Blog Posts

“Hey, this is Reggie,” a man with a Brooklyn accent said on my voicemail. “I’m callin’ from The New York Times. I wanna get your voice into the narrative that I’m writing for your, yunno, announcement.” Inconsistent as it might sound, I’ve been an avid and enthusiastic reader of The New York Times Weddings &…

New York City is defined by its neighborhoods: Hell’s Kitchen, Upper West, Upper East. Each has its place, it’s people, its institutions and landmarks. When Maggie was a toddler, we used to walk around the Upper East Side singing “Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood,” while introducing ourselves to everyone from the dry cleaner,…

I was sitting on our front steps Saturday morning, reading the paper and drinking my coffee, when I heard the hollow thud of bone on cement. I looked up, but no one was there. I looked down and saw a small squirrel, immobile but alive, in the street just a few feet in front of…

September 4th was, by any other account, a Saturday like any before. I woke at dawn, well prior to Abbi and the girls, rolled out of bed, and tip-toed down the steps. I brewed a cup of coffee (half and half, teaspoon of sugar in the raw), cracked the front door quietly, and stepped outside.…

I burst through the doors of Fame Studios like a deer in headlights: wide-eyed, disoriented, and out of breath. I’d stumbled through a side door just seconds prior, and been rebuffed and redirected by a cluster of young, handsome, chain-smoking rock ‘n rollers. I blew unwittingly past the studio’s matriarch, Linda Hall, beneath a hand-painted…

“10 bucks for parking,” I thought. “Of course.” The lot was shimmering like a National Guitar: sunbaked, half empty, dotted with slow-shuffling Elvis fans. I turned off my rental (a Kia Sportage, natch) and stepped towards the collection of white corrugated-aluminum sheds that constitute Elvis Presley’s Graceland. Not his house, but the dozen or so…