Farewell to the Time Lady
Copyright Ruth Lampert 2009
Last night we experienced a power outage – it was taken care of within the hour, but, every electric clock in the house needed to be changed..
I automatically reached for the phone to verify the correct time, and then I remembered – the Time Lady is long gone.
She was always there when I needed her. In tones that were clear, friendly, but never unctuous, she immediately gave me the information I needed. “At the tone,” the response came with a reliability seldom experienced in today’s hectic modern world, “the time will be…” and she would announce what the time would be, to the very second. Then a pleasant yet authoritative tone would sound, bringing a blissful sense of closure.
The argument I was having with whoever I was arguing about the exact time was solved.
The nagging suspicion that my watch needed cleaning was either confirmed or allayed.
If I was lonely, and just needed to hear a friendly voice, I could count on her.
She was the friend and counsel of my youth, the dependable helper of my middle and older years.
Now, she is gone. Sent away without fanfare or ceremony.
Well, time marches on, no pun intended. . I just hope what my computer says in tiny, silent, numbers at the bottom of the screen is correct. I did appreciate her while I had her, and I think she somehow knew, just as she always knew the correct time.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Friday, October 31, 2008
Feel Guilty? Join a Book Club
copyright by Ruth Lampert October 2008
For those of us who fell in love with books before we were strong enough to lift one, there has always been a price to pay in guilt for our passion. (This may come as a surprise to those who never liked to read, a condition which will probably not be explored elsewhere since no one would want to read it.)
But for book worms of all ages, as soon as a volume is picked up and you are comfortably settled in your chair, a nagging refrain turns on listing all the things you should be doing instead. (This excludes of course books which must be read for a class assignment. This topic also will probably not be explored elsewhere.)
As a child I remember hiding in the cellar with a beloved book while that merciless voice nagged:
Better you should go out and play in the fresh air.
Your room is a pigsty, why don’t you go clean it up and make it neat like your sister’s?
You’ll never make any friends this way, you goofus.
Growing up, the list of “should do instead” grows longer, including, but not limited to,
Doing your homework, especially the stuff you hate (like math.)
Washing your hair
Fixing dinner, or at least making a shopping list
Playing with my kids instead of stuffing them with graham crackers so they won’t bother you.
Better you should go take a walk and get some fresh air.
The house is a pigsty etc as above
Writing your blog instead of leaving it to the last minute
And then, to the rescue, comes The Book Club Remedy! If you belong to a Book Club, there is always something you not only should be reading, but quite likely also enjoy a lot... It’s not the same as reading a class assignment, because the book has been chosen either by you or by a friend who likely shares your tastes, and if not, you can begin the next month’s selection or read something new that can be your choice the next time around. I mean, you really should do your part and be prepared.
Some say this phenomenon is nothing but Jewish Guilt and since Jews are known to be The People of the Book it all takes on an added intensity. This would make a good subject for a scholarly study which I probably should undertake, but I can’t, because I have to finish this month’s book.
Ha ha ha.
I imagine the earth when I am no
more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a
strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song
in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the
shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from
radiance, heights.
Last lines from a poem by Czeslaw Milosz.
Quoted by Bruce Ja7 Friedman in New York Times Book Review
September 14, 2008.Name of poem not given.
copyright by Ruth Lampert October 2008
For those of us who fell in love with books before we were strong enough to lift one, there has always been a price to pay in guilt for our passion. (This may come as a surprise to those who never liked to read, a condition which will probably not be explored elsewhere since no one would want to read it.)
But for book worms of all ages, as soon as a volume is picked up and you are comfortably settled in your chair, a nagging refrain turns on listing all the things you should be doing instead. (This excludes of course books which must be read for a class assignment. This topic also will probably not be explored elsewhere.)
As a child I remember hiding in the cellar with a beloved book while that merciless voice nagged:
Better you should go out and play in the fresh air.
Your room is a pigsty, why don’t you go clean it up and make it neat like your sister’s?
You’ll never make any friends this way, you goofus.
Growing up, the list of “should do instead” grows longer, including, but not limited to,
Doing your homework, especially the stuff you hate (like math.)
Washing your hair
Fixing dinner, or at least making a shopping list
Playing with my kids instead of stuffing them with graham crackers so they won’t bother you.
Better you should go take a walk and get some fresh air.
