The blackbirds should be showing up any day now. I’m on the lookout. When the blackbirds are back in town it means spring is coming. Or at least the blackbirds seem to think so. I watch for them every year. Blackbirds, like the Summer People, are seasonal residents. The blackbirds’ ...

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts. Following my escape from the Nazi slave labor camp, and after encountering my brother-in-law, Bela Engel, on the streets of Budapest, he took me to one of the Swedish Safe Houses, established by Raoul Wallenberg, the legendary Swedish diplomat, ...

Editor’s note: This is the first of two parts I am allergic to birthday celebrations. Nevertheless, my Williamsburg friends organized an elaborate gathering on my 99th birthday. In fact, if they had followed the ancient Chinese custom of considering a child one year old at birth, I ...

On Friday, Feb. 28, the Mount Van Hoevenberg and Ski Jump crew installed a 10- by 15-foot mural representing the U.S. flag on the sliding track finish platform as U.S. bobsled and Skeleton athletes and their competitors arrived in Lake Placid to begin their final training and practice runs ...

“I’m not watching the news,” people say. “I can’t stand it. If I have to hear about” — say, for example — “the radioactive wild boars of Fukushima one more time, I’ll take the bridge!” Then, all at once, the subject is dropped, and we never hear of it again. Another topic ...

The other day I visited the Lake Placid Public Library for the first time. It was a wonderful experience, and I wondered why I had never thought to go there before. From Main Street the library looks small, but once you go inside you realize there are rooms and rooms at several levels. For ...