Authors Electric

Mary Reinholz '70 West    The jobs I had as a kid and even later, as a young man don't exist anymore. I had no inkling I'd work on a newspaper or write books, or be in "media." My "big get" was getting a job. I started earning pocket money at age 10 delivering newspapers to home subscribers on de Luxe Schwinn I loved that sleek, red-and-black bike, with its whitewall balloon tires, shiny streamlined chrome fenders, built-in horn, head-and-tail lights, front-wheel shock-absorber and rack to carry the afternoon dailies I delivered to my afternoon paper's forty subscribers.  I became adepted at sailing fat copies of rubber-banded,  Hollywood Citizen News onto subscribers' front porches without breaking a window - most of the time.  Schwinns of that era were like our plush, chrome-laden, dreamboat, fintailed cars -  as stylish as they were unsafe, gas-guzzling, and impractical. I lusted after just a second-hand one that I could restore. To save up, ...

Yellowhammer The other day - maybe due to my advanced age, or upon hearing that I've been writing a memoir - a friend asked me how I would choose to come back in the next life, if there is one.  "As a busker," I responded. I didn't give my answer much thought, except that I've always liked street performers. "Maybe as a great orchestra conductor, like Toscanini, maybe a pianist too, or Arthur Fiedler . My mother took me to see the legendary Fiedler lead the Boston Pops at the Shell in the summer of 1941 beside the Charles River. I recall the outdoor spectacle vividly though the mists of early memories. After that, I took to conducting radio music with a yellow pencil. One of my aunts gave me a baton, real or perhaps a toy one.  Beethoven  That began my childhood busking career. Housing was scarce. For a while, my parents and I lived at the house of my paternal grandparents in the then toney, Boston district of Brighton. It was a spacious three-floor affair fo...

Keeping a list... Ho, ho, not to worry. Kris Kringle will still bring gifts for children everywhere. But I hate to report that we adults in America have made this year's naughty list in blackest ink. A majority of us will find a lump of coal in our Christmas stockings. The lump will be orange, slimy and smell bad and be called a Trump. I'll not name names. You know who you are, and so does this season's frowny Father Christmas.  It's not party politics or the finer points of trade that have our Elf-in-Chief in a snit this Christmas. It's the summary, mass roundups of aliens that our doddering Don has already set in motion. Like under his first term, it includes separation of families and incarceration of children - by the millions this time. Hate based cruelty is not a byproduct here. It is the self-professed point. I t doesn't take an all-knowing Santa to recognize this pogrom for what it is - persecution, with holocaust looming.  Christmas celebrates the birth...