The house is a pigsty etc as above
Writing your blog instead of leaving it to the last minute
And then, to the rescue, comes The Book Club Remedy! If you belong to a Book Club, there is always something you not only should be reading, but quite likely also enjoy a lot... It’s not the same as reading a class assignment, because the book has been chosen either by you or by a friend who likely shares your tastes, and if not, you can begin the next month’s selection or read something new that can be your choice the next time around. I mean, you really should do your part and be prepared.
Some say this phenomenon is nothing but Jewish Guilt and since Jews are known to be The People of the Book it all takes on an added intensity. This would make a good subject for a scholarly study which I probably should undertake, but I can’t, because I have to finish this month’s book.
Ha ha ha.
I imagine the earth when I am no
more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a
strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song
in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the
shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from
radiance, heights.
Last lines from a poem by Czeslaw Milosz.
Quoted by Bruce Ja7 Friedman in New York Times Book Review
September 14, 2008.Name of poem not given.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Who Knew?
by Ruth Lampert copyright September 2008
I'm Jewish, all right. I have a Jewish heart, a Jewish sense of humor, Jewish taste buds, and Jewish guilt. But I was raised in a tradition of "secular Judaism" in which these traits flourished in a climate devoid of formal Jewish education or religious practice. The only thing I knew about "kosher" was the connotation in the saying "that doesn't sound kosher to me," and a vague image of bearded, skull- capped men who didn't eat pork.
My father -- a kind and deeply moral man -- was philosophically opposed to organized religion. He probably would not have approved of the summer camp I went to the year after he died, when I was 10.
We called it "Camp Chi," pronounced "shy," although today I wonder if it wasn’t the Hebrew word “Chai,” meaning “life.” Be that as it may, the director’s name was definitely “Mother Seiman." As I think about it now that sounds more Catholic than Jewish, but Mother Seiman she was. I paid very little attention to her until the evening of My Sin.
Camp life was O.K. -- I liked the songs, and can still sing all the words to "I'm a hayseed, I'm full of seaweed..." and "Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro" and "Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody's mother" -- but in a lot of ways it was dumb.
For example, cabins rotated the task of setting tables for the evening meal. On my Eve of Transgression I hurried to the dining room hoping no one would notice that I was a little late (I had probably been lying on my cot day-dreaming, as usual) and the other girls were hard at it, pushing and shoving as they grabbed utensils from a large wooden box which, if I thought about it at all, I probably assumed had formerly served some other storage or packaging use, since printed on the side in big bold letters was the word "MILK." Probably the little individual milk cartons had been delivered in it, I may have thought.
My dopey cabin-mates were all crowded around it in a frenzy of gathering spoons and knives and forks, and I wondered, in my sensible way, why some of them didn't just avoid the crush by taking utensils from the nearby box labeled "MEAT"- - probably brisket had been delivered in that one. I took what I needed from it, finished my share of the tables in short order, and slipped back to my cabin, my cot, and my interrupted day-dream.
Halfway through dinner -- which I didn't think much of, mostly just cheese-filled blintzes -- the door flew open and Mother Seiman stormed in from the staff dining room. Face blazing with fury, voice strident with rage, she bellowed something about having "just learned of this blasphemy... someone with a twisted sense of humor...I expect a confession by morning or everyone in the offending cabin will be punished...bla bla bla."
What the heck was she yammering on about, I wondered? Oh well, grownups were strange, and besides, I wasn't feeling too well. My throat was sore, and my head ached.
The next morning I was in the infirmary. I stayed there until Mother (mine, not Seiman) picked me up and drove me home where Doc Kraut said I had a strep throat and was I a lucky young lady that a new wonder drug called "sulpha" was available for just such cases.
So much for Camp Chi and Mother Seiman and her inexplicable temper tantrum. Growing up I became exposed to more traditional Jews and learned, among other things, about dietary laws, including the injunction against mixing milk and meat at the same meal.
Those boxes. MEAT. MILK. The tantrum became all too explicable.
I never have kept kosher. I do scrupulously observe a personal dietary law, which mandates eating lox, bagels, and cream cheese every Sunday morning at a deli.
I espouse the spirit of Reform Judaism described by the late humanistic Rabbi Leslie Freund, whose father was an orthodox Rabbi. Leslie recalled the day he realized he really didn't believe the words he was chanting, but, he said, “I still loved the music."
