Category: family

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Is Southern Hospitality Real? Notes From I-95

After driving up I-95 from South Florida toward Washington, D.C., somewhere between the boiled-peanut signs, the billboards promising salvation, and the exits containing more Waffle Houses than seems mathematically possible, I began wondering:

Is Southern hospitality actually real?

I think it might be.

This conclusion wasn’t reached at a Charleston garden party or over mint juleps on the veranda of an antebellum mansion. It came from the more reliable laboratory of American culture: restaurants, candy stores, hotel elevators and random encounters with people who had absolutely no reason to talk to us.

Brunswick, Georgia

Our first evidence came in Brunswick, Georgia, where we stopped for lunch at Indigo Shanty.

The food itself was worth getting off I-95 for—creative Southern cooking with enough personality to remind you that the interstate exit signs do not constitute a representative sample of American cuisine.

And then there was dessert.

Georgia Peach Pound Cake.

Who knew?

I’ve spent decades eating desserts and had somehow missed the possibility that peaches and pound cake might constitute one of civilization’s great achievements. It was one of those desserts where the first bite makes everyone at the table stop talking briefly—a considerable accomplishment in our family.

But what I remember almost as much as the food was our waitress.

She didn’t merely take our order and disappear. We started talking. She told us that her family had lived in the area for generations—going all the way back to colonial times.

Colonial times!

In South Florida, someone who arrived in 1987 is considered a pioneer.

A patron joined the conversation. Later, we wandered into a candy store and started talking with the owner. Again, there was no apparent objective to any of this. Nobody was networking. Nobody was collecting followers. Nobody glanced at a phone after 23 seconds to indicate that our allotted social-interaction period had expired.

They just talked to us.

Warmly. Curiously. Naturally.

It felt different.

Then came Florence

We stopped overnight in Florence, South Carolina, at a Hampton Inn.

There, Kathy and I got into an elevator with an older gentleman.

Now, in New York, the universally understood rules of elevator behavior are fairly straightforward:

Enter.

Face forward.

Study the floor numbers with extraordinary concentration.

Do not acknowledge that you and three other mammals are temporarily confined inside a steel box.

This gentleman apparently had not received the memo.

We started talking.

It turned out he served on the local school board and had just come from a meeting organizing a program at the local schools designed to help students develop specialized skills and give opportunities to students who might otherwise be disadvantaged.

By the time the elevator doors opened, we weren’t discussing the weather. We were talking about education, opportunity and how schools can identify abilities in children whose circumstances might otherwise prevent those abilities from being recognized.

Think about that.

We got onto an elevator expecting transportation between floors.

We got off having had a conversation about American education policy.

At a Hampton Inn.

That’s when I began to suspect that Southern hospitality might be more than an advertising campaign.

Maybe Southern hospitality really does exist

There is certainly mythology involved.

The South has spent generations cultivating an image of porches, sweet tea, “yes ma’am,” neighbors bringing casseroles and strangers asking where you’re from.

But stereotypes sometimes originate from observable cultural differences.

In much of the South, particularly in smaller cities and towns, conversation with strangers still seems to be considered normal social behavior.

Eye contact isn’t necessarily an invasion of privacy.

A question isn’t necessarily an interrogation.

And telling someone you’ve never met something about yourself doesn’t require first accepting their LinkedIn invitation.

Compare that with a large Northeastern city.

Try standing on a Manhattan sidewalk and asking a passing stranger:

“So, where are y’all from?”

You may learn several colorful new expressions, none traditionally associated with hospitality.

This doesn’t mean New Yorkers are unfriendly. Quite the contrary. If you collapse on Lexington Avenue, six people will probably help you before the ambulance arrives.

But if you’re standing perfectly upright and appear healthy, they expect you to keep moving.

The New York social contract is:

I’ll help you if you need me. Otherwise, don’t block the sidewalk.

The Southern version seems closer to:

We’ve got two minutes. Why shouldn’t we talk?

Why?

Climate probably contributes.

For generations, warm weather encouraged more social life to occur outside—on porches, sidewalks, church steps, front yards and town squares. People saw one another.

But climate can’t explain everything.

Miami is warm.

Nobody has ever merged onto I-95 in Miami and thought, What a delightful expression of communal warmth.

Population density matters. Pace matters. Smaller communities create repeated interactions. You encounter acquaintances, neighbors and people who know people you know. Reputation becomes a form of social currency.

Religion probably matters too.

Drive long enough through Georgia and South Carolina and you discover that Christianity is not exactly keeping a low profile.

Jesus competes vigorously with personal-injury lawyers for billboard space.

Churches historically served not only as places of worship but as centers of community life. Greeting strangers, asking about families, feeding visitors, helping neighbors and making newcomers feel welcome became behaviors reinforced generation after generation.

And then there’s the complicated part

Southern hospitality also exists alongside a much darker Southern history.

The mythology of the gracious South—good manners, gallantry, hospitality, the gracious host on the veranda—became entangled after the Civil War with romanticized memories of the Old South and the Confederacy.

That mythology could describe a society as genteel and courteous while ignoring the rather enormous question:

Hospitable to whom?

Slavery, Jim Crow and racial violence coexist uneasily with the romantic image of Southern graciousness.

But that doesn’t make the friendliness of a waitress in Brunswick today artificial.

Cultures inherit traditions from complicated histories and transform them. A social custom doesn’t have to endorse everything about the society in which it originated.

And the Florence encounter struck me as particularly interesting in that context.

Here was an older Southern man, serving on a school board, enthusiastically talking to two complete strangers about helping disadvantaged students acquire specialized skills and opportunities.

Whatever the origins of Southern social customs, cultures don’t remain frozen in 1861.

Dolly understood this

Then there’s Dolly Parton.

