Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘history’

The Big Squeeze

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 8, 2016| 2 Comments »

Last night I ventured out into the rolling hills of Albemarle County to attend a cocktail/get-together/girl-fest at an old friend’s farm. It was billed as a “Squeeze,” to reference a term associated with Dolley Madison.

With an astute sense of purpose and considerable charm, Dolley Madison navigated the waters of Washington society in an unprecedented way. She brought together disparate groups of politicians, diplomats, and local residents in a social setting. Weekly parties, called “Wednesday drawing rooms,” or “Mrs. Madison’s crush or squeeze,” provided a relaxed atmosphere for politicking and mingling. With no invitation required, these parties sometimes attracted four hundred guests. Some individuals who rarely associated with one another found themselves together at the White House. Even a boycott by President Madison’s opposition party, the Federalists, fizzled when members realized there was no political advantage to staying away.  http://www.whitehousehistory.org/teacher-resources/saving-history-dolley-madison-the-white-house-and-the-war-of-1812

I met a past Mayor of Charlottesville, an art and fashion historian, and the woman who ran the county’s social service network for thirty years. I talked with a lovely young woman who coordinates Planned Parenthood’s educational initiatives. It was an incredible evening jam-packed with energy, enthusiasm and best of all, fun.

Since I knew I was among “my People,” I asked almost everyone one important question – Hillary or Bernie? And I must say that Bernie was winning in my anecdotal poll. His approach to politics hasn’t changed; he’s deliberate and determined, much more progressive than Hillary. And they all liked his wife, who kind of reminds me of Dolley.

So while Planned Parenthood put their considerable support behind Hillary, and the President was in NOVA schooling the nation about guns at a Town Hall meeting, Trump was vowing to get rid of gun-free school zones. I was dumbstruck!

At least this will be an election year where the stakes are very clear. Would you like the NRA to continue influencing public policy? How about writing bills according to one’s religion? Or would you rather elect someone with integrity, someone who won’t mock disabled people. Someone who actually believes in science?

I’ve been thinking about Dolley this morning. She was thrown out of her Quaker religion for marrying outside her faith and never looked back. She and President Madison retired right up the road apace at Montpelier. Her reputation was secured in 1812, when was brave enough to stay at the White House while the British advanced, saving many of the nation’s art treasures, including that famous portrait of Washington. But it was that indescribable something that set her apart, her “joie de vivre.”  Her …”social skills, charm and personal popularity to win over her husband’s political opponents and help advance his career.”

Dr Jim always says it’s personality that can cog up the works in any business. But it’s also personality that can help a system as big as the federal government run smoothly. Above all else, we need another Dolley (or the male equivalent) to get our legislators talking and in the same room, if not on the same page. A civil discourse, is it too much to expect?     IMG_3722

 

Read Full Post »

A Mom for All Seasons

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2015| 2 Comments »

I’ve been thinking about my foster mother lately, Nelly Bly. She was born in Scranton, PA, the only girl out of 18 boys! Yes youngsters, before the Duggers, poor women had large families simply because birth control was unheard of, and/or you happened to be Catholic. Nell’s parents had immigrated from Czechoslovakia, and I distinctly remember her crying when we watched Russian tanks roll into her ancestral home in 1968.

The Warsaw Pact invasion of August 20–21 caught Czechoslovakia and much of the Western world by surprise. In anticipation of the invasion, the Soviet Union had moved troops from the Soviet Union, along with limited numbers of troops from Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Bulgaria into place by announcing Warsaw Pact military exercises. When these forces did invade, they swiftly took control of Prague, other major cities, and communication and transportation links. Given the escalating U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam as well as past U.S. pronouncements on non-intervention in the East Bloc, the Soviets guessed correctly that the United States would condemn the invasion but refrain from intervening.                                            https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/soviet-invasion-czechoslavkia

Like the Ukraine today, the Czech and Slovak people were leaning toward the West, instituting reform and banning censorship. Communist Russia put her big bear fist down and that was that. I wonder what Nell would have thought of the Velvet Revolution, when Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two states for purely political motives on Jan 1, 1993? She died when I was pregnant with the Bride, and we still thought a poet might be elected President.

