Archives for May 2007

More fun With Telemarketers- Tom Mabe

May 15, 2007 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

Haveil Havalim- The Next Edition

May 14, 2007 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Just a quick reminder that I am hosting the next edition of Haveil Havalim. Don’t forget to submit your posts through Blog Carnival.

Any questions? Leave them in the comments field.

A Six Year Old Wonders

May 14, 2007 by Jack Steiner 9 Comments

In the middle of dinner my son tells me that he has a question. He wants to know something about dogs. After a brief pause and a sip of water he says:

“Dad, when people go to the bathroom we have to wipe our tushies, but I have never seen a dog wipe his butt. Why don’t they use toilet paper?”

Being the good kindly old man I am, I immediately sighed with relief. It wasn’t that hard a question to answer. All I need to do is provide a simple, logical answer why a dog doesn’t need to wipe his ass. And then I realized that I didn’t know the answer. For a moment I surveyed the room to see if there was a good resource to use to answer the question.

On the bookshelf across the way I noticed a Star Wars book and immediately became fixated upon it. Or should I say that I immediately wondered about Chewbacca and Wookie bathroom habits. Kind of an odd thought and a strange juxtaposition, but sometimes you just have to go with where life takes you.

So I told the big boy that I wasn’t exactly sure, but that we could research it together. Due to an impending bedtime the research was put off but I know that within the next day or two the question will resurface. I think that it is time to call the vet or resort to making some stupid joke about how dogs use cats.

Holocaust survivor refuses to meet son

May 14, 2007 by Jack Steiner 7 Comments

BEACHWOOD, Ohio – The letter brought a bittersweet end to Sol Factor’s 17-year search for his mother, a Holocaust survivor who disappeared in the aftermath of World War II:We regret to inform you that we located the above mentioned person, but she would not like to be contacted by the inquirer, reads the message from Magen David Adom, the Israeli counterpart of the American Red Cross

Factor, who had found clues to his past with the help of the Red Cross and a vast archive of Nazi records, knows only that his mother, now 83 years old, is living in Israel.

Of course I’m disappointed because one likes searches like this to end with happy reunions, he said in an interview in his home in this Cleveland suburb.

There’s a sense of actual relief too, because now some of the mystery has been solved, he said.

Factor, 60, was born Meier Pollak in Munich, Germany, in 1946 to Romanian-born Rosa Pollak, also spelled Polak. He has found documents showing that Rosa Pollak and her newborn son were discharged from a maternity hospital on July 9, 1946, and soon after went to a United Nations-sponsored hospital for refugees in Munich. Within days they became separated.

Factor was adopted in 1950 by an American couple in Belmont, Mass., and began looking for his biological mother in earnest in 1990.