Tag Archives: Chicago

Two thrillers and a mystery

Posted on May 14, 2025 | 1 comment

This month I’m primarily focused on trying to publish the nonfiction book I’ve been working on for the last few years.  It tells the story of my fight for reproductive rights when I was a young lawyer in Chicago.  It will be a terrific book.  But I need to find a publisher.

While I pursue this goal, I’ve decided to devote this post to describing my three novels, all stories blending “the law” with protagonists who find themselves in perilous settings but somehow manage to survive.

Please forgive my shameless plug, but I honestly think you’ll enjoy reading about my novels.

My first published novel, A Quicker Blood, takes its title from an Emily Dickinson poem about “escape.”  Dickinson wrote “I never hear the word ‘escape’ without a quicker blood.”  You’re right to conclude that the theme of this thriller is “escape.”

The protagonist, Karen B. Clark, is a young lawyer living in New York City three years after getting her law degree.  She’s already weary of life in NYC, disillusioned with her job on Wall Street, and fed up with her two-timing boyfriend.  (I named my protagonist Karen in honor of a good friend who worked on behalf of needy clients for many years before she died.  I’ve known many admirable women named Karen, and I think it’s deplorable to disparage women using the name Karen for no good reason.)

Karen Clark impulsively takes off for a lawyers’ conference in Chicago, where she meets another young woman named Karen B. Clark.  Karen decides to call her “K.B.”   K.B. has just finished law school and is about begin her legal career in the small town of Walden, Wisconsin, where a law firm has hired her, sight unseen.

When both Karen and K.B. are injured in separate mishaps, Karen awakens in a hospital, where she’s been identified as K.B.  She spies a newspaper report of the death of an unidentified young woman and realizes that K.B. must be dead.

Karen decides to seize the moment and turn her life around.  She’ll escape her life in NYC, assume K.B.’s identity, and try life as a small-town lawyer.  Once in Walden, Karen relishes her new existence and begins a sizzling romance, but she soon uncovers terrible secrets that lead her to fear for her life.

A Quicker Blood has garnered many 5-star customer reviews on Amazon.com.  You might want to read a few of them!  Almost every reader has loved this book and asked me to write another one like it.  I think you’d also love learning how Karen finds her way to Walden and deals with the challenges of assuming someone else’s identity. You’ll probably like reading about the somewhat dubious characters she encounters there, how she finds herself plunged into a perilous situation, and how she cleverly manages to survive.

My second novel, Jealous Mistress, is not a thriller but an old-fashioned mystery like the ones Agatha Christie used to write.  A dead body appears on the first page, so you know that there’s a mystery to be solved.

It’s October 1981, and the Reagan administration has just declared that ketchup is a vegetable.  Alison Ross has chosen to set aside her demanding career as a lawyer so she can spend more time at home with her two young children.  She’d like to find a good part-time job, but because “the law is a jealous mistress,” her search for part-time work has gone nowhere.

Early one morning, Alison stumbles across a dead body at her daughter’s nursery school. (Preschools were still called nursery schools in 1981.)  Because Alison saw the school janitor make a hasty exit, she reluctantly becomes emmeshed in the police investigation.  When the police charge the janitor with murder, Allison has doubts about his guilt and decides to find out what really happened.

Pursuing the real killer while she juggles life at home with her husband and kids, Alison uncovers a host of shocking secrets in the quiet suburb of East Winnette.

Lots of readers have written 5-star customer reviews for this novel, too. It presents issues that many of us have dealt with.  If we’ve had a demanding job before we had kids, how do we achieve work-life balance once we have kids? This may mean deciding whether to keep our full-time jobs or search for part-time work.  In this story, I also ask whether a supportive husband will help his wife solve a mystery that falls into their laps, or will he get fed up with her time-consuming efforts to solve it on her own?  Will the wife, in her search for the killer, find herself attracted to another man who offers to help her?  And how does life in an affluent suburb affect Alison, who’s among its less affluent residents?

I had fun writing this story, which deals with all of these questions.  At the same time, I delved into the time-honored phase, “the law is a jealous mistress.”  What does it mean for lawyers today?  I also liked flirting with the term “jealous mistress” as a term with a double meaning.  If you read Jealous Mistress, you’ll come to your own conclusions.

My third novel, Red Diana, is something of a sequel to A Quicker Blood.  Karen Clark reappears twelve years after we left her at the end of A Quicker Blood.  She has moved to San Francisco with her 8-year-old daughter Davida (called Davi) and loves her new life there.

One terrible day, Davi is abducted on Market Street, just outside the office building where Karen works.  It’s summer and Davi has pleaded with Karen to spend a day at Karen’s office.  After buying M&Ms at a 7-Eleven, Davi is suddenly grabbed by someone wearing a mask, and Karen is gripped by fear.  Davi is returned unharmed the next morning and Karen begins to relax, but she soon finds a threatening note pinned to Davi’s shirt: “Karen, you’re next.”

Karen must find out who grabbed Davi—and why.  Her only clues are Davis’s recall of a brown sofa and the words “Red Diana.”  With the help of SFPD detective Greg Chan, Karen begins her relentless pursuit of the cruel abductor who now threatens her own life.

Set in San Francisco, with flashbacks to Chicago and New York, this chilling psychological thriller explores a bunch of themes: The desire for revenge, the burden of guilt, and the tyranny of unethical lawyers and corrupt judges.  It also touches on the shattering pain of losing a loved one—and the many routes survivors take to deal with their loss.

Above all, the book focuses on the intense love between parent and child–what one psychoanalyst has called “indestructible, the strongest relationship on earth.”

Karen’s search for the abductor leads her to a charming San Francisco Victorian, where she confronts a disturbed killer who puts her life in peril.

Like my other two novels, Red Diana has earned many 5-star reviews, and I think you’ll find it an absorbing read.

To sum up:  Please forgive my shameless plug(s) and think about choosing one of my novels as a better-than-ordinary “beach read” this summer.  You can zip through all three of them pretty fast, and I think you’ll be pleased with the sharp writing style you’ve come to like in my blog posts.

Happy reading!

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Watching a new musical on Broadway 50-plus years ago

Posted on August 5, 2024 | 4 comments

   

In April 1973, my husband (I’ll call him Marv) and I left our home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and headed for New York City.  Marv was a terrific math professor at the University of Michigan, and he’d already earned tenure there.  Thanks to recognition by other mathematicians, he was invited to speak at a math conference to be held at NYC’s famed Biltmore Hotel, and I decided to tag along.

