A New Year Begins

December 1, 2008

Today is my first anniversary of living in Hoboken. On December 1, 2007 I moved into an empty third-floor walkup on Hudson Street with big plans about making a new life in an old city. I had sold my car, had numerous yard sales to get rid of a lifetime of collected stuff, and given tons of clothes to the local thrift shops.

I’ve come a long way in this year. Even though I had purged so much of my furniture and onetime valuables, I found that what I'd kept more than filled the 800-sq.-ft. apartment. Luckily there were lots of big closets, and most of the stuff was shoved in. I bought a little single bed since the bedroom was too tiny to get even a double in comfortably. I was also able to use the little room for my laptop. I began my new blog.

Right away I found a doctor, a dentist, and the public library. I explored Hoboken on foot and got a little disoriented looking for basics like the A& P; tried to adapt to the colder climate, and wrote about all my new situations on the blog. A compulsive blogger in my home town, I knew writing about my life helped me clarify things in my own mind.

The enormity of what I had done was slow to sink in. I thought about the climate, the isolation, the difficulties of getting everywhere on foot-the blank slate that lay before me--every morning. There would be no phone calls, no board meetings, club meetings, organizational meetings. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t experience this as loneliness, but rather as a transition to something I couldn’t possibly understand. It seemed like an opportunity, but I couldn’t define for what.

I felt a little uncomfortable in my own skin, as if I were in a dream or on vacation in a place where I could speak the language but nothing else. I would get confused on the city streets, even in my old neighborhood in Manhattan. I took it slowly and didn’t push myself into doing too much too soon. It seemed as if my feet always hurt, from the walking and from minor foot surgery I had endured at the end of summer. I was never sure my clothes looked right--everybody in New York and New Jersey seemed to wear black all the time, not the bright colors and patterns I had been looking at in the South for almost 20 years. It took time to realize that this was less about Hoboken than about myself, facing a new phase of life in which I had to admit the person in the mirror looked didn’t look much like the self I had come to know.

Writing a blog about these things was helpful in surprising ways. Within a few months people were actually reading the blog, which had not necessarily been the case of my blog in my home town, “Finding Fair Hope.” On the Fairhope blog I had had a few regular readers, but most of them were people I had known in the distant past, keeping in touch with me from far flung outposts. I had about five regulars from contemporary Fairhope, and they were all people I knew who seemed a little discomfited by the thought that I might quiz them about the blog the next time I saw them. Hoboken brought me an average of some 40 readers a day, and they began to make themselves known to me by sending me emails and commenting on the blog.

Cristina wrote, after reading a post about me getting lost in the cold looking for the A & P, that she was new in town too and that maybe we could have lunch together sometime. She later told me that my blog posts sounded like a voice in the wilderness of someone who needed help. She is a special and generous person who has meant almost as much to me as my lifelong friends in my few months of knowing her. She and her husband run a company in New York, but she is always available to drive me anyplace either of us wants or needs to go, and we have a wonderful time together. It’s very odd to me that without prompting by me to do so, she never read the blog before or after her first time, yet I can email her for requests like a drive to the airport or the doctor’s, and she never refuses.

Gradually I have learned my way around. Working at it, I don’t find the walking of a couple of miles a day a hardship any more; over and over I tell myself “It’s good for you.” When I moved from a third floor walkup to one that was on the fourth floor, I had little problem with it.

Writing a blog has enriched my life enormously. Old Hobokenites discovered the blog and began to email me with tales from the past--high school pranks, characters they used to know, and desciptions of Hoboken in bygone days. They eagerly shared stories of the waterfront (The Barbary Coast), and On the Waterfront, the restaurants and ice cream parlors, the fabulous Fabian Theater, and Palisades Park. I learned about Mr. Stover, the high school principal, and the day some adventurous boys trapped a flock of pigeons in the piano before assembly, only to see them released onstage by an unsuspecting pianist. I learned about Eddie the Criminal, who worked as sort of a bouncer at Abel’s Ice Cream Parlor where the high school crowd hung out. I learn about Alan Freed’s rock-and-roll shows in Hoboken and Jersey City. I've written blog posts about most of these tales; if you're new, feel free to browse.

