June 1, 2016; r to l: Juliet, my granddaughter, Joanna, my elder daughter, RN who would have received her doctorate in English literature, and Jade Kosmos Phillips, my son-in-law, a paramedic, who received my permission to marry my daughter Before he proposed to her. Publication on this site (hitherto bogged down by an attempt to describe what it is like to watch my Grandaughter arrive on Facebook will be reformatted to be in reverse chronological order.
June 1, 2016; r to l: Juliet, my granddaughter, Joanna, my elder daughter, RN who would have received her doctorate in English literature, and Jade Kosmos Phillips, my son-in-law, a paramedic, who received my permission to marry my daughter Before he proposed to her.
“Here ” and “there” comes to mind
as I watch you born on Facebook
or so it would seem.
Reality has a curious way of contriving enigmas.
Upon the announcement of your birth
Fran called at the other end of the Commonwealth
startled by such wonderous news declaring,
“Anything can happen.”
Lost, perhaps not forever,
Is the Shakespearean sonnet
Human Yudewitz wrote on the occasion of my birth.
Born though I as I was on Columbus Day–
Yudewitz read his poem
on the occasion of my being purchased
from God via a priest.
Consider the New-World orientation of Yudewitz wrote.
Now that I am 70, I follow the model established by my Bubbie Celia, complain to my children and grandchildren in third commandment relapses:
https://joelsolkoff.com/ten-commandments-west-wing-hebrew-english-versions/
A Star is born as formal religious prayer achieves crossover status into popular music
Interrupting the story at the point where it nearly began, first a message from your sponsor.
What I feel required to communicate today
I am at a crossroads in my life. The question is: Can I continue to live independently? Will I be forced to be live in a nursing home? Assistance is required. Self discipline is required. As it happens, my situation unresolved today is a significant Jewish holiday. Today celebrates God giving the Torah to the Jewish People. God did so at Mount Sinai using Moses as an intermediary. Here is an image found after entering Shavuot at the Google prompt.
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Last week was extremely difficult especially considering that I am a 68 year-old paraplegic who has survived cancer three times, broken my ankle this year, and survived a serious bacterial infection that nearly killed me.
Last week I was incontinent soiling my pants and my bed sheets, requiring that I wear diapers. Bummer. I was incontinent two years ago following a spinal procedure for reducing chronic pain. It only lasted two days then when I had to wear a diaper. This time I also had to wear a diaper for two days. After drastically altering my diet, I am now well–at least in my GI-tract. When one is ill and recovers, it is as if nothing ever happened. Reconditioning myself that I not feel humiliated again by incontinence would make it prudent for me to write a post on the subject.
My relationship to God is part of my plan to prevent my being forced into a nursing home which would be tragic. I am not an Occum’s Razor kind of guy. I mange to arrive at my destination by a circuitous route. Also, I love a great story. The story I began to tell about a religiously observant Israeli singer who was expelled from her Yeshiva for singing God’s word on television is a humdinger. My plan is to interrupt the story’s flow on occasion to clarify why I am telling you this now especially since I just looked at my calendar to discover that on Thursday I am scheduled to go to New York for spinal surgery to reduce pain. I have to cancel the appointment. I am in no way strong enough to travel in a few days. Let us start with the song that caused so much trouble, Ofir Ben Shitrit singing from the book of Genesis: “I am not worthy of all the mercies and of all the truth which Thou show unto thy servant.”
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“Deliver me, I pray Thee,” Ofir Ben Shitrit” pleads to God in a voice so beautiful it breaks my heart. “In the media,” Ofir writes, “I was presented as a role model and heroine. However, there were other voices–those of religious extremists, who called me a ‘fake Jew’ and a ‘shame’ to the Orthodox community. Orthodox newspapers and magazines featured heated discussions on the Halakah’s prohibition on women singing in public.” Here is how one religiously observant website defines Halakah:
Note the spelling of the word God. Instead, the observant Jew often decides not to spell out the name, but to alter it out of holy respect, G-d. My sister writes God’s name with a hyphen.
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Consider:
“Ben Shetrit—at 17, one of the youngest of the show’s more than 50 contestants—is a student at an Orthodox yeshiva for girls in Ashdod and the only Orthodox young woman in the competition. Before she stepped in front of the microphone, she briefly introduced herself. ‘I’ve loved singing ever since I was little,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for a way to cultivate my talent.’ One of the show’s producers asked her if religion would get in the way; many Orthodox Jews consider the public singing of women immodest. Ben Shitrit smiled sweetly. “I think the Torah wants us to be happy,” she said. “It wants music to make people happy. I think you can combine Torah and music, and this is why I chose to come on the show.”
