VERBIAGE

Words in a Wagon

2011-12-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

In the final weeks before his death in 2005, my father drifted in and out of a morphine-induced haze which, given his extravagant imagination and wit, made most of the time I spent with him during those last days poignantly entertaining.

He awoke from one of his dreams one day and said, “I had a wagon and it was full of words, like blocks. The wagon was full and overflowing, and every block had a word on it. And I pulled the thing everywhere I went. I was pulling my words in a wagon, for God’s sake! And people were saying, Rabinowitz, what do you think you’re doing? Haven’t you ever heard of a dictionary?”

At the risk of sounding like the officious headmaster who delivers Hector’s eulogy in the movie The History Boys*, I have to say that my father loved words – really, he treasured them. And he shlepped that wagon enthusiastically. What a writer and conversationalist he was! He built gravity-defying edifices with words – flights of pure fancy that charmed and instructed. Anyone who ever had a conversation with my father or received a letter from him knows what I’m talking about. (You know who you are.)

I realized when he died and I understand now: my father’s legacy to me was the wagon of words. The job and privilege of pulling that wagon has fallen to me. And now I make my living choosing words out of the vast repository that has accumulated through the years, knitting them together into phrases and sentences and paragraphs, and then releasing them to take wing and fly into the world where they might, God willing, bring a smile and do some good.

Thanks, Dad.

*If you don’t get the reference, watch the movie. You’ll like it.

You Say You Want a Revolution

2011-10-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

Their demands were unclear. They started gathering before noon, several hundred at the start, in the park across from the plaza of the Capitol building in Denver, Colorado. They carried rough, hand-lettered signs and backpacks. I watched them from a podium on the west portico of the Capitol where I was setting up an event for my client: Colorado Call to Prayer Day.

From my vantage point, I saw a growing, restless, vocal crowd whose intentions were unknown to me. From their vantage point, they saw 200 white chairs gleaming in the sun on the plaza facing the Capitol building, a platform with flags, a podium, and an arrangement of chairs for speakers. Maybe they could make out a woman in black standing at the podium, alone on the platform, watching them. Who knows?

I do know that as I listened to them, the rhetoric ranged from reasoned to incendiary, and that this was discernible from the tone alone, without being able to hear all the words. I sensed that the crowd contained a trouble-making element. They were the loud, strident ones with anger escalating in their voices.

The state troopers who provided security for Colorado Call to Prayer Day formed a loose cordon along the semi-circular perimeter of the Capitol plaza. They stood, watchful and formidable, as my team of volunteers continued to set up for the 2:00 pm event. The state trooper liaison who kept me briefed was a short, compact woman with no-nonsense efficiency written all over her. I asked her what sort of problems she anticipated if the crowd advanced to the Capitol. This particular demonstration group, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street dubbed ‘Occupy Denver’, had been gathering, camping out and getting arrested in the park below the Capitol for several days.

“They’re very noisy,” she replied. A nuisance, I thought, but not a deal-breaker. She went on, “The thing is that they throw feces. That’s what they carry in those backpacks.” I recoiled at the thought. I wondered if that kind of hostility represented the mood and agenda of the whole crowd – I hoped not.

I mused that it only takes a handful of people throwing feces to turn a whole city against a crowd of demonstrators, many of whom might be, in fact, good citizens who are troubled about the state of our nation and are looking for answers, or maybe down-on-their luck families unable to find work and looking for a break, or maybe just Americans so frustrated with our nation’s condition that they’re mad as hell, not going to take it anymore, and looking for an outlet.

A few minutes later, the troopers got word from their undercover intelligence that the demonstrators were about to storm the Capitol. Immediately a team of riot police in full black combat gear appeared and set up a command post just inside the Capitol building. We moved all of the student volunteers inside. A small group of men and women stayed on the plaza to pray. I watched and waited from the portico, wondering what could be going through the minds of the demonstrators. Surely they must realize that they would be walking into a very, very bad situation. And without having told the world exactly what their demands were, what could they possibly hope to gain?

“We’re moving! We’re moving!” came the cry from the leader of the demonstration, clear as a bell across the plaza. The riot police moved swiftly to their places on the portico, as strong and forbidding as larger-than-life action figures, their bulky black uniforms stark and ominous against the white marble of the Capitol. I prayed and waited. Then the word came, “They’re moving to the 16^th Street Mall.” The demonstrators had decided to move away from the Capitol, to the long, urban pedestrian shopping mall that bisects all of downtown Denver. “Good move,” I thought, guessing that they were going to wait on the Mall until 2:00, when they would come back to the park and try to disrupt Colorado Call to Prayer Day. We were a convenient target.

We finished setting up. Volunteers moved to their posts. It was show-time. Elected leaders and citizens gathered and took their places on the platform and in the audience.

The crowd of demonstrators moved en masse from the Mall to the park below the Capitol and began to advance, their numbers greatly increased. They didn’t look like they were coming in peace. State Troopers formed a tight shoulder-to-shoulder cordon around the perimeter of the plaza.

The program commenced. Elected leaders – Colorado State Senators and Representatives – announced the formation of the Colorado Legislative Prayer Caucus, a bi-partisan group of legislators who have committed to pray together and seek God’s will as a body. These humble and sincere men and women spoke with intelligence and clarity, expressing their desire to be used by God to make a difference for the good of their state and our nation.

The demonstrators held their ground and made plenty of noise, but the ceremony went forward without a hitch. I began to notice people from the crowd below-- ones and twos, families – approaching the steps leading up to the plaza. Some of them still held signs; most had backpacks. The troopers kept them outside the perimeter, but they sat and listened.

A friend who accompanied my husband to the Capitol event walked down to the crowd to see what was happening. He told me later that he saw an older man circulating through the crowd with a sign that said something like, “Come pray with us at the Capitol.” For people who were looking for answers, he offered an answer that drew some away from the restless mass of demonstrators to a gathering with clear direction and promise.

“If my people who are called by my Name will humble themselves and pray,

and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven

and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

2 Chronicles 7:14

Imagine if every one of us put God first in our lives and trusted Him. Imagine if we all acknowledged and worshipped God as our Creator and our Lord. Imagine if we all put aside our agendas -- personal and political – and sought His will alone. Imagine….

You can say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Reflections on Becoming a Life Member of Hadassah

2011-10-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

“Kol ode balevav p'nimah, nefesh Yehudi homiyah; Ulfa'atey mizrach kadimah, ayin l'tzion tzofiyah...”

I sang along in the hotel ballroom as the ladies of my mother's Hadassah chapter stood for the Israeli national anthem at the start of the fund-raising luncheon. I was then a young student in my twenties, standing next to my mother at the table with her friends. I could feel her pleasure at having me there and her pride at being able to show off to her friends that I knew all the words to Hatikvah. I was glad to give her a reason to kvell – I loved pleasing her.

Today, more than forty years later, she would be pleased to know that I am now a Life Member of Hadassah, the organization she so believed in and served with such enthusiasm and commitment. My road to life membership was not a typical one. After college, I married an Episcopalian boy from Birmingham, Alabama, who swept me off my feet with his good looks and Southern charm and who sealed the deal by agreeing with me that we should raise our children in the traditions of both of our families. And so we have.

We moved from the Northeast to Alabama over 30 years ago, shortly after our first son was born, and I was welcomed warmly into my husband’s family. We settled about 30 miles from Birmingham, in a roomy house on a country road where our three boys grew and thrived. Along with exposing them to the liturgy and practices of the Episcopal Church, I taught my sons everything my parents had taught me about being Jewish. I was aware that there was a Jewish community in Birmingham, but we were far from the city, and life was busy in the country.

The years passed and lo and behold, the children were grown and gone, my work schedule lightened, and I had time on my hands. So I reached out to a Jewish educational organization in Birmingham and got involved in a project. Again, I was welcomed warmly. I discovered that my particular “skill set” can be put to good use in Jewish community projects and I love being involved.

Last year, I became a member of Hadassah. This year, I jumped on the $100 Life Membership Centennial Anniversary Offer, which is a deal my mother, the consummate bargain-hunter, would have approved of wholeheartedly. I’m excited and proud to now stand alongside my mother and the other women of Hadassah who have made a lifetime commitment to an organization whose good works have made a difference in so many lives.

I feel I’ve fulfilled a calling of a sort. I began to ponder this after a conversation with my daughter-in-law-to-be, a lovely African-American girl who has added a new cultural ingredient to our personal family melting pot. One day when the two of us were alone, I brought up the subject of “getting to know each other better,” which is a desire of my heart. She’s a quiet girl, and I couldn't easily discern if she wanted to keep her distance or if she wanted to get closer. I told her I wanted to get as close to her as she would like. “I’m a Jewish mother,” I explained, “and I’ll be a Jewish mother to you if you want me to be.”

There was a long silence after which she asked, “What does a Jewish mother do?”

“Oh, honey,” I thought, “Where do I begin?”

I responded, “Well, there are a few stereotypes associated with Jewish mothers, like being pushy and overbearing. Then there’s the whole guilt thing – like the Jewish mother who gives her son two ties for his birthday, and when she sees him wearing one, asks, “So you didn't like the other tie?” Jewish mothers have elevated this kind of logic to an art form.

But there's much more to being a Jewish mother than just the stereotypes, and I wanted to offer a real answer to my son's betrothed. I thought a moment. “At heart,” I said, “we’re family women. We want to be close to our families and involved in their lives.”

There was another pause, during which I wondered if I had scared her. Then she replied, “That sounds O.K.” And so we’re building our relationship, my daughter-in-law-to-be and I.

We’re family women, we Jewish mothers. If we push or meddle or interrogate, it's because we want to be on the inside with the ones we love. We want to be more than connected; we want to be intertwined.

There’s another important element to being a Jewish mother: we want to help. We want to make a difference and we want to make things better, especially where our family is concerned.

For the Jews, our commitment to our people is profound and complete, and the magnitude of our family is as large as we will make it. Hadassah makes our family very large indeed, by innovating health care for a nation and equipping the children of the land to continue the legacy of education and progress that sets Israel apart.

I am proud to be a Life Member of Hadassah and I hope to carry on the tradition of service and friendship exemplified for me by my mother, Molly Siegel Rabinowitz, who taught me to be a family woman.

Deborah and Molly, circa 1995

Talking Families: The Wedding of Shara and Adi

2011-09-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

My cousin Shara has a photo on her Facebook page of five family members representing branches of a family tree that has grown organically from old love and new love, marriage and remarriage. She calls it “Talking Families.” I love this photo, because it echoes my understanding of what’s possible in the phenomenon of family, given an open heart and a sense of humor: you can have a family tree that grows leaf by joined leaf into ever-widening and intersecting circles.

Last weekend there was a delightful convergence of brothers and sisters, parents, stepparents, godparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews, and friends of the heart in Berkeley, California for Shara and Adi’s wedding. We came from New York and Chicago, Los Angeles and Palm Springs, Alabama and Wyoming, Oregon, Florida and Germany. We all stayed at the Rose Garden Inn, a compound of Victorian houses on Telegraph Avenue surrounded by graceful wrought iron fencing and filled with beautifully tended gardens. The place was basically ours for the weekend and we settled in like kids at summer camp, ready for fun.

Shara’s father Richard is my first cousin. Our mothers were sisters. Richard and his sisters Barbara and Geri and I are peas in a pod, as our mothers were, and we always have a good time together. But on Shara and Adi’s wedding weekend, the fun just started there. Between them, the bride and groom have families that are far-reaching and multi-configured. In conversation with the friendly, creative folks who make up the extended tribe, I had to map out little family trees in my mind to understand where each person connected and who was connected to whom.

