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By Rick Fishman / Oakland, Calif. Before Detroit gave the world Motown nostalgia, before Los Angeles gave us the Knack, and before Blue Note Records had a president named Don Was, there was the Bar Mitzvah network in Oak Park, Mich, and a very serious band made up of 12-year-old boys who believed, with total conviction, that they were on the edge of greatness. We were called The Royal Jammers. I know this because I named the band. At that age, naming a band was almost as important as actually knowing how to play. Maybe more important. You could fake a guitar chord, but you could not fake a name. The Royal Jammers sounded regal, musical, and just vague enough to suggest we knew something that the adults didn't. We did not, of course. We were kids from suburban Detroit, operating somewhere between Hebrew school, grade school, puberty, and the powerful gravitational pull of girls at dance parties. The original band included Link Wachler on drums; his brother Andrew Wachler on guitar; me, Ricky Fishman, also on guitar; and a creative kid named Doug Fieger. Doug’s mother was my fifth-grade teacher, and she had decided that her son should meet me. I think she saw me as some kind of confident male figure, which is a very generous description of a boy with a guitar, a Bar Mitzvah coming up, and no visible life plan. Still, she thought Doug and I might connect. Doug wanted to play guitar, and I gave him his first lessons. That is my claim to rock and roll immortality, or at least my right to a free drink when the subject comes up. The Original Royal Jammers: 1962 (clockwise from top left) Link Wachler, Andrew Wachler, the author and Doug Fieger We played the songs every young band played in those days, “Louie Louie,” “Money,” “Twist and Shout,” and anything else with three chords and enough attitude to make girls look in our direction. The Kingsmen were all-important. But then, on February 9, 1964, everything changed. The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and 73 million people watched. For kids like us, it was not television. It was a calling. America did not just see a band that night. It saw haircuts, boots, screaming girls, and a new career path for boys who had previously been told to become doctors, lawyers or dentists. After that night, Doug became even more driven. He seemed to understand that music could be bigger than a gymnasium, bigger than a social hall, and maybe even bigger than The Royal Jammers. Sadly, his parents were not especially eager to drive us to rehearsals for the Bar Mitzvah gigs, where we had become almost a weekly junior band for The Zan Gilbert Orchestra, the adult band that played almost every Bar Mitzvah party at the time. Doug left the band around September 1962, right before my own Bar Mitzvah. This created a crisis. Not a national crisis, but in our world, it was close. I heard about a musician who did not live in my own Key Elementary School district but in the Dewey Elementary School district of Oak Park, named Don Fagenson, who had recently left another boy band in the area called the Saturns. I never fully knew why Don left. My guess is that, even then, Don had musical opinions. Strong ones. He already knew one more guitar chord than I did, which, in the meritocracy of 12-year-old rock ‘n’ rollers, made him highly qualified. I let him into the band. We also added Sammy Gun, who played piano and the melodica, an instrument that seemed to be part piano, part harmonica, and part comedy prop. Suddenly, we were complete. We had guitars, drums, a piano, a melodica, ambition, and no fear whatsoever. The Royal Jammers: 1963 (clockwise from top left) Drew Wachler, Don Fagenson, Link Wachler, the author, and Sammy Gun We gigged almost every weekend at places like: The Raleigh House, B’nai Moshe’s social hall, Shaarey Zedek’s social hall, Knollwood County Club and almost every synagogue in Oak Park, Huntington Woods and Southfield, Mich. during those years. Each of us got paid $5. This was serious money. The girls were crazy for us, or at least that is how I remember it, and at my age I reserve the right to improvise a little. Don and I became best friends, with sleepovers, neighborhood wandering, and the usual low-level trouble boys get into when they are smart enough to be bored but not yet smart enough to be useful. I even met my first girlfriend, Karen Spiwak, near where he lived at the Stratford Villa Apartments in Oak Park. The Royal Jammers: 1964 with Zan Gilbert’s Bar Mitzvah Junior Band Eventually, Don, mostly Don, wanted to move in a new direction. We started another band, and once again I took responsibility for the name. This time I called it The Opalescent Hobnails, a phrase I found while reading one of my mother’s books on antiques. Did it sound like a psychedelic band name? Absolutely. Did we know what it meant? Absolutely not. In the 1960s, not knowing what something meant could actually be an advantage. The Opalescent Hobnails: 1967: (from left) the author, Mike Loceff, Don Fagenson and Art Hirschfield, Playing at the Clinton Junior High School Valentine’s Day Dance The truth is, all of us were motivated by the same sacred teenage principles: play music, meet girls, get invited to parties, and seem more mysterious than we actually were. Being in a band was a very effective strategy. It was certainly better than standing against the wall at a dance, trying to look relaxed while wearing a clip-on tie. Years passed, and the two DF's from my childhood, Doug Fieger and Don Fagenson, found their own extraordinary voices. Sharona Alperin and Doug Fieger at the author's 28th birthday party at his apartment in Los Angeles in 1979. Photo (C) Rick Fishman Doug was the leader and main singer of The Knack, and in 1979 he co-wrote the song “My Sharona.” It caused a cultural detonation. The song reached No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, stayed there for six weeks, and became Billboard’s top pop single of 1979. I had known Doug when he was a creative kid learning guitar. Years later, both of us were living in Los Angeles and we were very friendly from 1976 to the early Troubadour days. I got to witness the Knack become the hottest band in town. Bruce Springsteen and Doug Fieger in 1978 performing together at The Troubadour At the Troubadour, everyone came to see the Knack, including Steven Stills, Bruce Springsteen and Ray Manzarek of The Doors. Many famous traveling musicians passing through Los Angeles seemed to turn up. Everyone wanted to see the hottest band in Los Angeles, and I watched the whole thing break open from the inside. I introduced Doug Fieger to the man who would become his manager, and I saw the teenage fans, the entourage, the excitement, and the madness that followed. At the center of it all was Doug’s special relationship with Sharona Alperin. She was 17 years old in 1978 when Doug met her, and he was 25 when he wrote the song that would become one of the defining hits of the era, “My Sharona.” I traveled to see the band in San Francisco and Miami. It was fun, glamorous, ridiculous, and completely real. Don Fagenson became Don Was, co-founder of Was (Not Was) with David Weiss, both classmates of mine from Oak Park, both talented creative partners. Don Was quickly became one of the most respected producers in America. He went on to win six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year in 1990 for Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time and Producer of the Year in 1994. Don became president and chief creative officer of Blue Note Records, one of the great jazz labels in history, in 2012. Last summer in San Francisco, I saw him perform with his new band, The Pan Detroit Ensemble, and during that weekend he received a lifetime achievement honor from SFJAZZ. We were able to spend some time together after the show and it reminded me of that wonderful history we shared and all the places he still frequents in the Motown where we all grew up. Not bad for a kid who got into The Royal Jammers because he knew one more chord than I did. Don Was and the author at the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 2025 Looking back, it all seems laughable and touching at the same time. Oak Park, Bar Mitzvahs, $5 gigs, melodicas, make-out parties, mothers driving boys with guitars, and the mysterious cultural power of Jewish suburban adolescence. We were not trying to change the world. We were trying to get through the weekend, get paid, play loud enough to be noticed, and maybe catch the eye of a girl across the room. But there was something real inside all of that youthful noise. The boys I played with all went on, in one way or another, to find success in their own lives and in their own chosen directions. Some became famous, some became accomplished in ways far from the stage, but I think that all of us carried something from that Oak Park world, a certain confidence, humor, drive, and belief that you could make something happen if you just stepped forward and played your part. Sometimes history starts that way. Sometimes it starts with a fifth-grade teacher, a garage, a few chords, a Bar Mitzvah circuit, and a bunch of boys who think they are already famous. And for a little while, at least in Oak Park, we were. Doug Fieger and the author in Las Vegas at the Knack concert in 2009. Doug passed away from lung cancer the following year at age 57. Rick Fishman of the Martini Brothers Swing Band and a former Royal Jammer, grew up in Oak Park, Mich. He has owned his own retail businesses for close to 50 years. After moving to California in 1976, he founded the LeSportsac franchise in 1978, Traveling Light Stores, and As Time Goes By collectibles stores. For more than 25 years, he has operated ArtDecoCollection.com, now supported by a 7000 square foot brick and mortar showroom by appointment, while currently producing the digital book, Art Deco Resource Guide. https://artdecocollection.com/art-deco-resource-guide/

