Thursday, December 01, 2011

November 8, 2011

›
It is with great sadness to report that my father passed away on November 8. He was so brave and strong to the very end. His family will ne...
11 comments:
Saturday, December 12, 2009

Update On Mort's Condition

›
He is slowly recovering. He is now in his third medical facility – a subacute rehab. where he is working to get back on his feet (with the...
18 comments:
Sunday, October 25, 2009

To the loyal readers of Octogenarian

›
This is being written by Mort's wife... About 10 days ago Mort was severely injured while driving his car out of his garage. He's ha...
23 comments:
Sunday, October 04, 2009

MEMOIR: When Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas rented my old apartment

›
After sharing apartments in Washington, D.C. for three years with other young bachelors, I reached a sufficient state of affluence in 1951 t...
12 comments:
Thursday, September 24, 2009

Isaac Bashevis Singer vs. Marc Chagall

›
Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel laureate in literature who wrote in Yiddish, is my favorite author. In 1975, taking a break from my regular...
9 comments:
Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Jimmy Carter: Enemy of peace

›
I don't normally publish material written by others on this blog. I am making an exception here to publicize this article by Israeli jou...
4 comments:
Saturday, September 05, 2009

MEMOIR: How I almost became a Texan

›
George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Conn. to a patrician family of staid New Englanders. When he was a child, the family moved to Midland,...
4 comments:
Monday, August 31, 2009

The unwinnable war in Afghanistan

›
I rarely agree with Pat Buchanan, the right-wing pundit and onetime Presidential candidate, on anything. But there is one issue on which we ...
6 comments:
Monday, August 10, 2009

My love affair with the Yiddish language

›
I can no longer speak the language in which, according to my parents, I uttered my first words as a small child. The language is Yiddish, th...
9 comments:
Saturday, August 01, 2009

The tormented Robert McNamara

›
My local newspaper recently carried an editorial cartoon showing Robert McNamara, the controversial former Secretary of Defense who died on ...
7 comments:
Saturday, July 18, 2009

MEMOIR: Returning to Washington from New York

›
In November 1949 I returned to Washington, D.C. to begin work for the U.S. Labor Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics as a press officer a...
4 comments:
Friday, June 12, 2009

It is a "small world" on the Internet

›
I posted a piece on this blog entitled "My life with music" this past April 4. In it I bemoaned the fact that, as a boy in the mid...
5 comments:
Saturday, June 06, 2009

What Obama didn't say in Cairo

›
I've been pondering how to comment on President Obama's speech this past week in Cairo. He succeeded in mending the U.S. relationshi...
6 comments:
Monday, June 01, 2009

Ending a "sabbatical" to comment on a horrendous crime

›
I've been on a sort of sabbatical leave from blogging over the past three weeks as my wife and I have gone through the logistical discom...
10 comments:
Sunday, May 10, 2009

Right-wing paranoia

›
I have received a curious comment on my April 20 post, "The right-wing malcontents are bashing Obama." It was written by a highly ...
10 comments:
Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Lamenting the decline of the print media

›
In the previous post on this blog (April 28), I published a poem by my wife Sybil, lamenting her entrance into the ranks of the octogenarian...
8 comments:
Tuesday, April 28, 2009

My wife Sybil's octogenarian's lament

›
We now have two octogenarians in my family. My wife Sybil has just turned 80. A group of her friends are celebrating the event this week wit...
15 comments:
Monday, April 20, 2009

The right-wing malcontents are bashing Obama

›
President Barack Obama has been in office for only three months, but already the right-wing malcontents are up in arms. Their rage was comic...
8 comments:
Monday, April 13, 2009

The amazing but sorrowful side of Googling

›
Whenever I have nothing better to do, I often turn to Google and type in the names of old friends and acquaintances with whom I have lost co...
5 comments:
Thursday, April 09, 2009

MEMOIR: Job-hopping and networking

›
My job as a press officer and editor with the U.S. Interior Dept.'s Fish & Wildlife Service, about which I wrote in my last Memoir, ...
6 comments:
Saturday, April 04, 2009

My life with music

›
I cannot play a musical instrument, and I have never taken music lessons. I cannot read music. And I can barely distinguish the playing qual...
5 comments:
Saturday, March 28, 2009

The Bronx County Courthouse vs. the Taj Mahal

›
The Taj Mahal is generally regarded as one of the eight wonders of the world. It is located outside the sprawling city of Agra, India. Some ...
5 comments:
Thursday, March 19, 2009

My ancestors in Jerusalem

›
  This is a photo of my maternal great-great-grandparents. The photo was taken in Jerusalem about 150 years ago when that city was ruled by ...
7 comments:
Saturday, March 14, 2009

MEMOIR: Whooping cranes, trumpeter swans and a kid from the Bronx

›
I started my first postwar job in June 1948 in Washington, D.C. shortly after my college graduation. As I revealed in a previous Memoir post...
5 comments:
Saturday, February 14, 2009

A blogger's anniversary and unexpected gifts

›
This month I am beginning the fifth year of publishing this blog. When I began in 2005, I had no idea who if anyone would ever read the stuf...
10 comments:
Sunday, February 08, 2009

MEMOIR: Settling in Washington, D.C.

›
Shortly after my college graduation in June 1948, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work as an editor and press officer for the U.S. Department...
4 comments:
Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A poet I'm not

›
For nearly a decade, I have belonged to a writers workshop in the Florida retirement community where I live half the year. We have about a d...
10 comments:
Sunday, January 18, 2009

Afghanistan: A lost cause

›
The incoming Obama administration will be making a grievous mistake if it goes ahead with its plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan by shi...
9 comments:
Saturday, January 03, 2009

A letter from Israel regarding the Gaza tragedy

›
I have received the following letter from an Israeli citizen, offering a personal view about the tragic events unfolding in Gaza. Dear fami...
11 comments: