The Kentucky Marriage and “Baby Girl Schlachter”

My research quickly revealed a death certificate for “Baby Girl Schlachter,” who was born prematurely at 6 months on August 28, 1939 in Salt Lake City and died within twelve hours. My grandparents didn’t have time to give her a name.

I was shocked to learn that I had a great aunt who wasn’t listed on the family tree. I don’t recall my grandparents ever mentioning her (it’s possible I’m forgetting or didn’t understand some discussions).

Baby Girl Schlachter got me thinking about some counterfactuals. If Baby Girl Schlachter hadn’t died, would my grandparents have made different family plans or life decisions? Would I even exist in that counterfactual?

Baby Girl Schlachter also got me thinking about my grandparents’ wedding. My grandparents married in a Kentucky county courthouse on May 30, 1939. They were living in Ohio (in the Cincinnati area) at the time. Why would they travel an hour or more across state lines to get married? Why hold the wedding in a county courthouse? I can’t imagine any family members attended (the witnesses were court staff), and I doubt the wedding followed many Jewish customs. None of this made sense, unless…

Baby Girl Schlachter’s conception date appears to be late February/early March, and my grandparents got married in May. One possible explanation for the May wedding is that my grandparents hastily scheduled it before my grandmother started showing. This might also explain the Kentucky wedding venue, i.e., perhaps Kentucky had more relaxed rules for quick marriage licenses.

This theory raised more questions for me. Max and Rosel had been coordinating their moves for at least two years by the time of Baby Girl Schlachter’s birth/death, including the relocation from Germany to the U.S. After their long courtship and joint planning, why hadn’t they already married? Were they waiting for better economic prospects or more stability in their lives before they got married? Resolution of their immigration status? Something else? So many unanswered questions.

My Grandmother Was an Orphan

When I reviewed the family tree, I noticed that Rosel’s parents died when she was 5 and 9 (and her younger sister Heddy was only 6 when she was fully orphaned). This raises an obvious question: who took care of Rosel and Heddy after their parents’ deaths? What was the financial arrangement? Where did Rosel get the money to move from Crailsheim to Frankfurt and train as a nurse? Being orphaned at such a young age must have had a tremendous impact on her childhood, her development, and her perspectives on life.

“Deportient”

Reviewing the family tree, I saw that three of Rosel’s six other siblings who survived to adulthood—in other words, three of my great aunts and uncles—were murdered in the Holocaust, plus the child of one of those siblings. (My great-grandparents had 12 children in total. Five siblings died as children). According to the family tree, two of Rosel’s siblings died in a Riga camp in 1941, and another sibling and her child died in Auschwitz in 1943.

Next to the three siblings murdered in the Holocaust, the Crailsheim family registry has a simple notation: “deportient” (see the red ovals below).

This is how the Nazi Germany government accounted for its Holocaust murders in the family records. The government stripped Jews of their citizenship and then “deported” these newly non-citizens out of the country to Nazi murder camps. The laconic statement “deportient” masks an enormous amount of government abuse, human trauma, and legal fictions. It makes the activity seem almost tidy and legally proper. It normalizes atrocities.

I suffer generational trauma when the Trump government and its associates seek to denaturalize U.S. citizens as political punishment or a racist flex, such as their current attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar. “Denaturalization” means U.S. citizens would be stripped of their citizenship—just like Nazi Germany stripped my great aunts and uncles of their German citizenship. Without U.S. citizenship, the denaturalized individuals become newly vulnerable to government abuse, such as being forced to leave their homes, family, jobs, and social networks. Denaturalization creates an enormous amount of suffering and trauma, and anyone treating denaturalizations as a weaponizable tool appears to be embracing the Nazi playbook.

The post Some Discoveries From My Genealogy Research (Part 4 of 4) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

As part of preparing my German naturalization application, I had to assemble timelines for my grandparents, my parents, and myself. I relied a lot on a family tree created by a distant family member.

The Early Life of Max Schlachter

Max Schlachter was born in 1910 in Frankfurt, Germany. He had an older brother, Joseph. The family tree indicates that Joseph went to Cuba.

Max went to college at the University of Frankfurt. I assume he graduated in 1932. He attended medical school in Bern, Switzerland and graduated in 1937. I don’t know why he went to Switzerland for medical school rather than a German medical school.

The Early Life of Rosel Schlachter

Rosa Rosenfeld was born in 1913 in Crailsheim, Germany, a small town in Baden-Württemberg (Southern Germany). Rosa was the 11th of twelve children. Five of those offspring died as children. Her father died in 1918, and her mom died in 1922. According to the family tree, Rosa’s eldest brother Albert married Frieda Schlachter, suggesting multiple connections between the Rosenfeld and Schlachter families.

Rosa got trained as a nurse and ended up in Frankfurt, but I don’t know the details.

Her birth name was Rosa, but over time she adopted the name “Rosel.” I didn’t find any evidence of a formal name change. As usual with genealogy research, we had to search multiple combinations of her name, including “Rosa Rosenfeld,” “Rosel Rosenfeld,” and “Rosel Schlachter.”

