SO WHO'S BLESSING NOW?

For many years my cousin, a veterinarian, received Christmas cards from her clients that she displayed on her office walls. Almost without exception these cards were made from photographs of those dogs, cats, birds, and other various little pets that she had cared for throughout the years. It was worth a trip to her office just to take a look at them, because few of those photos were of the pet "au naturel" -- no, instead we saw dogs with reindeer antlers protruding from their head, Santa hats lopped over the ears of rabbits, cats with big jingle-bell collars, and any other kind of costume that their proud owners could sweet talk their pets into wearing long enough to be photographed.

But far and away the funniest was the yearly picture sent of one family's pets - daddy dog, momma dog and baby dog - in the costumes and the pose of Joseph, Mary and the baby. The "baby" dog was of a small breed and stayed the baby for a long, long time. I kept a picture of this most-interesting family for a long time, but of course now that I want it, it is not to be found.

Now if one is apt to be easily offended and/or scandalized by such a representation, all I can say is that I know some people would be and I can allow them their feelings. But for me, this idea and its execution was hysterically funny and every year I got a fresh laugh over it. To me, it is more about people and their pets than people and their religious sensibilities.

So if you fall into the latter category, you might want to close your eyes as you come to the next picture. Because I think it runs the Joseph and Mary idea a close second.

Probably most of you are unaware that there are "denominations" within Judaism just as there are in Protestant circles, although there is a bit of difference in usage of that word. The Jewish denominations are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist, which equate more to the protestant fundamental, evangelical, and liberal movements. (In Christian circles the use of the word "denominations" signifies various groups within each of those major groupings.) Jerry and his family belonged to a Jewish Reform temple and that is really the only Jewish "denomination" I am personally familiar with. Sometimes when I see something happening in Jewish circles, usually in a different denomination, that is so different than I expect, I can't help but laugh at it. This is one of those times - and it is the picture below that made me laugh.



In the last ten years or so a number of the Reconstructionist groups have wanted to have something within their religious framework that is the equivalent of the Catholic Church's "Blessing of the Animals." Out of that desire the various rabbis have risen to the challenge, integrated Jewish prayers and blessings into a form comfortable for their congregations, and now are setting aside their own ritual "Blessing of the Animals." And no animal at all cares who blesses it or where the blessing comes from.

It is not the slip-sliding of this practice from the Christian to the Jewish religion that makes me laugh. I laugh because in the picture I see a darling little white poodle wearing a kippah, a yarmulka, just like the male members of Jerry's temple. That's downright funny, not sacrilegious or offensive. It's just funny, and clever.

There is a delightful Jewish blog I follow that has a video of this blessing: http://www.jewishhumorcentral.com/2011/01/blessing-animals-in-synagogue-in.html

Furthermore, there is an interesting blog called "Heeb'n'vegan" that also sheds some further light on this practice and I think you all would enjoy a quick read. http://heebnvegan.blogspot.com/2009/12/jews-adopt-blessing-of-animals.html

If I had something to dress Squeaky up in, I might have had a second photo to share with you on this matter. But I do not. However, I can share with you that she eats Matzoh crackers!

SPRING VALLEY SCHOOLHOUSE - RURAL KANSAS

In sorting through some old photos today, I found this one of the attendees of the rural Spring Valley School, located about 6 miles east of Caldwell, Kansas, and taken sometime close to 1915. The smallest girl in the front row was a visitor. Her name was Virginia Louise Ryland and she was born on June 14, 1911. How do I know this? She was my mother, and her mother (my Grandma Jessie)was very careful to label this photograph -- for posterity, of course. The little boy on the far right is my Uncle Bob, the oldest child of the Rylands and the little girl next to him is my Aunt Florence, the second of the Ryland children. My mother was the third.

Having grown up in a city, I really had no real perception of what a one-room schoolhouse was like until this photo -- in an old album that passed into my mother's hands at some point -- came to light. Of course I had always heard about these one-room schools and even had read about them in novels of "the old days" but when I saw my own mother and aunts in that setting, saw the age range of the kids that the schoolmarm was paid to teach, and saw the bleakness of the Kansas prairie in that part of Kansas down near the Oklahoma border, I better understood what shaped my mother and her siblings.