Nell was a proud Slovak, but she didn’t like to cook. For special occasions however, she would prepare Halupkis ( pronounced ha-LOOP-keys). This is a mouth watering stuffed cabbage, simmered for hours on a big bed of sauerkraut. Nell’s father used to make his own sauerkraut in the basement in barrels, but she was happy to buy it pre-packaged. I like to imagine her as a child, picking a cabbage out of their garden, helping her mother grind the meat in the kitchen, and tenderly folding the leaves around the rice and meat mixture.

Maybe because she had so much responsibility in the kitchen, as the only girl in her family full of brothers, she loved modern day conveniences – or should I say “mid-century modern?” One of my favorite dinner nights was “Chinese.” I think it was La Choy, but in the ’50s you could find a box in the grocery store with everything you would need to make dinner. The original Hamburger Helper, only you didn’t need to cook anything, just warm it up!

I translated that to “Taco Night” in our house. I’d add the packet of Mexican seasonings to ground turkey, stand up the hard Old El Paso tacos and let the kids pile whatever they wanted on top, which usually meant lots of cheese. It’s almost wistfully tender to think back about the days when we didn’t need to know where our food came from, so long as it showed up on our table.

And today I admit, I will occasionally cave and whip up an organic Annie’s Mac and Cheese for the Love Bug. Am I willing to order one of those Blue Apron type dinners that would be delivered to me in the mail, with instructions on how to prepare all the fresh ingredients? NO.

Because grocery shopping is my God-given right. I want to smell and feel the fruit, and know when the salmon was delivered. But I understand that working women, and men, are still looking for time-saving ways to serve a meal to their family, even if it’s not two dozen people at the dinner table.

Maybe I’m thinking of my Mother because next year, Bob and I are planning to visit Prague. But today I’m heading to the ballot box in VA because I do believe in birth control and I don’t believe in censorship. And I want guns out of the hands of abusers, and the mentally ill. And I have to think that Nelly Bly would agree.

This is my cauliflower au gratin – made with sweetened condensed milk and goat cheese. Nell put canned milk in her coffee, so I always have it on hand!IMG_3401

Read Full Post »

Yesterday

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on May 6, 2015| 4 Comments »

Two of my favorite things collided at the Jefferson Library, literature and politics. Andrew Burstein introduced his book, “Democracy’s Muse,” to his audience and its most interesting paradox; how can the Right and the Left lay claim to our city’s most cherished President? The answer is, it’s complicated.                                    http://www.monticello.org/site/visit/events/book-talk-democracys-muse-andrew-burstein

But it all started out with a feeling, a “breathless feeling,” after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt read a book by Claude Bowers. The now famous book, published in 1925 and titled “Jefferson and Hamilton, the Struggle for Democracy,” clarified for FDR his vision, his strategy for fighting the Great Depression. He began to quote TJ, and our early fight to become not just a republic separate from the British, but a Democratic Republic. Partisan politics began with our first breath, and the primal question of the role of government took center stage when the Democrats first lost the South in a “privilege or pillage” speech that asked, “Who spoke for the people and who spoke for the rich?” Sound familiar?

That Keynote Speaker at the 1928 Democratic Convention was not a politician. Claude Bower, author, newspaper editorial writer, historian delivered these words:

 You cannot believe with Lincoln that the principles of Jefferson are “the definitions and the axioms of a free society,” and with Hamilton that they are the definitions of anarchy.

You cannot believe with Lincoln in a government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” and with Hamilton in a government of the wealthy, by the influential and for the powerful.