Dolly possesses perhaps the purest modern version of Southern charm.

She somehow gives millions of people the impression that if they happened to sit beside her at a diner, she’d actually want to hear about their grandchildren.

Her warmth isn’t naïveté. She’s funny, perceptive and perfectly capable of delivering a sharp line. But she wraps intelligence in friendliness rather than using intelligence to establish distance.

That feels distinctly Southern.

And think about several modern presidents raised in the South.

Jimmy Carter had the Georgia smile and Sunday-school manner. Bill Clinton became famous for his appetite for personal interaction—the political equivalent of the man at the barbecue who somehow remembers the names of your children three years later. George W. Bush practiced the Texas variation: nicknames, informality, jokes and the impression that he’d rather be talking over barbecue than standing behind a lectern.

Three very different presidents with very different politics.

Yet each understood an important Southern social instinct:

Make the other person comfortable before expecting him to listen to you.

It’s an effective human skill.

Not surprisingly, it’s also an effective political one.

But is it sincere?

Probably about as sincere as any deeply learned cultural behavior.

A New Yorker isn’t necessarily angry when he says, “C’mon, buddy, move.”

And a Southerner isn’t necessarily offering lifelong friendship when she calls you “honey.”

Culture gives us scripts.

The interesting part is what happens after the script.

In Brunswick and Florence, people kept talking.

The waitress told us about generations of her family.

The candy-store owner lingered in conversation.

The man in the Hampton Inn elevator told us about his schools and the children he hoped they could help.

Nobody was trying to sell us anything. Nobody knew us. We were simply two travelers who would probably be back on I-95 the next morning.

Yet they invested a few minutes in us anyway.

That felt real.

The I-95 experiment

Maybe one of the best ways to understand America is not to fly over it.

Drive through it.

Get off I-95.

Ignore the interstate landscape of identical gas stations and fast-food restaurants. Stop in Brunswick. Spend the night in Florence. Walk into a locally owned store. Ask somebody a question that can’t be answered with yes or no.

You’ll pass signs advertising pecans, boiled peanuts, fireworks and eternal salvation.

Eventually somebody will start talking to you.

Not networking.

Not posting.

Not texting.

Talking.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll learn something about a family that’s been in Georgia since colonial times.

Or about a South Carolina school trying to give disadvantaged kids opportunities they might otherwise never have.

Or about the person standing next to you in an elevator.

And occasionally you’ll learn something truly important:

Georgia Peach Pound Cake is magnificent.

For a country increasingly populated by people staring silently into six-inch screens, perhaps the most appealing thing about Southern hospitality isn’t that it’s Southern.

It’s that it’s hospitality.

Somewhere between Brunswick and Florence, I realized how much I had missed it.

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Forbidden Love in the Pleistocene: When Homo sapiens Met the Neanderthals

It begins with a few suspicious snippets of DNA.

They sit quietly inside our chromosomes—genetic heirlooms from ancestors whose names have been forgotten and whose family photographs were never taken because photography would not be invented for another 50,000 years. Europeans and Asians commonly carry about 1–2 percent Neanderthal DNA. Some populations in Oceania possess an additional helping of Denisovan ancestry.

Clearly, something happened.

Officially, scientists call it archaic admixture. But let us dispense with the laboratory euphemisms. Our ancestors were sleeping with the neighbors.

These were the original fusion families—and one suspects they generated considerable gossip around the communal fire.

“Did you hear about Oona?”

“No.”

“She’s seeing a Neanderthal.”

“The one with the brow ridge?”

“They all have brow ridges, Mabel.”

Out of Africa—and Into an Awkward Reception

Early Homo sapiens did not simply leave Africa once in a single triumphant parade. There appear to have been earlier excursions into the Middle East and Eurasia, followed later by the major expansion—roughly 60,000 to 70,000 years ago—that produced most of the ancestry of people living outside Africa today.

So, in broad terms, we were out of Africa more than once. The first expeditions may have faded away or contributed little to later populations. The later travelers were more successful, although “successful” is a generous term for people crossing deserts on foot without maps, luggage, antibiotics or a decent airport lounge.

When Homo sapiens entered Neanderthal territory, they encountered people who had already survived hundreds of thousands of years of European winters. Neanderthals were powerfully built, technologically capable and remarkably well adapted to cold climates.

The newcomers were probably not greeted with gift baskets.

From the Neanderthal perspective, these skinny tropical immigrants must have looked poorly equipped:

“Look, Urg. More sapiens.”

“They’ll never last the winter.”

“They’re wearing shells as jewelry.”

“Pretentious.”

The Neanderthals were the hearty locals—the prehistoric equivalent of people who shovel snow in shorts. Homo sapiens, by comparison, arrived with narrower bodies, complicated social networks and an irritating tendency to keep moving into neighborhoods where nobody had invited them.

The First Culture War

It is tempting to imagine sapiens proudly unveiling their latest technological achievement.

“Behold—a finely shaped stone blade!”

The Neanderthal examined it.

“You spent all afternoon making that?”

“It has a symmetrical edge.”

“It’s a rock, Kevin.”

Both Neanderthals and modern humans made sophisticated tools. Neanderthals also used pigments, collected unusual objects and may have created symbolic markings or art of their own. The old caricature of the stupid, shambling caveman has not aged well.

Still, cultural rivalry must have been irresistible.

When sapiens began decorating caves with horses, bison and handprints, conservative Neanderthal critics may have complained that the work lacked realism.

“The bison’s legs are completely out of proportion.”

“It’s symbolic.”

“It’s rubbish. And now there’s ochre all over the wall.”

A Neanderthal father might have watched his daughter admire a sapiens artist and muttered, “He calls himself a painter, but he still lives in a cave.”