By Marilyn Mars / Santa Fe, New Mexico Have you ever thought about what you keep in the dark? Maybe it’s old love letters stashed away in your attic or the memory of a time when you knew you needed to speak up but chose not to. Maybe it’s an emotional grief that you pushed past, never allowing the feelings to come to the surface. Bringing these things into the light could create an emotional upheaval, so naturally you bury them, or put them behind closed doors, creating a stagnancy somewhere in your life. As a clutter-clearing expert, I see no distinction between hiding parts of ourselves, whether emotional, mental or spiritual, and actual physical clutter in our homes. Our homes mirror us, reflecting our stories, interests, beliefs, values, and even the things we hide. They can even reveal how we feel about ourselves. Think about all the things we store away: photographs of times gone by, a deceased loved one’s possessions, sentimental items in boxes, and clothes that no longer fit. These are not the things we display prominently for others to see. I worked with a woman I’ll call Annie. She had an insight that prompted me to write this article. Annie was surprised and curious why she and her home felt so much lighter after we clutter-cleared all of the things hidden from sight. Her goal was to be able to express her feelings more freely with the people in her life. She didn’t want to hide how she truly felt anymore. So, we worked on her closets, cabinets and all the other areas behind closed doors, particularly the areas she doesn’t go into often. We went from item to item as she made decisions about what she wanted in her life and what she didn’t. We focused on what felt true to her at this chapter in her life. She realized much of what was sitting static were items from her past. Things she hadn’t dealt with. When we made room for her to make clear decisions on each item, allowing her to feel what she had suppressed, Annie began to breathe easier. She was on her way to letting go of emotions that she had long buried. .When we avoid or hide things, it affects us. Whether an item is visible or behind closed doors, on some level we feel it. Your subconscious mind knows all of the undecided things that continually nag at you. This is a topic close to my heart. I grew up in a setting that encouraged suppression and hiding aspects of myself. It’s taken many decades for me to be able to stay present with myself, speak my truth, and take a lot of pauses as I smile at my humanity. As a result, clutter-clearing has become a lifestyle for me. There’s a connection between my mental wellbeing and my environment. I choose what I want around me as I change and grow Our willingness to feel why we hold onto things can help us choose more freely what we want in our lives and what we don’t. If you’d like to breathe a little easier, I invite you to tackle an area that’s been hidden away. Before you begin, take a moment to notice how you feel. I recommend you start with a small, less emotionally fraught area. Here are a few questions to help you get started: When did you last use or enjoy this item? Does it help you or hinder you in your life at this time? Do you get a full-body YES from that item that you want it in your life? Most importantly, pay attention to how you feel as you go through your belongings. Notice your breathing, your posture and any other sensations you experience. After you’ve completed this small area, keep your awareness on your feelings. I’m challenging the notion that out of sight means out of mind. Clutter-clear a dark area and bring it into the light. As a wise teacher once told me, don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. Marilyn Mars is a clutter-clearing expert and educator, whose passion is discovering the underlying reasons why we hold on to things that no longer serve us in our current lives, Marilyn has worked one-on-one with clients around the country for 15 years and teaches virtual classes year-round. A native of Long Island, N.Y, she took a road trip to Santa Fe in 2001, fell in love with the mountains and decided to stay. She and her husband Guillermo are dedicated hikers. www.marilynmars.com

By Jeffrey D. Sachs / En Route Seven hundred fifty years ago, a Venetian 17-year-old set off east and didn’t come home for a quarter of a century. Marco Polo left the Venetian lagoon in 1271 with his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo — three merchants on horseback bound, eventually, for the court of Kublai Khan. Their expedition ran on one horsepower per traveler. Our troupe of four — my wife Sonia, our friend Patrick Zhong, his son Jimmy, and me — has just set out along that same road east, where West meets East along the ancient Silk Route. I won’t pretend we’re roughing it the way young Marco did. Our caravan is an all-electric BYD Denza, and the top models in that line reach an astonishing 1,582 horsepower in one quiet and smooth ride. But strip away the horsepower and the seven and a half centuries, and the journey is the same: curiosity pointed firmly eastward, a belief that the surest road to peace runs through human encounters, and a long line of strangers who turn into new friends around the second cup of tea. We call it the Marco Polo Drive of Peace, Culture, and Sustainable Development — 12 countries, 15,000 kilometers, 43 days, from Rome to Hong Kong. We began, fittingly, in the Eternal City, home of the Papacy, because like the Polos before us, we are carrying a message from the Pope eastward, in our case Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, a plea for peace and for the wise and humane use of our powerful new technologies. The Polos once ferried messages between Pope Gregory X and Kublai Khan across a divided world. The aim, it turns out, has not changed all that much over 750 years. From Rome we pointed the car north, and in Bologna we stopped to charge — and here the 21st century announced itself with a flourish. Using BYD’s “flash charge” and its remarkable Blade batteries, we charged to 97.5 percent in under nine minutes, before our espresso arrived. Marco Polo measured his progress in seasons and mountain passes; we measure ours in minutes at the charger, and in the remarkable ease of crossing Eurasia without burning a drop of oil. This, in short, is a main message of the trip: that the green technologies now arriving can serve humanity, knit us closer together, and lighten our environmental footprint all at once. As I write, we are rolling toward Venice — the Polos’ own hometown, the city from which their journey began and to which, a quarter century later, they returned. From there our route turns to Croatia and Serbia, Bulgaria and Türkiye, across the Caucasus into Georgia and Azerbaijan, over the Caspian into Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan — Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, names that still host travels across the steppes — and then finally into China, to Xi’an and Shanghai and Shenzhen, ending in Hong Kong in late July. Several governments have prepared a warm welcome for us, and we look forward to sitting with political, business and cultural leaders along the way — and, just as eagerly, with students, drivers, shopkeepers, and the young people who are inheriting this interconnected world. Our firm desire is not only to talk but to listen. For those who’d like to come along, I’ll be teaching an online course as we drive — a moving classroom on the history of the Silk Road, on sustainable development, and on the old, stubborn, necessary idea that nations are far better off cooperating than colliding. You can sign up through the SDG Academy; the road is open to anyone with a curious mind. The sign-up page is here: https://sdgacademy.org/course/the-marco-polo-drive/ I return to one core belief as the kilometers tick by. Many so-called geopolitical strategists and politicians argue that the civilizations of East and West are fated to clash rather than cooperate. Marco Polo knew better. At the far end of the longest road to the East, he found not enemies but a brilliant, sophisticated civilization eager to trade ideas as readily as goods. The Silk Road has never been a single thread, much less a wall. The Silk Road from ancient times has been a vast network of interconnection. Globalization is a mark of civilization, from ancient times to our own era. Let us work for a globalization of peace, the harmony of diverse cultures, and sustainable development for all of today’s young people, the Marco and Maria Polo’s of the 21st century. Our Denza hums where the Polos' horses once plodded. The encyclical we carry has a new title, but the message is the same: if we meet face to face, peace stops being an abstraction or formula, and becomes a daily reality and joy. More soon, from somewhere further east. You can follow the trip on social media: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/orULhtZKuac Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/18Z61NqMNz/ INS: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYfGb9djXPW/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@projectmarcopolo/video/7641262493460860193 X: https://x.com/themppofficial/status/2056405221429948777 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/silkroad-documentary-themarcopoloproject-ugcPost-7462170494323126272-JslJ? Jeffrey Sachs has been traveling since his parents opened his eyes to the wider world more than 65 years ago. In addition to being University Professor at Columbia University, he is widely known to flight crews and airport lounges. A flight attendant recently asked, “Dr. Sachs, have your really flown 2 million miles on our airline?” He didn’t know for sure, but it is likely. This is his first long-distance electric vehicle trip. He and wife Dr. Sonia Sachs have visited all and worked in almost all the 12 countries on the route, but they very much look forward to connecting these wonderful sites along the Silk Road.