Exit from Germany and First Moves in the US

Though they were not yet married, Max and Rosel both moved to the United States in 1937. I remember them discussing how things kept getting worse in Nazi Germany, but I don’t know what was the exact flashpoint that told them it was time to flee. Obviously, many other German Jews didn’t draw the same conclusion (or didn’t have the ability to leave). I also don’t know where they got the money to leave or if they had any difficulties getting permission to enter the U.S. Surely their medical training was an asset because medical expertise was valuable for the anticipated war to come. Indeed, family lore is that soon after Max and Rosel left for the U.S., Germany prohibited all medical personnel—even Jews—from leaving the country. Exiting before that ban was one of the many good choices they made.

My grandfather sailed to NYC on the SS Manhattan, which left Hamburg on June 2, 1937. My grandma sailed to NYC on the SS Bremen, which left Cherbourg on December 17, 1937 (I assume Rosel boarded in Germany and the boat stopped in Cherbourg on its way out).

When Max arrived in June 1937, he did a residency at the Menorah Hospital in Kansas City, MO. His residency likely ended in summer 1938.

When Rosel arrived in December 1937, she stayed with friends in Manhattan, likely through the first half of 1938.

In 1938, Max got a residency at a hospital in Hamilton, Ohio, and Rosel got a job as a nurse in Oxford, Ohio, about 15 miles away. (Both cities are in the Cincinnati metro area). Given this geographic proximity, they were close enough to talk with and see each other regularly for the first time in a year or more.

On May 30, 1939, Max and Rosel got married in a county courthouse in Alexandria, Campbell County, Kentucky, Alexandria is also part of the Cincinnati metro area, but on the other side of the Ohio River.

Relocation to Utah

Soon after their marriage, Max and Rosel moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. According to my brother-in-law, the U.S. government was suspicious of the loyalty of doctors from Germany, even the Jewish ones. Therefore, the government tried to steer the German doctor refugees to the center of the country, where they posed less of a security threat. Max obtained his Utah medical license in early 1940. Shortly thereafter, he agreed to become the town doctor in Parowan, Utah, a small mining community. Rosel worked as a nurse in his office. Rosel would occasionally reference her time in Parowan without much nostalgia. She described the townspeople as nice but not really able to connect with the foreign Jews with thick accents.

For reasons I don’t know, the family moved from Parowan to Beaver, Utah and then Milford, Utah. My father and aunt were both born in Utah.

Relocation to California

After World War Two ended and security concerns about German refugees abated, my grandfather could leave Utah. He got a California medical license in 1946. The family relocated to Oakland, CA, where Max ran a general medical practice with Rosel as the office nurse. They lived in Oakland from 1946-1973, when they moved to Alameda. Max died in 1997. In 2002, Rosel moved down to Pasadena to be closer to my aunt and her family. Rosel died in 2005. Rosel’s obituary.

Observations

The years 1937-1940 were a chaotic time for Max and Rosel. They moved several times in three years, and they probably had limited real-time communications with each other during their separations.

I can only imagine the stress and uncertainty they must have felt during that period. They were strangers in a strange land. They had language barriers, a strong accent (that never went away), few if any family members nearby, presumably significant financial stress, the challenge of being German when Germans are hated in the U.S., and the challenges of being Jewish at a time when many people in the U.S. were anti-Semitic. Compared to many other immigrants’ stories, perhaps their stories aren’t quite as dramatic or painful. Still, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the sacrifices they made that benefited their descendants.

The post Short Biographies of My Paternal Grandparents, Max and Rosel Schlachter (Part 3 of 4) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

* * *

The Nazi Germany regime denaturalized Jews in multiple ways. For example, in 1941, Nazi Germany terminated citizenship for Jews living outside Germany (the Eleventh Decree to the Law on the Citizenship of the Reich, Nov. 1941). To rectify these Nazi decisions, Germany enacted a “right of return” that lets descendants of affected Jews reclaim the German citizenship they would have ordinarily been entitled to. My paternal grandparents were covered by Article 116 (2), first sentence, of the Basic Law (GG) for the Federal Republic of Germany, making all of their descendants (including me) eligible for German citizenship.

Preliminary Steps

In summer 2024, I reached out to the German consulate in San Francisco about applying for citizenship. I was connected to a handler, Andrea, who patiently helped me understand and navigate the options. It was a pleasant shock to deal with a government official who was actually helpful and did more than the minimum. With Andrea’s guidance, I decided I didn’t need a lawyer. The main challenge would be gathering the supporting evidence, not interpreting the law.

I extended an invitation to my other relatives on my paternal grandparents’ side to piggyback on my application. In total, 16 family members applied.

Gathering the Evidence

My grandparents died over 20 years ago, so they (and everyone in their generation) were not around to provide the required evidence or answer any questions. We had to collect and recreate everything. I began gathering evidence in earnest in Fall 2024.

Some supporting evidence was fairly straightforward to obtain. For example, I submitted online requests for my grandparents’ birth certificates from their birth cities, Frankfurt and Crailsheim. Because the records were more than 100 years old, they had become historical documents not subject to privacy restrictions. I did need help translating them because Google Translate couldn’t handle old-style German cursive. A Fall 2024 German exchange student graciously recruited her grandmother to translate the birth certificates.

