The Lilith Blog

November 17, 2016 by Rochelle Newman

About Your Boy Donald: An Open Letter to Melania Trump

Dear Melania Trump:

Here at World Is Watching High, the U.S. campus had an election. One candidate, who happened to be a girl, won the popularity contest. She didn’t want to be popular. She wanted to be President.

Strange how that worked out, since the school’s newspapers made sure everyone understood how very unpopular she was. She wasn’t a perfect candidate by any stretch of the imagination, but your boy’s henchmen and henchwomen showed no mercy. She was subjected to hacked emails, association with sexting and other forms of bullying, cyber and otherwise. She might have won if your boy didn’t buddy up with Russia. Who knows? We can’t turn back the clock.

Using the system we had in place, your boy won. Since all he cared about was winning, he used whatever tactics he could get away with no matter whom they hurt and how much damage they did.

The Lilith Blog

September 6, 2016 by Rochelle Newman

Tenements and Air Rights: A Cautionary Tale

Veronica ML

In Welsh, it’s called Hiraeth. There is no English equivalent. It’s a nostalgia one feels, a homesickness for a place that doesn’t exist anymore. For me, it’s how I feel when I visit my old neighborhood, New York’s Lower East Side. I haven’t lived in Manhattan for over 20 years, but I have been back and forth enough to adjust to and even appreciate changes. On the West Side, The High Line is change at its best. I’m even excited about the recently approved Lowline, an underground park-like experience that repurposes an abandoned trolley terminal at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. My anxiety over what feels like an Etch-a-Sketch erasure of an historic community wasn’t triggered by things happening below the pavement. My sense of loss really kicked in when I read that Katz’s Delicatessen had sold its air rights.