Interruption that is the central focus for this post SLEEP
Regarding Ashdod, Ofir’s home town, I visited Ashdod several times in 1967, where two days BEFORE the six day war, I worked on a nearby dairy farm Kvar Warburgh. This is how Wikipedia describes Ashdod:
“Ashdodis the sixth-largest city in Israel, located in the Southern District of the country, on the Mediterranean coast where it is situated between Tel Aviv to the north (32 kilometres (20 miles) away) and Ashkelon to the south (20 km (12 mi) away). Jerusalem is 53 km (33 mi) to the east.
“Modern Ashdod covers the territory of two ancient twin towns, one inland and one on the coast, which were for most of their history two separate entities, connected though by close ties with each other. This article is dealing with both these historic towns and other ancient sites now located within the territory of modern Ashdod.
“The first documented urban settlement at Ashdod dates to the Canaanite culture of the 17th century BCE, making the city one of the oldest in the world. Ashdod is mentioned 13 times in the Bible.”
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Why am I writing about Zionism at a time like this?
Zionism is a srong identifier of who I am as a person.
On Monday, June 5th 1967 I awoke early. I had completed my sophomore year at Colubmbia College. There I had read lovingly Agnon’s beautiful stories far too sophisticated for my vocabulary in Hebrew.
I was living in my apartment at 108th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam, then not a safe neighborhood. There I lived with Vicki Cohen whom I met during freshman week and whom I later married.
My early morning walk took me to a newsstand/soda fountain on Broadway where The New York Times was being cut out of the bundle. While drinking a vanilla malted, I read the details of the headline stating that war had begun in Israel.
One Times dispatch from Egypt was wildly inaccurate describing what turned out to be early fiction about Egypt’s early progress in the War.
I decided to go to Israel immediately. First I required a passport. After finishing my malted I then:
1. Returned home to collect my birth certificate
2. Called the Passport office
3. Dressed and went Downtime so I could be there for the office’s opening
4. Purchased a one-way ticket from AirFrance scheduled to leave from Kennedy to Orly
5. Told the passport official that a very dear uncle had died in Paris, that Jewish law required expedient burial and that I had already purchased a ticket to Paris that night, and I could not board the flight without an expedited passport.
6. Monday night June 5th, I kissed Celia, my beloved maternal grand mother, and Vicki goodbye. I could not have avoided noticing that they cried when I boarded the plane.
7. At Paris the Jewish agency was so overloaded that I could not rely on its timely assistance,
8. Tuesday night, June 6th, I purchased a one way ticket to Cyprus.
9. Wednesday June 7th I was at the airport at Athens.
10. Early Thursday morning I boarded a flight from Athens to then Lodd Airport in Tel Aviv.
11. Early Thursday morning, my plane was the first commercial plane to land at Israel’s main airport.
12. I kissed the ground.
13. When the immigration official began to stamp a visa on my passport, he asked, “Why are you visiting Israel.” I said “to help any way I can.”
14. Two days later, when the War ended with the victory at the dangerous and critical Golan Hights, I was shoveling manure on a dairy farm in the South of Israel learning the Hebrew word for “”electricity” when my farmer host tried to tell me I was about to touch an electrical wire designed to keep the cows in their place.
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Jewish spiritual song – Jerusalem if I forget you (Hebrew Yiddish Israeli jewish beautiful songs)
Our bus company here in State College PA. is the excellent Centre County Transit Authority (CATA).
The above I published on You Tube the week after spinal surgery in New York City now 4 months ago.
Here is the About section
I had a major billing problem that threatened my finances. During my stay in NYC I required dependable Internet access. I was organizing the wording on my mother’s tombstone. Have you ever written the words for your mother’s epitaph to be set in stone? It is a very tense experience. published with the video
Confucius’s book on how to be a good parent helped a lot. I am a fan of Confucius.
My role as the Pariarch of the family is based on Confucius. Recovering from spinal surgery in The Bronx I worked on the wording involving extensive wide band usage in The Bronx [where I was born] which is the Dark Ages when it comes to the Internet] and where the situation required my going in person to the Verizon office.
Doing so contributed significantly to my being able to May the rent. — the rent on which I was overdue and consequently fined.
