I’m back in 1972, again, the week before I returned to Camp Hillcroft as a counselor/assistant dance instructor. I was catching up on sleep at home in Riverdale,  recharging after sophomore year. (That was when I took Chem 101 to satisfy my science requirement, and burnt a hole in my favorite maroon leotard as I clumsily titrated with sulphuric acid… the one time that I was dressed for after-lab dance club bra-less… The splashing acid made my right nipple tingle and that’s when the unflappable Berlin-born Dr. Ernst Berliner threw a cold wet towel at me to cool things...

thetab.com/us/princeton/2015/10/19/cruz-is-colonial-92-so-we-asked-members-what-they-think-about-him-375 What… you haven’t heard my story about the time that Debi, Hilary, Cecilia and I headed over to Princeton for a Colonial Club party? All  because Cecilia told us her new boyfriend looked exactly like James Taylor and she had promised to invite her Bryn Mawr pals to add to the fun! I can’t remember how we got there.  I do remember  it was a Friday night in Spring, 1972 — weeks after getting a written warning for hitchhiking to the campus, where I had tackled some dusty...

You mean I’m the only one who knows that this is my 99th blog post? And am I the only one who realizes that each one of us will have to wait an entire extra day to blow out our candles again, next year, because 2016 is a leap year, which means that instead of my waiting roughly 340 -plus days for my next birthday to show up — because February 29 is getting added into the mix next year, adding yet another delay to our birthday waiting game. You can do the necessary calculations and see how an extra day between birthdays tallies up for you. And when you’re waiting for a birthday, just...

It didn’t look like an interview was in progress from where I was sitting.  Otherwise I would have knocked first, which is very hard to do when your hair is being shampooed by your favorite hair stylist on the island (make that the world) who is simultaneously having a coded exchange with an aspiring stylist about her plans to enhance the hair of a targeted customer.  My immensely talented hair stylist, the owner, was offering brief pointers but also sizing up the formulas cited by the outsider who was now very much of an insider for the time being in the popular shop. The outsider operating as...

In the carefully edited life of Pamela Gilbert-Bugbee, you get the mistaken impression that I grew up in Riverdale (NW Bronx) and only attended conspicuously numbered public schools before graduating from the High School of Music and Art — well, before  it got renamed. Of course, everyone needs a cut-off somewhere.  And even though I aced the fourth grade spelling bee at Village School in Syosset, I bury this victory because only my relatives, on a need-to-know basis, can confirm that from kindergarten through sixth grade, I attended a conspicuously un-numbered public school. Outside of the...