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?

okay now i will talk about yesterday

and our trip to the museum.

But a trip to the museum seems to always have other stuff around it, right?

We started out with a lovely group of four of us women. Before we left on our way, though, T got a call from her neighbor. I’m going to assume it was a frantic one, since what I heard on my end involved lots of blood and alternative plans for her girls. It seems that the little brother got a deep cut in his hand which would require a visit to the emergency room. No problem–we found booster seats and snacks and spring jackets and loaded them up into the van.

Road trip!

And so we enjoyed.

They were wonderful, those girls. The only difference it made having them there is I had to pay attention to what I was saying in the car. Something about girl swimmers vs boy swimmers. I don’t even remember now.

And yes, I found myself back in teacher mode. “What do you see that’s the same in these two pictures?”

“What’s different?”

“Oh, I didn’t notice that–great find!”

And yes, it’s different than being a grandmother. These girls listen.

Or at least enough to make me feel good.

But I did get a chance to take some photos that I thought were interesting.

Who knew my camera did this thing with the outlining? That’s what you get when you look at the settings.

Changing focus just a bit now:

And now some shadow-play.

Oh, and the kid’s all right.

Thank you, Inbound Zombie!

Thank you, Inbound Zombie. This is the kind of photo that I wanted!

Well, I do have another one, but that will follow shortly.

T and I did a big shopping today, first Whole Foods and then Costco. I wound up (what a great double-entendre word) with a cashier who was so busy not smiling that it hurt.

It hurt everyone around her. Maybe not Costco, but really, lady, would it hurt you to smile just a little?

I made a mistake with punching in my card. I did not want money back, but I pushed the red button and not the little sign on the screen. Bad me.

She told me to swipe it again and this time, follow directions.

I did and then admitted that I got confused by too many options. Red usually means stop.

She actually showed a hint of a smile.

There!

Did it hurt?

But then I got rewarded.

Another woman came by with a carriage filled to the brim with stuff, and on top of it, a gigantic bear!

Yes, stuffed.

Wait, Costco must have a photo of it!

Yes, here it is.

But I really really wanted a photo of how she positioned the bear onto the carriage. But my phone does not send photos. It could, but I don’t pay for that, so what would be the use?

So I asked T to take a photo. By the time that she could, the woman had already started to unpack her car. She put the bear into the front of her car.

It was too big for the car seat.

Yes, you can see the feet!

Didn’t this make you smile?

people are starving so eat your vegetables

today. On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day.

Yes, when I was young, people used to say this. Not my parents, mind you, but it was a well-known and used phrase.

People are starving in “fill in the blank place”, so eat your “fill in the blank”.

Europe                                         vegetables

That’s what it was when I was really young. And although the logic is quite suspect, it was true that there was a limit of food in certain places.

I never got told to eat my veggies; I just never did. How ironic, of course, is it that I am indeed a vegetarian, ovo-lacto-pesca variety…

But why is my attention drawn to food today?

We are so rich. We have so much, really. We cannot complain. We should be grateful for all that we have, even the problems.

So it is so obscene that I read this article today:

Pro-anorexia ‘thinspiration’ photos shouldn’t be banned from social media

We’re afraid of what’s known as “thinspiration,” it seems, because glamorous photos of very skinny women, together with admiring captions, might arouse self-loathing in women, and thereby inspire self-mortification, and in particular anorexia.

The fact that thinspo, as it’s sometimes called, is sassily named and designed to encourage beholders to reduce their weight—”thin” + “inspiration”—doesn’t help anyone looking to defend it as morally or clinically neutral.  There is no “tasteful pictorial” when it comes to thinspiration. It’s all hard-core.

Yes, sick sick sick. The article is not necessarily about the phenomenon, but about the futility of stopping such behavior since it will just boomerang somewhere and somehow else.

But still today, of all days, when reminded of the horrors of the Holocaust, when Jews and yes many many others, were subjected to inhuman unhumane torture, when dogs were treated better than they were, can we not see the decadence of our society?

No photos today, folks.

borrowed: 30 Dr. Seuss Quotes to Live By

As it say, from MAMIVERSE.COM.

I think I like #21 best.

Or 24.

I might like another one tomorrow and that’s okay, too.

well, if my home is a foreign place,

Then I better start putting down roots.

Actually, what I’ve done this week is more than that. I’ve basically bound myself to home all week in order to get rid of this nasty cold. And now that the weather has turned nasty (of course we can’t SKIP winter), I don’t wanna go out. So roots are down.

And so am I.

It might be traceable to many very real things.

