacation home in Vieques, Puerto Rico for the benefit of her kids’ private school.

(5) The Over-Achiever. You may or may not remember this classmate who rarely left her library carrel or the computer lab, but she recently won an award for solving world hunger or achieving peace on earth. Don’t be fooled by the wannabe over-achiever who expects recognition for opening an outpost of her law firm in the Republic of Georgia, starting the first on-line newsletter at some obscure professional association, or consulting on “platform agnostic services.”

Author’s Note: This template need not be limited to 5 Steps. Please use the comments section of this blog to add your own suggestions.

An SAT Tutor to Remember

I smiled when I saw Daphne’s tweet: “Overheard in Borders: ‘I had an SAT tutor for a month but he smelled really bad so I got rid of him’.” When my daughter’s tweet got replicated on Facebook, her husband Etan and his friend Eric, a recent law school grad, made comments about their own SAT tutor’s “yeasty-smelling” bad breath.

Among certain circles it seems unthinkable not to have special tutoring for the SAT’s, which has the potential to make the test more a measure of parental means than aptitude. For the record, my dad, a lawyer working in civil services jobs for most of his life, made sure each of his three children got SAT tutoring.

Dad swore by the recommendations of a science teacher who happened to be the brother-in-law of a guy he knew at work. For approximately 8 weeks, Dad drove me into Manhattan for a course given by Samuel C. Brownstein and Mitchel Weiner at the Statler-Hilton Hotel. Which one of them taught the verbal portion and which taught the math escapes me. The point was that they were the guys who wrote the SAT handbook in vogue back in the ‘60’s.

For most of my years in school, Dad had attempted to “help” me with my math homework. This usually translated into giving me the answers, but only after he began to sound more and more exasperated with my inability to comprehend what he thought he was teaching me, and my lack of mathematical aptitude.

When I got my scores after taking the Brownstein/Weiner coach course, there were few surprises. I did nicely on the verbal. But then I had always done well in any class requiring reading, writing, and analysis. My math scores were pitiful.

In Dad’s mind, those math scores would have qualified me for any college he held out as punishment for not studying hard enough, and that included C.W. Post, Long Island University, Hofstra, and the University of Miami. (Suffice it to say there are people who have gone to those schools and done just fine, thank you.)

Rather than risk the stigma of having his daughter attend one of the above-mentioned schools on the basis of poor SAT scores, and even worse yet, the stigma of my selecting a husband from one of those schools, Dad decided it was time for one on one tutoring.

It was junior year at Forest Hills High in Queens, and I had heard about a math teacher named Mr. Leeds. He gave his own SAT coach course, and did one on one tutoring on the side for $40 an hour, which in 1967 seemed like a lot of money. For several months, he came to our home every Sunday morning.

A kind, patient and heavy-set man in his 50’s, Mr. Leeds managed to drum into my head whatever math skills I’d failed to pick up in 11 years of schooling. And all with a smile!

Although our focus was the math portion of the next SAT exam, Mr. Leeds also made it a point of finding out when my own math teacher, Mrs. Katzenberg, was giving a test and what she planned to cover. Needless to say, he tutored me on that as well.

Surprise, surprise! I began doing very well on her tests. When I got my next round of SAT scores, I had gone up over 100 points. Knowing that Boston University could be my safety school, Dad breathed free at last.

Today I remember little of the algebra, geometry and trigonometry Mr. Leeds taught me. I do remember that he always took off his shoes after sitting down with me at my desk. Boy, oh boy, did his feet stink!

What are your own recollections of preparing for the SATs? Please share in the Comments portion of this blog.

The Heartbreak of Looking Like the Michelin Man

Photo credit: forum.baby-gaga.com

I’ve renewed my love affair with Boston these last several weeks. Except for a few rainy days, the weather has been sunny and moderate, and the leaves are starting to show just a hint of color. Despite the darkness engulfing the Charles when I launch my boat at 5:30 a.m., it’s still early enough in September that I can see the sun rise before I finish rowing.

Still I have a premonition of what’s to come. The great collection of coats in the huge walk-in closet off my den will come into use as early as November – as will the La Canadienne water proof leather boots now stored on a high shelf.

Blame it on that back to school mentality requiring new clothes, new shoes, and yes, a new coat. Face it, I’m not growing any more, and since I’m fortunate enough to be able to keep my weight stable, everything I’ve got still fits.