$1500. was due from Verizon instantaneously. The money was automatically deducted from my Social Security check of $1,788 check automatically deposited. Verizon got paid causing the $900 check to the landlord to bounce,
To fix the situation required my going to the Verizon in person to fix the situation. This video of Catabus shows you how this excellent Paratransit service works. Catabus literally is my lifeline.
Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald on their wedding day April 3, 1920. Years and misery later, Scott sat in his room at the Grove Inn and wrote "Crack Up" and other essays, such as the one above for Esquire Magazine. He wrote about his insomnia, "In the deep night of the soul, it is always three A.M."
Jazz Age uber-symbols, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald madetheir wild and alcoholic contribution to the 1920s. By the 1930s, Zelda was an in-patient at a mental hospital and Scott, sleepless nearby, at the Grove Hotel, Ashville, North Carolina, wrote a series on Insomnia for Esquire Magazine.
“On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire broke out in the hospital kitchen. Zelda was locked into a room, awaiting electroshock therapy. The fire moved through the dumbwaiter shaft, spreading onto every floor. The fire escapes were wooden, and caught fire as well. Nine women, including Zelda, died," notes Wikipedia.
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“Sleeping and Waking” — F. Scott Fitzgerald [December, 1934]
When some years ago I read a piece by Ernest Hemingway called Now I Lay Me, I thought there was nothing further to be said about insomnia. I see now that that was because I had never had much; it appears that every man’s insomnia is as different from his neighbor’s as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.
Now if insomnia is going to be one of your naturals, it begins to appear in the late thirties. Those seven precious hours of sleep suddenly break in two. There is, if one is lucky, the “first sweet sleep of night” and the last deep sleep of morning, but between the two appears a sinister, ever widening interval.
This is the time of which it is written in the Psalms: Scuto circumdabit te veritas eius: non timebis a timore nocturno, a sagitta volante in die, a negotio perambulante in tenebris. [His truth shall compass thee with a shield: thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night.]
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Joel’s Relevant Note:
This post serves as an appendix to my ongoing series “On the Edge of Despair.” The series examines the most pressing issue of my life. Can I continue to be independent or will I be forced into a nursing home?
As I write this, I am slowly recovering from five days of sickness caused by the aftereffects of stopping my pain medication. My pain medication is a blend of an opiate known as Oxycodone, which I have been taking under a physician’s orders for three years. The pain medication makes it possible to function.
Dr. Todd Cousins, the best pain specialist in State College, asserts that the medical profession as a whole is not sufficiently cognizant of the medical importance of controlling chronic pain. On a scale of one to ten, without medication and intensive exercise, my daily pain level is 7.5.
Without question, Oxycodene is a medication I would prefer not to take. Its effects and side effects are worrisome to say the least. One side effect of Oxycodene, morphine, and other opiates is severe constipation.
From time to time, I must risk pain, which last week caused me to weep, in order to let my G-I tract recover. The consequence has been five days of debilitating diarrhea.
For three days last week I was incontinent soiling my clothing and my bed sheets, requiring I wear a diaper.
Last year, after a surgical procedure which inserted steroids in my spine, I also experience two days of incontinence. Thus far, incontinence has been a rare occurence. Two days last year. Two days this year. The shame I feel as a consequence is enormous. I will be posting on incontinence and its potential threat that I be forced into a nursing home.
One solution to keeping me out of a nursing home is donations. In May, when I returned home from the hospital, my telephone service was cut off for several weeks because I was unable to pay my bill. Please donate if you can. A PayPal link is available at: https://joelsolkoff.com/part-ii-edge-despair/
The “Edge of Despair” series and appendices such as this F.Scott Fitzgerald essay will be forthcoming as I struggle to avoid the nursing home.
Especially important is that I continue my life’s work (as I so grandiously put it). Id est: Focusing on providing appropriate housing for low-income disabled and elderly individuals.
Specifically, I am close to completing “Renovating existing housing to provide residents with mobility disabilities the opportunity to live independently.” When completed, the report will be published as a technical paper on the website of the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center.
Please help me complete this work. I am a 68 year-old paraplegic who lives alone and independently. Productivity is part of the life force that keeps me going.
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Returning to F. Scott Fitzerald’s “Sleeping and Waking”
With a man I knew the trouble commenced with a mouse; in my case I like to trace it to a single mosquito. My friend was in course of opening up his country house unassisted, and after a fatiguing day discovered that the only practical bed was a child’s affair—long enough but scarcely wider than a crib. Into this he flopped and was presently deeply engrossed in rest but with one arm irrepressibly extending over the side of the crib.