After all, the Republicans had Lincoln, and so the Democrats anointed Jefferson. FDR’s Chief of Staff, Edwin Watson, in fact lived at Kenwood, next door to Monticello. The very building we were standing in yesterday, was where FDR waited to hear about the invasion of Normandy. Yes, I get goosebumps just thinking about that.

But eventually Ronald Reagan coopted Jefferson as the GOP’s own, claiming TJ was a champion for small government. And of course if you say it enough, half the country will believe it. And before you know it, Newt Gingrich was quoting the Charlottesville bard to illustrate his own “Contract With America.”

Returning home last night, Bob reminded me to check out the Google doodle. It was about another influential writer and newspaper reporter. I always called my foster mother, Nell Mahon “Nellie Bly,” it was her nickname and yesterday I found out who the original Nellie really was – a pioneering investigative reporter! At the ripe old age of 20, Nellie actually got herself admitted into a notorious insane asylum for 10 days in order to expose the inhumane treatment of patients. And to cap that off, she reported on her journey around the world in 72 days! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/05/nellie-bly-google-doodle_n_7210966.html

I was totally exhausted after one day tracing Nellie’s journey and the ideas that shaped our country, and our political partisanship. Today I think I’ll return to gardening, something TJ would certainly approve.

The Jefferson Library

The Jefferson Library

Read Full Post »

When Evil Looms

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on April 20, 2015| 2 Comments »

Last week my half-brother Brian was buried in Germany. He was laid to rest on Yom Ha’Shoah, the day Israel honors the victims of the Holocaust. Unlike the rest of the world, surviving European Jewish people were living with the grief of their systematic slaughter by Nazis every day and every night after WWII. It was a nightmare that came true with each new dawn. So they chose a different way to remember this evil; not by calling it International Remembrance Day, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, but by placing it on the Jewish calendar, in the month of Nisan, a week after Passover.

“Holocaust and Heorism Remembrance Day” was chosen to commemorate, to honor the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Since the early 1960’s, the sound of a siren on Yom Hashoah stops traffic and pedestrians throughout the State of Israel for two minutes of silent devotion. The siren blows at sundown and once again at 11:00 A.M. on this date. All radio and television programs during this day are connected in one way or another with the Jewish destiny in World War II, including personal interviews with survivors. Even the musical programs are adapted to the atmosphere of Yom Hashoah. There is no public entertainment on Yom Hashoah, as theaters, cinemas, pubs, and other public venues are closed throughout Israel.

My brother Brian married a wonderful German woman, Hildegarde. He adopted her family as his own, and although I know nothing about her, I can assume she was touched by the War. Was her first husband or father killed for resisting, or were they collaborators? I know she loved my brother very much, and that she was an excellent cook. She never really learned to speak English so that the two times I met her, I had the feeling she understood more than she could say. I never visited them in Germany primarily because Bob had no wish to go there.

Brian was almost 20 years older than the Flapper’s sixth child (me). Even if our family hadn’t been torn apart in our Year of Living Dangerously, I probably would not have known him well. But he was the one who got me to question the Catholic Church, because I have a vague memory of him asking me if I thought it was fair that only Catholics went to heaven. When my widowed Mother married a Jew, my status as a lapsed Catholic was complete at age 16. Remember, at that age we think we know everything, and certainly I did. But my ideas about faith, redemption and heaven have changed over the years.

This morning I was reminded that a great theologian left the safety and security of the US to return to Germany. Seventy years ago In April, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis at a concentration camp. He was a Lutheran pastor, a Nazi dissident and a true Christian martyr – a spy for the German resistance. A pacifist at heart, he nonetheless helped plot to kill Hitler, while the other Christian churches had opted to collaborate with his evil plan.

And I wondered what would I do. Would I have sent my children off to Hitler youth meetings? Of course not, we would have been rounded up and sent to our deaths. I like to think that church and state should forever be separate, but at that time of pure evil, should we not have seen more morally righteous pastors standing up for the Jews, the handicapped and homosexuals? What did they preach on their pulpits?

