Karen Loew is a journalist and urbanist in New York. Follow her on Twitter @karenloew.
Karen Loew
By Karen Loew
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Community Sorry, America: There Is No ‘Hanukkah Season.’
Last year, the first Hanukkah candle was lit on December 6 and the full menorah was blazing, a sight that truly brings me joy, on December 13. Almost two weeks after that came Christmas, two and a half weeks later was New Year’s Day, and close to a month later the super-sized menorah installed on…
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Culture Why Urban Preservation Is the Trend To Watch in 2014
When Tamara Greenfield received her master’s degree in urban planning from Hunter College in 2000, she felt somewhat lonely in her desire to combine her new profession with the arts. “It was hard to find a lot of people looking at the intersection of art and culture in the urban environment — which seems weird…
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Culture What Cornelius Gurlitt Could Have Learned From Monsieur Robert Klein
Until recently, Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, possessed 1,280 pieces of art — some already known to be major works — which he kept wrapped and stored in his apartment in Munich. He enjoyed the cache, but only furtively; the man was in hiding alongside his art. Now that he’s been flushed out and interviewed, Gurlitt comes…
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The Schmooze I.B. Singer and the Problem of Surviving
Herman Broder is a gangly loser who’s won the biggest prize of all: his life. After surviving the Nazi onslaught in Poland by hiding in a haystack, he emigrates to America — specifically, Coney Island — with the gentile Polish woman who hid him, and who is now his wife. This is the setting of…
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News Getting by With Job Loss
Holding several part-time jobs, living with friends, making do without employer-provided benefits and never expecting to achieve your parents’ standard of living: it’s all become routine for today’s youngest entrants into the job market. But in a semi-recessionary, post-union, without-a-safety-net era, workers twice their age are also getting used to the getting-by lifestyle. Unemployment is…
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News Ben Bochner on Following the Soul
Ben Bochner, 56 Austin, Texas Job: Singer-songwriter Previously: Video production and songwriting on the side This fall, Bochner left steady work as a videographer in his longtime home of Eugene, Ore., to pursue music in Austin. Why Change?: “I fell in love with Texas nights. I felt I understood why cowboys wrote songs. There’s a…
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News Esther Merves on Regrouping and Coping
Esther Merves, 54 Springfield, Va. Job: Adjunct professor at George Washington University and standardized medical patient, both part time Previously: Full-time staff research scientist at GWU A doctor of sociology, Merves was laid off from her full-time position several years ago. After fruitlessly searching for another fulfilling full-time job, she is “still in the process…
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News Gail Pierris on Unending Determination
Gail Pierris, 62 New York City Job: Executive assistant to the business manager of DC9, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Previously: Executive assistant at the New-York Historical Society Pierris has degrees in museum education and art history, and has worked in everything from travel and publishing to finance. She enjoys the perks…
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