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I don’t have much to work with. There is a torn photograph and a business card, both over a hundred years old. The card has faded and is foxed much like an old book or print. In the photograph my great grandfather is wearing his cantorial hat and has strong eyes, quite possibly hazel. He was a hazan, Hebrew for cantor. The card is written in Hungarian such as Boldog Ujevet Kivan (in boldface), fokantor beneath his name, Hebrew letters at the bottom left and what I believe is the town of Monor, which is in Hungary, at bottom right. (Anyone…

Apparently the aquifer has run dry, for I have not been able to compose any thoughts about what I want to say in these pages. A slurry of events these past eighteen days has kept me away from writing. Sometimes words just flow from my unconscious on to the screen, at other times I am literarily constipated. I recall a recent session with my therapist in which in passing I said I had nothing to say. She came back with the rejoinder that she felt I was “limitless.” A lovely compliment for my needy ego. And then there is that…

Through  a convoluted series of events Kevin Fahey, who teaches Classic Television at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV, asked me to speak about early TV and movies, leaving it open as to what theme(s) I might select. It got me to reminiscing and thinking about what that “clothesline”might be. And as I meander in this essay it may be that the meanderings might serve some common theme. In psychology we call it secondary gain, deriving some psychic pleasure from a primary effort. So a secondary gain from reading a great deal is to enrich your vocabulary, although this is not…

I saw recently the 1970 movie, Monte Walsh, starring Lee Marvin, Jack Palance and the sensuously comely Jeanne Moreau, who is still with us. It tells in its melancholy way the passing of the Old West; Monte’s prostitute girlfriend dies, his closest friend, Chet (Palance), is killed in an ugly robbery murder. His life as a cowboy is evanescing right before his eyes. Similar to Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in that relationships between men become more significant than the usual oater plots, it is a different take on the western, the plaintive, mourning ending of a time. It got me thinking about Palance whose voice…