Of course, it was Shara and Adi who connected us all – this couple who epitomize the Jewish concept of bashert: destined for one another, foreordained to be together. And we, the extended, evolving family, spent three days knitting our hearts together with laughter and interest and compassion before we gathered at Tilden Park, high in the Berkeley hills, to be witnesses and celebrants as Shara and Adi became echad: one in unity. We all felt it: the blessing of God is on this union of his design.

Marlene, Shara’s maid of honor, put a fine point on it in her toast to the couple. She said that when her son was about five years old, he said to her one day, “Love is the best thing.” She understood then and shared now, that this is the truth upon which to build one’s life. On that full moon, starry evening filled with joy and meaning and promise, we concurred unanimously.

An Adventure After Dark

2011-07-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

Our old hippie ways almost got us into trouble the other night. It was Friday night on a holiday weekend. “I have an idea,” I said to my husband as we sat on the deck towards dusk sipping cocktails, “Let’s eat dinner at Bernie’s in Columbiana and then drive down to the lake and go skinny-dipping after dark.” It was a plan. We got ourselves together, packed a bag with towels, jumped in the Firebird and hit the road.

A few weeks ago, we had been driving around looking for a public place to swim on Lay Lake. We found one about half an hour from our house. We followed the ‘Public Boat Launch’ signs to a serene and beautiful part of the lake with the kind of verdant surroundings you see only in Alabama. There was a boat ramp, a nice, new t-shaped dock, and some grassy areas that served as a small beach. The list of rules posted in the parking lot said “No swimming within 50 feet of the launch.” There was plenty of room to swim on the other side of the launch. We swam and sunned that day and met some nice boat people. The cool lake water was still and deep. It was great place to swim, we decided, as long as you’re mindful of the boats coming in and going out. After dark, we thought, it would be perfect for skinny-dipping.

So, on this particular Friday night, we drove to Columbiana and had a nice dinner at Bernie’s, all the while keeping an eye on the last bits of daylight coming in through the front windows. When it was dark, we paid our bill and left, anticipating our private moonlight swim. We drove with the top down through the cool of the evening, breathing the deliciously fragrant air of summer in Shelby County.

When we got to the boat launch at about 9:00, there were quite a few trucks with trailers in the parking lot, which meant that there were still people on the lake who would be coming in at some point. It was quiet, so we decided we could get in a quick swim. We walked out to the dock, stripped and jumped in. The water was surprisingly warm – the long days of sunshine had warmed it up. It was perfect.

Soon my watchful husband saw a boat approaching on the water without lights or motor. We ducked under the dock. I squinted to see what he was seeing. Yes, there it was, a small fishing boat being paddled in. We wondered why they were coming in so stealthily.

Suddenly, the water lit up with the red, white, and blue flashing lights of the Water Patrol which had also spotted the dark boat. The cops herded the little boat to the dock. They were coming right towards us. It was an ‘uh oh’ moment. My husband moved to stand in chest-high water in the shadows, and I stood behind him. We were very still, hiding on the other side of the dock, naked.

Three standard-issue redneck kids, 18 or 19 years old, were in the boat. They pulled closer and closer to the dock. We could see them, but they couldn’t see us. The cop stood up and began questioning the boys. One boy said their front light was broken and they didn’t want to attract attention by running with just the back light, so they were hoping to sneak in. But the Water Patrol had good eyes. So good in fact, that the cop’s next question was, “Have you seen any people swimming nekkid out here? There’s their clothes up on the dock.” No, the boys hadn’t seen anyone swimming nekkid. Not yet, I thought.

What a pickle we were in. My husband whispered, “You can write about this in your blog.” I whispered back, “Let’s see if there’s a happy ending first.”

The cop started shining his flashlight over the water, looking for nekkid swimmers. My husband stepped out of the shadows and raised his hand, smiling calmly. I stayed behind him, mostly out of view. “There they are,” said the cop. He addressed my husband, “You know you’re not supposed to be swimming out here.” My husband responded, “I’m 50 feet from the launch.” The cop couldn’t argue with that.

He asked, “Are these your clothes up here?”

“Yes, our clothes are up there, but our bathing suits are down here.”

“Oh,” said the cop with relief in his voice, “So you’re wearing bathing suits.”

“Of course,” my husband replied.

I thought I might faint.

“Well,” said the cop after a pause in which he clearly pondered his next move, “that’s fine then. We’ll be out of your way in a minute.”

We stood where we were in the water and waited while he lectured the boys at length and wrote out a citation. I fought a fit of nervous giggles. We waited. We were glad the water was warm.

We waited while the Water Patrol pulled away and the three boys maneuvered their boat to the dock so one of them could climb out and get their truck, then we waited while they maneuvered the boat to the launch ramp. We waited while the truck backed down the launch and the boys hooked and tied and chained it all together and then pulled the boat out of the water. It’s a long, slow process. When you’re standing naked in the water, it seems very long and slow indeed.

We were hopeful that these kids would drive away quickly, but it was not to be. Another truck arrived with more kids in it – friends of the boys in the boat. Suddenly there was a party in the parking lot. Then another boat motored in from the lake and pulled up to the dock -- a family. I groaned. The mother and her teenage daughter got out on the dock with their freshly-caught fish, stepped around our clothes, and went to get their truck. We were surrounded. I hoped no one had a video camera.

We considered our options. A) We could wait for all of them to leave, but there would probably be more boats coming in for the next hour or two, and we had had enough of standing in the water. B) We could make a naked dash to the bank and down the dock to where we had left our clothes, but that clearly would have been an uncalled-for spectacle. We opted for plan C: My husband quickly hoisted himself up on the dock and grabbed our underwear. His could easily pass for swimming trunks and mine could be taken for a beige bikini if you didn’t know what a bra and panties look like. We slipped into the shadows and somehow got dressed underwater.

We walked out of the lake holding hands and avoiding eye contact with the crowd of people around us. I think we appeared nonchalant, but inside I was wavering between hysterical laughter and absolute mortification. We walked casually to the end of the dock. I slipped into my dress, we gathered our things, and headed for our car. Eyes were averted as we passed. I appreciated, once again, the innate politeness of the South.

A happy ending was had by some: the boys got a ticket, the family got a load of fish, everyone got an eyeful, and we had our swim.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, we finally burst out laughing. We could see the headlines in the Shelby County Reporter: Skinny-Dipping Seniors Busted at Lay Lake.

I, for one, have learned my lesson: wait until midnight next time.

Jacob Becomes Jakob -- Guest Blogger: Milton Rabinowitz

2011-06-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

In honor of Father's Day, here's another selection from my late father's copious writings. This piece appeared in 1997 in a monthly homeowners publication in the south Florida community where my parents enjoyed their retirement.

Kindly raise your hands if you are the grandparents of a teenager. Thank you. I asked you to raise your hands -- not throw them up in despair.

However, I share the bewilderment of you fellow grandparents as you contemplate the metamorphosis of your normal, beautiful grandchild into some strange, non-familial creature. The dire teenage landscape out there, we are given to understand, is punctuated with weird cultism, outrageous hairdos, bizarre tattoos and ring-pierced body parts -- not to mention attire unearthed from some nearby landfill.

Molly and I have been suddenly and disturbingly awakened. We have a model grandson: a prepubescent but wannabe teenager who will be twelve in May. We felt the first tremor of a tectonic shift in our grandson's geology when we received a letter from him.

Molly got to read the letter before I did. She told me, "You might be interested to know that Jacob now spells his name with a 'k'."

"I don't understand," I said, "You mean he now calls himself 'Kacob'?"

"No," she replied, "he changed the 'c' in his name to a 'k'. Jakob with a 'k'.

"Why?" I asked.

"Not 'y', she said impatiently, "'k'! I guess it's a trendy thing among pre-teens."

Fear clutched my heart. Were we witnessing the first Article in our innocent grandson's undeclared Declaration of Independence? How far down the road was that ring waiting to go through his belly button?

"Whatever possessed him to drop the 'c'?"

"I don't know," said Molly, "See for yourself."

"There's no 'c' in yourself," I mused.

Molly looked menacing. "Don't start with me."

So what else could I do but write my grandson a letter?

Dear Jakob,
Please note that the salutation is exaktly as you dekreed. But forgive us if we konfess to some konfusion. We are also kurious. We thought you were kontent with 'Jacob'. How kome the change? We kan't help but wonder if you are kontemplating some other unkommon changes. Please remember that at our advanced age we kould not kope with anything too radikal. But if you don't kare to komment on the matter, we will understand and konsider the kase closed bekause we love you unkonditionally.
Love,
Grandpa
P.S. I'm wise to you. You just wanted to see what I would do. Well, as you see, I did not reakt.

Crossing State Lines

2011-06-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

1,700 miles from Denver to Montevallo on back roads in a Firebird convertible with the top down all the way and my guy in the driver’s seat. That’s what I did on my summer vacation, folks, and it was a blast.

The ground rules:

1. No cameras – just pure observation and enjoyment.
2. No eating at chain restaurants – local cuisine only.

We left Denver going south through the mountains into New Mexico, and my heart ached a bit to be leaving. I soaked in the now-familiar Colorado landscape. The brown slabs of mountains were just beginning to show the golden glaze that signals new spring growth in the Rockies. Isolated houses painted dark red and forest green were perched on lonely crags, built by the true pioneers who secured their little piece of mountain and still live on it. The ferrous oxide in the soil, I’m told, made red paint plentiful, and so the color scheme is ubiquitous, even in the city.

As we approached New Mexico, the landscape changed. It was dusk. Suddenly the vista opened up to a purple sky framed by a wash of gray mountain peaks, behind which was rising a fat, yellow full moon. “The Land of Enchantment,” said the sign at the state line. We concurred.

Now the houses morphed, too. Compounds of Airstreams and old school buses huddled together on the dry, sagebrush landscape. Pastel-colored adobe towns looked like organic outcroppings. It was a complete transformation of state identity – everything from terrain to color palette to plant life to habitats – all within miles of the state line. This piqued our interest. What kinds of changes would we find at other state lines?

We crossed next into Texas, which abruptly had none of the visual charm of magical New Mexico. The sign at the state line said brusquely, “DUI. You can’t afford it.” Rest areas featured spartan metal tables baking in the hot sun with no cover for shade. The vista was an endless flat landscape of oil drilling pumps. We imagined Texas saying to us, “We’re not big on enchantment, we’re just big. You want enchantment? Go to New Mexico.”

In Oklahoma, the prairie turned into rolling farmland, with huge expanses between farms and more cemeteries, by informal count, than houses. There was a florist in every little town. Lots of funerals, we figured.

In Arkansas, we were suddenly in pine woods. We started hearing songbirds and cicadas, and we began to be bothered by flies. In Mississippi, huge rice paddies filled the vista, explained by the Uncle Ben’s plant we passed near Greenville. As we crossed into Alabama, the landscape became even more verdantly lush and the mimosa trees were blooming.

Finding local places to eat on the back roads wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. We passed through a lot of towns that didn’t even have a gas station, much less a restaurant – just clusters of broken down houses and the shell of a downtown.

We also discovered that local lunch places in small towns on the back roads of America close at 2:00. We were on the kind of relaxed schedule where getting an early start means being on the road by noon, so we seemed to miss lunch everywhere we went.

Our first day out, we pulled into the 4^th Street Café in Saguache, Colorado late in the afternoon. It turned out that they were closed, but a local political group was holding a meeting there, so they had coffee ready, some leftover homemade desserts, and a little half-built patio out back where we were graciously invited to sit and have a bite to eat. The light-as-air peanut butter pie was a milestone in homemade pies. I’ll be trying to replicate that one.

One day we rolled into the nice little town of Granite, Oklahoma around 3:00 looking for something to eat. The one café was closed, but we found a drug store in town with a soda fountain where the friendly soda jerk made us thick and creamy chocolate malteds. Homemade pie and ice cream, we found, were much more accessible on the road than real food. I started craving other food groups.