I work in an environment requiring professional attire, and I don't think anything in my closet fails to pass muster. But when I checked the coat I count on for bitter cold temps without precipitation, I decided I’m sick of looking at the long, black fitted down coat with fur-trimmed hood I got at Nordstrom’s.

The purchase was made on the recommendation’s Finicky Shopper, Laura Landro, at least two years ago. At under $600, she said the Bogner Fire & Ice coat was the best value among long down coats and also reasonably stylish.

In that same article, she also said that if one were going for the ultimate in style, a Moncler model was available for more than $1000. She said she’d get the Moncler only if it went on sale. But I thought that this would be the year to splurge.

Tonight Dennis and I will be headed to the Bloomingdales in Chestnut Hill. We will carry two large brown cartons, each containing a fire engine red, Moncler down coat. I’d hoped to look as fabulous this winter as the model wearing the coat on Bloomingdales.com.

After opening the first carton, I didn’t need to open the second. As I’ve said before, Dennis is the arbiter on all matters relating to style. Sparing myself the pain of modeling a coat that made me look like I’d rented a Michelin man costume, I put the coat back in the box before my husband could see it.

The question of why I have two coats to return, both the same size, is more complicated. So impatient was I to order the coat one evening last week that I dismissed Dennis’ suggestion that I check to see whether I could save money using a Bloomingdales charge instead of a Visa card.

After checking with Bloomingdales.com, it turned out that Dennis was correct. If I put the coat on the store charge, I could save more than $250. But getting the discount required that I re-order the item.

I’m disappointed that the coat didn’t work out. Next month I can check the department stores on the Magnificent Mile when we’re in Chicago visiting family. In the meantime, I won’t have to subject myself to hearing that voice of judgment. The voice, existing solely in my head, will be that of my mother, saying “You paid nearly $1200 for a glorified ski jacket?”

A Time to Relinquish Child Abduction Nightmares?

(photo courtesy of ifc.com)

“Are parents who allow children to walk or bike to school by themselves being irresponsible?” is the question posed by today’s New York Times – following a provocative story by Jan Hoffman that asks whether parental fears of child abduction have gone too far. The writer cites the case of Etan Patz, a six-year-old boy never seen again after walking to catch a school bus in his Manhattan neighborhood more than 30 years ago.

Daphne was three years old when Etan Patz disappeared. I could imagine the pain his parents felt, holding my daughter’s hand as we walked to brunch at the Soho Charcuterie -- not far from where he had lived. We saw images of an adorable Etan Patz on posters plastered to lampposts, with pleas for information.

We fear losing those whom we hold most dear. Knowing it’s our duty to protect our children, regardless of age, we imagine all the bad things that could befall them, including abduction. I confess that at different stages of Daphne’s development, headline abductions and other crimes – both relatively recent and in the distant past – have fueled my anxiety of losing my only child.

We lived on the block of my daughter’s elementary school. So I allowed Daphne to walk to kindergarten, but the deal was that she had to walk with Sarah Pildis, her five-year-old neighbor friend and neighbor. The two of them became part of a caravan of children and parents heading for school.

Day camp was another story. The bus stopped directly in front of our home. Still I was convinced that unless I sat in front of the house in my green, webbed beach chair to watch her come off the bus, some psychopath might grab her.

The year Daphne entered third grade, I took a full time public relations job, and knew I would not be available to meet her day camp bus the following summer. Her dad and I decided to send her to a 7-week overnight camp, alleviating my anxiety.

Daphne loved camp. If I needed any further justification, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald provided it shortly after her return to school that year. Little Sarah Pryor, the same age as Daphne, disappeared while walking not far from her parents’ home in Wayland, Massachusetts. Years later a fragment of Sarah’s skull was found nearby in the woods.

The disappearance of Joan Webster, a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, haunted me for years. According to accounts in the Globe and Herald, Joan was returning from Thanksgiving vacation with her family in New Jersey in 1985, got off the plane at Logan Airport, and was never seen again -- until her remains were discovered in wooded Hamilton, Massachusetts nearly nine years later.

