My father was a very complex man. When he was in the Coast Guard, he climbed to the tops of LORAN (long-range navigation) towers that were 620 feet (189 meters) or more in height. He did it for fun. In 1949 he was stationed on Bikati Island, Makin Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands (red arrow)….
A post for my brother Pat
October 16, 2015
My brother Pat Wictor is a folksinger. Yesterday he called from the road in New York, and we had a two-hour conversation about our father Edward, who died on February 23, 2013. Ed was a mystery to us. He was the most secretive person I’ve ever known. In fact he scared me my whole life…
My calculated risk
February 27, 2015
Every now and then I’m reminded that what I do is dangerous. However, for me it’s a calculated risk, as I’ll explain in a moment. Today the American writer and blogger Avijit Roy was murdered in Bangladesh. He was killed by Islamists with machetes as he left a book fair. His wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya…
It’ll end badly
January 13, 2015
I was born in Venezuela. For the first four years of my life, my closest relationship was with a woman named Delia. She was technically our maid, but in reality she was my surrogate mother. I grew up speaking English and Spanish interchangeably. Although we lived in oil camps, we interacted with Venezuelans daily. Believe…
Leitmotifs
January 3, 2015
I must apologize for not keeping up on the e-mail correspondence and Facebook postings. This is a very difficult time for me, and it’s all because of a cat! Actually, Brother Cat is just symbolic of the leitmotifs that have defined me. A lot more is going on, but the damn cat is at the…
The sheer ordinariness of the opposition
December 11, 2014
People don’t like my posts on Israel. They decide they’re going to “fix” me by “letting me have it.” Unfortunately for them, they lack the imagination to understand that I’m impervious. The ordinariness of their communications to me is…extraordinary. Their attacks are always the same: 1. Making fun of me for my looks. 2. Making…