Jacob Becomes Jakob -- Guest Blogger: Milton Rabinowitz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.