About The Book

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	About The Book
RHODA'S MEMOIR, RHODA: HER FIRST NINETY YEARS IS NOW AVAILABLE AT: www.Amazon.com

	Rhoda: Her First Ninety Years is an honest and candid memoir of a first generation American woman who was willing to change the direction of her life every twelve years. Rhoda writes about the emigration of her parents from Rumania to the United States in 1900, their struggles with strikebreakers in Gary, Indiana, and life in the depression years in Chicago. She overcomes the knowledge that her mother tried, but failed, to abort her. With grit and determination, she manages to have a life filled with adventure, exuberance and joy. The curiosity and passion that infuse the stories of Rhoda's life, her three husbands, her many lovers, and her willingness to move from one career to another will appeal to Women entrepreneurs, Women over forty, Political activists, Academics, Older adults, Historians, Jews & Jewish women, and all adventurous souls who have ever swum against the current.
	The book covers Rhoda's growing up on the West Side of Chicago in the Twenties and Thirties, Berkeley in the Forties, San Francisco in the Fifties and Sixties, and Europe, Asia and the U.S. in the Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and the Oughts. These stories include sharp comments on the social, political and economic climate of the times. Details about life in Depression era Chicago, pre-World War Two Berkeley, Bohemian San Francisco, and experiences at the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C. bring to life places and periods long gone. After the war, when Rhoda and her husband move to North Beach in San Francisco, to start their leather business with Jim's naval discharge pay, they become part of the Bohemian scene. Stories about the Grant Avenue Street Fair and Rhoda Pack Leathers in the Fifties and Sixties are full of rueful humor. Jim's postwar trauma and depression lead to a collapse of the first marriage.		RHODA AT FOUR

RHODA TODAY

Rhoda's second marriage leads to a successful pregnancy, and the difficulties of being a wife and mother are not stinted. But the second marriage also ends in divorce after twelve years, and Rhoda goes back to graduate school at the age of sixty to acquire a master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. That degree makes it possible for her to move on to another career and another husband. The book's final chapters take the reader to Japan, South Korea, (for two years on a Fulbright Commision), China (as assistant professor at Lanzhou University), to workshops in Russia and Hungary, and to formal presentations at professional conferences world wide. Last but not least, the book ends with the story of Rhoda's meeting the love of her life when she was seventy-two and he was eighty-five, including details of their satisfying physical relationship.

Patterns

Someone made a pattern for me.
In fact, several someones
made a pattern for me.

The problem was,
None of them fit.

I tried adjusting them;
A tuck here, a nip there;
Saying yes when I meant no,
Still they weren't right.

I began making patterns of my own
Adjusting them, shaping them,
Molding them to fit

A changing me.

Chapter Descriptions

Introduction

Chapter One: Early Years

            My parents, Ruth Esther Hoffman and Mayer Kurtzbond;

            Family life in Chicago in the 1920s

Chapters Two to Five: The Middle Years

            A Summer Night: Close Shave; Dusting the Furniture;

            Life in the Sixth Grade; Stolen Sand.

Chapters Six and Seven: High School Years

            Albert Guy and the Marshall News;

            Sexual Awakening at the Indiana Dunes;

            The Nathanson Group; Power;

            The Nudist Camp

Chapter Eight: 1936-39, Northwestern University:

            The Mock League of Nations Conference;

            Protest Marches;

            From Evanston to Berkeley via Yellowstone Park

Chapters Nine and Ten: UC Berkeley in the 1940s

            Dormitory Life; Jim: First deep love

Chapters Eleven and Twelve: Graduation and First Marriage

            Teaching elementary school;

            Camping on the Rogue River

Chapter Thirteen: War Years in California;

            Birth and death of first child;

            Travel from Berkeley to Washington, D.C. via Chicago

Chapter Fourteen: Washington, D.C.

            Journalist in Office of War Information;

            Jim's return from the Pacific;
            Release from Naval Hospital

Chapters Fifteen to Nineteen: San Francisco, 1945

            "Designs in Leather" shop on Grant Avenue;

            Working in OWI Overseas S.F. office as journalist;

            Expansion of leather designs;

            Grant Avenue Bohemian life;

            Jim's illness--divorce--my attempted suicide;

            A New Life--Endings and Beginnings

Chapters Twenty and Twenty-One:

            Rhoda Pack Leathers; International fame;

            Baba; Mona's Bar and Betty Lou;

            Expansion of designs

Chapters Twenty-Two to Thirty: husband #2

            Ric Skahen, the courtship, the wedding, 1954;

            Mexican honeymoon, Diego Rivera

            Grant Avenue Street Fair, North Beach Life

            Son, Ricky, born 1957; Godfathers: Chingwah Lee, Benny Bufano

Chapters Thirty-One and Thirty-Two: San Leandro & Berkeley

            Rhoda Pack Leathers closes;

            Ric loses second hospital connection;

            The Gun--divorce, 1967

            New career: ESL teacher

Chapters Thirty-Three and Thirty-Four: husband #3

            Bob Holdeman, artist, 1968

            Ricky's Bar Mitzvah;

            Changes, Ricky's teen-age years;

            Divorce from Bob, 1973

Chapters Thirty-Five to Thirty-Seven: A fourth career

            Love affair with Bolt;

            Travels with sister Jeanne;

            A second master's degree

Chapter Thirty-Eight:

            Establishing program at UC Berkeley Extension;

            Fulbright assignment to Korea;

Chapter Thirty-Nine: CHINA

            Part I: Intro to China;
            Part II: Lanzhou University;
            Part III: Travels, Analysis

Chapter Forty: Peter

            The love of my life; at 72, meeting Peter, age 85;

            Travels with Peter;

            Peter's death at 93

Epilogue

            Where I am now; future plans

www.Amazon.com, www.Booksmith.com, Black Oak Books, Berkeley, Book Passage, Marin, and Capitola Book Cafe, CA

CONTACT INFORMATION

Email: rhoda@rhodabook.com or rhocur@yahoo.com