tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8349236360110556646.post587813249773292947..comments2024-03-28T05:12:59.489-04:00Comments on Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews: Interview with writer Tommy Donovan about his coming-of-age memoirLisa Haseltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10343869216082449827noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8349236360110556646.post-90942041159530220892017-02-09T16:48:33.524-05:002017-02-09T16:48:33.524-05:00I was born in 1963...grew up on 238th and Bailey A...I was born in 1963...grew up on 238th and Bailey Avenue...Irish-American construction worker father, and a German-American mother who worked at St. Patrick's home at 66 Van Cortlandt Park South in the 1970s (after her office at City College was burned down by the student protests in 1968!) We moved to Amalgamated's building 6 in July 1976.. my father had died in 1974 of asbestos-related cancer, Amalgamated's building 6...at 74 Van Cortlandt Park South was across the street from my mother's St. Patrick's home business office job...and a much shorter walk/commute for my older sister who was going to Lehman College for a nursing degree, and starting in fall 1977, for me, as I began Bronx HS of Science. <br />We STILL live in Amalgamated all these years later...and over the years, we've come to self-identify as "part Jewish"...from our close contact with our neighbors over the years...especially the older generation...many of them pre-war immigrants from Germany or Eastern Europe. My mother's parents were born in Bavaria...moved to the US (separately) in 1920...economic emigrants from Weimar Germany...often sending money home to their families. <br />It seems that the LAST wave of European immigrants to Amalgamated arrived in the mid-80s/90s as the 'wall' fell and perestroika/glasnost allowed the last of the Jews of eastern Europe to immigrate...some eventually to Amalgamated...and also included some non-Jewish people from the same countries...ncluding Romanian and Russian Orthodox. <br />As many of Tommy DOnovan's cohorts seemed to have almost wholesale moved out of the NW Bronx...to upstate NY...northern New Jersey, Long Island or further...some have "elevated" enough financially to live in Manhattan....either paying high monthly rents or somehow being able to pool enough $$$ to buy a co-op apartment or even a brownstone. <br />Today, as the WWII immigrant population...including the last of the Holocaust survivors with the arm tattoos doe off, our new Amalgamated cooperators seem to be from a veritable UN list of countries from around the world...with the largest "chunks" of our proverbial 'salad bowl'...as described by our late Senator Daniel P. Moynihan in his BEYONG THE MELTING POT come from the Dominican Republic, Korea, African- and Caribbean-Americans et.al. There's even some "economic refugees"...WASPs and other European-Americans...escaping the high rental (and retail)prices of living in Manhattan. The children of ALL of our cooperators...as always...seem to congregate on "THE RAIL"...but not in the numbers...nor in such long sittings as the kids of the 50s/60s/70s did...all too many of them are tweeting...texting...playing video games AT HOME...or otherwise staring at some sort of blue screen. You don't heard the BOUNCE of a basketball or an argument over a handball match nearly as often as we used to. (sigh) Glenn from the Bronxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11704097877350188884noreply@blogger.com