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 […]
Spain
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 […]
Hegira Succeeded: Report on the 989-mile-away-Engagement-Party-for-my-daughter Joanna
Mazel tov: Welcome to My Hegira. Webster’s defines hegira as: “A journey esp. when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation.” Cosmic Invitation How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soap– O how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw […]
My mother’s Thanksgiving story and my Thanksgiving letter
Let us start with my mother. My mother Miriam told me [when I was a freshman at Druid Hills High School in Decatur, Georgia in 1961] of her attempt to convince her Aunt Marcia (Tanta Masha) to have a Thanksgiving celebration in 1933 when my mother was eight years old. Tanta Masha, married to Sol […]
When I was treated for cancer 36 years ago, I wrote the following account:
[Note: I was diagnosed and treated for cancer in 1976 when I was 28 years old. This is how I described the experience when I was in the midst of my first round of radiation treatment.] […]
State College, PA – Celebrate Hemingway and the Scholarship that Makes Penn State More Than a Party School
Greatness comes in often curious packages. The greatness I have in mind, as I sit here in my apartment in State College, is Ernest Hemingway, a genius whose link to this area – through a combination of circumstances – is strong. “Hemingway made a difference,” wrote the late Philip Young, of Penn State’s English department. […]