If the necktie fits, wear it......

Click on the above title to link to a wonderful animated film.....with an accordion moral.

A Day in the Life of Daisy the Dog....Told to Abby Becker, age 9, 1998

As soon as I heard the familiar clip clop clip clop of someone on the stairs and knowing it was a person coming downstairs to eat breakfast, feed me let me outside and do many other things I started to shake my kennel, whimper, and bark to let most-like Papa know I wanted out.

He came over to open the kennel.  As soon as he opened it I began running around the house, jumping on him and wagging my tail (or what was left of it) like crazy.

Wait a second let me explain something.   I'm Dasy Mango Becker (Daisy for short) and my pedigree name is Daisy, Princess of All Flowers.   I'm a full-bred springer spaniel and my biological mother's pedigree name is Irrisias Wendella, but her people, or as they like to call themselves "owners" call her Spot.   My real Dad's pedigree name is Sir Joshua Pugsley of Brittany.   I don't know what his people call him.

Anyway back to this morning when Papa fed me, I instantlhy started devouring me meal.  After thay, Papa let me go to the outside room, and as soon as I was done I banged on the see-through, hard, opening, thing that people like to call a window to let whoever was in the inside room know I wanted in.

This time, Papa's wife came to the outside room to let me in.   When I came in I saw Abby, who is the closest thing to my mom (so I call her Mom) and Mom's brother Benny eating breakfast.  They both got up to say hello, saying things like, "Hello, Daisy" and "you're so sweet" to me.  When we were done, they finished their breakfast and left.

Papa had already left.   Papa's wife put me in the outside room.  Then she left.  This is the part of the day that I hate most.  I sit around forever in the outside room.   I and watch for birds, sleep, bark at other dogs, but mostly I'm B-O-R-E-D.

After several hours, Papa's wife came home and let in.   I jumped on her, my tail was out of control, and ran around, which is appropriate since I had been in the outside room for so long.   Soon Mom and Benny came home, and petted me till I almost died from love.

The familiar call from Pap's wife came out, and it was music to my ears.   She said, "Will someone feed Daisy?"   ' I will," Mom replied.   As soon as she fed me I dug in.

After tha, Papa came home, and ai said hello to him.  I jumped on him.   He said, "Off."   I hate the word "off."   When I jump on a person, I'm expressing happiness, and people aren't grateful.   Off is my least favorite word next to no.


Anyways, Papa let me in the outsideroom and when I was done I banged on the "window."   I went inside, begged for food at the dinner table, and got some leftover chicken.  Yum!

Then Papa put me in my kennel and I recited what I always say before I got to sleep:  the letter that mg biological Mom sent.


"Although I miss you, I'm sure you are very happy in your new home.   Are you being goo?   I wanted to let you know that I am fine.   Also my hips are now officially OFA certified.   (Please tell your owners and they will explain the term to you.)  Hope you like the picture.   Be a good little English Springer Spaniel for Momma. Woof-Woof-Woof.

Love
Momma
Irrissias Wendella"


Goodnight!

Like my parents

Like many kids (particularly children of the 60's?) I thought for sure I would never live a life like my parents.....my mother a school teacher, my father a (not very successful) small businessman.   So after years of working in left movements, I settled down into what I thought of as a straightforward technocratic career in occupational safety and health.

But then  I ended up  working as a faculty member at West Virginia University training local union members in health and safety, and eventually founding a soft money institute to support improving health and safety conditions at work.

So in the end....a teacher and a small businessman.

Ode to a newly purchased C Melody Saxophone

You sit in mostly mystery in the rocking chair
I could not bear to hide you in your battered case
Not for the batteredness, but for the intheclosetness.

A few shrieking notes from my mouth
A fine piece of 19th century engineering
Rods, pads, pivots, springs,
modifications to tonalities and overtones

On the low notes I feel the vibration right in my hip

On the high, I note that tone is not just a matter of your mechanics

But our mutual understanding and singing (currently lacking)

Like a new lover, I dare to wish for the music
That we might take and make together

Will we go there?
Will you help me?
Will we practice?
Or...will I betray you for accordion once more

Do you love me?
Do I love you?

hmmmmm
hummmmm

More Nign of Reb Mendel

I continue to listen to this cd.   My first reaction to the music was that the chassidic singer Eli Silberstein reminded me of my grandfather Emanuel (Manny) singing in my home.   He lived with my family till he died when I was about 15.   He was a gentle soul and free spirit.   He loved to tell stories and he loved to sing.   I have a tape of him singing, and sadly, on tape he refused to sing in "jewish." but only sang American songs.   But in person he often sang in yiddish.

