The Tree of Life, in Pittsburgh

Today is the third anniversary of the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. 

At the time of the murders, in 2018, three separate Jewish congregations had a home in the synagogue:  the Tree of Life Congregation, the New Light Congregation, and Congregation Dor Hadash (Dor Hadash means "new generation," in Hebrew). The attack occurred as Saturday morning Sabbath services were taking place.

Eleven congregants were shot and killed, during the approximately twenty-minute attack. Several other people were wounded, including four Pittsburgh police officers.

The individual arrested for the killings--virulently anti-Semitic, virulently hostile to immigrants--has not yet gone to trial.  He had frequently expressed, online, his hatred of Jews. Days before the killings, he had written of what he called (I am not reproducing, here, the entire word) the "k*** infestation" in the United States.  After he was shot by police, at the synagogue, he surrendered--and said, according to a police officer, that "all these Jews need to die." 

A book about the 2018 tragedy and its aftermath was published this month.  It is by journalist Mark Oppenheimer, and is titled Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. 

Here is the link for the book, on amazon.com:

https://www.amazon.com/Squirrel-Hill-Synagogue-Shooting-Neighborhood/dp/0525657193/ref

Three epigraphs

The following is an engaging epigraph; it appears in writer Peter Orner's short story collection, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge (Little, Brown and Company, 2013).  The epigraph is from a short story by the writer Gina Berriault:

It’s over me like a ton of water, the things I don’t know.

(I read Mr. Orner's book recently, and enjoyed it very much--while admiring, even more, his 2019 short story collection, Maggie Brown & Others, also from Little, Brown.)

Another epigraph I'm fond of is from a novel I've had for years, but have not read (one of many books I have that are still to be read): Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, from 1955.  The epigraph is from Andre Gide:

Please do not understand me too quickly.  

Recently, I tried to find, in the apartment, my paperback copy, from college, of E. M. Forster's Howards End.  I came up empty; the book seems to have disappeared. The reason I wanted to find it?  Simply to see, again (after many years), its brief, beautiful, memorable epigraph:

"Only connect..."

Alan Kalter

I always enjoyed watching (and listening to) Alan Kalter, on David Letterman's Late Show, on CBS.

He was the program's talented (and funny) announcer--from the fall of 1995, until the show left the air in May of 2015.  He was also regularly featured in comedy segments on the program.

Mr. Kalter died this past Monday, at age 78.

Here is an obituary, from The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/arts/television/alan-kalter-dead.html