That night, as I drifted off to sleep at the Brandenburg Motor Court in Atoka, Oklahoma, I wished out loud for some fruit. When I awoke, there on the nightstand was a bag of orange slice candy. My husband had walked to the truck stop to find his gal some fruit.

In Foreman, Arkansas, we lucked out at the Wooden Spoon Café which featured home-cooking in a roomy old house. A big bowl of turnip greens and cornbread was a cure for what ailed me.

Driving the back roads of this little slice of America gave us a window into the surprisingly distinct personalities of the states along the way. We can’t help but wonder – what would we find crossing state lines on the myriad other back roads in our land? It would take a lifetime to find out, but I‘m game. Note to self: Bring fruit.

When It Hits Home

2011-04-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

It was a one-two punch that hit Birmingham on April 27.

First, there were the 70-80 mph straight line winds that came fast and fierce in the early morning, uprooting many trees and snapping many more off at mid-trunk. Power lines were down; roads were blocked.

Then eight hours later, it began again. This time it was twisters, moving in packs across the state, defining their paths with wreckage. Then came the monster – a gargantuan, relentless mile-wide spinning mass of immense power and fury that traversed 185 miles of our state. Those of us who still had power saw it on TV – first as it approached Tuscaloosa and then as it approached Birmingham. We watched it bearing down on our city skyline, on the UAB complex. Even the weatherman said, “Wow.”

Downtown Birmingham was spared as the tornado plowed a path just north of the city center, utterly shattering Pratt City as it did the Rosedale community of Tuscaloosa. The loss is immeasurable.

Eighteen people died in the Birmingham area – over two hundred in the state. I wonder how many more lives might have been lost if not for the remarkable work of our local TV weathermen. I stayed tuned to Fox6 and tracked the imminent paths of the storms with meteorologist J.P. Dice and his team. Day to day, these guys report on the mundane warm fronts and cold fronts that pass through our area, but on April 27 they demonstrated their passion for what is surely the highest calling of a meteorologist: saving lives.

J.P. Dice was single-minded in his determination to identify the communities, the streets, even the local businesses that were in the paths of the multiple storms that raced across Alabama, and to alert us to the exact time we could expect to be affected. Alone in my house and uneasy about the trajectory of the storms that were moving through Shelby County, I was profoundly grateful to be told, “A tornado will cross I65 near the Shelby County Airport in 10 minutes. If you’re not in your safe place, go there now.” I went, and I continued to follow Dice’s reports on my portable radio. When that storm passed, it was followed by another within the hour. Again, I followed instructions. I think a lot of others did, too, and I believe J.P. Dice and his fellow meteorologists can be credited with saving lives in the Birmingham area.

As in other natural disasters we’ve seen, the worst devastation hit communities of limited resources. Why? Only God knows why He allows the things He allows. We don’t even dare to ask, because we know His thoughts are unfathomable. Still, I have to trust Him. I know there are many others in our community who trust Him and are asking for His mercy and blessings. I’ve read reports of people who lost their homes and all of their material possessions, yet are praising God for preserving their lives. I’m humbled by this evidence of faith. If I’m ever tested in such a way, I hope I’ll be able to respond with praise and thanksgiving to the One to whom my life belongs.

I want to help, as I know so many others do. Already the community is mobilizing and organizing, and the need for help will be ongoing. There are things we can do. We can donate money to community relief organizations. I chose to donate to the Tornado Recovery Fund established by the Birmingham Jewish Federation, which is coordinating efforts with local relief agencies and will give 100% of the money collected to community relief. https://ecommerce.isafe.net/isafe/bjf/onlinepay.asp (‘Tornado Recovery’ in the Comments box.)

Hands On Birmingham is a clearing house that is gathering volunteer information and will make contact when specific volunteer opportunities arise. I registered on their website. www.handsonbirmingham.org

The people of Birmingham are a generous people, a caring people. I believe we’ll come through for the ones who need us now.

Guest Blogger - Milton Rabinowitz

2011-04-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

This story was written by my late father, Milton Rabinowitz, who taught me how to tell a story. It's the first piece in a 'text and picture' album he created about the life of his father, Hyman Rabinowitz, an entertainer and liturgical music arranger on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the first quarter of the 20th century. Because of his rich and impressive basso voice, my grandfather was known professionally as Chayim Bass.

CHAYIM BASS
by Milton Rabinowitz

The house lights were on. I could see that the show was a sellout. I was ten years old, sitting with my mother in the Clinton Theater (a half block north of Delancey Street) waiting for my father to come out on the stage and sing. I was holding an aisle seat for him.

The attraction that day was a special showing of the much talked about German silent fantasy movie "The Golem." Big deal. Over on East Third Street, the American Theater had a Douglas Fairbanks thriller, and, glumly, that's where I wanted to be.

Everybody in the movie house was talking and laughing and waving to one another. It was a big party. The manager walked out on the stage and motioned to the pit. There was a piano fanfare. Finally the noise flattened to a few coughs, whisperings, and shushes. In Yiddish, the manager announced that this motion picture was a special event on the East Side. "The Golem" was a folk legend. An ancient clay monster, dug up in Prague, is brought to life by a rabbi. He charges it with the mission of saving persecuted Jews.

Befitting this solemn occasion, the manager said, there was an extra treat. The well-known bass vocalist Chayim Rabinowitz was engaged to render an appropriate prelude in song: "Eili, Eili" (God of mine, why hast thou forsaken me?) Big deal. I had been hearing his songs every day of my whole life.

There was a brief spatter of applause as my father appeared from the wings and went center stage to stand in front of the big white screen. As usual, he wore a dark suit, a white shirt with a stiff, removable collar into which one of his pre-formed ties was inserted, and a black yarmulke. My father bowed, nodded to the piano in the pit and began the mournful song. His bass voice was soft and controlled as he sang of his love of Torah and the laws of God.

Then something spellbinding happened. It seemed, somehow, that he was no longer singing to this audience. Everyone sensed it. He was alone with God. His face was turned heavenward, his palms up and the quiver in his voice entreating. It was theatrical magic. Or was it? His deep voice and those tragic words were perfectly wedded. I saw that my mother was weeping, but there were handkerchiefs out all around us. Was this the same man who could make people laugh and shout with ribald songs at Opatowsky's Restaurant and at Warschauer Society parties? The anguish of each word was in my father's hands and body.

When the notes reached the upper register of the song's climax, he was the ultimate supplicant. It was "Sh'ma Yisroel, Adonoy Eloheynu, Adonoy Echad!" -- (Hear, O' Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!) and it was over. There was a beat of absolute silence and then a roar rocked the theater. The spell was broken and my father's stagecraft took over. He bowed a few times to the right and left, backing gracefully off into the wings. The house lights were turned off abruptly and "The Golem" began.

After awhile my father came down the aisle, found us in the dark, and took his seat. He placed a small carrying bag in my lap as if it were meant to be mine. It had the nice, solid feel of lots of money in coins. For me? I was surprised, delighted, and naive. My father had been paid directly from the box office receipts. My hands groped around trying to locate the opening of the bag. My mother promptly took it away from me. She was quite content to keep its weight in her lap for the rest of the evening.

I believe I understand now the reason for the unusual intensity of my father's performance that day. I think he was harboring a dire secret that had touched his own mortality. And in the way he knew best, he implored God to witness that the tears flowing in the theater were for him. God was moved and granted my father one year more.

Weather or Not

2011-03-16T08:13:00.000-07:00

I’ve had more conversations about the weather this year than I’ve had in all of my previous years combined. It’s always safe to talk about the weather of course, and here in Alabama it’s a universal pastime whenever small talk is called for, but this year it’s actually interesting.

For starters, it snowed four times this winter. I’ve lived here for 33 years, and I can count the good snowfalls on one hand. So, four snows in one winter is news in Alabama. The snowfalls started on Christmas Day and progressed with bigger and better snows twice in January. Then, in early February, snow was in the forecast again and yet on the appointed day, the morning was sunny and bright. We’re always skeptical about snow in the forecast here in Alabama. We’ve believed the hype and suffered disappointment too many times. But, our intrepid weather men had gotten it right three times this season already, so I was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I was out in the car running errands around 10:00, and I watched in amazement as an advancing overhead blanket of grey moved up from the south. By the time I got home at lunchtime, grey covered the sky and it started to feel like snow. Then, as the day went on, it turned sunny again, then grey, then sunny. I worried that it was just a tease. But dark moist clouds kept moving up from the Gulf in relentless waves. The ground was already deep-chilled; it had been cold for weeks. The waves of grey kept coming and as the sun started going down, it got even colder. When the big grey blanket settled overhead and released its moisture, the frigid air zapped the big warm droplets just like magic.

At 6:00, while I was walking from a parking lot to a special family gathering at a restaurant, it began to snow fat, fluffy snowflakes. At dinner, we faced a big picture window and watched the swirling snow coat the trees with frosting as night fell. The pristine hush of new snow made the evening even more special. By the time I drove back to Shelby County, there were blizzard conditions for several stretches along the way. This was my idea of a snowstorm. Well done, Alabama. Snow, for the fourth time in one winter! It was definitely something to talk about.

Then all of a sudden, it was spring for a day. Then it was spring for another day and another. February hadn’t even thought about ending yet, and the air started to warm and sweeten.

Now the talk really started in earnest, and I confess, I instigated a lot of it. “What do you think about this weather we’ve been having?” The barista at Starbucks shook her head and said, “It’s totally random.” The grocery bagger at Publix said, “Alabama, the bi-polar state.”

“Do you think we’ll have another freeze?” I queried. My neighbor who works outside and is an observer of weather said, “No. We’re done.” He went through some fancy verbal calculations referencing winters I had no recollection of, and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. The check-out woman in the garden center at Wal-Mart said, “We’ll have a hard freeze before Easter.” She’s an old-timer here in Shelby County and she’s seen lots of Alabama weather, so she sounded like she knew what she was talking about too.

Today, just two weeks into March, the pear trees are in full bloom and the redbuds are out. The tulip trees are more fragrant than I ever remember them being. Daffodils, forsythia and camellias are all blooming as early and fresh and abundant as you please.

But it isn’t Easter yet. The jury is still out on another freeze. I remember an outrageous snowstorm one April. It could happen, people. And yet, I’m hopeful that this gift of an early spring will continue. Springtime is akin to a natural resource here in Alabama. We can’t market it, but we can surely celebrate it, and it’s one thing we all agree upon.

You Are Beautiful - The Rest of the Story

2011-02-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

It started in October with a message painted on the Highland Avenue overpass on the Red Mountain Expressway in Birmingham. "You Are Beautiful," it said. Was it a joke? The prelude to a marriage proposal? An advertising ploy? An honest opinion?

It caused a stir in town and became fodder for stories in the Birmingham News and on the local TV networks. It captured the fancy of commentators and politicians alike who reached for profound implications and encouraged us to recognize, embrace and celebrate our beauty as a city. As we tried it on for size, somehow the appellation took on a gravitas that was both cosmic and comic.

When the painted compliment began appearing in other locations around town, columnist John Archibald suggested that the city launch a public art project to keep the message alive. "Just sanctioned signs, in sanctioned spots, by sanctioned artists. With one message: You Are Beautiful. Then Birmingham might again start to see itself in that light. It would, after all, be hard to find a city more self conscious than Birmingham," he wrote.

Then on Christmas Eve, a graffiti artist struck again, changing "Beautiful" on the Highland Avenue overpass to a word described by the Birmingham News as "a contraction for profanity." A photo of the defaced signed showed a word beginning in a bright orange F whose remaining letters had already been painted over by city workers. We all blanched and drew in a horrified breath at the F word we assumed had been painted on our beloved overpass. Suddenly, we weren't so beautiful any more. Birmingham Mayor William Bell reassured us. "Birmingham is a beautiful place with beautiful people, and it's the spirit of the message that counts."

