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:

• Cover letter
• Prospectus

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.

@online{renaud2024im,
  author       = {Josh Renaud},
  title        = {I’m heading to Atlanta — plus, Jack Tramiel’s phone numbers},
  year         = {2024},
  month        = may,
  organization = {Break Into Chat},
  url          = {https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/05/16/im-heading-to-atlanta-plus-jack-tramiels-phone-numbers/},
  urldate      = {}
}

{{cite web |last=Renaud |first=Josh |title=I’m heading to Atlanta — plus, Jack Tramiel’s phone numbers |website=Break Into Chat |url=https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/05/16/im-heading-to-atlanta-plus-jack-tramiels-phone-numbers/ |date=2024-05-16 |access-date=}}