Love Across the Species Line

We do not know whether prehistoric groups disapproved of interbreeding. No Pleistocene advice columns survive, and archaeology has yet to uncover a stone tablet reading, “Over my dead body will you marry a Denisovan.”

Indeed, the word species becomes rather slippery here. Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans were distinct populations, but they could have fertile offspring. Whether we call them separate species, subspecies or humanity’s extremely distant regional cousins depends partly on how we define species.

Whatever terminology we choose, their DNA tells us the relationships occurred repeatedly.

The courtship process remains unknown.

Perhaps sapiens males impressed Neanderthal women with beads, music and long-distance trade networks. Perhaps Neanderthal males impressed sapiens women by lifting an entire elk without bending their knees.

One imagines the parental objections:

“He’s not our kind.”

“He’s thoughtful.”

“He has no chin.”

“That’s superficial.”

“He lives beyond the third glacier!”

“I love him.”

“Oh, wonderful. Mixed children. What will the mammoths say?”

Yet the children survived. Some had children of their own. Their genetic traces traveled through thousands of generations and now influence aspects of immunity, skin biology, metabolism and disease susceptibility.

Every family has secrets. Ours are encoded in base pairs.

The Denisovan Scandal

Denisovans are even more mysterious. We know them largely from DNA extracted from a few bones and teeth found in Asia. They left far fewer recognizable fossils than Neanderthals, yet their genetic legacy survives strongly in some populations, particularly in Papua New Guinea and other parts of Oceania.

Denisovan ancestry also contributed useful adaptations. One famous example is a version of the EPAS1 gene that helps Tibetans function at high altitude.

Thus, an ancient liaison with Denisovans eventually enabled people to live comfortably where sea-level visitors become breathless carrying a sandwich upstairs.

Evolution is nothing if not practical.

The Denisovans themselves had apparently interbred with even older, unidentified archaic humans—a “ghost population” that may have been related to Homo erectus or another ancient lineage.

This means Denisovans were criticizing their children’s romantic choices while concealing archaic entanglements of their own.

“You cannot marry a sapiens!”

“But Grandmother says your side of the family has erectus DNA.”

“Grandmother talks too much.”

We have no direct genetic proof that Homo erectus interbred with modern humans. But genetic studies suggest that some Denisovan ancestors mated with a very ancient human lineage. If that lineage was Homo erectus or something similar, then the prehistoric family tree was less a tree than a hedge after several glasses of wine.

Homo erectus: The Original Wanderer

Long before modern humans began congratulating themselves for leaving Africa, Homo erectus had already done it—perhaps nearly two million years ago.

They spread across enormous distances and survived far longer than our species has existed so far. If longevity were the measure of evolutionary success, Homo erectus could look at Homo sapiens and say, “Call me when you’ve made it past the million-year mark.”

Whether erectus engaged in genetic unfaithfulness with later human groups remains uncertain. But considering the record of every human population for which we possess DNA, the safest conclusion is that when two hominin groups met, they sometimes fought, sometimes exchanged technology and occasionally exchanged phone numbers—metaphorically speaking, since the Pleistocene cellular network was terrible.

The Shame of the Fusion Family

Did mixed families experience prejudice? Possibly, but we cannot know. Small hunter-gatherer groups depended heavily on cooperation, and outsiders could be regarded as competitors, allies, trading partners or potential spouses. A newcomer’s ancestry probably mattered less than whether he could find water, butcher an animal and refrain from attracting hyenas.

Still, one can imagine the social discomfort.

At the annual solstice gathering, a mixed sapiens-Neanderthal family arrives.

The children are robust, clever and slightly hairier than average.

Everyone tries not to stare.

A sapiens aunt whispers, “They have his brow ridge.”

The Neanderthal grandmother replies, “At least they have shoulders.”

Then the children demonstrate a better hunting technique, decorate the cave and survive the next epidemic. Within a few generations, everybody has forgotten why the match was controversial.

That is the great joke hidden in our DNA: the supposedly improper unions were not evolutionary mistakes. Some produced descendants who were better adapted to local diseases, climates and environments.

The scandal became an advantage.

We Are All the Result of Questionable Decisions

Eventually, Neanderthals disappeared as a distinct population. Denisovans vanished from the visible archaeological record. Other human lineages faded as well. Some were displaced, some absorbed and some probably succumbed to combinations of climate change, small population size, competition and plain bad luck.

But they did not disappear completely.

They survive inside us—in immune responses, skin traits, metabolic quirks and tiny stretches of chromosomes passed down from lovers who met tens of thousands of years ago.

We like to tell human evolution as a heroic story in which Homo sapiens marched out of Africa, defeated inferior rivals and inherited the Earth through superior intelligence.

The DNA tells a messier and much more entertaining story.

We wandered out of Africa in multiple waves. We met people who looked different from us. We competed with them, borrowed from them and had children with them. Some families were undoubtedly appalled. Some neighbors probably gossiped. A few fathers sat silently in the corner sharpening hand axes.

And yet the children endured.

So the next time someone complains about intermarriage, cultural mixing or newcomers entering the neighborhood, remind them that human beings have been upsetting the in-laws since the Ice Age.

Then show them their genome.

There is probably a Neanderthal in it, quietly raising one enormous eyebrow.

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Pedaling Through Life

I can still picture it.

It was bright red, with white handlebars and fat black tires. My first tricycle. It probably didn’t cost much, but to a four-year-old growing up in Whitestone, Queens, it was freedom painted crimson.

Then came my first “real” bicycle—a Huffy.

It wasn’t a Schwinn.

Back then, Schwinn was the Cadillac of bicycles. Every kid wanted one. My family couldn’t afford it, and at the time I noticed. Looking back now, I realize something more important: my Huffy took me everywhere a Schwinn would have. Childhood doesn’t care what badge is on the frame.

