EVEN AFTER TEN YEARS, THE memories and pain are still fresh when I think of them. I don’t think of them often. My habit in those days was to check the Ha’aretz news ticker with my morning coffee. “Hmm… soccer…
Tag: arm’s length
Because the word “community” is over-used.
Pithyism #16
THE WORLD LOOKS A LITTLE more friendly with something fragrant bubbling on the stove.
Our Labor Day Message
“WORKERS OF THE WORLD, RELAX.” (And for everyone else: who made your stuff? Who brought or sold it to you? Are you grateful? Then thank a worker. They seem to be an endangered species.)
Saturday Night Owls, Sunday Morning Penguins
EVEN IF THERE’S LITTLE TO read — sometimes, especially if there’s little to read — nothing beats sharing an early morning newspaper with someone you love.
The Best Quote Ever About Torah (And Stories In General)
“What does that song mean?” I asked Ernie once about a particular song. He thought for a bit and then replied that if I wanted to know what the words meant, he’d be glad to translate them for me. But…
Love to a Cat
HAD I NOT BEEN SWIFT, He would have brought the rat in. It’s the thought that counts.
Generational Drift
BY OUR BEST CALCULATIONS, HISTORY began in Sumer when people first started writing things down (there are some examples of probable earlier scripts, but no one’s translated them yet). This would be about 6,000 years ago. Let’s assume twenty-five years…
First Graf: The Lore Of Sail
THE MARITIME SECTION OF MY home library is, like a captain’s yacht, small but well-appointed. I’ve been a ship geek since 1987-88, when I served as a deckhand/docent on a replica of the Golden Hinde, and my taste tends toward…
Touching With Words
THE FIRST TIME I DISCOVERED that my words had an effect on other people was when something I wrote made other people cry. The people were my fellow high-school English students, and the topic was a personal essay we’d been…
Echo (Pithyism #18)
YOU REALLY FEEL LIKE A Jewish Teacher when a former student says “This needed to be here” and gives you a rock he picked up at Masada. (Thanks, Nick. May you also be blessed to know the difference you make.)…
Pithyism #+/-1
Thank God or your equivalent that the uttermost limits of joy and misery remain mostly unexplored — and largely uncommunicated.
Two Indigent Sketches
1. HITCHHIKING THROUGH RENO IN 1985, I wandered by the green banks of the Truckee River, where a number of seen-better-days men lived in the park, in what apparently remained of their business suits. “Hey buddy, you got a second?”…