Don’t fall the docs all tell us

Let caution lead the way

A bone broken incurs,

Conversations with more to say
There is no easy fix

No bandaid lined with salve 

Wearing sensible shoes

You thought you’d never have

The bones are the main structure

From which we dance and play

The years of “double dutching” so very far away

So you fix the carpal tunnel

A slice of life returned

You can shuffle up the cards

And feel your finger if it’s burned

With the femur and the tibia and the humerus intact

A quick walk around the block

Once our sprint around the track

One foot proceeds the other

Add caution to the mix

Enjoy this beautiful Tuesday

Leave nothing left to fix.

From the Madeline Murals at the Carlyle, and foie burger at Minetta Tavern, We Love New York.
A stroll through the Modern
buying clocks with big numbers at the gift shop.
We Love New York!
With euphoric recall we remember the Days of Comedy Clubs and “Arthurs“ jazz club , two drink minimums, laced with “sunshine and sodas and beer.” Oh the crunch of multi colored leaves as we strolled across the park in Autumn to have lunch at The Boathouse.
Ah, yes NYC.
From Drinks at the bar at The Four Seasons before the variegated visuals of the flowers and soufflés at Grenouille, we Miss our golden New York. Memories of dancing at El Morocco and Le Club before backgammon in the backroom at Cavalleros, priceless. We closed the night before with an early breakfast at The Carnegie. How about the days of sitting on an auxiliary seat in the back of yellow cabs with leg room, en route to an underground Allen Ginsburg poetry reading in a dive on Astor place near Tompkins Square Park. ”I took a deep breath and listened to the bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.” Poems by Sylvia Plath inspired us to walk down to the Hip Bagel. An infamous, artistic guy named Shelly Fireman had a vision we jumped onto. We heard about him and his multifaceted interests. A perfect panoply of his Peter Max Art, knowledge of herbal cures i.e. Dr. Giller and his cocktails known as ACE (adrenal cortex extract) and the smoked fish from Barney Greengrass. We couldn’t help but prophesize that he would find a unique recipe for success through the perfect antipasto in the most lyrical of neighborhoods. He would breathe garlic into locations housing music, art and the sounds of Placido Domingo. Good guess, indeed. Moving on now to the long ago delights of Steak Diane at Quo Vadis before it became The Post House. A little black jack and throwing dice at a private after hours gambling joint in a townhouse on 72nd and Park. Brass, red carpeting and pink walls added to the late night fantasy of downing Harvey’s Bristol Cream and suffering the after effects the next morning. Bromo- seltzer set up on our nightstand could have served as the back drop of an Andy Warhol painting. B. Altman’s, Rita’s Blue Tent Dress Shop on Madison Ave and accessories and Mini Dresses at Bendels was our idea of a perfect Saturday shop around before lunch at Yellowfingers or Daly’s Dandelion. Sunday Mornings of counting Ninas on the cover of The Sunday Magazine section through the distinct brilliance of Al Hirschfeld, was the precursor to lunch at Maxwell Plum’s. Oh those Eggs Benedict and mimosas under the kaleidoscopic stained-glass ceilings imagined and realized by Warner LeRoy. What a treat before grabbing the latest Woody Allen film at The Paris Theater on 59th Street. In the way, way back of the memory bin, the Pate at Brussels, anything at Le Bernardin- and the pasta at Joe and Rose (favorite of the Kennedys) were all pieces of our we Love New York Days.
So just for today, we will brush off our blue suede shoes, pick out a paisley blouse, grab an old hermes belt, add a touch of Shalimar and dream of the Date-nut bread sandwiches at Chock Full o’ Nuts. Make it a memorable “Sunday in New York.”

Repost- of Days of innocence, generations to follow will never know. Praying for healing and awareness to bring us closer to our yesterdays. 9/11 😥

Hello I just dropped in from the 60’s!

And then one day we just stayed in bed, under the covers, eating mozzarella cheese and pretzels. A mental health day? Perhaps. A day of feeling sorry for our mess of a country moment, indeed. With so many things on our “to do” list the pathetic state of affairs has immobilized us. We try to rally by pooling our sorrows to comfort our souls. Devastatingly, in a crowd of millions we are back to fearing our health. With no obvious panacea, but mandates and time, we arrange comfort zone memories of watching reruns of Dobie Gillis, I Married Joan and I Love Lucy-with a Saint Bernard friendly Topper. We derive a sense of calm by exhuming memories of eating a can of Buitoni ravioli after school with a hostess anything chaser. We travel back to days when a big struggle was learning what a parallelogram or a quadrilateral was.

