from Matzo Balls to Boeuf Bourguignon I got married in August of 1961. My wife and I had both grown up in Jewish households in Brooklyn. Most of the dishes our families cooked reflected our grandparents’ Eastern European background. …

The year is 2075 and I’m walking along the 20-mile stretch of California beach that connects Monterrey and Santa Cruz. I love spotting the numerous dolphins and occasional whale. I stop to speak with a man who is filling two large tanks with seawater. …

In the film Contact, Radio-astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway receives a message from the Vega star system which is 26 light years away from Earth. When she deciphers the message, she discovers plans detailing how to build a complex machine that will enable a single occupant to travel through space. Convinced…

In the 2009 film Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, a professor of music finds a lost puppy at the train station and takes him home for the night. The puppy remains unclaimed, and the two grow close. One spring morning, the dog who is now called Hachi follows the professor to…

When I was a teenager living in Brooklyn of the 1950s, I did not know how to defend myself and was constantly afraid of violence from older boys. I wanted to take a self-defense course but there was no place in Brooklyn that offered this training. Then in my twenties…

As far back as I can remember, I loved the ocean. I grew up in Brooklyn and spent as much time as I could swimming in salt water. As I grew older, I realized that the ocean which bordered my hometown was not the best location in which to scuba…

I’d been living by myself in an apartment in New Jersey for two years and getting increasingly lonely. My nightly dinners and weekends together with my girlfriend were just not enough to assuage my loneliness. I thought my goldfish would fill the void, but they didn’t, and then they died…

In 1957 I began studying physics during my freshman year at Columbia University. This inspired my best friend, the editor of the college literary magazine, to write a short story about a first-year physics student (me) who planned as an extra credit activity to assemble an infinite group of monkeys…

How a New Generation of Eco-Warriors is Saving the Planet from the Onslaught of Plastics Fifty years ago, I was an earth science teacher in the town of Larchmont, NY. To my surprise, the students found the course material boring. At that time, the concept of recycling was relatively new…