Upon their retirement, the author and his wife purchased a home in Florida where they live in the winters as well as in Erie Village (a suburb of Syracuse) in which they spent their summers before selling their town house. They joined the Sugar Mill Country Club in New Smyrna Beach, Florida after becoming Florida residents. They have watched the transitions of life in which all families participate with the death of their parents, the marriage of their sons, the birth of their grandchildren and making gradual accommodations to old age and their own eventual demise. While both the author and his wife enjoy playing golf, Scrabble, cards and other recreational activities, he has spent several years giving speeches, writings articles, novels, and attempting to demonstrate the transitions through which everyone journeys during the course of their lifetime.
Between the first and last series of stories the reader will find an amalgam of thoughts, experiences, maturation, and influences which have affected the life of the author. While some of the stories are humorous, tragic, rancorous or filled with questions the reader might ask himself/ herself, it is hoped that a new set of insights have been provided to give meaning to their lives. What drives persons to question their beliefs, growth, human examples and what has produced the type of person he/she has become? Everyone has grown up with persons who have influenced them more than they knew at the time of their encounter. It may only be years later that they may recognize who, what, and why they have experienced the vagaries of life unique to themselves. Even as a person's finger prints are unique and so uniquely differentiated that there are no two sets of finger prints alike among human beings, each one of us has his/her own unique lifetimes which no one else may have had. There are segments of a person's life which may resonate in terms of experiences, persons, events and places truly unique to themselves, but unduplicated in the same forms as those of their neighbors. A Medley of Short Stories attempts to illustrate how unique the totality of a person's life can be from beginning to end: from birth to death, from childhood to adulthood, from tragedy to success depending upon what a person makes of the lifetime experiences which everyone has but not everyone can turn to his or her advantage. It is the hope of the author to provide an insight and stimulus to the reader's reevaluation of his/her life which will assist in evaluating the heights and depths to which their own lives have evolved or are evolving in the course of their lifetimes.
The book is for those persons who have become somewhat disenchanted with the portrayal of religion as the end all answer to all of their most important questions relating to life and its peculiarities. Hence, an attempt has been made, after spending years in Seminary (Boston University) and working as an assistant to a pastor at a large Community Church in the Syracuse area. The book attempts to address those types of concerns and issues which have proved so challenging to persons who have begun to form their own opinions about topics which all persons confront over the course of their lifetimes.
This book centers on the influence of each boy in his historical period having been born the product of the rape of their mothers and the subsequent different life experiences each boy had as a consequence of how their mothers were treated during their early childhood experiences. Jesus was fortunate in having a father who took an interest in him and helped him in every way he could become the man he became. Gottlieb, on the other hand, had a tragic beginning, barely surviving the ordeal of not having a legitimate father and facing the constant harassment of a society that rejected the illegal children from unmarried mothers. The outcome for the life of each boy proved to be what he himself had decided to do with the life that he had!
This story about a farm boy who for the first time is really exposed to the world as he had never envisioned it to be, but grew up fascinated by the variety and unique types of people whom he has encountered over the course of his lifetime. Obviously, a great deal has been left out or omitted: some intentionally, and some inadvertently. The aging mind begins to remember people, places and events which have had a lasting impact as the years have gone by. Ive no doubt left out some very salient points which others may remember, but I have forgotten. I also, however, have remembered events people and places which some persons may have preferred to forget. Hence, as time goes by those whose lives have had the greatest impact upon my own life may already be among those who have gone on while the rest of us await our own end one of these years.
