Nathan Kolodney

Hartsdale, NY 10530

Undergrad college/major: Arts & Sciences/Philosophy.

Advanced degrees: M.S.W., D.H.L.

Career/occupation: Writer.

Honors and awards: Was invited to be Director of the Poetry Center and Kaufmann Concert Hall in Manhattan, N.Y.; Read twice into the Congressional Record -- Letter of Thanks and Commendation for Public Service from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan; Created an intellectual community for Russian Intelligencia who were finally left, penniless, from the old Soviet Union. In addition to concrete needs, we addressed spiritual needs to help avoid Culture Shock by creating The International Pushkin Society, which among other offerings, created a Russian Poetry Center that featured the internationally known Russian poets such as Yegveny Yeftushenko, Bella Akmadulina and Andre Vozenesenko and published a glossy large format “Literary and Visual Arts” magazine, ARSAMAS, that could be found in every major University in the Soviet Union. For this work I was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the well-know St. Petersburg Biographical Institute; Panelist for the National Council on the Arts, The National Council on the Humanities and The Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, and citations from the New York State Senate. Assembly and N.Y. City Council; Invited as a major speaker at the Biennial Council of Jewish Communal Workers in Jerusalem, Israel; President of the Greenburgh Central 7 Board of Education in Westchester (N.Y.); Awarded an American Indian citation and Symbolic gift: A 100 year old Santa Clara Black Pottery Wedding Vase from the Santa Clara Pueblo in concert with the Blackfeet Tribe In Montana, The White Mountain Apache tribe in Arizona, and The Yakima Tribe in The State of Washington for leading a group that, with the tribesmen and women, created English literacy programs and recreational centers for tribal children and, most important, supplied intensive training to Indian teens and adults in how to run these programs after we had gone.

Important affiliations: Berkshire –Board Member Berkshire-Emanuel Camps; President Bronx Council of UJA-Federation Agencies; Member Bronx Borough President's Council on Infra Structure and Building; Class Father of 2nd Grade class in the Highview Elementary School.

Published work: Numerous academic articles and op-ed pieces in the New York Times and the Gannett Papers. A few articles of general interest such as a favorable analysis of the Women’s Movement entitled “The Semiotics of The Women’s Liberation Movement,” in the academic Journal, ‘Et Cetera.’.

Marital status: Married 43 years to Elder Abuse Social Worker in the Crime Victims Assistance Unit of the Office of The Bronx District Attorney.

Spouse: Ellen (Kiok) Kolodney.

Children: Akiba Louis Kolodney (42) and Leah Rachel Pizer (38).

Grandchildren: Jackson Pizer (7). Outstanding Cornell memory: Sitting in Noyes Lodge with other profound thinkers (Well, we certainly thought we were.) and identifying the seemingly insolvable problems of economic and social inequality that have inevitably emerged in a materialistic society such as ours. Fortunately we have escaped those negative values perhaps because of inborn integrity, we objectively thought with our usual objectivity, while we sat looking out at a beautiful lake, wearing our L.L. Bean work clothes wrinkle resistant of course, drinking coffee and eating condiments and planning for the Phi Sig party that night. Barbara had said that she’d pick-up David and me. But I certainly couldn’t figure out how she was going to handle the two of us in the two seats of us in her new, beautiful, bright red and sporty MG--TD that she had received from her ‘Daddy, as she calls him when she’s not calling him other things, as a birthday present from her dad, because she’s “…Daddy’s little girl” and will remain so until he’s no longer able to sign a check.

Did your life turn out as you expected it would: I really had no expectations. I wouldn’t have minded being a folk singer, a professor, an actor or something like that. But I did know that I would spend a life in service to people and The Arts. I even earned a LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker --NYS) so that I could let the arts help inform and be a part of psychotherapeutic treatment.

Post-grad Cornell activities: 1. Volunteer Supervisor of Social Work Interns from the Graduate Schools of Social Work work schools of Columbia University, New York Univ., and Lehman Collage of the City of New York who were assigned to “The Child Abuse Prevention Center” in White Plains, NY; 2. Changed my creative (?) endeavors from poetry to my first-time study and first time writing of Short Narrative Fiction. First story ever written accepted for publication in a well-respected Literary Journal. Exceptionally experienced writers say this is rather unusual; 3. Half way through a novel about teenagers – the intellectuals and the gangs – of the 1950s. The ‘50s are so often called the peaceful, “Father Knows Best” decade. I guess that the war in Korea that we almost lost; Senator Joseph McCarthy and HUAC and their witch-hunt that ruined so many people’s lives (especially artist’s lives).

Personal reflections: To adapt a phrase from Helen Merrill’s book, “On Shame and the Search for Identity”: The major question in life is to know when to yield to a recalcitrant reality, and when, never the less, try to change it.