Like every aspiring cyclist, I began with training wheels, rocking awkwardly from side to side, convinced I was riding while those little wheels quietly prevented disaster.

My father would jog beside me, one hand steadying the seat while I pedaled with all my might. One day the training wheels were gone, and so was his hand. I didn’t realize he had let go until I looked back and saw him smiling from halfway down the block.

I was riding.

“I’m a man,” I probably thought, despite being about seven years old.

The greatest expedition of my young life followed soon afterward.

I pedaled completely around our block in Whitestone by myself. By today’s standards it was only a few city streets. To me, it was Magellan circumnavigating the globe. The world had suddenly become larger—and somehow more reachable.

Soon my bicycle became transportation, independence, and social network all rolled into one.

My friends and I rode to the neighborhood candy store to see whether the newest Superman comic had arrived. We clipped baseball cards into our spokes to imitate motorcycle engines. Second string players became willing sacrifices.

But Mickey Mantle?

Never.

Even a kid knew there were some things too valuable to destroy.

As the years passed, bicycles became less about neighborhoods and more about horizons.

Friends talked me into riding the Tecate-to-Ensenada ride in Mexico. By the finish my quadriceps were staging a revolt, but the long descent toward the coast made every painful pedal stroke worthwhile. Recovery, naturally, occurred at Señor Frog’s with a well-earned cerveza that tasted suspiciously like modern sports medicine.

Years later I found myself riding along California’s Highway 1 through Del Mar and Santa Barbara. My cycling nutrition was elegantly simple: a granola bar, a Mountain Dew, and youthful confidence that somehow everything would work out.

Then came one of life’s greatest pleasures—watching my own sons discover the same freedom that a bicycle had given me decades earlier. My older son chose independence over convenience, pedaling uphill to high school each morning while the school bus rolled past. The climb built stronger legs, but I suspect it also built character. My younger son learned under somewhat more memorable circumstances. His classroom was a narrow paved trail through the Everglades, bordered on both sides by alligator-infested water. There was little room for wobbling, no luxury of wide-open grassy fields. He learned to ride straight as an arrow, with remarkable focus and determination. Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether the alligators were simply excellent cycling instructors. Fortunately, they never had to give a practical demonstration.

Forty years after those California rides, I found myself cycling again—this time with Backroads through Spain and Portugal.

The bicycle had evolved.

So had I.

Gone was the heavy steel frame, replaced by a featherweight titanium e-bike whose discreet battery quietly compensated for muscles that no longer recovered overnight.

Gone were the convenience-store snacks.

Now lunch featured local cheeses, smoked salmon, crusty bread dipped in peppery olive oil, remarkable wines, and leisurely conversations overlooking vineyards that had been producing grapes for centuries.

The scenery had changed from suburban Queens to medieval villages.

The engine had changed from youthful legs to lithium-ion batteries.

But the feeling was exactly the same.

Freedom.

There’s something poetic about the evolution of the bicycle itself.

From the towering, precarious Penny-farthing—with its enormous front wheel daring riders to pitch headfirst onto cobblestones—to today’s marvels of titanium and carbon fiber, hydraulic disc brakes, electronic shifting, and electric assist, every generation has made cycling lighter, safer, faster, and more accessible. The bicycle may be one of humanity’s most beautifully refined inventions—an elegant machine that has continuously improved without ever losing its essential simplicity.

It even helped launch another revolution.

Before they conquered the skies, Orville and Wilbur Wright owned and operated a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. Building and repairing bicycles taught them precision machining, balance, lightweight construction, and steering dynamics—the very skills that ultimately allowed them to solve the problem of human flight. It seems fitting that humanity learned to balance on two wheels before learning to soar on two wings.

As I look back, I realize bicycles have quietly marked every chapter of my life.

They taught me balance before I understood the word.

They gave me independence before I had a driver’s license.

They carried me toward friendships, adventures, and discoveries that still make me smile decades later.

They became a bridge between generations, carrying first a little boy around a block in Whitestone, then a young man across Mexico and California, then my own sons toward their independence, and finally an aging physician through the vineyards and ancient villages of Europe.

Today, with a little help from modern technology—and an electric motor wise enough to ignore my birth certificate—I continue to pedal.

Not as fast.

Not as far under my own power.

But perhaps with greater appreciation.

The bicycle has never really been about getting from one place to another.

It has always been about freedom, curiosity, and the quiet joy of discovering what lies around the next bend.

For nearly eight decades, it has carried me through life.

And I’m not finished riding yet.

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The Cookie I Chased for 70 Years: Found Me On My Birthday

This post is rewritten to reflect recent developments:

Some people chase fame, fortune, or the fountain of youth. Me? I chase black-and-white cookies. Not just a black-and-white cookie—I’m talking about the black-and-white cookie. This is less a hobby and more a lifelong pursuit—part nostalgia, part stubbornness, and part refusal to accept mediocrity in baked goods.

My journey has taken me from childhood bakeries that no longer exist…to modern-day pilgrimages that occasionally end in heartbreak. (More on that Florida debacle later.) But every once in a while, just when the trail seems cold, something unexpected happens.

Like this year—on my 73rd birthday—when the cookie found me.

A Love Letter to the Black-and-White Cookie

Let’s get one thing straight: the black-and-white cookie is not a cookie. It’s a cake wearing a cookie costume.

Soft. Slightly domed. Tender but not flimsy. And topped with that signature half-and-half glaze—vanilla on one side, chocolate on the other—like a dessert that couldn’t decide and wisely chose both.

The icing is where greatness lives or dies. It should be thin, almost fondant-like—not a slab of sugary drywall. The vanilla side should be clean and bright. The chocolate side should taste like cocoa, not compromise.

