Category: Life in New Jersey

Who bottles the sounds and sights of fall better than Robert Frost? (If you’re wondering about the title and you didn’t take English courses in college, look up “Gathering Leaves.”) While fall is so gloriously spectacular–the one season when the colors of the earth manage to pierce the monotony of traffic and gray skyline here–there’s…

Thankfully, Anna likes her new school. She likes going to school, she likes finding monkey tatoos on her cafeteria tray, and she likes having Art every Tuesday and Music every Friday. The school is at the end of our street, a two-minute walk from the door, which is great when it’s 7:45, you’re half-dressed and…

I wish I could say this photo came from my rose garden, but I can’t. This photo came from Peggy Rockefeller’s rose garden. Growing up, our family backyard was laden with rosebushes. A rosebush wasn’t something you drove to to visit–it was something I watered and trimmed and then, when I felt like it, plucked….

This guy is worried about his future, and with good reason. So is this guy. And this guy knows that outside a zoo, his options aren’t so good and likely involve a side of french fries. No one on the planet can escape this recession. The econommic impact to the Bronx Zoo and other museums,…

Dear Anna, Already, your fifth birthday has come and gone. Another sticky pink cake, another pile of crumpled pink tissue paper, and each year the pieces to the toys you receive get smaller and smaller and smaller and find their way into my shoes and sheets. Like Birthday Letters from last year, you still hate…