Different Slants

Chicago Man Watches Death of Samurais in Israel (part 7)

by Robert M. Katzman © November 8, 2016

Some real life situations are so convolutedly charming that they defy fictionalization. Happened tonight.

Marooned as I am in The Promised Land with a painful foot problem which has stopped any explorations for now, and may now doom my hoped for two-day trip to Petra in Jordan and a night with the Bedouins, I spent the day in my nice apartment overlooking a valley thinking about ambition, ageing and gradually limited horizons.

Surrendering to pain, reluctantly and spending a day in an ancient Biblically historic land with cool November winds blowing through all the windows, and warm sunlight pouring down on a covered veranda, I had to think about how to spend my day.

(Read on …)

Tel Aviv, Israeli Radio and Unexpected Art

(part 5)

by Robert M. Katzman © November 4, 2017

 Driving south from Haifa, Israel, or 20 miles east of that to Tel Aviv on the mid-part of the coast on the Mediterranean Sea, later referred to all whom I asked as, “the Beach” or “the Sea” I had a choice of two ways to go, like long shoestrings hanging over a balcony, because both were parallel and I didn’t know the difference. One was more inland in the skinny country, Highway 6; the other ran along the touristy and industrial west coast, Highway 2. I chose 2.

An unmoving steel highway sizzling in the bright cloudless sun in tiny little chunks, chained together.

Discovered that rush hour in Israel was just like rush hour in Chicago or Los Angeles, except the road was narrower, the cars were tiny and aside from endlessly, robotically doing arithmetic in my head about how far one hundred kilometers really was, in American miles terms, so I had a mental picture of how much gas I had, and at the rate I was moving, would I ever get there?

Then there’s the radio. Israeli radio.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman © October 26, 2017

My plan to skillfully and thoughtfully distribute my wife Joy’s ashes where it would mean the most to both of us was going well. Our tall handsome blonde, brown-eyed son David made all the arrangements and connections on the Internet and eased my way, accept for the last one. What was I expecting?

Landing in Tel Aviv, Israel at 4:30 PM and leaving on the morning of Wednesday, October 25, 2017 from Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy awaking at 6 am, and flying east at noon on El Al, it was the last leg of my trip where Joy’s ashes will be sent into the wind from the top of Masada. Never heard of it? It’s usually incorrectly referred to as the Jewish Alamo, but since it happened 2,000 years earlier, the Alamo should really be called the American Masada. Just my opinion. Two Jews died in the Alamo with the other 180 men, not that it makes them any more special. (Read on …)

So, I’m this old new guy

In an old

Small Town

In a big new state

I joined a poet’s group

Nice woman there

Carefully looks me over

Figures out

That Hanukkah

Is possibly my holiday

Clever woman

Then she leans over to me

And whispers:

“There’s this tiny Jewish cemetery

In a mostly

Christian Town

Near here

And their red steel

Entrance sign

With its big Jewish star

Collapsed on the ground

In the mud

Makes me feel bad

It’s not right

Maybe you can fix it”

***

I backed up from her whisper

A righteous Christian

If ever there was one

Does she think I somehow

Have magic powers

Able to lift steel girders

With a wink and a prayer??

***

(Read on …)

Failing to Bribe a Chicago Judge: The Machine Fails Me!! 

By Robert M. Katzman

Copyright © January 2, 2014

In the spring of 1965, in Hyde Park, an area seven miles south of Chicago’s central Downtown area and home of the University of Chicago and jazz, my Father, Israel, felt it was time to explain corruption in the Chicago Machine and teach me the basics.

I was fifteen, and if you can imagine the setting, we’re in our small apartment sitting on either side of the scarred kitchen table. I was listening and playing with the salt and pepper shakers at the same time. He may as well have been explaining etiquette customs on Mars to me. I had no clue about what he was going to say.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© Monday, September 28, 2015

Two important facts will help my readers better understand this unlikely but classic example of surreal serendipity:

1–I like to cook

2–I have three dogs

Please do not despair for my dogs! While my intention has always been those two passions should never intersect, on this one occasion, they did. My story follows.

For months, I’ve unsuccessfully combed flea markets, Salvation Army stores and especially, garage sales in Northern Illinois, where I have a store, and in South Eastern Wisconsin, where I live, searching for an elusive black, heavy and a marvelous conductor of even heat for cooks, a cast iron skillet.

(Read on …)