The Crooked Mirror, Louise Steinman's Blog

  • About

The Crooked Mirror: Journeys Without and Within

  • A Peaceful Return

    It was startling to walk into a museum in Astoria, Oregon a few weeks ago and behold WW2 Japanese flags framed on the gallery wall. Those flags with their  bright red disks on white silk were just like the one I found with my father’s possessions, after he died, in an envelope with one of […]

    February 15, 2016
  • Among the Righteous, on the passing of Marian Bereska

    Among the Righteous, on the passing of Marian Bereska

    I can’t let 2015 fade into the night without making mention of a remarkable man who passed away in a little town in central Poland on December 20, the day before the winter solstice. I had the privilege of meeting Marian Bereska first in 2009, when he finally was willing to tell his story of […]

    December 31, 2015
  • Syrian Writer-in-Exile, an interview with Yasmine Merei

    THE IMAGES of the Syrian migrants go from harrowing to devastating: families facing batons of Hungarian police, a drowned three-year-old face-down in the surf of a Turkish beach. Then we try to grasp the reality of people still in Syria, the place that drove these refugees to risk the death of their children on foreign […]

    December 22, 2015
  • Captiva #climatemarch

    Captiva #climatemarch

    The night before our (very) local climate march (to coincide with the talks in Paris) finds the artists of our residency up late in Bob Rauschenberg’s mega studio in a confab of furious prop-building to the accompaniment of Ukrainian chaos-rock on someone’s iphone. Will shows Susan and Matt how to use the sewing machine to […]

    December 1, 2015
  • 70 Years After

    On August 6, I joined 35-40 others in a mosaic-tiled garden in L.A’s Beachwood Canyon for a service commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. We sat in silence for half an hour and then, at 8:15 AM, the moment the Enola Gay dropped the bomb over Hiroshima, a cellist began to play. We […]

    August 8, 2015
  • After dinner with Jane I woke up in the middle of the night

    At dinner with Jane Hirshfield, before her talk at ALOUD, she asked– since I couldn’t tell her all of them– to tell her one conversation I’d heard in Poland that she should know about.  I’ve even forgotten what I said in that moment, since in my heart, I really didn’t know the answer. I woke […]

    May 29, 2015
  • Notes on a Warsaw Residency, 2

    Shall I write about the storks clacking their beaks high in their nests on the road to Sejny? And in Krasnogruda, near the border with Lithuania, the hare that bounded across the road and straight out of Milosz’ beautiful poem? In the candle-light coffee-house, Song of Porcelein Cafe, in the basement of what was once […]

    April 22, 2015
  • Notes from a Warsaw Residency, 1

    some notes from this Warsaw residency (courtesy Adam Mickiewicz Institute, courtesy Warsaw Bauhaus)… the word “resident” from the Latin <em>sidere</em> to abide awhile, to settle down. To settle down on ul. Smulikowskiego, to read and write and move and think in this quiet flat not far from my friends Joanna and Wojtek, to emerge from […]

    April 13, 2015
  • Anna the Almaziful: Remembering Anna Valentina Murch (1949-2014)

    Anna the Almaziful: Remembering                                        Anna Valentina Murch (1949-2014)

    On Friday nights, the Sabbath prayer that my husband and I recite is from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. We light the candles and chant: “In the name of Anna the Almazifull, the Everliving, the bringer of plurabilities…” and as we praise Anna’s “haloed eve,” I think of my beautiful friend, Anna Valentina Murch, who died […]

    December 31, 2014
  • Between Nothing and Infinity: Poland’s Evolving Jewish Remembrance

    I remember the confusion I felt when I visited my family’s town, Radomsko, on my first trip to Poland in the fall of 2000. What was I looking for? I had no idea. I didn’t know anybody there. My relationship to the town, where my mother’s family had lived for over a hundred years, had […]

    November 5, 2014
←Previous Page
1 2 3 4 5 … 9
Next Page→

The Crooked Mirror, Louise Steinman's Blog

Proudly powered by WordPress

 

Loading Comments...
 

    • Follow Following
      • The Crooked Mirror, Louise Steinman's Blog
      • Join 186 other followers
      • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
      • The Crooked Mirror, Louise Steinman's Blog
      • Edit Site
      • Follow Following
      • Sign up
      • Log in
      • Report this content
      • View site in Reader
      • Manage subscriptions
      • Collapse this bar