Books That Moved Me – Part 4

Books That Moved Me – Part 4

This is the fourth edition of Books That Moved Me—a tradition dating back to 2016—in which I’ll list the fiction and nonfiction books I’ve liked most since my Books 3 post in January 2023. As in the past, virtually all the books I’ve read have been recommended by a...
Excerpts from Finding Ruby

Excerpts from Finding Ruby

A number of people have asked why they haven’t been receiving my blog posts lately (most of you have just been silently relieved). The answer is that for the past few years I’ve been working on a book. It’s about my two grandfathers – Rubin (“Ruby”) Schechter...
Books 3 – Friends Write Back

Books 3 – Friends Write Back

Apparently ignited by the plea for “help” in my recent Books 3 post, friends have sent a trove of recommendations that could keep me occupied with great fiction and nonfiction books for years. As I looked over the recommendations–some contained in the Comments...
Music II—Inching Up The Foothills Of Jazz

Music II—Inching Up The Foothills Of Jazz

This is an account of how, at the age of 61, I found myself whining with frustration, afraid of humiliating myself, and then fired by my piano teacher—all part of a journey that’s nevertheless been a highlight of these twilight years. After traipsing around the...
My Life in Music – Part l

My Life in Music – Part l

It began on Christmas in Dobbs Ferry, New York when I was about six, which would have been 1958.  I woke my sister Debbie before dawn to get a jump on opening presents. Ripping away the wrapping paper, I discovered a book around the size of a comic book:  the Trapp...
Loon Shots

Loon Shots

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a loon. She made a fool of me. It was August of 1978, on the first day of  a 100 mile canoe trip with my college roommate on the iconic Allagash River in northern Maine–the same trip Thoreau memorialized in his Maine Woods...