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Chicago Is
I decided a few months back to “celebrate” my 70th birthday with my son in Chicago. I have no idea what 70 is except it is vexing, annoying, troublesome and has arrived as predicted on the wings of tempus fugit. I humorously detest even saying the age out loud, as if to do so would immediately lead to my being Miranda-ized. One thing for sure is that internally I live the cliche that I am really 40 or so; yes, that is true; the character remains the same. The body decays, the spirit is alive and well. The curmudgeon still lives. The…
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Sometimes I wish…And Then I Take a Nap
I’m breaking the weak rule I keep for myself, no more than one blog per week. When the unconscious percolates up into awareness and the brewing bubbles burst revealing an idea or feeling to write about, then there’s no stopping that. The heat of the Nevada desert is insufferable; one runs errands and then beats it back to the air conditioning. Unlike a more temperate climate, it goes for months without rain, of any kind. As a new Yorker I could easily describe the varieties of rain in the big city between the East and Hudson rivers — light drizzle,…
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I Have Observed
I don’t know if you have observed but we have become shabby as a country; the American people absolutely deserve what they are getting, for they have voted in the rascals. Indeed, we are the rascals. I have no faith in politicians but I have a greater lack of faith in the American people — and a great fear of them as well. White men, lawyers, WASPS wrote the Constitution and it is a perfect lawyer’s document which protected economic vested interests (See Charles Beard’s The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution )– and racist: the slave is three-fifths of a white man for…
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Shoah Business: A Quick Exchange of E-mails
About a year ago Jane and I met a Holocaust survivor whose name, for my purposes, will be Josef Vekkony. An author of a ghost-written book about his experiences during the Holocaust, he lectures around Henderson, Nevada and elsewhere. He is probably past seventy and is a retired businessman. Something of a celebrity here, I now view him as the Holocaust “expert,” used by jewish agencies when next faced with an oubreak of anti-Semitism. All this back story is necessary as I was readily repelled when he gave me his business card which listed him as a Holocaust survivor —…