Tag Archives: bet on crazy

The Plight of a Billionairess – 2009

Back in 2008 a shoe dropped on the world economy week. The downturn was unlike anything I had seen since gas crisis of 1973. One spring weekend in 2009 I couldn’t take any more bad news and fled New York for the bucolic hills of Dutchess County. My good friend AC picked me up at […]

BET ON CRAZY 1 by Peter Nolan Smith

In the 1970s I knew very little about diamonds as a child other than Superman could squeeze coal with his steel-hard hands to create diamonds and my father had bought a diamond ring for my mother. It was a hundredth of the size of the diamonds Superman never gave to Lois Lane, but my mother […]

THE GUILT OF MOTHERS by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the 1990s I deserted New York to spend the Easter holiday with my family on the South Shore of Boston. Despite my abandonment of God as a child my mother persisted in requesting my attendance at morning Mass. It was a small sacrifice to make for the woman who brought me into this […]

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL OF PASSAICH by Peter Nolan Smith

When Cecil B. DeMille released THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1956 and it was an immediate box office success, earning the cinematic retelling of Exodus over $180 million dollars. In 1962 Paramount Pictures re-released the film for screenings at drive-ins across the nation and my father loaded my five brothers and sisters into our Ford station […]

Happy Purim

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 the religious […]