I just returned from the National Council of Social Studies (NCSS) National Conference in Nashville (lovely city–hey, hey, Nashville!) where I presented with friends and colleagues, Lisa Bauman and Colleen Tambuscio–both educational legends and long-time personal inspirations (sorry, ladies, if that indicates that we are, well, well-seasoned) –about our journey with Peter Feigl. If you’ll excuse the navel-gazing moment, which will hereafter to be referred to –often– as NGM, let’s talk about the word journey for a moment. Oh, also, link alert!
I’ve known Peter Feigl–the USC testimony version–since discovering him in 2007 when I worked as education manager for the USC Shoah Foundation. Even in the fall of the year, we (my beloved boss and now eternal friend, Sherry Bard–hey, hey, SB!), were already preparing for a big workshop in conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in the spring of 2008. I knew that the Museum’s workshop leader (my mentor and now eternal friend, Steve Feinberg–hey, hey, SF!) would be providing participants with Salvaged Pages (by author Alexandra Zapruder, my writing inspiration and now eternal friend–hey, hey, AP!) My thought was that we should examine the book and see how we could provide an intersection of the book and the USC Shoah Foundation. Lo and behold, there was a diary within Salvaged Pages where we had a matching testimony. Peter Feigl became that intersection. And with it, he has become my life inspiration and eternal friend (hey, hey, PF!) and impacted my life in ways he–or I–will never completely understand but maybe somehow I can try to express through this blog which will include many future NGMs1.
- NGMs = Navel-Gazing Moments ↩︎