-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
The Crooked Mirror, Louise Steinman's Blog 