My son, who lives in Birmingham and knows first hand what's happening in town, told me, when I asked him what he knew about the story, that the profane word painted on the overpass was Fugly. You Are Fugly. That drew guffaws. I had never heard the word before, and I understand its components, but you have to admit, it's a funny word. I have to smile every time I think of "You Are Fugly" as a perverse twist in this saga of civic identity, and I wonder why the Birmingham News deemed it unfit to print. The F word which was darkly hinted at and imagined was surely worse than the reality of fugly. At least we all could have had a good laugh.

Well, apparently all this was only the beginning.

Next, two local artists who may or may not be the original graffiti artists in this tale, were given permission by the owner of Monarch Cleaners in Homewood to paint "You Are Beautiful" on the side of his building. They got as far as "You Ar" when they were ordered to cease and desist by the City of Homewood, telling them they needed a permit to paint a sign. The artists contended that the piece was artistic expression, not a sign, and should be exempt from the permit requirement. So the Homewood City Council scheduled a hearing to determine whether the painting is signage or art. The hearing is this week, on February 15.

What do you think? I think it skirts the signage category because it doesn't say "Monarch Cleaners" or anything about dry-cleaning, but we'll see what the city of Homewood thinks. Sure, it isn't fine art, but a "You Are Beautiful" mural could serve as a visual reminder of an amusing story about our city that we could all enjoy and laugh about together. After all, a community with a sense of humor -- particularly about itself -- has a good shot at coming together, moving forward, and growing, with God's blessing.

Today's Birmingham News reports that "Beautiful" has suddenly reappeared on the Highland Avenue overpass. So, the rest of the story remains to be seen, but we're all in this together -- the good, the bad, and the fugly.

All Systems Go

2011-01-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

I’ve been doing a lot of recalibrating lately – i.e., adjusting my settings in response to changes in the variables of my life. For the most part, I live alone. Then over the holidays, in the space of ten days, I went from living alone to living with my entire immediate family, to living with just my husband, to living alone again, to living with my husband in DENVER. Whew. Plus, husband and family require a great deal of care and feeding, while I, by comparison, require very little on my own. Living en famille swallows up my space, my time, my priorities, my thoughts, my attention and my leisure, and believe me -- it requires some recalibration after living alone. I love every minute of it because I want all the face time I can get with my family, but it’s always a challenge.

Relational Recalibration, I call it. It’s maintaining your equilibrium -- your emotional balance point – in every situation so you don’t stumble when your comfort zone is breached. Really, it’s yielding to change. It’s redefining and expanding your comfort zone when other people’s needs bump up against it. It’s not easy for me to do (is it easy for anyone?) but when I manage to achieve it through the buoyancy of God’s grace, I walk in peace for a time. The bigger your comfort zone, the more fun you can have.

Moving from Alabama to Denver requires recalibration, too. Even in the throes of a harsh winter, the South retains a soft and misty gentleness in stark contrast to the piercing bright chill of the Mile High City. So, to recalibrate for the Colorado climate in January, I drink lots of water, pile on the moisturizer, layer, layer, layer, and wear my mother’s mink coat, bless her. Climatic recalibration is a lot simpler than relational recalibration, but equally necessary when you move from climate to climate.

I thought about recalibration once again when my husband had an impromptu flying lesson last weekend following a thrilling flight around Pike’s Peak and over the Royal Gorge in the sleek and sporty Piper Arrow owned by our friend Jim. Jim and his nephew Jason took us up on a rare, perfect winter morning with textbook flying conditions: clear and calm, unseasonably mild, blue skies over the Rockies. Our tour of the mountains was spectacular, and when we landed, Jim asked my husband if he’d like to fly the plane. Of course.

My husband climbed into the pilot’s seat and Jim gave him a quick tutorial on how to operate the foot and hand controls and how to read the gauges. Jim did the take-off and then handed it off to my husband saying, “Your airplane.” In the air, Jim instructed him on “attitude flying” – keeping the dashboard of the plane in line with the horizon. Buffeted by air currents, the pitch of the plane changes; that is, the nose drifts up and down. To stay on altitude, the pilot orients the dashboard so that it lines up with the horizon, and keeps it level as the plane moves forward. There’s a lot more to flying than that, of course, but the concept of maintaining an “attitude” captured my attention. As I listened to Jim’s instructions, I realized that flying a plane requires a hair-trigger sensitivity to change and the ability to make immediate, miniscule adjustments to stay on course, not unlike relational recalibration.

As we flew high over the Colorado landscape, I could tell that my husband was in his element. He’s a natural at handling crafts of any type and size. When he was in the Navy, he steered a huge supply ship, and he once steered our car along the ridge of a median to a safe stop when we went into a harrowing skid on a wet highway. I always feel safe when he’s behind the wheel. I was enjoying the view from 10,000 feet and the fact that my husband was at the helm.

And then a cable broke.

Suddenly, my husband was having trouble maintaining the pitch of the little Piper. “Holy smoke,” Jim barked as he ran his hand between the seats, confirming that a trim cable had indeed snapped, “We’re going back. My airplane.” Jim immediately took control, squared his shoulders, and used his skill and strength to keep the nose of the plane on course. With no way of knowing just how serious the trouble was, all I could do was pray. We were high, high above the ground below. The mood in the plane was calm, but tense. Jim kept the control tower apprised of our position. “Five miles out…two miles out…landing now.” We landed safely after those few long minutes of uncertainty and danger, and we all teased my husband about “breaking the plane.”

Now that my husband has caught the flying bug, I expect that Jim will take him up for another lesson soon. I’m sure I’ll hear more about “attitude flying” and that I’ll continue to extrapolate it to “attitude living” – another name, I think, for “relational recalibration.” It’s all about attitude: keeping your dashboard aligned just so, while things change around you.

It’s like following a guy’s lead when you’re dancing. If you’re really following – ready to shift, pivot, bend – you don’t lose your balance or step on toes. And if you really follow the One who can help you navigate your way through the changes, intrusions, disappointments, and frustrations inherent in living with other people, you’ll move more gracefully in the dance.

Y-M-C-A

2010-12-09T13:11:00.000-08:00

“Village People” connotations notwithstanding, I love the YMCA. It’s the best health club I’ve ever found.

My YMCA, the Shelby County Family Branch in Pelham, Alabama, is housed in the most architecturally-interesting modern building I’ve seen in this county. It has a good-sized, well-configured weight room, a bright, spacious exercise room, a spinning room, a stationary cycling/treadmill room, a tiled steam room, a wood sauna, an indoor pool and an outdoor pool!

There are day and evening adult classes in Spinning and Water Aerobics (high and low intensity), along with high-energy Aerobics classes with names like Bodypump, Bodyjam, Bodystep and Bodyflow, plus Pilates and Yoga! The locker rooms are clean and well-appointed. The staff is friendly and professional, and the clientele are a cordial and like-minded community of people who like to exercise.

My husband and I pay $56 a month to be members. This, my friends, is a deal.

I swim at the Y a few times a week. I started when I was engaged in the battle to lose 30 pounds -- a battle I won, thanks in part to the swimming. I’m not a great swimmer, but I love to swim. In the winter months when the frigid air discourages me from walking, I swim laps for exercise.

I start my regimen in the steam room where the moist heat soaks into my creaky joints and hydrates my skin and my breathing passages. Then I return to the locker room and do my stretches at the barre in front of the full-wall mirror. Based on the yoga I learned back in the day, my stretching routine is as important to me as the cardio and muscle workout I get from swimming or walking. Stretching makes me more flexible and improves my posture. I like to think it makes me more graceful – it certainly makes me more relaxed.

After the stretch, I swim my laps, interspersed with a couple of sets of a Deb-designed water exercise that tones my residual ab-flab. Last, I sit in the sauna and soak up the heat. The whole routine takes about an hour, and I always leave feeling great.

Depending on the timing, sometimes I share the pool with the kids on the YMCA swim teams. They inspire me – they’re fast and they’re strong. It pleases me to see young people committed to the discipline of a strenuous exercise program, and I commend the parents who facilitate this.

If you’re thinking you could stand to lose a few pounds – or a lot of pounds -- may I recommend the YMCA? If you’ve been thinking it for some time, saying it to friends and family, making excuses to yourself and everyone else, and feeling lousy because you can’t catch your breath, move without a twinge, or zip up your jeans – then may I say, “Quit whining and do what you know is good for you.”

Exercise, sensible eating habits, and perseverance are all it takes.

Follow these two simple steps:

1) Start.

2) Don’t stop.

You’ll feel and look better, I promise. Give it 3 weeks and you can call me to complain if you don’t see a difference.

Whatever your exercise of choice, you’ll find what you need at the YMCA. It’s affordable and there are branches everywhere. See you at the Y!

Something New Under the Sun

2010-11-23T16:22:00.000-08:00

To celebrate November 23, 2010, the first birthday of my granddaughter Myra Laine, I'm posting an essay I wrote shortly after she was born. All I can add is aptly summed up in this lyric by Marshall Barer from the Broadway show "Once Upon a Mattress."

Yesterday I loved you as never before,
But please don't think me strange;
I've undergone a change,
And today I love you even more...

OK, it's happened to me. I've heard about it, read about it, seen the effects on others, and even wondered what all the fuss was about. Now I know. It's happened to me: I've beheld my first grandchild for the first time.

Myra Laine Layman. Myra Laine, as dainty and perfect as a baby girl can be. Tiny - only five pounds -- with ballerina legs and pianist fingers and a mouth like a rosebud. And I'm smitten.

Her grandfather calls her Zuzu (go figure) and it suits her. Now Zuzu populates my thoughts as I cook ("Zuzu will like this casserole because Zuzu is going to be a girl who loves vegetables"), shop ("Wouldn't that little dress look cute on Zuzu?"), clean out closets ("Zuzu can dress up in this hat"), read the paper ("I have to save this cartoon for Zuzu"), walk the dog ("I'll take Zuzu here and show her this dogwood tree"), and on and on. I'll tell her stories, make up songs for her, dress her up in scarves and pearls, teach her how to bake Challah and custard pie, and read and read and read to her. I'll teach her big words and funny rhymes and how to tap dance and crochet and harmonize.

I remember when my mother saw Myra Laine's daddy for the first time. Just one week old. She flew down from New York to Richmond and my husband picked her up at the airport. She rushed into the house with a hug and a kiss for me, then tiptoed into the bedroom where the baby lay sleeping in his bassinet. She approached him. When she beheld him, I heard an intake of breath, and then she uttered a sound I had never heard before: it was both a sigh and an exclamation of the deepest awe and satisfaction, as if she had lived every day of her life just to see that face and to make that newly-minted sound. The sound of a first-time grandmother. I heard myself make that sound when I beheld Myra Laine.

My husband's respected friend and mentor used to tell him, "There's nothing new under the sun." My husband recalled this the other night as we were talking about our Zuzu. "He was wrong," my husband realized, "Every time a baby is born, there is something new under the sun." A new life to be lived, a new little creature that has never been before, a new being infused with God's special purposes and designs and treasures. For our pleasure, for His glory -- something new under the sun.

Curtis Files - The Last Song

2010-11-15T08:45:00.000-08:00

Curtis Files was in the audience at Dream Mecca Studio at the Daniel Day Gallery on Friday night. I was there to hear 2Blu & The Lucky Stiffs, and they were making some beautiful music for the full house at the stylish, offbeat venue on 6th Avenue South in Birmingham.

Curtis, an old-time blues singer -- 81 years old, I'm told -- was introduced as the upcoming act for next Friday night. Later, when the band invited guests to sit in, Curtis took the floor. "I'm ready," he said, "At least I've got to hope I'm ready."

The band laid down a rhythm, but Curtis said, "I'm not feeling it." He turned to the band, raised his hand, and they became his. "Give me a twelve-bar blues in A." The drummer laid it down and the bass and guitar started the slow, familiar progression that settles deeper in your soul every time it comes around. "Put some B.B. King in it," Curtis directed, and the guitarist did. We were all feeling it.