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By Andy Borowitz June 15, 2026 Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Taking his milestone birthday in stride, on Sunday Donald J. Trump told reporters, “I may be eighty, but I have the brain of a four-year-old.” “People who think I’m too old should take a look at this UFC fight,” he argued. “That’s an idea that could only come from a four-year-old’s mind.” Trump said his self-assessment was corroborated by doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, who told him at his most recent exam that his cognition had scored at a four-year-old level. In the first official act of his ninth decade, the president renamed RFK Jr. “The Donald J. Trump Robert F. Kennedy Junior.”

By Laurence Lerman / New York City Clark Gable helps Vivien Leigh keep her chin up in Gone with the Wind (1939) SCREEN TIME In just a few weeks, the United States will celebrate its 250th birthday—a milestone certain to inspire no shortage of speeches, retrospectives, and arguments about what the country has been, what it is, and what it ought to become. At a moment when Americans seem divided over everything from history and politics to patriotism itself, even a birthday can feel like a battleground. The movies tell that story well. The Ku Klux Klan was a poisonous force in post-Civil War America in The Birth of a Nation (1915) For more than a century, American films have helped the country imagine itself. From the distorted historical vision of The Birth of a Nation to the democratic idealism of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, from the disillusionment of Easy Rider to the entrepreneurial aspirations of The Social Network, these films reveal a nation continually revising its own story. America never arrived at a final version—it simply kept changing the narrative. The Myth America's earliest movie myths were often as revealing for what they omitted as what they celebrated. No film demonstrates that more starkly than The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith's technically groundbreaking but deeply racist 1915 epic, which helped shape popular perceptions of American history while promoting a profoundly distorted view of it. By 1939, Hollywood was offering competing visions of the nation. Gone with the Wind presented a sweeping, romanticized version of the Old South, while Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington celebrated democratic idealism and the belief that integrity could still triumph over corruption. Taken together, the films reveal an America already arguing with itself over history, identity, and national purpose. Long before Hollywood began questioning the country's assumptions, it helped create them. The Doubt By the 1950s and 1960s, America's cinematic self-confidence was beginning to fray. The myths remained powerful, but filmmakers increasingly seemed interested in testing them rather than celebrating them. Gary Cooper stands alone in High Noon (1952) High Noon marked an early turning point. On its surface, Fred Zinneman’s 1952 effort is a classic Western about courage. Beneath that, though, lies a pointed allegory about the Hollywood blacklist, with screenwriter Carl Foreman transforming the town's unwillingness to stand beside Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) into a critique of those who remained silent during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the decade. The end of the world approaches in Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) The doubts only deepened. Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb treated Cold War leadership as a theater of absurdity, questioning whether the people entrusted with civilization's survival were any more rational than the rest of us. Dennis Hopper’s 1969 road drama Easy Rider challenged another cherished belief: that freedom and individuality would inevitably be rewarded. Al Pacino (l.) and Marlon Brando keep it in the family in The Godfather (1972) Then came 1972’s The Godfather, which reframed the American Dream in darker, more transactional terms. Its criminal empire feels unmistakably American—not because it celebrates corruption, but because it asks uncomfortable questions about how power, wealth, and legitimacy are acquired in the first place. If earlier films imagined virtue and success moving hand in hand, Francis Ford Coppola’s masterwork suggested the relationship between them might be far more complicated. The Fracture Moving further into the Seventies, doubt was giving way to something deeper. The question was no longer whether America's institutions, values, and assumptions could withstand scrutiny. It was whether they had been hiding something all along. Leatherface gets his point across in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) Released in 1974, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre transformed the American landscape into a cinematic nightmare. Made on a shoestring budget by filmmaker Tobe Hooper, the movie arrived amid post-Vietnam disillusionment, economic uncertainty, and a growing sense that the country's best days were behind it. Its rough, rural horrors felt less supernatural than homegrown—and beyond control—as if the darkness had always been there, waiting just beyond the horizon. Dustin Hoffman (l.) and Robert Redford take on Watergate in All the President's Men (1976) Two years later, Alan Pakula’s All the President's Men brought a similar anxiety into the halls of power. The Watergate scandal exposed corruption at the highest levels of government and shattered public trust in institutions that earlier films had largely taken for granted. An unhinged Dennis Hopper shows Isabella Rosselini an evening she won’t forget in Blue Velvet (1986) And then there was Blue Velvet. David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece begins with one of the most iconic images of American innocence ever put on film: white picket fences, red roses, manicured lawns, and small-town tranquility. If The Texas Chain Saw Massacre suggested that the nightmare was out there somewhere, Blue Velvet proposed something even more unsettling—that it might be hiding in the backyard. The Reckoning The myths never disappeared—they just became harder to accept. The national story remained intact, but its cracks were becoming harder to ignore. Brooklyn smolders in Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing confronted one of America's oldest and most persistent realities: race. Set on a single Brooklyn block during the hottest day of the summer, the film refuses easy heroes, villains, or solutions. More than three decades later, its arguments about community, power, and belonging remain unresolved. No Country for Old Men offered a different kind of reckoning. The Coen brothers' 2007 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel follows a sheriff struggling to understand a world that no longer seems to operate according to familiar rules. Whether the country has changed or merely revealed what it has always been remains unclear. Jessie Eisenberg plays Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) Then came The Social Network, which gave one of America's oldest myths a distinctly 21st-century form. In the eyes and words of director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, the frontier has become Silicon Valley. Reinvention, ambition, and self-creation remain central to the national story, but now they unfold through algorithms rather than railroads. The Unfinished Story Taken together, these films reveal not a single American story but a succession of competing visions—about race and democracy, freedom and power, innocence and corruption. They are less a timeline than an argument, one that has played out on American screens for more than a century. That may be the real lesson on the eve of America's 250th birthday. The country has spent 250 years debating who it is. The movies have simply left a remarkable record of that conversation. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist and a former editor of Video Business--Variety's digital media trade publication. Over the course of his four-decade career, he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major filmmaker working today, from Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Clint Eastwood to Kathryn Bigelow, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Werner Herzog. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com, the founder and curator of FilmShul.com, a multi-part presentation on the history of Hollywood and Jewish America, and a commentator on various 4K UHD and Blu-ray home entertainment releases.

