August 13, 2018
After Then Husband and I married and went to grad school, we lived frugally and saved most of our monthly fellowship stipends. At the end of the year, we had saved enough for a student flight to Europe, two sleeping bags, a Coleman stove, and a pup tent. We had enough left over for eight […]
April 30, 2014
We live in a world that has always contained both the best and the worst of which human beings are capable. Across the ages, as we utilized technology for the good of mankind, we utilized that same technology for its destruction. The Nazis will be remembered for many things, among them the industrial genocide of […]
June 20, 2013
It’s difficult to do family research under the best of circumstances. Unless you come from royalty or from a line of nefarious evildoers or from people who etched their names onto the planks of the Mayflower, chances are the just plain folks of your family lived and died in relative obscurity. My family tree has […]
April 18, 2012
Chelsea Beach 1946, by Renee Fisher I am huge. My face is round and puffy. My ankles are swollen. My breasts, generous under normal circumstances, are almost comical in their inflated condition. My belly, while large, is of lesser protrusion than my breasts. This gives me a look, not so much of pregnancy, as of […]
August 25, 2011
I heard her cries coming from the research carrel next to mine at the Holocaust Museum. Her name was Irene, a short middle aged woman, staring, as I was, at a computer screen. Hoping, as I was, that a relative’s name would appear that might prove that family members lived in more than stories told by aging […]
June 14, 2011
Life in the Boomer Lane’s dad was born in Poland, seven years before the start of World War I. In addition to the massive upheaval going on throughout Eastern Europe at the time, it was additionally dangerous to be a Jew. And to be a poverty-stricken Jew at such time indicated the potential for a very […]
September 10, 2010
My cousin Linda and I have been chasing our family history off and on for more years than I can remember. Currently, we are “on.” Our tree is filled with people who often had to be invisible in order to survive, and, even in death, they remain elusive in spite of our best efforts […]
October 31, 2018
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