בלומה

A belated follow-up to the tale of my fight against ‘Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ specifically, and John Boyne more generally in school: They warned the teachers at my kid’s high school in advance that I am trouble.

Options to include: I think you’re dumb I think you’re irrelevant Housewife with a dictionary I just don’t like you Who are you again? (This is the Tom Paulin option)

To celebrate my sixth year of failing at whatever this is, I am now going to be including a form rejection where people can just tick the reason they aren’t going to speak to me anymore.

I hope friends and acquaintances who are still here are doing their damnedest and keep doing so into the new year.

I hate to be back here posting, but is anyone willing to chat with me and give me some advice on pitching someone a book-length translation?

Socialists, I left out socialists.

I find any and all suggestion that restrictive, repressive policies are aimed at preserving ‘family.’ My family is made up of minorities, immigrants and queer people. fuck off.

It was funny. A bit of ‘oh, *this* is where I come from!’

I know very little about my family (we‘re not the very literate sort and there aren’t any letters or many photos) but I happened upon a bit of information this summer… And last night I saw my great, great grandfather’s tombstone, complete with Arbeiter Ring insignia.

An interlude that feels very January to me. blumalangerobertson.substack.com/p/when-you-dis…

I’m a big fan of useless facts.

Allowing myself a retweet of this. Leivick in the DP press post-war blumalangerobertson.substack.com/p/we-must-not-…

Today I am thinking of Leivick’s like for (and use of) Dostoyevsky, despite his having a pretty good handle on what use Dostoyevsky would have had for him

I’ve had this particular JTA bulletin for a while — and posted it before — and have also previously read Leivick’s response to it. But going through articles chronologically means I’m now reading what he said that (in part) provoked it…

@_nemesissy_ This is bad. This is things on fire. Grab the children/animals/passports and go. Don’t stop for clean socks.

Probably something I should have kept up my sleeve for some later date or more prestigious venue, but this week is something which is partly the result of my research this summer. blumalangerobertson.substack.com/p/we-must-not-…

Sorry, fat-fingered, late ‘36.

Leivick turns to the sea in 1937, too, on the way to Argentina, when the then-President of PEN International asks him if Yiddish actually has a grammar.

It’s worth remembering that Leivick began writing in Hebrew — and secular Hebrew literature (Mapu’s ‘Love of Zion’) has its own place in his personal legend.

I find these trips (‘37, ‘50 and ‘57) so fascinating precisely because of the ‘Language question’ and how he wants — at least publicly— to present it.

I’ve hit 1950 and Leivick is off to Israel. An auspicious beginning.