Theresa D’Aiuto Sokol
It was the summer of 1973. A year after college graduation, I was making a life for myself on the gritty upper west side of Manhattan in a run-down tenement building occupied by a motley crew of hippies and disillusioned Columbia University graduates. My boyfriend Fred and I shared a fifth-floor walk-up at 105th Street and Columbus Avenue, adjacent to a building controlled by the local drug dealers. Each evening we were serenaded by salsa music emanating from the bodega just across the street, sometimes punctuated by the click, click, click of dominos accompanying excited comments from local Dominican and Puerto Rican players and onlookers.
The PS 52-school yard was completely enclosed with a ten-foot-high chain link fence topped off with barbed wire. Why the barbed wire, I’ll never know. The building and its grounds were a lot worse than some of our present-day work-release facilities. Aside from all that, it was one of the better places to play a good softball game. If we won the game, seven or eight of us would try to go home a little richer. With our game winnings in hand, we would go into the far corner of the schoolyard and shoot penny to nickel craps.
What would a summer reading list be without poetry? Surely no other season is better served by the weightlessness and sophistication of poetic expression. Today’s blog features three exquisite verses bathed in summer’s golden tones, contributed by one of our OLLI-USF award-winning poets. Kick up your feet, sip your coffee, tea or chai and let your senses revel in the refined beauty of language. — Editors 
The Temple to Luna, Goddess of the Full Moon, was built in the sixth century B.C. by Emperor Augustus on the Aventine Hill, overlooking the Tiber. There were tumbled tiled floors, double curved stairs, high archways, views of the river on all sides, groves of olives and lemons. On March 31st, upon the completion, a ceremony was held. It is said that the Emperor had commanded Homer to write a hymn invoking Luna, which was to be sung by 27 girls. And the story goes that, when the hymn was sung, Luna rode across the sky in Her silver chariot drawn by two horses, one white, the other black, pulling the Full Moon.
I was 15 the summer of 1963. It was time of hope and optimism. The promise of Civil Rights had permeated our generation, and we embraced it. We learned all the anthems: Blowin’ In the Wind, We Shall Overcome, WE Shall Not be Moved, argued with our parents about attending the march on Washington, and flocked to the movie theatre to see To Kill A Mockingbird which exposed the underbelly of southern segregation and Jim Crow. And oh how we loved Atticus, the gentle and wise soul whose integrity could not be diminished even as he was spat upon.
“…and that adds up to 26 dollars”, sighed my mother Nancy. Worry lines played over the soft, beautiful skin of her face as she consigned thin dollar bills into little brown envelopes, each marked with its own label: “groceries”, “rent”, and so on. Those little packets were the kind you got from the bank, small enough to hide secrets, wrapped securely with rubber bands to keep their precious contents in place, and softened from years of handling.
The Lunar New Year tradition is observed in China and several Asian countries, and among Chinese Americans. It normally arrives in late January or early February based on the lunar calendar. In 2023 the Lunar New Year’s Day falls on January 22nd.