Now if Jon (my former editor at Brandon’s, heavily armed with both Harvard and Berkeley credentials) were running the show here, he’d never let me get away with this!  The entry that you’re about to read — at least, I hope you will — is being presented for the third time.  A senior resident of my “Stories” section, after having been conceived in September,’06, “Looking Up” was beamed over here on 9/17/13, after I succumbed to the spell of  yet another full moon. And now, it’s back again… Twice was more than enough, Jon...

Maybe it was my yellow cotton gardening gloves from the Puako General Store that made the difference. They mottled up right away,  which made it seem like I’d been digging up carrots with Peter Rabbit since childhood. Which is hardly true … but I’m guessing a few untrained but eager to learn tomato seeds may have been coaxed into believing that I was well-mentored in the by-laws of cultivation, which gave them the confidence they needed to survive the harrowing underground route past the lava layer and on through the compost to get a closer look at the beaming Sunlight above. Not...

All I have left from my high school newspaper days is a four inch long typesetter’s slug that sleeps in full sight on top of my laptop. Not a single issue of “Overtone” survived adulthood, just my enduring lead alloy slug which says in all caps: Pamela Gilbert. The printer gave it to me when I dropped off the first set of galleys. It was eleventh grade, and we were all waiting to hear from the outgoing editorial staff about our new responsibilities.  Feature Editor … those were the two words I wanted to hear … when it was announced that I had been selected to steer the...

I saw an igloo on the beach, this morning.  No Eskimos in sight.  No blue glacier in the distance  … just an inflatable igloo with two people inside who were wearing very little and quietly turning pages.  No, I wasn’t staring at them … I was merely beholding.  (Much better.) And not far away from this igloo were a woman and child hauling over-sized sea-worthy noodles across the sand.  And two Japanese tourists were waist-high in the low tide giggling noisily while dousing each other with what certainly looked like wet cannons.  And off in the background, an ambitious fellow...

Such a loving era that still lights up my memory bank, when the Goldsmiths and the Gilberts were two families on the same voyage.  Thanksgiving feasts, a well-preserved vacation at Montauk Point, visits back and forth in Jackson Heights where we first discovered each other, on to Syosset, Great Neck, Wilton, a few Fifth Avenue parades, and whether there was a good reason or not, we sat around tables and just plain adventured together. Carol and my mother were, as my mother proudly reminded me after the Goldsmiths passed, very best friends, nudging each other on to taste life beyond the tribal...