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.

It was easier than Barb and I thought

A neighbor posted on our subdivision’s Facebook page that she had found someone to help her cut the cable cord and become a streamer. His fee was three months of the savings she would experience once she left cable bills behind. It appeared to be an Even-Steven proposition.

I have been contemplating making the cable-to-streaming switch for quite a while. Our cable bill is enormous, with little black cable boxes hanging from TVs on all three floors of our house, even the ones we rarely watch. Calls to the provider to ask for a rate reduction have been fruitless. I have fretted and complained, but have done nothing about it.

Until now. I decided the time had come to make the change.

But before contacting my neighbor’s expert, I did my homework. I created a spreadsheet comparing streaming costs to our current cable plan. I peppered ChatGPT with questions. I grilled our kids and their spouses, cord-cutters all, and conducted site visits to inspect their equipment setups. I even used our visit to friends in San Diego to investigate the ease of use of a Roku remote control.

When my research was complete, I made a decision. Yes, I wanted to switch from cable to the YouTubeTV streaming service. And no, I wasn’t going to hire anyone to do it. I was committed to doing it myself!

Barb doubted I could pull it off, but she gave me the OK to give it a try. My first step was to enroll in a free trial subscription with YouTubeTV. I programmed our smart TVs to receive the streams and bought a Roku stick for a set too old to be updated. We also replaced the TV in our kitchen. The new set was barely more expensive than the cost of a Roku would have been for the old one.

For our trial period, I left the cable connected but moved the cable remote controls out of easy reach. We learned how to navigate the YouTubeTV interface and use the proper remote controls. We improved every day and eventually proved that even old dogs can learn new tricks.

After two weeks, I called the cable service and told them I was discontinuing their service immediately. Of course, they were suddenly ready to make us a deal. But I knew it wouldn’t be good enough and told them goodbye.

Today I collected all the cable boxes. I’ll turn them in this week.

Barb said she was proud of me.

And that’s the best deal there is.

My first Social Security deposit felt strange — until it didn’t.

A new electronic deposit appeared in my bank account last week. I knew exactly what it was.

I had waited until the last possible moment, until I crossed the threshold of 70 years of age, before I began collecting Social Security.

When I first saw the payment, I felt an unexpected twinge of guilt, as if I were accepting compensation for work I had not done, for a biopsy I had not read, for a lab test I had not performed.

That feeling quickly gave way to a simpler truth: I had, in fact, earned this money.

I have been paying into the Social Security system since I was 15 years old. I paid in while bagging groceries at the Jewel, while stuffing envelopes at a printing and letter service, while performing autopsies as a pathology resident, and while practicing my profession for more than four decades. With every paycheck, a small portion of my income quietly disappeared into the program.

I am neither an accountant nor an actuary. I have no idea whether I will ultimately come out ahead or behind compared with a world in which those contributions had been invested elsewhere.

Fortunately, Barb’s and my careers have been successful enough that we do not depend on the payments we now receive. They are simply additional resources to spend or save as we choose. Still, I find myself appreciating the shift in perspective. What once felt vaguely uncomfortable now feels entirely appropriate.

I can accept it, finally, with no guilt at all.

How a gluten-free cake transported me to my Austrian grandparents’ apartment.

Barb and I were enjoying a lovely evening at our good friends Lee and Debbie’s Evanston home. We were served delicious dish after dish, with Lee assuring me that each one was gluten-free. Dessert was a loaf cake, made exclusively with almond flour. Not a hint of wheat in sight.

I took one bite, and like Proust with his madeleines, I was immediately transported to my past. The cake had the taste, texture, and raisins of Gugelhupf, the Austrian bundt cake that was the specialty of Mama, my maternal grandmother.

Just like that, I felt myself sitting in my grandparents’ Sherwin Avenue apartment in Rogers Park, sandwiched between the lake and the El. I spent many afternoons there as a young boy in the early 1960s. Mama and Papa’s cat Bobby would lounge in the sun, while Papa sat quietly painting watercolors. Mama bustled about the kitchen preparing for Jause, the afternoon snack time embedded in Austrian culture.

And always there was a freshly baked Gugelhupf, perfectly unmolded from its bundt-shaped pan. A cup of tea followed by slices of the wonderful yellow cake with its golden brown crust and juicy raisins made the perfect 3 o’clock treat.

