Savvy Saving Bytes

Once upon a time I used made-in-America soap exclusively. For the simple reason it was the only soap sold in the stores I shopped in. Then one-day America’s big soap makers had a big pow-wow and said, “Hey, people need soap every day. We can charge a whole lot more for the stuff. Let’s double [...]

These red cochineal beetles really get around. First they show up as neon red coloring in foods I recently wrote about in “Hair, Beetles and Beaver Anal Glands in Our Food.” And now the little red buggers have turned up in, of all things, the pink moisture cream I have been daily smoothing into my [...]

For newcomers, New York City’s energy, speedy pace and wow cast of characters can be an assault on the senses, so here are a few safety tips to ease you into the NYC saddle. Number one: be constantly aware of everything and everyone around you. When my teen-age niece first visited me, I stressed this [...]

When a pain specialist at a teaching hospital recommended an epidural to relieve my back pain — an injection into the scarily weensy area between my spinal cord and vertebrae — I requested that he himself do the procedure — not an intern or resident (doctor in training). After agreeing he asked me to remind [...]

When my teen-age nieces came from Virginia to visit me in New York City, their mother suspected their exuberant energy would quickly leave me in a puff of exhausted dust. Guess what. At the end of our first day hitting the sights and trooping up and down the city, the two totally wrung-out teens collapsed [...]

During the night at the end of a brutally hot July, the sizzling summer of hell finally took a powder. When I left my apartment the next morning I walked straight into a deliciously cool breeze. It had been so long since I had hit the street and not been assaulted by a blinding wall [...]