MODERNISM, MADNESS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
A few months ago I wrote about the new film project I am working on, Keep On Moving Forward, The Story of Emma’s Revolution. I want to thank all of you who generously supported the project already, including at our valentine “For The Love of Justice” fundraiser. That event netted around $16,000 and, together with […]
So… what has happened to The Restless Hungarian film, to which this website was dedicated almost seven years ago, along with the book? Many of you have asked me where and when they can see the film streaming, online. The is a short answer and a long answer to this question. The short answer […]
The seed of this story was planted fifty-two years ago. I was seventeen, a student at a remarkable school that saved my life. Teachers and classmates at the Quaker Meeting School became my chosen family. It was a place where everyone contributed. Everyone had a purpose. In the mornings before classes began, we would gather […]
About a year ago I suggested to Sharon that she might want to record an audio version of her book Burning Woman, Memoirs of an Elder. I think my wife has a lovely, dulcet, low voice and that she would narrate her own book beautifully. I would be her producer, director, and sound engineer. Neither […]
Paul was born into an upper-middle class Jewish family. There were firm expectations about who he should become. He told me: “I had the feeling that my future was completely planned by my family. They knew what I should do and who I should marry and I think that was part of my rebellion.” Young […]
From the childhood of the Restless Hungarian… The Hungarian word for motion picture theater, mozi, was coined in 1907. The American word movie came into usage one year later. Movies came early to Budapest. The pomp and circumstance of royalty was a popular topic in the first Hungarian newsreels. Otto von Habsburg, the […]
As a boy Pali Weidlinger was forced to take fencing lessons. He was never much of a sportsman… and he absolutely loathed fencing. In the 1930s duels were still frequent in Hungary. Being good with a foil or a sabre ensured that you would be able to defend your honor. Among university students dueling […]
When I found a stack of poems, in Hungarian, dating from the 1930s I hoped I had a trove that would yield the secrets of Paul Weidlinger’s teenage years. It turns out that most of them are drivel (sort of what you’d expect from a teenage boy) but there is a particularly dark one that […]
In 1934 a nineteen-year-old adventurer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, crossed Europe from the hook of Holland to Constantinople. He travelled mostly on foot. He was the same age as my father. A passage from his beautiful travel memoir, written years later, inspired this blog post. Fermor wrote, in Between The Woods and The […]