all the zoo images to think about

We took our New Jersey grandchildren into the city to meet up with their Australian cousins who are here for a very short week. So the Central Park Zoo was a central location to meet up before we met with more family celebrating the college graduation of our nephew. Phi Beta Kappa, no less!

At the end of the zoo visit, I asked the NJ cousins what was their favorite animal they saw there. The penguins got the biggest response. Our biggest girl said that was honestly because it was cooler in that space on a very hot day. Honesty is always good. The middle one said the snow leopard; up close but not personal. Yes, he said that. I had mentioned the phrase earlier in the day and he really got it! Oy, such pride I’ve got!

I thought that the human animals were quite clearly the most fascinating.

Here are a few images from today.

 

If you click on the photo above and peer inside the caves, you might also see the snow monkeys who were trying desperately to avoid the unusually hot May sun!

 

What was a bigger show–the seals or the people?

The two 3 year-olds finding lots of commonality.

And leaving the zoo, really encountering the oddest animals of them all.

what’s the best way to clean up OJ and chicken soup on a chair?

I should be specific; off a fabric-covered chair?

This was one dilemma that came up this evening after a wonderful day with the kiddies. We finally got their parents to leave for a few days and so we got to play. We went out for lunch, then went to batting cages for some practice (the little one was very patient because we told him he could do it at the end, but at the end, we just didn’t remind ourselves out loud of our promise and we left), then home to play, color, cut up the paper into shreds that we just colored, and ate dinner. The fairly-full cup of juice spilling over the boy, the chair, and the sister indicated that indeed, we were all tired. Bed was achieved for the boys without incident and the big girl will take care of herself.

With a little reminder.

I just spent five minutes knocking at the bathroom door to get her to answer me to get out of the shower.

I’ll probably have to go back in another 5 minutes. No doubt.

In the meantime, I just looked up another question that was posed the other day at lunch by a 5 year-old guest. Actually, he requested another fork, because the one he had was broken.

It was a dessert fork.

Did you ever stop to think about why the end prong is slightly dented and larger? Now I did. ISHI thought that it was to help stabilize cake as it is cut. Being a lefty, I guess it never got used for that purpose and I just really thought it was for decoration. But another Google search here shows:

The shapes of the fork tines accommodate particular foods. Forks wrought with long tapered tines, such as a dinner fork, are made to spear thick morsels of food, such as steak. Forks with a wide left tine and an optional notch, such as a salad fork, fish fork, dessert fork, and pastry fork, provide extra leverage when cutting food that normally does not require a knife. Forks with curved tines, such as the oyster fork, are made to follow the shape of the shell.

So that makes sense. But the history of the fork is quite fascinating! Here’s some more from the same site:

By the seventh century, small forks were used at Middle Eastern courts; one such fork, a small, gold, two-pronged tool, came to Italy in the eleventh century in the dowry of a Byzantine princess who married Domenico Selvo, a Venetian doge. After witnessing the princess use the fork, the church severely censured her, stating that the utensil was an affront to God’s intentions for fingers. Thereafter the fork disappeared from the table for nearly 300 years.

In England the fork was slow to gain acceptance because it was considered a feminine utensil. The exception was the ‘sucket’ fork, a utensil used to eat food that might otherwise stain the fingers, such as “a silvir forke for grene gynger” noted in an inventory taken in 1523 of Lady Hungerfords effects. The sucket fork was wrought with two prongs at one end of the stem and a bowl at the other. The fork end was used to spear food preserved in thick, sticky syrup, such as plums and grapes, and the spoon end to convey the syrup to the mouth.

And then the question that came up today and how I know I will learn a lot while I am with the kiddies is “What does that mean?” after I said I’d be there with bells on.

After all, what does that expression mean? So of course, I did another Google search and that is indeed very interesting. Basically, it’s not clear. People have some ideas and the fact that they are so different from each other is the most convincing that they really don’t know.

Here is a bit of trivia that is seasonal, I guess. The Mavens found that

F. Scott Fitzgerald left the final preposition off in his 1922 Beautiful & Damned, where we see, “All-ll-ll righty. I’ll be there with bells.”