Other supporting evidence was extremely difficult to find. In particular, no one knew where my grandparents got married so that we could obtain a copy of their marriage license. Eventually, my brother-in-law figured out they got married in a Kentucky courthouse. I’ll discuss this unexpected wedding venue in my fourth blog post.

After everyone gathered their evidence, we sent the package to the German consulate in July 2025. The package had some missing pieces, such as some people’s dates of residence. The examiner didn’t flag those holes. If you’re going through this process, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The Application Gets Bounced

In September 2025, the German examiner bounced our applications. We were missing: (1) proof that my grandparents were German citizens, and (2) certified copies of my grandparents’ U.S. Certificates of Naturalization.

The July 2025 package had evidence that I thought indicated German citizenship, including their birth certificates. However, German citizenship (like most countries) follows bloodlines, not place of birth. As for the Certificates of Naturalization, the US CIS doesn’t provide certified copies of Certificates of Naturalization, so I had submitted the photocopies they sent. I needed more guidance from the SF German consulate, which I got in December 2025.

Validating my grandparents’ German citizenship was as simple as getting copies of their family registries. We don’t have such documents in the US, but German cities catalogued an entire family in a single record that included the head of household’s citizenship. I requested my grandfather’s family registry from Frankfurt, which took 4 months. I also requested my grandmother’s family registry from Crailsheim. They emailed that overnight LOL.

Getting the U.S. Certificates of Naturalization was harder. No one in the family could find the originals in the family archives. That would have instantly solved the problem. The US CIS said repeatedly on their website that they don’t provide certified copies (I don’t know why they have this policy), and I had already submitted uncertified copies from the US CIS.

At the time of my grandparents’ naturalization, one original Certificate of Naturalization went to the federal government (now the US CIS), and another original was stored at the local courthouse. If I could find the local courthouse originals, perhaps I could get certified copies from them.

My grandparents got their Certificates of Naturalization in Parowan, Utah, a small mining town where my grandfather was the town doctor and my grandmother was the town nurse. I contacted multiple institutions in Utah to find the originals, including the Parowan City Clerk, the local judicial district, the Utah State Archives, and the National Archives in Denver. No one had it or could tell me who had it. The current location of those records would be an interesting mystery if it weren’t so frustrating. I never did find those originals.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law spotted language on the US CIS website indicating that the German consulate had agreed to accept non-certified copies from US CIS (so long as the uncertified copies were sent with the US CIS envelope). I had already submitted the uncertified copies with the envelope in July 2025, but when I went back in December 2025, the office couldn’t find it. I ordered another uncertified copy of each certificate and didn’t open the envelope. I also took a screenshot of the US CIS website’s disclosure.

The Applications Get Approved

In April 2026, I mailed copies of the Frankfurt and Crailsheim family registries, the screenshot, and the envelope with the uncertified copies of the U.S. Certificates of Naturalization to the German examiner. A few weeks later, SUCCESS!!! All 16 of us received emails notifying us that our naturalization applications were approved and instructing us how to proceed.

Our consulate contact Andrea had warned us that naturalization applications can take years to review. However, she advised me that my aunt, who is over 80, would get her application fast-tracked due to her age. Indeed, we applied in July 2025 and were approved less than a year later; and the delay from September to April was due to my uncertainty how to proceed. In theory, the process could have gone faster if I had turned around the evidence resubmission faster. I don’t think we’d have the same quick approval cycle if my aunt had not been part of the package.

Reflections on the Experience

Overall, the process seemed intimidating but really wasn’t that complex, especially with Andrea’s help. Still, I found it stressful and traumatic.

It was stressful because 15 other family members were depending on me to help them with their Plan B. I felt an enormous weight of responsibility to complete the process for them.

It was traumatic because it forced me to relive, step-by-step, my grandparents’ experience. I visualized the challenges they faced and the sacrifices they made, all to give themselves and their descendants a better life. I felt lucky that I never had to navigate such traumatic experiences like they did. I felt bad for them that they faced so many challenges. I confronted the tragedies of my other family members who did not or could not make the same choices my grandparents made and, as a result, died in the Holocaust. I felt guilty that I never fully appreciated my grandparents’ efforts or even asked them much about their history (to be fair, they didn’t often talk about the old days and didn’t get very detailed when they did). I cried repeatedly during the process as I processed some of the generational trauma.

The Citizenship Ceremony

After I got the email notifying me that my naturalization application had been approved, in mid-May, I picked up my naturalization certificate in person at the SF German Consulate. The “ceremony” was extremely informal. I didn’t swear any oath, and the only thing I had to sign was a receipt for my certificate. It was over in less than 5 minutes. (No ceremony photos because the German consulate doesn’t allow visitors to bring any electronics onto the campus, including cellphones).