I’m glad to be here. After a year I know that I’ve made a good decision. I’ve experienced a lot of milestones so far and I've seen many sides of Hoboken and myself during these days. I’m closer to my daughter and grandsons and they all love to visit Hoboken. I'm part of the boys' life now. I've reconnected with old friends who remain in New York, and I can get there in a few minutes. Thinking about Hoboken, I know it holds more adventures for the years to come.

Another Day, Another Turkey

November 26, 2008

Thanksgiving in Hoboken is a little different for me, partly because I’m not cooking. I’ll leave tomorrow afternoon for a visit with the family in upstate New York and come back Friday by noon for a little Hoboken day-after-Thanksgiving party. This will be my first Thanksgiving in the Northeast in a long time. Have you ever noticed that the day before Thanksgiving always seems like Friday, Thanksgiving Day always seems like Sunday, and then you get Friday the day after again followed by Saturday. No wonder we’re confused!

Sometimes the holiday gets out of hand. I love the movie Home for the Holidays when everything goes wrong until it goes right—a warm and funny romantic comedy with people like Dylan MacDermott, Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey, Jr. Rent it—it’ll take you right into Christmas!

Hoboken used to have the tradition of trick-or-treating for Thanksgiving. That’s right, it was a custom in Hoboken and other urban areas surrounding New York (notably Brooklyn) for little kids to dress up in rags and go door-to-door asking for change on Thanksgiving. I think Halloween was more for pranks, but there was some request for candy and handouts too. The costume of the day was “ragamuffin,” a look that was once acceptable for children in Hoboken, especially on certain days. We still have the Ragamuffin Parade, but these days it’s on Halloween.

I like to cook so I’ve always enjoyed Thanksgiving. It’s a nice meal because, for one thing, it’s a feast, and secondly because it’s so easy. Nobody wants you to veer too much from the traditional, especially from their favorites. It’s a menu that is prescribed by law, with the few variations being allowed for occasional modifications of the side dishes or the rather recent admission of wine to the table. As to the difficulty, and the extended preparation time we see taking place over the years, let’s face it, somebody is making much ado where it’s not necessary. All that’s important is the smell of roasting poultry coming from the kitchen. Even as a young bride who had hardly seen the inside of a kitchen I was able to cook a turkey without a whole lot of agony. I was married on October 29 (1960) and prepared not only a roast turkey for the boss and his wife, but also oyster dressing for it. That’s the only thing I remember making, but it was a hit, and there was no flop.

I decided turkey was so easy I should cook it often, and I did, that year. But I don’t any more. I hardly make it for Thanksgiving if I can avoid it; I think duck is better and I don’t get any objections from my guests. I vary the side dishes from year to year, but love the homemade cranberry-orange relish that is made in the food processor (and not cooked). I discovered rutabagas about 10 years ago and love the look of them on the Thanksgiving plate. Pecan pie I mastered at a very young age (I was lying about not having seen the inside of a kitchen). I’ll never forget how, a few years ago, I tried to spring an exciting dessert on the assembled crowd – my own creation based on Maida Heatter’s Polka Dot Cheesecake. Ms. Heatter’s features huge, gorgeous chocolate polka dots within the cake; I made a pumpkin cheesecake mixture and piped it in similar fashion, and my eaters looked as if I had just shot the dog. “Where’s the pecan pie?” was all that they said. I love it, but I hadn’t known pecan pie was a requirement at every Thanksgiving meal.

