This weekend I’ll be attending my sixtieth New Trier High School reunion. Sixty years! Really! Amazing! And besides this excitement, four couples will stay together at a high school friend’s house. One of each of the couples were in the same class at New Trier, took a journalism class from Dr. Robert R. Boyle – still a long-time friend, and all worked on the school newspaper together. Since reuniting at our twenty-fifth reunion, these friends and their spouses and my husband and I have remained very close. We gather together at each other’s homes besides attending reunions together. Unfortunately, though, a couple of news team members are no longer with us, and one dear friend, who was the editor-in-chief of our paper, is too ill to travel. Events for the reunion start on Thursday night with a get together at the famed Hackney’s on Lake in Glenview IL. It’s a restaurant I used to love to go to with my family. Friday morning is golf – my husband will participate … [Read more...]
My thoughts about the film The Wife (spoiler alert!)
The new film, The Wife, with Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, brought up a lot of memories of my writing career. Early on in her studies, Joan Castleman, the character Glenn Close plays in the film, was told she could get nowhere as a female author. It was the year 1958 – the same year I started college as a journalism major. Castleman, already recognized for her writing skills, says she couldn’t live without writing. I too was hell-bent on having a career in writing though I was discouraged as well. My father made it clear I should study to be a teacher – after all that’s what girls in my generation did – or skip college altogether and become a secretary. Of course, the Castleman character in the movie and I were on totally different paths in our writing. My forte was journalism; hers was fiction. I persisted and got a job right after graduating from college at a fashion trade magazine, which I quit after three weeks because my male boss verbally abused and harassed me. A … [Read more...]
Some old stories
In 2012 and 2013 I contributed to a website called Storylane. It inspired me to write very short pieces about a variety of subjects. Unfortunately, Storylane no longer exists, but packrat that I am I saved every piece I submitted. Here's a few: How I Got My First Job Out of College I graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and had no idea what I would do professionally after getting it. I had wanted to work as a journalist and actually completed all the course work for a degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin. But family illness caused me to transfer to UCLA for my senior year, and UCLA didn't offer a BA degree in journalism. So I was stuck in a city I didn't know, and hardly knowing anyone in it. I tried valiantly and unsuccessfully early on to get a writing job and then gave up. It was 1962. Not a lot of jobs for women writers in those days, especially in Los Angeles. Then someone suggested I try the growing aerospace business in southern California. And I … [Read more...]
