and feeling good about it.

This morning, There’s a Good Reason Why You Can’t Concentrate, an opinion piece in today’s New York Times, caught my eye. Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University, compared our nation’s current mental laxity to our pre-1950s physical laxity. According to Newport, the latter was improved (at least to some extent) following the detailed reporting of President Eisnehower’s heart attack and publication of the book Aerobics. Mr. Newport suggested a few steps that could improve our mental acuity in a similar fashion.

It was the section on the risks and rewards of A.I. that grabbed me. While he acknowledged A.I.’s usefulness, Newport insisted that “your writing should be your own.” And that made me think. How much of my writing is still my own?

I started writing my blog in 2015, before various A.I. tools became available. Every word, sentence, and paragraph I typed was my own. I also owned every grammatical error, clunky sentence, and inconsistent conclusion.

The incursion of artificial assistants started slowly. Grammarly opened the door, correcting errors in my grammar and spelling that a more polished writer would find on their own. My participles stopped dangling.

Next, a conversation with a neighbor introduced me to DALL-E, a program trained to create illustrations from written prompts. Suddenly, my opening pictures went from the cut-and-paste smorgasbord I had been creating in Microsoft Paint to DALL-E’s clever cartoon caricatures.

In completing my evolution, ChatGPT has become my best writing buddy. I have used it as an editor, a prompter, and a polisher. For illustrations, it is more precise than DALL-E with a wider variety of styles.

ChatGPT cuts the time it takes me to complete a blog post in half. I ignore some of its suggestions while embracing others, ultimately creating a weave.

The program assures me that it is writing in my voice. Over time though, I can feel that voice fading, replaced by a digital one created in a data center, perhaps somewhere in the Mojave Desert.

But after reading Mr. Newport’s piece, my post today is different. Grammarly is turned off, and nothing on this page has been suggested or proofread by ChatGPT. It’s my own effort, or lack thereof.

For today, I am all you get. I’m sure you will be able to pick out some mistakes. But it feels like the old way — and it feels good.*

Finding the one line in a long-awaited email

I saw the email this morning and had a good idea of what it would say.

It was from the Associate Artistic Director of the theater festival where I had submitted White Collar, my first play. I had been waiting for this message since last fall, when I sent in what was, improbably, the fourteenth revision of the script.

The note was about 150 words long. Polite. Professional. Appreciative of the number and quality of submissions. I moved through the first paragraph, then into the second, looking for the sentence that mattered.

It was there, near the end:

“Unfortunately, your play was not selected for the 2026 award.”

No surprise. Not really.

I had followed all the requirements. The play fit the format, the length, and the cast size. But those are only the price of admission. They don’t get you selected.

I’d be lying if I said I felt nothing. There was a brief pause after reading it—a small, quiet deflation. Not enough to ruin the day, but enough to notice.

Then, just as quickly, it passed.

I’ve already moved on to another project, Lines of Memory, a fictionalized history of several generations of my family. That’s the nature of this kind of work. You write, you revise, you send it out, and more often than not, you hear “no.”

If I keep at it, I expect to accumulate a respectable collection of those emails.

But I also hope that one day I’ll read far enough to find a different sentence waiting for me.

And for now, that’s reason enough to keep going.

I took the risk. The risk won.

When I told you last week about the return of Mini-Snickers Ice Cream bars to grocery store shelves, I mentioned the little tag at the end of the ingredients: “May Contain Wheat.” And I said it was worth taking a chance on my favorite ice cream confection—Celiac disease be damned. Maybe, just maybe, that wasn’t the best idea…

The bars were just as I remembered: whipped ice cream, caramel, and half a peanut. They made a wonderful after-dinner snack, each bar weighing in at less than 100 calories. They were a perfect complement to a steaming cup of decaf tea after all the dinner dishes had been washed and put away.

But after a day or two, I began to notice my stomach rumbling a bit more than usual. There was no pain, but a mild sense of discomfort pervaded my body. Being me, I ignored it and kept eating one bar each night.

And so I made it through the first box. Last night, I opened box #2.