Hours later he was awakened by what seemed to be a pin-prick in his finger. He shifted his arm sleepily and dozed off again—to be again awakened by the same feeling. This time he flipped on the bed-light—and there attached to the bleeding end of his finger was a small and avid mouse. My friend, to use his own words, “uttered an exclamation,” but probably he gave a wild scream. The mouse let go. It had been about the business of devouring the man as thoroughly as if his sleep were permanent.
From then on it threatened to be not even temporary. The victim sat shivering, and very, very tired. He considered how he would have a cage made to fit over the bed and sleep under it the rest of his life. But it was too late to have the cage made that night and finally he dozed, to wake in intermittent horrors from dreams of being a Pied Piper whose rats turned about and pursued him. He has never since been able to sleep without a dog or cat in the room.
My own experience with night pests was at a time of utter exhaustion—too much work undertaken, interlocking circumstances that made the work twice as arduous, illness within and around—the old story of troubles never coming singly. And ah, how I had planned that sleep that was to crown the end of the struggle—how I had looked forward to the relaxation into a bed soft as a cloud and permanent as a grave. An invitation to dine a deux with Greta Garbo would have left me indifferent.
But had there been such an invitation I would have done well to accept it, for instead I dined alone, or rather was dined upon by one solitary mosquito. It is astonishing how much worse one mosquito can be than a swarm. A swarm can be prepared against, but one mosquito takes on a personality—a hatefulness, a sinister quality of the struggle to the death.
This personality appeared all by himself in September on the twentieth floor of a New York hotel, as out of place as an armadillo. He was the result of New Jersey’s decreased appropriation for swamp drainage, which had sent him and other younger sons into neighboring states for food.
The night was warm—but after the first encounter, the vague slappings of the air, the futile searches, the punishment of my own ears a split second too late, I followed the ancient formula and drew the sheet over my head.
And so there continued the old story, the bitings through the sheet, the sniping of exposed sections of hand holding the sheet in place, the pulling up of the blanket with ensuing suffocation—followed by the psychological change of attitude, increasing wakefulness, wild impotent anger—finally a second hunt.
This inaugurated the maniacal phase—the crawl under the bed with the standing lamp for torch, the tour of the room with final detection of the insect’s retreat on the ceiling and attack with knotted towels, the wounding of oneself—my God! After that there was a short convalescence that my opponent seemed aware of, for he perched insolently beside my head—but I missed again.
At last, after another half hour that whipped the nerves into a frantic state of alertness came the Pyrrhic victory, and the small mangled spot of blood, my blood, on the headboard of the bed.
As I said, I think of that night, two years ago, as the beginning of my sleeplessness—because it gave me the sense of how sleep can be spoiled by one infinitesimal incalculable element. It made me, in the now archaic phraseology, “sleep-conscious.” I worried whether or not it was going to be allowed me.
I was drinking, intermittently but generously, and on the nights when I took no liquor the problem of whether or not sleep was specified began to haunt me long before bedtime. A typical night (and I wish I could say such nights were all in the past) comes after a particularly sedentary work-and-cigarette day. It ends, say without any relaxing interval, at the time for going to
bed.
All is prepared, the books, the glass of water, the extra pajamas lest I awake in rivulets of sweat, the luminol pills in the little round tube, the note book and pencil in case of a night thought worth recording. (Few have been—they generally seem thin in the morning, which does not diminish their force and urgency at night.)
I turn in, perhaps with a night-cap, I am doing some comparatively scholarly reading for a coincident work so I choose a lighter volume on the subject and read till drowsy on a last cigarette. At the yawning point I snap the book on a marker, the cigarette at the hearth, the button on the lamp. I turn first on the left side, for that, so I’ve heard, slows the heart, and then—coma. So far so good. From midnight until two-thirty peace in the room. Then suddenly I am awake, harassed by one of the ills or functions of the body, a too vivid dream, a change in the eather for warm or cold.
The adjustment is made quickly, with the vain hope that the continuity of sleep can be preserved, but no—so with a sigh I flip on the light, take a minute pill of luminol and reopen my book. The real night, the darkest hour, has begun. I am too tired to read unless I get myself a drink and hence feel bad next day—so I get up and walk. I walk from my bedroom through the hall to my study, and then back again, and if it’s summer out to my back porch. There is a mist over Baltimore; I cannot count a single steeple.
Once more to the study, where my eye is caught by a pile of unfinished business: letters, proofs, notes, etc. I start toward it, but No! this would be fatal. Now the luminol is having some slight effect, so I try bed again, this time half circling the pillow on edge about my neck.
