Random life updates

I added Twitter syndication, and because I have nothing to test it with I’ll share some random life updates.

My daughter was born recently, which means I’m on paternity leave for a few months. Hopefully in the liminal hours of sleep training, I’ll have some time to work on my book. Or at least catch up on reading.

I finally published my grandmother’s autobiography. I doubt anyone outside of my family will want to read it, but it’s available for sale on Amazon.

This was a convoluted saga. First my grandmother dictated her story into a handheld microphone in Hungarian. Then my mother and father spent a few years translating it to English and transcribing it. Then I edited and organized it into a coherent narrative. Then we had many rounds of editing. All with the typical sorts of delays of travel, health issues, work, babies being born, etc. Now that it’s done, both of my parents want to write their own autobiographies. I hope it will become a family tradition.

My grandmother was born in 1925 and died in 2017. One thing I appreciated about her story was how she describes typical life at that time. It’s too easy to get caught up in the history of monumental events and figureheads. It’s much harder to get a feeling for the zeitgeist as experienced by regular people. And how the byproducts of wars and regime change, a flood from a destroyed bridge or a son who wants to escape the Communist ideology, are what change us the most.

Anyhow, a few people interested in doing similar projects for their own families asked me to publicize this when it was done. So here it is! Time to change a diaper.