Curtis started to sing:

"I have had my fun if I never get well no more.
I have had my fun if I never get well no more.
All of my health is failing;
Lord, I'm going down slow,
I'm going down slow."

His voice was a little tight -- he hadn't had time to warm up -- but it was strong and melodic. He sang another verse:

"Please write my mother and tell her the shape I'm in.
Please write my mother and tell her the shape I'm in.
Tell her to pray for me,
Forgive me for my sin,
For all of my sin."

Curtis turned and handed it off to George Dudley, the guitarist, who took it up a notch. It was good. Curtis was leading and the room followed. His groove was immediate and visceral, and we all went there with him. He was in it with all his heart. Then his heart gave out.

We watched as he bent forward from the waist, then continued forward and down, grasping the speaker as he reached the floor. He rolled onto his back. He was still.

The audience sat aghast for a frozen moment.

911 was called. A pillow was placed under his head. A small group gathered around him, holding his hands and speaking to him. People prayed. A man and a young woman stepped up and performed CPR. We heard a ragged breath. Hope filled the room.

The paramedics arrived and did their job. Their poker faces didn't tell us anything. They took Curtis to the hospital.

Stunned and subdued, we talked quietly for some time. Then the band took the stage again and began to play. The music was good. It was passionate and powerful. Bruce Andrews' harmonica told the story. The room was a single-minded congregation.

The phone call came: Curtis didn't make it.

The music stopped. A woman sobbed. People gathered in twos and threes to comfort one another. We drifted out into the night, burdened and, somehow, blessed by what we had witnessed.

Presentation at "Darkness into Life" Opening Reception

2010-11-11T07:47:00.000-08:00

Here is the text of my presentation at the opening reception for the Darkness into Life Holocaust education exhibit at Parnell Memorial Library in Montevallo, Alabama on Nov. 7, 2010:

I grew up Jewish in New York City, and my own back ground is Ashkenazic -- Eastern European. My grandparents grew up in shtetls -- little villages -- in Poland. They came to this country in the early 1900's, so they were safe during the Holocaust. My family never spoke of the ones who stayed behind and I don't know their stories. I wish I did.

The culture I was raised in was the culture of the Eastern European Jews. It's a passionate culture that traveled with us to Ellis Island and to cities around the globe, and it took root wherever we were planted. I'd like to share a little bit of that culture with you today.

My grandparents spoke Yiddish, a richly idiomatic language with elements of both German and Hebrew. Yiddish words like chutzpah, glitch, shmooze and oy vay have worked their way into the American vernacular, so most of us speak a little Yiddish without even realizing it. I never really learned the language as a child, except for what I picked up around the dinner table. My parents both spoke Yiddish, but usually when they didn't want the kinderlach -- the children -- to understand what they were saying.

The music of the shtetls was Klezmer, a style that is distinctive in its upbeat wildness, yet the songs are almost always in a minor key. It's folk music that borders on jazz in its spirit, and it always makes us want to dance. You'll experience Klezmer music this afternoon, thanks to our band led by Alan Goldspiel. By the way, Alan is open to suggestions for a name for this new band. The current frontrunner is "Goldspiel and the Gefilte Fishes." You can see why he needs some input.

Gefilte Fish, by the way, is fish cakes cooked in broth and served with horseradish. It's a standard on Jewish holidays.

What can I say about Jewish food? It's made with the simplest ingredients -- a chicken, a carrot, a potato, an onion -- the foods that were available in the shtetls. Savory dishes that are slow-cooked to bring out all the goodness. Rich pastry doughs filled with fruit and nuts. Oh, the flavors! Smoked whitefish. Pickled herring. Golden braided loaves of challah on Shabbos - the Sabbath. And you haven't had brisket until you've had Jewish-style brisket.

Today we'll have some nosharei -- little snacks -- so you can get a taste of Jewish cooking. You'll sample mandelbrot -- almond bread (my mother's recipe), rugelach --- little pastry rolls with sweet fillings (a friend's recipe), and apple kuchen -- apple cake squares (my grandmother's recipe) -- all prepared for us today with a little help from my friends. And no, I'm not planning to open a Jewish bakery in Montevallo, but would it be such a bad idea?

Humor is one of the things that gets us through the hard times, and we've had some hard times. But we can still laugh, and we often laugh at ourselves. For a wonderful overview of Jewish humor and the Yiddish language, I recommend the book The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten. He uses classic Jewish jokes and anecdotes to illustrate the meanings of Yiddish words. It's very entertaining!

And while you're at the library -- the wonderful stories of 19th century writer Sholom Aleichem tell the tales of life in the shtetls. One of his stories, "Tevye the Milkman," became Fiddler on the Roof. His stories about the town of Chelm -- a shtetl populated entirely by fools -- are classics of Jewish folklore. Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer also told the tales of the shtetls in his short stories. One of his stories, "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," became the movie Yentl.

Learning was a priority for my family and for all the Jewish families we knew. The educational accomplishments of our children make Jewish parents and grandparents kvell -- be filled with pride, and Jewish children take on the mantle of learning with enthusiasm and dedication. We like to make our elders kvell.

In talking about Jewish culture, I've saved Jewish mothers for last because I could write a book, and someday I probably will. I am a Jewish mother and -- what can I say? Everything you've heard -- it's all true. We're so passionate about our children that it sometimes makes us -- and them -- a little neurotic. But at the heart of the Jewish mother is a woman who just wants all good things for her children, and like the writer Elizabeth Stone, feels that becoming a mother means having your heart walking around outside your body.

A friend of mine pointed out to me that it's a trait shared by all mothers. Yes, I agree, but I think we're just more vocal about it. My own sons can fill you in if you want details. Of course, they have a wonderful Gentile father who helped balance some of the mishegas - the craziness -- and I think they've turned out OK.

I know some of you had Jewish mothers. And I know some of you are Jewish mothers. You know who you are. And here in Alabama there's another category -- the honorary Jewish mother. And you know who you are.

Our Jewish mothers sang Yiddish lullabies to us, they fed us chicken soup with matzoh balls floating like clouds on golden broth, they told us to study hard and stand up straight and wear a sweater. They kvelled over us and they blessed us. I'd like to dedicate this occasion to the memory of my own mother and to the Jewish mothers who were lost in the Holocaust. Zichronam l'vracha -- May their remembrance be for a blessing.

And I hope you'll feel at home in our celebration of Jewish culture this afternoon. You're certainly welcome to partake.

Home Again, Home Again

2010-10-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

As much as I love visiting Denver, there's no place like home. Sweet home, Alabama. (Could she be any more trite?) Trite but true. There's that little surge of sugar-laced adrenaline that fills me when I get home to my house in the country. There's just something about coming home.

After Labor Day weekend at the beach, I accompanied my granddaughter Myra and her parents back to their home in Orlando. A six-hour car trip took ten with all the Myra-stops, but that was to be expected. When weary nine-month-old Myra was finally carried into her house, into her room, she started grinning and squealing like a slide-whistle as she looked all around. It was as if she was saying, "Hello, bed! I'm home! Oh, hello mirror! Oh, Horsie and Lamb, hello! I'm home, I'm home!"

It made me think of summers as a kid in New York City, when my family would take off in our household-packed Chevrolet to the bungalow colony in the Catskills where we spent the hottest months. Jewish families from all over the city were regulars at these places. The moms and kids would stay all summer, and the dads would come up on weekends. I know it's where I got my taste for country living.

After Labor Day, we would pack everything up, tearfully say good-bye to our summer friends, and shlep back to the city. As my dad pulled the car up in front of our apartment building, the four of us would say, together, "And here....we....ARE!" The final sound of our little chant would be accompanied by the sound of the car engine turning off. While Dad started to unload, my mother and sister and I would carry a few things up to the apartment. Mom would unlock the big Yale deadbolt and as the door opened, we would be hit with the airless heat of a top floor apartment sitting right under the steaming tar of the roof. Mom would rush around opening windows, and I would greedily breathe in the heavy, still air smelling of woolen carpet and furniture polish. I'm home! I'm home!

Coming home to Alabama is not so much about my house, although I love my house. My "I'm home!" moment came when I walked around the yard, visiting the special places that make up my enchanted garden. there's the "Three Sisters" -- a tree that fell in Hurricane Ivan and whose limbs sprouted up into three new trees not grounded in the earth but connected only to the horizontal trunk. The giant spread of roots that rose out of the ground is a backdrop for a place where I love to sit. The trunk is my balance beam and my barre.

Then there's the Viney Wood -- a little, hidden wood filled with curling vines that we're cultivating into a place where I plan to sit with my grandchildren, telling them stories and challenging them to find the secret treasure in the wood. You won't get it out of me, so don't ask.

The Pyracantha bush which has been here as long as we have, has come into its own this year. Twelve feet tall with huge graceful branches heavy with bright berries, she's the queen of the garden right now.

And the little cedar tree that sprang up in the volunteer garden that evolved behind the back deck is almost ready for her close-up. My husband turned over that earth right after my father passed away, with the thought of making a memorial garden. Dealing at the same time with our son's surgery following a car accident, we never planted anything. Things just started to grow there, and over the last few years we weeded and supplemented until the memorial garden we envisioned took shape without our even noticing. Today, a perfect little cedar stand at the front of the garden. It will probably have to move to another spot where it can grow unhindered, but this year it will be a Christmas tree for Myra, right where it stands.

I'm home! I'm home!
Jiggety-jig.

Why I Love Housework

2010-10-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

I wasn't trained in housework. "Why?" you ask. "How can a young woman not be trained in housework?" My husband has been asking that question for over 30 years. My mother taught me many things, but housework wasn't one of them. Although our apartment was always impeccable, my mother had other priorities. A lovely woman named Leona came over every week to clean the apartment and do the ironing.

Housework wasn't required of me, so I didn't learn it. Of course, I helped wash and dry the supper dishes, and I took the garbage down the hall to the incinerator. I often hung the wash on the clotheslines on the roof and brought it in when it was dry. In winter the sheets and towels were rigid and smelled like icicles and New York soot. Sometimes I dusted and ran the carpet sweeper, but I never learned how to clean a house.

What did I do? I read a lot and wrote stories and poems. I had a tape recorder (newfangled for a ten-year-old in the fifties), and I did "radio shows" with my friends and my little sister, the natural comedian. I played on the school playground and roller-skated around the neighborhood, skate-key on a string around my neck, until the street lights came on. And when my father was home, I sat at his feet and listened to his stories and lessons. So that's why I never learned to mop a floor or clean a toilet or scour a bathtub. My mom did the daily maintenance, and then she was busy with projects and volunteer work, mah jongg and shopping. That's what she taught me, in a nutshell.

My husband taught me to clean a house. (Everyone say, "Bless his heart.") My husband's mother required it of her children -- son and daughter -- and I must say they're two of the most capable and industrious people I've ever known. My hat's off to my mother-in-law. She knew how to leverage chores into character.

So, why do I love housework? I love housework because putting my house in order and making it shine grounds me. It's a way to quiet my mind and focus on physical tasks that bring, at their completion, a sense of peace and wholeness. A clean house feels good. I love housework because there's a memory attached to every photograph I dust and every bathtub I scrub. Memories from years ago and memories from last weekend. The family gatherings and the laughs. The little boys that were, and the new baby girl.

It's a pleasure to keep house, even though it's not my full-time occupation. Like my mother, I have many other priorities. But housework -- necessary and ever-present -- never fails to satisfy. It pleases me to think that all over Alabama, young people are still being raised in the fine tradition of chores that my mother-in-law taught to her children. Not to say that I fault my mother for this gap in my education. It was fine with me. And every time I find that impossible bargain dress or pair of shoes, I tip my hat to the woman who taught me the finer points of dressing well on a budget.

