iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

That’s the beauty of it.

Like, if your caf has that as an option, they’ve got a full English on the menu too. Sausage, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, maybe black pudding. But he’s clearly ordered that at a real restaurant, as it’s outside, like no self-respecting caf in existence.

140

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 8h

Beans on toast is the best, even if I eat it like a deviant (In a bowl, with the toast broken up like croutons and with cheese and hot sauce)

250

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I wish Cyco had a functioning website and/or people didn’t message me to ask for their contact details. In terms of annoyance, it’s somewhere between sending me your ME peace plan and wanting me to be your unpaid research assistant

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Thanks, I hate it. (Not Tom, love Tom, but I think most people guess that about me)

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This is from the most gorgeous essay, the one I hope to be able to get out there in a proper venue some day. The beauty of the image and the reality of existence ever so lightly hinted at. And I think about my own father talking me to shul for Simchas Torah and my own flag more than 40 years ago

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

She is now wearing a Dr Who Ace t-shirt and assembling Star Wars Lego.

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It’s big kid’s birthday and she’s gotten records by her favourite pop musician, Peter Schilling. She’s happily explaining German lyrics to me and I am delighted. She is undoubtedly my child.

120

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

What I really want to do for my birthday is buy sushi and sit in an empty house watching Truly Madly Deeply and crying until my head hurts, but apparently this is anti-social or something.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The Man recently finished reading all the Harry Potter books to the kids (I know, there have been many rows over this) and now he is reading Narnia aloud. Neither is for me. But the quality of Lewis’s prose is inarguably superior. One’s got a blunt poking stick, the other a pen.

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I’ve possibly got hEDS — no one will diagnose here, as it’s not treatable or testable, but I can turn my forearm all the way around and stand on the palms of my hands without bending my knees forward— and am a side-sleeper whose knees slowly slide sideways out of place all night. I feel your pain.

110

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

But yeah, absolutely baffled that this is a real cultural food. From a man who eats haggis.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

So ruglach popped up on tv that we’re watching and my partner seemed rather incredulous that I hadn’t made it up. Like, he believes that Pesach exists, because there’s a book I didn’t write and swag (tho he’s highly suspicious) and Chanukah must exist, because there’s swag (we have…8 menorahs)

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

As I sometimes try to be timely, here’s Leivick on the end of Sukkos (he was arrested just after the end of the holiday in 1906) blumalangerobertson.substack.com/p/getting-to...

blumalangerobertson.substack.com

Getting to the Bottom of Things

In which there is little forward progress in my part and we remain in Russia. And October.

010

Reposted by Bluma

Rachel @rachelneedsanap.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

People are really fucking weird about Hebrew.

2724

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Man is confused why we have instant borscht packets. It would be confusing if we didn’t have instant borscht packets.

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is why I haven’t reacted in such an outraged way to the story itself (though that picture!) and am beside myself at professional translators who say ‘he could have just used AI to translate if you wouldn’t give him the book for free’

140

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I’m sure you‘re already aware, but Dovid Katz has taught a course in the past and has materials on his site, though as far as I know, no plans to teach the course again at the moment defendinghistory.com/intro-ashken...

defendinghistory.com

The Ashkenazic Hebrew Manual

An Introduction to Ashkenazic Hebrew and Aramaic ◊ ◊ COMPANION TO: THE ASHKENAZIC DICTIONARY See also Youtube audio selections Jump to: Contents; Three Types of Ashkenazic; Vowel System; Historical ...

111

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

While the poem might date to the time in Philly (it’s unclear) it seems to perhaps be the Central Park Menagerie/Zoo described, as that was a free institution while I don’t think the Philadephia Zoo ever was.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

He eventually puts in a batch of poems that Katz decides to taken with him to New York to show A Liessin, then editor of Tsukunft, who prints them. (Vladek will later bankroll his issuing his first collection when he comes up short and looks worried on a visit to his office when back in NYC)

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

How Leivick gets to Tsukunft: He leaves New York for Philadelphia to work in a sweat shop as a cutter for children’s clothing, where he makes friends with B. Vladek (who in the Philly manager for the Forverts at the time) and M Katz, who runs Philly Yiddish paper, Di Yidishe Velt.

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It’s time again for what seems like another bi-monthly translator’s day, and while I am not a translator, here is a poem originally published in Tsukunft in 1915 under a different title.

