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Jewish Comics Day 2016
Jun. 1st, 2016 08:41 pm(Not betaed; I apologize for any errors.)
It's funny how he can turn a corner, see a wall where there was no wall, and go online to find people who were born long after he went into the ice lamenting that very fact. There are so many blogs devoted to cataloging the traces of Old New York that he can't keep up with all of them. But there are puzzling gaps in what they cover. He can take a virtual tour of historic Jewish cemeteries, get a map of the best 20th-century delis still open, but nobody posting seems to be aware that the people they are lauding didn't grow up speaking English. Or not only English.
He hasn't heard Yiddish on the street in...in a long time. The language isn't extinct, he knows, but it isn't like it used to be.
Well, he knows a bit about how that happened. He never did get to punch the real Hitler, but doing for the goddamn paskudnyak who thought Hitler was a piker--it was worth the ice.
He's been following Ms. Hill's strong recommendation (order) to lurk, but one evening a debate over which language a radio personality's immigrant parents must have spoken--German, Latvian, or Hebrew--and whether he ever learned it gets to him. He remembers this guy, who's smiling from his tombstone in an engraving taken from one of his publicity photos. He remembers WEVD pulsing out of the radio on the windowsill of the apartment below his and Bucky's on hot summer nights, the variety shows, the producers who went out with their microphones to ask any passerby to speak their piece, like an online forum sent forth on the wind. He types--well, he types a hell of a lot about it: Yiddish radio all over the dial, Yiddish newspapers on the streetcorners, children in the midst of some game in a vacant lot using Yiddish curses that would have infuriated their mothers, giggling girlfriends with their heads together shmuesing, strong old voices reciting prayers on a Friday evening. Hardly any of the old acetate recordings survived long enough to be transcribed, but he digs around online and finds a link to the WEVD theme song. Turn this up, he types at the end, in careful Yiddish with English hovertext. It should be loud.
And he signs his name: Steven G. Rogers.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: http://www.yiddishradioproject.org/
It's funny how he can turn a corner, see a wall where there was no wall, and go online to find people who were born long after he went into the ice lamenting that very fact. There are so many blogs devoted to cataloging the traces of Old New York that he can't keep up with all of them. But there are puzzling gaps in what they cover. He can take a virtual tour of historic Jewish cemeteries, get a map of the best 20th-century delis still open, but nobody posting seems to be aware that the people they are lauding didn't grow up speaking English. Or not only English.
He hasn't heard Yiddish on the street in...in a long time. The language isn't extinct, he knows, but it isn't like it used to be.
Well, he knows a bit about how that happened. He never did get to punch the real Hitler, but doing for the goddamn paskudnyak who thought Hitler was a piker--it was worth the ice.
He's been following Ms. Hill's strong recommendation (order) to lurk, but one evening a debate over which language a radio personality's immigrant parents must have spoken--German, Latvian, or Hebrew--and whether he ever learned it gets to him. He remembers this guy, who's smiling from his tombstone in an engraving taken from one of his publicity photos. He remembers WEVD pulsing out of the radio on the windowsill of the apartment below his and Bucky's on hot summer nights, the variety shows, the producers who went out with their microphones to ask any passerby to speak their piece, like an online forum sent forth on the wind. He types--well, he types a hell of a lot about it: Yiddish radio all over the dial, Yiddish newspapers on the streetcorners, children in the midst of some game in a vacant lot using Yiddish curses that would have infuriated their mothers, giggling girlfriends with their heads together shmuesing, strong old voices reciting prayers on a Friday evening. Hardly any of the old acetate recordings survived long enough to be transcribed, but he digs around online and finds a link to the WEVD theme song. Turn this up, he types at the end, in careful Yiddish with English hovertext. It should be loud.
And he signs his name: Steven G. Rogers.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: http://www.yiddishradioproject.org/