By Judi Markowitz / Huntington Woods, Mich. The patriarch who turned away My grandfather, Chiel Flasterstein, never acknowledged my dad as his legitimate son. There was no proof to justify this claim. My dad was born in 1916, in Janowa, Poland, after my grandfather left the country to find his fortune in America. My grandmother, Minnie (Minucha) discovered she was pregnant after his departure, and wrote to Chiel once she knew his location. Combining his travel time by boat and the slow delivery of mail, Minnie’s letters eventually reached my grandfather long after my dad was born; thus, producing unfounded doubt. Minnie and Chiel had two sons before he decided to leave his family and undertake the perilous journey to America. They had a profitable farm, but Chiel thought he could do better. 1926 Passport photo. Grandma Minnie with her three sons: (top left) Morris; (bottom left) Benjamin, the author's father, who later changed his name to Robert/Bob; and (right) Oscar Dreams of becoming a successful businessman took hold of Chiel’s mind. He bought into the stories that promised an affluent lifestyle awaiting those who ventured to America. According to the lore at the time, the country was overflowing with wealth and the streets were said to be paved in gold. The author's great-grandfather Avraham in 1926 This fantasy lured my grandfather to an unknown land, placing the responsibility for the farm, and now, three young children, squarely on my grandmother’s shoulders. It was a burden beyond comprehension, but one that she met with determination. As it turned out, Chiel’s dreams never came to fruition. He landed in Pittsburgh, and wound up hustling dry goods for a living. It was a far cry from being a successful owner of a farm, but he was determined. My grandfather worked for 10 years in order to secure passage for his family to sail to America. My great-grandfather even accompanied them on the journey. My dad finally met his father, when he was 10 years old. From that day on, my dad was treated like an inconvenience due to my grandfather’s relentless doubts about his legal place in the family. These thoughts lingered in my grandfather’s mind until his death. I can’t fathom the depth of the hurt and disappointment my dad endured throughout his life. From time to time, my dad shared childhood memories about his father. He told me that my grandfather kept a small notebook and pencil in his shirt pocket to keep track of business dealings. Every time my dad asked him for a nickel or dime, my grandfather would record it and expect repayment in a timely fashion. As the mistreatment continued through the years, my dad decided to leave his family’s home. His brother and sister-in-law opened their home to him. The author's father, Bob Foster, a proud volunteer in WWII at 27 years old He was in the Battle of the Bulge, worked as an interpreter and drove a tank. When my dad was in his 20s, he decided that his birth name did not reflect who he wanted to be. Having never liked it, he chose to leave behind the name Benjamin and adopted the more American-sounding Robert Foster. (His friends and his family called him Bob.) His brothers soon followed his lead, changing their surnames to Foster as well. Shaped by the wounds of childhood, my dad grew into the exact opposite of my grandfather. As a child, whenever I asked my dad for money, he readily handed it over. In fact, he never expected me to return any leftover change after making my purchases. When I offered, he would say, “Keep it.” My grandfather’s attitude toward my dad had a far-reaching impact, creating a ripple effect that extended to my siblings and me. My sister Gayle, my brother Alan, and I grew up without truly knowing our grandparents. Granted, they only spoke Yiddish, but language shouldn’t have been a barrier from giving an occasional hug or even a kiss. Bob and Marian Foster doing what they loved the most–spending time with their grandchildren. It was a daily ritual for both of them. The author with her daughter Lindsay. Todd, one of her sons, being held by Grandma. We were kept at an arm’s length and simply didn’t realize the void they created until much later in our lives. We naturally assumed this was their usual behavior with all of their grandchildren. But the opposite was occurring right under our unsuspecting eyes. This became abundantly clear a few years ago while at a family dinner. My cousin, Mel, was reminiscing about his Bar Mitzvah and broke out the photo album for a walk down memory lane. When a picture of our grandmother appeared, my cousin spoke about his warm relationship with our grandparents. He then confided that he was very close to our grandmother and they shared a deep and loving connection. This revelation blew me away. I was mystified and immediately felt that the legacy of “The Little Bastard” had left its mark on us. After listening to these stories, my sister and I asked Mel if we grew up in two different families. My brother chimed in and said, “I didn’t even know those people.” I recall the slights my mom and dad endured because of our grandfather’s attitude. One was quite pronounced; his two brothers were given money to purchase homes, and my dad received $50. It was a slap in the face. My mother never got over this hurtful act and spoke of it often. My dad, on the other hand, appeared to have compartmentalized the pain and carried on. In retrospect, my dad was an apt pupil. He mustered through the turmoil and chaos of his own childhood and learned life lessons about family from the disfunction he witnessed and paid them forward. I recall visiting my grandparents on Sunday mornings after going shopping with my dad and bringing groceries to their house. We would visit for a short while and the only interaction I received was a brief glance in my direction. My dad worked hard for our family and gave beyond his means. He would leave the house before 5 a.m. for work but never skipped a beat to kiss me and my sister goodbye. I always felt that peck on my cheek, even though he thought I was asleep. Bob Foster, the author's father, happily retired in 1984 And when his eight grandchildren came on the scene, my dad embraced the opportunity to share his warmth and devotion. He never stopped giving and I am proud that all of his grandchildren still talk about him and share their special memories. My dad passed away in 2001 and left behind strong bonds. Unlike his father, my dad was present and showed up every single day for the family. Miraculously, "The Little Bastard" survived the taunts made by his father and managed to come out on the other side as a man who was respected and loved deeply by his family. Judi Markowitz is a retired high school English teacher of 34 years. She primarily taught twelfth grade and had the pleasure of having her three sons grace her classes. In addition, she taught debate, forensics, and Detroit film. Judi has four adult children and nine wonderful and energetic grandchildren. She is married to Jeffrey Markowitz, whom she met in high school. They now spend much of their time running around with their grandkids. The View from Four Foot Two is Judi’s first book.