1. the phone call at 4:56 a.m. ISHI somehow picked it up. “Automated call”, he said,and then tried, pretty much in vain, to go back to sleep for a half hour.
2. the second phone call at 4:57. This time, I picked it up. It was from Amazon, automated, saying “put your PIN number in now.” No, I don’t think so. It turns out that the first one was from the same number. I called, a few hours later, and they of course said it was not them. They would have sent an email, if there were any problem. And yet, they also said they would investigate it further. If it wasn’t them, why would they need to? Because someone was identifying themselves as Amazon, and they’re not that big not to care.
3. Oh, and there was another phone call from them another 2 hours later. From the pretend Amazon people, at least I should say.
4. So I was fine all night. It was the first night in a week that I didn’t feel I had to suppress the coughing and all. Okay maybe just a little. But then when I woke up, it came roaring back.
5. Maybe I’ll really appreciate spring now, but oh the grey is so sad.
6. I don’t like complaining.
7. I don’t like people getting divorced.

Bet you didn’t see that coming.

Neither did I.

This is a couple I know who had participated in a program with me a few years ago. We’ve been in touch, on and off, through email, Facebook, and a visit last year when we were in Israel. Oh, yeah. Israeli.

Not that it makes a difference at all. Or maybe it does. I like to pretend that everything is better there, even though I know that’s not true by any means.

And they’re young.

With a child.

That makes it worse.

I want to say why didn’t you tell me? I wanted to say why didn’t you ask for help?

I asked a mutual friend what happened and he didn’t tell me. But he told me what I needed to know, that they are both relieved that this has come to an end, and that the divorce was as amicable as possible.

Looking back, I would have known that problems would lay ahead.

But of course, hindsight 20-20.

No, more than that. Everyone has problems–that’s part of the path. But everyone has to find the path that takes them to a better place, if only to have to find another path then.

So I’m not going to ask them what happened. I’m only going to wish them Mazal Tov, as they’ve asked to be wished.

Both of them.

Separately.

And I’ll try harder to pay attention to others, in the future.

(I am feeling better now, thanks for asking. I guess some things just have to work themselves out in ways nastier than we expected.)

so the ides was so two days ago

but I’d say beware the ides of February today.

And is “beware” much more than “be aware”?

Oh I think we can all agree with that.

Or perhaps not.

[Middle English ben war : ben, to be; see be + war, on one's guard; see ware².]

I’ve written about February being the cruelest month (here and here, with apologies to TS Elliot), about cabin fever that usually explains people’s malaise. But not this year, since it has been exceptionally mild, especially compared to last year. But do people think that way, anyway? Do they feel like they’ve got it coming to them?

I don’t know.

Today was exceptionally bad for all kinds of other people.

I sat with someone who has significant theological questions, about why so many things happen to her and how much can she take. I tried to tell her that the same bad things happen to a lot of people, although honestly, she has had more than her share, but it’s how they react that’s different. And when you are numb to problems for a long time, when you finally start feeling, everything is that much more painful.

And so she feels every single singe, bruise, and bump multiple-times worse than others do.

I can’t tell her that Shabbat will make her feel better.

I did tell her that it might.

And she left, feeling a little bit better, maybe a little bit stronger, and went to another meeting where she was totally bamboozled and felt how many times worse than before, because other people allowed her to be taken advantage of.

And when you don’t have control, what can you do?

You can find someone who will listen to you, so that next time, you will have a better chance of not letting the same thing happen again.

i wasn’t going to write about shlomo carlebach, but

I was going to write about bad grammar. There was a message on the phone machine from someone who should know better, but said”

“Blahblahblahblah  blahblah blah…

for you and I to get together.”

No. You lose all credibility with that one.

So that’s the theme here that I walked into (into which I walked?):

You should know better.

That’s my feeling about Shlomo Carlebach. I was reminded of him just now by the link provided by Jewish Ideas Daily from the Forward. I am wary in general of anything written in the Forward, since it’s going to have an anti-religious outlook, but this article is so blaaaand. It’s as if the person reviewing the musical had no idea of who this guy was. And I think that’s bad reviewing.

So I will review him without seeing the musical.

Which I will not do.

I will explain. Actually, I will refer you to what I wrote back on June 28, 2009 about my distrust of celebrity, charisma, etc., including my distaste for Shlomo Carlebach. I did not state it outright, but I’ll link you to an article from Lillith Magazine  that has been used as an example of Lashon Hara, since it was written after he died and so he couldn’t defend himself against such charges.

The fact is abuse basically by definition means the weak not being able to defend him/herself. So I have no use for this argument. The undisputed fact is that he took advantage of many women, and probably much of it (now this is definitely my opinion, for what it’s worth) could be called abuse.

So how does this figure into his music?

Last Friday evening, at shul, the person leading the services was a Carlebach devoté and he milked all the Carlebach tunes for all they’re worth.

Which, of course, in my book, is not very much.

Most of his tunes are quite simplistic, which most people think means that they’re easy to follow. It happens to be not true. There’s one in particular that people mess up, not able to handle the minor vs. major key that it dips into. But still, yes, I did use some of the tunes when I taught preschool. As I said, simplistic. Fit for that.