That metaphor continues to inform my spiritual life. So it is that on the coming Yom Kippur I will sit, as I do every year, with fellow Jews and examine my conscience. Have I been complacent? arrogant? unkind? self-righteous? etc. etc.
I know that getting strep throat was not punishment for my childhood sin of ignorance at Camp Chi, and no God I can imagine would expect me to ask forgiveness. Still, I offer up a little apology to Mother Seiman, and if a Higher Power hears me, hey...
Couldn't hurt.
by Ruth Lampert copyright September 2008
I'm Jewish, all right. I have a Jewish heart, a Jewish sense of humor, Jewish taste buds, and Jewish guilt. But I was raised in a tradition of "secular Judaism" in which these traits flourished in a climate devoid of formal Jewish education or religious practice. The only thing I knew about "kosher" was the connotation in the saying "that doesn't sound kosher to me," and a vague image of bearded, skull- capped men who didn't eat pork.
My father -- a kind and deeply moral man -- was philosophically opposed to organized religion. He probably would not have approved of the summer camp I went to the year after he died, when I was 10.
We called it "Camp Chi," pronounced "shy," although today I wonder if it wasn’t the Hebrew word “Chai,” meaning “life.” Be that as it may, the director’s name was definitely “Mother Seiman." As I think about it now that sounds more Catholic than Jewish, but Mother Seiman she was. I paid very little attention to her until the evening of My Sin.
Camp life was O.K. -- I liked the songs, and can still sing all the words to "I'm a hayseed, I'm full of seaweed..." and "Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro" and "Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody's mother" -- but in a lot of ways it was dumb.
For example, cabins rotated the task of setting tables for the evening meal. On my Eve of Transgression I hurried to the dining room hoping no one would notice that I was a little late (I had probably been lying on my cot day-dreaming, as usual) and the other girls were hard at it, pushing and shoving as they grabbed utensils from a large wooden box which, if I thought about it at all, I probably assumed had formerly served some other storage or packaging use, since printed on the side in big bold letters was the word "MILK." Probably the little individual milk cartons had been delivered in it, I may have thought.
My dopey cabin-mates were all crowded around it in a frenzy of gathering spoons and knives and forks, and I wondered, in my sensible way, why some of them didn't just avoid the crush by taking utensils from the nearby box labeled "MEAT"- - probably brisket had been delivered in that one. I took what I needed from it, finished my share of the tables in short order, and slipped back to my cabin, my cot, and my interrupted day-dream.
Halfway through dinner -- which I didn't think much of, mostly just cheese-filled blintzes -- the door flew open and Mother Seiman stormed in from the staff dining room. Face blazing with fury, voice strident with rage, she bellowed something about having "just learned of this blasphemy... someone with a twisted sense of humor...I expect a confession by morning or everyone in the offending cabin will be punished...bla bla bla."
What the heck was she yammering on about, I wondered? Oh well, grownups were strange, and besides, I wasn't feeling too well. My throat was sore, and my head ached.
The next morning I was in the infirmary. I stayed there until Mother (mine, not Seiman) picked me up and drove me home where Doc Kraut said I had a strep throat and was I a lucky young lady that a new wonder drug called "sulpha" was available for just such cases.
So much for Camp Chi and Mother Seiman and her inexplicable temper tantrum. Growing up I became exposed to more traditional Jews and learned, among other things, about dietary laws, including the injunction against mixing milk and meat at the same meal.
Those boxes. MEAT. MILK. The tantrum became all too explicable.
I never have kept kosher. I do scrupulously observe a personal dietary law, which mandates eating lox, bagels, and cream cheese every Sunday morning at a deli.
I espouse the spirit of Reform Judaism described by the late humanistic Rabbi Leslie Freund, whose father was an orthodox Rabbi. Leslie recalled the day he realized he really didn't believe the words he was chanting, but, he said, “I still loved the music."
That metaphor continues to inform my spiritual life. So it is that on the coming Yom Kippur I will sit, as I do every year, with fellow Jews and examine my conscience. Have I been complacent? arrogant? unkind? self-righteous? etc. etc.
I know that getting strep throat was not punishment for my childhood sin of ignorance at Camp Chi, and no God I can imagine would expect me to ask forgiveness. Still, I offer up a little apology to Mother Seiman, and if a Higher Power hears me, hey...