The consulate office allowed me to submit my passport application in the same visit. My E.U. passport arrived about a month later in mid-June. When my kids went to pick up their naturalization certificates, they were not given the opportunity to submit their passport applications, and passport application appointments at the SF consulate have a 3-4 month waitlist. So I got lucky with the timing of my passport application submission.

The post How I Obtained German Citizenship (Part 2 of 4) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

This post explains why I obtained German citizenship. Subsequent posts will explain how I did so; provide biographies of my German grandparents; and highlight some historical surprises I learned along the way.

The U.S.’s Governance Design Is Under Stress

As I learned from the 1970s Schoolhouse Rock! cartoons, the United States divides its government’s powers among the executive branch (elected by voters), the legislative branch (also elected by voters) that sets the rules for and supervises the executive branch, and the judicial branch that ensures both the executive and legislative branches follow the law and the Constitution.

I generally believe in the wisdom of this governance design. And yet, over the past decade, my confidence has been shaken. I have nervously observed each of the three branches repeatedly and unrepentantly shirk or disregard their historical checks-and-balances obligations. Other important institutions that we expect to challenge government overreach, such as universities, large companies, and journalists, have buckled to (or even normalized) these failures.

These institutional declines have raised my concerns about the resilience of our governance structure and our country’s commitment to the rule of law. Without a well-functioning government that follows the rule of law, many key features that I love most about this country are in jeopardy. Worse, the governance design failures will be hard to fix. In the best-case scenario, we face a long and contentious journey to repair the damage and rebuild trust in our institutions, with no guarantee of success.

All of this has left me asking myself: What will the U.S.’s governing institutions look like in the future? Will the institutions still protect my safety and enhance my ability to thrive?

Expanded Domestic Antisemitism

I’ve never personally experienced any antisemitism. As a kid, I grew up in generally tolerant secular communities. For college, I attended UCLA, also known as “JewCLA” because over 20% of the student population was Jewish.[FN] In the workplace, my co-workers have always accepted my Jewish identity. There are very few times and places in history where Jews did not personally experience antisemitism. Somehow I had the good luck to live in one of those rare exceptions.

[FN: For comparative purposes, Jews are about 2.5% of the U.S. population and about 0.2% of the world’s population.]

Given my fortunate personal experiences, I’ve been shocked by the number and severity of antisemitic attacks in the past decade, such as (to highlight two out of many incidents) the Tree of Life and the Capital Jewish Museum shootings. I was also shocked when, as Judge Scarsi summarized in Frankel v. Regents of UC, “Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.” How could that happen at JewCLA?

I don’t see this antisemitic trend abating any time soon. If anything, antisemitism seems to be gaining traction on both the right and the left.

In this new normal, my children are having to navigate around antisemitism. When my children chose colleges, we scoured each school’s antisemitism-based Title VI complaints; and on campus tours, we interviewed students about the campus climate for Jews. Yet, despite our careful diligence, in her first two years of college, my daughter has experienced three separate incidents of antisemitism.

I have no illusions that the rise of antisemitism is taking place only in the U.S. Sadly, it is proliferating around the globe. Still, I can hypothesize future scenarios where I feel safer as a Jew in another country than I do in the U.S.

My Exit Contingency Plan: German Citizenship

For the first nearly five decades of my life, I never once doubted that the U.S. was the best place for me. But witnessing the ongoing and worsening governance and antisemitism problems in the U.S., I can now imagine circumstances when I reach a different conclusion. Those concerns propelled me to develop an exit plan, a Plan B. Just in case.

As my next post will explain, I was eligible to apply for German citizenship because my grandparents emigrated from Germany in 1937. That made German citizenship the obvious option to pursue.

I fully recognize the irony. My grandparents fled Nazi Germany because of the threats they faced there as Jews. Had they not left Germany when they did, the Nazis almost certainly would have murdered them. The U.S. was their Plan B–and what a great Plan B it turned out to be for them and their descendants, including me. Yet, now Germany/the E.U. is my Plan B if I no longer feel safe in the U.S. What a plot twist.

To be clear, my Plan A is to remain in the United States for the indefinite future. I don’t plan to move to Germany or anywhere else any time soon, if ever. But in light of my family’s history, I felt I had to create options for myself before I needed them. It’s like insurance. It gives me greater peace of mind to have a Plan B in place.

The post I’ve Become a Dual U.S. & German Citizen (Part 1 of 4) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Despite our numbers, librarians’ families are generally an invisible community. For example, I can’t think of any TV shows or movies that featured librarians as parents, so we don’t get any Hollywood representation.

Because our stories are so rarely told, I’m sharing a few stories now.

Saturdays in the Library

Gail Schlachter at Cal State Long Beach circa mid-1970s

My mom worked as a reference librarian at Cal State Long Beach in the mid-1970s. She was the single parent of two children (me and my sister, 3 years older than me), working full-time and living on a librarian’s salary.

This was an era before workplaces routinely offered childcare to their employees. When mom had to work the reference desk on weekends or other days we weren’t in school, she couldn’t always obtain or afford childcare. Instead, she’d schlep her two young children with her to the library while she worked. She’d set us up in a corner of the library, away from the reference desk but in line-of-sight. We’d play, make art, and read while she worked.

