Thursday, April 29, 2010

I've been hearing a lot about facebook lately, most of it not good. People being robbed after they wrote on their facebook "Oh so glad to be going to Florida for the next two weeks". Teenagers and even younger kids bullying and being mean..."Oh you look so fat in that picture you posted". Every now and then when I check my e-mail there's another person "wanting to be your friend". Now, I don't have many friends, but I don't think that is how I want to get them.

When I was a kid (long before the internet) we had autograph books that we would exchange with our friends. This was very popular in the 50's and I can still recall some of the verses that were written. We were about in the fifth grade and just starting to notice the opposite sex, so there were some suggestive ones at that time:

I love you much, I love you mightly,
I love your pajamas near my nighty.
No don't get excited, don't get red,
I mean on the clothesline -not in bed.

When you get married, and you have twins,
Don't come to me for safety pins.

Don't kiss by the garden gate.
Love is blind, but the neighbors ain't.

Tulips in the garden,
Tulips in the park.
But the tulips that Linda likes best
Are two lips in the dark.

We always hid our autograph books so our parents wouldn't read the above.

The pages of the autograph books were varied colors, so some kids would write on a blue page, I hope you are never the color of this page. Or on red "This is the color you get when you see (boy's name who is in the class). "

Some times the page would be folded over, and on the outside would say, "If you are beautiful, open this". Then inside it would say, "Stuck Up. That's getting a little close to Facebook. Or, "Open if you have a dirty mind" and inside "Ivory Soap." Corny, huh. But that's what the autograph book was for. Corny verses. Sometimes teachers would sign and they always wrote something like "Good luck as you continue your journey through school" or "You have been a pleasure to have in the fifth grade". I remember my art teacher, a beautiful young woman, Miss LaScala would always draw a figure, a girl for a girl's book, a boy for a boy's book and sign her name next to it.

That's another thing. You had to use your best penmanship because you knew EVERYBODY was going to read what you had written. Kids can type on the computer probably close to a 100 words a minute, but they can't write legibly anymore.

After you wrote your verse, signed you name, then you had to add: "Your's til Niagara Falls".
Or, "Your's til butter flies". Locally, we had "Your's til Bear Mountain gets dressed" or "Your's til Cold Springs".

Today it is all shorthand LOL, IMHO, WTF - for a two fold reason - older people don't know what you are saying, and it is quicker. IMHO - give me an autograph book anyday.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

I am taking two classes in the Learning Institute this Spring - Family in the Bible and three plays by Eugene O'Neill. They are both worth while. Yesterday we learned about Joseph and his brothers and family. Joseph's story has its up and downs...thrown in a pit by his brothers, sold to slavery, became Head of the Slaves in the Phaoroah's home, thrown into prison, etc, etc. The teacher emphasized the unknowns in a life, nothing can really be planned, with a story his grandfather had told him.

A tailor and his Polish Magistrate are friends. One day the Magistrate drives by in his car and sees the tailor. "Where are you going?" he asks and the tailor responds "I don't know". The Magistrate's friends in the car laugh at this and the Magistrate, angrily asks again, "Don't make me look foolish, where are you going?" Again the tailor answers "I don't know". More laughs in the car, and the Magistrate says "Give me an answer, or I will have you thrown into jail." And, again, the tailor shrugs and says, "I don't know" so they throw him in jail. The next day the Magistrate visits him in jail and says, "Why wouldn't you tell me where you were going?" And the tailor responds, "Did I know I was going to jail?"

O'Neill wrote Mourning Becomes Electra, the American version of a Greek Tragedy. That teacher couldn't help himself and told us this joke: A man goes to his tailor, puts a pair of pants on the table, and asks, "Eumenides (You menda deese)?" The tailor responds, "Euripides?(You ripa deese)"

You can tell I love these classes. But the best thing happened last night. I was thinking about the story of Joseph, really a wonderful, entertaining piece, and I looked for Aunt Lillian's bible to see if this version matched the Rabbi's version he had told us in class. Now, Maria had inherited Lillian's bibles, several of them, so she had given one to Tim, a white bounded book marked with the American Legion seal. I had often referred to this book since many of my classes deal with religion, but last night I discovered something for the first time.

