The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for June 2005

To My Children

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Dear children,

This is one of many letters that I am going to write to you about my experiences and thoughts about the journey we all share called life. Right now you are both quite young and this will not mean anything to you yet, but the time will come when you will see a need to read this.

I hope that when that time comes you will find hope, help, comfort and sustenance in this because I am forever your daddy and love you with a passion that I cannot ever adequately express.

In time you will both be in school and you will encounter the meat grinder we call peer pressure. Your friends and classmates will spend time telling you about themselves and their lives. Some of them will do it in a friendly, open way and others will not.

Some of them will try to influence you to do as they do, to dress as they do, speak as they do and act as they do. Sometimes this can be a good thing and sometimes it can be a bad thing. One of the most important things you can do is learn how to think for yourself and learn how to swim against the tide.

It won’t always be necessary nor advisable to go your own way. Sometimes the smart course of action is to do what the majority does and sometimes it is absolutely the worst thing that you can do.

Your mother and I are not going to be there to hold your hand, so you have got to learn how to use your judgement. If we do our jobs you will be able to make those decisions, good, bad, hard or indifferent.

I want you to always remember to never stop learning. A solid, balanced education is critical. It is among the most important things that you can do because it will help provide you with tools that you can forever use.

In the future we are going to talk about your college education and what you need to do to be successful. But long before we get to that point I want you to remember something. Where you start is not as important as where you finish.

That means that if you go to a community college and then transfer to an Ivy league school no one will know that you spent any time at the community college. And for that matter there are advantages to going that route, but we’ll talk about that later.

Something else to remember is that reputations are nice but they do not always live up to the hype, there are a lot of factors to consider. By this I mean the reputations that some schools get. They are not always deserved, but again this is a discussion for a later time and place.

For now I look forward to watching you grow and sharing your lives with you. I love you very much.

-Dad

Do You Represent All Jews

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This was a 600 word rant that I just nuked because it wasn’t flowing the way I wanted it to, so I started over. The question I posed in the title is Do you represent all Jews also known as do non-Jews make their evaluation/judgement of who Jews are based upon their experience with you.

It is an old discussion and one that in general I find to be very distasteful. There is something very wrong about basing an opinion about a group of people based upon the behavior of one person.

For example, it is wrong to judge all Black people based upon your opinion of Michael Jordan or for that matter Michael Jackson. I wouldn’t do it and I am teaching my children to develop their thoughts/feelings/opinion about people based upon the person and not some shallow observation.

Yet it seems that all too frequently I have been engaged in a discussion by fellow MOTs about our responsibility to show the world who we are and what we are like. That if we act poorly, if we do not serve as a good dugma we are hurting other Jews.

It just irks me to no end. I’d say that I hate it but that is far too strong a word so I am not going to use it, but it gives a sense of just how distasteful I find this to be.

And now my sad confession. If I am reading the newspaper or listening to the news and I hear/read a Jewish sounding name I take an extra moment to find out what the story is. If the person that they speak of is a suspect or has been convicted of a crime I cross my fingers and hope that I find out that I am mistaken and that they are not a M.O.T. And of course if it is something cool than I want to hear that they are part of the tribe.

It is a bit of a contradiction, but that is part of being human, the desire to pick and choose, the will to take the good and eliminate the bad.

In a utopian society this dialogue wouldn’t exist because we would not judge each other based upon anything but the merit/actions of the individual. Even though we do not live in that world now, there is no reason that we cannot work towards it.

We do not plant trees for ourselves, but for our children, grandchildren and the people that come after us.

(Cross posted on The Jewish Connection)

Grandfather kills leopard with his hands

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If only Dr. Doolitle had been there to translate.

NAIROBI (Reuters) – A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather reached into the mouth of an attacking leopard and tore out its tongue to kill it, authorities said Wednesday.

Peasant farmer Daniel M’Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.

M’Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard’s mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal’s tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.

“It let out a blood-curdling snarl that made the birds stop chirping,” he told the daily Standard newspaper of how the leopard came at him and knocked him over.

The leopard sank its teeth into the farmer’s wrist and mauled him with its claws. “A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide open mouth. I obeyed,” M’Mburugu said.

