Gerry Goldstein

If there are children in the room as you read this, please shoo them away, because what follows is an intensely personal revelation on an issue they may not be old enough to understand. In the interest of journalistic transparency, here is my confession: I am a sapiosexual. How do I know? Because this new word, […]

“Dear Santa: I’m Jewish, but I really love U. Can U give me a present though. (Please don’t give me coal).” This letter to Santa, which often pops up in anthologies of communication with the jolly old gent, transports me to a long-ago time when as a Jewish kid myself, I also had a question […]

The recent death of New York Yankees hall-of-fame pitcher Whitey Ford provides me personal recollection of how, as children, we choose our role models and heroes. Ford won 236 games, more than any other Yankee, and was a mainstay on legendary teams including the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Yogi Berra. He shined […]

In these disturbing times it’s comforting to know that one has friends who can be relied on to come through when the chips are down.   In my case, I know I can depend on a stable of folks who have my best interests high on their minds. My special gratitude goes to the likes of […]

The other morning, in step with some cosmic metronome setting the rhythm of the seasons, baby turtles the size of silver dollars wriggled free of the earth outside our front door. Their mother, a crocodilian snapper whose travels I have mentioned before, had presented herself during the first week of June. As she does every year, […]

Since my title on our hobby farm in Rhode Island’s Apple Valley is executive vice president/manure management, I know a thing or two about the production and distribution of raw material. The work, honest and unpretentious, is far more pleasant than you might imagine; in fact, I see a magical aspect to it.   Each […]

It’s at this time of year that Emma Lazarus, whose New Yorker parents maintained a summer home in Newport, gets a lot of publicity for her Statue of Liberty poem and its image of “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But she wasn’t the first in her family to write immortal patriotic words, although the […]

In these volatile times when any given day can produce unexpected upheaval, June has delivered its annual reminder to our little hobby farm that dedication and consistency have not abandoned us. As she has for years, our visitor recently appeared right on schedule – in the precise week that tiger lilies send up their graceful […]

See if this snippet of history sounds vaguely familiar to what we’re facing today: Feisty, plain-talking Harry Truman, warned by scientists of his era that a major natural disaster was imminent, rejected their opinions and minimized the threat, hurling insults daily. Despite unmistakable clues that the situation was dire, Truman stood firm in his defiance, […]

As we struggle with the coronavirus, it’s common to hear people say this is our toughest fight since World War II.   Coincidentally, it’s been 75 years since an actual World War II battle played out within sight of our shores, and reminders of it still exist in Newport and off Narragansett. On May 5, […]

Here in Rhode Island’s apple orchard country of Greenville, the honey crisp and macoun trees are bare, but daffodils and tiger lilies are sprouting at our place, thanks to this kindly winter. As recalled recently on this site by news editor Frank Prosnitz, the Blizzard of ’78 is but a distant memory, leaving as it […]

The trade of Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers has split Red Sox Nation the way trading Barack Obama for Donald Trump has split America. Many fans are infuriated that the Sox unloaded their superstar a year before his free agency so they could get something in return before he walked away in 2021. […]

February being Black History Month, we might appropriately recall some familiar figures associated with racism: Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Tom & Jerry, and Popeye. These, and more celluloid friends from our childhood, inhabited cartoons peddling varying degrees of bigotry. Especially in the earlier decades of the last century, some cartoons were so vile […]