A bunch of my law-school classmates were living in NYC just then, and I contacted a few of them about getting together while Marv and I were in town.  One of my favorite classmates was my close friend Arlene, and she immediately made plans to see both of us one evening during our stay.

I was thrilled when Arlene surprised me with a terrific plan.  She was purchasing tickets for all three of us to see a hit musical playing on Broadway.  I’ve always been a huge fan of Broadway musicals, beginning when I was a kid, and I was excited at the prospect of seeing this one.  I may have heard something about it even before we got to NYC, but I didn’t know any details.  In the pre-internet era, it was hard to get details like that.

After a scrumptious dinner somewhere in Manhattan, the three of us set out for Broadway and the musical Arlene had chosen.  We excitedly took our seats in the balcony as the lights dimmed and a hush fell over the audience

As the curtain rose, I gasped. The musical was “Grease,” and it began at a 1950s class reunion at a Chicago public high school.  The graduation year, prominently displayed on the stage, was the same year that Marv and I had graduated from our own public high schools!  As we watched, our mouths agape, we soon figured out that the story focused on the “greasers” at the high school one of its writers attended.

The parallel with our own lives was undeniable.  No, we hadn’t attended schools where “greasers” dominated, but I clearly recalled the students my friends and I jokingly called “hoods”—short for “hoodlums.”  These kids were not terribly different from the working-class teenagers in “Grease.”  My school was dominated by middle-class kids, not the “hoods,” but we were all keenly aware of each other.

It turned out that the musical was first produced in Chicago in 1971, when Marv and I were living in California and totally unaware of local theater in Chicago.  It finally landed in NYC in 1972, about a year before we saw it, and it became the enduring hit we all know. Even better known: The 1978 film version that became a worldwide sensation.  “Grease” went on to earn both Broadway and movie fandom.

The music in the Broadway show we saw that night was astounding:  It borrowed the sounds of early rock-and-roll hits that Marv and I knew and loved.  It’s not surprising that many of the songs in “Grease” remain popular today. 

When the curtain finally came down, the three of us looked at each other.  We had all shared that era in the ‘50s just portrayed on the stage.  I was in a state of shock, trying to recover from the profound experience of reliving a slice of life from our high school days. 

You know what?  I don’t think I’ve ever completely recovered.

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Posted in 1950s, 1970s, American culture, Ann Arbor, Michigan, California, Chicago, class reunions, friends, friends, lifelong friends, New York City, rock and roll music, theater

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“A Raisin in the Sun”

Posted on April 24, 2024 | 1 comment

The enduring acclaim for the play “A Raisin in the Sun,” as well as its film version, has inspired me to relate what happened when I saw the play for the very first time. 

During 1959, this stunning new play about a Black family in Chicago, written by the exciting young playwright Lorraine Hansberry, premiered at an upscale downtown Chicago theater, the Blackstone Theatre.  Although histories of the play often state that it had its premiere on Broadway in New York City, it actually appeared earlier in Chicago.

The sometimes-caustic theater critic for the Chicago Tribune, Claudia Cassidy, wrote an enthusiastic review of it on February 11, 1959, noting that it was “a remarkable new play” that was “still in tryout.”

“Raisin” represented an enormous theatrical leap because of its plot– a realistic portrayal of a Black family in Chicago confronted with a crucial decision–and because of the brilliant performances by its actors, including Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee.

I was lucky to see “Raisin” during its pre-Broadway stay in Chicago.  As a Chicago public high-school student with limited funds, I saw it as an usher.

Ushering was a fairly casual affair in those days.  Often accompanied by a friend or two, I would simply show up at a theater about an hour before the curtain went up and ask the usher-captain whether she could use another usher.  The answer was invariably “yes,” and I would be assigned to a designated area in the theater where I would check tickets and seat ticket-holders. Ushering enabled me to see a great many plays and musicals at no cost whatsoever, and I ushered as often as my school’s schedule allowed.

I’ve never forgotten the startling incident that occurred during the matinee performance of “Raisin” I viewed as an usher.  In the midst of the performance, for no apparent reason, the actors suddenly stopped speaking.  The reason became clear when the theater manager strode onto the stage.  Bottling his rage, he explained that the actors had been struck by items thrown at the stage by patrons in the theater. 

I was shocked to learn of this extremely disrespectful behavior.  I’d never witnessed a problem of any kind created by audience members.

I concluded (fairly, in my opinion) that the audience must have included a number of boorish high-school students sitting in the balcony that afternoon thanks to “comp” tickets.  Some of them were undoubtedly displaying the bigoted attitude toward Black people that prevailed in their homes.

The Chicago area’s population at that time included large numbers of white people who were biased against Blacks.  Some of these whites felt threatened by any possibility of change in their communities.  Some later openly demonstrated to protest Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s visit to Chicago. 

Here, in an upscale downtown theater, was the ugly and ignorant result of this bias.

Has anything changed since 1959?  For a long time, I thought it had.  During my years as a public interest lawyer and, later, as a law school professor and writer, I worked toward and believed in meaningful progress in the area of civil rights.  I had hoped that this feeling by some white people that they were threatened by Blacks–and eventually by Browns as well—had decreased.

Sadly, our recent history has revealed that this feeling still exists. It’s even been encouraged by certain “leaders’ in the political arena.  Some predict that violence could be the ultimate outcome.

I worry that we’re edging toward a return to the ethos of 1959 and the hostility displayed during the performance of “A Raisin in the Sun” I saw back then.  I fervently hope that this will not, indeed cannot, happen and that most Americans vehemently reject the prospect that it will.

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Posted in 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, American culture, American history, Chicago, family, films, high school, legal assistance to the poor, respect, theater, Uncategorized

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Fighting for a legal abortion in March 1970–and winning

Posted on December 19, 2023 | 2 comments

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s dismantling of Roe v. Wade, we’ve all witnessed one anti-women’s rights assault after another.  There was, last week, a glimmer of hope in the abysmal state that is current-day Texas when a trial court judge issued a TRO allowing a pregnant woman to obtain a medically-needed abortion.

A TRO is a temporary restraining order, issued by a court, upholding the right of a plaintiff to obtain the remedy she needs right away to avoid irreparable injury to her. In the Texas case, the plaintiff was an expectant mother who very much wanted to give birth to a healthy child, but medical professionals had sadly concluded that her fetus would not survive and her own health and future fertility could be irreparably damaged.

In my view, the TRO was justified and the trial court reached the right decision.  But the Texas state attorney general intervened to stand in the way, and the Texas Supreme Court supported his position.  The result:  The plaintiff left the state of Texas to obtain the abortion she needed.

