If you find my disappearances annoying how do you think I feel?

Here’s one of the reasons for my most recent defection: "Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman’s Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany" by Marie Jalowicz Simon, translated by Anthea Bell, foreword and afterword by Hermann Simon (her son). My paperback edition was just published in May, 2016, a gift from my partner on the screenplay we’re writing. Have I told you that the true story we’re working on takes place in Nazi Berlin in 1941-42? So the book is useful to me for what i can learn, but it’s also a knockout.

In 1942 20-year-old Marie Jalowicz, a Jewish Berliner, resolved to stay out of the concentration camps. She took off her yellow star, took on an assumed identity and went to ground - that is, she lived in the city avoiding capture until the end of the war. No papers, no no money, no food, no coupons, no bed. She moved from place to place dependent on the generosity and silence of people/strangers who supported her. No one informed on her, though there were times when she was in real danger, and in fact, suffered a great deal. Bu she didn't die.

She never told her story until shortly before her death in 1998, and then her son taped her account, told with amazing chronological accuracy and a memory for names, events and places, checked by her son and put together by him and the writer Irene Stratenwerth. It’s harrowing and moving and inspirational. Perhaps you will understand why I neglected my blog.

And then I feel guilty. Where is it written that I should feel guilty about not writing my own blog?

I’m not going there.