By Erika Grumet When I was a kid, I would occasionally encounter people with numbers tattooed on their arms. I don’t remember a time when Nazis and what they had done to Jews (and by extension, my own family) weren’t a part of my consciousness. I heard the stories first hand from the survivors, inContinue reading “Antivax Racists are Trying to Repurpose the Yellow Star of David”
Category Archives: Pretty Words about Ugly Things
You Don’t Look a Day Over 200
By Erika Grumet It’s birthday time here. Mine is this week, although I am nowhere near 200, but we’ll also be celebrating Walt Whitman’s 202nd birthday with this weekend’s episode of The Ivory Tower Boiler Room. I think it’s hard to grow up where I did on Long Island and not have at least a Continue reading “You Don’t Look a Day Over 200”
May Wrap Up: The month of May was come
By Erika Grumet when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit. -Thomas Malory Lusty for clicks and comments for sure… When I sat down to write this, I had a cat at my feet, a cat at my head, and one under my right elbow, who was also insisting on sharingContinue reading “May Wrap Up: The month of May was come”
Erika’s Big Think #1:Coming out of the Poetry Closet
By Erika Grumet It’s a little ironic, I was the one who proposed that the topic for this month’s Big Think… should be “writing about ourselves as writers.” Of all the members of the Ivory Tower team, I’m the one who really struggles to self-identify as “a writer” and in fact often actively resists theContinue reading “Erika’s Big Think #1:Coming out of the Poetry Closet”
Sunday is for Swearing
By Adam Katz So. Erika and I were talking about the difference between a fanny-pack and a bum-bag. I didn’t know until a few days ago that, what in the United States, call a ‘fanny pack,’ in Britain is called a “bum bag,” apparently because in England (and elsewhere) “fanny” is a euphemism for “vagina.”Continue reading “Sunday is for Swearing”
Meet Erika
By Erika Grumet A little more than six months ago, well into the COVID-19 pandemic, and feeling the need to insert some structure into my own life, I signed up for a workshop “Feminist Midrash: Femme Fatale or Fierce Woman Warrior.” This was definitely an out of character thing to do; I’d stopped writing anythingContinue reading “Meet Erika”