But this is what I’ve found so far as the best selection of possibilities, including a reference to the bells that were on the garments of the Jewish High Priest back in the days of the Holy Temple, but they also include many other choices, for our consideration. You can tell by the spelling that the site is British:

 Two stronger contenders, and they are stronger by dint of their emergence in the right place at the right time, i.e. the USA in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and because the circumstances match the meaning of the phrase, are these:

- Bells that were added decoratively to the harnesses of horses in parades and especially in circuses or other gala circumstances, as depicted on old Christmas cards and the like. Someone coming to a party ‘with bells on’ wasn’t just coming, he was planning to come in with a flourish to boost the festive spirit.

- The settlement of US immigrants in Pennsylvania and other states. Their preferred means of transport were large, sturdy wooden carts, called Conestoga wagons. These were drawn by teams of horses or mules whose collars were fitted with headdresses of bells. George Stumway, in Conestoga Wagon 1750-1850, states that the wagoners personalised the bells to tunings of their liking and took great pride in them. If a wagon became stuck, a teamster who came to the rescue often asked for a set of bells as reward. Arriving at a destination without one’s bells hurt a driver’s professional pride, whereas getting there ‘with bells on’ was a source of satisfaction.

Circumstantial evidence is the best we have at present so, as they say, the jury is still out.

And I’ll let you know if I was successful in getting out the OJ and the chicken soup from the chair…

what is all that there is?

I wondered this for a while and then did some searching. So Google helped me find this site http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lady/snapshots/peggy-lee.html with this explanation:

I’ve recently discovered that the song “Is That All There Is?” (written by Stoller & Leiber) is actually taken from a story called “Disillusionment” by Thomas Mann (written when he was twenty). The following summary, taken from Colin Wilson’s book The Craft of the Novel, makes this absolutely unmistakable.

The narrator is sitting in St Mark’s Square in Venice when he falls into a conversation with a fellow countryman. The man asks, “Do you know what disillusionment is? Not a miscarriage in small unimportant matters, but the great and general disappointment which everything, all of life, has in store?” He tells how, as a small boy, the house caught fire; yet as they watched it burn down he was thinking, “So this is a house on fire? Is that all?” And ever since then, life has been a series of disappointments; all the great experiences have left him with the feeling: “Is that all?” Only when he saw the sea for the first time, he says, did he feel a sudden tremendous craving for freedom, for a sea without a horizon… And one day, death will come, and he expects it to be the last great disappointment. “Is this all?”

The song sung by Peggy Lee leaves out the part about the sea, but ends, just as Thomas Mann’s story does, with the idea that death will be just one more disappointment.

The verse to this song is actually spoken rather than sung. The refrain, the only part which is sung, goes

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friend,
Then let’s keep dancing,
If that’s  all
there
is.

didn’t have this in mind when thinking of what to write about

I didn’t want to write about Mother’s Day, although I have been thinking about my mother a lot recently. Our grandson who just turned 7 the other day was born right before she died, so I always think about her on his birthday. On top of that, this year her yahrzeit, the Hebrew date of her death, comes up very early, as these things cycle through. It’s next week. The Gregorian date is June 5. So having it come into May sort of gets me thinking more and more about her.

There is a boy in our community whose birthday is the same day as my mother’s death. I remember that so very well. We celebrated his birthday at school; I went home and ate a green apple, and got the phone call. This young man got called up to the Torah as a bar mitzvah yesterday.

So you see, it’s on my mind.

My father called a little while ago with bad news. Sometimes he can say he’s got bad news, but you can hear the giggle in the back of his voice that let’s you know he’s kidding. Today there was no giggle. No tickle. Just the news.

It was a nice day today, but I never felt warm, even outside. The temperature dropped just now significantly, which makes sense to me.

I had called my brother earlier in the day to wish him a happy birthday, but he wasn’t home.

Good for him.

What my father had to share was that a cousin of mine had a heart attack and died. We have not been close since really ever, even though we were very close with the rest of that side of the family. My aunt, who also married into the family and is now only one of 3 in-laws left out of 10, had called him. They are not involved in Judaism in any significant way and are having some kind of memorial service on Tuesday. My father did not press her for more information. We could not remember the sister’s name. I had to go to our Geni site, request a new password, since I had not bothered remembering it, and look up the family tree.

