Putting on the Socks

I wore socks yesterday. I wasn’t at synagogue. I wasn’t attending a wedding or bar mitzvah. It was chilly outside, around 46 degrees, no colder than other sockless days.

I was in Boston, a panelist in a small, financial community roundtable luncheon, discussing retail trends and the current holiday season. (I also took the opportunity to visit Finley and his parents, an added bonus to the trip.)

It felt good wearing socks. It felt good having people take notes on what I said. It felt good jousting with other panelists, juxtaposing my thoughts with theirs.

I’m not ready to tap into the sock drawer every day again. But I’m exhilarated that I can still be meaningful and relevant to a universe beyond the nosocksneededanymore community.


See This Play: Saw an interesting Off-Broadway play last night after returning from Boston. Titled This, it’s a well-written, well-acted black comedy about early middle-age relationships. It’s part of this season’s offerings from Playwright Horizons, a theater dedicated to the development of new productions from contemporary artists. This will be performed through January 3 at the West 42nd Street theater.

Along with Jane and Ken Gould, Gilda and I have bought season subscriptions for half a dozen or more years. We’ve seen some fascinating works through Playwrights Horizons, including Grey Gardens and I Am My Own Wife prior to their reaching Broadway.


Blog of Norway: After we returned home, as we watched excerpts of President Obama’s acceptance speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo’s City Hall, Gilda remarked, “I was there, in that hall.”

Indeed, she had been, back in 1990 when she attended an infectious disease conference during her time as an ID researcher at Westchester County Medical Center (unlike many of my business jaunts that Gilda tagged along on, I could not hitch onto her trip to Scandinavia as I’d exhausted my vacation time several weeks earlier for a family trip to Israel).

I teased her last night that if she had a blog of her own she could tell everyone about the experience. That wasn’t very nice of me. So here’s a public apology to Gilda. And if you desire details of her Oslo memory, please ask her the next time you see her.


DEFCON 4: It’s cold outside. 27 degrees at 10:30 am. Cold inside as well. Hovering around 64. It’s polartec sheet time (much warmer than flannel). I’ve raised the heat to a constant 67 degrees. And I think, anytime it’s below freezing outside, it’s time to wear socks. Even inside.