A New Story - "Filthy Rich"

An aged metaphor perhaps, but there's a reason for this title and story. Basically, it's to restore values to a somewhat "tired" economy. I'm sure we all can recall spending a modest amount of change for a candy bar or an ice cream cone and having the time of our lives with it. A cool lemonade after a hard day working in the sun is a good example of where this story is trying to go, You work hard you get an appropriate reward. Life is good. It doesn't have to be psychological conditioning or capitalistic indoctrination. It can be simply fun and proper for a given occasion or activity. It can even be a heartfelt gift for things we might otherwise take for granted. The point is, the best things in life are free, if only we could properly appreciate them. It's an old story, very very old.

Dan Haddon wanted one thing. Ever since he was a young boy he dreamed of being "filthy rich". It was a phrase he'd learned from his father. It wasn't that his father's ideas impressed him to any great degree. It was that the words struck a chord and brought to mind everything Dan considered important and out of reach, forbidden for that matter.

Another "Rather Cold This Evening" blog

Here we go again! NOAA has it going down to minus twelve degrees overnight! OK - not really unusual for this time of year. A soft snow has been accumulating all day. It's pretty and it seems to insulate the garage some. I keep the dog in the garage at night and there are some things I don't want to freeze in there, so I heat it up with a propane heater before I come in for the night. It was up to about forty six degrees when I came in tonight. That should hold till morning. I spent a lot of time insulating the garage, but this year I've been lax on checking for heat leaks. Minus twelve is no joke. The wind chill advisories are posted for our area up here as well as northern New York. It seems the jet stream is still looped down and pushing the warm air stream from the south over to the east before it gets up here. It's usually till March when that reverses.
I like the cool nights and the quiet the snow brings for sleeping. There are certain advantages to living further north. You need to properly dress and prepare for it. The same thing is true about very hot climates. Cool drinks in the shade can be a real pleasure. I love the beach and the ocean when it's warm, but there's such a thing as "too hot". In Israel, we'd stay inside between noon and two o'clock in the summer. The evenings were great!
Well, "stay warm" and "pleasant dreams".

Gosh It's Cold!

A girl putting groceries into the trunk of her car shouted out "I'm freezing!", the other day in the parking lot of the supermarket across the  from where I was loading my own groceries into my pick up. I asked her if she was OK and if she needed any help and she politely declined. "You have your hands full there", or something like came from between her chattering teeth.
I really understood her. The wind was blowing fairly hard and so, even for up here in the North Country of Vermont where you'd expect people to be more or less used to it already, she was close to calling for help.
Last night was something else again. Minus twenty three was what the NOAA weather station was reporting for the low and I read minus fifteen when I went to let the dog out and feed him. I watched him pulling his hind legs up one at a time off the icy ground as if it was red hot. It was the first time I'd seen him do that. I let him in the house for a minute to warm up. "It wasn't the cold or the wind",  I thought. "There was something trying to kill us!" I took it as a challenge and assumed an attitude that the dog picked up immediately and started to bark at it. And here we were, the both of us, each in our own way barking back at the cold. It made me laugh and the dog jumped all up and down like he does when we play. "Not us, we're not afraid of the cold - are you kidding!"

Life Is What You Make It

Thoughts for the New Year

"A place to go worth going to and a way to get there - that's all you need", smiled the old sailor. He puffed on his long curved pipe and added; "steer clear of places where they prohibit smoking."

What this really means is that you can have a rewarding year if you want and if you can draw up a practical plan for it. It's neither that difficult nor that simple a task really. Is there anything you'd like to be, do or have that you aren't, aren't doing or don't have now? Do you have a way to get there? Can you handle obstacles?
Many people put off doing any of that. They limit their goals and activities to TV and cruises and "jobs".  They "watch" life. Sometimes they see someone actually living it. More often they read about it. Cultures can and have moved forward. Today most are  not doing so well. People join cultural movements to have more participation in life. There's nothing really wrong with any of that - unless things are just not moving along the way you'd like it.
Life itself provides previews and motivation to most everyone on most every subject. You can be exhilarated. Skiing down a mountain for example, sky diving, driving fast can all be exhilarating. Many people do these things. More people watch them or watch videos of them.
It doesn't have to be that dramatic or risky for that matter. Just going outside to play when you're young can be pure exhilaration. New games every day! Things to do worth doing! You can even see animals playing and having all kinds of fun. It doesn't take all that much imagination.
There's a time when being young and impulsive is most proper and there's a time when being older and wiser is more fitting for making the most of life.

Make your own choices of course, but have a really great 2015!

Cold Never Bothered me Till Recently!

This is our eighth winter up here in Northern Vermont! It was interesting at first - a challenge - something to write home about. Well, now I live here and it is home and, quite frankly, it's just too darn cold for too darn
long Elsa! Enough's enough. You can take your fractal frozen wonderland - I prefer Miami this time of year!
Just kidding! Winter is just one incredible experience. The snow is pure white and quiet - perfect to sleep by at night. It's deep and dark and beautiful. We've just passed the solstice tonight and we're headed straight for the summer. What a great voyage this is!!!!