Ah, simple joys of listening to AM radio. Cousin Brucie spin us our favs. The times when one of our greatest pleasures was hearing the Temptations, as we were “not to proud to beg” while we waited to be built up by buttercups, knowing at this point it was the “worst that could happen.” Run on sentence counters, I know. Who remembers driving under the tressel , making your way through third ward park and looking to see which of our friends cars were parked there? How easily serotonin and endorphin rushes happened in the long ago and far away days, we so long for now. If only we were back to when busy signals offered the worst of frustrations. Or when setting our hair with pink plastic rollers and enduring the fumes of Aqua Net hairspray was one of our toughest endurances. Only if, our not so guilty pleasures were peanut cheddar crackers, Ring Dings or Funny Bones and a can of Tab, the acronym for the first (Totally Artificial Beverage). With lots of quarters, nickels and dimes we’d stop to get our after school snacks at the candy store next to Jan, Jill and Jon on Main Avenue. Shout out to Rhoda and Seymour Zucker (antique aficionados) for 50 years . What a run. Side bar, your Honor. Those were the times before rats were tested for lethal saccharine levels. Loved the rush from Tab and the sugar high from Dubble Bubble.
So we wait under the covers with bated breath as we watch our future decisions about when to go back into a movie theater and hope the seats we get are not the ones with chewed gum stuck underneath. We pray for the times we imagined that when Cosmo Topper, married Joan the only thing that was mandated was a fun- filled honeymoon to Bermuda and bringing your besties back a bottle of Chianti, Blue Nun or Thunderbird from the duty free shop. Hashtag Sad.

5782 what came before a real who knew

Let’s double down for healing strong

Wishing for a better a place to belong.

Life became more difficult

Everything takes more caution

We are praying and hoping this year, for please an easier portion.

We’ll bring along our double vaxxed proof

And send our blessings across to our troops.

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

We will sing to the Lord

Paying attention in place of tired and bored.

Our prayers will bring memories of the youth we remember

Adding days, weeks and years to a future with embers.

Put on your mask

Not a big task

Variants are raging

Out of their caging

With tears in our eyes

Our Hearts touching hearts

Kicking up the gear on precautions

This round a head start.

Hold tight to the plan

Keep crossing your fingers

And washing both hands.

A booster for certain

8 months we will wait

Never a moment to call it too late.

Dr. Fauci our Shepherd

Baruch to Hashem

Don’t want to go back to zero

And start over again.

Keep calling on science

To guide us along

A wing, prayer and shout out

Is where it belongs.

Hoping when school starts, a plan will be in place

For hugging our loved ones

As we stand face to face.

There isn’t a moment without safety hovering

Our mask on our faces, our protection our covering.

Staying connected to our souls as the Tuesday end of summer goal. With adventures displayed daily through the eye of photo shop on Instagram and Facebook, we travel guide through someone else’s life-at the moment. As the carpe diem magnet stares back at us from our refrigerator door we scroll and scroll some more. Bastante! Daily pictures of growing (up) vegetables on the terrace and strangers newly painted front door become as routine as the morning paper and orange juice. The flowers in Lady X’s garden or the smile on Mr. B’s grandchildren’s no visiting day faces have replaced “All My Children” and our voyeuristic interest in Erica’s choice for an eighth husband. So when one your grandchildren returns from camp, comes over for Legos and Lunch and says -” I love being here so much, it feels like I never left,” you take it as a defining moment to log out of anyone elses newly painted front door and walk through your own with your head high and your smile big. Grass greener seekers need not apply. Where’s the sign up list for tomorrow? Make someone else’s day.

Robert Redford turns 85
And Kim Cattrall 65
When Sex in the City
Becomes the “Way We Were”
We hit the ground running
It becomes one big blur
Get your mojo in gear
Make the most of the year
With rapid fire speed
No time to heed
Don’t give up your day job
Add Frolic and Fun
Age only matters if your not doing the most
So get out there each day, raise a glass with a toast.
With promise to hold our loved ones so dear
Giving it our best adding warmth and good cheer
Nothing trite about blessings to count
Let them all pile up and mount and mount
Together we’re Better without any doubt.
Let’s do it Thursday we are down for the count.

The room was comfortably full, not packed. The A/C offered a Brrr so any remnant of heat left over from Indian Summer was left outside our “four walls.”Rabbi Lookstein walked up to the podium with his particular cadence I’ve come to know through the years. I was appropriately clad in the “right” length skirt. And so the stage was set, the evening began.

