Dr. Jeniffer Simon, a caring and experienced urologist, Geissinger Medical Center, State College PA showed me on her computer this image–a cancerous tumor surrounding my right kidney, referring me to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “Unless you have surgery quickly, you will be dead in 10 years.” The date: April 5, 2013, […]
Amelia Solkoff
How do I feel?
I do not feel real. There is a disconnect between my body, which does not feel good, and my mind, which does not feel good. It is six in the morning. I am listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes; I am beginning to be not unhappy, but capable of realizing happiness will come. My body feels as if […]
The danger of “living wills”–a post surgical analysis
Of all my many preparations for surgery–including signing up for Premium Spotify [worth it]–creating a valid Living Will exercised far too much time. I can and may list the valid rationale for having a Living Will, which here in Pennsylvania is called officially a Durable Power of Attorney. Durable means (as lovers of the English […]
Raquel Welch, “Sex Goddess of the 1970s,” and my younger daughter Amelia
March 10, 2013, State College, PA., 7:40 PM. I was asked this afternoon why I nearly went crazy before each of my daughters was born. The lapse of judgment—mentioning Raquel Welch to my 22 year-old daughter this afternoon—is a good example of why I worried about becoming a father. As anyone who is a parent […]
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” […]
Poem: Last Year’s Gift
It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events by which the path to success may be recognized. –The I Ching or Book of Changes, Wilhelm Baynes edition, Princeton University Press LAST YEAR’S GIFT You are […]
Poem: Difficult
In Africa, lion after lion fell before the Colonel’s artillery. Rhinos, hippos, antelopes, wildebeests, and all manner of game were struck down, helpless as Democrats. When a skeptical George Creel asked one of Theodore Roosevelt’s guides how the former President, “blind in one eye, and myopic in the other,” could hit any of the animals […]
Self: Cultural identity Judaism
The following appeared in Brit Shalom of State College, PA’s quarterly publication The Center Scroll, January/February 2011 Teach It Diligently to Your Children I remember clearly that astonishing first visit to the obstetrician, the one where I saw for the first time a sonic image of my first child inside her mother’s womb and […]