This coming October 15 would have been my great-grandfather David Louis Berger’s 150th birthday. Eight days later, I will mourn the 100th anniversary of his passing, under bizarre circumstances, but that is a tale I reserve for my book. “Louis,” as he preferred to be called (like my own father David Louis Berger liked to … Continue reading My great-grandfather, his brother-in-law…and The Three Stooges?
This site benefits/suffers/both from consisting of posts about a wide range of topics, all linked under the amorphous heading "data-driven storytelling." In an attempt to impose some coherent structure, I am organizing related posts both chronologically and thematically. The sequence of events that resulted in the unifying concept of “interrogating memory” went like this: September … Continue reading Organizing by themes III: Interrogating memory and identity
In a recent post, I described the metaphoric journey my maternal grandfather took from being Yisrael HaCohen, born in the small town of Shpola (in what is now Ukraine) in November 1905, to being Samuel Joseph Kohn, born in Cleveland, OH in December 1904. His literal journey included crossing the Atlantic with his parents, Joseph … Continue reading Two (at least) Samuel Schmucklers: a cautionary tale
He had been a powerfully-built man, which served him well when he spent nearly two decades as a Philadelphia police officer (rising as high as plainclothes detective in the late 1940s). His 1940 World War II draft card lists the then-36-year-old patrolman as 5’10” tall and 210 pounds, dark-complexioned with black hair and brown eyes. … Continue reading Samuel Joseph Kohn: exemplar of the Jewish immigrant experience
The first indication of the nature of my recent trip to Philadelphia was the absence of SD’s and my favorite server at the Westgate Pub my first night there (the night before a Thor-like thunderbolt short-circuited the air conditioning in my hotel room for four nights). As I detailed here, I shoehorned seeking answers to … Continue reading Visiting Philadelphia: …very few answers
My “interrogating memory” project began as a July 2017 conversation with my wife Nell about writing a book in lieu of finding a new position in my two-decade-long career as a health-related data analyst. In my head, I translated her intended meaning (write a mystery—something that would sell many copies) to “I could easily expand … Continue reading Visiting Philadelphia: Many questions, but…
My preferred driving route to Philadelphia from Boston has evolved over the last 30+ years. My first route was simply an extension of departing from New Haven, CT in the mid-1980s, so I became used to taking I-95 south directly through New York City via the Cross Bronx Expressway; after crossing the George Washington (GW) … Continue reading Visiting Philadelphia: Restaurants and Rituals
I asked Nell to marry me in June 2007. Thankfully, she said yes—sending us scrambling to find a place to live together by summer’s end. After touring apartments that were either “absolutely not” or “great…wait, it’s already been rented?,” it was crunch time. Going into internet overdrive, Nell (then I) could not believe our good … Continue reading Moving memories
Periodically, a fellow blogger will pose and answer random questions in the context of a “blog award nomination.” The most recent person to do so decided, with commendable egalitarianism, to threw open the question-answering door to any and all entrants, so I decided to consolidate a series of questions (and my own idiosyncratic answers) into … Continue reading Questions asked…and answered
(with apologies to INXS). One of the unanticipated pleasures of writing my book is that I get to spend hours reading old newspapers. This is an amateur historian’s idea of heaven. Last August, I introduced a key character in my book: a powerful Philadelphia attorney named Herman M. Modell. Modell, who knew my father and … Continue reading Two worlds collided…
Just Bear With Me... 