Following, am reprinting a long and thoughtful article from todays NYTimes celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of a book of portraits and text I’ve long admired (actually, revered), for many years. It’s author’s – Gay Block and Malka Drucker (now Rabbi Malka Drucker) – happen to be friends. Their formidable, iconic book “Rescuers”, was(…)
Following, a paragraph taken from the home page of the dazzling blog SunnysideHanne.com: “Part of blowing so damn hard on the embers is to bring back the tastes of childhood, my mother’s expatriate Danish cooking, my Father’s Eastern European specialties like his sweet Tzimmes and half sour tomatoes, my Aunt’s traditional Danish farmhouse fair and(…)
Had Vivien Leigh lived into her eighties, she would have looked like my friend Carol*** does at eighty-five. Carol, who grew up in Manhattan, with an Irish mother and Scottish father, who ran a boarding house on the Upper West Side, met me today at my corner so that we could lunch together. She carries(…)
Adrift on this cool September friday, I listen to the traffic, a voice shouting at no one in the street below me. I drink old coffee, wander from room to room a bit like Karen Stone in The Roman Spring … read read read all day long. It’s cozy inside; a breeze visits in fresh(…)
For a long while I’ve greatly admired, and felt true kinship, with playwright/poet/dancer Sissy Boyd. Originally from Philadelphia’s Main Line, she currently resides, creates and performs in Southern California. Sissy is a former Martha Graham dancer, has acted in films as well as on stage. She’s a woman after my own heart, spare, understated, still-waters-running-deeply incarnated that includes a sharp(…)
By Johanne Rosenthal (Johanne has a successful blog named sunnysidehanne.com, featuring her original recipes) When I sit down to relate the story of my soldier it feels as if I am relating a Bubba-miser, a fairytale, as if the snow that fell was really goose feathers, the moon in the sky a matzo ball. The Norwegian(…)
Part II: Ruins on the Mountain When the Canadian poet (not yet a novelist, not yet a musical sensation) Leonard Cohen came to Hydra in 1960 and bought a home there, he attempted to inveigle himself into Ghikas’s villa by means of his slim connection to Jacob Rothschild, whom he had recently met in London.(…)
I’ve a long, rich association with the author of this post, Helle Valborg Goldman. It’s a pleasure to welcome her as my first invited guest. She’s a kindred spirit, always was, always will be. Helle has been mulling over long form ideas relating to the atmospheric, mythic Isle of Hydra, Greece, where our families met, got close and where I(…)
