You would not believe the week I just had. It was beyond belief.
But now back to the blog: Below you will see a very old photo of my mother and me taken on the rooftop of our building on 69th Street in Bay Ridge. I won’t reveal my age due to security reasons but this photo was taken in the early 1920s.
If you have moment, I also wanted to tell my mother’s favorite joke. Please click on the audio player below the picture…
Joe the iceman came around our neighborhood in Bay Ridge with a big ice wagon. This was in the 1920s and early thirties when we had an icebox. Originally Joe had a horse and cart but afterward he had a truck. You would call down and say, “15 cents worth!”, or “25 cents worth!” He used a pick to cut off a block of ice then grab it with big tongs. He had a rubberized piece of material so he could carry the ice on his back and schlep it up the stairs. We were on the third floor. Joe was Italian and a very hard worker. But don’t worry that he lost his livelihood when refrigerators came along. Joe was the one who bought the building from my father.
What is time? Is it real or did we invent it? I’d have to say we invented it. What does the universe need with units of time? Only man marks the passage of time. But does it exist outside of its measurement?
To answer the question, let’s consult Einstein. He said, “people who understand physics know that the distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
With that in mind, we must remember to spring ahead this weekend and reset our clocks or the illusion will strike us right in the face.
Chicken Soup
I have listed ingredients in the singular but amounts will vary in accordance with the amount of soup required.
I have just learned from an actual accountant that the IRS has been hacked and codes used for electronic filing have been compromised.
Now, is that chutzpah or what? How can they think they will get away with that?
I have a feeling this is not going to be pretty.
I am not going to spout my opinion of the President. I won’t politicize or pontificate. I will bite my tongue and not say a word. But my mother, if she were still here, would have said something in Yiddish at a time like this:
Es iz a lebedike velt.
Click the audio player below to hear me explain it as best I can…
Jewish or not, as a little girl, I got a present every Christmas. I’d wake up in the morning–of course I didn’t want to sleep–and Poppa and Momma would be there and there would be a present on top of my feet. I always knew it would be there. Whatever it was, I was hocking them about it all year long and it would be on my bed Christmas Day, absolutely. And Poppa would be laughing his head off and he would always say, “Senty Claus was here!”
One year I drove them crazy. I drove them out of their minds. I only wanted this xylophone toy with a hammer to play. Sure enough, Christmas morning, there it was on my bed.
A certain political candidate finds himself in hot water. Perhaps you know someone like this: They are unable to think before they talk. They have no “filter” and just come out and say whatever is on their “mind.” My mother had a Yiddish expression for this type of person:
Voss iz bei ihm afn ling iz bei ihm afn tzing.
What’s on his lung is on his tongue.
To the public school teachers: I consider myself a proud, happy, and grateful product of the New York City school system. In my time, the teachers had a tremendous job teaching children of families who emigrated from all over Europe. They had to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, and history to form students into solid American citizens. English very often was not the language spoken at home.
I loved my teachers and I loved school. I still remember their names from my time at P.S. 170 and Bay Ridge High School. (I graduated in 1940 so the post card is even older than I am!) I had Miss Rush in Kindergarten. Miss File in third grade. In sixth grade, I had Mrs. Strauss who was so kind. She invited me to her home where she had a beautiful piano and helped me with whatever songs I was learning as a young singer. My high school French teacher was Mlle. Faust. She used a pencil that was red on one side and blue on the other. So trust me, I learned to speak French like a native.
To all the teachers: Thank you, thank you. You will never be forgotten. And I have no reason to think that in the challenging melting pot of New York schools today, the job of the teacher is any easier or that their work is any less miraculous.
oldjewishlady.com 