I'm just glad I learned to love housework, too.

"We're Gonna find a Cure for You!"

2010-10-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

There's an old Jewish saying that humankind was created because God loves stories. That's one thing all humans have in common -- we all have a story. Stories with happy endings and stories with sad endings. Stories that make you laugh and stories that make you cry. Stories that make you avert your eyes and stories that make you clasp your hands to your heart because they touch your inner core.

At the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure in Birmingham yesterday, there was a sea of stories. All kinds. My story hardly counts. Just a biopsy, last October, of a suspicious lump that turned out to be benign. The bravery required to walk through that experience was just a drop in the bucket of bravery, by my estimation. I've seen real bravery in this arena. But it opened my eyes and made me aware, right at the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, of breast cancer. Suddenly, it was my own breast under scrutiny. It made me part of a sisterhood, and sisterhood is powerful.

We came from all over the greater Birmingham area -- an army in pink and white converging on Linn Park from all directions. I walk for exercise and I think of myself as a fast walker, but I've never entered a race before and I hoped I was up for the challenge. The 3.1 mile race started at Boutwell Auditorium, went around the back of the Civic Center and across 11th Ave. North to 19th St., then all the way up 19th St. to 5th Ave. South, over to 20th, and then back to the finish line at the entrance to Linn Park.

It was a LONG walk with some long uphill inclines. All the walking I do had prepared me, but it's not an easy walk. Some of us ran - the swift ones -- some of them pushing babies in jogging rigs. Some strolled arm in arm, the pink signs on their backs bearing the names of the ones who bind them: Mother, Grandmother, Sister, Aunt, Daughter, Cousin, Friend. It was a lovely mixed bag of sisters and their kin, all moving together toward the finish line at our own pace while bystanders cheered us on. "We're gonna find a cure for you -- Keep going!" chanted one group of young women on the sidelines. "Keep going!"

Legs tired? Keep going. Thirsty? Keep going. Feet hurt? Keep going. I felt the burn, and "keep going" was what I needed to hear, but I thought about the women who keep going through surgery and radiation and chemotherapy. I thought about their daughters and granddaughters -- the ones at high risk for breast cancer. We need to find a cure, and money is the first step. Birmingham's Race For the Cure was a huge success -- over 16,000 paid an entrance fee and many raised additional support. There's also the Breast Cancer Research Foundation here in Birmingham which raises seed money to acquire research grants for the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center and has leveraged $2.5 million in donations into over $18 million in grants.
http://www.bcrfa.org/index2.php

We all crossed the finish line at different times -- my time was 52 minutes. My goal was to do it in under an hour, so I was pleased. Maybe I can do it faster next year. I stayed by the finish line for a long time, cheering the ones who finished after me. I talked to women and heard their stories. There's an element of loss in many of the stories, but there's an element of hope in all of them. "We're gonna find a cure for you -- Keep going!"

Au Revoir, My Denver

2010-09-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

As my second sojourn in Denver comes to an end, I begin to feel homesick already. I'll miss the sun setting over the Rockies at the cocktail hour. I'll miss my neighborhood. I'll miss downtown with its eclectic and harmonious mix of the old and the new. I'll miss driving high into the mountains, top down in a fast and flashy red Firebird, and I'll miss hiking up into the clear, thin air and indescribable vistas of the Rockies. I'll miss all this, but it's the people I'll miss most of all. My heart has connected with this town.

On my first visit, I met Melanie Miller at the lounge at the Burnsley Hotel. My husband and I had come to hear Teresa Carroll sing, accompanied by Doug Roche on the piano. Teresa is a jazz vocalist whose delivery and interpretation of a song weave a spell that touches the emotional core of her audience. Doug's piano accompaniment takes the magic to the another level. Melanie, a charmingly gregarious and knowledgeable regular on the jazz scene in Denver, recognized us as fellow jazz-lovers and chatted us up. She even bought us a copy of Doug's CD so we could hear his solo work, and his music has provided the soundtrack for many mountain drives.

Melanie shared with me her vision for a benefit concert that would showcase some of the outstanding jazz musicians in Denver and raise money to help the homeless and the hungry in the city. I caught her vision and agreed to help her make it a reality. We started making the rounds of the clubs to hear the remarkable talent this town has to offer. I met Billy Wallace, an 80+ year old jazz pianist who looks nowhere near his age but whose music is imbued with the wisdom and easy grace of a man who has played it all and seen it all and whose peaceful demeanor comes from navigating a life that was, perhaps, not always so peaceful.

I met Ron Bland, an extraordinary bass player who balances a family, teaching at three colleges, and a mind-boggling schedule of gigs, and who still found time to meet me for coffee to talk about the music scene in Denver. I met Don Grove, a remarkable drummer whose solos galvanize a room and get the adrenaline pumping, Colin Gieg, a bassist whose rendition of Satin Doll is a must-hear, and Charlie Zanichelli, a smooth saxophonist who moves from style to style with elegant ease. I'll miss these guys -- the music and the conversation. And I'll miss Melanie, a classy broad with a heart for Denver, who will be, I sense, a lifelong friend and partner in crime.

In my wanderings about town I've met people who are passionate about making a difference. Looking for a place to eat lunch one day, I spotted an intriguing looking cafe on Broadway in Englewood and pulled in. The menu at Cafe 180 is flatbread pizza made with whole-grain flour that's hand-ground daily, homemade soups, and fresh, fresh salads. When I offered my debit card to pay for my order, I was surprised to learn that it's a "pay what you can" set-up: you pay what you can afford, or a little extra, or nothing at all. The cafe is a non-profit staffed entirely by volunteers. Cathy Matthews, the founder and Executive Director, explained to me that this is the second restaurant of its type in the Denver area and that it's becoming a model for similar restaurants in other cities. About 30-40% of the people who eat lunch there pay nothing for their meals, volunteering an hour of their time instead. It all averages out, and after being open for two months, Cafe 180 is operating in the black. www.appetitesunite.org

There's Michael, a Clinical Case Manager for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, who provides one-on-one help for the down and out in Denver, juggling a monumental case load and diminishing funding. With winter approaching like a freight train, the Coalition has a backlog of 2,000 on a waiting list, and Michael approaches each long day with the calm perseverance of a professional and the heartfelt frustration of a compassionate man who can't meet every need, pursuing his passion for family counseling in his "free time."

There's Louie, the mail carrier who deals daily with the rudeness of an entitled generation of young people who vandalize mailboxes and intentionally block her parked USPS vehicle. Louie is a single mother who is raising her 17-year-old son to be obedient, responsible, and respectful of his elders because, as she says, "You have to start somewhere to make a difference."

Then there are the new friends who have welcomed me into their homes for a meal, a glass of wine, an afternoon in the garden, an introduction to their friends, a stimulating conversation. Dennis, my husband's offbeat and always entertaining friend, and Joy, opera buff and my role-model for being a grandmother in the 21st century, have given me a sense of belonging.

Au revoir, my Denver. I'll miss you and, God willing, I'll be back for more.

Deb recommends:
Cafe 180
Broadway and Floyd
Englewood,CO
Tues. - Sat., 11-2
303-761-4510

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

2010-09-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've lived in a city neighborhood where everything you need is within walking distance and the folks on the street greet you with a smile of recognition. Twenty years of living on a country road in Alabama have lulled me into the contented quietude of lush green landscapes and dark night skies where the nearest neighbor is half a mile away and every errand involves getting in the car. But dormant within has been the girl who grew up on the streets of New York City, walking the pavement with long-legged strides that never counted the miles while making the rounds of bodegas, dry cleaners and cafes where all the faces were familiar.

In Denver, where my husband now lives and works and where I visit for a month at a time, I've laid claim to a neighborhood: my walkable section of Capitol Hill, from 6th to 13th, from Broadway to Cheesman Park. My first visit to Denver was in the heat of July, and while many Coloradans stayed indoors and complained about the unusually high temperatures, I leashed up my little Shih Tzu, armed myself with sunscreen and a bottle of water, and took to the streets. The sun, a mile closer than in Alabama, felt good as I walked, and freed from the suffocating humidity of the deep South, I soaked it up like a tonic.

The neighborhood charmed me. I loved the small, stylish apartment buildings with names like "Bermuda," "Gaucho," and "Doris." I loved the big, grand corner houses with wrought iron gates and curved turrets. I loved the carefully-tended gardens with profusions of hollyhocks and purple sage, coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. Returning in September, I found the gardens evolving towards fall with golden marigold, mums and late-blooming roses.

And then there's Poet's Row, a one-block stretch of Sherman Street that has captured my fancy. A showcase of Art Deco and Art Moderne styles built mostly in the 1930s, nine of the apartment buildings on this block are named for great American writers -- seven of them designed by the same architect, Charles Dunwoody Strong, a lover of literature and poetry. From the "Mark Twain" to the "Emily Dickinson," each three-story building is an eye-pleasing gem of fine proportions and elegant detail.

Walking east on 11th, the neighborhood changes to a family flavor. Along with the joggers and dog-walkers and bicyclists, I now pass parents carrying babies in papoose sacks and pushing toddlers in strollers. This is my favorite part. I like to see children growing up in friendly, diverse neighborhoods where they can learn tolerance, self-expression and good-citizenship -- the fundamentals of true community. As we neighborhood elders watch the little saplings grow and thrive they become, somehow, the responsibility and the hope of us all. Walking the track in Cheesman Park, I always swing through the playground where the sturdy little bodies and tousled heads remind me of my granddaughter Myra Laine, my family's first contribution to the generation that will take the reins halfway through this century.

As I walked to the park on a recent Saturday, a gentleman sitting in his lovely yard with a frosty pitcher of lemonade on a little table and an extra, empty chair beside it invited me to stop and have a cold drink. I map the neighborhood with feet on pavement, still an outsider, always ready for a conversation that will allow me to enter in, to connect, to hear a story. This gentleman, a neighborhood fixture, draws the neighborhood to him with an inviting tableau of refreshment and the aura of a benign spider in a friendly and welcoming web. I sat down to a cool glass of lemonade and a delightfully interesting conversation which I hope to continue.

From Tony's Market to Buffalo Exchange to Penn Street Perk to Cheesman Park, I've found everything I need in a nicely walkable neighborhood where cars yield to pedestrians and people greet one another with a smile. I like to think that, should I stay here for any length of time, I would be recognized as a neighborhood regular. "The fast-walking woman with the long legs and the little Shih Tzu keeping pace? Oh yeah, I've seen her around the neighborhood."

Photos of Poet's Row by Nik Layman
(Robert Browning, Mark Twain, detail of Louisa May Alcott)
www.niklayman.com

Rat in the House

2010-09-16T09:08:00.001-07:00

Twelve-year-old Pearl, cat in residence, has earned her reputation as a critter-catcher. One night, as my husband and I sat on the deck enjoying a starry sky, Pearl slipped into the house with her mouth full of something dark and furry.

"Chipmunk," my husband guessed, just as Pearl released her toy in the house and resumed the game on her home turf. "She'll get it, "my husband assured me as I groaned about having a chipmunk running loose in the house.

By morning, Pearl was showing no interest in the pursuit, and there was no evidence that the deed had been done. I wondered whether this episode would end with a rodent running across my path or with a smell that would require a search and recovery mission. I didn't like either scenario.

That evening, as my husband worked at his desk in his study, he called out ominously, "It's not a chipmunk." Oh dear. We locked the cat in the study and hoped for the best. No luck. "Call an exterminator," my husband advised.

I called first thing in the morning and waited for his scheduled afternoon visit. About lunchtime, as I walked to the front door to let the dog out, a plump and panicked gray field rat scurried down the hall toward the door. I rushed to open the door and let it out, but by this time the dog was ready to pick up the chase, so off they went into the living room.