The two boxes were side by side in the grocer’s freezer aisle. I am sure both were made at the same plant—probably during the same shift. But within a few minutes of my first Snickers from the second box, my mild discomfort had been transformed into a full-blown gluten attack. I knew that for box #2, “May Contain Wheat” could be better quantified as “Absolutely, positively loaded with it.”

I gambled, and I lost. The house, it turns out, always wins, and I’ll be paying the price for a day or two more. But for a few moments, I enjoyed a treat that I thought had long ago been lost to me.

I consider that a decent pay-off—or at least, breaking even.

The end of a four-year quest in the freezer aisle at Woodman’s

Are you a long-time reader of my blog? If you are, you might remember a post from four years ago in which I lamented the post-COVID disappearance of Mini-Snickers Ice Cream Bars from grocery store freezer shelves. I told of my impossible quest to find my favorite after-dinner treats.

Many readers suggested I buy the full-size bars and cut them in half — a King Solomon “cut the baby in two” solution. I have steadfastly refused. So for four years, my diet has been Mini-Snickers Ice Cream Bars free.

Until today.

While pushing my cart through the ice-cream novelties aisle at Woodman’s, I did my customary check. And there they were. Rows and rows of my favorite treat.

Some things have changed. The box now contains 10 bars instead of an even dozen. And while a check of the ingredients doesn’t reveal any obvious sources of gluten, there is a warning that the bars “may contain wheat.” That is something I wasn’t concerned with before my Celiac diagnosis three years ago.

That warning is not enough to deter me. I bought a box. (OK, I bought two.)

Tonight will be the test as I have my first taste. Will it be as good as I remembered? Will I avoid a reaction to a smidgen of gluten that may be in them? Will my perseverance pay off?

Keep your fingers crossed for me. I’m hoping Friday the 13th is my lucky day!

How a birth note, a poetry letter, and a dismissal notice trace my family’s path through Austria’s changing times

Among the papers I have kept since my Aunt Paula died in 2005 is a small, fragile sheet with a handwritten note and a purple ink stamp. The blurry stamp reads “Matrikelamt der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien,” the Registry Office of the Jewish Community of Vienna. The note itself is brief, and for many years, I didn’t study it or try to translate it.

Curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I took a closer look. The note, apparently signed by a registrar, indicates that Gisela Durst (my grandmother) gave birth to a girl named Pauline in October of 1913. The purple stamp suggests that someone in the Jewish community’s registry office handled the record or verified the information. It isn’t a formal birth certificate—just a small note connected with the official Jewish registers maintained by the community in Vienna.

Paula was my mother’s older sister, the daughter of my grandparents Gisela and Rudolph Durst. In 1913, the Austro-Hungarian Empire still existed, though its final years were already approaching. Within a year Europe would be engulfed in the First World War, and the world would change dramatically

Paula married Leopold Buchwald, known in the family as Poldi. Among the papers in Paula’s file is a letter dated March 1935 from the Austrian radio broadcasting company RAVAG. Poldi had submitted several poems for possible broadcast. The letter politely explains that there had been a misunderstanding: no promise had been made to read five poems, though perhaps three to five might be presented depending on their length. Some of the poems were being returned as less suitable than those already selected.

It is a modest letter, but it reveals something unexpected. Poldi, an engineer, was writing poetry and trying to place it on Austrian radio. In the cultural life of Vienna in the 1930s, radio readings of poetry offered a platform for aspiring writers. I don’t know whether any of his poems were ever broadcast, but the letter shows that he was at least trying to enter that world.

Only three years later, the tone of the surviving documents changes dramatically. In 1938, after the Anschluss, Austria’s absorption by Nazi Germany, Poldi received a formal notice terminating his employment. The letter carefully states that the dismissal had nothing to do with his professional abilities or his character. The reason was simply that he was classified as a “non-Aryan.” The language is bureaucratic and polite, but the meaning is unmistakable.

Placed side by side, these documents form a quiet family timeline. In 1913 a baby girl named Pauline Durst is born and entered into the Jewish community’s records. In 1935 her future husband is writing poetry and sending it to Austrian radio. By 1938 he is being forced from his job under the new racial laws.

