I love a crossword puzzle. I love the blank slate of it and the way you can slowly start to fill in the grids with all the random pieces of knowledge you've accumulated over the years. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote Cats, which was based on poems by TS Eliot, who was...
My father, a professor and a poet, has dementia. Over the years he must have written dozens of articles and poems. Occasionally for money. Yesterday, he received a royalty check for .78. He obviously has no memory of what the check is for. My mother also has no idea....
When my daughter is home from college she likes to go to the grocery store with me. It's something we used to do together when she still lived at home. Before Covid, I bribed her with a latte. I wanted the time to talk to her alone, away from her homework and her...
This is Feige and Moshe Melamed. Feige was the sister of my great-grandmother. In the picture they are standing on the balcony of the hotel they owned in Kremenets, which at the time was Poland, and today is Ukraine. The hotel may have been called the Bristol Hotel or...
My father has always loved Star Trek. He likes Spock more than Kirk and I think Picard more than either of them. Spock is not only undeniably Jewish, but the symbol for "Live Long and Prosper" is taken directly from the Levis, and my father, an egalitarian in every...
The house I grew up in had a huge backyard. In the front of the yard, just outside my bedroom window, was a large oak tree. The kind of tree that you could imagine a kid or teenager climbing out of the window on to, if I had the kind of parents that required sneaking...