I was at KJ Synagogue to hear Dr. Rabbi Ari Berman, President of Yeshiva University speak. The write up about the evening caught my eye and the kids set me up to gain entrance. He spoke on Sin, Self Perception and the Art of Living. 

The timing for me to hear this was propitious. Yes, G-d offers no coincidences. I walked away from the evening a little more fine tuned on some immediate issues that have been dealt to my extended family.

He touched on the distinction between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He detailed the difference in prayer between looking at and embracing your sins, your misgivings and your wrongdoings. He was light on the emphasis of sins necessarily being terrible shandas worthy of punishments and more on ways we have wronged others. He moved on to the meaning of wearing white on Yom Kippur and praying for the forgiveness of the past year’s behaviors that we feel we can better. He was straightforward, his words flowed with a pleasant melody and his sincerity offered comfort. We, as Jewish people are factually in the minority.

Our importance and roles in society however, quite the contrary. What was in the minority last night as well, were cells phones beeping, ringing or being accessed. We were there to listen, perhaps learn and be respectful of a very busy man sharing his knowledge and wisdom about keeping the peace pipe moving. L’dor V’dor. 

I left the Rabbi’s sermon feeling comfortable, embraced and that my well being was cared about by a virtual stranger, an ordained man.

In the love your neighbor category and a look after your own way, I question why it is often easier to be more kind to strangers than intimates. As a divine order play out, we are placed in positions, in families and situations that because we are “just humans” will inevitably offer conflict and need for repair. So perhaps just for today, four days short of wearing a white outfit and maybe even sneakers why not look to our left, glance to our right and say we are sorry to an intimate we may have wronged. Perhaps if we begin to own our piece of behavior we can move on in a healthy way to the sounds of cell phones ringing and beeps of texts coming in. Amen!

Dear Ordainer of Weddings and Funerals. Would we still have tried as hard? Perhaps we would have given it more effort.

Please stand on that long line over there. That’s the one that says “Weddings and Funerals only.” You don’t see it? It’s the longest line in the room. The shared celebrations and the pool your sorrows with tones of mandatory invites and show ups.

The terms Kismet, Destiny and Beshart offer the concept of “the meant to be’s.” How much does luck or chance factor into who we go the distance with? We were raised believing our family of origin and blood relatives are the people who will be our first and forever friends. Does forever mean until the holiday meal is over or when someone moves off the block?

Early on we come to learn Holiday Anxiety can exist all year long .The dread of the “do we have to,” kicks in.

As social media has connected us to our past, we have become voyeurs into the lives of the people we met through our “chance” encounters. Reunions, cousin clubs and catch up events offer the second time around opportunities. If we try hard can we champion our first time around defeats and turn our once in awhiles, into the more oftens.

The trepidation of “will we be understood” and the “will they like us feelings” enter the room before we do. Phew, we got that over with is the relief emotion as we feel the rapprochement went really well.

So we learn back to the future isn’t always in the canasta cards. Equally, the surprise of the well blended double date shows up. We walk away, look at one another and think yes, a take two would be very nice.

On Thursday the pharmacist at Duane Reade referred to the type of flu shot he was administering to us as the “upper classman” strain. We thought what a gentle way of saying senior discounts accepted.

So as a member of that category we got the shot, took our senior day discount on our over the counter Nexium and went home and took a nap.

My take away is, we can dwell on missed opportunities and bemoan our fate about who has stayed and who is gone, or we can accept that our time with them was inscribed as exactly what it was “meant to be.” Make it a reach out to someone you love day. I just did.

Booster shots, children hanging from planes as their fate to evacuate Afghanistan, hospital beds being scarce for variant filled patients, explosive numbers of innocent people taking bullets rickshawed into their bedroom windows, all share the same headlines with, you are kidding me, Brittany Spears conservatorship dilemma. As we forego “guilty pleasures,” frills and over the top celebrations we pray for a return to our yesterday’s.
Dear G-d, this year as we zoom services while searching for our words, we will be praying on our knees. Our world is so far from a semblance of order we held on to. We have stored fears and doubled up anxiety levels. Just when we stopped cleaning the outside of our avocados and didn’t buy toilet paper every time we went in for a container of milk we found ourselves standing in a puddle with our new sneakers on. Doom and gloom, naysaying and negativity seeped into our most evolved and positive attitudes. So just for today Hashem, we will Evan Hansen it and “Step out, Step outta the sun
If you keep gettin burned
Step out, Step outta the sun
Because you’ve learned, because you’ve learned.” Let’s do it Saturday, buy the ticket, take the ride!