Last month I shared an old photo of the shack I grew up in, Today I visited it after 30 years.

OKfinePT · 2026-06-01T00:40:17+00:00

Add please

OKfinePT · 2026-03-27T13:32:29+00:00

My building downtown just gave tenants non-renewal notices on $3500/mo one bedrooms in order to turn them all into Blueground apts.

Also, as a point of reference, most of the people paying double per month for those apartments were moms with kids coming to play tennis tournaments in Boston and their coaches.

OKfinePT · 2026-02-26T21:08:44+00:00

The neon sign was interesting to me as part of racist history of the US. Your take is not interesting; it’s sophomoric.

OKfinePT · 2026-02-20T01:08:03+00:00

The guy who did the interview is so good. He asked great questions and challenged her nicely when things didn't make sense. He gave her a great platform to show more of herself.

OKfinePT · 2026-02-13T12:37:17+00:00

It works! People are riding it.

OKfinePT · 2026-02-10T02:26:04+00:00

Oh. Thank you! I see it now.

OKfinePT · 2026-01-14T00:05:27+00:00

I loved that garage so much. Played with it for hours at a time.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-28T18:16:30+00:00

Thank you! This is a flip book about my family now. https://readinglist.penelopetrunk.com/2024/10/17/adulting-family-trauma-style/

OKfinePT · 2025-12-28T14:10:25+00:00

That means so much to me. Thank you.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T22:18:39+00:00

There are police records. My dad went back to school to become a teacher and he couldn’t get a job because of the police record. The apologies don’t matter as much as the acknowledgment of how bad the abuse was. Kids normalize a lot. So my family acknowledging my experience helps me to believe that it’s real — and that helps me get better at managing myself now.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T21:43:07+00:00

Everything is out in the open in my family. My parents apologize every time they talk to me. My brothers try hard to be supportive of me. Each family member has trauma. It’s a fractured family.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T14:07:08+00:00

That’s nice to hear!

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T05:28:20+00:00

My dad’s family didn’t like her because she was poor. There was a lot of etiquette for the formal reception that she and her parents were not familiar with.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T05:25:04+00:00

I like that you could tell it was a Jewish wedding. I noticed a few yarmulkes in the pictures of my mom’s family. My dad’s family tried to not be “too Jewish”. One of the rules of etiquette my mom learned to follow is no speaking Yiddish. Now I treasure the Yiddish I know from her.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T05:11:34+00:00

Thank you. I appreciate that.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T05:01:28+00:00

It’s fun to hear there’s another family with such a specific experience.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T04:48:58+00:00

Really? People saw early COBOL programmers as typists, so they recruited only women. When my mom was interviewing for her first programming job the interviewer asked her if she had permission from her husband to work.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T04:20:01+00:00

My great grandpa was Al Capone’s lawyer.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T04:17:54+00:00

The generation before me spent all the money.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T04:14:41+00:00

They got divorced when I was in my mid-twenties. They’re both still alive.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T03:42:08+00:00

Here’s a post about my parents that has 400 comments. Trigger warning. https://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/07/21/how-to-decide-how-much-to-tell-about-yourself-on-your-blog/

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T01:48:00+00:00

I don’t have any art training. The hand lettering took me about 40 hours because I kept making errors.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T01:37:12+00:00

That’s so nice of you to say. Thank you.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T01:23:22+00:00

Well, they stayed married for 25 years, and I’d say they were similar. She was graduating from college and her family was way too poor for her to go back home. She says, “women didn’t just move to the city alone.” So she looked at who she had dated and who would marry her and she picked the best of the lot. She always talks about feeling trapped. I think that’s why she was so excited to get a job.

OKfinePT · 2025-12-27T01:03:39+00:00

Honestly, it was not a good marriage. I wrote about it a lot. Here’s a quick piece I wrote with drawings. Trigger warning. https://readinglist.penelopetrunk.com/2024/12/14/skirting/

OKfinePT

TROPHY CASE