Elise Sereni Patkotak

I was in a place called Laguna Niguel for Christmas Eve.  It’s a gated community in California a little south of L.A.  It’s about a million miles away in every possible sense from Mississippi Avenue where I grew up. 

But the people there were people from the neighborhood. The hostess Paula was my sister’s best friend from childhood. Paula’s mom, Mrs. Gerbino, brought the traditions and memories of my childhood Christmases with her.  It made this first holiday without mom a little easier for both my sister and me.

Christmas Eve dinner was all that I remembered from my youth. 

I would like to be able to take the high road about shopping sprees this Christmas holiday. I’d like to be able to say that on this of all recent Christmases we should be focusing on something other than buying more junk.

But that’s hard to do when our national leaders keep telling us it’s our patriotic duty to spend money.

For some, that message is a clarion call to do what they have always done best. Now they get credit for doing it as a patriotic gesture. Talk about a win-win situation.

In World War II, women came out

I just returned from a trip east to my childhood home on the Jersey shore. The weather was – for a Barrowite – downright summery.  In fact, on some days it actually got up to 68 and I’d complain long and loud about how darn hot it was.  Most people just gave me strange looks.  They’re outsiders, what do they know?

I’ve always loved the Atlantic Ocean. Being brought up at the seashore in Atlantic City has left me with an abiding devotion to that dark mass of crashing energy.  The mid to north Atlantic has a dark look and

I guess it was inevitable that if I went back east for any length of time I would eventually find myself drawn to New York City.  It was not a decision I made easily. One part of me felt obligated to go and the other part just wanted to hunker down in front of the nickel slots in Atlantic City and pretend there was no bigger world than that of the windowless, timeless, cacophonous casino surrounding me.

I’d spent Veteran’s Day weekend at Valley Forge State Park hiking some of its trails. All about me were signs of the winter

Notes from a plane trip post September 11, 2001:

Flying is a strangely quiet experience now.  With only ticketed passengers allowed through security, the boarding gates are positively ghostlike.

No more balloons saying “Welcome home, college graduate” held proudly aloft by smiling parents.  No more little children asking over and over, “Is daddy’s plane here yet”. No more final whispered conversations between lovers about to part.  Just quiet people sitting quietly.

A man behind me talks on the phone to his girlfriend, relating the horror of trying to get through the huge security line. Even as he complains he keeps

Maybe I’m a little extra sensitive about immigration issues because my family was so recently immigrants to this country.

Having spent most of my life living in areas rich with cultures other than middle class white America, I find that the multi hued colors of Brooklyn’s streets, the gruff accents of the Inupiaq language and the heady smells of a walk through Little Italy in South Philly have always described America to me as much as, if not more than, a suburban neighborhood with neatly mowed lawns and trimmed hedges. 

In order to get a true picture of America today,

It’s something of a running joke among my friends that when they visit me they bring coats and sweaters because they claim I keep my house too cold.  When winter approaches, their sweaters become more bulky and mittens appear as they try to stave off frostbite during the bridge game.

My attitude is that as long as my three parrots and cockatoo are ok, my friends shouldn’t complain. After all, my birds come from warm tropical climes and surely would be the first to suffer the bad effects of excessive cold.

Since my birds have probably never actually experienced the

My mother had a habit of waiting till 11 PM to call me so she could get the night rate. She continued this habit for most of the thirty years I was in Barrow and she was in Atlantic City.

So, unless it was me calling her, our calls took place while she was falling asleep in her chair in front of the TV. In fact, as she aged, the main topic of these particular phone conversations would be how sleepy she was and how hard it had been to wait up till 11 PM to call me.  She would

Every time I turn on the TV or radio or read a newspaper recently, I find some politician or community or civic leader urging America to get back to normal.  Well, having seen normal in America, I’m not so sure that is something to which we should necessarily aspire.

In case you don’t remember, before the attack on the twin towers, we’d spent the summer with our noses deep into Gary Condit’s smelly and somewhat suspect psyche.  So going back to normal may not really be all it’s cracked up to be.

As these thoughts wandered around my brain looking

I was in Barrow for a children’s hearing when the planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center. For the first time in my entire career as a GAL, I was happy to have the hearing as a diversion.  The alternative would have been to sit in front of the TV hour after hour, staring at the scenes of chaos and devastation visited on a city I know and love so well.

I was young in New York City.  I was just out of school, working my first job and feeling as though the world was mine and