This Veterans Day I offer a toast to my Uncle Richard. He was a very young soldier in 1943 when he was called upon to invade Sicily and fight the Nazis there ( Read more... )

In my father's novel Bull Fire, the four holidays that most cultures share are named as follows:

The Greater Sunstop
The Lesser Sunstop
Pandemonium
The Springing

Happy Pandemonium, everyone!

Sometimes a series of things about us goes through my head and I just start giggling. This morning very early, lying awake and looking at the bookshelf of books signed by their authors, it was ( Read more... )

1. There is no force, however great
   To pull a wire, however fine
   Into a horizontal line
   That shall be absolutely straight
   
   -- Unknown
   
2. Stone walls do not a prism make
   They're better made of glass
   If you had studied Science
   You would not be such an ass
   
   -- My father
   

I scanned in some of my parents' 1950s jazz record covers. My favorite so far is the back page of a flexi-disc magazine called Sonorama from 1959. It's an ad for a perfume called "Rock 'n' Roll" and the artist is Salvador Dali!


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1. How to get extra treats:


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My father would have been 85 on Friday. He died in 1993. I still miss him. But he had a good life and left behind some good books. Can't ask for more. This is him in 1943 as a very young naval officer.


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My greatsomething grandfather Jacob arrived in the American colonies from Darmstadt-Hesse, Germany in about 1750 as an indentured servant. His brother Sebastian apparently bugged out and headed home at the end of his service, but Jacob liked it enough to stay in "Pennsylvanian Dutch" country with the other Germans. My family has had a presence in ( Read more... )

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