I remember mom telling us about the cold winds and trying to keep the schoolroom warm in winter, the hot winds and hanging wet sheets in the doorways to try to cool off the inside of the wooden building in the summer. I remember her talking about the older boys bringing in the water in buckets and carrying in logs for the stove. And I remember seeing a photo of my Aunt Florence and much younger sister Marie on the back of an old horse that took them to school sometimes.

Seeing this interesting photo reminds me of how very different my own school days were. Whereas my mom started school in 1916 in a one-room schoolhouse on the prairie, I started school in a K-6 elementary school in a big city, of a size that required two classes per grade level. My own kids' elementary schools were not so different in size from mine.

As I compare the children's clothing styles between 1916 and 1940 I see such a vast difference, but I don't see that much change between what I wore in 1940 and what my kids wore in the 1960s. However, I'll betcha that my kids would see it differently. I suspect that they would look at the 1940ish clothing that I wore and say MOTH-ER! What kind of clothes did you guys wear? Look at those Peter-Pan collars! Look at the suspenders that go up and over your shoulders to hold your skirts up! Why are you all in dresses and Buster Brown shoes and bobby-sox? And look at those silly bows in your hair. And why are you always in dresses? Didn't you get to wear pants?

I'm sure my kids will see a vast difference in dress between them and my generation that somehow has escaped my awareness.

There really isn't a point to today's little walk down memory lane -- except for this. Please, please take some time to look at your old photos with the goal of putting some kind of identification on the edge or carefully on the back. I am so thankful that my Grandma Jessie did that with her album. Had she not, I would never have recognized any of my three family members in this darling photo of a time and place long past. There are no members of my mother's generation left. I am the oldest of the next generation - and yes, I have labeled all my photos too.

The acorn didn't fall very far from the tree, you see.

THE GOURMET GRILLER AT IT AGAIN!

At one time we lived in a house with an outdoor grill built on the patio. Jerry and his apron were a perfect match for this equipment and when called for, he often made the switch from "dessert chef" to "griller par excellence" without loss of image. He also began culling recipes from all kinds of sources, and this recipe today is one of his best discoveries. Although we now use a George Foreman grill in our kitchen, and although Jer pretty much has retired his apron and his spatula, the recipe remains!

SAVORY BEEF BURGERS
1 pound extra-lean ground beef
2 tablespoons minced onion
1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard
3/4 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/4 teaspoon each ground cumin, cracked black pepper and salt.

Combine ingredients, mixing lightly but thoroughly. Shape into 4 patties and grill.

That's it, folks. But this is just for a start. I like a really full-flavored hamburger patty and I use unmeasured amounts of everything! I am particularly fond of the taste of cumin, and I think the mustard in this mix is a great taste. So be brave and experiment; just make sure some of everything gets in.

I'M BAAACK!

I walked into the doctor's office today and announced to him that I am now back to being my old self! What a relief, I thought to myself.

Him? He rolled his eyes (well, I didn't see him do this but I am sure that he did.) Actually he doesn't remember me from visit to visit, but I mainly was there to show him that my blood pressure was now in the healthy range and I probably wouldn't be pestering him anymore. He lifted up his eyes from the laptop he was carrying and said he'd see me prn, doctor-talk for "as needed." Out he went. And out I went to face the rest of my life.

First on the agenda is to start walking the neighbor's dogs again. I haven't been doing it until I had some assurance I wouldn't pass out while the doggies were in my care. Furthermore I'm sleeping through the night. I've scrubbed my kitchen floor, done grocery shopping and have started eating again. Not that I minded losing 6 pounds, but having that feeling of morning sickness at age 75 is a good indication that all is not well.

My good doctor did apologize for prescribing two medications that had wild side effects; the first I discovered belatedly for myself when I ran a computer search on Norvasc. The other I was alerted to by my pharmacist, who made sure I was aware ahead of time what might occur with chlorthalidone, a diuretic. He was right. I am not normally allergic to medications, but these two just about did me in. To add insult to injury, an Urgent Care doctor thought I was stressed and added Xanax, causing me to sleep for three straight days.

The mirrors at the top of the blog represent who I might have been at any one time during this past month -- or maybe not me at all. I must say that Jerry was a trooper through this all, and he's happy that I'm back.

