Political meet-and-greets are a funny hybrid, with two separate goals folded into one gathering. You go to get to know a candidate who may be only vaguely on your radar, and an hour or two later the campaign manager is passing out palm cards and pointing to the QR code that leads you straight to […]
Meet-and-Greet and Assess and Vote Read More »
For fifteen years we had a dog, which meant that for fifteen years my days were meted out in companionable, purpose-driven walks. Then, in early 2020, the dog—bless his wiry coat and big dachshund heart—began an excruciating decline. He grew so thin he became almost luminous. We had to put him down that August. I
Where Do We Go When We Go for a Walk? Read More »
Walking down Greenwich Street recently, I came upon a sight that chilled my West Villager’s heart: a giant For Rent sign in the main window of Garber’s hardware at 710 Greenwich and Charles Streets. It’s a store I have relied on ever since I moved to the neighborhood in the 80s, with particularly heavy patronage
Garber’s Isn’t Going Away Read More »
The first book I ever bought that was written by someone I knew was a French memoir called Frany, one of those nifty European paperbacks whose cover folds inward to serve as a bookmark. The author was my theater professor when I was lucky enough to do a junior semester in Paris, a gentle, roly-poly
Memoirs: Who Knew? Read More »
My husband and I went to Boston for the weekend for a friend’s surprise birthday party. I used to go to Boston for the weekend all the time when I was in my teens and 20s. What a strong pull it exerted then: all those smart students swarming the umpteen colleges, including my sister at
Small Pleasures of a Long Marriage I asked my husband: Cumulus and cirrus, but what’s the third one? Thromboid, he replied. Immaculate Conception On a wall in our bedroom in a wooden frame hangs a photograph of Gus the neurotic polar bear, who spent his life swimming from one side of his tank in
Valentine’s Day poems Read More »
The well-made theater at Hudson Guild hides unassumingly inside the Community Center in the NYCHA Elliott-Chelsea Houses on West 26th Street. It has professional lights and sound booth, a deep and well-proportioned stage, men’s and women’s dressing rooms, 100 comfortable orange upholstered seats, and not a bad sight line in the house. I didn’t know
My Season with Hudson Guild, by Michele Herman Read More »
Not all that long ago, an editor at a website that covers green architecture and sustainable design called me about doing some writing for them. We had a pleasant conversation, and then, before saying goodbye, I asked for her phone number. Awkward pause. Just use this number, she said. Awkward pause. I’m on a landline
My Appless Life, by Michele Herman Read More »
Let’s talk shampoo, a conversation that I think is long overdue. For years I bought mine from Arrojo, a local salon, in jumbo plastic containers. The products had none of the bad stuff—parabens, phthalates, synthetic fragrances—and I figured one big container uses less plastic than several smaller ones. Then the algorithm started to feed me
“A Sustainable Village” figures out zero waste, by Michele Herman Read More »
In 1984 I took an oddball part-time summer job with a company that created newspaper indexes. My first task every morning was to call an obscure office at The New York Times. How many dots? I would ask. The voice on the other end would give me a number ranging from zero to four, and
When newspapers were big and indexing was done by people, by Michele Herman Read More »