By Bonnie Fishman / Palo Alto, Calif. My first chemotherapy treatment My family has a few expressions that are so fitting for my circumstances now–the journey of a stem cell transplant to cure an aggressive form of lymphoma. We say, “You have NO idea!” Or “You don’t know the half of it!” And if it’s really, really awful, and I want to walk away and not deal with the whole mess, I say, “I just can’t!” My genetically engineered cells being transfused back into my body On April 17, at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, my T-cells were removed from my blood and shipped off to a lab in New Jersey, so that they could be genetically modified in order to kill off my cancer cells. On May 16, I began chemotherapy for three days to weaken the cancer cells. Then the modified cells were returned to my body through an infusion in my chest by catheter on May 21. All very sci-fi. This was the beginning of Bonnie-in-a Bubble isolation. During my two-week hospital stay, the engineered cells were busy multiplying and “eating” the cancer cells. Sounds pretty easy, huh? Au contraire. You have NO idea! I felt like I got hit by a truck. While my body was busy attacking the enemy, I had a high fever, I ached all over, I had neurotoxicity where I was confused, I couldn’t remember what you might have told me an hour ago, I had terrible tremors, and I could hardly get out of bed. Did I leave anything out? I couldn’t type, think, read, do puzzles or basically feed myself. You don’t know the half of it! As far as eating goes, I was on an unrestricted diet. Patients could order whatever they wanted from 6 am to 8 pm. The menu was quite extensive, particularly for a hospital. I learned how to dodge food that I knew was going to be inedible. I zeroed in on safe choices. Breakfast was steel-cut oats, cottage cheese, and blueberries. Every day for two weeks. Rule No. 1: don’t drink the coffee. I had Starbucks delivered after breakfast! The sign outside my hospital room door. This is who I am. My usual choices for dinner were mac ’n’ cheese, peas, and hamburgers. I kept it simple. Boring, yet simple. It didn’t really matter because I had no appetite anyway. Finally, after two weeks in the hospital, I was cleared to go “home,” to a one--bedroom suite in a nearby hotel where I live in isolation with a caregiver for the next 2 1/2 weeks. My caregiver rotation has been my sisters, my husband, my cousin Carol from Minneapolis, and my lifelong friend, Elissa. The point of not being able to go to my real home is that transplant patients need to be close to the hospital in case something goes awry and they need to get medical help quickly. Also, every three days I’ve been visiting the cancer clinic for labs, vitals, consultations. Last Monday, my sister Marcia and I were assigned a treatment room in the furthest hallway, in the last room. We had already been waiting in the reception area to get in there since 3:15 pm. Now it was 4:30 pm. We waited and waited. At 5:45 pm, the PA came in very apologetics They had forgotten about us. It was a miscommunication between two PAs. It was so late that I was getting ready to order pizza! A typical hospital dinner––a salmon taco, mac 'n’ cheese, peas. The mac ’n cheese was not half bad! I’ve been settled in at the hotel since June 11, but I’m planning on going home on Thursday, June 18. The highlight of my day is ordering food from Grubhub, something I’ve never done before because I rarely eat out or get food brought in. I’m so much happier cooking for Bob and me at home, AND the meals are much better. The good news about the deliveries here is that Palo Alto has some great restaurants. It has the most diverse ethnic food imaginable, from Burmese to Persian to Thai to Indian to dumpling houses. Unusual tacos? Wonderful salads? Phenomenal grilled sandwiches? Seafood restaurants? Palo Alto has it all. We’ve managed to mix it up and try everything. I have another week of isolation. It’s been lonely for sure. I physically don’t feel normal yet. A stem cell transplant is brutal on your body, so it will take weeks if not months to regain my strength. My brain is still foggy and I can’t string thoughts together. I have trouble processing what someone is telling me. So not my style! All that being said, I’m grateful for the opportunity to have had this treatment. Out of all the people in this country who would benefit from the transplant, only 20 percent get it. Some of these people know about it, while others live in an area where it’s not available. I’m hoping I will be cured and I’m done with four years of dealing with cancer. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

By Lydia Hope Wilen / New York City & Stan Fischler / North Golan Heights, Israel The Maven Counts The Ways: Why do I love Lydia Hope Wilen? Her voice is softly silken like a muted trombone. She not only talks tachles; she knows what it means. Her sense of humor is a curious blend of Robert Benchley, S.J. Perelman and Henny Youngman. Lyd and her sister Joany wrote more practical self-help books than Dr. Ruth. She worked for Dr. Ruth, so there's absolutely nothing I can teach her about eagles and honeybees. Nobody–not even Travis Green who coined my handle–ever says "Hey Mave" more affectionately than my Lyd-ee. Unfortunately, she knows 70.7 percent of my jokes and listens so attentively that I never mind when she delivers the punch line two seconds before I start my exhale. Lyd is the only person in captivity who bought my book Tales of Brooklyn, read it cover to cover and then told me "I love you and your book." (That saved her from doing the obligatory book report.) When she laughs it has the pungency of Good Health Seltzer and the liveliness of a grasshopper. Hungarian grandma, Etel Friedman, warned me against loving a Litvak but she didn’t know Lyd. We're so much on the same page about comedy that when I told Lyd to watch Tin Men and Diner, she was shooting dialogue at me faster than the Lucky Strike auctioneer. I love Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Al Bowlly and The Great Jimmy Durante, and that's Lyd's weakness now. When my sweetheart says, "I Love You Mave" THAT is that thing called LOVE! Lyd's the only one who ever let this monotone sing a love song from start to "Red Sails in the Sunset" finish and made me believe that she loved it. Lyd knows I love hockey; she didn't know from it when we met, so she gave it a try; made me feel good and watched a few playoff games. "Puck is too small, goes too fast and I can't follow it. Sorry." I love her 'cause she didn't bullshit me! She did suggest that the hockey puck be replaced by a hamantaschen. It would be easier to see. Confession: I've been a "Leg Man" since my 582 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn days. The minute I got a look at my lover's gams on a photo taken when she was in the movie Network with William Holden, my temperature zipped past "heat wave" and beyond. A look at Lydia's legs or Network's Girl with the Gams Since I love her so much, I can only get mildly pissed that she's reluctant to wear that hot dress she wore in that movie and still has and says it still fits. It's gotta be love if I'm left smiling after we hang up on the phone. I would have loved her folks because singing, dancing and just off-the-cuff funning was part of their DNA. She's a good healthy devotee in such a nice way, you get the warm feeling that The Great Lyd is your private nurse. Not many gals would almost kvell over The Hoosier Hotshots singing, "I Love Bananas Because They Have No Bones." There's a tune, "You Make Me Feel So Young." Many times I get the feeling that it was composed with me and Lyddy in mind. Put it this way, Lydia Hope Wilen makes me feel loved just as the tune says, "Come Rain or Come Shine.” And if you think this Cupid caper of mine is direct from the heart, well -- as my dad liked to say, "I don't mean 'maybe' either.'' Lydia’s Turn: Long-Distance Love I’m going to be telling you personal things that I probably shouldn’t be writing. Ah, but who are you going to tell, huh? Daylight Maven Time It is seven hours later in Israel than it is in NYC. When I go to sleep at 11 p.m., Stan is waking up at 6 a.m. Want to hear romantic? Lately, he wakes up at about 5 a.m., calls me with his soft, sexy, sleepy voice and sings a few lines from a wonderful old love song and then he goes back to finish his night/morning sleep. And I go to bed with a smile. By that time, I will have sent Stan emails that will be waiting for him when he goes online in his morning. When I get up in my morning, I have his answers to my emails waiting for me. I’ve been getting up earlier than usual these days. Hmm. One of my emails is Stan’s idea of a getting-to-know-you “Question of the Day.” I ask tough questions that Stan never not answers and his answers lead me to say to him: “Who but you?” Q & A example If, every time you entered a room, there would be theme music, what would that music be? Stan’s answer: “Semper Paratus” (Always Ready), the United States Coast Guard motto and march. Do you know anyone who is not in the Coast Guard that would have that as an answer? I don’t. Well, now I do. Another Q & A example What word would you turn to in the dictionary to find a picture of you illustrating that word? This hockey maven, writer, reporter, historian, musicologist, mentor, dad, grandfather, podcast prince (and more I’m sure) says that if you find his picture in the dictionary, it would be next to the word dreamer. DREAMER! Stan never