Author: ruhlwrite

Laurel Hicklin is standing in the stacks at the Steinway Library. She takes a deep breath. “There’s nothing like the smell of books,” she says in delight. “It’s so exciting to be surrounded by all kinds of books that are just waiting to be read.” She’s felt this way ever since she was a girl growing up on the Thumb of Michigan. “I went to the library all the time,” says Laurel, the branch’s assistant community library manager. “I always…

Continue Reading →

It’s on the top floor. To get there, you must pass through a spiral of boring hallways whose numbing palette is grey upon grey upon grey. The door to the dollhouse of an apartment opens straight into the cubby of a kitchen, whose table is spread with crystal, silverplate platters and a pretty pink and yellow chintzware tea set edged in gold. There’s a sleeping area off to the side, and the bed’s done up in frilly bridal white. Straight ahead, in the living room, where the flat-screen…

Continue Reading →

It came about, when Edith O’Donnell was in her late 40s, that she found herself without a husband and without a job. And with two daughters to put through college. Most people would panic, whine or curse. Not Edith. She simply squared her small-boned shoulders, pulled herself up to her full flat-heel height of 5-foot-4 and got down to the business of reinventing herself. In short order, she had co-founded Lyons, the friendliest mortgage and insurance services company in Astoria. “It’s…

Continue Reading →

“Clothing is like art,” says Kristie Foster. “It’s to admire.” The statuesque Kristie, does, indeed, look like a gallery work. She’s clad in a two-layer shirt dress, deep iris purple over light lavender, that makes her Tiffany-blue eyes pop like spring crocuses. Her neck is decorated with a long, flowing vintage scarf that features dancing angels that accent her short, highlighted blond hair. Her retro-style spectator shoes, in cream, complement the white leather…

Continue Reading →

Helen Polychronis comes to the front door carrying a tin coffee pot, the kind that would have been bright-shiny-new a half century ago. It’s filled with water. “Excuse me, I have to go save a dying gardenia,” she says as she shuffles to the garden. Walking isn’t too easy, even without the can throwing her off balance: Helen’s left leg is an inch shorter than her right, and she wears a brace. She’s not using her cane today. Back inside, she surveys the living room.…

Continue Reading →