“Once upon a time” (I tell myself) “they needed a quarterback at Princeton, and they had nobody and were in despair. The head coach noticed me kicking and passing on the side of the field, and he cried: ‘Who is that man—why haven’t we noticed him before?’ The under coach answered, ‘He hasn’t been out,’ and the response was: ‘Bring him to me.’…we go to the day of the Yale game. I weigh only one hundred and thirty-five, so they save me until the third quarter, with the score….” But it’s no use. I have used that dream of a defeated dream to induce sleep for almost twenty years, but it has worn thin at last.
I can no longer count on it—though even now on easier nights it has a certain lull…The war dream then: the Japanese are everywhere victorious—my division is cut to rags and stands on
the defensive in a part of Minnesota where I know every bit of the ground. The headquarters staff and the regimental battalion commanders who were in conference with them at the time have been killed by one shell. The command devolved upon Captain Fitzgerald. With superb presence…but enough; this also is worn thin with years of usage. The character who bears my name has become blurred. In the dead of the night I am only one of the dark millions riding forward in black buses toward the unknown.
Back again now to the rear porch, and conditioned by intense fatigue of mind and perverse alertness of the nervous system—like a broken-stringed bow upon a throbbing fiddle —I see the real horror develop over the roof-tops, and in the strident horns of night-owl taxis and the shrill monody of revelers’ arrival over the way. Horror and waste -— waste and horror—what I might have been and done that is lost, spent, gone, dissipated,
unrecapturable. I could have acted thus, refrained from this, been bold where I was timid, cautious where I was rash. I need not have hurt her like that. Nor said this to him. Nor broken myself trying to break what was unbreakable.
The horror has come now like a storm—what if this night prefigured the night after death—what if all thereafter was an eternal quivering on the edge of an abyss, with everything base and vicious in oneself urging one forward and the baseness and viciousness of the world just ahead. No choice, no road, no hope—only the endless repetition of the sordid and the semi-tragic. Or to stand forever, perhaps, on the threshold of life unable to pass it and return to it. I am a ghost now as the clock strikes four. On the side of the bed I put my head in my hands. Then silence, silence—and suddenly—or so it seems in retrospect—suddenly I am asleep. Sleep—real sleep, the dear, the cherished one, the lullaby. So deep and warm the bed and the pillow enfolding me, letting me sink into peace, nothingness—my dreams now, after the catharsis of the dark hours, are of young and lovely people doing young, lovely things, the girls I knew once, with big brown eyes, real yellow hair. In the jail of ’16 in the cool of the afternoon I met Caroline under a white moon. There was an orchestra:
Bingo-Bango Playing for us to dance the tango And the people all clapped as we arose For her sweet face and my new clothes –
Life was like that, after all; my spirit soars in the moment of its oblivion; then down, down deep into the pillow…
“… Yes, Essie, yes.—Oh, My God, all right, I’ll take the call myself.”
Irresistible, iridescent—here is Aurora—here is another day
Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald on their wedding day April 3, 1920. Years and misery later, Scott sat in his room at the Grove Inn and wrote “Crack Up” and other essays, such as the one above for Esquire Magazine. He wrote about his insomnia, “In the deep night of the soul, it is always three A.M.”
My credentials for being a music critic stem from the influence of my paternal grandfather who played the clarinet.
This. Is my favorite piece of music in the world.
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I am not here to tell you of my passion for Mozart and Chopin’s Nocturns. I am writing to convince IVY League Graduates, frequent denizens of New York City’s Yale Club, of the virtue of Country Music.
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You are a tough nut to crack.
In addition I am especially writing to convince my son-in-law to love country music. Jade is a paramedic at the Anne Arundal Maryland Fire Department. Even though he has a long commute, I cannot convince him to listen to country music.
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June 1, 2016; r to l: Juliet, my granddaughter, Joanna, my elder daughter, RN who would have received her doctorate in English literature, and Jade Kosmos Phillips, my son-in-law, a paramedic, who received my permission to marry my daughter Before he proposed to her. Publication on this site (hitherto bogged down by an attempt to describe what it is like to watch my Granddaughter arrive on Facebook will be reformatted to be in reverse chronological order.
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I want my two-month old granddaughter Juliet to listen to Maddie & Tae just as I will ensure Juliet is instantly familiar with Mozart’s Piano Sonatas.
Jade, who graduated from high school in Central California hates country music. He does not dislike it. He hates it. As soon as Jade hears a twang he stops listening and wishes it would go away.
