I am now 80 years old. Living proof that people today are living much longer than they ever expected. As an old jazz musician said, “If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
I began my writing career at the age of 6. My parents asked me what i wanted for Christmas. I asked for a typewriter, stipulating “not a toy.” My father, not rich, responded by presenting to me a big, clunky old Remington. True to form, when I saw it, I burst into tears. I wanted a sleek new portable!
I eventually dried my tears, and wrote a little play for my kindergarten play group. It had a highly romantic yet adventurous plot. It seems there was this very young lady who was kidnapped from her healthy home by a wicked Queen who took her to her palace and tried to corrupt her by plying her with loads of cake and candy. Fortunately, her friends, who happened to be a crew of fruits and vegetables, decided to rescue her from the wicked Queen. Each character had an appropriate line of dialogue. They went to the palace and returned her to her mommy My play was a success.
I eventually grew up and went to U. of Miami on a Coca Cola scholarship.Then I moved to Greenwich Village, NYC, and became a hippie. Then I moved to L.A. and became a writer/editor for Playgirl magazine. This lasted until I wrote a couple of articles that bugged the New York Mafia. They bought Playgirl, moved it to NYC, made millions of dollars on it, and fired me.
With regard to Mensa, I have had a very long relationship with U.S.. Mensa. I believe I attended the first American Mensa meeting ever, in NYC. There were six or seven of us. One was Edmund L Epstein, a writer and editor, who became a very good friend, He was an editor of Joseph Campbell’s “A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake.” Which is where I got my title, “A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File.” I met Isaac Asimov, a famous science writer, and he wrote a limerick about me. Tom Elliott reviewd my Gemstone File book.
I have had a lot of fun and mad scrapes in my life.
Meanwhile, I got very old. Somehow, I became 80 years old. However I am still writing and still have a lot to say.
Books:
The Gemstone File – A Memoir on Amazon
A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File