Featured Interview Archives

Interview: Short Life Lessons

I was interviewed by World Class Performer website about my new book, Tree of Hope: Anne Frank’s Father Shares His Wisdom with an American Teen and the World. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Source: WorldClassPerformer.com

Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like? Did you have any particular experiences/stories that shaped your adult life?

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California. I was very much loved and supported by my parents. However, the childhood I always considered truly happy was the one I had with my beautiful sons. When they were born, so was I.
I am grateful for the fact that my childhood home was one of acceptance and love for all beings; we cherished animals. We lived on a rambling ranch and I had many pets that were rescued and cared for. Our holidays were often filled with people of all races and religions gathered around our table. I never knew prejudice.

So, a particularly wrenching memory I had was in the mid-Fifties when I was traveling cross-country with my parents and little sister and we stopped at a gas station where I saw a water fountain with a sign above it titled, “Colored.” Besides myself, with excitement thinking that the water would actually be colorful I ran to turn on the spigot whereupon the gas station attendant stopped me telling me I couldn’t drink from that fountain. It was for colored people alone. I had absolutely no idea what he meant. Colored people? People with designs and colors on them? No. People who weren’t white. Shocked by the reality for the first time in my life at age ten that people were separated by the color of their skin, I remember sobbing to my parents, and wrote a poem at that time, “Always drink from the same fountain. Always climb the same mountain. Negro, Japanese, Hindu, White should all be friends and never fight…”

I still believe this with all my heart.

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Guest Spot on KRXA 540

On Sunday, November 11, 2012, I was the guest of Michelle Jackson on KRXA 540 radio to talk about my relationship with Otto Frank and my book, Dear Cara: Letters from Otto Frank.

Hear the recording on how I was impacted both by Anne Frank’s Diary and by the meaningful words that Otto wrote to me throughout my youth into adult hood.

Listen Now »

You can also buy the book directly from Amazon.

This Week’s Featured Interview: Greg Archer

When Greg Archer and I started talking about using his own garbage from which to grow abundantly, I had a preconceived idea of where the direction would be heading. Greg, a longtime Editor of The Good Times newspaper in Santa Cruz, California was from my vantage point a success. His interviews engage him in dialogue with the rich and famous. He attends star-studded events; travels in trendy circles everywhere; is already an accomplished writer co-authoring a popular book, Shut-Up, Skinny Bitches; was a health enthusiast—everything from yoga to meditation to rigorous workouts and more.

I thought we would talk about how he had grown such a triumphant life after years of fighting lack of self-esteem, an unhappy body image and his fight to maintain the course after roller-coaster bouts of yo-yo dieting. We talked about his desire to help men, especially gay men, find more meaningful ways to accept themselves and others seeing beyond the superficial look and preconception of body-beautiful. But as we talked, something profound began to reveal itself.

Greg told me that he has a restlessness within him. He has this almost mystical longing, a calling to go back in time and unearth his Polish family’s story. I asked him to tell me about it and he began to share a story that is not unlike Dr. Zhivago meets the Holocaust meets raw, surreal, unthinkable slave-driving cruelty under Stalin’s bloody grip during World War II, and a Catholic Polish family’s miraculous survival against years of horror. The saga of his relatives covered continents and your heart pounds, you can barely breathe reading Greg’s article about them. It is the foundation upon which he is planning to write in a novel; the garbage of despair upon which his own garden will finally take root and grow.

Greg’s true roots are alive in his Polish ancestry. Their tears and screams and struggles and survival and longings to find a place of their own, a place from which they could call home at last–those are the source of Greg’s own insecurity and feelings of entrapment that has barely anything to do with the present. He has inherited the pain of his astounding family’s past and he needs to unshackle their entrapment in order for him to be free. Only then will he be able to grow the garden of true abundance that is woven into all that he is today — a first generation Pole who is longing to embrace the power of his extraordinary heritage. I welcome you to read an article Greg wrote about his family and that will soon feed a wealth of imagery in a story that must be told – The Family Gift: http://goodtimessantacruz.com/index.php/good-times-cover-stories/667-the-family-gift.html