My daughter is known as an expert baker of pies; this year we’re going to have apple and pumpkin. I’ve seen Thanksgiving turn from a relatively simple family holiday in my childhood (Mama always baked a chicken) to today’s overdone overindulgence pushed by the turkey industry, the cranberry industry, the orgy of television specials on heroes and the needy (and, this year, “going green”), and that old Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover.

My Thanksgiving advice is to do it your way, the less fanfare the better—have a small potluck with favorite family and a few friends, and a little gratitude for your good fortune in having them. Keep in mind what we learned from the pilgrims: Thanksgiving is a beautiful day, but it’s probably going to be a long, cold winter.

A Lament for the Soon-To-Be-Late DNR

November 24, 2008
Daily News Record was one of the many trade publications under the Fairchild banner--a small, family-owned trade publisher whose flagship was Women’s Wear Daily. Begun at roughly the same time, DNR and WWD covered the apparel industry, the former being the bible for the men’s wear trade and the latter for women’s wear.

I started my New York career as a secretary to the two editors of DNR in mid-1960s. They were drinking buddies as well as industry scribes—as different as two Jewish writers could be. Mort Gordon was tall, smart and sexy while Herb Blueweiss was short, balding, hyper and sometimes enigmatic. Herb liked to read and attend the theater with Martin Gottfried, Fairchild’s critic, and Mort, a bachelor, was content to attend industry functions and do as much skirt-chasing as time allowed. The two worked so well in tandem that they were referred to by staff as The Bobbsey Twins. It was, all in all, a fun place to work.

At one point Gottfried commented to Pat, my forerunner as assistant to the duo, that it must be great fun to have Herbie as a boss. Pat responded, “You’d think that, but Mort’s better to work for.” Mort was a good editor and a gentle guy with people; he was the one we’d take our stories to if we had a problem.

Fairchild was housed in two buildings, back to back. The front door was at 7 East 12th Street, an entrance into a modern if characterless building where the sleeker publications were produced. A plain lobby housed a front desk and a bank of three elevators. If you took this elevator to the third floor you were in the world of Women’s Wear Daily, full of chicly dressed young women at desks with typewriters, reporting on the future of hemlines, and a few hapless males writing about the business side of the women’s fashion industry.

If you were going to the Daily News Record office, you had to make a trek through these desks on past the fey characters of the art department on the right and through a passageway to the back building. This structure was decidedly old, housing some geezers who wrote columns called “Words at Random,” and “Cotton Grey Goods,” as well as some serious guys discussing such topics as the necktie market, textile machinery, the staying power of the “mod” fashion in the youth market. You would also see a passel of merry pranksters looking for their next big journalism break. As a secretary, I fit cozily into that latter category.

You could also enter DNR the back way, up the stairs or in the creaky old elevator in the shabby 13th Street building. At that end of the room were the financial desk, the legal reporters, and a smattering of other market desks.

I worked at DNR off and on for some six years from the mid-60’s until the early 70’s when I left for good for the greener pastures of public relations, but I left having made the acquaintance of some of the most interesting characters of my life, and having made some friends I still see today. There is a surreal quality to my memories of the place. Every reporter, every editor, even the copy kids—all were distinct in his or her view of their employment. They took their work with a grain of salt, but basically performed it well. It took some doing for an incipient novelist to call on the little knitting mills producing men’s sweaters and report the company’s financial and marketing plans.

We all weren’t incipient novelists, of course, but I think most of us thought of ourselves as writers. Some went on to become well-known as television personalities, drama critics, columnists for New York Magazine or denizens of city’s night life. This was a stopping off place on the way to a big break, and the hilarity of the lunch hours and after-hours imbibing had little to do with the markets we covered. We liked the company, we even liked our jobs, but we approached everything with irreverence and attempts—sometimes quite successful—at wit. We impressed ourselves and each other. We traded quips with members of the art department and Chauncey Howell, who already had a column with his name on it in WWD.