Night and Rain

Night and rain. All the beasts
Sleep in their cages,
Only the quick squirrel
Leaps from branch to branch.

All the benches and huts empty,
All the paths — wet;
The homeless from the street
Come to find hiding places.

One sits on a bench
And rain pours from his face,
His hands — only just
Raked through the garbage.

His dead eyes look off somewhere,
As if through bars,
And a piece of bread falls
From his breast to the grass….

Night and sorrow. A drizzle falls
From the trees
And with a violent start from sleep
The lion leaps…

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I very rarely get so personal, but it’s nice to connect now and again. We’re all so lonely

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I really like talking to some people, like the guy who asked me about the music scene in Philly when he found out I was from nearby. So I wound up talking doo wop and the Tin Angel (A”H) and others.

101

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Last call of the day was basically someone older who needed a trip-sitter while making a payment online. I am cool with that. Past closing time? Sure. A challenge? Absolutely not, just the way I like it.

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

And I will argue you well into next year about how Horn clearly didn’t read one of the works she mentions and I suspect I know where her attitude about it comes from. But yes, don’t feed the fascists.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It gives me serious agita that I can’t (and don’t) link the most accessible article about Leivick and Der Volf because it is there. I‘ll tell you it‘s there, but I’m going to judge you like hell if you look.

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

sometimes someone twigs my accent isn’t right and I wind up confessing where I’m from. So they ask me about America. Because of where I work, I have to be rather circumspect and just say that it’s changed. As of tomorrow, I have lived here half my life.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Because even a stopped clock can be a doorstop, I guess, I have apparently come in handy for knowing something. I don’t hardly expect be taken seriously after this, but it does prove I’m good for at least one other thing than knowing what the Klezmatics do for day jobs.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Responses include how you could have so much physical/spiritual nourishment (and fun) with the housemaid than with the mistress

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Oh no, this doesn’t just happen there, trust me. This is a huge thing

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Wow. Get the job he decided I should get, don’t complain if he disappears all day to play Tomb Raider, don’t mention my reservations about things or upsets, but forget tomorrow is a weird local holiday and he’s got off and ask if the British flag needs to be folded like a US one and I’m a bitch. Ok.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I’d say the biggest issue for my kid growing up in a Jewish/Presbyterian interfaith household is that one of us will talk about sex and the other is perfectly happy to let her believe in parthenogenesis. No prizes for guessing.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I would purchase this with no shame

020

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My spine reminds me of this every day, not just Nirvana

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Melekh Ravitch wrecking me today for a change.

Farewell Chava, my childhood pain,
First love and love’s terror,
You left not only me
But our people too.

May life, this strange one, be good to you,
Perhaps what happened had to,
May your sons only see the mother in your face
And never the Jew…

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’ve always operated roughly on the premise that until all of us are free, none of us are free. But I see people who have gotten their freedom treat those who haven’t as second class. And they’ve forgotten that while they might be able to monetise that identity for themselves, its tenuous at best.

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I get the inability to do stuff, too

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The only thing I get from that is ‘my kids mean everything to me.’ So, bravo. You’re fine. Wax is fine.

120

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I always get the wild mushroom soup on the off chance it will kill me and I won’t have to do this shit anymore

001

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

both Leivick and Efros included these sort of poster/plaque format pages in their books based on ones they saw in the camps. Efros’s is the more visually striking of the two. The book was part of the poylish yidentum series

000

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So the book I finally got my grubby little hands on was Israel Efros’s account of visiting the DP camps in Germany, and which has this page that first appear in the scanned version

A red and black pages saying ‘remember 6000000’ in Yiddish and Hebrew

100

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Oh my goodness, to this is my first Yiddish book that still has its dust jacket and there is a tipped-in page that isn’t in the YBC scan and my goodness, it’s silly but I‘ve wanted my own copy for a while now.

001

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

That is the little word I hate most, across a few languages.

030

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Dokh is infinitely worse.

120

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

My musty book came! My musty book that I had given up all hope of ever seeing came I‘ve already roughly Englished it, have never received any kind of response asking about rights, but it‘s here and I’m thrilled and I’m waiting until everyone else goes to bed to open it so I can be alone with it.

010

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I’m HOH, so I don’t tend to dwell too much in the audio archives, I’m afraid

010