I’ve been remiss in sharing some fantastic news. In April, I was awarded a “Geffen and Lewyn Family Southern Jewish Collections Research Fellowship” from the Rose Library at Emory University!
This fellowship will enable me to travel to Atlanta for a week or two and study materials at Emory related to several Jewish educational games for the Apple II made by Gesher and Yaakov Kirschen, which I rescued from floppy disks and published in 2022.
The Breman Museum, also in Atlanta, holds some similar materials that I hope to explore, including this floppy disk:
If you’re interested in my project, here are links to my fellowship application materials:
While I’m there, I’m hoping to connect with some retrocomputing folks and maybe gave a talk (or two!) about Kirschen’s computer curiosities.
On a related note, Kirschen’s wife, Sali Ariel, sent me a box of documents related to his American company, “Just For You, Inc.”
I received it last week. It contained a mix of enlightening and saddening documents. An example of the latter is a handwritten letter to a creditor informing them they wouldn’t be able to pay their debts. Their software hadn’t sold.
I was scanning some of these items a couple nights ago, when two small things fell out of the cardboard box, which I hadn’t noticed before.
Note cards with phone numbers for Jack Tramiel, CEO of Atari, and Nick LeFevre, Atari’s legal counsel.
The card for Tramiel has three numbers: his “direct” line at Atari and personal numbers for homes in California and Toronto.
Teenage me would have gone nuts if he somehow could have seen this.
Share your thoughts!