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Menachem Elyah Paull

Aug 21, 2026, 6:02 PM

Why I Am Leaving Montreal at 70 · עוזב בגיל שבעים

The Erasure Aliyah at Seventy — Post One of Three Menachem Elyah Paull Nine months ago I asked an editor in Jerusalem to erase me. She did it in two days. Two days. I have waited longer than that for a plumber. I have...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

Aug 20, 2026, 6:50 AM

The Mountain That Refused the War

AI-generated illustration inspired by the slopes of Chaparrastique volcano in El Salvador.

People often ask me what I remember most about growing up during El Salvador's civil war. They expect stories about soldiers, explosions, fear, or death. Those memories exist, but they are not the first ones that come to me....

Aug 18, 2026, 6:08 PM

Welcome to my blog

That's a photo of one of my solar projects.

Who am I and why do I want to write a blog now? For starters, I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, but always for myself, for school, or for work. Since October 7 hit...

Silas Anastacio

Aug 13, 2026, 4:58 AM

Fleeing the Terror: The Story of Ariella Pardo Segre

São Paulo – In 1943, as Nazi persecution intensified in Italy, the Pardo family risked everything to survive. Guided by a smuggler and sheer courage, they crossed the Alps on foot toward Switzerland. Among them was Ariella Pardo Segre,...

Michael J. Salamon

Aug 12, 2026, 8:56 PM

Vienna: Walking the Past Fearing Its Return

Vienna is a city that wears its history on its sleeve. Grand buildings line the boulevards, and it’s easy to get swept up in the old-world charm of imperial palaces and bustling coffeehouses. But beneath the surface, in the...

Barry Mellinger

Aug 9, 2026, 6:38 AM

Never Again, Has Blinded Us

I am a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, barely survivors. Survivors who stepped out of the camps into a world emptied of everyone they had ever loved. Survivors who emerged with no surviving family, no parents, no siblings, no child,...

Aug 6, 2026, 9:14 AM

At Eighty-Three: Choose Life, Not Certainty

When I turned eighty, I wrote that it was a moment of truth. Today I turn eighty-three. What is different this time? At eighty-three, the truth is harder—and less comforting. This is the first birthday I I am spending without...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

Aug 6, 2026, 5:43 AM

The Bridge That Held Us Together

Puente Litoral (later widely known as Puente de Oro), over the Lempa River in El Salvador, photographed on January 20, 1953. Courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1988, a dog with rabies bit me in San Jorge. I do not remember the bite as clearly as I remember what came after it: the buses, the hospitals, the bridges, and my older brother sitting beside me...

Nina B. Mogilnik

Jul 31, 2026, 10:52 PM

Little Pieces Make a Life

This morning, a friend came by unannounced to do what she called "a welfare check" because we'd failed to connect by phone or text tag this week. We speak or see each other every week by routine, but this...

Walter Estever Gonzalez

Jul 23, 2026, 5:51 AM

The Boy Everyone Called Calavera

A Salvadoran mother offers a meal to a young soldier during the country's civil war. AI-generated illustration based on the author's recollection.

I no longer remember his real name. Everyone called him Calavera—the Spanish word for "Skull." His real name disappeared long ago, but the nickname remained. That’s how memory sometimes survives war: it forgets names but refuses to let go...

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