Prescription for Patient X, the Humans
Aug 19th, 2010
Patient X, the Humans, presents to clinic disoriented, unable to agree on a future, and with significant retrograde amnesia.
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A Start Up Odyssey
Aug 4th, 2010
...I was convinced that my enthusiasm for the subject matter, the brilliance of the ideas, and the undisputed high quality of the people I was dealing with somehow guaranteed a flawless product, even though I had totally lost focus. I think I’ve been there before. Oh, yeah. A decade ago. When I worked for an internet startup. (Still, irrationally, my favorite job ever.) The initial assignment, and the bottom line (in both fiscal and journalistic terms), had become less important than the buzz I was getting from the work. And make no mistake: Entrepreneurial creativity is suburban crack.
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On Tragedy…..and Triumph
Jul 20th, 2010
The thing about tragedy is that, almost by definition, it completely takes us by surprise. Life has very few rules we all feel apply both personally and globally, but one of them is, or should be, that people outlive their parents. And live long enough to perhaps become parents themselves. Tragedy takes these basic assumptions, assumptions we need to make in order to thrive, and in one awful moment tells us: Don’t bet on it.
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Some Like it Hot
Jul 5th, 2010
For me, Summer is a strange mix of adrenaline and Zen.
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From Helen to Hellenism: All You Need is Love
Jun 28th, 2010
Why, you wonder, do we not just dissolve our salty selves into the Great Sea of Man? Imagine – no countries! No religion! Why all the – oh, please let me savor this shaved-ice phrase again – “vicious tribal cartography” that deeply identified Jews so forcefully engrave upon the enlightened, blind-to-race world? Why, you ask, the ugly, Shylockian “we, we, we, we, we”? Why not join the collective, the universal, the mythic, theTimelessOriginalSpiritofHumanity? Breaaaaaaathe. Isn’t that better? Well, honestly…the buzz is not bad. (Pufff.) But there’s kind of a nasty edge to it, some toxicity. And I’ll tell you why...
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Like a Bat Out of Helen
Jun 21st, 2010
The crazy thing is, I never wanted to be a "Jewish blogger,” or a political one for that matter. I have never been a single issue kind of girl, and I fear a "niche" as much as other, smarter, more marketing- savvy people often seek it.
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Get the Hell Out of…My Face
Jun 8th, 2010
Here's the thing. I've been thinking about poor Helen Thomas, who I believe was probably just saying what everyone thinks and has therefore been made a scapegoat. Not that I really care, because we ought to share the scapegoat status once in a while. It's the least we can do to dispel the stereotype that we are stingy, us irritating Jews.
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Things I’ve Seen on Recent Travels
Jun 6th, 2010
I have seen 4 am April snow in Vermont, a great white eraser of global woe, and my children soaking, freezing and thrilled by the time 6 am arrives, at which time they request craisins and a carrot for the snowman’s face. I’ve seen my teenager clean an icy windshield in his pajamas using tourist brochures, the machismo already firmly enough entrenched to make the prospect of gloves, socks, or a coat utterly ridiculous for this task. I’ve seen how maple syrup gets pure in a hot basin in a cold room, and how pure American art used to be in the days of Rockwell, and also how to make a million pints of relatively expensive premium ice cream in 3 or 4 days, while sounding like a bunch of hippies who live out of a van. I’ve tasted B&J’s 'Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz', which was taken off the market (a “graveyard flavor”), but can still be gotten at the Waterbury plant (making it a “zombie flavor”), and which, if I am ever famous, I would like renamed after me.
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Yom Hashoah, Harry Potter, and Reality TV
Apr 12th, 2010
I have an unshakeable feeling this Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day. And that is that the day we mark the Jewish status as victims is only still significant in that we no longer are.
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Stressing re: Cross Dressing
Mar 8th, 2010
It's been about a week since the Jewish festival of Purim, but I am still thinking about my broad shouldered and hairy (male) neighbors who, although upstanding citizens in general, year after year insist on observing the custom of dressing up in costume (fancy dress for you Brits, who are in any case the worst offenders here) by putting on lipstick, a bra, a dress, and a wig…to rather hideous effect.
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On Work and Freedom: For Holocaust Remembrance Day and Durban II
Apr 22nd, 2009
My amazing grandmother, Esther Klein, is turning 91 next month. She was in her mid-twenties when she was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross from an aimless, endless transport, after having spent several nearly lethal winter weeks in Ravensbrueck. Before that, she'd "worked" for several months in Auschwitz, after having lived for a very short time, along with her elderly parents, in a temporary tent city near her hometown of Seredna, constructed right along the railroad tracks, the better for the Jews to wait for their "ride."
Before that, Esther Herskovitz was a bright, active young woman with bad hay fever, living near the Czech border in a small town in a big house with an orchard and a vineyard and a large, warm family, all of which have since vanished, literally, into thin air. Except the allergies… and my grandmother.
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The Social Well
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