…postpartum depression, or jet-lag, or there’s-no-there-there, or bonjour tristesse, or s.a.d., or depleted, or low t., or Shoo Fly Don’t Bother Me, or stone in my shoe, or Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, or gas, or A Hole in the Bucket, or Pictures of the Gone World by Lawrence Ferlinghetti The world(…)
She asked, Why no foreskin? He replied, A foreskin is redundant. She asked, Do they tie the baby up in a receiving blanket? Are his legs tied down? Are his arms tied over the head? Is the individuality ignored? Are his limbs strained like Dürer men? He replied, Don’t ask me. They drove along the(…)
Speaking of bad good luck, here’s an excerpt from my book Fiet’s Vase and Other Stories of Survival, Europe 1939-1945 recently reissued with new material by TMI Press from Part I, Chapter: “Uncanny Luck” [Kohn is on the far left in the photo] Sometimes a crumb foils From the table of joy Sometimes a bone is(…)
I occasionally order a cream pie from a tiny kiosk at the port beside what once was the old old bakery run by brothers. After heating the opulent pastry, the pleasant owner shakes a powdering of confectioners sugar across its crusty surface, smiles and asks, Cinema? I nod. She shakes on a small cloud of cinnamon. The(…)
“In 1930s Berlin, Eli G. is an abstracted young Jewish painter addled by Marxist idealism and tangled memories of his mother and the shtetl. Longing to move to Paris, Eli feverishly paints maps and watches the baby while his wife Vera gives up her ambition of becoming a doctor and works as an accountant. This is where Not(…)
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(…)
Speaking of bad good luck: [Example #1] In summer one of my guests (a friend who I’ve known since she was four years old) told me that some beads she was wearing while washing her hands at the bathroom sink while staying at my Greek house had broken, scattered, many disappearing down the sinkhole. Since the necklace was the last(…)
Various statuettes loiter in a corner of my enclosed terrace. Joining them, my father as a young college graduate about to take on the world. And my mother too. Little could he imagine the bumps and tripwires he would encounter concluding with his death in New York overlooking the East River on October 9th a few years ago.(…)
Two articles written by the journalist Kirk Spitzer have appeared in USA Today. Here’s a short excerpt from the first and the complete article relating to Chiune Sugihara, the subject of my interview with Mr. Spitzer and my book A Special Fate, Chiune Sigihara, Hero of the Holocaust, recently reissued by TMI Press. [Excerpt] Japan opens(…)
Finally the days of rain end; a rim of sunset can be seen. Doors have swollen from the rain.The door to the old house won’t open; the door to the front gate won’t close. During the downpour, the leak under the metal spiral stairway stopped but water from the kitchen ceiling dripped onto the table where my papers and fresh bread(…)