It was a blur of frantic skittering and galloping and sliding. I can only imagine my personal soundtrack in the midst of this. Squealing and shrieking come to mind. There may also have been some jumping up and down and arm-waving. I know my adrenaline was in full gear and it was, for heaven's sake, a rat in the house!

The rat took refuge behind a heavy credenza, so I put the dog out in the yard and scrambled to find something to keep the rodent where it was. I plugged the spaces between credenza and wall on both sides with rolled up towels and called my husband to give him an update. "Rats can climb over towels, " he cautioned.

Okay, okay, what could I use to fill the narrow gaps between the credenza and the wall? I scanned the house looking for something rectangular and solid. Eureka. I build barricades with cereal boxes and books, and by the time I was done, that rat was not going anywhere. I figured the worst that could happen was he would eat some cereal while we waited for the exterminator.

For the next two hours I guarded the rat with a broom at the ready. I checked on him every few minutes, and he really wasn't bad-looking for a rat. Certainly he was nothing like the scabrous, vicious predators that are infamous in New York, my home town. He was clean and roly-poly and actually sort of cute.

When the exterminator came, he dismantled the cereal-box barricades and guided the rat into a bucket. "He's a nice healthy-looking rat," I said, "Just let him out somewhere -- but not in my yard."

"Yes, ma'am," the cheerful exterminator assured me, "I'll take him to a field and release him. He'll be fine."

I felt good about the outcome until I related the tale to my husband. He laughed and reminded me how his Dad used to catch chipmunks and mice in a Have-a-Heart trap. Our boys always wanted to know what Granddaddy was going to do with the critters he caught. "I'm going to teach them how to swim," he replied. This satisfied the boys' gentle compassion for little furry things. They never knew that Granddaddy also said, under his breath, "I've never found one yet that could swim."

So now I wonder if my rat is happily roaming the countryside, or if my exterminator has just had lots of practice dealing with soft-hearted housewives.

The Gulf That Unites Us

2010-09-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

Labor Day weekend on the Gulf Coast is traditionally the final family gathering of the summer for folks from Alabama, Georgia and beyond. We pack up our children and our coolers, our umbrellas, floats and kites, and we converge on the white sand beaches from Gulf Shores to Panama City.

A few months ago, we all wondered if BP had brought an end to life as we know it on the Gulf. Would we spend this Labor Day on fouled, empty beaches, scraping up oil and washing sea birds in tubs of soapy water? But God in His infinite wisdom and mercy had an army of oil-eating bacteria ready to take care of the worst of the clean-up and a disaster was averted, praise His Name.

So our family gathered for a long Labor Day holiday on the famous sugar-white sands of a pristine and perfect Panama City Beach. The occasional patch of black, on closer inspection, was sand that had been carried in by the tide, we fancied, from the black beaches of the Isle of Pines in Cuba. Under a cloudless sky, the water was shimmering green Roman glass. The sun was hot and the Gulf, which I like to think of as a huge mineral bath, worked its healing on our bones as we surrendered to its gently buoyant embrace.

We arrived early in the week -- twelve of us in all --and we had the beach to ourselves at first. As the weekend approached more families started arriving. The early-comers would stake out their spot and hoist their beach tents and umbrellas. Soon little family groups would join them as they pulled in, road-weary and ready to unwind. I watched as parents my age greeted their grown children and welcomed the newest babies to the gathering for the first time. I watched as little cousins hugged littler cousins and ran off to play together, and I watched as sisters and brothers sat close and caught up on each others' lives.

Remember the opening and closing scenes of the movie Love Actually? They're montages of reunions at airports -- fathers and sons, grandmothers and babies, sisters, lovers, best friends -- all captured in that moment when they behold each others' faces and embrace with the longing and fervor engendered by separation. The banked embers of the heart ignite as we enfold the ones we love in our arms and press our cheeks against theirs once again.

Our family was no exception to this orgy of delighted togetherness, and this year our tableau had a new centerpiece: nine-month-old Myra Laine, who took to the water like a tadpole, voraciously licking the salt water off her floatie and squealing with joy when the little waves splashed her face. Around the big dinner gatherings, we passed her from hand to hand and she greeted each face with an expectant smile, knowing she would be entertained in some new way. A beard here, a chunky necklace there, a tickle, a funny noise. It was surely sensory overload, but she was game.

Myra's parents, for whom this first vacation with a baby was really no vacation at all, stoically did the schlepping and the maintenance while the rest of us provided the babysitting and the diversions. "It does get easier," I assured my son when he seemed, at one point, overwhelmed at the amount of work it takes to have a nine-month-old at the beach. "Look at Dad and me," I pointed out as he surveyed the mountain of baby paraphernalia under his umbrella while Myra's mom fed her and got her settled for a nap. "At this stage in our lives, all we need is a towel, some sunscreen, and a bottle of water, and we're good to go."

"Thanks for rubbing it in, Mom," he snorted as I ran off, unencumbered, to play in the Gulf. I've paid my dues; his time will come.

Saturday Night at the VFW

2010-08-24T14:21:00.001-07:00

With my husband working out of town, I'm always looking for entertainment on the weekends that he doesn't fly home. My criteria: fun, affordable, and wholesome. When my girlfriend invited me to Saturday night ballroom dancing at the VFW downtown, I was intrigued, but skeptical. "Seriously," I asked, "the VFW?" I was picturing old geezers in faded army uniforms pushing walkers and oxygen tanks around the floor. But my friend, a very hip 50-something single, assured me that I would enjoy it. She knows I love to dance.

Dancing is in my blood. I even have a couple of chorus girls and a Rockette in my lineage. My parents were the Fred and Ginger of their social set, and my dad started me on the fox trot as soon as I was tall enough to dance with him without standing on his feet. My husband loves to dance too, but he's more of a freestyler. He wooed me on disco dance floors, and he still moves like no one I've ever seen, but every once in a while I long for the structure and predictability of ballroom dancing. So I took the opportunity, put on my dancing shoes, and went to meet my friend.

For ambiance, the VFW has next to nothing to recommend it. The dance was in a big institutional hall with a bandstand at one end and a bar at the other. The dance floor was huge, with a perimeter of long tables and chairs, and the place was packed. Scanning the crowd, I saw mostly 50 and 60-somethings: totally my demographic. A really good live band, the Archers (also 50 and 60-somethings) filled the air with covers of everything from Rock to Swing to Latin. And people were dancing. Really dancing.

I spotted a few couples who had surely been dancing together for years -- they floated from move to move with practiced familiarity and grace. But even the dancers who weren't polished had obviously taken some ballroom lessons. Everybody knew the steps, the turns, the variations, the footwork. The guys knew how to lead, and the girls knew how to follow. I was in my element and I couldn't wait for someone to ask me to dance.

I stood at the edge of the dance floor tapping my foot to the music and trying to look approachable and friendly, but after ten minutes I started to feel, again, like the skinny, pimpled adolescent with glasses and braces who had wallflowered at lots of high school dances. I forced myself to stand up straight and not look desperate. My heart sank a little more with each song that saw me standing, partnerless, on the sidelines. Was I destined to always be a wallflower at a dance with my peers?

Finally, one of my friend's regular dance partners approached me and asked me to dance. Did she put him up to it? I didn't care. Out on the dance floor I easily followed his lead, adding a few flourishes learned years ago at the many Bar Mitzvahs and wedding receptions where I had honed my skills. I must have completed some kind of unspoken initiation, because once I demonstrated that I could indeed dance, my dance card filled up and I didn't sit down until the band quit at midnight.

Some of my partners were experts, some were beginners, but they were all serious about dancing. They led me through fox trots, rhumbas, two-steps, and cha-chas. They twirled me through energetic swing dances. They waltzed me around the floor and I imagined myself in a hoop skirt and crinoline. Each gentleman politely thanked me after our dance and led me back to where he had found me. I felt, finally, like one of the popular girls.

At the end of the night, I ducked into the ladies' room and glanced at my reflection in the mirror. I was flushed and disheveled. My hair was damp and my clothes clung wetly. I was out of breath. My feet hurt. And I was utterly spent and happy. So, if you're looking for me on Saturday night, you'll probably find me at the VFW. I'll save a dance for you.

Deb recommends:
Saturday dance at Kelly Ingram VFW Post 668
8:00 pm - midnight
1801 11th Avenue North
Birmingham, AL
205.252.2695
Admission: $5.00
Cash bar

Fire Ant Control - One Man's Methodology

2010-08-18T07:08:00.000-07:00

He kills fire ant beds with urine. He pees on them.

This is not white trash entertainment. It's a tested, methodical strategy that he has perfected over years of experimentation, and it works.

Fire ants have plagued the South since they jumped ship in Mobile in the 1930's and started their northward invasion. They bite, and the bites hurt like hell, then itch and fester. Killing fire ants is a serious mission requiring aggressive tactics. Men have tried them all. Pesticides, gasoline, mechanical crushers, exhaust fumes, explosives, electrocution -- it's war.

Urine works. all you need is a flashlight and a full bladder. It's best done at night, he says, so you don't offend the neighbors. The big challenge is not to splash your shoes, but one of the benefits of doing it at night is that the grass is laden with dew, so if you miss, you can just walk through some tallish grass, but be sure to polish your shoes before you wear them again.

It typically takes two applications of urine to kill a fire ant bed. Fire ant beds may be mounded or volcano-like in shape. You want to go for the core. Pee straight down into the highest point and then soak the rest of the bed deeply. You're going for the queen, who is protected at the base of the bed. The peak of the bed is as tall as the queen is deep. So first shoot a straight stream right down the hole at the top. Then you just drench the suckers. On warm days, worker ants bring eggs up near the surface. He calls drenching the whole bed on warm days "fouling the nursery."

Depending on the size of your bladder and urethra, you can make applications to one or more bed with one load. (His personal best -- three.) It takes a lot of control to stop and start and stop, so practice is beneficial. Make sure you get the most mileage out of each load. You might use a full load on a large ant bed, but don't blow your load on starter beds.

Some beds take years to kill. One in his driveway took him five years, but it's gone now. It might crop up again, but he'll be ready for it.

Grass continues to grow as an ant colony builds its bed, so after you kill a mound, the next step is to rescue your lawn. Fire ants secrete a substance that hardens dirt, so rake the mound or it will petrify. Expose the grass and redistribute the dirt.

Fire ants are aggressive and tenacious, and you may have an infestation in some years. Enlist the help of your friends. Recruit a fraternity from a local college. It's worth the cost of a keg.

There is not general agreement concerning the properties of urine that make it poisonous to fire ants. Some suggest it's the proteins and enzymes; others think urine upsets the pH balance of the mound. Although urine has not gained wide acceptance in fire ant control, it works.

He says it's using what God gave you to do what you need to do. And it's damn satisfying. Fire ants are the enemy -- show no mercy. He marks targeted ant beds by stabbing a lit cigarette butt into the peak of the bed. You're next.

Myra's Posse

2010-08-10T07:27:00.001-07:00

Have I mentioned that I have a granddaughter? This may not seem like a big deal to you, but for me, the mother of three sons, a baby girl in the family is a glimmer of lace and tulle in a sea of denim and camouflage. Myra Laine. How I adore her.

Myra's extended family, an eclectic mix of folks, gathered from north, south, east, and west for her baby dedication at the church in Alabama where her parents were married. When Myra's diaper unloaded onto her pink batiste bloomers right before the service, it was clearly a two-grandmother job. My daughter-in-law gave the urgent signal to her mother: "Mom! Bathroom! Now!" I figured I might be able to help, so I joined the procession, bringing up the rear behind my son who carried the essential diaper bag. We ducked into a side room with a big conference table and got to work.

Like a well-trained Nascar pit crew, we performed a full-service pit stop in record time. As if we had practiced for days, we all knew exactly what to do in a sprint that involved laying down a changing mat, pulling off satin shoes and lace-trimmed socks, removing the offending bloomers without soiling the rest of the outfit, undiapering, wiping, rediapering, replacing socks and shoes, tying little bows, packing everything up, and keeping Myra entertained so she would be smiling when she faced the congregation.