One of our number got promoted to a management position, the ultimate betrayal. He became in our minds—as put by one left behind—a toady for the Establishment, admonishing us to shape up and keep the noise down, that sort of thing. Once when he gave us a dire warning that there would soon be a salary review, we decided this would be a great opportunity to put on an all-company show, “The Salary Revue,” with songs and sketches from all departments. We were occupied for several weeks dreaming up musical numbers for the non-event to come. For George Washington’s Birthday, we thought a historical pageant would be in order. Who would play George? John Pareti wanted to be Cornwallis “because he made out pretty well after the war.” We fulminated on possible casting until that fantasy project faded away only to be replaced by another.

There was an older lady with a personality column who took her job very seriously. She was really interested in the men’s wear industry, and counted many of its executives as her friends and contacts. She was on the phone all day long, usually talking rather animatedly, and once when she was not at her desk someone answered her ringing phone for her and was immediately sorry. This was before the days of the cleaning staff wiping down such instruments, and the mouthpiece of her phone was green with dried slime.

Maybe it was because we were all young and optimistic that it seemed like such fun to work in an atmosphere of controlled chaos and actually produce a daily newspaper just like in the movies. It was a profound experience in a decidely frivolous setting, and those of us who reflect on it now have mostly happy memories. You had great hours, for one thing, arriving at 10 (or later if you had arranged an appointment in the market), went to lunch at noon; and, because your business of learning everybody’s business was so often facilitated at lunch you might not get back to the office until 2:30. To improve your focus you could take a half-hour coffee break and leave the office at 5.

Talk about a great neighborhood to work in! Around the corner, there was a Schrafft’s on Fifth and 13th Streets, and a Longchamps in the middle of the block. I used to spend some lunch hours trying on hats at May’s on Union Square, I can’t imagine why. David Platt, who later went left the company for a long stint as fashion editor of Playboy, used to fret that I wasn’t checking out the chapeaux for little animals that might have been left there by other customers. Usually the office crowd would eat at a place called The Terrace, or one of the many coffee shops surrounding the building, but for a treat we’d try the sweet little Italian joint called Il Bambino at 12th and University Place. None of those places still exists—Scrafft’s became a western-themed hangout, and the other places were gutted and replaced many years ago. Fairchild Publications moved to the old Ohrbach’s building sometime in the last century. Daily News Record kept the name (or initials, anyway), but hadn’t been a daily for years.

A friend from those days sent me a link to a news article that DNR will cease publication with today's issue and the men’s wear market will be covered by WWD in a special section once a week. I’m sure its time had come, but for many years it was a solid little news outlet for an often overlooked industry. And, like Fairhope and Hoboken, it was a great place come from.

Hoboken B & R

November 20, 2008
If you were born and raised in Hoboken, you know what B & R means. If not, here’s what it means: Born and Raised in Hoboken. Jim B., who sent me this picture of Hudson Street in the 1950’s, was B & R, as were Slezak, Dennis (The Rabbi), and probably most of my readers.

I was neither born nor raised here, but I’ve had numerous communications from those who were. They talk of growing up with the smell of coffee from the Maxwell House factory, bread baking at the Wonder factory, Oreos baking and Tootsie Rolls free for the asking. (Little kids would stand beneath the windows of the Tootsie Roll factory and scream for freebies until a soft-hearted worker would toss a handful out the window.)

I’m sure there was the smell of longshoremen down by the waterfront, of steel engines near the train station, the cleaning fluids in all the halls of the tenements every Saturday morning. All in all it was a fragrant place to live. It remains so today, but the smells are emanating from restaurants and kitchens, as the factories are no more. In the hall of my old apartment building, the scents of Indian cooking wafted from the apartment below mine; walking down Washington Street, you can still smell coffee (from Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbuck’s, or Panera Bread) or garlic and tomatoes from any one of a number of Italian restaurants.

