My Zadie says no to blackface

My Bobie (grandmother) Sylvia was reading the blog (see post below on blackface), and she wrote to tell me that I take after my (late) Zadie (grandfather), Leon Katler. Anyway, Bobie tells me that when Zadie was Youth Director at Temple Beth Am (he was also the first president of the temple before he had a falling out with the rabbi, but that's another story), one of the other youth workers wanted to put on a blackface minstrel show and "your Zadie put his foot down with a loud 'no way'." Way to go, Zadie.

Speaking of my Zadie, I miss him a lot (he died just after I started college), and I wish he could be here to see my cartoons and blog. He was the person who got me into progressive politics when I was a kid, he bought me subscriptions to In These Times and The Liberal Opinion (where I first read Tom Tomorrow's cartoons) and gave me his back issues of The Nation. One of the last things I remember him saying to me was that he wanted to make sure my friends and I were involved in labor activism and "marching for homosexual rights." (I am, Zadie, I promise).

And while I'm on this topic, I also miss my other grandfather, though he died when I was three. My mother tells me he was quite the personality and used to drive me around on his motorcycle... here's a picture of us together).