stops surprising me. Telephone Tsouris Don’t get me started when it comes to Spectrum, my landline provider. For weeks, it was telephone torture and three technicians testing equipment, replacing the modem, updating whatever could be updated. Nothing helped. Talk Is Cheap – Ah Now A few times I splurged and called Stan on my cellphone at $2 a minute. When I mentioned it to a friend, he made me aware of WhatsApp. What’s Up with WhatsApp? The microphone is at the bottom of my phone, beneath the keyboard.. The speaker where Stan’s voice comes through, is at the top of the phone. Matt, the Insider’s tech whiz, suggested a headphone to prevent carpel tunnel syndrome from having to turn the phone back and forth during our conversations. That should happen by the time you read this. Music Maven in Addition to Hockey Maven Mave’s romantic and sometimes weird songs were all born before 1960…same as us. We all know wonderful old songs, but you ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Here are some unusual titles on Stan’s playlist: “Since They Stole the Spittoon from the Corner Saloon, The Guys Can’t Go Pitooey Anymore” “Celery Stalks at Midnight” “Who Ate Napoleons with Josephine When Bonaparte Was Away” Oops! I’m past my word allowance and I haven’t even gotten to Stan’s references, requests, joke-telling, and our attempt at sexting. Maybe next month. For now, I’ll end with Rhyme Time "The Raven" The Maven For Better or For Verse Stan is affectionate, supportive, and kind He’s exceptionally bright with an eidetic mind. A total mensch is Stan the Man, He makes people laugh like no one else can. This poem is far from Poe's classic “The Raven” ‘Cause it isn’t Poe who is cravin' the Maven. Lydia Hope Wilen began her professional career as a comedy writer on Personality, a celebrity-driven game show. Her greatest gig was her extremely successful collaboration with her late sister Joany as nonfiction bestselling authors (18 books), which led to the sisters becoming popular TV personalities. They continued as journalists (NY Daily News Sunday full-page feature, Celebrity Surveys for Cosmopolitan Magazine, cover stories for Parade Magazine) and got the opportunity to write and talent coordinate a Nickelodeon series hosted by Leonard Nimoy. The Wilens had an unusually versatile writing range from Reading Rainbow episodes, to off-color comedy skits for Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s TV show, Sexually Speaking, plus three optioned screenplays. And that's just for starters . . . Stan was gifted with a silver hockey stick when inducted into the USA Hockey Hall of Fame by the Islanders in 2020 Stanley I. Fischler (born March 31, 1932) is an American historian of hockey and the New York City subway, as well as a broadcaster, author of over 100 books, and professor. As a broadcaster with MSG, Fischler has won seven Emmy Awards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Fischler)

By Susan Senator / Boston The house when we first bought it with our son, Nat, in the driveway. The Door to Nowhere is on the first floor. I live in a dream house, but it’s also a nightmare house. It is an 1880s Victorian that we restored—and I use that term loosely, because a lot of it is still the way it was 140 years ago. (We ran out of money.) For me, the house has everything I had ever dreamed of: nine-foot ceilings, six fireplaces, an elaborate arch over a large window seat; original woodwork everywhere; a small, curved hobbit door to the kitchen. And the pièce de résistance? A floor-to-ceiling Palladian window on the landing of the main staircase. I have often joked that the house is like a very old, dear relative—very infirm, needs a lot of love and attention, but part of our lives, nonetheless. The Hobbit Door leading out of the kitchen I always wanted a house like this, having grown up in a 1970s suburban Colonial. But be careful what you wish for. Even during the final walk-through, I could see through my rose-colored glasses that there was a lot of work to be done, but that long arched window in the staircase said, “don’t look at that old wallpaper, look at me!” Maybe I should have examined that window. But more about that later. Most old house problems do not simply disappear with paint. Still, we found ways to deal with some of the larger issues, such as new roof and cedar siding. Termites and wisteria had pulled down the entire back deck, which ran around 20 feet from the side porch to a door off the playroom (or parlor). Without the deck, this useless parlor door leads to outside air. But we just keep it locked and call it the Door to Nowhere. In any case, we took care of the termites after we experienced a swarm in the basement. There is a little powder room on the first floor, a brick broom closet-sized structure that was added onto the house in 1913 by the second owner, an elderly woman. How do we know she was elderly? I have inconveniently forgotten the answer. Complete with pull-chain, leaking toilet, we hired a plumber immediately, but he left after a few hours, saying the H-word: Haunted. We laughed at this. To this day, I wish I had asked him what he meant. But that company never returned my calls. But of course, there were no ghosts. No such thing as ghosts. The round wall in the hallway where our son Ben maybe saw the Little Blue Ghost But the first time our favorite babysitter came over was also the last, unfortunately. I tried to find out what she had seen, what had happened, but all she did was shake her head. Then, my youngest started waking me up every night telling me there was a “little blue ghost” scaring him. I was convinced it was somehow the blue fireplug outside his window. But one night I wandered over to the round wall by the back stairs and something kind of flew by. Was it a car light? Sure, it was! But there was no window there to reflect a car light. Every now and then we hear loud clicks at night. My husband Ned, firmly grounded in science, computers, and all things nerdy, reported that these sounds are just the window latches opening on the Palladian window at the top of the staircase. Neither one of us discusses why this would happen. Creaks are one thing, but actual latches being flung open? On a window that is painted shut? Our son Max standing by the Old Lady’s window Still, when it happens, my husband says, “It’s just the window latches,” and I reply, “I’m sure it’s fine.” The wind, an old house, settling, shifting–there’s always a good reason for these things. Silly old house. Except for that morning, about 20 years ago, shortly after we’d moved in. My husband was awake before I was and had gone downstairs to make coffee. He glanced up at the staircase and saw a woman there. He thought it was me. Except for the fact that I don’t wear large hoopskirts. He looked again and she was gone. It’s one thing if I had been the one to see her. I’m the emotional, dreamy, believer-in-astrology member of the family. But it did not happen to me. It happened to Ned. We just kind of laughed about it but was a whistling-past-the-graveyard kind of laugh. I could maybe still shrug it off. But there was that beautiful evening recently when I was sitting on the sunny side porch and I heard someone on the sidewalk below say, “Door to Nowhere.” I got chills and ran outside to meet the person who knew this strange thing about my house. The Pumpkin Room door yawning open, beckoning It turned out she was the former owner’s daughter. She had grown up there. My excitement rose up like balloons as she described what it was like living there. The Door to Nowhere. The strange room off the upstairs bathroom—her uncle had nicknamed it The Pumpkin Room—but no one knew why. It was understood that if she was naughty, she’d be sent to The Pumpkin Room. In my family there is no such threat; we merely try to keep it closed but of course it pops open every so often. And then I asked the woman, “Did you ever see—” We both said it at once: “The Old Lady.” “I never saw her,” the woman told me, “but my brother did.” “My husband did.” We thought about this in silence for a moment, and then I took her on a tour of the house to show her what we had done to it so far. She was duly impressed. I could have ended up feeling completely freaked out, but somehow, I was not. I felt—the only way to describe it is—special. Honored? Because after all, if there is some presence, she is benign. She merely wants the big window open. Well, so do I. And she visits the Pumpkin Room. She thumps a little, clicks a little. I can live with that. Because whether ours is just a finicky, needy old house, or we have a ghost who is finicky and needy, she is our finicky old house ghost and well, sigh, I am never going to sell it. Especially now that I’ve gone public with the whole H-word thing. The back of the house today, looking benign Susan Senator is an author, blogger and journalist living in the Boston area with her husband Ned Batchelder. They have three sons, the oldest of whom is 36 and has profound autism. Ms. Senator is the author of Making Peace With Autism as well as The Autism Mom’s Survival Guide and Autism Adulthood: Insights and Creative Strategies for a Fulfilling Life. A journalist since 1997, she has a column in Psychology Today, and she has published many pieces on parenting, autism, and living happily, in journals like the New York Times, Time magazine, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and NPR. Senator has appeared as a guest on “The Today Show,” MSNBC, ABC News, PBS, NPR and CNN.