Eight hands moved in furiously efficient synchronization as we danced around each other to grab a foot, a wipe, a diaper, the hem of a dress, a bonnet, a pacifier. And Myra cooed through it all. I think she was enthralled by the blur of motion in which she was center stage.

We're your posse, Myra, I thought as we walked back to the sanctuary with just moments to spare before the service began. And when we all stood together with the rest of the family as our baby girl was dedicated to the Lord, I thought about how blessed Myra is to have -- besides her amazing parents -- two sets of great-grandparents, two sets of grandparents, four uncles, a host of great-aunts and great-uncles, and a world of cousins. Yankees and Southerners, Christians and Jews, city folk and country folk, united by this child who is flesh of our flesh, and by a sense of humor that overrides our differences and makes us an unlikely but authentic family. Myra's posse.

On Becoming a Senior

2010-08-04T06:36:00.000-07:00

Most people don't guess my age, which is over 60. I've been blessed with good genes. I'm officially a senior citizen now, and this rite of passage has given me a fresh outlook. I've forgiven myself for the foolishness of my youth, learned a lot from experiences both good and bad, and feel myself moving, hopefully, towards that place of unflappable calm and wisdom that I find so attractive in those who have made it to their 80s and 90s with their minds and spirits intact.

My reference points for being a "woman of a certain age" are the women in my family who pointed the way. I hear my mother's voice in my head, and it's a welcome voice. I find myself calling women younger than myself "dear," as she did. It sounds terribly retro to my ears, but it flies off my tongue with ease and it doesn't seem to offend, so I don't edit. My mother had a gift for connecting with people. She took a sincere interest in everyone she met, and the seeds of care that she sowed reaped a harvest of respect and affection. I aspire to that.

Being a senior gives me, I believe, a certain license to dispense kindly advice and encouragement to the young. (To me, anyone under 50 is young.) Not only do I happily own my opinions, but I have no qualms about making them known if I think it will do some good, and it often does.

My father's older sisters, Anna and Fanny, whom he affectionately called 'Arsenic and Old Lace," were an ongoing object lesson for me. Aunt Anna was a self-centered beauty with a reputation for comic wit and a sharp tongue. She never cut her hair -- it was down to her knees -- and she wore it in a braided crown that gave her a regal appearance. (Personally, I think it was all those hairpins that made her so testy.) Aunt Fanny, petite and plain, was a gentle soul with a generous spirit who married a scoundrel and raised four sons pretty much on her own.

My aunts were both tough cookies. To support her boys during the 1920s, Aunt Fanny drove a truck route from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The truck was stacked with bootleg whiskey. Aunt Anna hosted a well-known poker game once a week at her cold-water flat on the Lower East Side. Anna bossed and snapped at everyone around her, but was also so funny and entertaining that we all forgave her. Fanny was the warm, welcoming bosom we ran to when we needed a reassuring embrace or an understanding ear.

Aunt Anna died in her 80s, cancer-ridden and in terrible pain. I visited her in the hospital a few weeks before she died and listened as she railed in bitter self-pity. She had nothing good to say about her life or her family. It grieves me that a woman who had been so passionate about life found no peace at its end. Aunt Fanny, still soft-spoken and energetic, moved to a nursing home in her late 80s. She liked it there because, as she said, "I like to help the old people." When she died at the age of 95, she spoke her last words to her three remaining sons who were gathered beside her. "Tell everyone I love them," she whispered.

Love, my friends, remains the answer. As I transition into my seniorhood, I want to get better and better at feeling love, sharing love, receiving love, dispensing love. I want to be one of those old ladies whom young people affectionately kiss on the cheek and sit beside for serious conversation because it makes them feel good about themselves. Being a senior is serious business. We point the way, as the women in my family did for me, and the direction we point can have a profound effect on rising generations. I accept the mantle humbly and willingly.

Old Broads in the Kitchen

2010-07-26T09:41:00.001-07:00

I'm discovering that old broads make the world go 'round. Maybe it's because I am one, and I fancy that a network of old broads is an unstoppable force. As Bette Davis said, "If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it." So I collect old broads and cultivate relationships with them. They're everywhere, and I've found some gems. I'm building my network.

In each of the little Rocky Mountain towns we've visited, there's always a cafe that serves up perfect eggs, juicy burgers, homemade pies, and specialties of the house like Buffalo chili and sweet potato fries. If you peek into the kitchen, you'll find an old broad who has honed her skills cooking for a family. Her resume is thirty-plus years of short order breakfasts, production line sandwiches and Sunday dinners for a crowd. She invented multi-tasking. For her, all cooking is homecooking, and at her cafe, you want to tip the waitress and kiss the cook.

One Sunday, we pulled into Pat's Falling Rock Cafe in Howard, Colorado at about 10:30 in the morning for a late breakfast. We were the only ones in the place, and we could hear a lot of pan-rattling in the kitchen and snatches of a tense conversation: "...need some help...get these potatoes in the oven....never be ready for the church crowd."

A hand-written sign behind our table said "Sunday Special: Pork Chops and Scalloped Potatoes." I surmised that a breakfast rush had kept Pat from prepping her potatoes, and we all know how long homemade scalloped potatoes take to bake! I felt for her, and when the waitress came to take our order, we both ordered the simplest thing we could think of: a couple of eggs sunnyside-up, bacon and toast.

While we waited, we looked at the drawings and paintings that covered the walls -- many of them portraits of Pat. "Who's the artist?" I asked the waitress. "Pat's husband," she replied. "He usually helps in the kitchen, but he couldn't be here today." So that's why Pat was behind.

Things quieted down in the kitchen as Pat got to work. The sizzle and aroma of bacon filled the air. I said to my husband, "She can turn these eggs around pretty quick, and then she can get on those potatoes."

We were halfway through our perfectly fried eggs and deliciously crisp bacon when two cars and three motorcycles pulled into the parking lot within seconds of each other. A couple, a party of four, and three bikers came in. The waitress looked stricken. The pan-rattling started again, and I began to worry about poor Pat. There was no hope for the potatoes now.

I said to my husband, "I think I need to go back there and peel and slice potatoes for her, or she'll never make it." He calmly nixed that idea, although he understood where I was coming from. It's some kind of Old Broad Code of Conduct -- never abandon another old broad in her time of need. But a husband can trump that when push comes to shove.

While he paid for our breakfast, I ducked into the kitchen to give Pat a little encouragement. "You really have your hands full, don't you?" I said with a smile. Pat was beyond stressed. "I just don't know how I'm going to do it," she moaned. "I know you can do it," I answered, "And I'm praying that the preacher will have a good, long message today so church will let out really late!" That got a laugh, which was good enough for me.

Deb recommends:
Pat's Falling Rock Cafe
10281 Hwy. 50
Howard, Colorado

The Honeymoon Suite at the Rock-N-Row

2010-07-19T16:27:00.001-07:00

My husband took me to the mountains for a romantic weekend. He knew a couple of great places because his friend had taken him to his own favorite destinations over July 4th weekend, and my husband had been saving them to share with me during my visit to Colorado.

We drove four hours into the mountains. You have to understand, driving into the Rocky Mountains is almost enough all by itself. It's a feast for the eyes, and the chronicler in me wanted to plaster a camera to my face and capture every image, every crag, every golden hillside, every purple flower, every cloud, every shadow of a cloud, every silver streak of snow-- but the light in the Rockies is a living, moving thing -- too fleeting for stop-action. So we just looked and exclaimed.

Our first stop was a hot springs camp hidden deep and high in the mountains, overlooking a vast fertile valley. The fence posts along the 8-mile dirt road leading to the camp were hung with shoes of every size -- some old, some new -- where, we decided, people who had just opted to stay at the springs forever had left the last thing that tied them to civilization. We spent the afternoon soaking in the warm healing waters and emerged rejuvenated and relaxed. You might find my shoes on a fence post there, someday.

We drove another hour and a half to the Rock-N-Row, the best rafting place on the Arkansas River, where my husband had scouted out a little cabin with a private beach on the river. It was one of three cabins used by the rafting guides during the season -- one of them was vacant, and it looked like just the place to my husband, at least from the outside. He didn't look inside.

We pulled in at about 7:00 in the evening. The main building was closed, but one of the guides was waiting for us. The private beach was noisily occupied by a large family who were camping on the property, so not so private, but the cabin was off to the side and it did face the river and had a nice little porch, so there were possibilities. Until I opened the door.

Picture this: a 10 by 10 foot wooden box with a double bed, a filthy rag of carpet, and a two-month layer of dust on a rickety wooden dresser. There were clean threadbare sheets on the bed that reeked of river guide. One of the pillows even had a pillowcase. A bare light bulb hung dead-center. A picture of Cochise was thumb-tacked to the wall. No bathroom. No running water.

My husband smiled hopefully at me and mumbled something about "right on the river." I tried to be a good sport. I investigated. The main building across the big yard had a toilet that was accessible, and there was a pump in the yard with clear, cold mountain water.

I thought back to earlier times when I would have rejected accommodations that didn't have a hair dryer. It's not all about me, I thought. I'm past that. It's right on the river. I determined to make the best of it. But the floor was so filthy I couldn't imagine taking off my shoes, and a night in that bed would be like sleeping in the boy's locker room at your local high school. And no running water.

I know I looked stricken, but I held my tongue. I tried to smile. I failed. Said my husband: "Do you want to go up the road to one of the motels instead?" YES! And so we did, and it was cozy and perfect. And right on the river.

The next day we went back to the Rock-N-Row for a thrilling whitewater rafting trip. I met the owner, who had booked the cabin for my husband and was surely curious about how the wife would react. "Sorry you went to the trouble of putting clean sheets in the Honeymoon Suite," I said. He laughed.

Deb recommends:
Rock-N-Row
Cotopaxi, Colorado
877-487-2494
www.rocknrow.com
Whitewater rafting, fishing, rock climbing, horse riding.
The best place on the Arkansas River.

Rocky Falafel - The Feral Shih Tzu

2010-07-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

In the diminutive lap-dog body of Falafel, my two-year old Shih Tzu, beats the heart of a feral alpha male. His size and undeniable cuteness elicit baby talk from strangers, and his googly-eyed gaze causes giggles, but he is, in truth, a predator and a guardian -- alert, ready to spring, ever watchful, and protective of his mistress.

The 5-hour plane trip from Birmingham to Denver in a pet carrier under a seat was a stretch for him. He likes to see what's going on around him from the highest possible vantage point. On the layover in Chicago, I let him out of the carrier as we sat in the waiting area at the gate. He stood at attention on my lap with the stance of a mountain goat and the focus of a hawk. Cuteness is just a disguise for this dog.

Now far from his home on a green and lush Alabama country road, Falafel watches the city below from the 15th floor terrace of our Denver apartment. A noise in the hall rouses him from a nap with a fierce bark that surely, for a potential intruder, conjures the image of the dog he truly is: large, toothy, not to be messed with.

We took Falafel with us on a day-trip into the foothills that make Denver the dead-end of the midwest -- the last outpost of civilization before the impossibly forbidding grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. We pulled off the road to explore some woods, and Falafel was in his element at last. He followed his nose with gleeful abandon, perched on rocks, investigated holes and shelters, and marked his new-found territory.

When we called him to get back in the car, he balked. He stopped and looked at us as if to say, "Thanks, I'll just stay here if it's all the same to you. You guys have been great, but this is where I belong."

So now Falafel, the king of cuteness, has a new add-on name: Rocky. When we call him Rocky Falafel, we see him as he sees himself: a feral prince of the Rocky Mountains, a carnivore who would surely be a one-bite meal on the Rocky Mountain food chain, but a predator nonetheless.