This appalling state of affairs reminded me of what happened in Chicago over 50 years ago.  I was working as a young Legal Aid lawyer in Chicago, co-counsel in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on February 20,1970, that challenged the constitutionality of the Illinois abortion statute,

I suddenly acquired a new client in March 1970 when I got a phone call from one of our Legal Aid branch offices.  The mother of a teenage rape victim had come into that office to report that her daughter had been raped and was now pregnant.  The mother asked whether we could do anything to help her daughter get a legal abortion.

This Black teenage girl, whom I dubbed Mary Poe, had been beaten and raped by two boys in her neighborhood, and her resulting pregnancy had been confirmed by a local physician.  I was already representing two other women, adult women we called Jane Doe and Sally Roe, but this young woman was different. She was a brutalized 16-year-old victim of rape, and her mother didn’t want her to be forced to bear the result of the rape.

I immediately began preparing documents to allow this Black teenager to intervene as a plaintiff in our case. On March 19, I filed these documents on behalf of Mary Poe, seeking to obtain “a legal, medically safe abortion,” denied at this time because her doctor had “advised her that under the language of the challenged statute” he could not “perform such an operation upon her without fear of prosecution.” 

The new Complaint joined the original plaintiffs’ prayer for relief and added the request that the court “enter a temporary restraining order [TRO] enjoining the defendants from prosecuting [one of our plaintiff physicians, Dr. Charles Fields] under the challenged statute if he terminates her current pregnancy on or before March 27,1970.  Unless this relief is granted by the court, this plaintiff will suffer irreparable injury.”  Dr. Fields had examined Mary Poe and concluded that her pregnancy could be safely terminated until on or about March 27.

The district judge presiding over our case, William J. Campbell, was on vacation, and we turned to another district judge, Edwin Robson, who was reviewing documents in Campbell’s absence.  So on March 23, I filed a motion for leave to intervene on behalf of Mary Poe and for a TRO allowing her to receive a legal abortion.  Robson ordered the defendants to file briefs by March 26 and set our motion for ruling on March 27.  On that date, the last day Dr. Fields said the pregnancy could be safely terminated, Robson finally granted the motion for leave to intervene, but he denied our motion for a TRO.  He continued that motion until Campbell’s return in April.

Back in my office, I prepared Mary Poe’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which sat in a courtroom several floors above the district court courtrooms.  As soon as the appellate court allowed me to, I argued before Judge Luther Swygert, chief judge of the appellate court, appealing the Robson ruling that denied Mary Poe a legal abortion.

Judge Swygert ruled on March 30:  “[T]his matter comes before the court on the emergency motion of [Mary Poe].  Upon consideration of the motion…IT IS ORDERED that a temporary restraining order be entered enjoining defendants…from prosecuting plaintiff [Dr. Fields] under [the Illinois statute we were challenging], if he terminates the current pregnancy of [Mary Poe].”

I remember standing in the courtroom to hear this order spoken out loud by Judge Swygert, a brilliant and fair-minded judge.  He became my enduring judicial hero ten months later, when he issued the ruling upholding our constitutional challenge, in January 1971.

We’d won a TRO allowing Mary Poe to get a legal abortion!

When Judge Campbell returned to his courtroom in April, he was confronted with the appellate court’s decision, and there was no way he could change it.  But he went on to oppose us at every possible turn as we proceeded with our lawsuit.  I describe everything that happened in my forthcoming book, which I’m hoping will appear in print in 2024.

In the meantime, I’ll state my unwavering belief that Campbell was an early version of the “robed zealots, driven by religious doctrine, with no accountability,” described by Maureen Dowd in her opinion column in The New York Times on December 16th.  In this column, “Supreme Contempt for Women,” Dowd clearly indicts “the Savonarola wing of the Supreme Court,” who couldn’t wait “to throw [Roe v. Wade] in the constitutional rights rubbish bin.”  Judge Campbell would have fit right in.

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A party at the Playboy Mansion

Posted on September 20, 2023 | 2 comments

Here’s a bit of history for you.  This story will appear in my book-in-progress, which focuses on the lawsuit filed by my co-counsel and me in Chicago in February 1970.  Our lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the regressive Illinois abortion statute, and we won a 2-to-1 decision in our favor from a three-judge court on January 29, 1971.  The ruling, Doe v. Scott, 321 F.Supp. 1385 (N.D. Ill. 1971), can be read online.

When my granddaughters learned that I had once attended a party at the notorious Playboy Mansion in Chicago, they were astounded and wanted to know how and why it happened.  This is what I can tell them, and you:

On a chilly evening in late December 1969, the Chicago ACLU sponsored a fund-raiser, including a lavish party for donors at the Playboy Mansion on North State Parkway.  The event was promoted as a celebration of the Bill of Rights.  Hugh Hefner, publisher of Playboy magazine, was not surprisingly an avid supporter of those rights, which enabled him to keep publishing his often lurid magazine largely without restrictions.  At that time, Hefner was living in his opulent Chicago mansion, and he opened its doors to partygoers that December night.

My co-counsel, Sybille Fritzsche, was an ACLU lawyer and my colleague in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Illinois abortion statute. As a lawyer with the Appellate and Test Case Division of the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau, I was representing low-income and minority women.

Sybille somehow wangled a non-donor invitation to the event for me.  I was delighted to be included, hoping to encounter some interesting people and get a good look inside the famed mansion.  I wore a glamorous new pantsuit in a beautiful indigo blue with rhinestone buttons, and I walked to the mansion from my nearby studio apartment. 

The atmosphere was raucous, featuring a large crowd of partygoers and extremely loud rock music.  I caught a glimpse of lavish furnishings and stunning artwork, but the crowds kept getting in the way.  I remember seeing celebrities like Peter Lawford acting inappropriately, and I also witnessed something a bit more startling.  I watched people (mostly young women) swimming in the nude in the mansion’s somewhat notorious pool. I descended to a lower level and sat facing the underwater window along one of the pool’s walls, allowing me and anyone else to watch the nude swimmers.

I soon ran into Sybille and her husband Hellmut, but we were barely able to communicate over the din. Sybille herself complained about the loud music that drowned out any conversation.  She was nearing the end of her fourth pregnancy.  (Her child was born the following February.)  But she didn’t let that stop her from having a great time at the party, where she undoubtedly recognized a lot of her colleagues and friends.

As for me, I chatted with some other partygoers, but I didn’t readily recognize any friends besides the Fritzsches, and the noise finally got to me.  So after roaming around the mansion a bit more, munching on food and imbibing liquid refreshment, I decided to walk home.  I lived only a few blocks away, and I distinctly recall running down those dark city blocks, attempting to avoid the many treacherous patches of ice on the sidewalk. 