Mama’s baking days ended when my grandparents moved to an “old-age home” in 1963. My mother inherited the Gugelhupf pan, and though she was a good cook, she couldn’t quite replicate Mama’s technique. Her cakes were good, but not quite perfect. I believe my sister tried her hand at making the cake, too, but also fell short of our grandmother’s specialty. The same can be said for the occasional bakery-bought versions I have tried.

It’s been a long time since I thought about my grandparents. I’m glad Lee’s baking got me thinking about them again. I’ll be sure to reminisce about them every time I enjoy the leftover cake Lee sent home with me.

Maybe I’ll have a piece now. After all, it’s Jause time somewhere!

A Jeopardy memory—and the poet behind it

“In 1950, he won a Tony for best play, and 18 years after his 1965 death, he would go on to win 2 Tonys for a musical.”

That Final Jeopardy answer today brought a big, bright smile to my face. My grin grew even broader when none of the three contestants on this Jeopardy! Invitational episode provided the correct question. None of their guesses were even close.

Why did that particular Jeopardy! Q and A, and the contestants’ failure, bring me so much pleasure? My schadenfreude was well earned. You see, in the late 1980s, I was faced with virtually the same Final Jeopardy answer when I stood across the podium from Alex Trebek on my 1988 Jeopardy! appearance. And I got it right.

Despite that final success, I finished in second place in my Jeopardy! game.

So much has changed since then. Instead of being a young dad, just beginning to find my way in the world of pathology and family life, I am now a happily retired grandfather of four. Alex Trebek has passed away; his duties are now assumed by Jeopardy!’s G.O.A.T, Ken Jennings. We stream the show, rather than watch it live.

And in those long-ago days, Jeopardy! didn’t have Invitational Tournaments or second-chance games. Like the NCAA College Basketball Tournament, contestants were one-and-done. If you lost a game, you were banished from the Kingdom of Jeopardy, forever. That game was my only appearance on national television.

Oh, the right question to that Final Jeopardy answer? It was a lot easier in 1988 than it is in 2026 to remember that the biggest musical of the 1980s, the Hamilton of its era, was Cats. Andrew Lloyd Webber gets most of the accolades for the felonious show, but few people then, and even fewer now, know the lyrics are based on a book of poetry, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot.

And T.S. Eliot is who those two Tonys went to. Even Trebek was surprised I got it right. But that one came easily—Eliot has always been my favorite poet. I just never knew he would come in so handy.

But you can’t make him dink.

“She’s gotten more aggressive since I last saw her play,” I said to my daughter-in-law, Becca, as we watched my granddaughter take command at her 6th-grade basketball game.

“The extra coaching she’s gotten has really helped her,” Becca said, before continuing, “She’s very coachable.”

“Coachable,” I said. “That is one thing that I am not.”

It’s true. “Coachable” is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me. I don’t take well to that kind of instruction!

Of course, it is most noticeable in athletics and body mechanics. I lack the capacity to hear the instructions from a coach, a pro, or a trainer, and turn those instructions into actionable items for my body.

Those golf lessons our kids gave me as a retirement present? I dutifully signed up with the lead instructor at the local driving range, practiced with him for hours, and then went out onto the course and ignored nearly everything he had tried to teach me. Instead, I have to do things my way, the way that feels most natural, even if it is completely wrong. Of course, the results have been predictable—lost balls and frustration.

My friend Marty has given himself the mission of coaching up my bowling scores. “Follow through,” is his mantra, and I hear it in my head every time I take my approach. Occasionally, I will follow through, but it’s more accidental than anything I consciously control. My muscle memory, like my general 70-year-old memory, is too intermittent and spotty to permanently instill Marty’s instructions.

Later in my courtside conversation with Becca, she told me how much she was enjoying pickleball lessons and how much she was learning from them. Becca, who had been a star high school athlete, is a very coachable person. I, on the other hand, have resisted taking pickleball lessons. And I have a hard time incorporating whispered on-court tips from my partners into actionable items. The neural pathway from my ears to my brain to the rest of my body just short-circuits when it should be firing on all cylinders.

I admit that my inability to benefit from all those lessons is probably a combination of a whole lot of stubbornness mixed with a tinge of laziness.

I’m just a mule lying down for my afternoon nap. That’s one thing I don’t need coaching for!

My friends help me learn a lesson.

Earlier this week, I texted my baseball buddies to wish them a happy new year and to offer condolences to the Cub fans among us on the reported death of Billy Williams, the Hall of Fame, sweet-swinging outfielder from the 1960s.

The replies arrived almost immediately.

