“But the one fight that never resolved was the one between my Bessarabian grandfather and my American Uncle Izzie, who drove a truck and married into the family long before I was born. And it happened during the late 1970s, during the Carter administration.”
“Although I would have liked to have taken a photograph, my camera was full, and they’d already walked away towards a shop with a sign advertising Calzones.”
“For a young immigrant boy who knew nothing about politics or history, Star Wars had a universal appeal that transcended language, nationality, time, and other superficial social barriers.”
“Channeling Uncle Bill, who died over a decade ago, I invite his ghost to weigh in. But rather than answering, he walks me downstairs in his old Brooklyn house, where we stand together in his paneled den—the perfect skin we’d heard about, now on the floor.”
“Dad never searched for buried treasure again. He instead bought lottery tickets, entered contests online, and invested in a million dinar after Iraq fell…”
“By sheer accident, one man in this stupefied future learns how to read.”
“Having lived in Latvia for over a year…there is a selection of good things, ideas or their manifestations, which seem to pervade Latvia and/or which the United States either lacks or has forgotten.”
“While many have suffered badly—and I do feel their anguish over being fired, falling into depression, or even committing suicide—I have to admit that it turned out rather nicely for me.”
