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Lobbying for Adventure
by Julie Metz 12/08/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
“It’s not like I am going to die or anything.” My ten-year-old daughter Liza is begging me to let her walk alone to her school bus stop three streets from our Brooklyn apartment. She is as persistent as a lawyer in court, who, sensing that victory is at hand, refuses to let up on the [...]
Finding Fred: Death and Ice Cream
by Allan Goldstein 07/19/2006Neighborhood: All Over, Brooklyn
I was riding in our friend’s red, rattling car. The car that had been filled with balloons to celebrate my last birthday—the time we traveled to visit Mom. Now my wife and I were going to inform my forty-five year old brother of her death. To inform, support, and console my kid brother—the brother who [...]
Tour Guide to the Real New York City
by Kate Walter 06/30/2006Neighborhood: East Village
I have no kids and never wanted any, so I was a bit anxious about playing tour guide for my 14 year old niece, Shannon, on her first visit to New York City. But my brother John said she could not wait to see Manhattan. It was quite a trip for an eighth grader from [...]
In Search of a New Season: For the Knicks and the Rest of Us
by Dorothy Spears 06/15/2006Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Since my boyfriend, Alexis, injured his shoulder playing pick-up basketball, he’s been watching games from the sideline. Usually he’ll just stop for a couple of minutes, en route to wherever he—or we—are going. If a pick-up buddy says, “What’s up?” he’ll sometimes give them one of those street-hugs, where they grab each other’s hand and [...]
My Only Regret
by Thomas R. Ziegler 04/27/2006Neighborhood: Bronx, Outer Boroughs
Arriving before the engine, with fire blowing out two windows on the third floor and people in the street yelling, “There’s two kids in there” our asses are about to be kicked and there is nothing we can do about it. It’s 1977, and Lieutenant Annello leads the way as usual. He is simply the [...]
Asking For Love
by Allan B. Goldstein 02/16/2006Neighborhood: Financial District
An “incident” had occurred at the group home where my younger brother lives with five other men and three women who all have mental retardation. His supervisor, more amused than upset, followed procedure by notifying me and beginning an investigation. Fred, a 103 pound, 5’2” 52-year-old man, was discovered standing with his roommate of two [...]
Mr. O’Brien’s Legacy
by Kitty Derbin 01/26/2006Neighborhood: Letter From Abroad
I learned a lot from my grandpa, John Francis O’Brien, a native of Cork city (Ireland) and an immigrant to America. He used to always say that he was closest to God when he was connected to nature. Grandpa was quite an unusual character in our working class neighborhood on Detroit’s West Side, just a [...]
The Surprise Visit
by Kitty Derbin 01/05/2006Neighborhood: Uncategorized
Where do I begin? On Christmas Eve 1999, I was doing the usual stuff… Following my family’s long tradition of going from one home to the next, delivering Christmas presents and cookies, eating and eating some more, singing carols, and sharing midnight mass together downtown. This year, my brother needed a ride back to his [...]
The Lucky Children of New York City
by Emily Horowitz 12/22/2005Neighborhood: Inwood
The public school kids of New York City learned that they could go to school 2 hours late during the strike. At least for the kids who live within walking distance of the school, and didn’t have to take a car service or walk miles in the cold, this was fun and exciting. When I [...]
The Jewel in the Crown
by Marvin V. Arnett 11/16/2005Neighborhood: Uncategorized
[The following was originally published in "Piece From Life's Crazy Quilt," a collection of personal essays about growing up in Detroit in the 1920's, 30s, and 40s by Marvin V. Arnett. The collection first appeared in 2000, as part of the University of Nebraska Press's "American Lives" series (Series Editor: Tobias Wolff), and the University [...]
Getting Che
by Susan Connell-Mettauer 01/15/2003Neighborhood: Upper East Side
My brother was thirteen years older than me. We had different values, he having grown up in a repectable working class slum and me, from age seven to seventeen, in a fancy suburb west of Boston. I took a lot of things for granted. But he had bought the American Dream, maybe because our mother [...]
Mother’s Day
by E. Franke 01/02/2003Neighborhood: West Village
My brother is a twenty-eight-year-old millionaire living in Greenwich Village. He drives a Boxster, owns a beach house in East Hampton, and recently bought an original one-sheet of Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the bargain price of twenty thousand dollars. Sometimes he asks me, his older and poorer sister, what I want or could use—cable TV, [...]