Though Daphne was just a fourth grader when Joan disappeared, the memory was etched in my brain, becoming especially vivid during my daughter’s years at Barnard. Depending on my own finances, Daphne took the Peter Pan bus or Amtrak between Boston and New York. But I always gave her cab fare, knowing it would after dark by the time she arrived in Manhattan.

Daphne resists motherly, but perhaps neurotic expressions of love and concern. Given her own lean finances in those years, I can understand her wanting to divert at least a portion of the cab fare. Yet she knew it made me unhappy when she reported taking the subway back to the dorm – despite being accompanied by a few other girls.

In the interest of disclosure, I should say I’m fascinated by crime, and even did a stint covering murder trials for United Press International. Kitty Genovese, a young bar manager, was raped and stabbed repeatedly as she walked from her car to her apartment on Austin Street in Kew Gardens. What was so horrifying about Kitty's murder was that neighbors reportedly heard her screams and failed to call the police until it was too late.

Though I was fourteen years old when the crime occurred, it wasn’t until I became a mom that the attack on Kitty became larger than life. For a brief period in 2002, Daphne had an apartment off Austin Street in neighboring Forest Hills. My daughter seemed so happy with her spacious studio with hardwood floors and elegant arches in a pre-World War II building that I didn’t have the heart to raise the subject about what happened to Kitty.

There comes a time in your child’s life when you still worry. But you know it’s time to keep your fantasies to yourself.

What fantasies do you have that prevent you from letting your children become more independent?

As an adult, do you recall your own parents’ fantasies/warnings?

Please use the comments section to share them.

Who Wears the Pants at Your House?

The story of a woman in Sudan named Lubna Hussein who was tried on charges of indecency for wearing pants has sparked international outrage and indignation. Lubna, a journalist, was imprisoned until activists stepped forward to pay a $200 fine on her behalf. Much was made of the fact that despite what sounded like a kangaroo trial, she avoided the 40 lashes permissible under Islamic law for such an offense.

This deeply disturbing headline news took me back to my pre-Title IX girlhood. It was not unusual to hear Dad complaining: “The trouble with my father is that he lets my mother wear the pants.” A physician, Grandpa was happy to be relieved of any responsibilities beyond seeing his patients. Besides, Grandma, a smart, outgoing lady with a head for business, enjoyed running his office and otherwise taking charge of the practical details of their lives.

“In my house, I wear the pants,” Dad would say. Deep down a softy, he could also come across as a bully. Mom’s “I’ll need to talk this over with your father” response to requests ranging from could I have a friend sleep over to can I get new shoes” was so standard that it made more sense to go right to Dad – even if it meant facing his wrath or irritation.

Ironically, the black and white vacation snapshots with deckled edges show Mom wearing pants, riding jodhpurs to be specific, or Betty Grable type short shorts. When pants became fashionable for women’s casual wear in the ‘60’s, Grandma lamented the fact that she was too fat to wear pants.

As illustrated by the story emanating from the Sudan, the concept of wearing pants is really about empowerment of women, something far more threatening than indecency. Until I saw a Wikipedia entry on the subject, I had no idea that the passage of title IX in 1972 put an end to the requirement that girls wear skirts or dresses for school.

The entry made me think of that day in fourth grade, when Mom was sure the single digit temperatures would make it o.k. for me to wear corduroy pants to school. The only thing worse than being scolded by my teacher, Mrs. Hamburger, was witnessing the snickers of the other girls in my class.

In the New York City high schools of the 60’s, a few of us attempted to push the envelope by wearing culottes. When confronted by a teacher, we would claim to be wearing skirts. Ironically, the shortest of short skirts, just verging on “indecency,” and perhaps as demeaning to women as booty shorts, were considered acceptable.

I resisted wearing pants for work or evenings out until Dennis came into my life. A man with impeccable taste, my husband loves looking at clips of Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn in their flowing pants from the ‘30’s, and maintains that pants can be the height of elegance.

So it is that I, a woman with bad feet, have discovered that pants permit me to wear comfy loafers or satin flats with rhinestones, depending on the occasion, and also liberate me from the confines of pantyhose. And when I gave the first toast at Daphne and Etan’s wedding last November, I wore black chiffon palazzo pants.

Thank goodness Dennis has enough male self-confidence to feel good about both of us “wearing the pants.” After all, isn’t male insecurity what underpins the tyranny we’re observing in Sudan?

