why are chocolate chips such a big deal?

In case you haven’t heard, there’s been a huge hullabaloo here in the states about Trader Joe’s trading in their status of favorite store of many observant Jews due to the change in the status of their chocolate chips. They used to be certified kosher pareve, which meant that they could be used for either meat or dairy dishes, but due to stringency on the part of the kosher supervising company, they’ve now been certified dairy, even though they still don’t have dairy in them. It’s a bottom line bottom-line thing. Cost. They can’t wipe down the equipment between runs anymore like they used to. Well, they CAN, but…

So now we have to see if they can because the cri de coeur is so deafening.  After all, not only was there a petition sent all around through change.org, but it made the Wall Street Journal today. As always, the comments were telling. One person pointed out the value of the pareve status for those with dairy allergies. Their lives literally depend on that. Of course, I know that those who are in that position also find out when dairy is really not dairy at all, such as Oreos. So who’s willing to be the guinea pig on this one? I guess someone with a lesser reaction, but I wouldn’t want to play that part. I like playing it safe.

Some complained about religious nonsense and much ado about nothing. And that’s perhaps true, except that, after all, this is a business paper addressing a business issue.  So whether there’s a value or not to the issue, it makes sense for them to investigate.  And after all, if we wouldn’t dare object to the restrictions of Halal for the Moslems (as much as it’s become politically correct to make fun of the Mormons and their food restrictions–see this article, if you’d like, about their issue with coffee), then we should be honestly accepting of all faiths’ food taboos and limitations.

And yet…

Why is it such a big deal?

Yes, they’re tastier and less expensive than other brands. That’s not a little thing. But it’s only chocolate chips, after all.

So why?

I think it’s because we like to be normal. All we’s. We who keep kosher, we who have allergies, we minorities of unseen things. We like to be able to go to a regular store and buy our things and pretend, for a moment, that we are all the same.

Of course we are. Really.

One of my favorite things that happened a few years back was going into a Trader Joe’s when travelling through the middle of California and finding kosher wine. We had to take the main highway while travelling from San Francisco to LA due to the wild fires along the coast. Really–the middle of nowhere!

And not the not-so-good-though-kosher wine that they sell now, but Herzog wine! Now that’s convenient luxury! We bought a whole bunch of bottles, for sure, just to show our appreciation.

Is it the luxury of convenience or the convenience of luxury?

But being able to buy our little luxuries makes us all on the same level. And that’s a good thing. We need to be able to know that capitalism is the great equalizer.

Or it could be, all things being equal.

But they’re not. And so those in charge are making us understand our limits.

So what am I going to do?

Make brownies instead of blondies.

And hope that I can keep things in perspective.

Dear Unknown,

I can promise you very little.

But I will promise you that if you do not declare yourself to me, I will do the same.

And that goes ditto for your friends Blocked, Pactel, anything with an 888 number, Friends of Police (aren’t we all?), and all your relatives.

I will also not run to answer anyone’s number I do not recognize. I will not jump through hoops. I will let the phone machine pay its keep.

Oh, it does.

I do not have a smartphone. (I do have a simple cellphone that I use when I have to.)

I am fascinated by these commercials where the disembodied Siri acts as a servant for the celebrities who are making money for being there. Upstairs Downstairs for the 21st century.

But I am happy using the technology slowly, if not smartly.

Here are some photos from a nature walk we took yesterday on a glorious day. This path is 7 minutes from my house by foot.

Not bad.

I know I’ve said I like full blossom, but potential is nice, too.

One more lovely setting that people provided.

And now into the woods! (As always, click on any of them to open them up wide.)

This is the kind of unknown I want to get to know.

Yes, so much depends upon that wheelbarrow, doesn’t it?

And I’m not talking about Christo, either.

I”m talking about this:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

So what does depend on it? Oh so much has been written about this gem. Here’s a fascinating bit by Julio Marzán with his understanding.

But from what element in “Brilliant Sad Sun” did Williams get the “red wheelbarrow”? From an imaginary translation from the Spanish. In Spanish, to know things by heart or to do something by rote can be described by the phrase de carretilla: hacer de carretilla or saber de carretilla. The image evokes carrying around the knowledge using a small cart. Colloquially, one can refer to someone’s habitually prattling on about some- thing as bringing back one’scarretilla. And carretilla also literally denotes “wheelbarrow.” On that afternoon, Rose was prattling nostalgically de carretilla, so the carretilla was Rose’s, la carretilla de Rosa, which homonymously translated also says “the red wheelbarrow.”

 He claims that it’s reasonable to get there because of WCW’s southwestern roots.

(There are many more writers who give their opinion about the poem there, but you can see for yourself what you think is valuable.)

So can we get there from here or do we have to?

The reason that this poem is dear is because it was a way out of an assignment that our dear son#2 had to do in some level of schooling (what year did they make you do this?) and ISHI came up with this ingenious way out.

I mean, so much depended on his ability to finish the assignment, you know.

But then, after the kids were grown, I started looking around and seeing things with new eyes.