A TRILOGY OF A FAMILY SAGA Volume I: The Security of Silence The first novel of the trilogy portrays the lives of Emilie and Friederich Malin originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in southwestern Germany. Emilie came from an upper middle Class family whose father was a newspaper owner/publisher. Tragically, she lost her father when she was 13 years of age and never quite got over the loss. She met an older man who was not only a prosperous businessman, but one whose family, her mother said, was from the lowest class in town. She ignored her mother's advice and married him. He became a father surrogate for her. She had everything she wanted. Her comfortable life style continued even though she discovered her husband had an unsavory appetite for women. She attributed his difficulty in relating to other persons because of a war wound as a soldier in the German army in World War I. He had lost his ability to speak in a normal tone of voice due to the incompetence of the field surgeon who cut the nerves to his vocal cords. He could only whisper and subsequently, Emilie became his interpreter with the customers for his business. He resented this dependence upon her and decided it would be best to emigrate to America as the rest of his family had done. Emilie did not want to leave Germany, but she felt herself trapped in a marriage from which she believed she could not escape. She was afraid of her husband's anger and felt, for the sake of their children, she would have to remain silent. Volume II: A Conspiracy of Silence A Conspiracy of Silence is the second novel of the trilogy and takes place initially in Germany as the family gets ready to leave for America. Emilie learns more about her husband's infidelities than she really wanted to know but felt there was nothing she could do about them. She believed them to be part of the past and her orientation was always to look towards the future. Upon arriving in the United States, Friederich buys two different businesses before deciding to buy a farm. He knew nothing about farming but thought he would have fewer encounters with other people on a farm. His handicap would not be such an overwhelming problem for him. His sisters and one brother-in-law go into farming with him from April to September only to find that the combined income from tourism, operating a gas station, dairying, and raising crops were insufficient to maintain three families. They leave him and his wife to return to the city. Friederich and Emilie have to do the work once carried on by four additional persons. Emilie doesn't see how they can do all of the farm work plus take care of the gas station and care for her family with a third newborn. But learning to milk, in addition to caring for their three children, cooking, planting crops and harvesting them, leaves her no choice but to work as she had never envisioned. In Germany she had been a Kindergarten and Elementary school teacher. Her husband tells her she has no alternative other than to continue to work the farm with him. The depression deprives them of any surplus savings and the devastating barn fires end their dairy operation. The work of last resort is to turn to the woods which Friederich does to cut firewood for income and logs with which to saw lumber and rebuild his barns. His proclivity for sex, however, continues to know no bounds. Volume III: The Struggle to Survive The Struggle to Survive is the final novel of the trilogy of this immigrant family. Emilie and Friederich have survived the transition from Germany to the United States. They have moved from an urban environment to a rural one. They have fallen to the lowest level of income. In spite of all of these difficulties, they survived to rebuild their barns, resurrect their dairy, expand
Between the first and last series of stories the reader will find an amalgam of thoughts, experiences, maturation, and influences which have affected the life of the author. While some of the stories are humorous, tragic, rancorous or filled with questions the reader might ask himself/ herself, it is hoped that a new set of insights have been provided to give meaning to their lives. What drives persons to question their beliefs, growth, human examples and what has produced the type of person he/she has become? Everyone has grown up with persons who have influenced them more than they knew at the time of their encounter. It may only be years later that they may recognize who, what, and why they have experienced the vagaries of life unique to themselves. Even as a person's finger prints are unique and so uniquely differentiated that there are no two sets of finger prints alike among human beings, each one of us has his/her own unique lifetimes which no one else may have had. There are segments of a person's life which may resonate in terms of experiences, persons, events and places truly unique to themselves, but unduplicated in the same forms as those of their neighbors. A Medley of Short Stories attempts to illustrate how unique the totality of a person's life can be from beginning to end: from birth to death, from childhood to adulthood, from tragedy to success depending upon what a person makes of the lifetime experiences which everyone has but not everyone can turn to his or her advantage. It is the hope of the author to provide an insight and stimulus to the reader's reevaluation of his/her life which will assist in evaluating the heights and depths to which their own lives have evolved or are evolving in the course of their lifetimes.
Upon their retirement, the author and his wife purchased a home in Florida where they live in the winters as well as in Erie Village (a suburb of Syracuse) in which they spent their summers before selling their town house. They joined the Sugar Mill Country Club in New Smyrna Beach, Florida after becoming Florida residents. They have watched the transitions of life in which all families participate with the death of their parents, the marriage of their sons, the birth of their grandchildren and making gradual accommodations to old age and their own eventual demise. While both the author and his wife enjoy playing golf, Scrabble, cards and other recreational activities, he has spent several years giving speeches, writings articles, novels, and attempting to demonstrate the transitions through which everyone journeys during the course of their lifetime.
This book centers on the influence of each boy in his historical period having been born the product of the rape of their mothers and the subsequent different life experiences each boy had as a consequence of how their mothers were treated during their early childhood experiences. Jesus was fortunate in having a father who took an interest in him and helped him in every way he could become the man he became. Gottlieb, on the other hand, had a tragic beginning, barely surviving the ordeal of not having a legitimate father and facing the constant harassment of a society that rejected the illegal children from unmarried mothers. The outcome for the life of each boy proved to be what he himself had decided to do with the life that he had!
The story tells the early remembrances of the farm from a little boys perspective, including his reaching adult age and bringing his wife to visit the farm for the first days of their marriage in Boston, Massachusetts. While the stories reflect the attempts of a little boy to remember the important experiences of his life on the farm, they may also reflect the gaps and omissions that may have occurred that he no longer remembers. As he approaches ninety, his remembrances skills are beginning to fade. Nevertheless, it has been a pleasure to try to remember what important events had taken place on the Megnin Farm.
The book is for those persons who have become somewhat disenchanted with the portrayal of religion as the end all answer to all of their most important questions relating to life and its peculiarities. Hence, an attempt has been made, after spending years in Seminary (Boston University) and working as an assistant to a pastor at a large Community Church in the Syracuse area. The book attempts to address those types of concerns and issues which have proved so challenging to persons who have begun to form their own opinions about topics which all persons confront over the course of their lifetimes.
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