Jewish High Holy Days Inspire 5 Recollections

(photo courtesy of Kevetchingeditor.com)

During my childhood years in Forest Hills, my Jewish High Holy Days began with feasts that Grandma would warm up in the oven. She purchased enough rotisserie roast chicken, chicken soup with kreplach, stuffed derma, sweet potato tsimmes, and potato kugel to feed an army -- all from a caterer on the lower East Side. This was followed by mini-marzipan three layer cakes held together with raspberry or apricot jam and topped with dark chocolate. Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, happily brought with it two days off from school, but Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement yielded just one.

My family did not belong to a synagogue. Instead we took long walks around the neighborhood and gawked at the hordes of people going in and out of synagogue. Forest Hills had several Jewish houses of worship, but by far the ritziest was the Forest Hills Jewish Center. Reportedly the doors were painted in gold leaf. In the basement was a small swimming pool. But for my grandparents, nothing signified affluence more than the number of mink stoles seen on the shoulders of women worshippers, and there was no better clientele for Orthodox Jewish furriers than the congregants at this great big synagogue on Queens Boulevard.

Jerry and I joined Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, not long after Daphne was born. His parents had helped found Temple Sinai in Roslyn, New York during the late ‘40’s, and worship had been a significant part of his life. So he would chuckle when our own rabbi, a man with a sanctimonious personality, would write windy pieces in the synagogue news letter, The Tidings, saying that if people didn’t want to attend services, he’d prefer they stay home. Jerry thought if the guy were a nicer person, he’d inspire people to attend.

We chose to attend on just the High Holy Days. Daphne and I accompanied Jerry in the mornings. The temple was a beautiful building resembling a mosque, with seating capacity of 800, never needed except on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. As much as I liked hearing the sound of the cantor’s singing as we walked in, and loved hearing the part about “who shall live and who shall die” on the first holiday, followed by a lot of “we have sinned, we have transgressed, we have acted perversely,” on the second, by one o’clock I would announce that I’d had enough. Jerry would often go back for the afternoon service, especially on Yom Kippur when he fasted and I did not.

It has been many years since I’ve set foot in any house of worship, unless you count wedding chapels or the occasional funeral. But I have at least five memories of our days at Temple Ohabei Shalom:

(1) Shortly after Rabbi Emily replaced the guy who wrote those whiny columns about too few people being there to hear his brilliant sermons at Friday night services, she gave a thoughtful High Holy Day sermon. This was pre-Katrina so it was o.k. to talk about a guy on a roof-top declining help from different public safety agencies as the flood waters were about to overtake him – and all because he was waiting for G-d to help him. Whether she mentioned something about the need for modern medicine or flu shots, I don’t recall. Her point was to accept whatever help was available and be grateful.

(2) The scent of Shalimar perfume clashing with Worth’s Je Reviens could induce nausea. I won’t pretend to have multiple chemical sensitivity, but I will tell you that women, including me with my Fendi or Paco Rabanne cologne, sprayed the stuff on with so much abandon that the smell was overpowering. The High Holy Days were for seeing and being seen, and I usually opted for a new suit and high heels. (Mink stoles were no longer in fashion, except among the elderly.)

(3) Also known as the Days of Awe, the Jewish High Holy Days would attract people ordinarily too weak or feeble to attend services. An elderly man at my gym used to joke that these people came in from Florida on the Yom Kippur Clipper just for the holidays. Jerry would usually catch a few of them in his arms as they stumbled on the synagogue steps. In a similar show of kindness, he was there to help a young woman on the bimah, sparing her the embarrassment of losing her place as she read her aliyah in front of all 800 worshippers.

(4) At one point the principal of the religious school, consisting of two days from 3 to 5:30 and Sunday mornings, decreed that every child, accompanied by parents, must attend monthly Friday night Shabbat services. Despite her letter saying this would be a time of family togetherness, I found them anything but. Our own version of Friday night togetherness was my having enough time to cook rare roast beef with baked potatoes, embroidered by whatever breads and pastries Jerry would purchase as a “surprise” at the Savoy French Bakery across the street from his office.

