Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

When a Child Dies: Emotional Grief at Christmas Time…by Robert M. Katzman

by Robert M. Katzman © Sunday, December 22, 2019 (Revised 12/26/22…This may continue)

Written in response to Peggy’s letter of pain on Facebook: No, Peggy, I don’t know you, but I felt compelled to respond. Perhaps it will give you some possible way to cope and find peace.

I have not lost a child, but seem blessed or cursed with empathy, with absorbing others’ pain so intensely, it is like having a massive unpredictable Empath Serpent coiled within me, sometimes rearing up and piercing my heart with its fangs. I have no shield to stop me from caring.

I am Jewish without excuses, not into endless ritual, but deeply spiritual, and now old enough to have experienced the loss of so many people that I have forgotten some of their names.

(Read on …)

Three Bad Choices: Max, My Dog, is Gone!…by Robert M. Katzman

Three Bad Choices: Max, My Dog, Is Gone

by Robert M. Katzman © August 5, 2019

This story is part of a larger one, currently being written, and titled:  Seeking a Second Sunrise.

This chapter was unplanned, unintended and unwanted. Aside from the introduction, you will soon see why I feel this way, and exactly what happened. There are no heroes in my story. If there were, it wouldn’t be me.

My father, Israel, used to quote his father, Jacob, in Yiddish saying:

“Man plans and God laughs”.

Which is exactly what happened.

(Read on …)

A Man and His Dog Awaiting the Blizzard of 2019…by Robert M. Katzman

Filed under: Existential Pets,Life & Death,My Own Personal Hell — Bob at 3:32 pm on Tuesday, January 29, 2019

A Man and His Dog Awaiting the Blizzard of 2019  
by Robert M. Katzman © January 27, 2019

I went out to walk my tiny dog Max at 12:15 AM
And I saw the big snow storm moving in
I have been battening down the hatches
As the snowflakes are starting to fall harder

***

(Read on …)

My Old Dog Max and The Interstate Incident…by Robert M. Katzman

(A Doggy Christmas Story)

December 24th 2018, by Robert M. Katzman

Readers, believe what you want to believe. But this happened on Sunday December 16, 2018, in Chicago, at about noon.                                                      

Max is not an attractive dog.

A year and a half after the death of my wife Joyce, and the three old dogs who progressively had to leave our home as her cancer spread, I decided that it was long enough for me to live in a silent house in Wisconsin. A dog out there might agree with me, but which dog?

After visiting many shelters in Kenosha and beyond, and not connecting with any dog I saw, I went searching further afield in the Lonely Dog Metropolis of The Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society, at 510 South LaSalle Street.

Years ago, after being fired from a horrible job by a beastial boss who screamed obscenities into a phone when leaving messages for his quivering employees into their voicemail, and he soon discovered I was no good at all at quivering, I decided I may not be able to change my own luck, but perhaps I could change the fate of a soulful dog waiting for me there at the CACS, a couple of blocks away. 

I hunted around for a while in my silent misery; saw a smallish black dog with a white chest about Beagle size, but a mutt. 

(Read on …)

My War with the Squirrel Gang Continues…by Robert M. Katzman

by Robert M. Katzman © July 22, 2018

So in my ongoing War with the Squirrels up here in the hinterland, or North Woods–or, oh…I don’t know where the hell I am anymore–I decided to take decisive action against the birdseed stealing bastards with grey furry tails. Problem is, they’re organized.

They have this practiced pose where they sit on their haunches and hold their little grasping clawed paws together, so people will assume they’re eating something they’ve stolen. But really, they have advanced communicative implants in their paws so all squirrels know where either food or danger is at all times. The Twitchy Nose Mafia, everywhere and hidden at the same time.

This is hard for a bird-lover (without a shotgun) to overcome. I know, we have bigger brains, but no claws so we can’t scramble up trees after them, and no wings so we can swoop down on ’em, and so on. But…

(Read on …)

14th & Main…by Robert M. Katzman

14th & Main

by Robert M. Katzman

© August 7, 2017

It still glitters in my imagination

Gives me a suspended moment

Whenever

I slow down to stare at it

It is the absence of anything

The quiet vista that represented

Better times for the

New couple in town

14th & Main

(Read on …)

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