No sprinkles. No fillings. No nonsense.

This is not dessert innovation. This is dessert perfection.

For me, it’s more than food. It’s memory. It’s New York. It’s childhood. It’s a time when bakeries smelled like sugar and promise, and one cookie could make your entire day.

A Bite of History

The black-and-white cookie has been around for over a century, which already gives it more staying power than most things on the internet.

Often associated with New York, its origins are debated. Some credit Bavarian immigrants. Others point to Glaser’s Bake Shop, which opened in 1902 and helped define the form before closing in 2018—an event that should have warranted citywide mourning.

Screenshot

Jewish bakeries and delis carried the torch, turning the black-and-white into an icon. Even Seinfeld weighed in, famously declaring it a symbol of harmony.

I’ll leave the philosophy to Jerry. I’m here for the icing.

The One That Got Away: Adventurers Inn

Every obsession has its origin story. Mine involves a now-defunct amusement park in Queens: Adventurers Inn.

They didn’t just serve black-and-whites. They served a double-decker version.

Two layers. Twice the cake. Twice the icing. A structural achievement that should have required an engineering permit.

As a kid, I stared at it like it was edible mythology. And then—like all great childhood institutions—Adventurers Inn disappeared, taking my beloved double-decker with it.

I’ve been chasing that ghost ever since.

The Delray Beach Debacle

Fast forward to recent times. I hear whispers of greatness at Boy’s Farmers Market. Naturally, I go.

The bakery counter was five people deep. Not a line—a contact sport.

Elbows were deployed. Orders barked. Boxes clutched like lottery winnings.

I hovered. I strategized. I briefly considered a pick-and-roll maneuver.

But in the end? I walked away. No cookie. Just dignity… and a growing suspicion that the best black-and-white in Florida was five feet away and completely inaccessible without shoulder pads.

Still, if it’s that crowded, they’re doing something right.

The Birthday Surprise (When the Cookie Found Me)

And then—just when I least expected it—came my 73rd birthday.

No bakery pilgrimage. No crowded counters. No tactical maneuvering required.

Instead, my son’s mother-in-law—clearly a woman of exceptional judgment—had scoured the internet, found a recipe, and showed up with a batch of homemade black-and-white cookies.

What I walked into was less a kitchen and more a cookie workshop in full swing.

Rows of freshly baked cookies. Bowls of icing. Spatulas in motion. It had the feel of a family-run bakery—only warmer, livelier, and a lot more fun.

And then came the grandkids.

My granddaughter and grandson stepped right into the process with complete enthusiasm. They helped spread icing, sampled along the way, and brought a level of joy and energy that no professional bakery could ever replicate.

The cookies took on a little personality—some with a bit more chocolate, some with a bit more vanilla—but each one felt like it had a story behind it.

It was exactly how baking should be.

The cookies themselves? Genuinely excellent. Soft, balanced, with icing that captured the spirit of a true black-and-white.

But more importantly, they had something no bakery can reliably produce:

They had occasion.

The Search Continues

So here I am. Still chasing the perfect black-and-white cookie.

Maybe it’s in a hidden bakery.
Maybe it’s in a deli that hasn’t changed since 1975.
Maybe somewhere, somehow, a double-decker is waiting for its comeback tour.

But now I know something I didn’t before.

Sometimes the best version isn’t the one you chase.

Sometimes it’s the one that shows up—on your 73rd birthday—made in a busy kitchen, shared with family, and brought to life by a couple of enthusiastic young assistants who understand, instinctively, that dessert is supposed to be fun.

And frankly, they’re absolutely right.

The quest continues.

But for one day at least?

I caught it.

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Boy and Man’s Best Friend: A Life Measured in Dogs

If you want to understand the chapters of my life, don’t look at schools, jobs, or addresses. Look at the dogs.

The Early Years: Borrowed Dogs and Forbidden Longings

The first dog I truly knew wasn’t ours. She lived next door in Clearview, Queens, a mixed-breed named Tippy, grandfathered into a housing development where dogs were technically verboten. Tippy was gentle, cautious, and deeply unimpressed by fireworks. July 4th was not her holiday. While the rest of America celebrated independence, Tippy practiced anxiety.

My cousins in Flushing had Cocoa, a cocker spaniel with a flair for drama. Cocoa pranced through northern Queens as if the sidewalks were runways and she had somewhere important to be. I adored her.

Naturally, my brother and I begged for a dog of our own.

Miraculously, our parents caved.

Domino: The Dog Who Made Childhood Complete

Ignoring housing rules and common sense, we stopped at Bide-A-Wee, the nonprofit rescue, and came home with a black-and-white mutt. My father named her Domino, a name so perfect it felt inevitable.

Childhood immediately improved.

Domino tore across our 700-square-foot apartment like a Hall of Fame running back, executing sharp cuts between furniture and humans alike. She went on long walks with us and short sprints through the living room. My mother fell completely under her spell, cooking special meals—eggs and ground beef—clearly superior to anything the rest of us were eating.

Domino knew dog people on sight. My Aunt Ardyth—veteran of Cocoa and later dogs—was her favorite human. When Ardyth walked in, Domino’s tail wagged so fast it seemed capable of generating lift.

When Domino gnawed a hole straight through the carpet, my mother patched it and hid the evidence from my father, knowing full well that discovery could mean deportation for the dog. This was marital diplomacy at its finest.

Too soon, Domino died of canine distemper at just two and a half years old. Our apartment felt impossibly quiet. Childhood took its first hard lesson in loss.

The Supporting Cast: Dogs of Relatives and Young Adulthood

Other dogs followed—belonging to family, but partially ours in spirit.