(5) Less than two months before Jerry died at age 49, Rabbi Emily led a group of 8th graders on a “field trip” to a Jews for Jesus service at a church in Wellesley, and I went along to protect Daphne from something I felt could be menacing. Our rabbi considered this group an example of a destructive cult, and wanted the kids to understand how it worked and why this was neither Judaism not Christianity. Halfway through that service, I ran outside crying, fearful that my being at the wrong service might hamper Jerry’s very slim chances of recovering from lymphoma.

Mostly likely Dennis and I will spend the High Holy Days together at home, perhaps over a quiet dinner. For us the days will be a time of reflection, mostly about how lucky we are to have found each other after losing our first loves to cancer, and also to have kids and grandkids leading satisfying lives.

A Haven for English Majors?

The note on a friend’s wall in Facebook – written by a woman I don’t know – said she was working in a bookstore in Vermont, “the ultimate fate of an English major at some point.” As a woman who majored in English and went on to get a master’s in that same seemingly self-indulgent area of study, I felt sad. Not because there’s anything wrong with working in a bookstore but because I suspect she’s eking out a living in business whose days are numbered.

My most cherished snapshot of the summer now drawing to a close is one never captured on anybody’s iPhone camera: Two newlyweds on the beach in Cape May, surrounded by his parents and her mom. Absorbed in their respective books, the subjects are sprawled on their chaise lounges, shielded from the blazing sun by great big beach umbrellas.

I can’t tell you what Daphne or Etan or Etan’s parents were reading. For the first time in perhaps a year, I could dedicate hours to reading something not focused on public relations or social media, but a memoir my daughter and son-in-law had given me for my birthday. The book was Monica Holloway’s Driving with Dead People. Though the subject is sad -- kids growing up amid an abusive father’s reign of terror and a narcissistic mother’s neglect -- the memoir was a page-turner.

That was the same week I finally finished reading Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, the 1961 novel I purchased shortly after having seen the movie in early January. The reason I mention this is not because I’m planning to give you a catalogue of everything I’ve read, but because I fear that the distractions of Facebook, Twitter – along with the two television programs I’ve watched religiously, Mad Men and Nurse Jackie – have stolen time I once used for pleasure reading.

Am I eager to see if Jackie –seen blacked out on the floor of the ER’s ladies room in the season finale – can tackle her substance abuse problems and stop cheating on her doting husband? You bet I'm looking forward to Season 2 of Nurse Jackie; do any of you know when it will start? But at the same time, I’m glad to have a breather that’s allowing me to read Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter, a gripping 1986 novel about a man who’s lived through the death of a child, marital breakup and is about to face yet more change – all in the week leading up to Easter.

While I continue to have a Tivo “season pass” for Mad Men, usually watching it on Tuesday evenings at 7:45, I’m enjoying season 3 less than I enjoyed season 2. I like that Betty Draper’s maid, Carla, is calling Betty’s creepy father on his racism, but I also find it distasteful, maybe even silly, that Peggy Olson gets drawn into trying marijuana in the workplace. Bottom line: I think I’m enjoying The Sportswriter more than I’m enjoying Mad Men.

Bookstores are suffering the fate of newspapers – with prospective customers opting to make their purchases online or download “books” onto a Kindle. I’ve said it before and I don’t mind saying it again. I hate making purchases via Amazon.com, not only because I think the site tries to be too technologically cutesy, remembering things I wish it would forget, but also because it deprives me of the opportunity to browse inside a bookstore.

The Barnes & Noble in Boston’s Downtown Crossing has been gone for years now, and if I don’t feel like driving to Chestnut Hill I will have to redeem the birthday gift card from my parents online. I’ll probably use it to purchase Shel Israel’s Twitterville.

Thank goodness there’s still a Borders at the corner of School and Washington, just down the street from my office. On days when I have no lunch plans I like nothing better than to walk through the store, not knowing what fellow book lovers I might meet, usually having no idea what if anything I might chose to buy. If I need gift recommendations, I know I can count on a guy with a lanyard around his neck, glasses and graying crew cut – probably a former English major. He’s great at helping me find the historical biographies I know Dennis loves.

This particular Borders often has a long line at lunchtime. The fact that it’s there long after Lauriat’s and the Globe Corner Bookstore have folded is not lost on me. Dare I hope up that this particular bookstore will survive amid hard times, technological advances, and changing tastes?

Driving with Dead People

The Sportswriter

Revolutionary Road

Twitterville