Julie Wittes Schlack

Writer, mother, durable wife, lover of soup, author of This All-at-Onceness and Burning and Dodging, politically left and reenergized.

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Articles

Our 'obligations' to the dead

1 week ago | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

Last month, the last member of my parents’ sometimes rowdy, always vivacious cohort of lifelong friends died at the age of 96. Nancy was cognitively sharp until the end, but largely immobilized, her hearing and sight rapidly failing her. She was ready — even eager — for death. Nancy’s late husband Harold and my father had been friends since they were 14.
Guinness World Records has always been about more than trivia

Feb 21, 2025 | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

As a child I loved Tom Thumb, the perfectly formed human who was only a couple of inches tall; he roamed the countryside while sitting on the back of a mouse or hitched a ride in the ear of a horse. It grieved me to eventually learn that he was a fiction, not an actual human being.
Now that I’m the ancestor, it’s time for a new dream

Nov 18, 2024 | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

One night when I was about 15, I dreamt that I’d come home from school to find my older brother sitting in the big, green leather chair in our living room. My mother had purchased this chair — imposing and vaguely British with its winged back and brass nailheads — at Treasure Mart, the consignment store from which she furnished our house during those years.
The subversively liberating potential of Kamala Harris

Nov 3, 2024 | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

“What happens when a woman takes power?” ask the high school girls sitting on the stairs in a recent TikTok video. They look like my daughters and their friends did years ago. In fact, they look pretty similar to me and my pals in the halls of Pioneer High in the 1970s. As they sing, they snap and clap in a cadence familiar to any schoolgirl. Unlike the young women of my generation, they do not tap or shuffle their feet. They stomp them.
Trump pits immigrants and working-class Americans against each other. But they both need the same things

Oct 23, 2024 | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

As Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s anti-immigrant rhetoric reaches ever-new lows, I want to tell you about some of the families I’ve gotten to know in the past two years as a volunteer helping newly arrived refugees. (I’ve changed their names to protect their identities, but have not altered their stories.)Abdul, a recent immigrant from Syria by way of a refugee camp in Lebanon, works at a food co-op washing dishes. He rides a donated bike there.
We asked, you answered: The first presidential debate of 2024

Jun 27, 2024 | wbur.org | Steve Almond |Robert C. Bordone |Joe Caiazzo |Frederick Hewett |Lara Jirmanus |Jesse Mermell | +3 more

Editors’ note: It seems the universal sentiment leading up to this first presidential debate can be summarized in one word: dread. “No matter how it plays out, I expect a horror show,” one Cog newsletter subscriber told us. “Like many Americans I am tired of all this. Our campaigning functionally starts a few minutes after the swearing-in ceremony; in other words it’s continuous. It shouldn’t be that way but I have no idea how to change it,” she continued.
The fearless compassion of Alice Munro

May 16, 2024 | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

Search for Port Hope in Google Maps and you’ll see a pin on the northern shore of Lake Huron, surrounded by dozens of other southwestern Ontario towns you’ve never heard of. Skim through the photos of Port Hope and you’ll see pictures of Hampton and Comfort and Best Western Inns, of a dam and a small river, a flat, plain but kempt Main Street.
My mother never stopped loving the world

May 8, 2024 | newsbreak.com | Julie Wittes Schlack

Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments.
My mother never stopped loving the world

May 8, 2024 | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

If I believed in reincarnation, I’d think that my late mother has come back in the form of my dog, Billie. When Billie is feeling most energetic, she trots from one room to another, rearranging her possessions. She moves the marrow bone from her bed to ours; she transports the gutted, formerly plush dinosaur from its resting place under the couch to one beneath the bathroom rug. But it’s not just her penchant for redecorating that so reminds me of my mother.
Nostalgia is lovely, and a waste of time

Oct 31, 2023 | wbur.org | Julie Wittes Schlack

A few weeks ago my husband and I got together with my old boyfriend Craig and his current, 60-something girlfriend. For two achingly long years — when I was 17 and 18 years old — I was smitten with Craig.