I safely arrived at my studio apartment, certain that I would remember the event forever.  But, in truth, it was buried in the far corners of my mind until 2022, when it popped back into my consciousness while I was trying to recall any and all lawsuit-related events that took place from late 1969 through January 1973. 

I went on to wear my glamorous pantsuit on a host of other occasions. I later attempted to add it to my clothing collection from that era, a collection I donated to the Chicago History Museum just before I moved to San Francisco.  But the museum staff ultimately chose to reject it because the fragile fabric was too worn—proof of just how much wear I had given it.  It remains hanging in my closet as an artifact dating from that long-ago era–and a reminder of partying at Chicago’s Playboy Mansion in December 1969.

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Posted in 1960s, American history, Chicago, Chicago History Museum, clothes, clothing, Illinois, law, lawyers, legal assistance to the poor, U.S. federal courts

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Being short

Posted on May 30, 2023 | 3 comments

Being short

When I was in seventh grade, I was one of the tallest kids in my class.

The other kids kept growing.  I didn’t.

So, for most of my life, I’ve been viewed by others as “short.”  Not painfully short.  Just short.  And that’s been fine with me because I’ve always viewed myself as perfectly normal, confident in my own (short-sized) skin.  At the same time, I can’t deny my short stature, with all of its attendant pros and cons.                      

Another writer, Mara Altman, recently put forth her own ideas on being short. In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Altman declared that “there has never been a better time to be short.”

Why did she decide to take up this particular cause?  Altman tries to make being short seem to be somehow better by dredging up a list of positives as support for her claim.  Quoting famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who was himself 6’8” and once said that our culture’s “favoring the tall” is “one of the most blatant…prejudices in our society,” she attempts to knock down that prejudice.

As someone who’s about the same height as Altman, I like her list of benefits.  For example, I like her claim that short people live longer and have fewer incidences of cancer.  Great news, if true.  I’ve lived my life feeling pretty happy about being short, and anything that bolsters my general feeling of well-being is welcome.  But I question some of her sunny conclusions. 

First, Altman contends that being short benefits the environment.  She cites Thomas Samaras (she refers to him as the Godfather of Shrink Think), who has calculated that if Americans were just 10 percent shorter, we would save 87 million tons of food every year, as well as trillions of gallons of water and millions of tons of trash. But where are the calculations that support these conclusions? 

Altman also cites, Yuval Noah Harari, the author of “Sapiens,” who studied a population of early humans living on a small island.  When the island was cut off by rising sea levels, “Big people, who need a lot of food, died first,” Harari wrote.  But does this story of an isolated group of early humans really inform us in twenty-first-century America?  For a more recent and more apt example, why don’t we look at Holocaust survivors?  I haven’t researched this topic, but it seems to me that those who survived horrendous treatment in the Nazi concentration camps covered a wide range of body types.  Everyone in the camps was desperate for food, disease stalked the camps, and survival depended on a number of things in the survivors’ lives.  I have to question whether the “big people” died first.

Another bit of questionable evidence cited by Altman:  The findings of a Dutch researcher, Nancy Blaker, who has studied “social status” and concluded that short men (not clearly defined), “counter to prevailing attitudes,” may “compensate” for being short by “developing positive attributes.”  According to Blaker, short men aren’t necessarily “aggressive and mean” but “behave in smart strategic ways…that can also mean being prosocial.”  Huh?  Let’s be honest here.  I’ve known a great many short (as opposed to tall) men during my lifetime, and I would never presume to generalize about them.  Each man, like each woman, is an individual, subject to his gene pool and to a number of influences that began in their early childhoods.  Each man, short or tall or medium-height, is the result of whatever has made him the way he is.  Whoever said they were “aggressive and mean” in the first place?  Ludicrous.  All of them now behave “in smart strategic ways”?  Some, maybe, but all? 

I share Altman’s concern that some parents foolishly seek out expensive human growth treatment in an attempt to produce a child who’s bigger than nature intended.  A Philadelphia endocrinologist, Dr. Adda Grinberg, worries that parents think height is the key to success and belonging.  Grinberg disagrees with these parents.  “There are some short people who thrive and do phenomenally well and lead fantastic lives, and there are some tall people who are miserable.  It’s not the height that determines the outcome.”   Well said.  Truly caring parents should think twice before subjecting their children to an uncertain and possibly harmful treatment, hoping their kids will turn out taller.  Altman confesses that her parents, concerned that she would be short, subjected her to those “excruciating” treatments for three and a half years.  And those treatments apparently didn’t make much of a difference.  She still turned out to be “five-feet-even” short.

I’d love to believe Altman’s claims that short people live longer and have fewer incidences of cancer.  I sadly don’t find any citations of evidence for those claims.  I similarly like her focus on environmental benefits, but her support there is also sketchy.  If anyone can offer valid numbers to attach to these claims, I’m all ears.

By the way, I’d add one advantage Altman’s omitted:  Being a passenger on an airplane.  No matter where I sit on a plane, I always have plenty of legroom because my legs simply don’t require a lot of room.  Taller passengers often look resentful.

But things may not the same on other forms of transit.  When I would take a commuter train from home to downtown Chicago, I’d usually seek out the window seat on a two-seater bench. Time after time, a large overweight man would squeeze into my bench, leaving me little space to enjoy my chosen spot.  Whenever I later told my darling husband about it, he wisely responded, “Of course! Those guys want to sit next to you because you’re so small.”  He explained the obvious:  These men were exploiting my small size by occupying the lion’s share of my bench.

So, being a short person hasn’t always been totally positive.  I have a perennial problem reaching high shelves and racks in stores.  Since the pandemic has cut my time in stores to a minimum, that problem has abated.  But I still have kitchen cabinets and closets with high shelves requiring a stool to reach items perched there.  But seriously, are those enormous obstacles to happiness?  I don’t think so.

Overall, being short hasn’t been a big problem for me. As a child, I always felt perfectly normal.  Both of my parents and my sister were also short, and I was never made to think that it was better to be tall. I’ve rarely felt excluded, because of my height, from any activity or pursuit I chose to follow, including attending law school at a time when women were generally discouraged from doing so.  And I had a whole universe of men, from the shortest to the tallest, who were OK with dating me, while taller women may have attracted a somewhat smaller cohort.

Still, I’m not sorry that my delightful daughters have turned out to be about five or six inches taller than I am, reaching a height somewhere between mine and that of their much taller father. They light up my life in every way.  But to be specific, they’re happy to grab items for me from those pesky high shelves. 

