Monthly Archives: February 2021

More Than 500,000

February 24, 2021 – 8:32 pm

Over 500,000 Americans have died from Covid. My friends, Ro and Doctor Bertoni, were two of them. As was Dakota Pittman and many others. Last year this time I was atop Kilimanjaro. The 2021 team of Kili Initiative descended from the summit. I got an internet connection on the Saddle. Reports from the Guardian and […]

By Peter | Posted in america | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Pig Snout a la Thai

February 24, 2021 – 2:37 pm

Several years ago my Thai cousin and I stopped by the Jomtien tha-lat. My sister-in-law ran a food stall inside the open-air market. On my last visit Yai had been selling chickens. Now it was pig and Khim said, “We eat from tail to nose. Everything, but the oink.” On display were heads, tails, feet, […]

By Peter | Posted in Food, Thailand | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Happy Purim

February 24, 2021 – 9:18 am

Five years ago I wandered through West 47th Street looking for a job. No one was interested in hiring a goy on Purim and my Hassidic friends cajoled me into having a drink with them. “Whiskey is kosher.” They poured a good measure of Scotch into a glass. “Shalom.” I clinked glass with them following […]

By Peter | Posted in Bet On Crazy, holiday, semi-fiction | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

THE TASTE OF PIG by Peter Nolan Smith

February 24, 2021 – 8:56 am

My great-grandaunt Bert circumnavigated the world on her father?s whaling ship in the 1870s. In 1960 National Geographic published a story about her childhood travels and at her 101st birthday the old Yankee lady related tales of seeing the black-toothed betel-nut chewers of Indonesia and joining tiger hunts on Java. The only two other family […]

By Peter | Posted in 90s, indonesia, photo-romans, semi-fiction | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Journal Entry – June 22, 1977 – Gaslight Pub – Park Slope

February 20, 2021 – 9:33 pm

Last night the improv class at Hunter College was crazy, as Chuck, Carla, and I created another version of STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE about trannys. Carla went home with her ex-husband. I headed back to Brooklyn. No one from Manhattan wants to bridge or tunnel to that borough. At the Gaslight Pub the crowd was in […]

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