My cousin had just turned 61.

Too close for comfort and too far away, also.

watching life unfold in the most expected and unexpected ways

Since it was  rainy today and I couldn’t spend so much time outside, I’ll post a few from my last couple of nice walks I did with my camera.

Wait–I didn’t walk with my camera.

But perhaps I did.

ISHI and I went on this walk together. But since I did take my camera, he knew to be ready to stop at various times to look around for me, taking another photo.

There’s nothing wrong with observing. I was there then, but also bringing it back to be here now.

(Click on each of them to open them up w-i-d-e!)

This one below  is through a car window on our return from our ladies’ day at the museum the other day. We had stopped at a red light. I was very taken with the choice of the color of the house.

Take it in while we can, before the light changes.

what i did and did not see on our walk today

Purple said I should write about it.

So I will.

It was so lovely out today and we enjoyed the walk and the talk. What I gain from friends, knowing I can say anything  (but won’t, but I can) is not to be taken for granted. 

And enjoying the weather, knowing it will change at any time. Spring is glorious.

So I took this with my phone. Do you see the twins? 

I asked the mother here in the photo below if I could take a picture of her little girl looking at the tulips, but I was too slow or too polite. The little girl turned away. I still am very taken with the colors of their clothes. They matched the tulips. Do you think that was her fascination? More likely, the flowers were at her eye-level, so she could really examine their insides and outs. Budding scientist, perhaps? I loved that the mother was so patient with her.

This photo below is blurry. I know. Can you see the man in the full Scottish regalia, including bagpipe? As we passed the church, we noted there must be a funeral. They wouldn’t have a wedding on a Wednesday morning, would they? But everyone gathered outside didn’t seem to be sad. Just business-like. 

 

After we were that far away, I thought it wouldn’t be as tacky to take his photo–thus, the blur. It was just about then that he started playing.

I just looked to find some information about why they play. Here’s one account of the obvious:

Many people associate bagpipes with funerals and this is because they powerfully touch our deepest emotions; the haunting voice of the bagpipe express feelings that words alone may fail to convey.

 

Purple thought it was (how did you put it, exactly?) maudlin. I thought it was very moving, quite dignified. And she agreed that it was, in and of itself, but the whole death thing is so difficult.

This was quite a while after our discussion about the ethics of where the Boston bomber should be buried.

What do we owe someone we love?

What about someone we cannot?

And is it time to pay the piper?

can i be the folk in the folk music?

Yesterday, when I was driving to the store to pick out new tiles for our bathroom, I heard this song. I found the version I like the most on YouTube and it’s here below.

It made me think about how much I usually love folk music. I can find fault in much (as I did in my last post) for its oversimplicity that masquerades as lack of effort and value for the listener. But sometimes, actually often, the words drive the music so deeply. I know that different things affect people differently, but how can you hold yourself back from being moved by this?

Or why would you?

I already wrote two years ago here about how our kids made fun of us for our love of folk music. Now, of course, it’s becoming more popular. Good thing. I had saved this entry from delanceyplace.com from March about folk music’s entry into the American musical scene in the 1950′s, which led to the popularity of Bob Dylan (about whom the book was written).

“Those that followed or considered themselves part of the folk revival placed great importance on an elusive quality in music that might be described as authenticity. To be respected in the folk community, musicians had to perform traditional songs in a manner true to the original, while also making the songs distinctively their own. The starting point was to find and learn from the earliest and purest forms of the songs.

 Authentic is so often just the opposite. It’s so refreshing to hear something that makes the human connections that are really at the source of all communication. Or is it the other way around?

one step in front of the other

There’s a extraordinarily insipid Hebrew song that was popular back in the 60′s, at the time when “Jewish” music was just breaking into a new form; pop, meaning popular. In the style of the times. But what it was really was just a 2-part easy-to-sing-around-the-campfire kind of song that could make people feeeeeel something.

(I know. I’m a sentimental old fool.)

