The Making of a Child Star — Her friend’s parents called her Valerie-Who-Doesn’t-Go-To-School. This nomenclature predated the height of COVID when most of her other friends also didn’t go to school. They might have known her actual last name but their daughter had numerous friends in their Rancho Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and they had developed…

Dave’s Practice — His sister Renee would question him. “It’s so unprofessional, Dave. I mean, why? How can you be so attracted to those insipid girls you meet at the office?” “It’s easy,” he’d reply, munching on her vegetable curry over mashed potatoes, about the only one of her specialties he could stomach…

Winnie — Winnifred. They called her Winnie. At least that’s what the little daisy-adorned plastic nameplate read above her heart. She always thought it should say Losey or Loosey, how Ricky Ricardo addressed Lucy. Lucy was a Winnie and Winnie was a Losey. Lucille Ball had won everything: two swell husbands, a…

The Masked Hatter’s New York Hood — During the height of the pandemic, I avoided all forms of mechanical transportation, not leaving my neighborhood for eleven months. I strolled and walked and explored, all the while parading my hat and sunglass collections, now enhanced by newly purchased COVID-19 protective masks, and I began to take selfies of…

A Rocky Show of Death — They were born in southern states: she in Kentucky and he in Texas, and both died in Tennessee, a mere half-hour drive from one another, she most recently having dwelt in Lieper’s Fork and he in Brentwood. They were close in age as Naomi Judd’s life extended from 1946 to…

A Misogynistic Myth — Last week, I was speaking with a bright young woman who told me her favorite movie is Pretty Woman. She believes she saw it for the first time when she was nine years of age. She is now in her late 20’s. Since its 1990 release, millions of girls and…

Butt-length hair, beware! — We’ve all seen the articles, the pieces on COVID hair, scanned images of women with distinct color demarcations to their locks, men with sudden ponytails. After months of avoiding hair care professionals, blondes became brunettes and redheads turned dishwater blonde. After years of Clairol and L’Oreal covering a lack of…

Flakes on a Plane Unmasked — I was lucky! We three strangers seated in row 20 of a flight bound from LAX to JFK on April 20th were all masked. I should say we were lucky, lucky to be safer than most of our fellow flyers. I had booked my travel weeks ago, prior to some unqualified…

This is not an Amber Alert but a true tale not preserved in amber, having taken place just prior to the Amber Age. I opened an email from Ted. “Elizabeth, I am writing you just in case you know of anyone who can help. My niece is not doing well…