Dear Former Students, Colleagues and New Friends,

I thought you might like to know about my new book, Ol' Man On A Mountain (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Good Reads). I've taken to sending out a passage from the book to selected persons; as well, since this is the only book about Appalachia that I know of with a Yiddish glossary, I will be sending a Yiddish word with each passage. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I loved writing it. So far so good–32 5 star reviews. There's a new career in the old bird yet! I'm doing a signing at Bright Lights Books, Sat, March 22 from 1-3pm. First one they've done with a local author. Hope to see some of you.

Please find information on my book through Facebook, blog, Amazon, Barnes and Noble :

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Passage:

When we used to visit the Jewish cemetery where her 'Mann,' her beloved Reuben, my grandfather, was buried, an old Rabbi would inevitably find and approach us. The place seemed to me, a kid of 14, to be teeming with them, ancient men from the old country–dirty, a little smelly, with scraggly beards, always dressed in old shma'te-dicha suits; translation, near enough to rags to be rags. To a teenage kid, they seemed frightening, like aliens from another world. 

And, of course, they were. The reality is that many were learned men in the old traditions; many had been rabbis in Poland or Germany or another European country. Fifteen years earlier their congregations had been murdered by Hitler or sent to the concentration camps all over Europe to die. Once respected rabbis, or teachers, these men, who had somehow escaped or survived the camps, found their old worlds destroyed. They were the closest thing to working Jewish beggars in America. I think that even then their eyes looked empty to me, and that's why I was scared. I wondered if this is what they did all day long, wandering around the cemetery like ghosts themselves, asking to say prayers at the graves. I never expressed my fears to my grandmother, but she must have sensed them, because as one approached. she wrapped her arm around my shoulder.

"Mrs., you want I should say a prayer for your husband?" he offered in Yiddish.
And she, as inevitably as his appearance, agreed, always agreed.
"Nu (well), so say a prayer.
Then she would give the ghost a dollar or two. Sometimes, when she'd had a really good week in the bakery, she'd hand over a five-dollar bill.
At fourteen, I was already something of a skeptic. "Bubbe, if you don't believe," and she made it clear she did not, "why give him money?" 
She shrugged those little world-toughened shoulders. "So, an old rabbi also has to make a living. An old man also needs dignity. Remember, 'zein besser, nit erger."' (For him we can make it better. Let's not ever make it worse.)

My mind turned back to Lorne, who was saying, "You know Stew, in a lot of ways he's like a child. He ain't good with money. But that boy's got a real good nose for people. And he already sees you as his friend. When he calls you Ol' Man, he doesn't mean a thing by it except love."

Yiddish Word:

tsuris: Rhymes with a drawn, out your is
Definition: trouble, big trouble
"Don't tell me yours. I've got my own tsuris."

Best,

Dr. O