Bonni Brodnick Blog

CRINGE-Y MOMENTS OF OUR YOUTH Cafe Wha? and 6th Graders Playing Hooky An afternoon of sipping Coke + smoking Marlboros Bonni Brodnick · \ Photo by the Author What in  sam- hell were we thinking? Me and my friends (to use the vernacular, notice I’m not writing “My friends and I”) were in sixth grade and decided to cut school one day. My best friend and I would make this clandestine outing to New York City along with two other guys. That meant leaving the cushy suburbs of Maplewood, New Jersey to take the Erie Lackawanna train to New York City. Get off in Hoboken because the train didn’t connect to the city at that point, and grab a subway to West 14th Street. Destination:   Cafe Wha?, a joint in the West Village with live music where Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Allen Ginsberg, Bruce Springsteen, and others used to hang out. Since 1959, folk singers, artists, poets, beatniks, and anarchists have come to the club. As sixth graders, we’d fit right in. The Problem How to disguise myse...

 

National Squirrel Appreciation Day An Annual Celebration of Those Annoying Critters On January 21 — every year — it’s a big celebration in our house. It’s National Squirrel Appreciation Day! I’m thankful for many things, and my list runneth over, but I never thought squirrels would hover at the top. Christy Hargrove, a wildlife rehabilitator in North Carolina, founded National Squirrel Appreciation Day to make us aware that food sources were scarce for them in mid-winter. And be they shades of gray, pale orange, deep reddish-brown or black; Ground, Tree, or Flying squirrels, on this particular day, we’ve got Hargrove’s blessing to honor them and make them feel as if they matter. For background, these creatures are at it 24/7. As pure opportunists, squirrels will break into your attic any time. They’ll leave cracked acorns on your lawn when they think it looks too neat. Have overflowing bird feeder problems? Need an attic pilfered? Count on these ubiquitous rodents to show you a thing o...

Many thanks to Georgette Gouveia at Westfair Business Journal for this great coverage in "Book Beat" . . . Book Beat:  From life’s fast lane to stroke’s slow lane and back    by   GEORGETTE GOUVEIA     January 17, 2024  0 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Bonni Brodnick, author of “My Stroke in the Fast Lane: A Journey to Recovery, a Memoir,” was reunited with her acute rehabilitation team at Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow on Wednesday, Jan. 10.  From left, Kathy Gibbs, senior occupational therapist at Phelps Hospital; Brodnick; Joanne Gelsi, senior physical therapist at Phelps Hospital; and Caroly Bossinas M.A., CCC, director, speech and hearing at Phelps Hospital. Courtesy Northwell Health.  Author photographs by Andrew Brodnick. On Easter Sunday morning, 2017, Tarrytown writer Bonni Brodnick was cruising along I-95 when one of anyone’s worst nightmares happened:  She suffered a stroke traveling at 65 miles per hou...

Tarrytown Author and Stroke Victim Returns to Phelps to Say “Thank You” Bonni Brodnick (second from left) with Occupational Therapist Kathy Gibbs (left), Senior Physical Therapist Joanne Gelsi ( to her right) and Speech Therapist Carolyn Bossinas (right) January 12, 2024 By Bar­rett Sea­man– Easter morn­ing 2017 started out like most morn­ings for Bonni Brod­nick, ex­cept that she would be dri­ving that day to Con­necti­cut to pick up her mother and bring­ing her back to Tar­ry­town for Easter din­ner with her fam­ily. At 86, vi­su­ally im­paired and deaf in one ear, her mother could no longer be trusted be­hind the wheel of a car—or so Bonni and her sib­lings had con­cluded. As she washed her face, she felt “lit­tle blips in­side my head,” which she had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing lately but had con­cluded that they weren’t enough to war­rant call­ing her doc­tor. “You can’t call your doc­tor about every­thing,” she lec­tured her­self. On the drive back on I-95,...