I’m OK with being short, and I don’t feel a need to defend it.  Nature intends us to be short or tall or in-between.  Why should I pick a fight with Mother Nature?

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Posted in cancer, Chicago, environment, family, happiness, long life, longevity, parents

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The power of birdsong

Posted on January 17, 2023 | 1 comment

Is gloomy winter weather getting you down?  A recent study has unexpectedly revealed something that may brighten your mood:  birdsong.

Scientists long ago discovered that spending time in natural surroundings has positive effects on people’s emotional and physical health.  You’re probably well aware of this phenomenon, seeking out green places as often as you can.

Living in California, as I do, makes that pretty easy to do.  At least most of the time.  Right now my home state is confronting challenges posed by too much rain.  But we generally have an abundance of sunshine, allowing me to visit lots of greenery sprouting nearby.  (I’ve also lived through many winters in Chicago and other cold-weather cities, so I’m well aware of the challenges there.)

But let’s look at exactly what can cheer you up, no matter where you live.  Biologists at California Polytechnic University have spent the past few years investigating how birds may play a role in creating beneficial effects.  Danielle Ferraro has focused on the impact of birdsong.  Ferraro and her colleagues played two weeks’ worth of recordings of a number of species’ calls on two trails in a Colorado park.  They then interviewed hikers on these trails, hoping they could discern changes in the calls of different bird species.

It turned out that they could.  But the best thing the researchers learned is that the hikers reported experiencing greater feelings of joy and pleasure than those who walked the same trails when the recordings weren’t playing.  Ferraro was astounded that “even 10 minutes of exposure to the recordings had very positive effects on people’s moods.”

A similar study conducted in Germany reached the same result.  The German researchers found that the larger the number of bird and plant species in a region, the more content people were.  British researchers came to a similar conclusion.  (These studies are reported in the Winter 2023 issue of National Wildlife, published by the National Wildlife Federation.)

Ferraro thinks there may be an evolutionary reason for this phenomenon:  Human brains may be genetically attuned to enjoying nature.  “It could be our natural inclination.”

Reflecting on these studies, I think we can all benefit from listening to birdsong.  Even in harsh weather, we can seek out trails in national and local parks, dressing smartly to withstand the chill.  Birds survive in all kinds of climates, so you may be able to hear birdsong in winter even when you hike these trails in cold weather. 

Another possibility:  You can try to find recordings of birdsong and either play them in your own home or listen to them elsewhere.  Listening outdoors in a park-like setting is probably best because you’re also benefiting from the natural surroundings.

Whichever way you choose, try to listen to those birds.  Remember that Ferraro’s study concluded that even ten minutes of listening to birdsong can make you feel happier.

As we benefit from listening to the birds, please keep in mind the warnings I recently came across in a publication from Audubon, the primo organization concerned with protecting birds.  Audubon warns us that climate change threatens nearly 400 bird species with extinction. 

If we fail to confront climate change and its undeniable effects on our natural world, we may be ushering in the loss of many species of birds, along with countless others in the animal kingdom. 

We would all be the losers.

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A Christmas Carol (my story–not Dickens’s)

Posted on December 12, 2022 | 2 comments

With the arrival of the December holidays, we’re surrounded by the sounds of holiday music.  Much of this music celebrates religious holidays, but some of it has become beloved secular songs.

I’ve always loved holiday music, ranging from traditional Christmas carols to more elevated music composed by serious composers.  I especially relished singing Christmas music with my high-school and college choral groups.

My high-school experience was memorable.  Our school chorus was invited to sing carols in the plaza of the Chicago Sun-Times building. We joyously sang at this site on Michigan Avenue adjacent to the Wrigley Building, just north of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. What a fabulous time we had, singing a number of well-known carols in the freezing cold while bundled-up passers-by watched and listened. (Sadly, the Sun-Times building was demolished around 2004, and its plaza is now occupied by an enormous blot on the riverscape along the Chicago River: the 92-story T…. International Hotel and Tower, built by our twice-impeached former president.) 

As a college student at Washington University, I joined two choral groups that sang holiday music with the St. Louis Symphony.  First, as a member of the university’s Women’s Chorus, I sang with the symphony in “L’Enfance du Christ” (“The Childhood of Christ”) by Berlioz.  By my senior year, I was part of the wonderful university Choir. We did a lot of singing, including a holiday-timed presentation of Handel’s “Messiah.”  Singing these two pieces, as well as Brahms’s “A German Requiem,” with the St. Louis Symphony created some of my favorite WashU memories.

The holiday season and its music also revive a memory from my much younger childhood.  When I was about eight, my parents shopped for a piano so I could learn how to play.  I remember viewing a handsome model at the Lyon & Healy store on Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago, where the salesman had a great sales pitch.  He told us this piano was worth a great deal more money than L & H was asking because it was designed for a wealthy pooh-bah who’d returned it to the store only because he wasn’t happy with some feature or another.  True story or not, my parents scooped up this gorgeous piano, and it became a highlight of our otherwise ordinary living room.

Mom immediately set about arranging piano lessons for me.  Somehow she came up with Rachel G., a woman whom I remember as a rigid unsmiling taskmaster (taskmistress?), lacking in patience, whose lessons became a dreaded part of my existence.

At first Rachel G had a fairly kind approach.  She introduced me to classical music in very simplified form, and I did glean a basic knowledge of composers like Mozart, Haydn, and Bach in child-designed sheet music.  Truthfully, I didn’t retain much of their biographical information, but I painfully made my way through the simple arrangements of some of their most famous melodies.  I later progressed to slightly more advanced arrangements of major classical pieces, like the Soldiers’ Chorus from Gounod’s “Faust” and the theme from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat Minor.  Remarkably, I’ve saved almost all of my sheet music, shuttling it around the country during numerous cross-country moves, and I still have them, decorating the piano that now sits in my apartment.

One day fairly early in our relationship, Rachel G brought a new and very simple piece of music for me to learn.  It was a well-known Christmas carol:  “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”  The front cover of the sheet music, with a cover price of 30 cents (a 25-cent price is crossed out), portrays a Dickens-era group of four carolers, led by a man in a top hat and bright plaid coat.  In big letters, the cover notes that it includes one of six different “Carols you love to sing and play.”  Inside, we read that this carol was the creation of Phillips Brooks and Louis H. Redner and that Walter Lane arranged the very simple collection of notes and lyrics.

Phillips Brooks was the Episcopal rector of a Philadelphia church (later rector of Trinity Church in Boston) who was inspired to write the words of the carol by his visit to the city of Bethlehem in 1865.  Three years later, he finally wrote the words, and just before Christmas, he asked Redner, the church organist, to add the music.  Redner later recalled that the simple music was “written in great haste and under great pressure….Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music…would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.” 