By Marion Blank, Ph.D. / New York City An unidentified student stands in front of an archway at Cambridge University in 1957 (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) The year was 1957—a time when ocean liners, not airplanes, were the way one crossed the Atlantic. It was September and I was on a French ship that departed from New York, heading for England. After reaching our destination, we disembarked and continued the journey on a small boat (known as a tender). It would take us to a port on the coast of southern England. As would prove to be a much-repeated experience, a dreary rain was steadily falling. My journey was almost over. The final stop would be Cambridge where I planned to spend my “post-grad gap year.” The bleak scene added to the trepidation I was feeling about my ability to handle the “adventure” I had planned. The author at a family wedding in the 1950s Unfortunately, my first weeks in England only added to my fears. Along with the rain that didn’t seem to stop, my living quarters were far from inviting. When I entered the one-room apartment I had rented (while still on my home side of the Atlantic), it just raised more doubts as to whether I could cope. One of my first questions to my landlord was “Where is the fridge?” The answer was, “There isn’t one. But not to worry. There’s also no heat, so you don’t need a fridge.” Then miraculously, these concerns fell into the background, to be replaced by an incredible world I hadn’t realized existed. Ultimately, it provided a set of experiences that changed my life and my priorities. An Amazing Lack of Bureaucracy At the time my odyssey started, my encounters with books like Dickens' Oliver Twist and plays like My Fair Lady led me to see Britain as a land with rigid social expectations. That view, which was quite accurate, stood in marked contrast to the mobility that characterized the U.S. at that time. Still as I was to discover, the close encounters of everyday life yielded a different, more nuanced picture. Newnham College in the 1950s when the author attended there Among the unexpected experiences were ones involving Anna Freud, the woman thought to be Sigmund Freud’s favorite child. Although her famous father was attuned to seeing the horrendous forces that exist in human beings, he felt certain that Germany was too civilized to succumb to the evils that Hitler might produce. Guided by those mistaken beliefs, the Freud family stayed in Vienna until it was almost too late. When the danger could no longer be denied, the family fled Austria and went to London. There, Anna established what would become the world-famous Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. At that point, Sigmund was too ill to work, but Anna was young, full of ideas and far more down-to-earth than her father. She devoted herself to helping children whose lives had been devastated by World War II. Her work was admired but also controversial. For example, she brought in teachers and caregivers to participate in the therapeutic process—a practice that challenged the traditional patient-doctor model. She also insisted that the clinic be free of any signs that indicated it might be an institution. She set it up to be as close to a home setting as possible. It was a great idea then; it continues to be a great idea now—despite the fact that it is typically ignored. The clinic’s location in London was only about an hour from Cambridge. Deciding to pursue a faint possibility, I wrote Anna Freud a letter asking if I could participate in any of the center’s work. Her response came within a few days, and it welcomed my attending their weekly staff meetings. The ease of the process seems unimaginable in today’s times. My acceptance at the Hampstead Clinic was not unique. The process of entering the doctoral program at Cambridge was almost as smooth. This was to be my “fun, unpressured” year and I had not expected to be a student. But to help with expenses, I got a job as a research assistant for Derek Russell Davis, a kind and caring psychiatrist. He was a man who, far ahead of his time, offered strong support to women in research. He encouraged me to become a doctoral student. He ultimately became my Ph.D. supervisor and the central figure in helping me get a prestigious Pinsent-Darwin Fellowship. Poet Sylvia Plath attended Newnham College at Cambridge from 1955-1957 on a Fulbright scholarship It’s difficult, in today’s problem filled world of student debt, to believe the opportunities that were available during my student days. Prior to Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister of Great Britain, the universities—including Cambridge—were effectively free. So, along with not having to pay tuition, I received financial support. The support was seen as one of the most effective means for creating an educated and productive population. Though it seems long-distant history, for many years, a similar view prevailed in the United States. It ended when Thatcher’s close colleague Ronald Reagan became president and convinced Americans that the "subsidization of intellectual curiosity" had to be ended. As I reflect back on those pre-Reagan/Thatcher years, I continue to be astounded by the simplicity that marked my British experience. Many decades have passed since that time, and I am not familiar with the current situation and its many post-Brexit complications. But for me, the time period was nothing short of miraculous. At the same time, the absence of creature comforts such as heat and refrigeration became a blip that didn’t matter all that much. Women and the University As with so much of life in England, the story of women in Cambridge begins hundreds of years ago. It started in 1209 when the University of Oxford–the preeminent educational institution at the time--went into voluntary suspension following a scandal involving the murder of a local woman. Its scholars dispersed to many places including Cambridge University. It was, of course, a totally male establishment and it stayed that way until 1948, when it became the last British university to admit women. When I arrived in the 1950s, it had 25 colleges—23 for men and two for women. That imbalanced number was still perceived as a threat. Hundreds and even thousands of male students engaged in aggressive, noisy protests against the distaff side of humanity entering their turf. By the time I was there, there were some unanticipated advantages to that state of affairs. The university kept its eyes on the students by requiring them, in the evening, to wear gowns – like the ones worn at graduation. The rule applied to woman as well as men. But the guards who enforced the practice didn’t seem to envision that women could be students. So, even though I never put on my gown, I was never stopped. Primatologist Jane Goodall as a doctoral student in Africa During my time in Cambridge, there were only two women in the psychology department. One was me; the other was Jane Goodall. We also happened to be in Newnham, the same college, but we never met during our Cambridge years. She was off in Africa, laying the foundation for her ground-breaking work. In keeping with the flexibility of the university, her acceptance had been unique. She did not have a bachelor’s degree. However, she did have the backing of Louis Leakey, the world-famous paleoanthropologist. That was all she needed. In describing the situation, she wrote in 2018, “He took me despite my lack of academic credentials — or even because of them as he wanted someone with a mind uncluttered by the reductionist scientific thinking of the time.” The Lectures My undergraduate days in the U.S. were marked by courses one attended several hours each week. Aside from science labs, most courses involved three to four hours of lectures each week. The situation in Cambridge was far different. Each academic year involved three eight-week terms based on the Anglican Church calendar. They were Michaelmas (autumn), Lent (spring), and Easter (summer). The non-lab courses generally involved only a one-hour lecture each week. When I first became aware of this system. I was surprised, and with a touch of American arrogance (that I didn’t think I possessed), quickly deemed “our system” to be superior. My view of this matter did not last long. It changed after I sat in on the lectures of a few of the major faculty. The English readily acknowledge their lack of ease with what is commonly referred to as “the gift of gab;” that is, the ability to be a smooth talker who easily wins people over. However, when it comes to lectures and formal presentations, they cannot be surpassed. One day, I decided to attend the lecture of an historian who was presenting the case for how Cambridge became a powerhouse. At the outset, Oxford was the leading center; Cambridge was in a different league—small, unimportant and underfunded. Then matters changed when King Henry VIII found himself facing a problem. He wanted to divorce the first of what would become six wives, an action that was unacceptable to the Catholic Church. At the time, the faculty and senior members of Cambridge University were predominantly clergymen. So, Henry went to them with a “deal.” If they could come up with an acceptable religious rationale for his obtaining an annulment to end the marriage, he would ensure the prosperity of the University. The clergymen seemed to have no qualms about the morality of the issue they were facing. As the saying goes, “the rest is history.” It’s not surprising to find that a single personal experience can have profound effects. But, like the dropping of the atom bomb, the experience generally has to be unique and dramatic. What is surprising are the major effects that can follow from seemingly unremarkable experiences like the historian’s lecture. It led me to an “ aha moment” that set me on a multi-decade quest to transform the way subjects such as history and science are taught. Instead of being presented as boring, abstract facts, we needed to capture their potential to be phenomenally interesting. That led me to focus a major part of my career into revamping classrooms that turn that potential into reality. Graduation As in other universities, graduation at Cambridge is the final step once a doctoral candidate has completed all the requirements. In many places, the appearance of the graduate is optional and there are no significant consequences for those who forgo the ceremony. That was not the case at Cambridge. A human body had to be present for the degree to be awarded. That body, however, did not have to be the person graduating. There was the option of paying a substitute to stand in for the actual candidate. I had no idea what the ceremony entailed, but there was no way I was going to pay someone to take my place. That decision led me to participate in a scene that could have been part of a movie extravaganza. The ceremony took place at a regular faculty meeting in a large, prestigious hall. A series of issues—all presented in Latin—were raised for the faculty to consider and then vote on. The only words I could make out were in Latin: “placere” (meaning agree) and “non placere” (meaning disagree). The scene was like an ancient Roman market with lots of bargaining and heckling going on. Then, the man who appeared to be the lord of the session and his aide, both in the finest regalia, went to center stage. The aide, speaking in Latin, would bellow out that he had a doctoral candidate to bring forth. When it was my turn, after being granted permission, he led me to the center stage where I was to carry out a set of instructions. They included my having to kneel down and place my hands on the lord’s knees. It was emphasized that when I walked away, just as is required when leaving the monarch, I had to walk backwards. That ensured that the lord would only see my face—and never my backside. Then the show ended. It was a marvelous production. Weird, extravagant, anachronistic—but absolutely marvelous. A Final Reflection During my years at Cambridge, I was not yet familiar with the word “serendipity;” I was also unfamiliar with the idea it represented. It never occurred to me that life could bring happy accidents that miraculously resulted in good fortune. It was only when I returned to the “real world,” that I realized the many encounters I had experienced with that remarkable phenomenon and how fortunate I had been to have had this period at an ideal time in my life. Dr. Marion Blank is a developmental psychologist with a specialization in language-both spoken and written. Her research and clinical work over the course of five decades has led to her recognition as an international authority in literacy, especially for children with developmental challenges. She has held academic positions at Columbia University, Rutgers Medical School, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and as a Visiting Professor at Monash University, Hebrew University, and the University of London. As the creator and director of Columbia’s Light on Literacy Program, she pioneered innovative, evidence-based approaches to teach reading to children with autism—including those who were thought to be non-verbal. Dr. Blank is the recipient of numerous national and international awards for her contributions to education and child development. Her new book, Brilliance Unleashed, will be published in June 2026.

