Nancy Ruhling's Astoria Characters

On the kitchen countertop, there’s a sliver-slim volume. will tell us everything we need to know about Jenn Wehrung. She’s happily married with four kids, two dogs, four kittens and two cats (the gerbil didn’t make it). She has — let’s make that “had” — a booming fashion business. Before that, she was a dancer with a best-seller tucked under her tutu. She just taught her son to play piano. “But I don’t even play piano!” she complains. Gotcha.…

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The century-old glass-front door opens, and there stands Mr. D with Friday, the 77-pound pit bull/pointer bruiser who howled his head off when the bell rang. “Are you afraid of dogs or kids?” It’s a moot question; Friday’s nosing around, and the kids — 10-year-old Ian and 6-year-old Willow — are bound to be bounding down the stairs any moment. James A. DeSoucey Jr. is a squat muscle-bound square with laughing baby blues. The kids he coaches on Willow’s first-grade…

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You can get mad. You can get sad. You can get even. Or, like Clif Militello, you can do all three. By writing a book. Of fiction (wink, wink). Clif is many things — art director, cartoonist, caricaturist, inventor, lecturer and proud mustachioed bald man — but he’s the first to admit that author is not one of them. Still, when he lost his job as an art director for MTA-NYC Transit on Sept. 17, 2010 during a “workforce reduction,” he decided to pen, a who-might-do-it…

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“Where’s the baby? She has to be here somewhere.” Donna Bungo knows this because when she packed the insulated cooler this morning, there were four. And now there are only three. There’s no way one escaped, at least she doesn’t think so. Casually alarmed, she carefully culls the covers, her old flannel pajamas, until she comes up with the critter. She playfully scolds her five-week-old charges and cuddles the sleepy-eyed squirrel who almost beat her at hide-and-seek.…

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The sweeping starts with the first blush of spring. In the beginning, it’s whisper soft. But as the roses bloom and their fragrant petals stoop to kiss the pavement, it takes on a frantic urgency. Sweep, sweep, sweep. SweepSweepSweep. All those plunging petals and so little time to get them up! SweepSweepSweep the sidewalks clean. Before long, the Petal Pushers, in housecoats and hair curlers, in pumps and pearls, are in full spring swing. Like crocuses popping up out of the ground, they burst…

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