When evil looms, what would you do? CCIytTJWIAAUV78

Read Full Post »

Origins Porrigins

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on December 18, 2014| 3 Comments »

The other day I was being escorted to my car with a cart filled with bags of groceries, when the well meaning young man asked me if I had anything fun planned for the evening. Take note Northeners – here in the South, grocery clerks don’t even ask if you might need help out to your car. They just commandeer it.

Instead of fluffing him off, I said, “Yes, it’s the first night of Chanukka, do you even know what that is?” He smiled and said that he did, something about oil, right?

Leave it to my brother Eric to send me the real origin story of of this minor level Jewish Holiday that has scant hope of ever living up to Christmas.

A camel walks into a bar. I know, y’all thought it has something to do with a grand fight, the Maccabee brothers take on the holy Roman Empire. But according to this, the first time Chanukka is ever mentioned is in a Jewish law text, tort law no less. Back then, the rabbis were the chief judges and executioners of the land. And they made a distinction about fire damage claims in this Mishna:

If a camel knocks over a lamp, causing a fire, the rabbis say the camel driver is responsible if the lamp is indoors; but if the lamp is outside a shop, the shopkeeper is liable. Rabbi Jehudah provides an exception to this rule: The shopkeeper isn’t liable if the lamp is a “Hanukkah lamp.”

Some 250 years after the Maccabean Revolt, the rabbis explain why the menorah is lit, and it has more to do with a rededication of the Second Temple. Josephus first called the festival “Lights.” But in fact, like all traditions, it most likely originated with a newly monotheistic people trying to accommodate pagan rituals; “The more likely explanation is that Jewish households adopted the practice from pagan ritual, following which the authorities gave the practice a “Jewish explanation” after the fact. The Zoroastrians of Persia for instance marked the Winter Solstice with a festival of fire, called Chaharshanbe Suri, which predated Hanukkah and fell at about the same time of year.”

So thank you Iran! And that explains why we have so many damn lights all over everything at Christmas! And thank you Rabbis, for wanting to emphasize a victory for our people, when so many times we suffered defeats like Masada.

The Groom said last night, “I Like Chanukka!” After all, you get to eat anything fried in oil right! And the Bride said guess what, “We’ve got six more nights to go!” But of course I had to remind that grocery clerk of the Adam Sandler movie, and the eight “crazy” nights, when he thought it lasted “…like a month or something.”

Still, I wonder why some people spell it with a “C” and some with an “H?” What do you want for Chanukka? IMG_1880

Read Full Post »

A Crossroad

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 12, 2014| 4 Comments »

Did you ever see the 1998 movie “Sliding Doors” with Gweneth Paltrow? If not, it might be a good one to watch over the holidays with your family. It’s about the choices we make in life, and the outcomes. Gweneth lives parallel lives that change according to one small decision she makes; will she catch that train?

The Flapper met my Father while waiting for a tram in Scranton, PA. She was at that train stop every morning outside his drugstore and he would watch her from the big store window while waiting on customers. Whatever made him chase after that tram one day, and introduce himself, we’ll never know. Was it the way she smoked a cigarette? The way she brushed her platinum hair out of her eyes? It was 1933, and she was quite a dame.

After our Father died in our Year of Living Dangerously, around 1955, the Flapper was able to walk again and she wanted to pick up and move to Rockaway, NJ so she could be close to me. We’d live near each other, and I’d get to know my brothers and sister. And my real, biological Mother. But she needed a job.

She met Eugene Ginsburg who owned Rockaway Sales through an ad in the newspaper. He had started this prequel to a Big Box Store long before anybody had ever heard of a Best Buy. He was selling mostly hunting and fishing, camping and outdoor gear. This part of Morris County was still considered rural. And he needed a book keeper. My Mother needed a job and so she told him she knew how to keep accounts, which she didn’t. But he gave her the job and his lovely wife, Hope, taught her how to do it.

