by Sidney S. Stark The phrase came into focus for me at my first college graduation. That matriculation was a two year foray to acquire an associate’s degree. In 1963 two years seemed like more than enough of a commitment as I was burned out from my academically competitive high school years. The reduced timeframe… Continue Reading
Who is Santa Claus?
by Sidney S. Stark Even though I grew up in New York, most of my Christmases when I was a child were spent out of the city. You might well think my parents were rebelling against the commercialism and hectic pace of the season in a big metropolis; not so. Actually, my father had an… Continue Reading
Patience
by Sidney S. Stark “Patience is a virtue; catch it if you can…” My grandmother would often recite that adage to me at the times I was least likely to be virtuous. Then she would usually finish it with, “seldom found in woman; never found in man” and she’d chuckle at her own private joke.… Continue Reading
Mollie
“I have to dump you at the store,” was how my mother referred to dropping me off at my grandmother’s store. Perhaps this was my mother’s way of teaching me irony or a way to verbalize her guilt in having a passion for her career. The irony was that I loved being dumped. The “store,”… Continue Reading
Sensitivity
by Sidney S. Stark Imagination is a miraculous creature spawned of spiritual need and creative deprivation; or so Cousin Kate believes according to one of her early interviews with a reporter from Opera News Magazine. She told him that growing up on the mud flats of Maine forced the birth of her artistic temperament. Maybe… Continue Reading
Self-Indulgence
by Sidney S. Stark Recently my friend Sam made a horrendous mistake. Sam (short for Samantha) is a writer I met at the Southampton Writers’ Conference in 2009. She was in my memoir workshop and we became buddies almost instantaneously. Sam wrote the funniest work of any of the ten participants in that class. As… Continue Reading