Dear old Doc Evans, the old family doctor who cared for me from 1975 to 2000, who brought me through appendicitis and various and sundry occasional illnesses by his diagnostic skills and his warm bedside manners, would have been far more available to shepherd me through a month like this past one. He was a board-certified internist and a cardiologist. And he made time for me. I am sorry that I can't have that kind of rapport with my present doctor, who is equally certified and equally kind. He just is not available in the same way. Doc Evans was then, and my new doctor is now. There just is not time now in medicine for warmth and niceties. This is not what the doctors want either, but it's mostly the best they can offer.

At any rate, in the long run I'm probably none the worse for wear. I'm tackling 2011 changes a little belatedly but have some ideas about what I'm going to do for myself. What I've held in front of me like a carrot during this past episode is that I have friends to go visit - my friend Fran and my friend Pauline and my neighbor Bev and a stitchery group and my Los Angeles cousins -- and if I ever get brave again, my cousin in North Carolina.

But for today, I can't wait to get over to those dogs!

FUTURE, PAST & PRESENT

I have never been one to make New Years Resolutions. But I have almost always set goals for myself - generally five things I wanted to accomplish during the coming year. This list has been affixed to my printer lest I forget. I mark them off as I complete them. At the end of each year I replace them with the next set of five. These are all outward "things." Participating in Reboot's yearly "10Q" has helped me focus on some inward changes that I'd like to make. But none of these things are what I'd call resolutions.

One thing that has concerned me as 2010 grew to an end is to find the right balance between looking backward and looking forward. As I age and as I attempt to share my past with my kids and grandkids, I find it tempting to name my regrets and my disappointments. And in looking to the future I am tempted to focus on the uncertainty and the dwindling time left to finish making my mark. Neither of these - past or future - is where I want to be. So this has given me 2011's challenge: Find new ways to embrace "Now" - to do what I can with what I have and where I am. Which is actually where I should have been all along!

Today I took a first step, tiny though it was. Let me share it with you.

Because of some health issues, some mine and some my families', I have been sleeping very poorly at night. The doctor put his finger on stress as one of the reasons and prescribed a light tranquilizer for me to take at bed time. Did I sleep? You bet! I slept all night the first night, and then slept most of the next day. Night came again and I took half of the prescribed dose; that worked no differently; I slept the day away again. I stopped taking the medicine and watched the clock all night long. Worry and tranquilizers had pretty much done me in.

It occurred to me that somewhere in a storage box I had a relaxation tape that I used to play to help me fall asleep. I recently spent a great deal of time looking for an old tape recorder and earphones that I'd stuck in a box somewhere. And I never did find the relaxation tape. But it also occured to me that I had once used an audiotape of Faure's Requiem as a going-to-sleep tool and it worked every bit as well as the relaxation tape, so I found that instead.

I put the tape in the old audio tape recorder, put the headphones on and listed to that beautiful piece of music. Only it wasn't beautiful. The tape was monaural, not stereo. And there was way too much "hissing" on it. The clarity of music on CDs has spoiled us for ever using old audio tapes again. A few years ago I bought Faure's Requiem on CD but I needed a Sony Walkman CD Player and earbuds to listen to it in bed, where I hoped it was going to do me some good.

So today, January 1, 2011, I marched down to Target, picked up a personal CD Player with little earbuds, popped Faure's Requiem in it, and set it on my nightstand where it is waiting for evening to come. My intention is to lull myself to sleep listening to the most beautiful music in the world. I had to laugh to myself because the piece actually is a Requiem Mass, all about dying and going to heaven! Oh well.

So this is an example of integrating a little something of the future (a good night's sleep) with the present (the setting up of the equipment). As for the past, it has to do with the music itself.

The playbill posted above is dated 1955. My first husband and I met in the choir at Pepperdine, and our choir director played the violin in the orchestra that played for this event. He invited Joe and me to the rehearsals preceding this concert, and it was there that we were introduced to Faure's Requiem. We had copies of the sheet music and were able to follow along as the members of the Roger Wagner Chorale worked on this piece, which was just one of a number of musical offerings the Chorale sang for that performance. We grew to love it and knew it intimately. After we married we bought ourselves a LP record of the Requiem and at bedtime would set it playing...we called it our music to fall asleep to.

(Interestingly, you will note that in 1955 Marilyn Horne was singing with the Roger Wagner Chorale. She went on to become a famous New York Metropolitan Opera singer.)

So tonight I anticipate a great night's sleep, and if not, at least a good concert!

