An improvised life

I’m in a plane bumping through the skies toward Juneau, returning from Los Angeles. At my feet is a leather bag containing wafer-thin papers signed by Nazi storm troopers in 1938. One document informs my grandfather, the Jewish Doctor Rudolf Braun, he is no longer permitted to treat Aryan patients. Another document discharges his Aryan household staff because it is, according to the Third Reich, sullying to work for a Jew. I carried these documents to LA and to the Austrian consulate. I presented them alongside my birth certificate, my parents’ marriage certificate, my son’s birth certificate, my husband’s death certificate, and other papers produced by other units of government of various type and vintage. In 2020 Austria passed a law granting citizenship to victims of Nazi persecution and their direct descendants. Unlike most citizenship processes, this one does not require that one speak German, reside in or even visit Austria, take any test, or pay any fees. It is, the country says...

Last week a friend who doesn't live in Juneau sent me screenshots of an online rant and said, “I think our neighbors complained about us on Reddit!!!” The Reddit post began, “Hello neighbor from the [redacted] block, Launching mortars last night was a really inconsiderate move.”   Uh oh. It was my friend’s block, and while my friend had not been home, her family had apparently launched New Year’s Eve fireworks.   The post incited a predictable onslaught of anonymous vitriol. Outrage and allegations built. At some point the original poster added: “The thing that gets me the most is that they are a very nuclear family with a bunch of rowdy teen boys and the parents were the ones lighting them off. These are the same people that threw a rager and left beer cans and puke in my yard.”   Most of this did not sound right. “I don’t think it’s you,” I reassured my friend.   “Yeah,” she said, “We haven’t had a party here in years.”   But soon a hand-written note showed up...

I lived in a co-op for my last two years of college. I left the dorm and my sweet roommates for various reasons including a generalized anti-establishment streak, but it was mostly about food. I couldn't deal with the mass-market feel of the dining hall, I wanted to make toast in the middle of the night, and I needed to bake cookies for therapy.   The co-op was a glutton's paradise. We snacked on chocolate chips from a 25-pound box. Eight loaves of fresh bread came out of the oven every night. I developed an addiction to hot chili sesame oil, which we ordered by the case, and which I smothered on rice and ramen. When I graduated and moved out, I forgot my laundry in the dryer and literally lost all of my favorite clothes, but I remembered to grab a bottle of hot chili sesame oil.  I was leaving Boston and heading to Alaska for a summer job studying the temperate rainforest. There would be bears and big trees and whales and glaciers. There would not, I feared, be a ready supply...

Today I participated in a forum called Faith and Blue, an event spearheaded by the Juneau Police Department in association with a national weekend of activities organized by law enforcement and religious communities. The flyer notes, "National Faith & Blue weekend is a collaborative effort to build bridges and break biases." Since we don't have a resident rabbi, I got to play one on TV. The program will be edited and posted to Facebook. I'll share a link when it's available.  I was struck by the genuine caring and concern of everyone who participated, how much our cultural, religious, and racial identities shape our experience of the world, and the difference between those whose views centered in belief in Jesus Christ as savior/answer and those with more secular or humanist orientations. I have always felt that being Jewish was inextricably linked to my views of justice, and this project deepened my understanding of that connection.  At Alder's Bar Mitzva...

Among the things I found after John died were 24 cans of Rainier beer in an outside pocket of his hockey bag. Yes, it was a massive bag – a goalie bag, though John didn’t play goal.  I got rid of most of his stuff pretty efficiently when he died, some of it with unabashed glee. The boxes of old magazines he carted through each move, fraying 1986 copies of Mother Jones and Utne Reader he was always going to get to. I brought 17 boxes to paper recycling. I doled skis and jackets to friends and family. I gave away his skates. But something stopped me from giving away the hockey bag, and I’m pretty sure it was the beer.  It’s a bit ironic given that I don’t even drink beer. I think I realized that case of beer stuffed in his hockey bag and smuggled into the rink was quintessential John. He was never one to travel light, a habit that continually irked me. But who was the hero at Happy Camp, three days into a Chilkoot Trail backpack trip, when he pulled out a complete copy of the Su...