My parents weren’t members of any church, Christian or otherwise.  They—especially my father–were pretty casual about religious observance of any stripe, including their own.  My grandparents, who’d emigrated from Eastern Europe, were probably unfamiliar with American Christmas carols, but my American-born parents never objected to my singing them. 

Still, my mother, usually reticent, seemed disturbed by Rachel G’s selection.  I think she viewed the carol as a religious piece of music, and she disliked the idea of my playing religious music in our home.  Before my lesson began, she uncharacteristically spoke up.  I don’t recall the exact words spoken by either my mother or Rachel G, but I could grasp the tense tone of the conversation. 

Looking back, I suspect that Rachel G was most likely Jewish, so her choice was somewhat curious.  But I’ve concluded that her choice was based on the music, not the words.  Its super-simple musical arrangement was clearly suitable for the level of my ability.  So, as a conscientious music teacher, she stood her ground. 

In the end, Rachel G must have soothed my mother’s concerns because I went on to learn, haltingly, the music of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”  I still have the fragile paper copy of the sheet music.  And I still love to play its beautiful melody in my still halting fashion.

When my family moved from Chicago to LA when I was 12, my parents sold our gorgeous piano, and our fortunes never led to the purchase of another one. That ended any possibility that my piano skills would ever improve.  I grew up to deeply envy skilled pianists who undoubtedly had more benevolent instruction and a piano literally at their fingertips.

The carol I learned to play, thanks to Rachel G, has endured.  When I viewed “Christmas in Connecticut,” a fan-favorite Christmas movie that appeared on TV last week, I watched star Barbara Stanwyck romanced by star Dennis Morgan.  In one delightful scene, he charmingly plays “O Little Town of Bethlehem” on her piano while she’s trimming her Christmas tree. 

“O Little Town” lives!

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Posted in 1950s, American culture, Boston, Christmas, Christmas music, Christmas carols, Christmas muxic, Washington University in St. Louis

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Declare Your Independence: Those high heels are killers

Posted on July 1, 2022 | 3 comments

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Following a tradition I began several years ago, I’m once again encouraging women to declare their independence this July 4th and abandon wearing high-heeled shoes. 

I’ve revised this post in light of changes that have taken place during the past year and a couple of new ideas I want to pass along.

My newly revised post follows:

I’ve long maintained that high heels are killers.  I never used that term literally, of course.  I merely viewed high-heeled shoes as distinctly uncomfortable and an outrageous concession to the dictates of fashion that can lead to both pain and permanent damage to a woman’s body. 

A few years ago, however, high heels proved to be actual killers.  The Associated Press reported that two women, ages 18 and 23, were killed in Riverside, California, as they struggled in high heels to get away from a train.  With their car stuck on the tracks, the women attempted to flee as the train approached.  A police spokesman later said, “It appears they were in high heels and [had] a hard time getting away quickly.” 

During the past two years, largely dominated by the global pandemic, many women and men adopted different ways to clothe themselves.  Sweatpants and other comfortable clothing became popular.  [Please see my post, “Two Words,” published July 15, 2020, focusing on pants with elastic waists.]

In particular, many women abandoned the wearing of high heels.  Staying close to home, wearing comfortable clothes, they saw no need to push their feet into high heels.  Venues requiring professional clothes or footwear almost disappeared, and few women chose to seek out venues requiring any sort of fancy clothes or footwear.  

But as the pandemic began to loosen its grip, some women were tempted to return to their previous choice of footwear.  The prospect of a renaissance in high-heeled shoe-wearing was noted in publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.   In a story in the Times, one woman “flicked the dust off her…high-heeled lavender pumps” that she’d put away for months and got ready to wear them to a birthday gathering.  According to the Times, some are seeking “the joy of dressing up…itching…to step up their style game in towering heels.”

Okay.  I get it.  “Dressing up” may be your thing after a couple of years relying on sweatpants.  But “towering heels”?  They may look beautiful, they may be alluring….

BUT don’t do it!  Please take my advice and don’t return to wearing the kind of shoes that will hobble you once again..

Like the unfortunate young women in Riverside, I was sucked into wearing high heels when I was a teenager.  It was de rigueur for girls at my high school to seek out the trendy shoe stores on State Street in downtown Chicago and purchase whichever high-heeled offerings our wallets could afford.  On my first visit, I was entranced by the three-inch-heeled numbers that pushed my toes into a too-narrow space and revealed them in what I thought was a highly provocative position.  If feet can have cleavage, those shoes gave me cleavage.

Never mind that my feet were encased in a vise-like grip.  Never mind that I walked unsteadily on the stilts beneath my soles.  And never mind that my whole body was pitched forward in an ungainly manner as I propelled myself around the store.  I liked the way my legs looked in those shoes, and I had just enough baby-sitting money to pay for them.  Now I could stride with pride to the next Sweet Sixteen luncheon on my calendar, wearing footwear like all the other girls’.

That luncheon revealed what an unwise purchase I’d made.  When the event was over, I found myself stranded in a distant location with no ride home, and I started walking to the nearest bus stop.  After a few steps, it was clear that my shoes were killers.  I could barely put one foot in front of the other, and the pain became so great that I removed my shoes and walked in stocking feet the rest of the way.

After that painful lesson, I abandoned three-inch high-heeled shoes and resorted to wearing lower ones.   Sure, I couldn’t flaunt my shapely legs quite as effectively, but I nevertheless managed to secure ample male attention. 

Instead of conforming to the modern-day equivalent of Chinese foot-binding, I successfully and happily fended off the back pain, foot pain, bunions, and corns that my fashion-victim sisters often suffer in spades.

Until the pandemic changed our lives, I observed a trend toward higher and higher heels, and I found it troubling.  I was baffled by women, especially young women, who bought into the mindset that they had to follow the dictates of fashion and the need to look “sexy” by wearing extremely high heels.  

When I’d watch TV, I’d see too many women wearing stilettos that forced them into the ungainly walk I briefly sported so long ago.  I couldn’t help noticing the women on late-night TV shows who were otherwise smartly attired and often very smart (in the other sense of the word), yet wore ridiculously high heels that forced them to greet their hosts with that same ungainly walk.  Some appeared to be almost on the verge of toppling over. 

Sadly, this phenomenon has reappeared. On late-night TV, otherwise enlightened women are once again wearing absurdly high heels.