My brother’s German Shorthaired Pointer would stand rigid in the kitchen, pointing at appliances as if the refrigerator contained an adult quail.  He shared Domino’s fondness for carpeting.

Then there was Bea, the bandana-wearing beagle of my college apartment in Buffalo, where I lived with roommates who had signed on for higher education—not wildlife management.

Bea was compact, cheerful, and deeply committed to her work as an urban hunter. She lived in an apartment that technically housed students but functioned as a rodent surveillance unit. Every so often, Bea would surprise us by proudly producing a mouse, tail wagging, eyes bright, as if to say, You’re welcome

She wore her bandana like a union badge. Bea was not embarrassed. We were.

Adult Dogs: Bigger Houses, Bigger Damage

Adulthood brought Scooter, a golden retriever—affectionate, loyal, and refreshingly uninterested in carpets. Unfortunately, Scooter was interested in the pool’s intake piping, which she chewed through, creating a backyard flood best described as Lake Erie-adjacent.

Still, she was a good girl.

Millie: Ten Pounds of Chaos and One Near International Incident

Then came Millie, a Jack Russell terrier with the confidence of a Great Dane and the impulse control of a caffeinated squirrel.

Millie didn’t run—she launched. She bounded up stairs two at a time, sometimes skipping entire steps, occasionally achieving what appeared to be temporary flight. She believed every object was hers, including—memorably—my son’s shin guards, which she stole just before a soccer game.

When panic erupted, Millie eventually returned, head lowered, shin guards in mouth, wearing the unmistakable expression of someone who had won but decided not to press her advantage.

Her greatest performance, however, occurred one summer when my boys were away at camp in Northern California. Millie escaped.

What followed was a harrowing, cardio-intensive chase up the steep inclines of Yorba Linda, with Millie turning the entire neighborhood into her personal agility course. She would allow me to approach within inches—close enough to believe—then bolt a quarter mile uphill, glancing back just long enough to ensure I was still participating.

This went on for hours.

Eventually, exhaustion—mine, not hers—ended the game. Millie finally allowed herself to be apprehended, panting happily, grinning like an athlete who had just set a personal record.

At that exact moment, the boys called.

Sensing that the truth might be… destabilizing, I calmly lied.

“All is well,” I said.

Millie, freshly captured and still vibrating with joy, sat beside me, beaming.

It was parenting, dog ownership, and crisis management rolled into one.

The Next Generation

Now my sons have dogs of their own—Gainy and Charlie—who carry on the proud tradition of hijinks, companionship, and unconditional joy. Watching them with my grandchildren feels like closing a long, happy loop.

Epilogue

Dogs have been our sentries, our comedians, our therapists, and occasionally our demolition crews. They’ve shared our apartments, our houses, our mistakes, and our best days.

For that companionship—and for the early humans and canines who figured out this remarkable partnership—I remain deeply grateful.

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I Went Back to my Kindergarten Class of 1958– Here is What I Told Them

Show and Tell, 67 Years Later

I arrive in Whitestone, Queens, in the soft, milk-glass light of 1958. The air smells faintly of chalk and floor wax. The sidewalks are narrower, the cars longer, the future quieter. I push open the classroom door and there you all are—knees scabbed, collars starched, haircuts obedient to gravity and mothers. Mrs. LaPenna stands watch, ruler nearby, smile doing most of the work.

You look up at me as if I’m a substitute teacher who took a wrong turn off the Whitestone Expressway. I tell you I’m one of you—just borrowed from a later inning of the same game. I’m here on a time pass from 2025, and I don’t have long.

I start with the easy truths.

“First,” I say, “you’re growing up in a good moment. The Dodgers have left Brooklyn, which hurts, but the Yankees are still a juggernaut. Elvis is on the radio. Ike is in the White House. Polio is on the ropes. Milk comes in bottles and your parents still believe tomorrow will be better because it usually is.”

A few of you grin. One kid in the front row adjusts his bow tie like it’s armor.

“Second,” I say, “hold onto this room. You won’t know it now, but classrooms like this—blackboard dust, wooden desks, a teacher who knows your full name—are where the country learns how to argue without fighting. You’ll need that skill.”

I tell you what’s coming, gently.

“There will be a man on television named Kennedy who makes politics look young. There will be marches where people insist—out loud—that America live up to its own handwriting. There will be a war you’ll see every night at dinner. Some of you will go. Some of you will protest. Most of you will just try to make sense of it all.”

You fidget. Big words for small shoes.

“So here’s the advice,” I say, and I lean in because advice should never be shouted.

“Be curious longer than is comfortable. Read beyond the assignment. Learn how things work—your body, a carburetor, a balance sheet, a sentence. When the world tells you to pick a side fast, slow down. Speed makes noise; understanding makes progress.”

I point to the windows. “Neighborhoods change. Whitestone will still be here, but it will look different. That’s not a loss—it’s a relay. You’ll carry what matters and pass it on.”

I pause, then add the part I didn’t know in kindergarten.

“You will fail at things you’re good at and succeed at things you never planned. That’s not hypocrisy—it’s growth. Be kind to yourself when the map gets smudged.”

Someone asks about the future—always the future.

I smile. “In 2025, you’ll carry a small rectangle in your pocket that knows almost everything. It will be miraculous and distracting. Use it to learn, not to disappear. And when it tells you the world is on fire, remember this room. Remember how a group of five-year-olds once sat still long enough to listen.”

Mrs. LaPenna clears her throat—the bell is coming.

“One more thing,” I say. “Call your parents more than you think you should. Thank teachers while you can. Save a photograph like this and look at it when you’re unsure who you are. You’re in here. So is everyone you’ll ever be.”

The bell rings. Chairs scrape. Time tightens.