Couldn't hurt.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Geezer Power:
A New Spin on Senior Scams
Copyright by Ruth Lampert, September 2008
Don’t just whine about it - beat them at their own game. As a chronologically gifted person, (my grandson’s creative term for “elderly”) you are in a position to: make scamming an equal opportunity activity. Scam the scammers! Turn a lemon into lemonade!
Here are some tips for effective telephone pitches to help you get started:
“Hello young fellow, (or ‘young lady,’ or if in doubt, ‘my friend’)”how are you today? Did you know there are thousands of elderly folks out there who have no one to leave their money to?” (this point gets a pitiful quaver in your voice, suggesting you may be one of them.) “All you need do is sign up for my seminar on ‘Beyond Roofing Rip-Offs With Retired Rubes...’ Yessir, this fantastic event will be advertised on national TV’. tomorrow for $999.99 – registration is yours at a special one-time only price of for only $18.75 just be using your credit card. Act NOW: I can take that information immediately on this here phone!”
Or try this one:
“Send $50.00 in cash (envelope must be marked by midnight tonight) for a full audio-cassette or compact disk recourse of instruction on ‘New Scams With Old Folks.’ This gem is by a A WELL KNOWN promoter, the very same con artist you have seen on late night television explaining “How I Made a Fortune With Nothing Down in the Scam Market.”
Hey there old timer, you weren’t born yesterday – far from it.
You’ve seen what Geezer Power can do politically. Let it work for you financially! You know you’ve been ripped off a time or two in your long life – here is the chance you have been waiting for to scam the scammers! How do you know who the scammers are? I will provide you with this and other vital information – information available no where else – just as soon as you tell me your credit card number, expiration date, and those three numbers on the back “
Win-win propositions aren’t the sole property of the younger generation you know. If you are wondering how to get the telephone numbers of MILLIONS of these so-called baby boomers, well, you know how to reach me.
And phone calls are only the beginning. There is also e-mail, text messaging and who knows what other new-fangled technologies are on the horizon? But don’t wait. The old-fashioned way was good enough to get you to invest in Nigeria, and it’s good enough to work in the USA.
Operators are waiting to take your information. You won’t regret it, I promise you. Would I lie?
Have a great evening!
A New Spin on Senior Scams
Copyright by Ruth Lampert, September 2008
Don’t just whine about it - beat them at their own game. As a chronologically gifted person, (my grandson’s creative term for “elderly”) you are in a position to: make scamming an equal opportunity activity. Scam the scammers! Turn a lemon into lemonade!
Here are some tips for effective telephone pitches to help you get started:
“Hello young fellow, (or ‘young lady,’ or if in doubt, ‘my friend’)”how are you today? Did you know there are thousands of elderly folks out there who have no one to leave their money to?” (this point gets a pitiful quaver in your voice, suggesting you may be one of them.) “All you need do is sign up for my seminar on ‘Beyond Roofing Rip-Offs With Retired Rubes...’ Yessir, this fantastic event will be advertised on national TV’. tomorrow for $999.99 – registration is yours at a special one-time only price of for only $18.75 just be using your credit card. Act NOW: I can take that information immediately on this here phone!”
Or try this one:
“Send $50.00 in cash (envelope must be marked by midnight tonight) for a full audio-cassette or compact disk recourse of instruction on ‘New Scams With Old Folks.’ This gem is by a A WELL KNOWN promoter, the very same con artist you have seen on late night television explaining “How I Made a Fortune With Nothing Down in the Scam Market.”
Hey there old timer, you weren’t born yesterday – far from it.
You’ve seen what Geezer Power can do politically. Let it work for you financially! You know you’ve been ripped off a time or two in your long life – here is the chance you have been waiting for to scam the scammers! How do you know who the scammers are? I will provide you with this and other vital information – information available no where else – just as soon as you tell me your credit card number, expiration date, and those three numbers on the back “
Win-win propositions aren’t the sole property of the younger generation you know. If you are wondering how to get the telephone numbers of MILLIONS of these so-called baby boomers, well, you know how to reach me.
And phone calls are only the beginning. There is also e-mail, text messaging and who knows what other new-fangled technologies are on the horizon? But don’t wait. The old-fashioned way was good enough to get you to invest in Nigeria, and it’s good enough to work in the USA.
Operators are waiting to take your information. You won’t regret it, I promise you. Would I lie?
Have a great evening!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