So…what about the women, like me, who adopted lower-heeled shoes instead?  I think we’ve been much smarter and much less likely to fall on our faces. One very smart woman who’s still a fashion icon: the late Hollywood film star Audrey Hepburn. Audrey dressed smartly, in both senses of the word.

I recently watched her 1963 smash film Charade for the eighth or tenth time. I especially noted how elegant she appeared in her Givenchy wardrobe and her–yes–low heels. Audrey was well known for wearing comfortable low heels in her private life as well as in her films. [Please see my blog post: https://susanjustwrites.com/2013/08/08/audrey-hepburn-and-me/….]

In Charade, paired with Cary Grant, another ultra-classy human being, she’s seen running up and down countless stairs in Paris Metro stations, chased by Cary Grant not only on those stairs but also through the streets of Paris. She couldn’t have possibly done all that frantic running in high heels!

Foot-care professionals have soundly supported my view.   According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, a heel that’s more than 2 or 3 inches makes comfort just about impossible.  Why?  Because a 3-inch heel creates seven times more stress than a 1-inch heel.

A few years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle questioned a podiatrist and foot and ankle surgeon who practiced in Palo Alto (and assisted Nike’s running team).  He explained that after 1.5 inches, the pressure increases on the ball of the foot and can lead to “ball-of-the-foot numbness.”  (Yikes!)  He did not endorse wearing 3-inch heels and pointed out that celebrities wear them for only a short time, not all day.  To ensure a truly comfortable shoe, he added, no one should go above a 1.5-inch heel.  If you insist on wearing higher heels, you should limit how much time you spend in them.

Before the pandemic, some encouraging changes were afoot.  Nordstrom, one of America’s major shoe-sellers, began to promote lower-heeled styles along with higher-heeled numbers.  I was encouraged because Nordstrom is a bellwether in the fashion world, and its choices can influence shoe-seekers.  At the same time, I wondered whether Nordstrom was reflecting what its shoppers had already told the stores’ decision-makers.  The almighty power of the purse—how shoppers were choosing to spend their money–-probably played a big role.

The pandemic may have changed the dynamics of shoe-purchasing, at least at the beginning. For the first year, sales of high heels languished, “teetering on the edge of extinction,” according to the Times.  Today, the pandemic may be a somewhat less frightening presence in our lives, and there are undoubtedly women who will decide to resurrect the high heels already in their closets.  They, and others, may be inspired to buy new ones.

I hope these women don’t act in haste.  Beyond the issue of comfort, let’s remember that high heels present a far more serious problem.  As the deaths in Riverside demonstrate, women who wear high heels can be putting their lives at risk.  When they need to flee a dangerous situation, high heels can handicap their ability to escape.

How many needless deaths have resulted from hobbled feet?

Gen Z shoppers can provide a clue to the future. They largely eschew high heels, choosing glamorous sneakers instead–even with dressy prom dresses.

My own current faves: I wear black Sketchers almost everywhere. I occasionally choose my old standby, Reeboks, for serious walking. [In my novel Red Diana, protagonist Karen Clark laces on her Reeboks for a lengthy jaunt, just as I do.] And when warm temperatures dominate, I’m wearing walking sandals, like those sold by Clarks, Teva, and Ecco.

The Fourth of July is fast approaching.  As we celebrate the holiday this year, I once again urge the women of America to declare their independence from high-heeled shoes. 

If you’re currently thinking about returning to painful footwear, think again.  You’d be wiser to reconsider.

I encourage you to bravely gather any high heels you’ve clung to during the pandemic and throw those shoes away.  At the very least, keep them out of sight in the back of your closet.  And don’t even think about buying new ones.  Shod yourself instead in shoes that allow you to walk in comfort—and if need be, to run.

Your wretched appendages, yearning to be free, will be forever grateful.

[Earlier versions of this commentary appeared on Susan Just Writes and the San Francisco Chronicle.]

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Posted in Audrey Hepburn, fashion, fashion industry, films, Fourth of July, high school, high-heeled shoes, high heels, Paris, Red Diana novel, Riverside, California, San Francisco Chronicle, television, The New York Times, walking

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PACIFIC BEACH: An unforgettable year (Part IV)

Posted on April 21, 2022 | 1 comment

My baby was due in early May.  One Friday close to my due date, I underwent a procedure in my doctor’s office called amniocentesis.  It involved plunging a needle into me to extract fluid proving that my fetus’s lungs were sufficiently mature.  It was painful, briefly, and there was a danger of piercing the amniotic sac, but skillful Dr. Blank carried it off with aplomb.

I felt fine when it was over, and Marv and I took off for a beautiful afternoon in Balboa Park.  We strolled through the park until we came across the Spanish Village Art Center, a collection of small buildings designed like an old village in Spain.  It was originally built in 1935 for the second California Pacific International Exposition, and a group of dedicated artists had turned it into a permanent art center. Artists have continued to preserve and enhance it. 

We happily encountered a watercolor artist, Frances Steffes, who was showing some of her paintings, including one of La Jolla Cove.  After chatting with her, we decided to buy this watercolor, which captured the beauty of a spectacular spot in La Jolla.  The painting now hangs in the home of the baby I gave birth to two days later.

Dr. Blank had warned us that amniocentesis might hasten the birth, so we took it easy on Saturday.

I woke up around 4 a.m. on Sunday. The process had begun.  As a high-risk primapara, I was worried that things might not go smoothly, so I needed to get to the hospital right away.

Marv and I phoned Dr. Blank and left for the hospital.  At that time, Scripps Memorial Hospital arose in the middle of a still largely undeveloped tract of land in La Jolla.  We were ushered into a room where my progress was monitored by a rather brusque nurse until Dr. Blank arrived.  Although I had increasingly painful contractions, I was told that my labor didn’t “progress” well.  Because of my high-risk status, Dr. B didn’t want labor to continue indefinitely, and at noon he decided to deliver my baby by C-section.

Now we began to wait for an operating room.  I was in agony, wondering exactly what was causing the hold-up.  We were finally told that only one operating room was available on Sundays (that was somewhat surprising), and another operation was in progress.  A male baby had a “bleeding circumcision,” and we had to wait for it to be surgically repaired before I could be moved to the operating room.  The surgeon who had caused the flawed circumcision must have been desperate to repair it to secure his professional reputation. 

All this time, I was having intense labor pains, along with accompanying worries about my high-risk status, and the waiting seemed interminable.  (I could comment here about gender-bias, but I won’t.)

Finally, I was moved to the operating room. An anesthesiologist gave me a spinal injection that killed my pain, and he and I chatted while Dr. B deftly performed my C-section.  When Dr. B announced, at last, “You have a beautiful baby girl!” I burst into tears, deliriously happy tears running down my face.

