JFK: Remembering the Man not the Assassination
(The author, shown above, in the months after JFK’s assassination.) By Bruce Farrell Rosen, The recently passed date of November 22 marked the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For many of us of a certain age, the memory of hearing that news is etched into our brains like grooves in […]
Boo!
By Janie Gabbett, In the cool, expansive health club I joined this year, the recumbent bikes have TV screens to distract you from the tedium of pedalling. Flipping channels, I come upon Bonanza on an oldies TV station. OK, for those of you not quite as old as I am, Bonanza was a Western series […]
What’s a Manuel Ferreira? Book Excerpt from The Prison Lady
Phyllis Taylor is the author of The Prison Lady, a memoir of her journey alongside prisoners. The following is an excerpt from her book. By 45, Manny, a great-looking Portuguese career criminal, had spent two dimes (ten year sentences) in the Kingston Pen. He was fond of boasting that he knew the most infamous […]
I Wish my Doll had Been Made of Metal: The Heartbreak of the Lahaina Inferno (Essay)
By Bruce Farrell Rosen, One of my favorite places in all the world was Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. I first travelled there in the summer of 1975 with a friend who had come over to vacation with me following the conclusion of our respective college years. I had been a student at the University of California, […]
The Synagogue at the End of the World (Memoir)
(Note to reader: the following is taken from a work in progress, a blended memoir about contemporary Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust. I hope you’ll join me on this ride.) By Leah Eichler, The synagogue at the end of the world is not what you would expect. Imagine a large, single room […]
Simon Wiesenthal, meet Henry Morgentaler (Column)
By Leah Eichler, I can’t recall exactly what inspired me, in the late 1990s, to send that fax (a fax!) to Simon Weisenthal’s office in Vienna and request an interview. Weisenthal was already 90 and not very active in the day-to-day operations of the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi […]
Shell Game
By Jacob Austin, The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas is hosting a traveling exhibit called Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art. One of the items on display is a conch shell trumpet. It sits alone, under halogen bulb, in a sterile glass box. The plaque and the voice on the audio […]
I Loved Milan Kundera in Part Because His Pain was Familiar (Column)
By Leah Eichler, Milan Kundera died this week at age 94 and the free flow of obituaries reminded me of how enamoured I was with dissident writers when I was young. Other girls had Judd Nelson, I had Solzhenitsyn. There was something about the bad boy writer that really appealed to me. Dark, brooding, artistic, […]
The Lottery Taught Us That the World Can Be a Scary Place (Column)
By Leah Eichler, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery first appeared in print in The New Yorker in the June 26, 1948 issue and according to legend, generated more letters to the editor than the magazine had ever experienced before (and possibly, since.) The Lottery is arguably the most widely known work of short fiction in American […]
The Titan and the Audacity of an Instagrammable Life (Column)
By Leah Eichler, It’s been almost a week since the wreckage from the Titan, the doomed submersible bent on giving its wealthy passengers a close-up view of the Titanic, was found, confirming that all five on board were dead. Since then, many of us have lamented the loss of life as well as the waste […]