There were always great places to eat, like the Blue Point or Biggie's or any one of the pizza parlors all over town. Some are still there but aren't the same, at least not the way they are remembered. The Blue Point was at 10th and Willow Avenue, and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé would go there after working on the Steve Allen Show. There were lots of theaters, including the fabulous Fabian, at the lower end of Washington Street.

Boys were employed to hang the clotheslines when one broke. I doubt if they were paid for this treacherous work, but their mothers volunteered them. They carried the lines around their neck, a hammer to secure the loose spikes, and they had to climb outside the building to hang the lines, while watched by the housewives of the neighborhood from their fire escapes. Up on Hudson Street, the clotheslines were out back in an alley, also a great place for playing ball. Each pole had about 20 clothes lines coming from several directions on it so climbing up on it was a hazard. There were spikes on the pole to climb up.

Kids played most kinds of ball in the alley between Washington and Hudson Street. On what is called the yellow flats, all the basements were connected which were great places to play. On Hudson Street there was a basketball net on the Gate at 12th street. Stickball and football were at Bethlehem Stadium (the yard side of Hudson Street).

Teenagers hung out at Umland's or Abel's and listened to the music from the juke box. They danced, fell in love, ate ice cream and had the kind of good time we can only remember. Around in some neighborhoods they were able to get beer from time to time, usually to regret it, and, although marijuana was available, it was not particularly sought. Ice cream was the universal choice.

Almost everybody was Catholic, and the many churches and clubs attest to this fact. There were more bars per capita than in any nearby center of population, and some of them you didn't want to go to. But everybody went to one at least once in a while.

Hoboken's been cleaned up a lot, but a newcomer like me can't help but be a little envious of the earthy, gritty upbringing of anyone who brags about being Hoboken--B and R!

How Not to Fix a Leaky Faucet

November 18, 2008

Ever since I moved to the new place I've been bothered by a dripping faucet in the sink. Such things are common and easy to fix, so I've had it on my mind to do it for weeks. There was a problem with my dishwasher, so the condo owner and her boyfriend came to work on it, both armed with information they had gotten from the Internet.

I should have been somewhat leary, because what they learned didn't really help and she ended up having to buy a new dishwasher for the place. But the idea of learning simple tasks from the Internet intrigued me and I Googled "fix leaky faucet." There were a number of places to go and I found this one which featured an attractive, upbeat lad named Ian who walked me throught the process step by step, ending with the phrase, "Now you're golden."

Over the weeks I began studying his little video. It was so easy. I even had those tools. I tried some of the steps, and found that the old wrench and pliers I had were rusty, not the size I needed, and useless. I bought new ones. I bought a box of all-purpose washers. They weren't the right size for anything. I bought a box of assorted o-rings. They were all sizes, but no two alike, so I bought a second box in case I would need to fix both faucets. I walked myself through the process several times, and nothing seemed to be quite right. I hoped I wouldn't have to replace the "Cold" faucet because I couldn't screw that one off.

Today was the day. I had bought some pipe joint compound which seemed to be the final step in assuring I'd be golden.

I brought a couple of towels into the sink area where I would be working, as Ian had instructed me to. I set out all my tools, taping off those that Ian said to so as not to damage the threads of the screws. He didn't mention taping might make the tools less efficient--in fact, he hadn't mentioned that anything could go wrong.

First off, I turned off the water valves tight. Then I removed the one faucet I had learned in my practice sessions that I could. Disaster. Thinking I was turning the water valves off I was actually turning them on full force! The kitchen was pretty well flooded by the time I got down under the cabinet to turn both valves in the other direction. Luckily I had lots of towels in a bag to give to Goodwill, so I mopped as I went.

When you get the faucet off, its bare bones don't look like those of Ian's faucet. The new washers and o-rings didn't seem to go anywhere, and pieces of the little faucet skeleton were everywhere, none fitting where I had thought it would. I fiddled and fussed and could not get the joint compound tube open. I tried a nail. I called a friend in Alabama who said just to break into the tube and throw the thing away when I was finished. I did that. This joint compound also didn't look like Ian's, which came in a tube too, and looked like spackle or white grout. Had I gotten the wrong kind of joint compound? Mine was runny and grey-green. At last I managed to smear some on the faucet joint, but I didn't make a nice firm seal as Ian had promised.