Glued in the front of the book was a spiritual leaflet, entitled Power for Living ... the First Step. Inside the pamphet were two pieces of paper. One was a note from Uncle Phil, a love note written on a scrap of paper, with a heart with an arrow drawn through it. I love you written in Uncle Phil's uneven handwriting.

The other piece of paper looked like it had been in a small pad and written in red ink in Aunt Lillian's beautiful penmanship was a poem - The Traveler by James Dillet Freeman.

Let me write it out for you:

She has put on invisibility
Dear Lord, I cannot see -
But this I know, although the road
ascends and passes from my sight,
That there will be no night;
That you will take her gently by the hand
and lead her on
Along the road of life that never ends,
and she will find it is not death but dawn.
I do not doubt that you are there as here,
and you will hold her dear.

Our life did not begin with birth,
It is not of the earth;
and this that we call death, it is no more
than the opening and closing of a door -
And in your house, how many rooms must be
Beyond this one where we rest momentarily.

Dear Lord, I thank you for the faith that frees,
The love that knows it cannot lose its own;
The love that, looking thru the shadows, see
that you and she and I are ever one.

A gift from Aunt Lillian and Maria.

One more note about our class. Joseph's story ends the Book of Genesis. The book starts with Adam and Eve and Cain killing his brother Abel. When the Lord asks Where is Abel? Cain answers "Am I my brother's keeper?" and with Joseph at the end of Genesis forgiving his brothers, and loving them in spite of the past, it answers the question...Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I like that.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Yesterday I stopped at our Agway store to buy birdseed and a mother and daughter were sitting outside the store, with three cages of baby rabbits. When I was making my purchase, the phone rang and the question was asked "Is the lady with the rabbits still there? Someone else wants to buy rabbits?" They are hard to resist, but then I remembered back when we had rabbits.

I don't remember where they came from, but Joel had made a hutch and two baby rabbits appeared, one almost all white, one with black spots - two males (or so we thought) Peter and Thumper. Then in June my sister Kathy said the class pet, a black rabbit named Benjamin, had not been claimed by any of her students. Would we want him? So Benjamin was added to the group. But when he was placed in the hutch with the other two, a terible ruckus occurred, so Benjamin moved into the house.

Benjamin liked to sit under the pot belly stove and amazing to me, he would only poop in the bathroom, on the bathroom rug. The fact that he knew what room to use, plus always the same spot was appreciated by me, the cleaner. All I had to do was carefully pick up the rug, then shake it in the toilet and voila, all done. Unless somebody didn't look where they were going and stepped on the rug. Then it was a different story.

One morning I went to the hutch and was horrified by a sight of tiny, hairless, dead baby rabbits. Thumper was NOT a boy. She apparently was amazed at what had happened and was pulling out her hair to make a nest, a little too late. To avoid another sight like that, Peter was moved onto the porch. There he quickly made a home in a large, leatherly reclining chair, a tossed out gift from Uncle Phil. We liked to point out that Peter made two holes in the chair, an entrance and an exit hole. "In case he was chased in by a predator, he had another exit, so he could escape safely", we would proudly explain. No explanation for a rabbit, a rabbit predator, or a large reclining chair on someone's porch though. Peter, unlike Benjamin, was not happy indoors, so everyday we let him out to roam the yard. Getting him back in at night was the problem. "Go put your shoes on, we have to catch Peter", I would tell the kids. It took all of us to catch him. He would run in circles, dart out of our hands. It usually took anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to corner him. Paul was best at it - but Peter would retaliate as Paul got close. "He's pissing on me," Paul would yell, but knowing there was no rest until Peter was on the porch, would try to grab him anyway.

This went on for months, until someone from IBM wanted rabbits and came in a truck to take the three rabbits, hutch thrown in as well, away. He had two little kids with him, and they were so pleased with the sight of the rabbits. Like the army, it was "don't ask, don't tell" as we handed them over. The man took four boxes out of the truck, each one holding a large chocolate rabbit. The trade was complete.

The girls cried and moaned at the loss of their pets, but Paul opened up his candy box, settled on the couch in front of the TV and joyfully, contently grawed at the rabbit.

I never found out what happened to Thumper, Peter and Benjamin. But somehow, I bet it wasn't pretty. Happy Easter everyone. God Bless.