The Daily Reviewer | Octogenarian

Update On Mort's Condition

Dec 12, 2009 3:32pm

He is slowly recovering. He is now in his third medical facility – a subacute rehab. in NJ where he is working to get back on his feet (with the help of a walker). He is sadly also dealing with other serious medical problems. He is no longer...

To the loyal readers of Octogenarian

Oct 25, 2009 2:45pm

This is being written by Mort's wife...About 10 days ago Mort was severely injured while driving his car out of his garage.He's had two back surgeries and has not regained mobility in one of his legs.It will take months of rehab before he's back writing on his beloved blog.I wanted...

MEMOIR: When Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas rented my old apartment

Oct 4, 2009 1:00pm

After sharing apartments in Washington, D.C. for three years with other young bachelors, I reached a sufficient state of affluence in 1951 to rent my own apartment. My new home was Apartment 233 at 3701 Connecticut Ave., N.W. It was defined as a "studio apartment." It consisted of a single...

Isaac Bashevis Singer vs. Marc Chagall

Sep 24, 2009 12:38pm

Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel laureate in literature who wrote in Yiddish, is my favorite author. In 1975, taking a break from my regular work as a journalist who specialized in business, I wrote profiles about him that were published in the New York Times Magazine and the now-defunct Harper's...

Jimmy Carter: Enemy of peace

Sep 9, 2009 1:31pm

I don't normally publish material written by others on this blog. I am making an exception here to publicize this article by Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini, which exposes ex-President Jimmy Carter as a phony "peace activist." As an accomplished Israel-basher, Carter continues to feed the Palestinian rejectionism that has prevented...

MEMOIR: How I almost became a Texan

Sep 5, 2009 1:05pm

George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Conn. to a patrician family of staid New Englanders. When he was a child, the family moved to Midland, Texas. Their new home town was then a small, bustling oil town that was culturally and socially far removed from their prim, sedate...

The unwinnable war in Afghanistan

Aug 31, 2009 6:15pm

I rarely agree with Pat Buchanan, the right-wing pundit and onetime Presidential candidate, on anything. But there is one issue on which we do agree: the war in Afghanistan. In a recent column, Buchanan described the war as "unwinnable" and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops."We were seduced by...

My love affair with the Yiddish language

Aug 10, 2009 12:40pm

I can no longer speak the language in which, according to my parents, I uttered my first words as a small child. The language is Yiddish, the native tongue of East European Jews.Although I can no longer speak Yiddish, largely because of disuse, I can pretty much still understand the...

The tormented Robert McNamara

Aug 1, 2009 2:48pm

My local newspaper recently carried an editorial cartoon showing Robert McNamara, the controversial former Secretary of Defense who died on July 6, standing in front of St. Peter in heaven."There are 58,000 soldiers in here who'd like to have a word with you," St. Peter angrily tells McNamara, citing the...

MEMOIR: Returning to Washington from New York

Jul 18, 2009 6:24pm

In November 1949 I returned to Washington, D.C. to begin work for the U.S. Labor Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics as a press officer and editor. I had moved back to New York City three months earlier after having lost a similar job with the U.S. Interior Dept.'s Fish &...

The Michael Jackson hysteria

Jul 9, 2009 12:49pm

Maybe because I am a geriatric sourpuss, I find it hard to stomach the widespread hysteria over the death of Michael Jackson and the worldwide celebration of his musical talents.I have never been able to understand the lyrics of his songs. And although I am not a choreographic maven, his...

A tale of computer woe

Jun 28, 2009 3:25pm

I've been cut off from the blogosphere ever since my computer crashed more than a week ago. The problem began when a pop-up message box appeared on my screen warning me that the computer was heavily infected by worms and viruses.The warning came not from my McAfee anti-virus program but...

It is a "small world" on the Internet

Jun 12, 2009 1:45pm

I posted a piece on this blog entitled "My life with music" this past April 4. In it I bemoaned the fact that, as a boy in the mid 1930s, I foolishly turned down a chance to take piano lessons because the lessons would interfere with playing ball. My mother...

