Sightseeing in the Mindfields
The Cheap Sunglasses Tour, 4: The Zig Zag Mountains
December 19, 2022
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Bathhouse Row is just the urban edge of Hot Springs National Park, which covers thousands of acres. The park contains numerous hiking trails as well as dozens of thermal springs. While HL and I did not do much walking, we did drive into the woods, to the summit of Hot Springs Mountain. There we ascended the tower, a steel latticework, that the park...
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The Cheap Sunglasses Tour, 3: Racehorses, Runs, and Racketeers
December 09, 2022
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The afternoon shadows were lengthening when we checked into our room. We lodged in an unprepossessing motel opposite the far larger and pricier Oaklawn Casino. Gambling had played almost as important a role in Hot Springs' development as had its bathhouses. Those who came to benefit from the waters could not, after all, soak in them day and night....
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The Cheap Sunglasses Tour, 2: Bathhouse Row, Hot Springs
December 02, 2022
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We left our house late on a bright, warm morning and encountered unexpectedly slow traffic as we proceeded east. Near Princeton, Texas, the presence of a former POW camp imposed the ugliness of the past on the bland emptiness of the prairie. During the Second World War, German prisoners of war were interned in what had been a camp for migrant worke...
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The Cheap Sunglasses Tour, 1: Hot Springs, Arkansas
November 24, 2022
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As a child growing up in New York City, I heard little about places in what I envisioned as the featureless, agrarian interior of the country. Hot Springs, Arkansas, was an exception. I knew that name because my grandparents went there, at least once. My grandmother sufferted from arthritis. Like many immigrants from Europe, she believed in the cur...
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Current Events 86: A Farewell Toast
November 17, 2022
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For our final evening in Bucharest, Simona invited us to dinner at her home. Her house was far from the city center, in a newish neighborhood where every residence had been custom-built on a private lot. Simona's house was spacious and modern, furnished handsomely. There were Oriental rugs on the tiled floors, and a grand piano in the main room. Th...
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Current Events 85: A Rehearsal
November 10, 2022
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We were rather downcast as we left the Great Snagogue museum and returned to the Choral Temple. It was such a fine, breezy day, however, that soon we recovered our spirits. The first yellow leaves had fallen, and the wind sent them scudding across the sidewalks. It felt good to reenter a synagogue that still had a congregation. G., the young man wh...
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Current Events 84: The Great Synagogue/Sinagoga Mare Part 2
November 03, 2022
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After the Allies defeated the Nazis, over a hundred thousand Jews poured into Bucharest. Many were survivors of the camps. Once the Communists were in power, they closed many Jewish community agencies, and used synagogues for secular purposes. Antisemitic Romanians blamed the "Bolshevik Jews" for the harsh Communist rule that Moscow imposed. The Co...
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Current Events 83: The Great Synagogue/ Sinagoga Mare, Part 1
October 27, 2022
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The Great Synagogue was doubly hidden. Its plain plaster walls masked a sumptuous interior. The ceiling was gorgeous, painted in elaborate symmetrical patterns by the artist Gershon Horowitz in a 1936 renovation. The chandeliers, gilded and inset with azure, could have graced a palace. Gold glowed everywhere. Once, the Great Synagogue may have been...
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Current Events 82: Bucharest's Choral Temple/ Templul Coral, Part 2
October 20, 2022
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The money and time for the synagogue's renovation were well spent, as the results were spectacular. The ceiling and walls were painted with geometric patterns, mandalas derived from eight-pointed stars. The dizzyingly symmetrical designs were painted in buff, coral, crimson, white, and shades of blue, accented with gold. As in Budapest's Dohany Str...
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Current Events 81: The Choral Temple (Templul Coral), Bucharest, Part I
October 12, 2022
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Our levity yielded to solemnity when we met Simona and our Israeli friends at the Choral Temple, Templul Coral in Romanian. In front of the entrance was an imposing menorah. We could tell at once that the dark metal menorah was a monument to the hundreds of thousands of Romania's murdered Jews. The Communists had not permitted specific memorials fo...
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