SOLSC: Random Family Facts

            I’ve been using Facebook’s On This Day feature to download my Facebook posts to my computer, and it’s been illuminating. The past couple of days, I came across five-year-old posts that I had labeled “Random Family Facts.” My parents had died in 2010 and 2012, and going through their papers I’d come across information that I had not known.

            For instance, when my maternal grandfather died, in 1974, he’d left small bequests (he’d never had much money) to organizations that revealed his interests and his political tendencies. a Yiddish newspaper founded by the American Communist Party (defunct since 1985); the Daily World, the English-language CP paper (defunct since 2010); Jewish Currents, a magazine whose tagline is "activist politics and art," founded in 1946 and still publishing, with an interesting Web site; the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (Jewish Cultural Association), an international organization, initially Communist-oriented, for writers, artists, musicians (the U.S. branch closed in 2006); the Jewish Folk Chorus of Greater Miami, founded in 1943, but no longer existing; and the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women’s Clubs, which started as the women's section of the Jewish section of the International Workers' Order (a Communist-leaning fraternal order that died during the McCarthy era) and disbanded in 1989 as membership declined.

For example, the Morning Freiheit,

            Another Random Fact: when my mother was small and lived above a candy store in New York City, there was a fire in the story. She was carried to an apartment next door over the fire escape. The smoke and noise frightened her so much that decades later she couldn’t watch a fire in a building in San Francisco when she was visiting there, and when she moved to an assisted living facility, she didn’t want to be above the seventh floor because she’d heard that was as high as fire department ladders went.

            I posted these little stories to Facebook. Are there any random family facts you’ve found or remembered that your kids or grandkids or other family members might not know and you’ve thought of passing on?

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I’m participating in the 11th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 23 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!