As the leopard was dying, a neighbor heard the screams and arrived to finish it off with a machete.

M’Mburugu was toasted as a hero in his village Kihato after the incident earlier this month. He was also given free hospital treatment by astonished local authorities.

“This guy is very lucky to be alive,” Kenya Wildlife Service official Connie Maina told Reuters, confirming details of the incident.”

Giant Popsicle Floods Manhattan

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And they say that weird things happen in Los Angeles.

“NEW YORK – An attempt to erect the world’s largest Popsicle in a city square ended with a scene straight out of a disaster film — but much stickier.

The 25-foot-tall, 17 1/2-ton treat of frozen Snapple juice melted faster than expected Tuesday, flooding Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid that sent pedestrians scurrying for higher ground.

Firefighters closed off several streets and used hoses to wash away the sugary goo.

Snapple had been trying to promote a new line of frozen treats by setting a record for the world’s largest Popsicle, but called off the stunt before it was pulled fully upright by a construction crane. Authorities said they were worried the thing would collapse in the 80-degree, first-day-of-summer heat.

“What was unsettling was that the fluid just kept coming,” Stuart Claxton of the Guinness Book of World Records told the Daily News. “It was quite a lot of fluid. On a hot day like this, you have to move fast.”

Snapple official Lauren Radcliffe said the company was unlikely to make a second attempt to break the record, set by a 21-foot pop in Holland in 1997.

The giant pop was supposed to have been able to withstand the heat for some time, and organizers weren’t sure why it didn’t. It had been made in Edison, N.J., and hauled to New York by freezer truck in the morning.”

I Knocked Myself Out- No Really, I Did

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Prepare yourself for the latest onslaught of silly tales and random thoughts. Earlier this week from a voice near the Mediterranean we were treated to tales of things that embarrassed us. I have a laundry list of these items, and while it doesn’t rival the fabled story of Old Mac Tubby and the Eunuch it does have a few high spots, or low. It all depends on your perspective.

Here is my sordid tale about the events that took place at a party. We didn’t have to party like it was 1999, because it was 1999. For that matter it was the Summer of 1999. We were at a wedding in Rancho Palos Verdes. In our circle of friends it was what you could refer to as the P.C. Era, “Pre-children” and that allowed us to play a little looser with the Schnapps and Scotch. Lest you think that this is a tale of Jack imbibing too much allow me to tell you that during the course of three hours I had but a glass of wine and a shot.

I did my drinking in college so it is rare that I really try to tie one on.

It was a very plesant affair. The bride was a dear friend and many of the guests were people that I had met many years earlier, people who had been to camp and Israel with me. It is fair to say that most of my closest friends were there. Once we entered the social hall we gathered around our assigned tables and laughed as we caught up with each other.

And this my friends is where the story takes a turn. Upon each table there had been placed the traditional flower centerpiece and a small white bottle that contained soapy water with which you could blow bubbles.

At some point during the conversation one of men at the table pointed at one of the women and said jokingly, “you have a real gutter mouth. Our wedding video has a clip of you swearing on it.” The woman in question smiled and said “I guess that you’ll just have to wash my mouth out with soap.”

As she said that one of the men at the table grabbed the bubble bottle and pretended to pour soap into her open mouth. What neither one of them realized was that the cap was loose and consequently she received a mouthful of soap.

I couldn’t contain the laughter, I was roaring, so hard that I fell out of my seat and smacked the back of my head on the ground. I must have knocked myself out because a moment later a waiter was standing over me and for a moment I didn’t have the foggiest idea how I had come to be lying there on the floor.

Needless to say I was just a little embarrassed by this, but I would be less than honest if I didn’t say that it was worth it. That episode remains one of my treasured memories, too funny.

And from a totally different tack I would like to say that I have really enjoyed reading Robert Avrech’s tale of meeting his wife. Gentlemen, may I suggest that you do not allow your wives/girlfriends read this because Robert has gone and created a problem for us. It really is a beautiful story, now if I could send him the bill for the roses I had to buy. 😉

Read the entries for June 15-17th, they are well worth it.