Before the Hollywood centrifuge of Facebook philanthropy stopped spinning and Sean Penn took the microphone from Anderson Cooper, I too gathered my lance and shield. Like a plate tectonic Don Quixote, I headed for Haiti.

Had I ever been that brutally honest with myself? I slunk to a bench on the mall, sat in the sunshine and decided to give it a try. Ok, babies. What to do about babies? Let's think it through.

In 1941 the Nazis and their allies occupied Romania. Rose and her mother were forced into the Jewish ghetto along with the 60,000 Jews of Czernowitz. By the end of WW II 55,000 of the Jews of Czernowitz were annihilated by the Nazis. Rose Ausländer survived the three years of Nazi occupation through forced labor and going into hiding. While in hiding she became friends with well-known Jewish poet, Paul Celan, also from Czernowitz. During spring 1944 the Soviets occupied the city, and liberated the Jews. Rose worked then as a librarian.

A New Yorker’s fear of violence in Athens. To quote the ‘80s tune, should he stay, or should he go?

A wave passes through/ echoing the call/ of the other loon/ on the fog-lifted shore.