Sukkot in Vermont

My family was never very up on Jewish customs. We celebrated only Rosh Hashanah with a special meal the night before and on Yom Kippur we fasted - well as best we could. My dad usually just slept the whole day and got up when the fast was over and had dinner! He actually worked very hard all the time and this was a good holiday for him. He had not got along too well with his own father as he told it and seemed to hold it against Judaism for that and for a difficult life altogether. He never had his Bar Mitzvah and seemed to resent that too. Nevertheless, we had a very happy homelife, but we grew up in a vacuum of Jewish tradition. This changed when my mom died and my father followed her a few years later. It was sad in our house where it had been happy and I didn't want to stay there with my brother. Israel was in the news as they defeated the Arabs that surrounded them. It was David and Goliath and the world celebrated their victory with them. I felt proud for them and I decided to take a break from the sadness at home and visit Israel with my brother for a  while. It turned out to be four years! Meanwhile, I had married an Israeli girl and my son was born. He now has three children who were also born there in Israel. As a result, I have a very different view of what Judaism is and what the holidays mean.

I can relate to the Sinai desert now, having lived very close to it. I can understand what it was to wander forty years there before finding  the much better living conditions further north. People take water and vegetation for granted when it is all around them as it is in most of the temperate areas of our world. When you live on the desert, you see things differently. You thank heaven for a few drops of water and for any kind of food. The roots of the Jewish people are way back there in the desert of Sinai. A new slant on a  "wandering people"  eh?  Perhaps restarting then on this this "learn as you go" version of an ancient yet totally new and unique religiion, keeping its records and carefully marking oases and divine pheneomena so that their grandchildren and their grandchildren might have it a bit easier!
Well, I didn't build a special structure, I used a shed I had put up for sheltering tools and machinery against the winter snows. I did, though, say my candle prayer for the holiday, which was a first for me and I ate a donut instead of dipping "challah" in honey, but it worked for me. Reaching back thousands of years, with the help of memories of a Bedouin tent we'd sat in many years ago, I could just about see the early Israelites celebrating their good fortune in the midst of all that sand for enough water and perhaps some fruit and a small shelter to protect them against the cold of the desert night.
"The palm tree will provide for you!"

Smarty Jones and The Belmont Stakes

      The Belmont Stakes

     This one goes back a few years and is taken from a web-page I kept up for my science classes at Philadelphia Regional High School. If your interested, it still runs at: http://members.tripod.com/mrgoldsteinpa

I did a couple of cute stories for the students under "The Adventures of Wooples the Cat", about my cat Wooples who learned things very quickly and totally surprised me one day with his command of the English language!!

Anyway, here goes;

It was a terrible day in Philadelphia. It was raining fairly heavily and kind

of cold too.  I had been watching the running of the Belmont Stakes with Wooples, my cat. Wooples rarely watched television but he would keep me company if I was interested in watching a program. He preferred watching the birds on the front lawn. He'd jump up on the back of the chair by the front window and peer out between the vertical blinds with an intensity that reminded me of documentaries of hunched lions peering at prey through high grasses.  But today was different. We were going to watch Smarty Jones win the triple crown of horse racing and have a Smarty Party.  I had been caught up in the Smarty Jones excitement that had  swept through Philadelphia. Smarty was going to win the triple crown of horse racing and Philadelphia was going to be famous and the whole world would be happy.

     I had explained all this to Wooples during a commercial about Visa credit cards. Wooples assured me that he would help me root for Smarty and that he felt confident that Smarty would win the triple crown of horse racing and Philadelphia would be famous  and the whole world would be happy.  

      The rest is history. As Smarty got nosed out toward the finish, I turned the TV off. I couldnt bear to see or hear any more. I was thrown back to 1960 when the Phillies lost the national league pennant.  We were ten games ahead toward the end of the season. All we had to do was win one game, one game in ten. We lost them all! Goodbye world series. Goodbye famous Philadelphia. Goodbye happy world. It just wasnt in the cards.

     Wooples was lying on the floor with his chin on the carpet, his eyes nearly closed. He turned and looked up at me. "He ran as fast as he could" he said, and shut his eyes. He shuts his eyes whenever hes sad or sympathetic. Sometimes he shuts his eyes when you scratch his back or pet him but then he purrs too.

"I dont know what happened Wooples"  - I offered, lost for an explanation. "He was supposed to win. Everyone said he was going to win. The odds were 1-5!! for heavens sake."

     We let it go for several hours. Wooples was still brooding. He broods when he doesnt understand something. "He tried as hard as he could" he said. "He ran with all his heart Smarty probably feels real bad now."

     I felt bad too. I imagined a large number of people in Philadelphia who had to cancel their Smarty Parties felt bad as well. No triple crown. No famousPhiladelphia. No happy world. No champagne. Just a big let down. "Sometimes you lose Wooples. When you lose, youre supposed to feel bad." "OK", he said, and we brooded together.