“I’m an executive!” my mother shouted at her family. “But nobody respects what I do!” An executive? We sniggered. My dad was blatantly dismissive. My brothers, and even I, a young woman of the 1960s and ‘70s,thought she was losing her marbles.
Antarctic Journey My husband, Bill, and I, just returned from a trip to Antarctica, an other-worldly land on the "bottom of the world," traveling on a ship designed to cut through the Antarctic ice. The National Geographic ship, Orion, was [...]
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY TO ALL ACROSS THE DECADES! Here's an adorable valentine, February 14, 1942, from Lillian Koroschetz to Fred Gartz - before they were married. Love is timeless.
"Russell Baker died Monday at his home in Leesburg, Va. He was 93." That's the opening to the New York Times obituary after the death of one of the twentieth century's greatest newspapermen, memoirist, writer, and overall high quality human being. I didn't know Russell Baker personally, but after reading and rereading his Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir, Growing Up, to the point I could quote passages verbatim, I wanted to know him.
On Jan. 11th, 1911, (1/1/11) a massive steamship, named "Friedrich der Grosse" (for Frederick the Great, a one-time Prussian ruler) pulled into New York Bay. My dad's father, Josef Gärtz, was on that ship, peering out at the Statue of Liberty, greeting him and the other hopeful and exhausted boat-load of immigrants. It was the beginning of a life entirely different from the lives of the family and friends he left behind.