There are good musicians in my family… I am not one of them. Each fourth grade student at my elementary school was compelled to choose a musical instrument or join the chorus. I chose the trumpet. The noises that escaped from that collection of joined brass tubes, valves, and fittings – with my help – were indescribable. My grandmother was “treated” to an impromptu trumpet “concert” in my parents’ dining room early in the fall of fifth-grade. As soon as I started playing, I s

V&T Pizzeria in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan holds a special place in my family’s history. By all accounts, the first piece of pizza my dad ever ate was in the small pizza shop owned by a set of brothers named Vincent and Tony in 1947. The brothers moved their restaurant to its current location sometime after 1947, and that is where I had my first piece of pizza a little less than 30 years later. I also know where my dad first ate Chinese food, but that’s

In law school, my professors used casebooks filled with cases dating from the 19th and early 20th century. If you closed your eyes and opened your imagination, it was possible to picture the subjects of these cases: blacksmiths, cobblers, horse-drawn carriage coachmen, Pullman porters, and whalers. Not a growth career in the bunch, at least from my mid-1990’s perspective. Of course, some of the career paths of 30 years ago seem as outdated and antiquated as a steam pipe fitte

The title of this article is a phrase I hear at least once a month. No further explanation is usually necessary. When the client calls come in, the Powers of Attorney in question are ones that we have prepared and ones that we did not. Banks scrutinize all of the POA forms that are submitted for their review. They are ensuring that an invalidly prepared or executed form is not attached to an account which could lead to fraudulent transfers by parties who do not have proper fi

Negotiations are not going well. The other side’s list of demands is stretching the bounds of good sense. Threats and recriminations are flying across the table. If this meeting goes south, a diplomatic disaster will ensue. No, this is not another international conflict. Your daughter-in-law has asked you to babysit in Long Island next Saturday afternoon. You have done the traffic math in your head. Weekend driving on I-95, the Throggs Neck Bridge, Cross-Island Expressway, an

“The Shawshank Redemption” had all the elements of a grim movie – prison, degradation, and unjustness. Baked within its telling, however, is a drifting reed of hope, which is both absorbed and dismissed by its characters. One scene alters our understanding of the story – and it’s not Andy Dufresne’s escape. It is Red, played by Morgan Freeman, hitching a ride to Buxton, Maine. This elderly man, so nearly full of despair, ventures into the fields of this rural town with only a

I was holding tiny pink glittery sneakers in my hands along with a purple sippy cup. In front of me was a bounce house – the noise from its air pump hitting my eardrums like Mike Tyson working the speedbag. This was not my first bounce house… Not even my 10 th . My daughter was climbing the angled ladder so she could slide back down and continue jumping. Seeing her laugh and revel in her favorite inflatable housing was a salve for my soul. Those early childhood days seemed to

Generation X was conditioned to believe that its cultural footprint would only leave the faintest impression. It took a few visits to the mall with my teenage daughter to dispel that belief. A Nirvana T-shirt hung next to an Oasis T-shirt, which hung next to a Sublime T-shirt. Oversized, baggy sweatshirts dominated the clothing racks. These were not artifacts from some 50-year-old’s closet. This IS the style. There is something to be said about the iconography and styles of y

Achievement-minded parents of the 21st century wish their children read more. A mere glimpse of their teenager engrossed in a paperback would probably leave a permanent grin on Mom and Dad. The fact that one smartphone has access to all of the world’s media and can feed every imaginative impulse is a force that can overshadow the simple act of picking up a book. Things used to be different. In those ancient, pre-internet, pre-scrolling days, we had to physically source our ow

We all get lulled to sleep sometimes. The perceived permanence of everyday life leads you to anticipate… more of the same. Rumblings of thunder in the background may be audible but, in our minds, the reality of an impending lightning strike still seems farfetched. Then your world explodes. I was 25, fresh out of law school, when my mother became seriously ill. My parents’ marriage, already strained to the breaking point, disintegrated into nothingness on a Friday night in Sep