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.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
–Emma Lazarus
Colossus of Rhodes image {{PD-old-70}}
Below is a century-old photo taken at the English seashore. My husband is the smiling baby front and center. But there is something very wrong here. Can you see what it is? (Scroll down to read the answer.)
Answer: There are no men in the photo, only women and children. Their smiling faces belie what is really going on: The men were away serving in World War I.
For over a century, Russia had two major newspapers, Pravda and Izvestia. In Russian, “pravda” means “truth” and “izvestia” means “news.” Those sound like good names for newspapers. But they were all propaganda. A famous Russian saying, evoking these pillars of journalism, can be translated to something like this: “There’s no truth in The News, and no news in The Truth.”
Ain’t that the truth?
I remember in the 1930s going to Coney Island in the summer. The subway ride was a nickel. Teenage boys would buy Eskimo Pies and ices and sell them on the beach out of big ice chests. They would go along the water’s edge where people bought ice cream. But the boys were competing with vendors who had stands on the boardwalk so the cops were forever chasing them away. The boys would run off, but when the coast was clear(!) they came back to sell more ice cream.
My father-in-law, Solomon, born in Whitechapel in 1887, was noted for singing an endless number of English music hall songs. One in particular springs to mind. Please click the player below to hear Solly’s rendition of Poor Old England (1907), lyrics provided.
Poor old England, isn’t it a picture? Everything you see you must agree,
The carpet on the stairs, the table and the chairs are made in Germany.
When I go up into me bedroom, lying in a tiny cot
Is a little baby boy, mother’s pride and only joy,
That’s the only little thing that England’s got.
Velvel (his Yiddish name), pictured above, was born in London in 1914. When his parents went to record his birth, they told the registrar his name was “Wolf,” the English for Velvel. The well-meaning bureaucrat advised, “He’s going to be a nice English boy. You don’t want to call him ‘Wolf’. Why not call him Walter?” And that is how my husband got his name.
Mind, you, Wolf is a perfectly good English name. Remember the writer Wolf Mankowitz who wrote “A Kid for Two Farthings?” It was made into a film with Celia Johnson and Diana Dors.
So there’s nothing wrong with a kid called Wolf.
Pictured above are my in-laws from England, Solomon (“Solly”) and Annie. Solly was born in London in 1887. He possessed an inexhaustible repertory of English music hall songs, developed over decades of dedicated practice. He would sing at the drop of a hat, to Annie’s dismay. In 1955, my husband recorded his dad. I am providing just one example here among dozens of ditties. The recording is a song called “The Weaker Sex”. Click the player below to hear him, lyrics provided…
By the wink of her eye she can capture your body and soul.
By the wave of her tongue she can drive you up the pole.
She can rush a man, crush a man whenever he goes too far.
Oh, the weaker sex are wonderful strong they are.
oldjewishlady.com 