by Robert M. Katzman © December 21, 2013
People of the Book
Wandering brown-eyed
Through silent dark streets
Alone among the millions
Each December 25th
For Millennia
Tinsel-less
Sleigh-less
Tree-less
Santa-less
Outside and looking in
No chimneys filled with myth
No stockings to hang
No mistletoe for kissing
*** (Read on …)
Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355
By Robert M. Katzman © July 7, 2013
When the passion is enough
I’m compelled to pick up a pen
Recreate incidents now forgotten
Resurrect the long buried
Populate rooms with them
Put words in their mouths
Editing the dead
*** (Read on …)
By Robert M. Katzman © June 29, 2013
Â
Since the June 15th 2013 Chicago Tribune publicity about my Skokie, Illinois back-issue magazine store, people have been coming in from all sorts of places to check me out, but not usually from Shanghai.
 This man, his tall model-like daughter and his wife came in–I have no idea how he could know about what I do–and he asked me for whatever I had from 1874, because his company in China owns another company in Milwaukee which was founded on that date. I found five things for him. In five minutes.
 His daughter, about 18, said, “How did you do that without a computer?”
I responded, “I don’t know any other way to do it.”
Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: Â http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355Â
© June 20, 2013
My relentless surgeries
Nearly three dozen
An incomprehensible number
Akin to counting stars
Accepting and knowing
There is no conclusion to it
So many scars
Like an unprotected moon
Pelted by
Jagged asteroids
The thin red lines
Tell their stories
From my head to toe
Randomly in between
Have
Given me insight
Into
 What’s important
Between these
Sharp-edged assaults
Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355
© April 18, 2013
I used to write on another blog about Hyde Park, a southern part of Chicago six or so miles from the Downtown area, a diverse intellectual community containing many things but most famously the University of Chicago, its experimental K through 12 school, the Laboratory School and the Museum of Science and Technology.
Sometimes I responded to what another person wrote and sometimes that response was reprinted here, because it expressed reflections that might mean something to a larger group of whomever my readers are. How can I know you? Facebook is, illogically, faceless. So, Strangers, see if what I wrote matters to you, possibly in some other context.
There was a significant political person named Marshall Korshak, forgotten today, who was a Chicago Democratic Party powerbroker there in the ’50’s,’60’s and ’70’s. Not everyone loved him. I responded to that expressed feeling in his defense. Marshall, born in 1911, died at 85, in 1996. This is what I wrote about him:
I was reading this thread until I read the part about Marshall Korshak and some not so complimentary remarks about him. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Me, too. But my relationship with him couldn’t have been more unbalanced.