As I step back into 2025, the chalk dust follows me for a second, then settles. I carry it with me—the proof that before the headlines and the hindsight, before the decades did what decades do, there was a room in Whitestone where the future sat cross-legged and waited its turn to speak.

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Santa, ChatGPT and the end of the Naughty-Nice Era

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Published Christmas Day

I watched Pluribus recently, and the idea has been quietly stalking me ever since. The show imagines a superhuman race endowed with infinite knowledge and perfect cooperation. No individuality. No hierarchy of skill. No one stands out, because no one can. There’s no schadenfreude—failure doesn’t exist. There’s no long educational climb, no apprenticeship, no grinding effort to elevate oneself above the rest. Everyone knows everything. Everyone performs equally well.

It’s an orderly world. Efficient. Bloodless.

What struck me wasn’t the absence of conflict—it was the absence of accomplishment. If distinction disappears, what does it mean to achieve anything at all?

That thought followed me straight into our own present moment.

The Great Leveling

We are already living through a quieter version of Pluribus. Recall—once a badge of intelligence—has been demoted to a parlor trick. Sports trivia, historical dates, obscure facts: once markers of expertise, now solvable in seconds by a glowing rectangle in your pocket. You don’t need to know anymore; you just need to search.

And writing—my particular arena—has become the most unsettling test case.

You write a rough draft. It’s honest. Thoughtful. Maybe even good. Then curiosity (or temptation) intervenes. You ask an AI to revise it.

What comes back is cleaner. Sharper. Better structured. The prose you meant to write.

You shrug—not because it failed, but because it succeeded.

So whose work is it now?

Confession Time

The version you are reading was edited—significantly—by ChatGPT. I wrote the draft. I shaped the ideas. But the clarity, the flow, the tightening of loose bolts? That was machine-assisted.

Is that cheating? Is it collaboration? Is it no different from spellcheck, or fundamentally different because the tool now competes with the craftsman?

I don’t have a clean answer. Only an honest one: pretending this isn’t happening feels more dishonest than acknowledging it outright.

Christmas, Santa, and the Algorithm

And since this is Christmas Day, it feels appropriate to bring Santa into the discussion.

For centuries, Santa Claus has run the most ambitious surveillance-based performance-evaluation system in history. Naughty. Nice. Binary. Efficient. Judgment rendered annually, with toys as incentives and coal as penalties.

But imagine Santa with AI.

No more vague moral assessments. No secondhand elf reports. Just a comprehensive dataset: search histories, impulse buys, tone of emails, patience in traffic, comment-section behavior. Naughty and Nice reduced to an algorithmic score.

Santa outsourced.

If that sounds unsettling, it should. Yet it mirrors our larger dilemma: when judgment itself becomes automated, where does human discretion fit? When assessment is perfect, what room remains for grace, growth, or redemption?

What’s Left That’s Ours

AI can recall better than we can. Write faster. Polish endlessly. It can outperform us in domains we once believed defined intelligence and creativity.

But it didn’t decide this question was worth asking.

It didn’t feel uneasy watching Pluribus.

It didn’t wonder whether accomplishment itself is being quietly deprecated.

What remains human—for now—is judgment, taste, values, and the discomfort that comes with change. The choice of what to pursue, why it matters, and when to stop optimizing.

In a world sliding toward Pluribus, individuality may no longer come from knowing more—but from caring differently.

A Christmas Thought

Christmas has always been about imperfect humans trying to be a little better than they were the year before. Not optimized. Not flawless. Just better.

If AI eventually knows everything, writes everything, and judges everything—including Santa’s lists—then perhaps the last true human accomplishment will be choosing imperfection when perfection is available at the click of a button.

This post was edited by ChatGPT.

The unease behind it was not.

Merry Christmas.

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Transportation as a Gateway to Learning—From Subways to Skies

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Early Fascination as a Pathway to Discovery

Some kids memorize baseball stats. Others can name every dinosaur from Allosaurus to Zuniceratops. I was the kid who memorized the New York City subway map.

Four hundred eighty-six track miles, a tangle of lines more intricate than any anatomy chart, and 472 stations—each with its own personality. I used to sit with that map the way other kids sat with comic books. The G’s lonely green line, the A stretching heroically from Inwood to the ocean breeze of the Rockaways, the way the 4 and 5 shadow each other before peeling off like old friends heading to different boroughs. It wasn’t just a system of rails; it was a world of possibility.

Funny thing is, I now have a grandson with the same spark—except his passion lives on the streets and in the skies. At four, he stands on the curb like a miniature car sommelier, announcing make, model, and year before most adults could even identify the color. He studies maps like treasure charts, and when a plane crosses his field of vision, he looks up as if receiving a transmission from some aeronautical muse. He’s never been to San Diego—but when he finally visits, he’ll find it a transportation playground.

How Transportation Curiosity Shapes Learning

There’s something powerful about that kind of early fascination. People think it’s a hobby. But really, it’s a honing mechanism. When a child becomes obsessed with the mechanics of how things move—cars, buses, trains, planes—they’re not just naming machines. They’re building neural circuitry for attention, pattern recognition, systems thinking. They’re learning to follow a thread from point A to point B, and—without realizing it—training themselves for the long game: the ability to learn deeply, persistently, joyfully.

Transportation has always been more than conveyance. It’s a metaphor for growth. Anything that takes you from one place to another reminds you that there are other places, other ideas, other horizons waiting. Whether it’s a subway snaking under Manhattan or a plane banking over Mission Bay, movement awakens possibility.

The journey itself becomes a teacher.

A Few Stops of NYC Subway Trivia

The New York City subway—my first great teacher—remains a marvel. A few favorite bits of trivia:

  • The A train still holds the title for the longest uninterrupted ride in the system—over 32 miles from tip to sea.
  • Times Square is the busiest station, but the deepest is 191st Street in Washington Heights, sitting 180 feet below ground.
  • The 6 train still makes the elegant “City Hall loop,” passing through a hidden 1904 station closed since 1945.
  • And Fulton Center is one of the few places where more than nine different services intersect, creating a kind of transit symphony.