By Sienna Sachs Beck / New York City The author outside of the United Nations on April 24. She was there with her MUN delegation to attend a special meeting of the General Assembly commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. In late October, 2024, I got a one-sided, large-font permission slip telling me to go to Room 324 during my lunch period. I knew what it was. I’d known even before I’d been at the school. My junior high school, Booker T. Washington (MS 54), is quite well known for its MUN program. That’s Model United Nations, an educational program with hundreds of thousands of participants worldwide. [Editor: UN sources have cited more than 200,000 annually, while some educational estimates put participation above 400,000.] Here, we call ourselves MUNchkins, because our conference day breakfast is six dozen Dunkin donuts. We function way differently than your average MUN, though. MUN is not a club. It’s not a team. The word to describe it is a commitment. All 60 of us get to school at 7:45 a.m. every single day, whereas normal school starts at 8:40 a.m. Each week, we give up three of our five lunch periods to talk, debate, and work. We give up many of our weekends for writing and conferences. It’s the best (and most time-consuming thing!) that’s ever happened to me. We begin the year by focusing on current events and seeing where the flow of conversation takes us. It is the most genuinely open space in which I’ve ever been privileged enough to participate. It’s the kind of place where, stimulated by the moment, you can slip up and say something so morally wrong, and people will yell at you while giving you hugs and tissues. True story! It’s the one place I can share all of my opinions and not be censored in any way. Around this time, our MUN newsletter also opens up. It’s called The Gazette, and it’s shared via Google Docs to all of us daily. Towards the middle of MUN, the eighth grade is divided into several groups. Each group is presented with a current or historical dilemma. These include situations like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the current state of India, the situation in Nepal or the fall of the U.S.S.R. Once a slideshow is created and research has been done in extraordinary depth, the topics are presented, pondered, ranked and voted on by the entire delegation. The highest-ranked topic becomes the one that the delegation pours its heart and soul into for at least two to three months. My 7th grade year in MUN, it was El Salvador, and the two sides of the debate were pro-Salvadoran President Bukele and anti-Bukele. The position papers were over 25 pages long. This year, it’s been the Democratic Republic of the Congo–with a focus on the cobalt mining methods, sales, and child labor rates, and foreign-owned mines there. We spend a few months doing intense research and debating with each other, which often leads into screaming matches that end in hugs. At the end of that period of time, two days in the end of March or early April, we stay two hours after school and present the position papers, usually extremely professional and long! Oreos are provided–a necessity. Once this part of MUN is over, we begin preparations for our conferences. Here is where traditional MUN starts–we are assigned a country, a committee, and a topic. In the four conferences I have been to, my countries have been Nigeria, Ukraine, Colombia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines Islands. Before writing the papers, we spend hours and hours on end reading from websites, collecting information on our topics. Once we have a deep enough understanding, we begin to write the position papers. These range anywhere from one to ten-plus pages, but this is just the first draft. Then, we get comments on our papers from our MUN advisor. Usually, we require anywhere from four to twelve drafts until it has everything it could need in it. These are anywhere from 2-12 pages. Then, we create our bibliographies, which have a minimum of 35 sources. At this point, we are super close to our conference, the climax and ending of MUN. By two weeks before conference weekend, we are reading opening speeches in front of everybody on the delegation. We also read update papers from our dais, preparing conference note templates, as well as any other background information one might need. Then it’s conference weekend. You know how they say time flies? I say that time teleports. One moment it’s there, the next moment it’s gone. The conference weekend this year was from April 24-26, taking place in the Millenium Hilton, right across the street from the United Nations. We all gather from 7:15-8 a.m., at the Time Warner Center in Colombus Circle. Dunkin’ Donuts are served, hence, MUNchkins. We all assemble and talk and argue and have final checks to make sure we have everything for the conference. Once everyone is accounted for, we take the subway to Grand Central Station, then walk to the U.N., where we hand out IDs and change into our conference shoes. Then, we go to the Millenium Hilton nearby for the conference. The conference itself lasts anywhere from two to eight hours per day for three days. It consists of moderated caucuses (specific amounts of time with a specific speaker’s time on a specific topic), unmoderated caucuses (kind of like free time), bloc forming (forming alliances to start working on working papers), voting (which draft resolution should be the one of the committee session), and amending (kind of like compromising the resolution for a final draft). At the end, awards are presented, but the reason our delegation goes is for the experience, not for the certificates. The weekend after the conference, the delegation goes to the Gemini Diner for a last lunch. Afterwards, we all go back to the Peace Form One statue across from the U.N and say our heartfelt goodbyes to the delegation. Usually there are a lot of tears. This year was no exception. It’s the delegation’s last formal goodbye. M.U.N. has a lot of special events. This year, Columbia Prof. Mahmood Mamdani (the Mayor’s father) paid a visit to our school and talked to us about his Ugandan background and the history of Africa in terms of the effects of imperialism and the misconduct of local elites. Last year, Columbia Prof. Jeffrey Sachs (my grandfather) came in and talked about…everything, really. Model U.N. is one of the best things that’s happened to me. It’s an open space that won’t target me for saying the weirdest, most not-true things in the world. I am eternally grateful to it. Sienna Sachs Beck, 13, will be entering 9th grade this fall at the High School for American Studies at Lehman College. Although she enjoys all kinds of writing (except for research papers), her favorite form of all time is poetry. An active environmentalist, Sienna especially loves writing poetry that raises awareness about global changes. And best–or worst–of all, Sienna enjoys doing Eka Pada Sirsasana (her favorite yoga pose) to excess, even while writing her next piece.