I promised myself and my generous readers that I would write. So here I sit, researching topics triggered by the calendar--holidays or tremendous significance that I knew almost nothing about.  I'm humbled by how much I don't know and hope you'll find this informative.

Today, June 12 (1929), is Anne Frank’s birthday. Anne was a writer, so we know a lot about her.

I’m learning to meditate with an app called Headspace. I’ve completed the free “basics” module and just began a 30-part unit on anxiety. This is connecting me to my iPhone much earlier in the day than usual. I’m one of those who typically doesn’t check the phone first thing in the morning. I don’t want it to rule my life. But I like this meditation practice and as I finished it, a reminder came up on my calendar. “Anna Steinbach’s birthday.”

Anna Jacobs died a year ago on the same day in the Jewish calendar that her beloved husband Jack passed away eight years before. That was a poetic synchronicity that reflects the wonder of her life. She couldn’t have known consciously that it was the date. She had not seen a calendar in weeks. Did he call her?

A haunting portrait of Anna Maria Steinbach is August’s Portrait of the Month. We chose it because August 2nd is Roma Genocide Remembrance Day. On that day in 1944, nearly 3,000 Roma and Sinti people, mostly women, children and the elderly were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anna Maria was probably one of them. She was nine years old.