It is a vanity project and a writing closet, a treasure chest for news, views and reviews.

More prosaically, it provides a store house for my writing. Some of it is quirky – poems, sayings and asides. There are movie and book reviews, profiles and other articles from my past and present sojourn as a journalist. Plus my new book — The Dream Machine: A Novel of Future Past!

Lester Jacobson in black without glasses
The Dream Machine
Novel

The Dream Machine: A Novel of Future Past

A thrilling, highly imaginative and tautly written journey back in time to find “the tool to unrule” a post-American fascism.

“Brilliant,” says National Book Award winner and MacArthur Genius Fellow Charles Johnson of “The Dream Machine: A Novel of Future Past.”

“A great tale, brilliantly told,” says violist and international recording artist Roger Chase. “There are surprises on every page, and the end, which comes only too soon, is a coda of marvelous drama, invention and imagination.”

Night Train

Notes written on my overnight train trip to New York City on June 1st and 2nd, 2016. The train lurches to a start exactly on time — 6:40

Continue Reading »

Received Wisdom: Monroe Kaufman

Received Wisdom is intended to capture the thoughts and experiences of older people in the belief that a lifetime of struggle, survival and joy – in other words, living – has endowed them with special insights and knowledge worth sharing. 

“I would think the favorite time of life is always – always – the present. There’s no reason to believe that beautiful events that occurred in the past do not continue to occur now and in the future.”

Monroe Kaufman is the father of one of my best friends from high school. This interview took place at his home in New Rochelle, N.Y., in April 2012, a day before a joyful celebration in honor of his 90th birthday. He was born on April 18, 1922, in the Bronx, N.Y. During the Depression, he said, young people who couldn’t afford to go out on dates met in friends’ houses for “gatherings,” casual social affairs. It was at one such gathering, when he was 15 and she was 13, where he met his wife-to-be, Charlotte. “It must have worked because we’ve been married for 68 years.”

What was life like as a youngster?

I don’t have much of a recollection of the years prior to the Great Depression. I went to school and was interested in the usual sports, principally baseball. All the kids played baseball. We also played stickball, until the police came along and chased us away. You could play it in different ways. On the street the sewer covers were your bases. In addition there were many unfinished apartment buildings, because it was the Depression and there was no more money to complete the buildings. So we used the buildings as playgrounds. You could play stickball against the bare wall and . . .

Continue Reading »