Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

The Inner Life of a Carpenter’s Tools

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bob at 8:54 pm on Saturday, June 10, 2023

by Robert M. Katzman © June 10, 2023

In the silence of his garage

In the Northwest corner

Where essential tools dwell

Are they conscious of him?

Do they tremble in anticipation

As he once again becomes active

Ready to do his carpentry?

(Read on …)

I’m Flying to See My Friend

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bob at 6:46 am on Friday, May 26, 2023

by Robert M. Katzman © April 25, 2023

(Dedicated to and inspired by Raphael Pollock, a friend since 1964)

Up at 3 am

I am older now

More careful now

Packing began a week ago

Notes to remind me:

Computer/Phone/Hearing Aid

Money/Driver’s License/Boarding Pass

My good wife wakes up with me

Makes me hot coffee

Mother Hen’s me studiously

Insuring I leave nothing behind

She drives me through the rain

We both search for the airport’s lights

My one-time high school classmate

 Endured a heart attack

I bring him the only medicine I have

I’m flying to see my friend

(Read on …)

Rainbows: Seeking a Dead Man’s Forgiveness, 60 Years Later

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bob at 10:06 am on Friday, May 19, 2023

by Robert M. Katzman ©  May 18, 2023

A friend, Ron Buzil, sent me and a number of our other classmates from Caldwell Grammar School at 8546 S. Cregier St on the South Side of Chicago a message that a person I once was in kindergarten with in 1955, Michael Froman, had just died at 72. What follows is a series of unexpected emotions and memories locked away (I thought for good); but I guess the lock was sorta rusty. Long forgotten, I realized I had a debt to pay.

(Read on …)

My Grief about Losing Joy Hit Like a Brick: April 27, 1975

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bob at 6:03 am on Thursday, April 27, 2023

First written five years ago, this memory of when I met Joyce Esther Bishop later on this day, mother to all of our children, and then when I was impacted by her death 42 years later, deserves to see light, be reread, be remembered by her countless friends and family:

by Robert M. Katzman © April 27, 2018

Never knew when it would hit, how hard it would hit, or where.

*

Didn’t think it would be in my kitchen in Wisconsin on a sunny Friday morning, on the 43rd anniversary of when I met a beautiful young love I’ll never see again.

*

It is one thing to type that.

*

It is another thing to experience the totality of that slammed door all at once on the first anniversary of that endlessly shared day with her, without her.

*

Oh, she’s gone.

*

Forever.

(Read on …)

Passing Over The Root River During Passover

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bob at 2:46 pm on Sunday, April 2, 2023

by Robert M. Katzman © April 2, 2023

 

Long time ago

Passing over the Root River

During Passover

The muddy chocolate flowing

A fast-moving body of water

Morphing into a

Malted Milk Waterfall

Where the Old Mill used to be

(Read on …)

Ed and Margery Bernstein Weren’t too Busy to Care

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bob at 4:05 pm on Thursday, March 23, 2023

Ed and Margery Bernstein Weren’t Too Busy to Care

By Robert M. Katzman © 3/23/23

 I knew different members of the Bernstein family: Ed, Margery, Amy and Hal, when I was operating Bob’s Newsstand during the ‘60’s and 70’s. Mostly Ed, though, who taught Social Studies at the University of Chicago Lab School where I was a student between 1964 to ’68. I wasn’t in his classes.

When I contacted Amy to help with my memory, now that I’m older than many trees, she told me that her younger brother Hal worked at the newsstand for a while when he was in grammar school. She did not. I remember her mother Margery clearly for one particular moment, but it mattered, in 1970. Mostly, I remember Ed.

(Read on …)

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