I realized that my neighbors always had a wheelbarrow for displaying plants out during the spring and summer and then I realized I didn’t know what they did with it in the winter. And then I realized how little I knew about my neighbors. And then I heard that they died.

And I saw how much does depend upon that wheelbarrow.

And I saw the brilliance of the poem and of WCW.

And I saw how powerful writing can be.

And then I saw this article about Zionism that posed this question:

Both of you have written about the tragedy of young American Jews who have no connection to Judaism and the fate of the Jewish State. So let’s say you were stuck in an elevator with one of the people from that demographic and you had two minutes to sell them about why they should re-engage with Jewishness and Zionism and the Jewish people. What would you say?

Oh did you see that coming? You should look at the article to see what he says.

Can we redact everything so perfectly?

It’s a good exercise.

And so much depends upon it.

forget about who moved the cheese*

I want to know was it worth it?

I shop at a few different supermarkets, depending on time and direction and weather. So this one market has been out of my loop for about a month, I guess since they started their redecorating process.

The good news is that this obviously is a sign of good economic times for them, that they thought to expand. The bad news is that it makes things very difficult for us consumers.

I realize that my post yesterday means that it is good to mix things up. I know that it’s good for the brain. But I just didn’t want that exercise today, thank you. A very nice (older) woman offered me her list of aisles and items.

“Thank you, but that would mean that I would have to look at the list and where I’m going. And that would also mean I should know what I wanted. That’s really okay. You can keep it.”

You see, I know what I came to get, but I didn’t know what else I might find. Eyes open and all that.

I really didn’t need any cheese, so that wasn’t a problem.

They didn’t have soy flour. I didn’t find any organic potatoes. They only had blueberry kefir, not plain.

I’m not sure what else I didn’t get.

But I’ve already found I’ve got what I need.

* I just saw that they actually made a version of that silly book for kids.

Maybe that’s the target audience for the original. Sorry if I offended anyone who liked it.

Or at least maybe I should be. Convince me , if you want.

sometimes satiation isn’t a good thing

I absolutely can’t figure out how I found this yesterday. Link to link to link…

But this is such an important concept for so many areas.

So somehow I came across this term in something that I read online–semantic satiation.

Sounds interesting, you say? Here’s what Dr. Wiki says about it:

Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who can only process the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

(You can find that here.)

Happens to me all the time, along with the inability to recall words. I’m sure they’re related.

But I’m sure that has to do with my parents trying desperately to make me right-handed, which caused major confusion in the part of my brain that deals with language.

Or so I tell myself, since I’m the only one who listens to such, um, a tale.

But [getting back to my subject] doesn’t it matter with everything that we do repeatedly?

Let’s suggest a list where this could play out:

1. giving advice/directions/feedback to children
2. to co-workers
3. to relatives of all levels
4. to spouses
5. to G-d.

Yes!

Oh you saw that coming, didn’t you?

It’s about anything repeated too often. It can lose its meaning. It’s like the mwaa-mwaa of Charlie Brown’s adults. (How would you spell that?) It becomes noise and signifying nothing.

Maybe full of fury but always full of sound.

Definitely told by idiots.

So the only answer is not to make it so meaningless, to figure out a way to invest it (whatever you’re saying–substitute any of the above, but certainly for prayer

Or for any conversation, really) with concentration.

On the other hand, sometimes as I pray I just get something I never thought of before and it is indeed meaningful. Since in Hebrew,להתפלל the verb for prayer is reflexive, it really is about how we are approaching and reflecting it back to ourselves.

So we shouldn’t be idiots.

But if the xkcd:Skynet is apt, then there is indeed a problem with becoming too self-reflexive, too caught up in yourself.

Yup, that works, too.

Remember your goal. It’s not about you.

Psalms Chapter 16 תְּהִלִּים
ח  שִׁוִּיתִי יְהוָה לְנֶגְדִּי תָמִיד:	8 I have set the LORD always before me.

why do i write in lower case, i wonder

Memory at any point in one’s life is sketchy. Just ask any of our family about D#2′s “memories” of when we put the house up for sale. Or about her recipe for cream of broccoli soup, but that’s another matter completely.

But I can say at T minus 7 months to 60 that my memory is sketchier than ever for real now.

So I do remember at some point during my teenage years moving to lower case lettering exclusively. Even for some term papers, now that I’m thinking.

Okay, it was a journal that I was keeping that was part of the assignment, so that made sense. I was smart enough to follow the rules, even in the wild times that I was living when all rules were begging to be broken.

So was it reading Ferlinghetti? Was it reading e.e. cummings?

Or was it archy and mehitabel?

I recall this quandary because I came across mention of said A&H yesterday while looking up something else, which I’ll get to later, perhaps.

If you’re not familiar with archy and mehitabel, then you can look here for a bit. Now that I relook, I realize how unable I was to understand its brilliance at that age. And I have no recollection of how I came across the book, either. But I definitely loved it.

Here’s a blink of the poem, found here.

i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

Okay it was probably all of the above.

You perhaps have noticed that I am using more or less proper capitalization in this post, so what am I talking about? When I write things out by hand. Like to-do lists, menus.

and journal entries.