“I just looked him up. Wikipedia says he’s alive.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean Billy Dee Williams? Or Billy Wilder?”

Soon the conversation wandered, as our conversations often do, but the message behind the teasing was unmistakable: I had probably gotten this one wrong.

So I went back to the source, a Facebook post I had taken at face value. There was no satire label, no obvious punchline, no reason to doubt it. And yet, there it was: false, simple as that. The mistake was not in the story. The mistake was in my response to it.

“Trust, but verify” has long been one of my guiding principles. When something sounds implausible or a little too dramatic, I normally check it against a reputable source before sharing the story or writing about it. Most of the time, that habit serves me well.

But this time I did not pause. I did not verify. I passed the story along. Not out of carelessness, exactly, but out of familiarity. A known name, a nostalgic figure, a post that felt believable. Sometimes the things that feel the most plausible are the ones we question the least.

That is what unsettled me.

This was not satire or parody, and it was not a scam angling for clicks or money. It was a small, needless distortion of reality, the kind that drifts quietly across social feeds, gathering momentum simply because no one stops it soon enough.

And in that moment, I helped it along.

We live in a world where truth has become something we negotiate rather than assume. AI-generated voices, fabricated images, convincing imitations, all of these blur the line between what appears real and what is real. The challenge is not that we cannot know the truth, but that knowing now requires effort, patience, and a willingness to slow down.

In that sense, the lesson for me was not about technology or deception. It was about discipline.

Verification is not a slogan. It is a habit we have to practice, even, and perhaps especially, when the story feels harmless, familiar, or emotionally resonant. I did not meet that standard this time, and I owe my friends, and myself, better judgment than that.

I write because I want to tell stories grounded in honesty and respect for the people who read them. When I fall short of that, I am reminded how easy it is to be swept along by the currents of everything we see, hear, and forward without thinking.

So I will keep the motto, but with a quieter, deeper awareness behind it.

Trust, verify, and when in doubt, take one more breath before pressing “send.”

What Bruce, Seurat, and Barb Taught Me About the Pursuit of Perfection

What do Bruce Springsteen, Georges Seurat, and my wife Barb have in common? A restless pursuit of perfection, the constant question “Is this the best I can do?” that pushes them to refine, rethink, and ultimately create something extraordinary.

I’ve been listening to the audiobook Tonight in Jungleland by Peter Ames Carlin. It recounts, in painstaking detail, the intensity, discipline, and obsession behind the making of Springsteen’s 1975 album Born to Run.

After two earlier albums that failed to meet expectations, Bruce knew this record might be his last chance with Columbia Records. His band was evolving, producers were multiplying, and the endless retakes he demanded strained nerves across the studio.

Still, he pushed forward, convinced that if he could capture the sound he heard in his head, he might help redefine rock and roll. The vision kept shifting, but his commitment never did. And even though he remained unsure of what he had achieved, the release of Born to Run became, for many listeners, as close to perfection as music gets.

I have spent many hours standing in front of Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte at the Art Institute of Chicago, studying its stillness, its order, and its quiet intensity. The painting appears serene, a peaceful summer scene along the Seine, yet behind that calm surface lies an extraordinary act of discipline and doubt.

Seurat worked on the painting for more than two years, developing a painstaking new technique built from thousands of tiny dots of color, applied with scientific precision and unwavering patience. He produced study after study, revising forms, recalibrating light, and questioning every decision. What looks effortless on the wall is, in truth, the product of continual uncertainty and relentless refinement, the same inner voice asking, “Is this the best I can do?”

We are often told that perfection is the enemy of good. I once worked with a surgeon who would frequently say “good enough,” as if stopping there were a virtue. But for some creators, whether in a recording studio, a Parisian workshop, or at a needlepoint frame, the refusal to stop at “good enough” is exactly what makes the work extraordinary.

I have written before about Barb’s marvelous needlepoint work, the canvases that fill our walls, and the beautiful gifts she has created for friends and family. With her latest project, she too is engaged in that pursuit of perfection.

Every choice matters to her: the materials, the colors, the number of plies in each thread, the selection of stitches for every section of the canvas, and the willingness to pull out hours of work and begin again if something does not feel exactly right. Even when teachers offer guidance, she weighs their suggestions against her own vision, determined to realize the piece as she imagines it.

Like Bruce and Seurat, Barb understands that perfection is never easily reached, but when this work is finished, another masterpiece will join the ones already hanging in our home.