Stories,photos

124 results total, viewing 111 - 120

Patricia Allen, a graduate of Hope High School, RISD and Brown, married Jim Weiss, who grew up in the orphanage at the site of the Miriam Hospital, and among foster homes. They now live in Florida throughout the winter months. Patricia sent me a … more

Mike Fink | 4/10/14

The blurred souvenirs of memory

He sat by the burning logs in the open hearth of our parlor, in a wing chair. I think it was upholstered in patterned peach silk. This is the only memory I have of my maternal grandfather. He had paid this brief visit from Montreal when I was ... … more

Mike Fink | 3/13/14

Teatime with Judy

It was such a long time ago on the Benefit Street trail. It was Judy Beckman, with her skills and interests in genealogical trees, who found the addresses of my grandfather and great uncle and their wives. “The ghosts, the phantoms, of the lives … more

Mike Fink | 2/13/14

Aunt Edith

I took my aunt Edith pretty much for granted while she lived just a few houses uphill from ours. We both eventually inherited our family homesteads and stayed put there. When I was but a boy, Edith would babysit me. Throughout the war years, she … more

Mike Fink | 1/30/14

Tu Bi-Sh’vat

“Humanity is a tree of the field,” declares Deuteronomy. There was an old song that sighed, “Spring will be a little late this year.” (I think it meant, “she said no.”) In Israel, despite last month’s snowstorm, spring comes a little … more

Mike Fink | 1/3/14

We make our own Eden

“Frenchman’s Creek” has “gotten’ to be a habit with me,” in the phrase from an old song. I know the turning of the roads around the creek with the fountain and the golf-cart traffic at the curves. more

Mike Fink | 12/19/13

Minnie and Moe

My eldest aunt had been, in the womb, a twin: I wonder if she was seeking her other, vanished, half, all through her 90 years and more and beyond. Minnie first appeared in Providence when she was – oh, my! –fifty! She stood on our front steps … more

Mike Fink | 12/5/13

Ruthless

I guess her turn has come up. Not like a yahrtzeit candle that welcomes a departed soul to your household. Just because, she figures on the landscape: I’ve been squinting through the blur of memory at profiles of my uncles and aunts, my cousins … more

Mike Fink | 11/22/13

The wrong cup

I met my aunt Stella for the first time when I was a bar mitzvah boy, I mean a young teen-ager. Why? She came down to our cobblestones from Montreal, now that the war was over and travel bans were lifted. You could take a train or drive on your … more

Mike Fink | 11/7/13

A mystery left unsolved

“Evangeline” – the romantic, tragic, poetic epic by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow we used to read in the Providence public schools – is depicted on postcards, posters, clips from the eponymous Hollywood movie with Dolores del Rio in the title … more

Mike Fink | 10/25/13