sweetheart redux

This is my Grandpas's brief sketch of the details of his life, written when the rest of the family requested him to, a few years ago.  Luba I never met any of my grandparents. I think my dad's parents died in Europe.   My mother's family was upper middle class. Her father owned a small department store in the Black Sea port city of Odessa. Fleeing both radicals and anti-Semites in l902 they came  t o the US, where they settled in Meridian, Mississippi.   I think my   Uncle Ben and Aunt Molly were both born in Mississippi. There were four sisters (Molly, Mary, Celia, and my mother, Luba).There were three brothers (Mike, Charley, and Ben). Mike and Charley were in the Navy in World War I; Ben was just a boy. Sometime before World War I they moved up   North. My mother worked as a waitress and cashier in a restaurant whose name I never knew, but she says that the composer Victor Herbert was a steady customer, so it must have been in Manhat...

Jean Smith and David Lester of Mecca Normal. Photos by Sean Raggett. Mecca Normal BIO : The literary rock duo of Jean Smith (vocals) and David Lester (electric guitar)  has released thirteen albums on Kill Rock Stars, Matador and K Records. Mecca Normal's 14 th  album  " Empathy for the Evil "  will be out  September 16, 2014 on M'lady's Records. There is a lot of mention in the media of a renewed interest in 1990's culture.  Do you find that to be so, and if so, does it have a direct impact on your life? JS:   It is extremely important to our intensity and longevity to feel that there is some sense of the past being both accessible and of interest to people who participated back then or to those who are just learning about the 1990s now. There were some very important ideals that originated within the D-I-Y and independent scenes that are still valid today. Women writing and performing music about their specific concerns is still...

my wedding -- Bill on the left mom and Bill Bill on the left I have not been sure if I should, or even could, write a tribute to my friend Old Bill, who died a few years ago, and whose birthday it is today.  I’ve known him almost my whole life.  My mom has always had a hard time taking care of herself, and he was pretty much her unofficial (as in, not a government-sanctioned public administrator) caretaker, out of love for her and kindness.  He picked me up from school every Friday to take me to mom’s work to pick her up, and then to drive us home.  I’ve gone over all of this before, but it’s so important to underscore again and again what a wonderful person he was.  There will never be anyone even close to him in this world again.  Me and mom called him Old Bill because she had another close friend we called Young Bill.  I thought it might hurt Old Bill’s feelings at one point, probably when I was 11, to have him referred to as “old”...

Biz http://bbbiiizzz.tumblr.com/ Robin and Geof Kelli kellicallis.wordpress.com Lindsey Joy Kim Burly   www.thealphablonde.com    Photo by Aurora Lady Photo by Jennifer Emerling

  my bedroom faces, college 1999 My mother, who doesn’t know what a selfie or Facebook is (she asked me if Facebook was really a book of faces , which it kind of is now) acts more like a troubled teenager than a grown woman.  Since I was a kid, I've seen the self-portraits she photographed whenever she was incredibly sad or smashed.  These were bummer pictures to see, of course, as her daughter, but I also admired how unabashed she was about them; they weren't hidden away in a box somewhere.  The one I remember most clearly, probably because I own it (she sent it to me when I was away at college ) is a photo she took just after she'd cut off all her beautiful long hair.  I also regularly took self-portraits when I was crying or really sad, when I was a teenager.  I liked how these photos looked and the idea that I'd created a work of art of sorts just by capturing myself in the act of crying; even as a young person, i was aware...