The song was “Kol HaOlam Kulo Gesher Tzar M’od”. The 2 lines translate as:

The whole world is a very narrow bridge.
And the main thing is not to fear at all.

It was based on the words of Rebbe Nachman, who was also becoming mainstream in those days. Ironically, much of the music that he himself wrote is much more sophisticated and worth knowing, past your school or camp experiences.

But it’s actually not what he wrote.

I’m attaching the original Hebrew, but you can see it here, brought to us by the Breslov organization, in Likutei Moharan II, 48.

It says, right in the middle:

…And all of it comes together and gathers and connects and comes to help you in a time of trouble, which is, G-d forbid, some pressure or trouble, G-d forbid. And know that a person needs to cross over a very very narrow bridge, and the rule and the principle is that he should not יתפחד

Okay here’s where it gets even more interesting. The word he uses is in the reflexive future tense. I saw one person translate it as “not give into fear.”

“Don’t get caught up in fear.”

Now we see that they changed the words to get a simple tune.

But this is not simple, is it?

After all, there is much to be afraid of. There was when Rebbe Nachman wrote it and there was when they changed it to fit the tune. And we have not changed now. Newtown. Boston. Syria.  Lots of narrowness.

But

the other day, after our hike, I thought about this some more.

It’s not that there aren’t troubles; it’s that we gather our strength to go step-by-step, with G-d’s help. We don’t walk sideways; we walk ahead. We are creatures who move that way, not like crabs.

We can walk backwards, when we realize we’ve made a mistake or when we want or need to re-visit somewhere.

So we can admit to being afraid; we can admit to the reality of the world. But we can also muster up the help around us to move forward.

 

 

And be amazed.

learning how to not take yourself so seriously

And by that, I mean me.

Yes, it was lovely to get away. We enjoyed being with old old friends, as well as meet some new and very interesting people. We enjoyed lovely weather, long walks, and even a big hike. I got to give hard-learned advice to my friend on how to set limits and not be taken advantage of. And today, we took in the Norman Rockwell Museum out in Stockbridge, on the advice of another friend.

It was the least we could do. He asked us to do 2 things for him, after he took us on the amazing hike up a gorge, fed us cheese and wine at the top of the mountain, and then dinner back at his house.

The first thing was to read a book. It’s ordered; the reading will follow eventually. “Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success”, by Adam Grant. Our friend is a successful businessman who made less than he had, thanks to being a friend of Bernie (Madoff)’s, so had to go back to work after he retired and had moved out to Lenox, Mass. His wife also got sick, went to the doctor’s, and died a few days later. So he has a right to tell us what to think and what to read. We can choose whether to think it back.

Here’s what the book people think the book is about:

Give and Take changes our fundamental ideas about how to succeed—at work and in life. For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured world, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. Give and Take illuminates what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common.

Using his own groundbreaking research as the youngest tenured professor at Wharton, Grant examines the surprising forces that shape why some people rise to the top of the success ladder while others sink to the bottom. In professional interactions, it turns out that most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.

I’m intrigued, no question about it.

The other thing was to go to the Rockwell Museum. That was easy.

I have photos to show how brilliant Norman Rockwell was and how what he did was complex and significant. And his artwork was much more than just illustration. I want to show one in particular that is not well-known; it’s not from a magazine cover.

It’s called Portrait of a Man.

Now would you have identified this with a Rockwell? Okay, maybe you artsy people out there, but I was flabbergasted.

And now, here’s the description.

A Portrait of a Man.

It just changes my perspective so radically.

Thanks, friend; I needed that.

Word of the Week Challenge: Court Reporter (WARNING - HUMOR)

Reblogged from Anne Squared:

The United States legal system is the full interconnected system of judicial, regulatory and governmental authorities who together administer and enforce the laws of the United States, operate the judicial system, and resolve judicial disputes and appeals. (Wikipedia) (Note: If I ever use Wikipedia as a reference or source, I am not too serious about my topic. This is a first for me.) There are rules and roles that the players must follow.

Read more… 740 more words

Please be ready to grab the tissues to wipe the tears from laughing so much!