Suprise Me

A culinary endurance story by (3 Stories)

Prompted By What We Ate

/ Stories

Being from an Italian Family was well…… a culinary journey and a eating endurance contest. I grew up in a what was called as tenament in Fall River, Massachusetts.  If you do not know what that is, it is simply a duplex stacked one on the other.  We lived above my grandparents until I was…
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Life Off the Fast Lane: Staying Home with kids by
50
(90 Stories)

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When I got pregnant with my daughter, I worked at the law school on the UC Berkeley campus, known then as Boalt Hall. I described my position there as “petty bureaucrat,” doing payroll and other administrative duties. It so happened that nine women on the staff became pregnant that year. Rumors circulated among staff that…
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Lost and Found by
100
(141 Stories)

Prompted By Close Calls

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A sulfurous smell of decay seeped into my mask. I looked around in vain.
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The Power of Words by
10
(12 Stories)

Prompted By Camp

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A summer camp counselor realizes the impact he has on his charges.
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What Are You Going to Be? by
50
(90 Stories)

Prompted By Trick or Treat?

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As kids, we started thinking about the next Halloween on November first. Over the next several months, ideas were floated, refined, discarded, and resurrected. These were the most important decisions a kid could make in those days. As a parent, I had to wait patiently while my kids repeated this cycle of indecision, hoping that…
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Delta Echo Whiskey by
100
(141 Stories)

Prompted By Veterans Day

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Occasionally I learn that they are dead.
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Love and Marriage – For our 50th Anniversary* by
200
(298 Stories)

Prompted By Marriage

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In 1967, I left my hometown in Michigan to move to Chicago with Fred, who would be starting medical school. Before I moved, I received several dire warnings from the women in my family. My great-aunt Sarah shared that she had read several cases in The Jewish Daily Forward’s “A Bintel Brief” about women who…
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My Grandparents’ Story by
200
(359 Stories)

Prompted By Immigrants

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Belle Potocsky and Zalman Beckenstein were married in the “old country”; Bialystok, Poland (part of Imperial Russia) in 1902. I have a dress that Grandma wore to a ball when they were courting. These were not “shtetl” Jews like in “Fiddler on the Roof”. They were educated and erudite. My grandmother’s dress is a beauty,…
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It’s the Shoes That Made Me Cry by
200
(298 Stories)

Prompted By Art’s Impact

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Jews were told to remove their shoes and then shot by the Hungarian Arrow Cross and pushed into the river. As one of our guides said, “They disappeared.” Only their shoes remained behind.
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Mosquito Magnet by
100
(194 Stories)

Prompted By Fireworks

/ Stories

Every 4th of July I spent in New Jersey I became exceptionally popular. This one time a year, everyone wanted me to be part of their group ...
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