From the Globe and Mail, July 2000 Painted a bright red, the 201-year-old John C. Backhouse Mill seems as conspicuous against its background of grass and trees as the British Redcoats must have been when engaged in combat with the Americans during the War of 1812. A historic property that was restored to pristine condition…
Tag: American
Orchestrating the American dream
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Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the Kids, by Burton Bernstein, was first published in 1982, and remains, 30 years later, one of the most interesting family histories this reviewer has read. The reason is not so much that Burton Bernstein was the brother of a celebrity, the great composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, but because he treated…
Stories from Jewish Portland
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If you have roots in Jewish Portland, you may be interested in a recent book — Stories From Jewish Portland, by Polina Olsen (The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2011). Olsen has collected many stories of the Jews of Portland. Their roots go back to the gold rush and their heart is the “old neighbourhood” of…
Titanic genealogy
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The 100th anniversary of the S.S. Titanic disaster is almost upon us. The legendary British ship sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912, after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage. More than 1,500 of the 2,200 people aboard perished in the tragedy, which has been memorialized in books, popular…
Only in Los Angeles: the Wilshire Boulevard Temple
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When your address is Hollywood and you’d like some murals in your synagogue, who are you going to call? L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard Temple is a magnificent structure, both inside and out. Modeled roughly after the Great Synagogue of Florence, its features seem by turns pure Byzantium and pure Hollywood. Large as a cathedral, it boasts…
Lost in Hollywood: my cousin, the child actor
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During a sightseeing visit to Los Angeles some years ago, I surprised myself by taking a cab to the Margaret Herrick Library at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills. I hadn’t seen the Getty Museum, the Hollywood studios and so many other sights, so why was I going to some musty…
Singer’s literary legacy appraised at his centenary
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In the early 1920s, a young man who proofread copy for a Yiddish literary magazine in Warsaw asked the editor to consider publishing a short story he’d written. After due consideration, the editor said he found the story greatly flawed, but would publish it anyhow. And what was wrong with it? the brash novice wanted…
Ruth Wisse: a litterateur with political smarts
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Ruth Wisse, the noted author and professor of Yiddish literature, told a large gathering at the Leah Posluns Theatre during the 16th annual Jewish Book Fair that she was greatly influenced in her salad days by a circle of New York liberal intellectuals that included Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Harold Rosenberg as well as “my…
At Innisbrook, a Florida golf resort
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“A subtle dog-leg to the left”: that’s how golf pro Matt Hurley describes the 10th hole of Sandpiper — which is to say that it bends ever so slightly. Our golf-cart is idling in a shady grove at Innisbrook, a posh 21-year-old golf resort in Tarpon Springs, on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Its well-landscaped 1,000 acres…
War of 1812 replayed at Backhouse Conservation Area
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Painted a bright red, the 201-year-old John C. Backhouse Mill seems as conspicuous against its background of grass and trees as the British Redcoats must have been when engaged in combat with the Americans during the War of 1812. A historic property that was restored to pristine condition two years ago for its 200th anniversary,…