History is often told through large events—wars, revolutions, political upheavals. But it is experienced through ordinary lives. A birth date preserved by a registry office, a hopeful letter about poems, and a curt notice of dismissal: three small pieces of paper that show how quickly the world around one Austrian family changed.

My late father receives an insurance offer

A piece of mail addressed to my father arrived at our house the other day. This was surprising, since my father never lived in this house. In fact, he never even lived in this town or this county.

But the real complication is that my father died in 1993.

The envelope contained an offer for bundled auto and homeowners insurance. Apparently, the insurance company believes my father is currently in the market for both.

This came as news to me.

When he was alive, my father never owned a house. He spent his life in rented apartments. Nor did he own a car. He was a master of the CTA, familiar with every stop on the El line and the 151 bus.

Yet according to the sophisticated marketing databases of the modern insurance industry, he is now apparently both a homeowner and a motorist.

This raises some intriguing possibilities.

One is that the insurance company has discovered a new marketing channel to the afterlife. Perhaps the deceased represent an untapped demographic. From a business standpoint, I can see the appeal. Customers in that category are extremely stable. They rarely move. And they almost never file claims.

Another possibility is that my father’s desires have changed dramatically since his passing. Perhaps he finally developed a taste for homeownership that he had avoided throughout his life. life. Maybe he and my mother now live in a pleasant celestial bungalow with a nice view of the clouds and an “eternity” lawn that never needs mowing.

If so, homeowners insurance would make perfect sense.

The automobile is harder to explain. I’m not sure what people drive in the hereafter. A cloud? A chariot? Something electric, perhaps?

Still, if there is traffic in the afterlife, accidents must occasionally happen. A drowsy octogenarian backs a Tesla into a harp. A distracted cherub plows into a Rivian.

Naturally, responsible drivers would want proper coverage.

So I suppose the insurance company may be onto something.

But if they actually manage to sell my father a bundled auto and homeowners policy, I would very much like to meet their marketing department.

And ask whether they offer life insurance to the deceased as well.

Two weeks of flipping switches, moving cables, and negotiating with customer service

When I last posted, I was patting myself on the back for successfully disconnecting our house from cable TV and becoming the ultimate streamer. Little did I know that my fun was just beginning. The last two weeks have been an educational experience.

With all the streaming I anticipated, I thought I needed a really fast internet connection coming into the house so I could distribute it to every corner of the home with my Wi-Fi extenders.

My provider had several plans with 1 gigabit service, and that sounded pretty good to me. But which plan should I choose? Each had a different set of add-ons: Netflix with Plan A; Disney-Hulu combo with Plan B; 6 streamers and a fixed rate for 5 years with Plan C.

I made my choice and then attempted to set up the newly included streaming channels. Each channel presented a different challenge, but all required hours on hold with customer service, “escalations” to a higher power, or creative workarounds. After all the tweaking, I can now receive 99% of the channels I expected in my package. As with most things, perfection remains elusive.

Then came the biggest challenge: getting all those megabytes to the TVs, computers, and other devices in the house. I was baffled by how slow everything seemed to start up, and all the buffering that was happening, so I turned to my friend ChatGPT.

In the last two weeks, I’ve had a lengthy dialogue with the AI program that occupies a prominent place on my computer screen. We’ve discussed bridges, switches, and configurations. Networking maps have been created and discarded. At one point, the diagram looked so complicated that I briefly wondered whether I was designing a home network or trying to interpret a particularly tricky biopsy.

As the program thanked me for each new piece of information I provided, I made layout changes I never would have dared to try on my own. When I told ChatGPT that a particular change had worked, I received a resounding YES; my failures were met with a “let’s figure out what went wrong.”

Now I am happy with the system. My computer runs blazing fast (thanks to Ethernet), and the Wi-Fi for the rest of the house works fine. I look forward to years of ignoring the complex in-house network architecture and simply enjoying the benefits of my hard work.

Until the latest and greatest new thing comes along.