THANK YOU in advance for supporting 30 Poems in November and the Center for New Americans! A few unconventional suggestions: to honor my maternal grandparents, please give $40 (or $1940 if you can spare it!); to honor my mom, who died last year of covid-19, please give $41; to honor the Jewish tradition, please make a donation in a multiple of 18 (it's good luck). This year I will be splitting my writing time between poetry and my translation from Yiddish of my great-grandfather's last book, about less fortunate members of his family who were killed in the Bialystok ghetto. So I invite you also to consider honoring my great-great aunt Sheyna and her daughter Hanka (for whom I am named), both heroes of the underground resistance, with a donation of $43 in honor of the year of their deaths and the liquidation of the ghetto.
The Center for New Americans provides support and education services to immigrants in our community. This cause is important to me because my grandparents (pictured) were immigrants, refugees of the European Holocaust who arrived in the US in late 1940; my mother, arguably an "anchor baby," was born a few months later in 1941. Immigrants contribute so much to our local, regional, and national communities, and it is important to welcome and support them as we ourselves would want to be welcomed and supported if we had to remake our lives in a new home. This is true now more than ever. So please give as generously as you can!