As soon as I was moved to a room, Marv immediately rushed to my bedside (fathers weren’t allowed in operating rooms), joyfully telling me, “She’s the prettiest baby in the nursery!”  By this time, Marv and I had decided on a name in memory of his late mother.  I’ll call her Felicia. 

We were extremely relieved to learn that Felicia had no signs of diabetes (or any other ailment), and my own gestational diabetes had vanished as soon as she was born.  It reappeared only briefly during my next pregnancy and then once again disappeared.  I’ve been lucky to have been spared this awful disease.  So far, at least.

Mom arrived from Chicago to join our newly-created three-member family when we left the hospital.  Her cheerful stay was brief but helpful.  After she left, Marv and began to focus on our new life.  Tammy and Norm volunteered to be our first babysitters, and we took them up on it and left for a quick bite at Bully’s.

Breastfeeding, a/k/a nursing, was a challenge.  At the time, breastfeeding wasn’t universally adopted by new mothers.  But I was determined to try.  I constantly returned to another well-thumbed paperback by an author who strongly endorsed it.  Just as she warned, it was painful at first, but I persevered, and it was worth it.  I loved holding Felicia in my arms, nurturing her with milk produced by my own body.  I still think that breastfeeding is an astounding experience that every mother should at least attempt, and I was delighted that both of my daughters followed my lead and breastfed their babies.

At home with my baby, I was able to watch the televised impeachment hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee, which began on May 9th.  By June, Woodward and Bernstein had published All the President’s Men, its astounding revelations creating a firestorm.  Tricky Dick was clearly in big trouble.

Going for long walks with our baby smiling at us from her carriage, Marv and I began to look at houses. We weren’t certain that we had a future in La Jolla (he had only a one-year appointment as a visiting professor), but we thought we might as well look, right?  I remember seeing a house in La Jolla that listed for $40,000.  It was in a not-so-desirable part of town and probably wasn’t much of a house, but looking back even a few years later, I realized what a great investment any piece of property in La Jolla would have been. 

Unsure that we’d stay, we unfortunately couldn’t consider buying it.  We didn’t have a lot of spare cash, and we needed to save what we had for a future home, wherever that might be. 

Marv and I got adventurous, taking our baby to a restaurant for the first time.  Our choice was La Rancherita, a small Mexican place on La Jolla Boulevard.  Dinner there was a breeze.  Felicia slept through the whole thing.

We tried our luck again a few weeks later.  We headed for a terrific Italian restaurant in Pacific Beach.  But our luck had run out.  This visit was a near-nightmare. Although Felicia was a happy baby who almost never cried, here she cried the entire time.  The only positive thing that happened: A woman diner asked me her name, then told me she’d given the same name to her own daughter.  That made me feel a tiny bit better.

Aunt Sade and Uncle Sam reappeared, driving down from LA, and we ate at a splendid seafood restaurant in La Jolla called Anthony’s. While we ate, we all gazed at the entrancing Felicia.  I was delighted to see Sade and Sam again at our joyous reunion, and I looked forward to another one. 

Life was blissful.  Although we knew we might have to leave our magical life in La Jolla, the prospect was too awful to contemplate.  But one day Marv had to relate very bad news. 

We’d been hoping that his one-year appointment at UCSD would be extended.  But his mentor, an older professor who (as I recall) headed the math department (I’ll call him Jay), was leaving.  A native of the Netherlands, Jay had taught at American universities for decades.  But his second wife missed her home in Europe and was eager to return.  For whatever reasons, Jay accepted a position in Amsterdam. 

This was shocking news.  Jay had invited Marv to UCSD because he greatly admired Marv’s work as a mathematician and relished sharing ideas with him.  I think Jay would have made sure that Marv remained his colleague at UCSD.  But Jay was departing, and his influence no longer held much weight.   

So although Marv was at the top of his field (he’d already earned tenure at the University of Michigan), the rug was suddenly pulled out from under him when Jay announced he’d be departing for Europe. 

Marv began searching for another job in California.  But it was too late in the academic year to secure a new faculty position, and other attempts to find a meaningful position for someone of his academic stature didn’t pan out.

So together Marv and I bravely faced facts.  We’d have to leave our idyllic new life in La Jolla.  We knew that the math department at the University of Michigan would welcome Marv back with open arms, so it made sense to return to Ann Arbor for one more year. 

Our new baby was totally dependent on us, and it was imperative that the three of us stay together.  I sadly had to forgo the prospect of returning to my Legal Aid job in San Diego.  I knew that I would continue to pursue my own career, but I never for one second considered looking for a job that would separate me from my adored Marv or my beautiful new baby or both.

Together we would move back to Ann Arbor.

We began packing.   While we packed, we put Felicia, comfy in her baby chair, on the floor near us. We discovered that she liked to kick brown paper grocery bags, watching the empty bags move and listening to them make noise, so we placed bags where her tiny feet could reach them.  This effort kept her happy while we filled up cartons with our stuff.

As we packed, Tricky Dick Nixon faced his own grim future.  On July 24th, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to deliver tape recordings and other materials to the district court.  The walls were closing in on him.

Then, between July 27th and 30th, we learned of two other developments:  The House of Representatives issued Articles of Impeachment, and Nixon’s “smoking gun” tape was disclosed.

Around August 1st, Marv and I flew back to Ann Arbor (via Detroit) with our not-quite-three-month-old baby.

While we stayed at Ann Arbor’s Briarwood Hotel, looking for an apartment, we had one consolation for our move:  On August 8th, Nixon announced his resignation in a televised speech (he officially resigned and left the White House the next day).  Watching his humiliating speech on TV, Marv and I celebrated by ordering steak and champagne from hotel room service.

An even more significant and lifelong consolation:  Our baby.  Felicia sustained us through everything we dealt with during the next year in Ann Arbor.  Flooding my memory is the agony of pushing her baby carriage through daunting piles of snow and ice that winter.

This darling new person in our life sustained us until the following spring, when Marv accepted an excellent job offer from a university in Chicago.  Being in Chicago would be an exciting departure from Ann Arbor.  Soon we used our spare cash to buy a house in the leafy lakefront suburb of Wilmette. 

No, it wouldn’t be La Jolla.  It wouldn’t be Pacific Beach.  But our new home in Wilmette meant the beginning of a beautiful new life.

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Posted in breast-feeding, California, Chicago, daughters, diabetes, family, happiness, La Jolla, mathematicians, Pacific Beach, U.S. Supreme Court, UCSD

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