by Robert M. Katzman © Sunday, December 22, 2019
Written in response to Peggy Boyce’s letter of pain on Mike Stickler’s Facebook page: No, Peggy, I don’t know you but I decided to respond. Perhaps it will give you something you want.
I am Jewish, not into 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 …)by Robert M. Katzman © December 18, 2019
(Inspired by Nancy Alexander)
Cool surfaces
Glazed skin
Hooded eyes
Tentative Touch
(Read on …)By Robert M. Katzman © Halloween 2011
What follows is the quintessential Chicago story of hardship and friendship. It all happened on the South Side, and my story covers decades. Why not dive in and get lost for a while? Every so often, as present civilization seems to be crashing down around us, and civility with it, good happens.
Why this is always a surprise mystifies me, but just as there’s more darkness in the Universe than light, perhaps that out-of-whack ratio is mirrored here on Earth with evil overwhelming good. I don’t want to believe that is true. I have evidence to the contrary that spontaneous good both exists in the most modest of people, and that it is either an inherited trait, or a mutation.
Though my story was written on Halloween, it is more goodhearted than all the witches and goblins who surface that day, and is much more of a Thanksgiving Day story, at least to me. Let me introduce the cast of this absolutely true little drama, which begins in frigid winter, 1967 and ends in sunny June 2011, forty-four years later.
(Read on …)by Robert M. Katzman © December 5, 2019
As a former owner
I can tell you it is death
Of an intense boutique business
By a thousand individual sales
Which never happened
(Read on …)By Robert M. Katzman © Sunday, November 24, 2019
About 35 years ago, when Joy and I were 34, Lisa was 10, David (now Konee) was 7 and Rachel was 5, a tradition was started within our little family. People don’t actually know when traditions start unless they linger through time like this one. This is that story:
Once upon a time, in 1985 or so, I was on my second marriage with two young children. But when I was much younger and married to another very young and good person, we had a daughter, Lisa. After the 2nd marriage, on Thanksgiving Day, Lisa was home with her Mom and so she couldn’t be with her younger siblings or Joy and me, and it was sad for all of the five of us.
(Read on …)Diana Leslie Gallai Weinstein Eulogy: Diana Leslie Weinstein, nee Gallai, 48, beloved mother of Zachary Weinstein; loving daughter of Adele Ballis, nee Warman, and the late Sieg Gallai; dear sister of Julie Gallai and Bruce Ballis.
(Note: I read the first half of this Eulogy to my cousin Diana, but was unable to read the rest. So Joyce, standing next to me, immediately continued to read the words. This happened often, and Joy was always there to fill the gap. My missing hero.)
What are the Chances for Happiness? © March 4, 2008
I think the odds are long.
It requires a person to make choices.
Should I love someone?
Should I take this job?
Should I risk traveling?
Should I have a child?
And other choices.
If you love someone, will they love you back?
(Read on …)