I want to start today with the wonderful news that Nathan Thrall received a Pulitzer Prize for his book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. I wrote about the book in a blog I posted not long after the start of the Gaza War. To refresh your memory, Thrall examines the many ways, small and large, in which the lives of Palestinians living in Israel are constrained, demeaned and oppressed by the...
My wife is reading one of the best books I’ve read in recent years, Nora Webster, by Colm Toibin. It’s the story of a recently widowed woman living in a small Irish village, trying to keep herself and her family afloat in the face of daunting obstacles. When I was walking past Rosellen’s chair on the way to the bathroom, she looked up and said, “You’re one of the few men I know who could...
It’s hard to write when there’s a cat on your lap, demanding all the extra petting she missed out on when our house was full of family here to celebrate Passover with us. Or is she just displaying her delight at the return to the status quo? Nutmeg is a creature of habit, and much as she enjoyed the stimulating kaleidoscope of sound and movement that our guests brought into her space, she is glad...
By the time you read this, we will be deep into setting up the Passover Seder table and cooking the many dishes we will be serving our 14 guests. Our 13- year-old granddaughter Dalia will recite The Four Questions which are the prelude to retelling the story of our liberation from Egypt, and her father Ben will be leading us in singing the rousing songs contained in the Haggadah, the text for the...
This is the season when I feel the need to return to a subject I’ve addressed before — my life as a sports fan. The confluence of March Madness and the opening of baseball season means that I spent an inordinate amount of time in recent weeks in front of the TV, time which, arguably, could have been better spent cleaning out our overstuffed closets or reading Proust. How did this come to...