Maps, tracks, transfers—they were my first textbook.

A Balcony Classroom Awaits

Today, my vantage point is different. From a condo on 6th Avenue beside Balboa Park in San Diego, cars glide past in a steady parade. And every few minutes, a plane descends toward the airport, banking low enough to cast a brief shadow across the street. It’s a living exhibit in motion: automotive, aerial, and constant.

Someday, when my grandson finally visits San Diego, he’ll sit on that balcony for the first time. He’ll watch the cars flow by and begin identifying each one with the effortless precision he’s already mastered. He’ll look skyward and recognize the aircraft type, the engines, maybe even its probable origin and destination.

And from that mosaic of motion, he’ll continue his own journey—moving toward new ideas, new abilities, new horizons.

Because transportation, at its core, is a promise:

that where you begin is never where you have to end.

Sometimes all it takes is a subway map, a passing car, or the shadow of a jet to set a lifelong journey in motion.

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🎃 Trick, Treat, and Radiology: Reflections from a 1950s Halloween

From candy corn kernels to X-rayed Milky Ways — one man’s sweet evolution through the decades

Halloween has always been that magical time when ordinary citizens—young and old—put on masks, defy curfew, and demand sugary tribute from strangers. For me, the magic began in the 1950s, when the phrase “trick or treat” meant something pure, thrilling, and slightly unsanitary.

Back then, the concept of getting candy for free by merely showing up at someone’s door was revolutionary. Armed with a paper grocery bag from A&P—free of charge, mind you—I roamed the sidewalks of Queens like a miniature bandit. The rewards were astonishing: a few loose kernels of candy corn, an occasional Lincoln head penny, and from the more affluent homes, a full-sized Hershey bar—the Holy Grail of confectionery.

Packaging was optional, hygiene was theoretical, and nobody used words like “processed sugar intake.” The candy haul was superb thanks to the dense, row-house geography—door to door in seconds. Contrast that to when my own sons went trick-or-treating in the suburbs, where each house sat on half an acre. Their candy-per-step ratio was dismal. I considered handing out Fitbits.

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🍫 The Evolution of a Sweet Tooth

As my palate matured, my candy preferences evolved—from humble candy corn to Reese’s, and then to the sophisticated allure of Milky Way bars during my college days. That was my version of fine dining on a student budget: nougat, caramel, and chocolate—three food groups in one.

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👻 The Tricks of Yesteryear

“Tricks” in mid-20th-century Queens were mostly good-natured. We filled socks with chalk to “decorate” each other’s coats. (Why? Don’t ask. It was a simpler time.) The truly daring among us escalated to egg throwing—back when eggs were so cheap you could use them as projectiles. Imagine that today: “Sorry, officer, I assaulted a Buick with $6 worth of cage-free organics.”

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☠️ When Treats Got Tricky

By the late 20th century, the innocent fun had soured. News reports surfaced of razor blades and metal fragments hidden in candy. Pediatric radiology departments found themselves X-raying trick-or-treat bags. “No cavities,” the doctor would say, “but your Snickers has shrapnel.”

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🦇 Costumes Then and Now

In my childhood, costumes were simple: Batman, Superman, or a random Disney character. The masks were molded plastic that cut off oxygen but never enthusiasm. Today, the front yards are equipped with animatronic zombies, motion-activated ghosts, and sound effects that could raise the dead—or at least startle your Apple Watch into detecting atrial fibrillation.

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🍬 The Spirit Lives On

So, when kids ring my doorbell today, I smile. They’re carrying store-bought pumpkin buckets instead of crumpled A&P bags, and they’re dressed as everything from Spider-Man to Taylor Swift’s cat. But the gleam in their eyes is the same—the age-old thrill of getting something sweet for nothing, of prowling the neighborhood under cover of darkness with permission.

And when they hold out their hands, I drop in a mini-sized candy bar, silently lamenting the extinction of full-size generosity. But hey—at least it’s sterile, gluten-free, and X-ray safe.

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You’ve Got a Friend: A Night with James Taylor at The Rady Shell

There are concerts, and then there are moments in time that become stitched into the fabric of your memory—softly, indelibly. That’s what happened the other night at The Rady Shell in San Diego, where James Taylor performed under a perfect spring sky.Seagulls glided above the stage, effortlessly catching the breeze like backup dancers choreographed by nature. In the distance, boats floated lazily off Coronado, their sails catching the golden hour light as Taylor’s warm voice wove its way into the ocean air.

It’s true—his voice isn’t what it once was. The range has narrowed, some edges are softer now. But none of that mattered. Because when the first chords of Sweet Baby James rang out, something vivid and unstoppable happened: the floodgates opened. I was back in college, a freshman clutching the brand-new album like it was a sacred text. I could hear myself humming Mexico as we rattled down dusty roads in North Baja, lobsters and beans on our minds. The windows were open. The future was wide.

Time folded that night, like a concert program tucked into a jacket pocket. I looked around and saw my dearest friends and my spouse—people I’ve known for most of my life—illuminated by the soft light of the moon. Their faces glowed with familiarity and joy, made more poignant by the music weaving through the air.

And then, of course, James sang You’ve Got a Friend.

There it was: the reminder, gentle and true, that while our hair may have greyed and our voices quieted, the people who’ve walked with us through all of it are still here. In the same row. Still smiling. Still listening.

As the last note drifted out over the bay, past the gulls and the sailboats and the California light, I realized the music didn’t need to be perfect—it just needed to be shared.