January 17, 2017 is an appropriate date to announce the engagement of Amelia Altalena Solkoff to Javier Blanco. The date marks the 1925 birthday of Amelia’s late paternal grandmother Miriam Pell Schmerler zt”l who was close to Amelia and her sister Joanna. Amelia teaches English in Pontevedra, Spain (on the Portuguese border) where she is also an enthusiastic […]
Miriam Pell Schmerler
“In my little village, everybody looked like you.”
The Village of Stories by Richard Kopley, Edgar Allan Poe scholar at Penn State Many years ago, on a bus in New York City, a little old lady in a babushka stared at me. I looked away, and then back, and she was still staring. I rose to get off, and she stared as I […]
Travel barriers for individuals with disabilities
The following was published in June of 2010 shortly before my mother died. It appeared in my monthly column From Where I Sit, produced on a monthly basis for Voices of Central Pennsylvania, my spiritual home here in State College, PA. The column appeared regularly for over a year, written sometimes between hospitalizations but submitted on time […]
My mother Dr. Miriam P. Schmerler
Eulogy for my mother Dr. Miriam P. Schmerler Monday, September 6, 2010, State College, PA “People do not wish to learn about how to deal with death until they are confronted by death, and when they are confronted with death they are not inclined to study how religion approaches it,” writes Maurice Lamm in […]
Portrait of my grandfather and namesake an intensely emotional journey from 1916 when the photograph was taken
My grandfather played the saxophone and clarinet in the orchestra pits of movie theaters (many of them great palaces) to entertain audiences when the silent movies were playing. His name was Salvatore Pellecia. My mother, a Hebrew school teacher, named me after him—translating “Salvatore” into “God helps” and then debating between “Joshua” and “Joel Ezra” […]