1952: Year of the Water Dragon. It’s been said that our year didn’t hold a candle to 1950 or 1947.  Some believe that our bulging birth rate got in the way from the start: less individual attention in the hospital, more crowded kindergartens … But that was ages ago.  What matters now is that it all worked out quite well.  And a major anniversary is just around the corner — #40 for Class of 1974! Four decades have spun by since we wore our bunny fur on May 13, 1974. But I won’t be on the ground.  With some regret, I’ll miss all the class fun, the robust and...

global100.adl.org/did-you-know   I was 23 years old, a working girl in NYC, and decided it was high time to try out a little eye shadow for the first time.  So I trotted over to Saks Fifth Avenue and asked for a little help.  Which color would be best for me? In her phoniest voice, the clerk assured me … “With those thick eyebrows, nothing would help!” Well, my feelings were bruised, and back at the office, my pals at Reader’s Digest General Books were horrified when I repeated her words. Which counter they asked, after kindly suggesting that my furry eyebrows had never...

“Just tell them, when they ask, that you’re looking for a good clash,” the debate coach said to me.   Whatever it took — I would do it.  I’d beg for the good kind. The right kind of clash. The Good Clash policy was declared about the same time that I learned how to write post-debate comment sandwiches.  Encouraging words, first.  (If you have nothing nice to say about the baby, my father recommended praising the blanket.)  So I’d rave about their well-matched socks and then I’d move on to appraising their arguments before signing off with a touch of...

If we could just have a quick peek at the cards we never touch,  I’m almost positive that our best of anything would be the hardest to find.  It would be someplace waiting.  On top?  Never.  How can the best ever come first — before the rest?  Impossible, incomparable, right?   Let’s stop here. You see my best boss did come first.  Peter Lacey by name.  Peter Lacey was my first boss,  just a couple of weeks after the diploma was all mine. He was exactly twice my age and somehow found stories of my college life as engrossing as the little captions and checked facts that I...

I was on the beach this morning,  just in time to catch the opening act of a new enactment of the war of the genders.  Two very young boys were working on on what could have passed for a sleeping octopus.  The taller boy was barking out work orders in a menacing tone. Still wet and half-wrapped in a towel, I surrendered my front row seat to see what was going on. “We gotta beat them,” Cooper told me and pointed to two small  girls about 20 feet away.  Then he shook a tiny crab under my nose.  “Afraid of crabs?”  he taunted.  I held my ground politely and dropped by to...