But I got it all back in place and turned on the water. It spewed from the faucet without my turning it on, and would only turn off by using the valve under the sink. I'm sure I did everything right. It would have been easier to have called the landlady, which I must do now anyway. She and her fiancé will simply watch Ian and come over and fix the faucet or maybe she'll send a plumber which is what I really need.

Look, nobody is good at everything, I tell myself. If Ian has a blog, I'll bet somebody else writes it.

Polar Opposites

November 15, 2008



This political season has brought us a pair of females who ask to be taken seriously. They rose like cream toward the tops of their respective tickets, and, although they are polar opposites, they may have changed the landscape of presidential politics forever.

Hillary Clinton is serious, intelligent, demanding, competitive, perhaps more than a little strident. As the wife of a favorite president, she garnered support for her own run as a U.S. senator and took the post as a stepping stone toward her dreams of higher office for herself. I said no to her all along, but after her fierce and relentless primary campaign for her party's nomination, I came away with some admiration for her along with increased conviction that she has as many political liabilities as she has strengths, the main one being an inability to work with people or see them clearly. Her campaign was a shambles almost from the first, with her operatives dropping along the wayside like flies as she became more determined to topple Barack Obama, himself a phenomenon in many ways not unlike her husband.

It was a painful campaign to watch, yet Obama held steady and gave her as good as he got, albeit with more restraint and grace. Pundits on the tube hounded him to turn ballistic, make the horse race more exciting (to them) and give the audience more fire. Instead, he worked directly with the American people and with his own organization in building a constituency based on respect for him and desire to have a brave and wise person as president of the embattled and weary nation.

Then came John McCain's choice as Sarah Palin, governor, to be his vice presidential running mate. We all made her acquaintance one night when she appeared as brightly as a shooting star on the horizon, making a sarcastic, bitter speech with a plastic smile on her face and in her voice. Here was a new political creature, pretty and with no baggage, the polar opposite to Hillary Clinton. She bragged about being a soccer mom, and told us that was like being a pit bull. She denigrated the Democratic candidate as being inexperienced compared to her, although the more we learned about her the more we saw what a lie that was.

By now Hillary was on the sidelines, and we had a couple of months to examine the Palin resumé and find it wanting. Day after day my email contained heaps of communications from women all across the country, all with more information about the ineptitude of Ms. Palin and her colorful dealings and family in Alaska. There was a certain amount of fear in these notes, fear that this interloper might actually win. She was too much like the women we had known in our youth, those clever incompetents who liked nothing so much as proving the advantage of looks over intellect.

Clinton's whole life has been a testament to her brain power. She famously met the coming young star of Harvard Law School, Bill Clinton, in the library, having been the smartest girl in her class everywhere she had ever matriculated. He has often called her one of the smartest people he has ever known, and few have disputed that. Her personal style, however, has needed an overhaul from time to time, and she has endured it for the sake of her ambition. She did not share her husband's enormous skill with people, although she was not without wit and a certain charm as she cultivated an impressive career in the wake of his.

Sarah Palin went from beauty contestant to sports news wannabe and on to the office of mayor of a minor town in a state quite remote from Washington, D.C. Defensive about appearing ignorant, she took neutral questions to be an attempt to insult Alaska, all the while looking like a million bucks (or at least $150,000) and allowing her party to play that up with a wardrobe to match. She was a lot of style with very little between the ears, while over in the Democratic Party there was still Senator Clinton, an example of the contrary.

