Grandma's Been There

Today, I'm going to tell you all about my school uniforms. They were outdated, impractical and humiliating. I  hated   them.

This week, I think we need a vacation. And where do Brooklyn people go to get away from the congested dirty city? To the Catskill Mountains, of course. We're goin' up the country!

As I've said many a time, life in Brooklyn sometimes left a bit to be desired. On the other hand, it had some very special and unique places that plenty of other cities didn't have. This week, I want to take you with me to visit one of those places.

Since "Grandma's Been There" is turning one year old in about another month, I thought I'd make the last episode of 2025 about the podcast itself.

Now the seasons pass with the speed of shooting stars, but at a time when a year represented one tenth of my entire life, it always felt as if holidays would never come. And out of all the holidays, Christmas was by far the hardest one to wait for.

Sometimes shooting stars appear to us in human forms. They get caught in our gravitational fields and produce streaks of light across the heavens of our lives. The imprints they leave remain with us forever.

This week, as we tumble down the wormhole, we're going straight past the 1960s and 1950s and time traveling back to the early 1940s. Today's episode brings us to the Brooklyn Skating Rink on Empire Boulevard in December of 1942. The story is based on real places, actual events and real people. Come with me and let me introduce you to some "Unknown Legends."

A temperate zone is defined as an area that has a moderate climate and distinct seasons with relatively mild temperatures. "Mild?" That  is  a relative term. Even though I knew there were plenty of hotter, colder, wetter and drier places on this earth, the middle latitudes didn't always feel so "temperate" to me when I was a kid.

It's often said that anyone who's old enough to remember the day can tell you exactly where they were on November 22, 1963. As trite as it may sound, it's the truth. For me, the memory of that afternoon and the days that followed will never fade or disappear.

I was fourteen years old the first time I saw Joni Mitchell. She was simplicity and intricacy, and she was beautiful. She was like no other artist I'd ever seen or heard before. Let me share some of my pictures of Joni with you.

John Kennedy entered the White House five months after I entered the first grade. When I saw that the new president was a  young  man with a daughter around my age, I knew things were looking up. But how much of what I saw was real and how much of it was an illusion?

This week, I want to tell you how much I enjoy Halloween in this new millennium. Before I do that though, I need to tell you what Halloween was like when I was a little girl because it was  very  different than it is now.

As a young kid, I was awkward, self-conscious and devoid of confidence. I was lucky to have the support of a friend who was a self-propelled leader. She was the locomotive and I was the caboose.

October 16th marked the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This week's episode is a work of fiction based on actual events. "World Without End" is the story of a little girl who challenges the validity of 1960s Cold War propaganda by refusing to take cover during an air raid drill. I've divided it into two parts which I'm releasing simultaneously so...

Here's the second half of "World Without End." If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, please go back and listen to that first.

I'm gonna miss the summer, but I'm ready for cooler air and a whole new color palette. I love all the seasons, but there's nothing like the look, the feel and the personality of the fall.

Let me tell you how Bernard Castro helped me sleep at night when I was a little girl even though we never owned one of his sofa beds.

In 1969, it was often easy for me to feel like Alice Pleasance Liddell trying to navigate Wonderland and the world of opposites on the other side of the looking glass while always on the lookout for the Queen of Hearts. Outside my door, there were lots of strange creatures, a little madness and some real danger.

If you should happen to notice any similarities in the themes of these two cautionary tales from the past, or if you find them relatable to things that are going on in the present day, well, that could be because history does have a tendency to repeat itself, especially when we're not paying attention.

Our food was processed, artificially flavored, chemically preserved and loaded with sugar and caffeine. We breathed secondhand and thirdhand smoke every day. We stuck our hands, arms and heads out the windows of moving cars. And we went outside to play by ourselves on busy city streets before we were old enough to go to school. We asked total strangers to help us cross the street. We were living o...

In the 1950s and early '60s, looking and acting exactly like your neighbors wasn't a trend or a fad. It was a national obsession. For some, uniformity afforded comfort and security. For others, conformity was as comfortable as a straitjacket.

Once upon a time, there were no such things as zip codes. The post office identified neighborhoods by their zones. Any mail addressed to me or my neighbors came to Brooklyn 25, New York. We liked our zone.

Whether we like it or not, we're just a few weeks away from saying goodbye to another summer. No matter how young you are, I strongly suggest you pay close attention to this week's story and heed its advice. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think!

From chalk slates to Etch A Sketch, Chutes and Ladders to Mouse Trap, we've got all the games. We've got hula hoops, Duncan yo-yos, Slinkys, toy soldiers, doll carriages and Colorforms. Come on downstairs and let's play!

During the school year, our weekends were precious. Monday morning may as well have been light years away when we bolted out of that school building on Friday afternoon. This week, we sing the praises of wondrous winter weekends. How sweet they were!