What follows are first the lyrics of a song by Maddie and Tae, I will tell you about this Texas duo, I will embed their most famous song “Girl in a Country. song.”
“Girl in a Country Song”
(“No country music was harmed in the making of this song, this is only a test-t-t.”)
Well, I wish I had some shoes on my two bare feet
And it’s gettin’ kinda cold in these painted on cut-off jeans
I hate the way this bikini top chafes
Do I really have to wear it all day? (Yeah, baby)
I hear you over there on your tailgate whistlin’ [whistle]
Sayin’, “Hey girl.” (“Hey, girl.”)
But you know I ain’t listenin’
‘Cause I got a name
And to you it ain’t “pretty little thing”, “honey” or “baby”
Yeah it’s drivin’ me red-red-red-red-red-red-redneck crazy
[Chorus:]
Bein’ the girl in a country song
How in the world did it go so wrong?
Like all we’re good for
Is looking good for you and your friends on the weekend
Nothing more
We used to get a little respect
Now we’re lucky if we even get
To climb up in your truck, keep our mouth shut and ride along
And be the girl in a country song
Well, shakin’ my moneymaker ain’t ever made me a dime
And there ain’t no sugar for you in this shaker of mine
Tell me one more time, “you gotta get you some of that”
Sure I’ll slide on over, but you’re gonna get slapped (Hah!)
These days it ain’t easy being that
[Chorus:]
Girl in a country song
How in the world did it go so wrong?
Like all we’re good for
Is looking good for you and your friends on the weekend
Nothing more
We used to get a little respect
Now we’re lucky if we even get
To climb up in your truck, keep our mouth shut and ride along
And be the girl in a country song (Yeah, yeah, yeah, baby)
Aww no, Conway and George Strait
Never did it this way
Back in the old days
Aww y’all, we ain’t a cliché
That ain’t no way
To treat a lady…
[Chorus:]
… like a girl in a country song
How in the world did it go so wrong?
Like all we’re good for
Is looking good for you and your friends on the weekend
Nothing more
(Woo)
We used to get a little respect
Now we’re lucky if we even get
To climb up in your truck, keep our mouth shut and ride along
Down some old dirt road we don’t even wanna be on
And be the girl in a country song/…
Aww, no
(Ha-ha-ha…)
Before watching these videos, read the RULES first
Rules: Watch this video on mute. You are net ready to listen to the music. Do not turn on the volume until I return
On Monday, June 5th 1967 I awoke early. I had completed my sophomore year at Colubmbia College. There I had read lovingly Agnon’s beautiful stories far too sophisticated for my vocabulary in Hebrew.
I was living in my apartment at 108th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam, then not a safe neighborhood. There I lived with Vicki Cohen whom I met during freshman week and whom I later married.
My early morning walk took me to a newsstand/soda fountain on Broadway where The New York Times was being cut out of the bundle. While drinking a vanilla malted, I read the details of the headline stating that war had begun in Israel.
One Times dispatch from Egypt was wildly inaccurate describing what turned out to be early fiction about Egypt’s early progress in the War.
I decided to go to Israel immediately. First I required a passport. After finishing my malted I then:
1. Returned home to collect my birth certificate
2. Called the Passport office
3. Dressed and went Downtime so I could be there for the office’s opening
4. Purchased a one-way ticket from AirFrance scheduled to leave from Kennedy to Orly
5. Told the passport official that a very dear uncle had died in Paris, that Jewish law required expedient burial and that I had already purchased a ticket to Paris that night, and I could not board the flight without an expedited passport.
6. Monday night June 5th, I kissed Celia, my beloved maternal grand mother, and Vicki goodbye. I could not have avoided noticing that they cried when I boarded the plane.
7. At Paris the Jewish agency was so overloaded that I could not rely on its timely assistance,
8. Tuesday night, June 6th, I purchased a one way ticket to Cyprus.
9. Wednesday June 7th I was at the airport at Athens.
10. Early Thursday morning I boarded a flight from Athens to then Lodd Airport in Tel Aviv.
11. Early Thursday morning, my plane was the first commercial plane to land at Israel’s main airport.
12. I kissed the ground.
13. When the immigration official began to stamp a visa on my passport, he asked, “Why are you visiting Israel.” I said “to help any way I can.”
14. Two days later, when the War ended with the victory at the dangerous and critical Golan Hights, I was shoveling manure on a dairy farm in the South of Israel learning the Hebrew word for “”electricity” when my farmer host tried to tell me I was about to touch an electrical wire designed to keep the cows in their place.