What Obama didn't say in Cairo

Jun 6, 2009 12:50pm

I've been pondering how to comment on President Obama's speech this past week in Cairo. He succeeded in mending the U.S. relationship with the Islamic world. But in trying to be even-handed between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he overlooked some background on their conflict. I hesitate to be critical...

Ending a "sabbatical" to comment on a horrendous crime

Jun 1, 2009 12:18pm

I've been on a sort of sabbatical leave from blogging over the past three weeks as my wife and I have gone through the logistical discomfort of moving back to our New Jersey home from our winter residence in Florida. I often wonder how people like Sen. John McCain and...

Right-wing paranoia

May 10, 2009 2:12pm

I have received a curious comment on my April 20 post, "The right-wing malcontents are bashing Obama." It was written by a highly educated, articulate reader who occasionally visits and comments on my blog.She wrote: "Just because [Obama] is coming after the Christians, veterans, pro-lifers, etc...doesn't mean the Jews are...

Lamenting the decline of the print media

May 6, 2009 5:25pm

In the previous post on this blog (April 28), I published a poem by my wife Sybil, lamenting her entrance into the ranks of the octogenarians. Now I have a lament of my own to write. But mine involves a matter far removed from the personal issue of aging.My lament...

My wife Sybil's octogenarian's lament

Apr 28, 2009 10:36am

We now have two octogenarians in my family. My wife Sybil has just turned 80. A group of her friends are celebrating the event this week with a birthday party in her honor. She has composed this poem to read to them...AN OCTOGENARIAN'S LAMENTI look in the mirror and see...

The right-wing malcontents are bashing Obama

Apr 20, 2009 2:18pm

President Barack Obama has been in office for only three months, but already the right-wing malcontents are up in arms. Their rage was comically displayed at last Wednesday's nationwide rash of "tea parties" during which the paranoid Obama-bashers vented their spleen about taxes, soaring government spending for financial bailouts, and...

The amazing but sorrowful side of Googling

Apr 13, 2009 5:31pm

Whenever I have nothing better to do, I often turn to Google and type in the names of old friends and acquaintances with whom I have lost contact. I'm inquisitive by nature--some might call me a busy body--and I'm curious to know what's happened to these people since I last...

MEMOIR: Job-hopping and networking

Apr 9, 2009 10:13am

My job as a press officer and editor with the U.S. Interior Dept.'s Fish & Wildlife Service, about which I wrote in my last Memoir, was was my first job after my 1946 Army discharge and my college graduation in 1948.My career there was short-lived. I resigned a year later...

My life with music

Apr 4, 2009 11:13am

I cannot play a musical instrument, and I have never taken music lessons. I cannot read music. And I can barely distinguish the playing quality between a Yitzhak Perlman and a journeyman violinist in the back row of a major symphony orchestra.Yet I am an avid lover of classical music...

The Bronx County Courthouse vs. the Taj Mahal

Mar 28, 2009 2:18pm

The Taj Mahal is generally regarded as one of the eight wonders of the world. It is located outside the sprawling city of Agra, India. Some Western historians have claimed that the its architectural beauty has never been surpassed. The Taj Mahal, which means "Crown Palace," was built over a...

My ancestors in Jerusalem

Mar 19, 2009 9:18am

This is a photo of my maternal great-great-grandparents. The photo was taken in Jerusalem about 150 years ago when that city was ruled by the Ottoman Turks.My maternal grandmother, with whom I lived during my childhood, brought this photo of her own maternal grandparents with her when she arrived in...

MEMOIR: Whooping cranes, trumpeter swans and a kid from the Bronx

Mar 14, 2009 9:48am

I started my first postwar job in June 1948 in Washington, D.C. shortly after my college graduation. As I revealed in a previous Memoir posting, the job was as a press officer and editor for the U.S. Dept. of the Interior's Fish & Wildlife Service. I was hired as a...