As kids, we didn’t love this. It meant we’d be stuck indoors on beautiful sunny Southern California days. And if we had to be indoors, we’d much rather watch TV. Nowadays, if we had to go to the library with mom, she could set us up with an electronic device so we could binge-watch TikTok videos for hours.

Back then, we didn’t have anything so portable as a mobile device for entertainment. Instead, we brought all of our entertainment with us, which meant we’d bring stacks of our own books and art supplies, enough to keep us entertained, or at least distracted, for hours. I was a geography nerd back then, so I would also bring my 12-inch globe. I’d spend hours spinning the globe and memorizing far-away country names and capitals and rivers and mountain ranges. I can only imagine how I must have looked to library patrons…a young child in the library’s corner, randomly studying his globe.

My sister and I were good kids, mostly, and we didn’t want to make trouble for our mom as she worked. But we were kids, and sometimes youthful energy would overwhelm us. We’d start getting antsy and rowdy as kids do. Our mom would have to shush us, as librarians are always stereotyped as doing.

Family Vacations at the ALA Annual Meeting

Mom attended the ALA Annual Meeting faithfully. The conference was usually a highlight of her year—a chance for her to see her friends and colleagues and nerd out on librarianship. Bringing two small kids in tow surely wasn’t ideal for her, but it was her reality.

She made the best of the situation. We’d tag along with her to the social events. We enjoyed the free food, but we were bored by the adult conversations. The novelty of having young children at the professional event delighted the other attendees. Whenever I run into one of mom’s friends from the old days, they will inevitably (and truthfully) say “I remember when you were this tall!”

For us as kids, the conference exhibits were the highlight of the Annual Meeting. The 1970s was a different era: libraries had money to spend, and publishers competed to get it. The publishers would put on lavish displays in the exhibit hall, their booths loaded with free schwag. We’d grab an ALA totebag and then make our way up and down the exhibit aisles, taking one of everything. It was a bit like Halloween, except we didn’t have to say “trick or treat.” Many vendors had candy and pencils or pens, which we grabbed anyway despite their banality, but occasionally we’d find little toys or stuffed animals or items we could actually enjoy. We’d take our stuffed bags up to the hotel room and compare our loot, showing off the goodies we had found but our sibling had missed.

After my mom transitioned into the publishing industry, libraries remained a part of our family vacations. We’d go check out the local public libraries to see if they had copies of my mom’s books. It would be a great joy being in some obscure (to us) corner of the country, seeing my mom’s books on the shelves and imagining how she was helping people we’d never meet.

An Archivist’s Tale

My mom kept papers from everything. We sorted through dozens of boxes of papers after her death. She kept our art doodles from the long afternoons in the Cal State Long Beach library. She kept the internal staff newsletters for the Cal State Long Beach library, written on typewriters and mimeographed. She kept her ALA papers, which now reside at the ALA Archive at University of Illinois. She kept a complete collection of the hundreds of books she published, which now reside at San Jose State University.

Like my mom, I’m an archivist. Over the years, I’ve cleared out some of my papers, but I still have boxes and boxes of papers in my garage. I have all of my childhood correspondence, papers from jobs when I was a young adult, and printouts of virtually every email I sent and received in the 1990s. I don’t envy the chore my kids will face sorting through my paper archives if I don’t clean them up before I die. At least my electronic archives won’t force them to park one of their cars outside their garage.

Freedom of Expression

My mom firmly believed in public access to information. She saw libraries as a way to reduce information divides and make available, free of charge, credible and reliable information to everyone.

For decades, this function of libraries has been under attack by censors who wish to control information flows to advance their normative or partisan ends. The library community is one of the OG defenders of free speech. In this respect, libraries are like canaries in the free speech coal mine, usually at the vanguard of the censorship battles. My mom started fighting those battles in the 1970s, and I’m sure she’d be aghast today at how censors continue to aggressively implement the same condemnable playbook decades later.

Even as the Internet plays an increasing role in our information ecosystem, the services provided by libraries remain a threat to those in power, and efforts to censor libraries are taking place in parallel with their efforts to censor the Internet. Just as libraries have been targets for decades, censors are trying to shape Internet content to serve their normative or partisan objectives. I’ve seen this story before through my mom’s eyes. As a law professor, I spend much of my professional time today carrying the OG free speech banner, with an emphasis on digital battlegrounds. My mom’s legacy includes my efforts to stand up for the freedom of information.

About the Author: Eric Goldman is a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law in California. He acknowledges Dusty Springfield for the title inspiration.

The post I Was the Son of a Librarian appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

How He Got Here

My son graduated high school during the pandemic shutdown in 2021. He went through the college application process in his senior year and even put down a deposit, but he never had the chance to do any college tours. After some reflection, he felt he wasn’t ready yet for college. Instead, he did a gap year at Tivnu, which proved to be a wonderful experience for him.

After Tivnu, he wanted help navigating the college experience due to his neurodiversity. This led him to CIP in Berkeley, where he could get professional support to enhance the skills he needs for college and life. CIP works with students attending Berkeley City College (BCC), so he started CIP in 2022 and BCC in 2023. While at BCC, he worked part-time, first as a law firm file clerk and then as a math tutor. He completed his Associates’ degree in math this semester.

