Our daughter Adina and son-in-law Peter divide their time between Israel and the U.S. They were in Jerusalem on Saturday, October 7th when Hamas carried out its horrific massacre of innocent Israelis. Independent of that, they were scheduled to fly back to the U.S. two days later to fulfill various professional obligations. With all the flight cancelations, except for Israel’s own carrier, El Al...
When the wedding invitation arrived in my email box among all the junk destined for quick erasure, it immediately caught my attention. The daughter of one of our dearest friends from our Houston years was getting married. Even though we hadn’t seen Leah for many years, the opportunity to reconnect with her and her whole family was very attractive. But there was another draw that clinched the deal...
Up until now, I thought the most ill-timed publication of a book award went to my friend Bill Ayers. His book, Fugitive Days, an account of his years in The Weather Underground included, among many other events of the time, stories of the group’s bombings of public buildings to protest the Viet Nam war. The book emerged just as The Twin Towers were falling on 9/11/2001. Bill now has a...
Ever since the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016, we’ve been trying to score tickets to see what one very discerning friend said, after an early visit, was “nothing less than transformative.” We make several trips every year to the DC area to visit our daughter and her family. Before each visit Elana waged a determined online campaign to reserve tickets, to no...
Although we’ve lived in Chicago for 28 years now, we moved a lot before landing here –San Francisco, Boston, Mississippi, New York (Brooklyn actually), New Hampshire, Houston. We’re proud to say that we never left one step ahead of the law or out of unhappiness with the place. It was always pursuing a new opportunity or exciting experience. Each time we moved, there was that nagging question: how...