Good morning writers.

Welcome to South Florida’s Writer Association’s Mango Writers Conference (A Maggie Eubanks Production). I’m Mort Laitner, president of SFWA. I’m proud to say this year marks our 35th anniversary and our 14th Mango Conference.

We hope you’ll enjoy your day with our esteemed speakers, guests and members.

Jeffery Dorn, our Director of Contests, advised me that at this year’s conference, we have an extraordinary raffle prize. It’s a piece of writing history. A piece of the Beat Generation. It’s a Jack Kerouac’s bathrobe. 

Jeffrey donated the bathrobe to us and said, “Years ago, I worked with a gentleman at Xerox who was named Kerouac. He said Jack was his uncle. I told him how much I liked his uncle’s books, On The Road and the Dharma Bums. He told me the family had given much of Jack’s iconic clothing to Christie’s for an auction, but kept some articles for sentimental reasons. Christie’s didn’t want this bathrobe, and I don’t have a letter or certificate giving it’s provenance, just his word. He was leaving the country and said, “I could have it as a friend. Perhaps it will inspire you when you write,” he suggested. I wore it when I wrote my book, so who knows. Now it’s time for it to find a new writer to inspire. Maybe the story isn’t true, but maybe it is, who knows?”

Jack Kerouac was a novelist, a poet and a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Jack’s bathrobe belongs in a museum. And you now have a chance to own it, if you buy a raffle ticket.

I first read Kerouac’s “On the Road”(1957) way back in 1969 as a junior at the University of Miami. Here’s a quote from Jack’s book:

…and I shambled after as usual as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

We writers are people of interest, mad to write, to live and to talk.

So make Jack proud today. Get on the road. Hang out with some people that interest you. Buy a raffle ticket, burn like a roman candle, pop and make everybody go “Awww.!

Have a great day. 

Thanks for attending. 

Have fun.

PS—I now own Kerouac’s bathrobe. I won it at the raffle. When my numbers matched the ticket pulled out of the bowl, my heart burned like a roman candle, popped and said, “Awww.”

I sit on the couch, petting my Westie’s white coat. Daisy, like all dogs, enjoys when I rub her belly. She feels safe and secure. And as she shuts her eyes, mine feast on another episode of Northern Exposure (Amazon Prime).

You see, almost every night, I’m binging on two or three episodes of the show.

And I wonder, “How many of my young readers have ever seen an episode of Northern Exposure?”

“Who knows?”

“But I bet the number is real low. But I wager the old timers will remember the program.”

I think, “I watched that show from 1990 to 1995. And during its six year run (110 episodes), I never missed one.”

So you may ask, “Mort, why were you so addicted to that TV show?”

“Well, I loved the Alaskan panoramas filled with Denali, forests, salmon and moose, the weird story lines and the cast of outcasts surviving in the American wilderness. Our last frontier.”

You see, I grew up in a small country town in the Catskills. A town with about a thousand folks that was quite similar to the town of Cicely, Alaska. We too had our flora and fauna, our eccentric cast of town folks and some pretty astounding storylines. Northern Exposure was a warm plate of nostalgia served to a country boy feasting on grits. A town with a tavern, where the locals raised a glass or two to the greatest nation on earth.

But most of all, I loved the fact that the protagonist, Dr. Joel Fleischman, (Rob Morrow) is a handsome NYC member of the tribe and Dr. Joel’s love interest, Maggie O’Connell, (Janine Turner) is an absolutely beautiful shiksa. What a shayna punim! With a stylish, boyish haircut and that brown mole located one inch south of her left eyebrow. She was the embodiment of an American beauty. A living fantasy. And I, like every Yiddisha boychick, craved kissing that mole. I desired to touch perfection and feast on America’s sweetest piece of eye-candy. And this Jewish M.D. and his shiksa had chemistry. You could see it in their eyes. They were a thing. And, yes, those were the days.

The show was also chock-full of Judaism: talk of bar mitzvahs, seders, schmucks, Magen Davids, the cup of Elijah, the prophet and circumcisions, Kaddish and kippahs and not a whiff of anti-Semitism.

Yes, you remember those days.

How we kvelled, knowing that we were living in the “Promised Land.”

So now you’re wondering, “Why did Mort entitle his story, The End of the Jewish American Renaissance?”

Well, what I didn’t know at the time, was that Northern Exposure represented a high point in the Jewish American renaissance. But with the benefit of hindsight, 29 years worth of hindsight, I realized that during that period, (1990 to 1995), we Jews were living the American dream. We were in a cultural renaissance. We felt safe and secure. It seemed that nobody hated us. Well, almost nobody.

And now, I want to sing about the good old days

Okay, now is your time to sing this Russian folk tune with me. All together now:

Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
Think of all the great things we would do?

… Those were the days, my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
La-la-la-da-da-da
La-la-la-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da, la-da-da-da-da

Let’s thank Gene Raskin (writer) and Mary Hopkin (singer) for the memories.

Yes, we thought, “Those were the days, my friend, our renaissance would never end. For we were young and sure to have our way. Well, we lost and America started its regression back into the Dark Ages. Our run had ended.”

By 2015, the writing started to appear on our walls. And by 2024 our walls were covered with blood-red graffiti.

Rampant anti-Semitism floods the internet;

Neo-Nazis in full uniform marching and sieg heiling down our streets;

Torch-bearing Nazis chanting down the streets of Charlottesville, “The Jews Will Not Replace Us.”

Protestors burning Israeli flags and ripping down posters of hostages;

Bigots terrorizing Jewish students on American campuses;

Presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT failing to understand the meaning of “genocide”;

A former US president breaking bread with America’s leading Neo-Nazis;

A former president saying, “There are good people on both sides” with one of the sides being American Nazis;

Jews being murdered in front of their synagogues;

Cemeteries being desecrated: tombstones up ended and covered with black swastikas;

A land where Jews feared wearing stars of David around their necks or kippahs on their heads or placing mezuzahs on their doorposts.

Well, I’m still sitting on that couch, now scratching Daisy behind her ears and watching another episode of Northern Exposure, when I nod my head and think, “We had a good run, too bad it’s over.”

Cool globes Jerusalem, Environment of Israel 22 August 2013. Dror Feitelson via the PikiWiki – Wikimedia Commons

On the evening of Shabbat, I watched TV in the den of my sister-in-law’s home.

The day before, we sat shiva for her late husband.

Now, she turned on her television, to watch services performed in a Conservative temple in San Diego.

I studied the bema, the Torah and the stained glass depictions of the Ten Commandments and I wondered, “How many miles is it from San Diego to Jerusalem?”

So I asked Google.

“I’m not sure how many miles it is to drive from California to Israel, but it’s 7,629 miles as the crow flies,” she replied.

“Wow! We’re worlds apart. I’m literally on the other side of the globe.”

As I listened to the cantor and rabbi sing and play guitar, I wondered, “What would the rabbi say in his sermon about the Gaza War?”

And toward the end of the service, the rabbi mentioned, “If you want to donate money to help Israel through this terrible war, please donate to…”

That was it!

No mention of the names of Israeli soldiers who had died in battle that week.

No mention of the hostages still held captive by Hamas.

No words about how the war was going.

No mention of what’s happening in the UN.

So I asked my sister-in-law, “Is this the way American temples are treating Israel during its time in crisis?”

And I thought, “Wow, we really are, worlds apart.”