22. Female Trouble: Samantha the Wise
After I interrupted Tony and Sarah in their anatomical machinations in my garage, and was humiliated as a result, I [...]
The taste of mustard
As I was sitting at the table, someone said, “Have I ever steered you wrong?” I looked up to see [...]
21. Female Trouble: A Post-mother life
The surge of female trouble that culminated, at least for me, in my mother’s decision that she would not be [...]
The lunatic
I am the madman of my apartment block. I have this propensity that is entirely un-Italian: I leave my front [...]
Of lines and bylines
One evening, I was telling my daughter Julia a bedtime story about Fassi’s, my favorite gelateria in Rome. I was [...]
Belovid Dad
My nuke-powered teen daughter is lovid with me. No, not livid. That would be too easy, and Rebecca backs away [...]
The basement war
In June 1967, I was a scaled-down Moshe Dayan in my bunker-like basement. Like the Israeli commander, I wore a [...]
A shell game
As a child, I collected souls (but it was only when the deities slumbered). It mattered little that I [...]
Tutu’s fluke
Every family that's lived on the Long Island coast east of New York City has a fish story" So it’s [...]
The great Great Falls mystery
I am not Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, or Philip K. Dick, writers who contemplated the imagined as a matter of [...]
20. Female Trouble: Things Fall Apart
If the end of the Jurassic Period marked the beginning of the end for the dinosaurs, my twelfth birthday (two [...]