Greetings from Mid-Winter

Brought to you by this box of tissues—recycled paper, people!*

I spent a week in Sarasota Florida, leading a workshop at Bookstore 1 on scene-writing in memoir. The weather was glorious, in the 70s, such a treat after some serious cold up here in the north. My hosts took me to two excellent symphony concerts and a play and I made some progress on a new research project. And then, it seems, I picked up a virus on my flight home… and now I am now hanging around the house all day in my pajamas, sniffling. Clark has kept the house well-stocked with soup. All will be well, and I will return next week with more thoughts on the world.

On January 30 I was interviewed on the Alpenverein Basecamp (Austrian Alpine Club) podcast.
This episode of the podcast was created to commemorate the anniversary of the Alpenverein Donauland, a separate mountain climbing club formed after Jewish members were evicted from the main club. Most of this podcast is in German but if you cue up to 4:38 you will hear my conversation with podcast host Michel Mehle about my grandparents, Julius and Anna Singer, who were members of the Donauland. This alpine club included notable members, such as Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz and emigrated to America, where he became an eminent psychologist and wrote the seminal memoir Man’s Search for Meaning. After 1945 until the late 1970s, there was little scrutiny into the past. Only when the Alpenverein celebrated their 125th anniversary, they invited Victor Frankl to speak about the Nazi past. Frankl is quoted in person during the podcast, and he says, among other things, that he does not believe in “collective guilt.” Listen to the interview.

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*If you haven’t yet heard of the brand Who Gives a Crap, I can highly recommend the above tissues, TP, and trash bags. A small way to do something positive in dark times.Thank you all for your support. Pass the tissues!