The country has rejected both these women for the posts they were seeking, marginalizing them at least for the nonce, and I think that's a good thing. Clinton will surely find a solid place in President Obama's coterie (as long as it's a place high enough for her comfort), and Palin is not likely to go away in the near future either.

Neither of these contenders has the potential to be a great leader. But in a weird way both have blazed a trail for women of the future. And their participation in the process has prepared us all for the bumpy ride toward a real hole in the glass ceiling.

Your Inner Doctor

November 13, 2008

Last April I checked out a book from the Hoboken Public Library called The Art of Aging. It must have been a breakthrough moment because I remember about 20 years ago reading a book called Stop Aging Now! and I thought I had it nailed. The right vitamins, a regimen of exercise, a handful of blueberries every day and the occasional glass of red wine, a happy attitude--and age would never catch up to me.

Then little things began falling off my body. Gradually my hair went from an attractive streak job to a rather unflattering grey (which I found cosmetic ways to defeat), I ached in places I'd never ached before. The inevitable leaves of the calendar rapidly fell away, as in an old movie, and the changes caught my attention. Aging was indeed beginning to happen, and I'd better make the most of it.

I relocated from my hometown, which was aging me more than I wanted to admit by being flooded with people who in the name of "improvement" only sought to tear down the old and replace it with the tacky. Like so many, I fought against the tide of development as long as I could. Unlike many, my choice was to ameliorate my agony by relocating to a place in which I had no history, but one which had a history of its own I could latch onto and enjoy.

In the quaint and not incidentally historic building that houses Hoboken's library, I found the book The Art of Aging by Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D. I read it with relish, and posted on the blog a recommendation to my readers on May 7. Even today I find myself thinking about what I learned from this eminently readable little book.

One of the points Dr. Nuland makes is that as you age, you have to become your own primary care physician in a way. I don't know if he put it that way, but his theme was that only you really know when little things are going wrong, and it behooves you to address these little things before they become big things.

In other words, you have to become sensitive to your inner doctor. The longer you tell yourself, "Oh, that's nothing, everybody has that," the less likely you are to get a symptom cured or to find a larger cause of it. You can't, on the other hand, bother your doctor with every question or complaint, but if you make up your mind that you're the main doctor, you'll have a better idea when it's time to call in a pro.

I have found the Internet to be a tremendous help in my medical education. For example, I attended a movie in Manhattan in a nice cineplex I knew from the old days, and at some time during the film I noticed painful bug bites on my elbow and arm. Mosquitoes? The itch felt like mosquito bites, but much more powerful, and there was a line of them up my arm! I could hardly concentrate on the movie, I was so distracted by the thought of getting to a drugstore and getting some relief.

When I got home I put my handy search engine to work, and discovered that there is an epidemic of bedbugs all over Manhattan. I had noted upholstered chairs in the theater, and had no doubt that somebody had brought an infestation from home. I read up on bedbugs and trembled in my boots that I may have brought some home in my pocketbook, but I endured the itches and eventually they went away. None of the insects remained in my clothing or my bag. Unfortunately I found there really is no cure for the itch, but alcohol and an over-the-counter cream helped a little.

I had a similar experience with hoarseness. It was at the time I was in the play. I had to clear my throat all the time; my voice was getting weak, and I feared throat cancer or at least nodules on the larynx which might prevent my ever speaking onstage again, or worse. I looked it up phlegm in the throat on the Internet and found that it can be caused by post-nasal drip, which can be cured or at least controlled by using a little "neti-pot" of a saline solution in the nose. I tried it first thing in the morning and last thing at night for about a week, and it cleared up the laryngitis and the sinusitis that had caused it.

I called upon my inner doctor and didn't have to go to an outer one. These were minor symptoms, but very worrying and if the home remedies hadn't worked, of course I would have gone to my doctor. But the art of aging requires a little wisdom and resourcefulness (both of which are supposed to come with age) as well as the patience to endure, which may or may not ever come. If you're going to have to age anyway, you might as well learn the art of it.