The Drexel Decision

As a transfer destination, Drexel stood out on several fronts. First, it has leaned into support for neurodiverse students, which gave us some comfort that he could succeed there without CIP’s support.

Second, Drexel’s co-op program will help my son build the kind of work experience and professional identity that can help him make his next move after graduation. Drexel’s neurodiversity support includes help with the job placement function, which will surely benefit him, and which reduces the risk of him bouncing back home post-graduation (a common outcome for many college students nowadays, especially neurodiverse ones).

Third, the math department seemed like a good fit. The math department was big enough to provide all of the options my son will want, but the total number of math majors and the associated class sizes were small enough that students appeared to get personal attention from the professors.

Finally, I was impressed with the overall vibe at Drexel. It has all the resources my son will need, but it is not as overwhelming and impersonal as a big public university. The students we met with were focused on their professional development goals. The Jewish community seemed acceptable (we looked at Drexel’s Title VI complaint but could not validate the concerns).

Drexel’s main competition for my son’s enrollment was UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley is such a compelling option: his mom and 3 of his grandparents are alums, the city of Berkeley is a wonderful (if complicated) college town that he already knows well, he could continue his neurodiversity support with CIP, and it has better weather and is closer to home compared to Philadelphia.

And yet, the UC Berkeley transfer admit day was not great for him. For me, the standout feature was that the Berkeley speakers repeatedly hyped how students should feel honored that they got admitted to such a prestigious school, but not one speaker talked about employment outcomes. It was like job placement considerations were a non-priority to the institution. (I know that’s not true, but the silence loudly communicated that message). UC Berkeley provides stats about employment outcomes by year and major (yay for transparency), and the numbers for their math department were not comforting. A number of other red and yellow flags arose during the day, such as transfer students’ difficulties enrolling in upper-division math classes and getting dorm rooms. And, of course, UC Berkeley is a complicated community, especially for Jews.

* * *

My son made a major adult decision moving across the country to a new community, a new time zone, and a lot more weather drama. I am proud of him for creating great transfer options for himself, navigating the transfer decision-making process smartly, and being willing to take some risks. #ProudDad #ProudDrexelDad.

The post My Son’s Next College Destination appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

______

#ProudDaughter

Dear Dad,

I see you out there, feeding the stray cats when you think no one is looking. I see you, running around the house once the sun starts setting. You yell at everyone: “time is ticking!” and hustle us out the door to admire the colors. You take pictures of the sunset with your ancient Panasonic camera, and complain that it doesn’t capture the bright pinks you so love. I see you, pointing out the orange California poppies that bloom every spring. You appreciate them whenever you see them.

In many ways, you taught me how to love. Your love is daily, hard work that you start from the moment you wake up at 6 AM every morning. You would drive me to school in the morning before work. You would nicely cut up fruit from the Farmer’s Market and put it in a bowl next to my homework and call it a “cornucopia.” You would insist on taking high quality photos of every piece of art I’ve ever made. Your Zoom background is my watercolor of baby Yoda, peeking above your shoulder for everyone to see. You post all of my life events with a #ProudDad hashtag (and usually a few emojis). 

I know that you never got cornucopias growing up. Or a dad. So, you invented being Dad. You invented cornucopias and our annual Dina-Daddy trips. You woke up at 6 AM every morning to get started on loving me because you didn’t get a blueprint of how fathers should love their daughters.

I definitely don’t wake up at 6 AM. But once I do get up, preferably around noon, I love just like you. I work hard. I put full effort into every aspect of my life. I notice the tulips planted around the University of Oregon campus for spring term. Whenever I get the pleasure of seeing a cat, I pet them gently and take photos of them from every angle. I see how every day is new and different; an opportunity to love. Your catchphrase: “Another beautiful day in California.” I live in Oregon now. “Another beautiful day in Oregon.”

I love you, Dad.

Love,

Dina

Fig 1. You in a business meeting

Fig 2. #ProudDad and #ProudDaughter

Fig 3. Love, as you taught me

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* * *

Although we were three years apart, I “skipped” a grade so that I was only two years behind her academically. I spent much of my K-12 education trying to close that two year gap and catch up to Sandy.

It’s well-known that younger siblings benefit from their older siblings. As one study summarized, “First-born siblings engage in leadership, teaching, caregiving, and helping roles, whereas second-born siblings are more likely to imitate, follow, take on the role of learner, and elicit care and help.”

One analogy is to drafting in biking. Sandy was out in front, setting the pace. I was drafting in her slipstream, able to move forward faster and with less effort because she was doing the extra work. Or a hiking analogy: if you are climbing a hill covered in snow or up a sand dune, the easiest path is to walk in someone else’s footprints.