Also, because I'm not much of a TV watcher, I've decided that when I knit or cross-stitch (two more "nows" I hope to get back into sooner than later) I can do them with other CDs providing the background music - like some of Brubeck's jazz!

It was really after hearing Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl last August that I really became aware of how much I was ignoring the music that at one time took an upfront position in my life. I'm counting this tiny little change as the first of my attempts in 2011 to better integrate the Past and the Future with the Now. If Jerry hears humming coming from the vicinity of my bed this evening, he'll know that its me, just making progress!

A TOUGH READ

I am not crazy about recommending a book with a subject that is going to be emotionally tough to read. Also I hesitate to recommend a book that I feel almost turns into a soap opera toward the end. But the book was recommended to me as a “must read,” and although it is fiction I learned much about a specific time and place about which my knowledge was sadly deficient and yours might be too. So I need to tell each of you that it will be worth your while to read it. The book is Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rostenay.

There is no dearth of stories, both fact and fiction, about the Jews during World War II. I have never read one that focuses on the Jews in France in 1942 and what they went through with the Vichy government. I have read about the Jews in Italy, in Poland and Eastern Europe. This was my first exposure to the Jews of Paris and its environs. It is not easy reading, but I would say you will find it doable and be glad you took the time to absorb what happened there.

The first part of the book switches back and forth in time, between a 1942 Parisian Jewish family and a present day American Journalist living in Paris. A key that a little Jewish girl named Sarah has is a theme through both parts. It is that first part of this story that makes this book so worthwhile.

***
As many of you know, I’ve been doing some indexing of the 1930 census for FamilySearch.org. The other day I was working on the New York census for the Borough of Brooklyn, where I found pages and pages of Jews listed. As I entered the data on these people, I was overcome by a feeling of gratefulness and relief that all of these Jewish people listed on this and other pages that I had indexed had escaped from Hitler and his machinations. That, of course, lead me to the opposite feeling of sorrow and horror for the millions who did not escape. While I was indexing, I found myself saying to these Jewish immigrants that they were among the luckiest people in the world to be out of Europe and into our country by then!


****
The other thing reading "Sarah’s Key” reminded me of was a picture that came into Jerry’s possession at the time of his mother’s death. Jerry’s family all arrived in the US before 1910, so as far as we know there were no close relatives lost in the holocaust. His mom had been the youngest of three daughters – Betty, Belle and Bertha. “Bert” was the only one whose children lived to adulthood. Thus when Betty died, Belle inherited the family box of photos. Likewise, upon Belle’s passing, the photographs came to Bert. Jerry inherited those photos when his mother died, and we had the job of sorting through huge boxes of unmarked and unidentified people – maybe family and some maybe not.

There were few of the photos that we could identify, other than those of his aunts and their husbands, and reluctantly we tossed them out. But we found one snapshot that just took our breath away. It is of two unidentified people in a park, a man and a woman. The handwriting on back of the photo does not match any handwriting samples we have in our photo albums. The clothes could probably set the time period more precisely than we could guess; we’ve assumed the 1930s. These may be relatives of Bert’s or her husband's family or simply friends. There is no one left to ask. But take a look at the picture and see what it tells you.


On the back of the picture it says, “Here we are in a nice park near here. Do you know what the sign says? It reads, “Jews not wanted.” Isn’t that silly! We got a kick out of it so had our picture taken by it. Aren’t you glad you’re in America?”

Innocence and Evil in one click of the camera; the time and the place only guessed at.

The ultimate outcome is what Sarah’s Key is about.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR READERS

A decade ago I found this list and have enjoyed using it so much that I'd like to share it with you for 2011.

1. I will reread a book that I loved as a child.

2. I will finally read that classic from high school that I’ve been avoiding.

3. I will find a book of poetry and read some aloud.

4. I will spend an hour in aimless browsing at a library.

5. I will read a book written in the year I was born

6. I will create a journal and keep notes about the books and magazines read.

7. I will assemble a list of my favorite people and send them my ideas about
books (favorites, recent reads, and the like)

8. I will read a book to a child.

9. I will gather a few friends and read a play out loud

10. I will read a book on the history of my town.

11. I will read a book written from a political point of view totally opposite my own.

12. I will read a book about a place I’ve never been.

13. I will reread a book that I just didn’t “get” when I was eighteen.

14. I will read a book written by a non-American.



Adapted from a list created by Camille DelVecchio, Penfield (NY) Public Library