I also still sign my name in lower case, but it’s gotten to that point that it’s illegible enough that no one would know the difference.

Not like my mother whose penmanship was flawless. Until it wasn’t.

And why did I come across this train of thought?

In honor of Mothers Day, I saw this poem in a few places wishing us a happy one. I thought it wonderfully odd for such a day, but perhaps more meaningful than other garbage trifles that get offered up.

Here’s the poem from one of the earliest places (2002) I found– a website for cruise addicts. (!)

Dust If You Must

Dust if you must but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture or write a letter,
Bake a cake or plant a seed
Ponder the difference between want and need.

Dust if you must but there’s not much time
With rivers to swim and mountains to climb
Music to hear and books to read
Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must but the world’s out here
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain
This day will come around again.

Dust if you must but bear in mind
Old age will come and it’s not kind
And when you go and go you must
You, yourself, will make more dust.

Supposedly a woman named Rose Milligan wrote this. I can’t find anything else about her except a few obituaries.

I guess that’s fitting.

for those few of you who didn’t google the answer

Here is the intro to what I wrote in the previous post:

Elsa Schiaparelli is not a woman to mince words, if her “12 Commandments for Women” are anything to go by. In her autobiography, Shocking Life, which she published in 1954 just as she was closing up her famed shop on the Place Vendôme in Paris, she concludes with a list of guidelines she gleaned from her career.

Apparently, today the Met opens up a fascinating exhibition (oh but I wish I were travelling in NY and could see it):

On View May 10–August 19, 2012

The Met’s Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, explores the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two Italian designers from different eras. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias’s “Impossible Interviews” for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, the exhibition features orchestrated conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Iconic ensembles are presented with videos of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada directed by Baz Luhrmann, focusing on how both women explore similar themes in their work through very different approaches.

The works on view are arranged into seven themes: “Waist Up/Waist Down,” “Ugly Chic,” “Hard Chic,” “Naïf Chic,” “The Classical Body,” “The Exotic Body,” and “The Surreal Body.”

It’s an interesting time to have this conversation. What do we want fashion to be about? How are we allowing ourselves to be manipulated by others? Why does poor Hillary Clinton get called on the rug for not wearing make-up?

Here’s some of what Peggy Orenstein says about the incident (read the whole thing, if you have a chance):

For her part, Hillary Clinton did what she should have: she laughed off the tempest in a teapot (not even a teapot–maybe a demitasse?), telling CNN:

I feel so relieved to be at the stage I’m at in my life right now. Because you know if I want to wear my glasses I’m wearing my glasses. If I want to wear my hair back I’m pulling my hair back. You know at some point it’s just not something that deserves a lot of time and attention. And if others want to worry about it, I let them do the worrying for a change.

Because she’s got other things to think about. Like, I don’t know, terrorism, human rights abuses, nuclear war. But let’s focus on whether she’s hit the Bobbi Brown counter lately, shall we?

who do you think wrote this and

when?

1. Since most women do not know themselves, they should try to do so.
2. A woman who buys an expensive dress and changes it, often with disastrous result, is extravagant and foolish.
3. Most women (and men) are colour-blind. They should ask for suggestions.

4. Remember, 20 percent of women have inferiority complexes, 70 percent have illusions.

5. Ninety percent are afraid of being conspicuous, and of what people will say. So they buy a gray suit. They should dare to be different.
6. Women should listen and ask for competent criticism and advice.
7. They should choose their clothes alone or in the company of a man.
8. They should never shop with another woman, who sometimes consciously, and often unconsciously, is apt to be jealous.
9. She should buy little and only of the best or the cheapest.
10. Never fit a dress to the body, but train the body to fit the dress.
11. A woman should buy mostly in one place where she is known and respected, and not rush around trying every new fad.
12. And she should pay her bills.

I lovelovelove #4 the best.

The question is whether we can count ourselves among the 10%.

May those of you in the know know this without having to guess. I’m guessing that most of you won’t have a clue.

I think I’ll let you guess and I’ll tell you later …

Dear World

Reblogged from Herding Cats:

Here’s the deal – if you’ve never had a special needs child, do not tell us how to manage ours. Telling us to spank our kids when they’re “bad” is ridiculous. Telling us “Oh I know! My two year old does that.” isn’t helpful. Because your two year old? Will grow out of that behavior. My kid may not.

If you work with special needs kids, input given nicely is welcomed.

Read more… 999 more words

Herding Cats should know and we should listen.

layers

I don’t understand some trends.

I like being able to layer clothing. It gives me a feeling that I can manage the weather.

Not control it.

But why do we look to make things complicated?

Like this food layering business. Maybe it’s good to help people lose weight.

Layering flavors involves cooking techniques that add depth of flavor. Each step of the cooking process is important — skip a crucial step and you can’t add back the missed flavor.

Crucial step?

It’s food.

The only thing crucial about food is to have it and not in a way that’s dangerous to your health.

I look at my old cutting board. That’s simple and direct. Beat-up, uneven, worn. Like me.

Dependable.

Useful.

Real.

Now, wine, on the other hand, deserves to be layered and complicated.

Like me.