I will also link you to a wonderful article about music and prayer by Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks that I just received and I will include but a bit here (and you should definitely read the whole thing, if you haven’t already):

There is an inner connection between music and the spirit. When language aspires to the transcendent and the soul longs to break free of the gravitational pull of the earth, it modulates into song. Music, said Arnold Bennett is “a language which the soul alone understands but which the soul can never translate.” It is, in Richter’s words “the poetry of the air.” Tolstoy called it “the shorthand of emotion.” Goethe said, “Religious worship cannot do without music. It is one of the foremost means to work upon man with an effect of marvel.” Words are the language of the mind. Music is the language of the soul.

So if music is indeed the language of the soul, then it will inform what is in that soul. And I’m saying that just like I won’t listen to Wagner’s music because I know what an anti-Semite he was, (and I don’t like Renoir because I know what kind of anti-Semite he was), I will say that Carlebach’s lack of boundaries comes out in his music and we shouldn’t use it for holy purposes. And so the Forward can review the play, but that’s just what it is.

A play.

And he played with people’s lives, and we shouldn’t make music to sing to G-d without realizing where it’s been first.

We  should know better.

the country mouse is sooo happy to be out of the city

but I did enjoy myself in the BIG APPLE. Or I think I should say we enjoyed ourselves.

We were very very busy mice. After the babysitting, we went into the city to a very nice hotel, Hotel Belleclaire,  that apparently is the home for El Al flight attendants. We heard more Hebrew than since we were in Israel last year. Or maybe since we were in LA last month. Even the doorman met us with “שלום!  מה הענינים”, which idiomatically means “Shalom! How’s it going?”  And he was not Israeli. Anyway, it was a good launching point for us to go to the Met on Monday, MOMA on Tuesday (wait–it isn’t open today? Oh that’s why we were going to go to the Guggenheim) and the Guggenheim, lunch here and there, and some nice dinners at Noi Due and at Ozu, walking through Central Park and all over the Upper West and East Sides, getting in a little shopping, of course, and we even went out to the movies (since we couldn’t find any decent plays that didn’t have music or nudity, etc.). So a fabulous time was had by both of us.

I forgot to mention that yes, I did take a lot of photos! We were lucky, too, that the weather was manageable so that we could bundle up but still be comfortable. So I had an extra good time playing with my camera. I will hopefully post some of those photos but I wanted to start with a sorry state of affairs. Really. At one point, we passed by a courtyard that was very dramatic, but we didn’t have time to check out what it was at that time. Later on that day, (or was it the next morning?) ISHI had to pass by there coming back from shul. He stopped in the pharmacy right past there to pick something up and so he asked the sales girl what was there.

“What courtyard?”

“Two doors down–it has the same name as your pharmacy–Apthorp.”

“Never heard of it.”

“How long have you been working here?”

“Two years.”

She was certainly not only forgetting to look up, but look at all!

Well, you can be certain that we went back to look. Here’s what we saw.

And we went in to explore some more.

We asked the man at the gate (the gateman?) what they were and he told us they were condos, but we could look at the sign on the wall for more information.

It had been there since 1905! This made me very sad. New Yorkers, along with all other city dwellers, are WUI, walking under their Iphones, or Ipods, or whatever is keeping them hyper-focused on a little box.  A box.

I wanted to give out gold stars to those people who were actually either looking around them or yes, gasp, talking to the person next to them! Maybe next visit…

Here’s a little sadness to go along with my observation–

Death by iPod

POSTED ON JANUARY 18, 2012, AT 10:23 AM

47
American pedestrians killed or seriously injured by trains, cars, and buses while wearing ear buds or headphones in 2010-11

16
Number of such deaths and injuries in 2004-05

29
Percent of headphone-related accidents in which the vehicle reported sounding a siren or horn before the crash

UGH! Look what you are missing, people!

a spoon is a spoon or is it something else?

Our grandson, the little one here, insists that a fork is a “poon” and a spoon is a fork. If you offer him a fork, he’ll correct you and say “a poon”. And visa-versa. And so at dinner tonight, take-out from Sushi Metsuyan, he spits out the spicy fish poppers, but eats the tofu and the grilled mango from the Nakate Tofu and as much of the California roll that his brother will give him, but takes a new “poon” each time he returns from walking away from the table. And leaves his ice cream to go back to more tofu.

You see, he’s two years old now and the world is his. If you say that a certain item is yours, he’ll correct you and say it’s his. So it’s his toys and his booster seat and his bike and his bike helmet (the pink one and the blue one) and his gloves (all the pairs that he can put his hands on) and his hat. His brother’s hat, his old hat, and anything else that goes on his head. Especially the doll hat. We returned a doll hat that someone in his family had left at our house. He insisted that he could wear it. We tried to let a toy bear wear the hat and he thought that was a hoot. No, it belonged on his head. But the bear was allowed to wear a scarf, something that had come off one of his sister’s shirts. After all, it was very cold today and the bear needed to be warm.

It’s extraordinary to watch someone learn to play and represent the world in symbols, while still owning the world.

I would publish a gallery of the little one’s wearing of the hats, but I won’t. I will publish other photos later when we return to home. In the meantime, we’re enjoying not being home and just being at home in the universe.