Eventually she told Mr Ginsberg that he should start selling toys! Because at Christmas people would want to buy toys for their children – and so the store morphed into a mix of Gander meets Toys R Us. Then the Flapper caught the eye of the store’s attorney, and they married and I moved into their house in Dover, NJ; gaining a step brother and sister to boot! I convinced the Flapper that I just had to go to public school, so long Sacred Heart.

Hello Dover Senior High School. If the Flapper didn’t meet the attorney, my stepfather, I would have probably been raised in Rockaway, the next town over and never met my husband Bob. Or what if she didn’t move to NJ, if she insisted I move back to PA? There were so many crossroads in my early life.

And meeting Eugene Ginsberg that day, having the chutzpah to tell him she could do something when she knew nothing about book keeping, well that was another train steering our lives in a certain direction. Gene became a life-long friend of our combined families, and my heart goes out to his family today.

He lived a courageous and exemplary life. One in which he helped so many people without public acclaim. He was humble and truly the kindest, sweetest 93 year old in the whole world. He had a twinkle in his eye at Ada’s birthday party, but I will always remember the dashing young, business man who traveled the world and gave my Mother a chance to build a life with me. http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dailyrecord/obituary.aspx?n=eugene-ginsberg&pid=173441912& IMG_0963

Read Full Post »

Feeling the Fourth

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2014| 2 Comments »

IMG_0787Yesterday we got up early to wish our country a happy birthday. Like we’ve done so many times before, we headed up the mountain to Mr Jefferson’s home for the 52nd Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello. http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/state-regional/nearly-citizens-naturalized-at-monticello/article_33d59e48-03f4-11e4-af9a-0017a43b2370.html

Thousands always gather to watch our newest citizens swear an oath of allegiance to these United States; red and blue, right and left unite in our collective pride for once. And as Iraq was dissolving into tribal warfare, trying desperately to sustain its very early gestational stage of freedom, I thought about the bigger picture. How we didn’t achieve true independence in 1776, well not ALL of us did, IMG_0792

We had to fight our own bloody Civil War and then survive the tumultuous 60s, and we are still voting one state at a time for marriage equality in 2014.

And while the keynote speaker, David Rubenstein, co-founder and CEO of the Carlyle Group, read an amusing email he received from TJ himself, it was his list of famous immigrants that caught my attention; Albert Einstein, YoYoMa, Kissinger, Madeline Albright, etc and I couldn’t help but think about the buses of women and children that have faced angry mobs in California, and the refugee camps we’ve set up along border states.    IMG_0797

Still, what other country our size manages to allow and contain so much dissent, along with a free press? How will history tell this American immigration story? It turns out Mr Rubenstein graduated the same year as Bob from Duke University. I asked Bob if he thought he’d been a frat boy in 1970. The Yearbook that year was divided in two, one for the Greeks and one for the Geeks (Hippies).

And as I stood there with my little flag and my hand in its splint, I thought about the Supreme’s latest Hobby Lobby ruling. In 1967 when I was in college, doctors were not allowed to write prescriptions for that newfangled birth control pill if you were unmarried. And today, your boss can determine your reproductive destiny because SCOTUS has ruled in favor of corporations over women. And it has once again softened the line between church and state, and we know what Mr Jefferson would say about that! IMG_0783

http://classroom.monticello.org/teachers/resources/profile/6/Jefferson-and-the-Declaration-of-Independence/   ps why do I always look like some botched plastic surgery victim?

 

Read Full Post »

Chance Encounters

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on May 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Hope everyone had a fun-filled holiday weekend and took some time to remember our fallen warriors. Our President went to Afghanistan and the Pope went to Jerusalem, conflict zones still. My silent prayer yesterday was for peace, like some aged pageant finalist, I knew I didn’t have much of a chance.