That’s pretty much what I did. Sandy blazed the trail, and I followed. I took the same courses she took, from the same teachers. I got involved in the same student groups she was involved in. In high school, we did Junior Statesmen together, and I got into student government because she did. She worked a summer at McDonalds (and was employee-of-the-month); they hired her little brother because they loved her, but I was never employee-of-the-month. I initially got so much goodwill from teachers and other adults because everyone loved Sandy Sunshine. They got quite a surprise when a moody introvert showed up instead.

* * *

Even though we are different personalities, in many other respects we’re essentially twins (not that you could tell from the photo below). In particular, since I graduated high school, we’ve pursued different professional paths but keep ending up in the same place.

Our first convergence was in college. Sandy started at UC Davis and spent a year abroad in Israel. During that time, I graduated high school and enrolled at UCLA to study economics. Coming back from her year abroad, Sandy decided to transfer to UCLA to be closer to our mom and grandma (and me). I was on a three year schedule and she was on a five year schedule, and that’s how we both graduated at the same time from the same university.

We even held a joint college graduation party.

Sandy went to Michigan for her masters in library and information science, while I worked two years in LA in commercial real estate. Sandy decided to continue towards her PhD, which led her back to UCLA. I decided to pursue a JD/MBA and that led me back to UCLA as well. So once again we were at the same institution at the same time. During this time, we ended up living just a few miles from each other on the west side of LA. This time, I graduated before Sandy.

After graduation, I decided to pursue Internet Law, which led me to the Silicon Valley. I worked at a law firm in Palo Alto, then as General Counsel of an Internet company on the Peninsula. Sandy got her PhD and a teaching job in Arizona. But after a few years, she and Jay decided to leave academia and get industry jobs, which led both of them to HP. They moved to Palo Alto in 1998, and we were in the same community again.

Another amazing convergence took place in 2001, when we were on a panel together at Comdex in Las Vegas regarding privacy. By that point, I was a Goldman and Sandy was a Hirsh, so the organizers had no reason to know of our sibling relationship—though it became pretty apparent when we stood side-by-side.

In 2002, I decided to pursue an academic career, which took me and my family to Milwaukee. Four years later, I got a full-time position at Santa Clara University, which brought me and my family back to the Bay Area. We bought a house in Mountain View, just 7 miles from the Hirsh’s Palo Alto residence. At SCU, I held a dual appointment as an professor and as an administrator directing the law school’s High Tech Law Institute.

In 2010, Sandy got the opportunity to direct the School of Information at San Jose State, where she was also appointed to the faculty. At that point, we were both professors and academic administrators. News about the Schlachter “twins” took over the SJSU Information School home page.

In 2020, Sandy got “promoted” into the role of Associate Dean of the College of Information, Data & Society at San Jose State. A year later, I got “promoted” to Associate Dean for Research at Santa Clara Law.

And so that takes us to 2024, when Sandy and I both held Associate Dean titles at universities located 4 miles from each other, residing in houses 7 miles apart. We went our separate ways when Sandy graduated high school in Santa Barbara, only to find ourselves 40+ years later back together again, with the virtually the same job titles and in each other’s backyards.

[Reminder: in conjunction with Sandy’s birthday, I made a Spotify playlist and my daughter made a painting.]

The post A Tribute to My Sister Sandy Hirsh on Her 60th Birthday (Part 2 of 2) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Many of you probably assume it’s time for the little brother to roast his big sister. After all, I’m a GenXer and I’ve been honing my snarking skills for decades, since I was in the womb. And if this were Sandy’s 30th or 40th birthday, I probably would let it fly. But as much fun as it would be to take the express train to Snarktown, this is a 60th birthday and, as a sign of my newfound maturity, I’ve decided to respect my elders and actually try to be nice. Sandy, my birthday gift to you is that I’m keeping the embarrassing revelations about your youth secret until your next milestone birthday. You’re welcome.

* * *

Sandy and I are 3 years apart. We are both early-stage GenXers. Our parents were wartime babies, so they are technically late-stage Silent Generation instead of Boomers. But like many boomers, they married young, the relationship didn’t work out, they divorced, and they both went on to achieve personal and professional success separately.

Our parents’ split defined our childhood. We grew up in a single-parent household with a full-time working mom. It was just the three of us, but in fact for many hours of the day it was just the two of us. Like many GenXers, we were latchkey children. At a young age, we arrived home to an empty home with no adult figure awaiting us. In practice, for much of my childhood, Sandy was the closest thing I had to a parent for several hours a day.

Sandy and I have very different personalities. To oversummarize, I was a socially awkward and nerdy introvert, and Sandy was the socially gregarious extrovert. Sandy’s nickname was “Sandy Sunshine,” though I have no idea where that came from.

Some of you may not appreciate how significant Sandy’s interpersonal skills were to her childhood. Our mom shrewdly recognized that California real estate was a great investment, and she moved constantly in an effort to “trade up” and parlay her accumulated equity. This was a smart financial decision, but it came at a significant personal cost.

After our parents separated, we moved to the Los Angeles basin, where we lived for 5 years. We then moved to Davis, California, where we lived for another 5 years. We then moved to Santa Barbara, where we lived for another 4 years until I graduated high school. Across all of those relocations, we lived in 7 different houses.