My next experience of this CD is the doubling of voice and clarinet.   That's not common in current klezmer, but Rubin says it was not uncommon in an earlier period.   My experience here,  is that there is a l joining of the word and wordless.....ways to spirit.   That joining is powerfully compounding.

I have generally experienced this CD as joyful, but tonight it evokes sadness.   It's taken me a while to track that....and in fact I started this blog entry to help find the sad roots.   Well the music is taking me back to the places in Europe where jews lived, came from, and no longer are present.   But I am not one to romanticize shtetl living.   People were poor, oppressed, and in many ways narrowed.  Romanticization aside, I believe I'm experiencing the contrast with American culture, the restlessness, the drive to almost always be someone else, be somewhere else, do something else.   Lately I've been finding my own ability to just sit still and absorb the present to be heightened.

But back to the music.   The string that is touching me is the lack of this restlessness, this seeking to be other, and a settledness into the music as set in place, in religion, in daily life.       And my sadness: the difficulty in modern life to find that same sense of settlement....  the word authenticity comes to mind, but does not really do justice.....

And so in some way my image of Manny Miller speaks here.   My father regarded him as "simple."   meaning in his terms not an intellectual.   But Manny (in my memory) was settled.   He loved music, he loved his grandkids, he loved to eat, he loved to tell stories, he loved to sing.   I think when he was younger he also loved women and he loved to dance.   At an unsettled time in my life, I am wishing myself back onto his knee as he sang Oy Avram.   Thank you Joel and Rabbi Silberstein.   And granddaddy, thank you for this gift......which took me 50 years to notice.

Simon Rawidowicz on The Jewish Diaspora

I've been wishing to understand today's jewish diaspora and its relationship to the state of israel in a more historical manner.   I've been reading State of Israel, Diaspora, and Jewish Continuity, by Simon Rawidowicz a famous scholar who chaired the dept of New Eastern and and Judaic Studies at Brandeis.  In an early essay in the book he takes strong issue (1949) with naming the new state Israel, rather the Eretz Yisrael (land of israel) because it implies that diaspora jews are not part of Israel.

In the last essay in the book he eloquently states the following:

"There is no quarrel here with kubbutz galuyot, the ingathering policy of the new State.   It is difficult to predict how this process of kibibutz gauyot presently reduced, will develop in the near future.  May that policy one day arrive at its fulfillment.   All I am saying is that as long as a complete kibbutz galuyot has nether happened nor is visibly imminent, 'Israel' means nothing less than the totality of the Jewish people.   Moreover, the total identification of the State with 'Israel' carries dangers to coming generations of Jews born in the State that we dare not ignore.   It can lead to a distortion of the meaning of the Jewish past and present in the world and only serve to intensify the cynical attitude on the part of Jewish youth of the State toward the galut Jew.   It must inevitably give rise to an Israelism or native chauvinism, tendencies that are certainly meanacing to the future political structure and spiritual character of the young State."

The essays were published in 1986, but undated.   Simon Rawidowicz died in 1957.    His unfortunate prediction has proved all too true.

The Nign of Reb Mendel

(Click on title for link.)

I highly recommend this new CD by Joel Rubin and Rabbi Eli Silberstine (and ensemble). These are hasidic songs in yiddish which strongly inform (me) in a major esthetic influence on the klezmer I play. They sound more or less removed from various regional eastern european folk styles. The doubling of voice and clarinet on most melodies strikes me as a powerful evocation of the spoken and unspoken ways to spirit.

On a bad day in Newark......

I lived on Huntington Terrace from about 1949 to 1954.  Our block ran between Eckerd and Renner Avenues.   The street was filled with two and a halves.  These were separate houses with three floors.   They were called two and halves because the third floor apt was smaller than the first two because it was under the roof and eaves.  They had self standing garages and just a little dirt around them.  The Macklesses were our landlords and lived on the first floor.  My father and I called them the Mackleberries.   We lived on the second floor.  Since they were landlords, I had to learn not to drop and thump my shoes on the floor.   The Goldbergs lived on the third floor, and were were the first to get a TV in our neighborhood and I remember intensely my first look at that kinda round screen.

Our apartment was very large.   In fact it was larger than the house we later moved into in Springfield.   Besides 3 bedrooms (parents, me, Granddaddy) it had a living room, dining room (we used it as family room and ate in the kitchen) kitchen, walk in pantry (where my father had his floor scraping business office) one big bathroom, a sun parlor with jalousie windows, and an outside screened porch.   The bathroom had a fancy shower with jets that also shot at you from the side.   I still have the bathroom cabinet with enameled steel top under which I hid the books I sneak read while on the pot.

 I had at least 3 good friends and several other boys in my grade on the block:   I can almost, but not quite remember the names.    Something like Ronnie Rosen,   Howie Redless, Larry Shtier.   So play usually meant going outside and seeing who was around.   Sometimes you might knock on a door to find someone to play with.   On a really slow day I would go around the corner to play with the kids whose houses backed up into ours on Schuyler Avenue.   That was pretty rare.   I didn't really have to go off the block very often.

As I got older I used to hang out with kids further away.   My cousins Ted and Paul Green lived on Wolcott Terrace.   That was all of 3 short blocks away.   I also had a friend Danny Schiff who lived one block down the hill on Osborne Terrace.

Our play had no parent input, no organized sports.   What did we do?  We played stick ball.   We played stoop ball.  We flipped trading cards.   We played mumblypeg (with pen knives.)  We played marbles.   We also did a lot of just adventuring around.   We'd climb to the roofs of garages and jump from one to another.   Sometimes we got into snow ball or mud ball fights with kids from other blocks.   The empty lot on the corner of Eckerd and Huntington was a good place for a fight.   I see from google street view that it is still empty.   If we were really evil we we put ice balls inside the snowballs, or rocks inside the mudballs.

Sometimes we got creative.  Several of us had gone to native american themed summer camps.  We appropriated some clothes poles and made carved and painted totem poles out of them.

I remember that a few times we went into the coal bins of the Redless house and played strip poker (details redacted.)

Street Fear

Huntington Terrace in Newark was not your bare urban street.   Both sides were lined with huge trees...so much so that we had a complete canopy over the street.   They must have been chestnuts (before the blight) because we had lots of brutal fights throwing chestnuts at each other.   I also liked to just hold them and feel how smooth they were.

One day, probably aged 5 or 6, I made a big careless mistake and somehow ran out into the street in front of a moving car.   I almost got hit......I think.   Anyway this act filled me with terrible guilt and fear.  I somehow got the belief that I was in big trouble, and that in fact that the police would now come for me for my crime.   I rushed up to our second floor apartment and dove into the bed, pulled up all the covers and hid in terror.   I don't think my parents knew where I was, so they're not part of the story.   Anyway, it felt like I lay in bed for hours.   I don't really remember the rest.   I guess at some point I just got up.   I do know I didn't go to jail.  I still remember, so you can get an idea how scared I was.

Vaporizer Cures

I feel like I'm catching a late fall cold.   That reminds me of the vaporizer cure:

My parents believed greatly in the value for fighting colds of keeping things moist and humid; and I agree.  So when I got one of those kid colds where you cough and cough and cough all night, they brought out the old vaporizer.

In those days, these were made out of glass  and had a removable plug with two big round prongs.  They tended to have a very fine line between not making steam, so you added salt, and spitting burning hot water threatening to burn you.  I believe the brand was Kaz.

Now the Becker vaporizer treatment only began with the vaporizer.   Objective  number 2, was to get the thing as close to my night time breathing zone as could be.   So the thing was always next to my bed on a chair or stool or other prop.....and I was always afraid I'd knock it over.

Objective #3 was the "tent."   In order to concentrate the steam on me, my father would build a tent out of a sheet.   Since my head was in a corner of the room, the "tent" could be tacked onto the wall on three sides.   For the fourth, my dad would use a badminton pole setup (more of that later.)

Wow it got like a steam bath in there.   But it felt really good.   The gentle sound of the vaporizer steaming away (if it wasn't spitting) and the warmth and enclosure of the steam filled tent.   How could I not get better.   I remember one particularly  night I got sick in the middle of the night and my dad got up from his sleep and built the tent and whole setup.  I was  (and am) aware that this wasn't fun for him.   I felt truly nurtured.   What better way to heal and get better?

I've used vaporizers for myself and sometimes the kids for colds.   I've never built a tent.   Oh well!

OK.  The fourth corner pole:   I lived in Newark and somehow got the idea that I wanted to play badminton.   We had no dirt to stick poles into.   My dad guided me in building self standing wooden poles with bottoms built out of crossed two by fours.   I had no skill to notch these out, so they just crossed one over the other.   I believe I attached the vertical stand with those stainless steal angles.   The thing worked......kinda.  The poles stood up, but could waggle back and forth since the cross pieces did not provide a flat base.   Still we played.....and I built it myself.

Two neat fixes:

Problem:   When I lean back in my wheeled desk chair, it badly creases and wrinkles a nice old "oriental" rug.  After years of restraightening and trying to control my roll, I fixed it yesterday:

Bought a small section of quarater round at Lowes and tacked it down in front of the rug.   Protects 100%  I considered removing the wheels, but that would take away the fun.   Please forgive the use of "oriental" as anochronistic.


Problem:   Place a candle in a pumpkin carved out for Halloween and it usually falls over.  You can't wax it to the bottom because the bottom is wet.

Break off a piece of toothpick and force it a half inch or so up into the candle.   Then insert the other end into the soft bottom of the pumpkin.   Works every time!

Sometimes I can get positively smug about these kinds of things.    Another approach to making the world a little bit better every day....... or at least a  small victory against the forces of entropy.

Hi-Fi (not five)

My parents were big classical music fans.  In the early 1950's they had a custom HiFi set made for our living room in Newark.   The cabinets were custom made of some very blonde wood in that 1950's Swedish modern style (Nina, eat your heart out!)   Well the part with the sound components sat on one side of our couch against the wall and the other big unit with a huge speaker sat on the other side.

The compoenent side had an upper door for the tuner/amplifier.   The bottom door revealed a turntable that pulled out to operate.

Well  this thing could push out a lot of volume.   IT WAS LOUD!

Saturday mornings were radio morning for me.   First I listened to live radio dramas.    I remember one called Smilin' Ed's Buster Brown Show.   There was a character called Froggie.   I remember for some reason, the other folks on the show said something like, "Pluck your magic twanger froggie."   Strange what sticks.

Well after dramas, I listened to records.   Sometimes it was Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance or HMS Pinafore.   (I had learned all the words by attending teaching concerts of these at the Mosque with my mother.)   Sometimes I listened to operas and followed along in the text.   My favorite then was Aida.

Other times I listened to symphones or ballets.   Then I would dance around the living room in the sunlight streaming in the windows.   Now it's come full circle.  While on line this morning I heard some totally get up and dance Norteno on the HIFI and right now I think I'll go downstairs and dance around in the sunlight.

College dalliance

In the fall of 1962 I was starting college at Haverford.   I was dating a young lady  (from Ohio I believe) who attended Bryn Mawr.  I  had fixed up a friend with another Bryn Mawr young woman and they hit it off (and later got married.)

The two couples took off on what felt to me like a wild adventure sometime during that winter.   The friend must have had a car, because we drove to New York City and then stayed out at his house (parents were away) out on Long Island.

Here's what I remember:

It seemed to be night for the entire trip....the drive, NYC, the "island"   I have no memories of daylight.

We went to the Five  Spot in NYC and heard Charlie Mingus.   He was a true force and power.   He refused to play when he thought the crowd got too noisy.   I was incredibly impressed.   He was one angry man.   Black Power.   There's a great video about him, which I've seen on TV a few times.

We got to the Long Island house.   So many dilemmas...where to sleep, how to sleep, what to do, alone with an attractive woman.   Understand it was risque and "not done" to be alone at night with someone of the "opposite sex."So much tension around what today would be a no brainer.

Does the reader want to know the denouement?   Suffice to say I and she remained virgins.   But the suspense was delightful.

Holiday Tipping

Here's a guide based on a Consumers' Survey of what people tip for the holidays:


Cleaning person: $35;
 Child's teacher: $20; 
Hairdresser (wish I needed one): $20; 
Newspaper carrier: $15;
Barber: $10; 
Manicurist: $15;
 Pet-care provider: $20; 
Lawn crew: $25; 
Mail carrier: $20; 
Garbage collector: $20.




Okay, other than getting up a 5:00 a..m. how do you tip the garbage collector?

More school technology

1. Window openers:  Our classrooms at Hawthorn Ave. School had huge windows.   You couldn't open them from floor level.   We had long (I'm guessing 12 feat at least) wooden poles with matched steel fittings on the end that fitted small receptacles on the window tops that we used for opening and closing the windows.

2. Eraser cleaners:  Down in the furnace room was a fast turning buffing wheel that was used to clean chawky erasers.   It was considered a great privilege to be nominated to take the classroom erasers to the basement and hold them against the running wheel to clean off the chawk.  The privilege came from leaving the routine of the classroom and getting to this room that was a dark mystery....to be totally on your own.   Today liability considerations would probably not allow any kid to run a powered wheel on their own, much less to be in the furnace room of a school.

Ink Pens

I started at Hawthorn Ave. School in Newark in 1949.   We sat in those old wooden school desks with black painted iron frames and wooden box tops with lids.   I believe they were fastened one to another front to back in rows.   And they all had ink wells.   And we still used dip pens until sometime around 1951.

So into each ink well fit a small glass "jar" which was filled with ink.   (I don't remember anyone ever putting ink in, so there must have been some "miracle of the ink filling."    I do remember once getting into big trouble because I was fooling with the ink well and spilled all the ink.   BAD!

So we each had a black dipping pen with a changeable nib.   Dip in the well, then write.   Try to control the amount of ink, especially so you don't drip.   I was not good at this at all.   I was terrible at it!

Well the big deal was our technology conversion to fountain pens.   We had a kid in our class who's father was able to get us a discount on fountain pens, and we all had to buy them (albeit at discount.)    They seemed very expensive and very special.  They were Esterbeke j models.   My first one was red.    I still remember the lesson in how to fill it.   Pull the little metal lever on the side to suck up ink out of a closeable ink bottle.



They also tended to dry up and clog.   They you went to a sink, pushed out all the ink with the lever, and pulled in water untill everything ran free.   I recall how the sink full of water looked as black ink swirled around and gradually turned the water all dark.   (Today we might say psychedelic.)

The nibs were changeable so you could do fine work with a fine nib or bold work with a broad nib.   I don't remember how, but I still managed to make plenty of messes with these.   I remember one failed in my pocket and leaked ink all over a new pair of chinos.

Those desks stayed in use for years.   The ink well holes always seemed lonely.   We should have invented another use for them.    Maybe we could have used the old ink jars for flowers and had flowers on all our desks.

Since corporations are citizens:

See 2010 Supreme Court Decision "Citizens United."

Corporations can bear arms (Second Amendment to the Constitution.)
Corporations can be drafted (to use those arms at no charge- watch out Blackwater.)
Corporations can run for office (Jerry Brown vrs Ebay)
Corporations can be forced to go to public school from age 5 - 18.
Corporations can't have any drinking until 18yrs old.
Corporations should learn to play the fiddle
Corporations can sue for punitive damages for pain and anguish
Corporations will need passports to travel abroad.
Corporations will need to pay taxes (many do not)


etc. etc. etc.
Have any ideas?

Supreme Court Coup(s)

In 2000 the Supreme Court determined the presidential election by finding for Bush in Gore vrs Bush (remember the hanging fads.)

In 2010, scads of corporate money newly allowed by the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision fueled the size of the Republican Congressional election victory.   Unaccountable corporate funds will continue to play larger and larger roles in US elections.   The corporation as person has been raised to a new level. 

I'm wondering whether corporations have second amendment rights as well.