Bob was saving lives all weekend. No, really he saved a young man’s life, in his 30s, first heart attack, coded right in front of him like they only do on TV. An emergency department can be like a war zone, especially on Memorial Day (or insert any summer holiday). Grills are being fired up and gas tanks malfunction, lawn mowers throw crap into people’s eyes, fish hooks get stuck in the most unlikely places; and that’s just a sample of a country hospital. Throw in too much alcohol and/or drugs, then change your scenario to a city, and all hell will break loose.

Because guns are so prolific in this country. Because guns can be bought in a parking lot, online or down the street at the newest Gander Mountain store where guns line the walls like 3D wallpaper. Because no politician has the nerve to stand up to the NRA, to challenge the 2nd Amendment. We successfully challenged that bit about African Americans and slavery. But heaven help us if we want to keep guns well regulated, have background checks or challenge laws like “stand your ground.” We the people are not even allowed to track gun violence, or sue a gun manufacturer if a gun misfires! In some states, the NRA tells our pediatricians they cannot even ask if there are guns in the home.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

I didn’t start to cry until I saw a father, Richard Martinez, ask how this was possible in Santa Barbara, California. How could his 20 year old son go out to a deli only to be gunned down for no reason. How could this happen after Sandy Hook, CT? http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/father-blames-government-idiots-as-california-town-mourns-killings

“Martinez said his son died because Congress had failed to act after a mentally ill gunman killed 26 people in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. “These people are getting rich sitting in Congress. And what do they do? They don’t take care of our kids,” he said.

Because let’s get real. It’s not about mental health laws and how long people can be held in a hospital or be committed against their will. This latest mass murderer was not only a misogynist, whose parents cared enough to call the police about his homicidal tendencies, he was a cunning, borderline psychopath. He had the money and the ability to purchase as many guns as he wanted, legally, and to fool the officers who interviewed him for what, ten minutes?

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE GUNS

Maybe, just maybe there is something we can do. And if enough of us act, if enough of us gather signatures, gather our nerve, we might make a dent and get politicians to listen to parents who have had enough of this senseless gun violence – in schools, in movie theaters, in delis. Because a “well-regulated militia” means the National Guard to me. It takes one nation to end gun violence. Consider joining “Everytown for our Safety.” I did.

http://everytown.org

I was going to write today about a chance encounter I had with a dad helping out his son in a new business, they own a local food truck. But sometimes my fingers just type what they feel, and another dad’s feelings took over.  Why not join Everytown with me, let’s give peace a chance.     IMG_0612

 

 

Read Full Post »

Immunity Theories

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2014| 6 Comments »

I’ve been thinking about immunity lately. Why is it that some of us never seem to “catch” a cold? While the rest of us succumb to the slightest bug going around. Why did I develop an anti-immune disease (Guttate Psoriasis) at 60 that normally shows up at 30? Maybe it’s just that since we returned from Mexico, illness has descended on my house like a plague. Today, Bob was diagnosed with pneumonia, about a week after I started feeling “normal” again. Ah, the wonders of antibiotics.

It’s well known in my family that the Flapper gave Bob the original hospital bill of my birth when we married. She stayed in the hospital for 11 days in 1948; remember I was baby number six, and the only one born in a hospital, so the doctor thought she needed a rest. My parents were charged a dollar a day for the nursery, $11 for my care and feeding. And at the bottom of the hospital bill was a section for penicillin charges. Antibiotics were so new, they had an important, separate spot on the bill!

WWII brought us not only the bomb, but the quick development of antibiotics. Eisenhower wanted enough penicillin to treat his soldiers after the Normandy invasion and so the original strain, discovered in England in 1929, had to be made and marketed on a mass scale in the United States after we entered the war.

On March 14,1942, the first patient was successfully treated for strephtococcal septicemia with U.S.-made penicillin. Half of the total supply produced at the time was used on that one patient. By June 1942 there was just enough available to treat ten patients.