The constant moving fragmented Sandy’s K-12 education. Over 13 years, she attended 9 different schools.

The relocation disruptions meant that Sandy was constantly saying goodbye to her current friends and having to make all-new ones. I’ve often wondered if Sandy’s social gregariousness was forged by these trials, or if it was innate and the secret to her ability to survive the dislocations.

In contrast to Sandy’s disjointed education record, mom’s moves synched up with my normal school transitions, so I only attended 4 schools total (K-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-12). Even that degree of disruption was a lot for a socially awkward person like myself. I took a long time to build friendships and never built a lot, and each relocation broke the social progress I made.

I always envied Sandy’s social skills. I aspired to emulate her gregariousness because I knew that I would get more out of life if I could. Much of my life through my mid-twenties was defined by my efforts to be “more like Sandy Sunshine.”

Because of my difficulties making other friends, Sandy was always my best friend growing up. She was the one constant relationship in my life, the one person close to my age that I could count on, the social foundation I didn’t have to rebuild with each move.

When I got married, there was no doubt who should be my “best man.” Despite defying the gender expectations for the role, I knew who belonged at my side on that most important day. After all, she had stood by my side every other day.

[Stay tuned for Part 2]

BONUS 1: I prepared a Spotify playlist for Sandy’s birthday. It’s meant more as a soundtrack of her life than as a list of her “favorite” songs.

BONUS 2: My daughter made this painting of pomegranates as a birthday present for my sister.

The post A Tribute to My Sister Sandy Hirsh on Her 60th Birthday (Part 1 of 2) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Gail Schlachter, Palo Alto

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my mom’s death. In many ways, it feels just like yesterday. I still think about her every day, and the entire family feels her influences constantly.

But, as the expression says, life goes on. This blog post rounds up some of what mom has missed since her death.

My mom derived great joy from celebrating her family’s achievements. She would make significant personal sacrifices to attend family events big and small, from major milestone birthdays to everyday school performances. She would have loved to be a part of our regular family gatherings for birthdays and Jewish holidays. She especially would have celebrated these major milestone events [this list is just for the Goldman family; my sister and the Hirsh/Halsner families would have their own list]:

• My son’s bar mitzvah
• My daughter’s bat mitzvah
• My son’s graduation from junior high
• My daughter’s graduation from junior high (disrupted by COVID)
• My son’s 18th birthday (disrupted by COVID)
• My son’s graduation from high school
• My daughter’s 18th birthday
• My son’s 21st birthday
• My daughter’s graduation from high school

At each of these events, we have felt my mom’s virtual presence, but she would have much preferred to be there in person.

Nowadays, my mom would be kvelling with grandmotherly pride at my kids’ college journeys–my daughter at University of Oregon and my son at Berkeley City College (I’ll have a post about the next step in his college journey shortly).

My mom would have also taken great pride in my professional and personal milestone events over the past decade. The ones I think would have meant the most to her:

• My Congressional testimony on the Consumer Review Fairness Act
• My Congressional testimony on FOSTA/SESTA (1, 2)
• My 50th birthday
• My university award for career scholarly achievement
• My “promotion” to Associate Dean for Research
• My university award for curricular innovation

(Other major milestones from the last decade relate directly to her passing, including liquidating all of her properties, closing her estate, and purchasing a vacation rental on the Mendocino Coast with her money. Those milestones would not have existed if she were still alive today).

With respect to my wife, she would marvel at the relative normalcy of my wife’s life 11+ years after her Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis.

On less happy notes, my mom missed the death of her dog Laddie, the death of her husband, Trump 1.0, the COVID pandemic, and Trump 2.0. All of these developments would have caused her great distress.

Blog Posts About Gail Schlachter Hauser’s Death

* I’ve Finished Work on My Mom and Stepdad’s Estates
* The Legacies of My Mom, Dr. Gail Schlachter Hauser (1943-2015)
* Announcing the “Gail Schlachter Financial Aid Directory Collection” at San José State University Library Special Collections & Archives
* How Reference Service Press Books Acknowledge My Mom’s Career & Life (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* PROJECT COMPLETE: I’ve Finished Selling My Mom’s Real Estate Portfolio
* Announcing the Helen B. and Lewis E. Goldstein Scholarship Fund
* Remarks From Gail Schlachter’s Induction Into the California Library Hall of Fame (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Memorial For My Mom At The ALA Annual Meeting (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Patricia Schuman’s Remembrance of Gail Schlachter Hauser (1943-2015)
* Dimi Berkner’s Eulogy For My Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Remembrance From My Mom’s Lifelong Friend, David Weber (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Remembrance from Sumyyah Bilal
* An Example of How My Mom’s Books Helped Students (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* My Sister’s Eulogy For Our Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* My Eulogy For My Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* From my wife: Gail Schlachter, My Mother-in-law, Remembered
* Selected Remembrances of Gail Schlachter Hauser (1943-2015)
* My First Mother’s Day Without My Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Signs That My Mom Is Still Thinking of Us (Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015)
* My Mom’s Idea of a “Really Good Day” (Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015)
* Initial Reflections on Losing a Parent (Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015)
* My Mom Died: Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015

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