Stories I Tell Myself
Linda Brody Bakst on Brooklyn, growing up, identity and more
Category: Belief systems
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I have a running joke with the guy who prepares our taxes. When I call to make the appointment he responds, “Now I know tax season is done! I am in the homestretch,” he says with delight in his voice. The joke is that I am almost always the last of his clients to call,…
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As has often been the case recently, I got to thinking after attending a talk at the University at Albany. Anthony Ray Hinton, author of The Sun Does Shine, was the featured speaker at the annual MLK Celebration. Mr. Hinton served 30 years on death row in Alabama for a crime he did not commit.…
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I googled ambition and this is the definition that came up: a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.
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A flash of insight can come at the most unexpected time. I was driving to my poetry group on Saturday and I was thinking about why I was so agitated that morning. Why was I feeling so ‘judgy’ of others? I suddenly understood something that maybe should have been obvious, but somehow wasn’t. Here…
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The last public event I attended before the pandemic shut everything down was an appearance by Scott Simon, the NPR broadcaster, sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute. He talked about his career in journalism and the book he had recently written. In the course of the discussion, he said something I made note…
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Note: Two weeks ago I posted the first part of an essay exploring my Jewish identity. I missed a week – life got in the way. The first part of the essay examined Judaism as a religion. Here is the second part of that essay. The other strand of my Jewish identity is more deeply…
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One of the themes of this blog has been exploring different aspects of my identity. One central question I have grappled with is: What does it mean to me to be a Jew? This is part of a longer essay. At 61 years old, I think I have finally figured it out. As a…
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Being able to let go of something – a person, a belief, a dream, a habit – is terribly difficult. I can’t say I have done it successfully very often, certainly not as often as would be healthy for me. I was thinking about this the other morning when I woke up feeling lighter. It…
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Note: It has been another challenging week for me. Aside from my mother’s continuing health issues, I am troubled by the violence in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. I do not subscribe to the narratives offered by the far left or far right in explaining what is going on there. I believe all the…