Just 10 patients in 1942! According to legend history a good strain was found on a moldy cantaloupe in Illinois and our Army doctors (along with Merck) managed to synthesize 300 billion units by D-Day 1944. Pretty amazing in just two years. Which is why our parents were so hypochondriacal. The Greatest Generation grew up without antibiotics, afraid of every cold and scratch their children suffered because in an instant, the grim reaper might appear at anyone’s door. My foster father Jim often talked about his sister who died when her older brothers were swinging her, holding her arms and legs, upstairs in the attic. Just fooling around, having fun. A splinter in her back became infected and that was that.

Which leads me to another kind of immunity, something called “psychological immunity.” In this Atlantic article http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/308555/ the author tries to explain why our 20-30 year old adult children are so unhappy, even though their parents did everything they could for them…and there’s the answer. We parents are doing too much, and not allowing our children to learn some pretty simple lessons – like picking yourself up, brushing yourself off and deciding that that wasn’t so bad and I can take care of myself alright. “Well intentioned parents have been metabolizing their child’s anxiety” for so long that once they are unleashed on the world, they don’t know how to handle its ups and downs.

It’s like the way our body’s immune system develops,” he explained. “You have to be exposed to pathogens, or your body won’t know how to respond to an attack. Kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure, and struggle. I know parents who call up the school to complain if their kid doesn’t get to be in the school play or make the cut for the baseball team. I know of one kid who said that he didn’t like another kid in the carpool, so instead of having their child learn to tolerate the other kid, they offered to drive him to school themselves. By the time they’re teenagers, they have no experience with hardship. Civilization is about adapting to less-than-perfect situations, yet parents often have this instantaneous reaction to unpleasantness, which is ‘I can fix this.’

It’s hard not to try and fix everything. It looks like it will take more than chicken soup this time to get Bob back on his feet. Thank you General Eisenhower! And thanks to the universe for our last, hopefully, snowstorm.

IMG_0259

 

Read Full Post »

Atomic City

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 21, 2014| 1 Comment »

Imagine yourself fresh out of high school. Someone tells you that you can make 79 cents an hour, but he can’t tell you where, or what exactly you’ll be doing. It’s the middle of WWII, and your family had just survived the Great Depression; 79 cents an hour is really good money. Would you say goodbye to your family and friends, pack a suitcase and get on a train the next day?

Well, it’s the middle of the great Virginia Book Festival http://www.vabook.org/index.html/ and this glorious, spring-like afternoon I found myself at the New Dominion Bookstore on the historic Downtown Mall listening to Denise Kiernan talk about her book The Girls of Atomic City. I learned something new today. The race to build an atomic bomb wasn’t just happening in New Mexico. Over 80,000 people were assembled in Oak Ridge, TN – a town that was built for the sole purpose of enriching uranium. Only no girl knew exactly what they were doing there. All of their jobs were so well compartmentalized; plus they had been advised not to talk or write home about their work, or they would be fired. http://www.girlsofatomiccity.com/the_book.html

I wanted to ask her, after she explained how she had interviewed some of the surviving women now living in an assisted living community at Oak Ridge, if they felt any remorse when they found out what they had been working on, in their later years. But I didn’t because the bookstore was packed and I was squeezed under the stairs on a stool. I’m just going to have to read this book myself, and draw my own conclusions. Or maybe I’ll email the author and ask her!

I love the Book Festival, it’s quintessential Charlottesvillian. There was a beautiful carousel that was whirring in the middle of it all, and gown and town were mixing it up with alacrity. I bought the Love Bug a few books naturally, and visited with Anita and Skip who come over every year from Richmond. I told them how we had just seen the movie Monuments Men. I learned a few things during that movie as well. And who doesn’t love George Clooney? Plus his dad does a cameo at the end.

This was a week to go back in time, to the 1940s. Of all the programs so far this weekend, I can honestly say Ms Kiernan was the best. But I doubt I’ll be attending any other festival events because poor Bob has finally come down with that flu-like illness I mentioned earlier. Not to worry. I just made him some delicious Jewish chicken soup, he should be feeling better in no time.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »