Some Cheer on an Otherwise Somber Day

On this saddest of days, October 7, some lighthearted September Facebook posts from my sister Lee, some entertaining, some political, but always worth sharing:

It will never not be hilarious that over 300 insurrectionists have been turned in by their ex-wives.

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Kamala will be the first Democratic president in DECADES to not have to start by rescuing the American economy from a Republican recession.

LET THAT SINK IN!

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I’m at the age where I appreciate a nice handrail. 

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I read somewhere that being sarcastic on a regular basis can add up to three years to your life. If that’s true I’m gonna live forever.

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I’m not sure how many cookies it takes to be happy, but so far it is not 27. 

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A little girl asked her brother, “What is love?”

He replied, “Love is when you steal my chocolate from my lunch bag every day … and I still hide it in the same place.”

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Not all relationships will lead to marriage. Some will help you discover new restaurants. 

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Sign at a Grace Methodist Church 

New Commandment: Thou shall not use your religion to take away other people’s rights

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The reason your grandmother didn’t leave your grandfather has LESS to do with some moral compass or love than you think. Until 1964 an employer could REFUSE to hire you because you were a WOMAN. Until 1974 REFUSING to sell a WOMAN a home was LEGAL … Until 1988 you could REFUSE to rent to a woman with CHILDREN. Contrary to what people believe, women didn’t stay because relationships were better, they stayed because SOCIETY wasn’t designed for their independence.

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If you can’t secure your own golf course, don’t claim you can secure our borders!!!

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Wife: “Do you have a plan for clearing out the garage?”

Husband: “I have concepts of a plan.”

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Not to brag, but I can forget a new password before I’ve finished creating it. 

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Volkswagen should bring back the Beetle as an electric vehicle and call it the Lightning Bug.

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“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

- Hannah Arendt

D-E-T-H-R-O-N-E-D !!!

All hail Finley, newly crowned tallest of the Forseter clan!!! 

 

As New Year Approaches, Will Finley Be Taller?

At six feet, zero inches, my stature as tallest member of the Forseter clan may be in its waning days. Coupled with a body’s natural tendency to shrink as one ages, our grandson Finley’s unstoppable ascendancy is all but certain. He has already passed his father’s 5’ 10” standard and is roughing out at six feet. 

We will stand barefoot, back to back, when Dan brings his family to White Plains for Rosh Hashanah Wednesday evening. 

Finley is not following my growth pattern, the one Dan inherited. Dan and I were below average height at our respective bar mitzvahs. We sprouted to our ultimate height during our late mid-teen years. 

When Finley turns 15 in November I expect to be officially dethroned as tops in our family, assuming I retain my prominence this week. 

Visual evidence as to who is now, or still, top of the clan will be available on my next posting. 

Meanwhile, to all, 

shana tovah umetukah

שנה טובה ומתוקה 

Sharing Posts Worthy of Sharing

Everyone’s Facebook feed is different, so here’s a handful or two of posts worthy of passing on:

It’s simple. Anyone who cheats his customers, vendors, and partners is going to cheat you. Anyone who betrayed his wives will betray you. Anyone who lies all the time will lie to you. Wise up.

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I had a beeper in high school, and a good way to make sure it never explodes is to not constantly fire rockets and drones at the people capable of making that happen. It’s an important lesson to learn.

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When a 78-year-old man repeatedly rants about dog-eaters rampaging through Ohio, you have him evaluated by a geriatric neurologist. You don’t hand him the nuclear codes.

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How sad it must be believing that scientists, scholars, and journalists have devoted their entire lives to deceiving you, while a reality TV star with decades of fraud and exhaustively documented lying is your only beacon of truth and honesty.

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“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason’s and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” — Ulysses S. Grant, September 29, 1875

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Why are 100+ year old buildings classified as “heritage” and illegal to tear down, yet it’s legal for 100+ year old trees to be cut down every day?

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“No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means” — Nye Bevan, 1948, founder of Britain’s National Health Service

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Jews against Trump - because we’ve seen this before.

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Never Forget: Not one Republican officeholder who objected to Biden’s victory has objected to their own win on the same day, on the same ballots, using the same election systems.

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“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.” —Voltaire

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He doesn’t need more Secret Service agents. If thoughts and prayers are enough for our children, it’s good enough for him. 

A Tale of Eggs and Their Electoral Impact

Yesterday at my local supermarket I bought a dozen large eggs. The least expensive carton cost $4.69, about double the price two years ago. Which got me to thinking, the coming election will be decided by which pain affects voters to a greater degree—the pain in the wallet for a dozen eggs or the insidious pain to a woman’s womb as Republicans try to control all aspects of a fertile woman’s egg-producing years. 

Which reality will motivate voters? Today’s egg prices, or tomorrow’s “Handmaid’s Tale” future?

Inflation is only part of the reason egg prices are up. Another outbreak of bird flu has shrunk supply, spiking prices. Yet, that reality will barely penetrate the psyche of voters who choose to blame Democrats for inflation. 

Eggs of a different kind—the kind that can be transformed into human embryos—are at the center of the debate over reproductive freedom, the origin of when life begins, the status of equal rights for women, along with access to quality, affordable maternity and child care. 

Without giving details of his programs Donald Trump promises a utopia of lower regulation, lower taxes, lower prices, lower inflation, better health care, more empowered women, lower crime, higher tariffs to stimulate more American manufacturing jobs, fewer immigrants, massive deportation of illegal migrants, expansive child care, and an end to international wars. 

He is beyond loose on specifics on how he would achieve those goals, especially ones that require congressional action, such as providing better health care. He does not address how consumers could see lower prices if immigrant and migrant labor is sharply reduced on farms and in food processing plants, how home costs could go down without their presence in the construction industry, how landscaping and home cleaning/maintenance jobs could be filled. Trump ignores history and the view of economists that tariffs drive prices up for consumers and, if too high, could result in retaliatory tariffs or cancelled trade.

Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has not “dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s” in her multi-pronged economic stimulation program, either. Her plans, as well, depend upon a compliant legislature. But her keynote appeal revolves around healthcare, specifically women’s reproductive rights.

On the economy people have no or little comprehension of why prices go up, or down. They just blame a current administration for a lousy economy even if it was inherited. Thus, too few Americans have given Joe Biden props for what he did to salvage the economic shambles left by Trump. 

So Harris has to change the narrative away from the economy to reproductive rights and other medical issues that affect women and their families. She also has to emphasize how Trump and JD Vance are bullies and liars which women/mothers find repulsive. It doesn’t hurt her cause that Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno and North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson reinforce the GOP’s outrageous positioning toward women. 

Women, especially black women, college coeds and yes, women over 50, will be key to a Harris victory. 

At the same time, let’s be clear that it is in the best interests of men to support a woman’s right to choose, to their access to great health care and child care, to protect in vitro fertilization. Returning women to a role of dependency a la The Handmaid’s Tale would undercut our country’s standard of living, dismiss their contributions in medical, financial, business, education and other fields, and thrust the United States onto a path of Third World status. 

A Sadness from Betrayal, Loss of Trust

When you talk with Israeli women from Ashkelon, Israel’s largest city closest to the Gaza Strip, when you listen to them recite the horrors of October 7, you hear overwhelming sadness from a collective feeling of betrayal. 

Palestinians employed by Israelis, some brought into their homes, some even transported to medical services deep inside Israel, these Gazans were at the forefront of the barbaric attack, pinpointing specific homes and families to brutalize and kill, even to the absurd result that one kibbutz family with plans to be away that day escaped the terror their neighbors endured because they had postponed their trip without telling their Palestinian worker, so he told fellow terrorists the house was empty and need not be attacked. 

The betrayal cannot be forgiven. Severed, possibly forever, is a measure of trust that will take perhaps generations, if ever, to resurrect. 

Who will lose out? Israel will find replacement workers for their fields and factories, for workers and caregivers in their homes. The country is nothing if not resourceful. 

But from whom will Gazans, even the ones who reject Hamas, find relief? Income? Medical services not available in the Gaza Strip, surely not since much of it has been reduced to rubble? The bridge between cultures has been destroyed. 

For the last 10 days six women from Ashkelon were guests of Shalom Yisrael of Westchester, a reward for volunteer work they do in their community along the Mediterranean coast. They enjoyed an ever so brief respite from the sounds of war, the impact of missiles evading Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. 

A slight correction. Even touring New York they were reminded of the war. New Yorkers are used to seeing helicopters, in the air, taking off, landing. But to Israelis, helicopters along the Hudson and East Rivers were associated with military activity, with emergency crews bringing wounded to hospitals. 

Before October 7 Yona had left her home to visit family. October 7 was not just the sabbath. It was a holiday, Simchat Torah. Until she returned days later she had no idea a rocket had hit her home. Ashkelon has the unenviable distinction of being the Israeli city most targeted by terrorist rockets.  

Clara’s overnight nursing shift was to end at 7 am. But many emergency room nurses and doctors did not show up that morning, so a call came in to her upper floor station for help. Clara spent the next 24 hours attending the wounded. 

She had served as a nurse during combat in 1984. She was familiar with seeing wounded soldiers. But these injured were different. They were mostly civilians, poring into the ER not singly by ambulance but in droves, sometimes six to ten stuffed into any vehicle that could rush them to the hospital. 

Since 2010 I have been involved with Shalom Yisrael, a 35-year-old volunteer organization that strives to build lasting bonds between Israelis and Americans through annual visits by deserving Israelis, not because they are heroes but rather because they tirelessly, unselfishly, give back to their communities. 

This year’s six guests predominantly volunteer for an organization, Haken, that counsels women from families in distress. Indeed, one of our guests received such counseling and now provides it to other needy women. 

During their 10 day visit they toured New York, took a Circle Line cruise, saw a matinee of “Water for “Elephants,” ate in Chinatown, rode the subway and Metro North, and, most importantly, told their stories to teenage students at Westchester Hebrew High School, the Leffell School and Temple Israel Center of White Plains, and to staff of Westchester Jewish Community Services. 

They went home today. Clara, Yona, Malka, Leah, Valerie and Sigal will arrive back in Israel Thursday full of memories, knowing they imparted memories in all they met. 

At 75, Finally Learning to Swim, I Hope

With autumn officially beginning today, another summer has gone by and I still have not learned how to swim. 

Not that I didn’t try for so many years. I did go for 15 years to sleepaway camp where instructional swim was mandatory for campers. Okay, those last six years I was a counselor and could evade any swim instruction. 

Speaking of evading instruction, for one of my summers I almost earned an intermediate instruction certificate (I would have qualified if I had mastered treading water). 

My instructor told me to dive into deep water, swim underwater for 10 yards then tread water. I didn’t want to as I was not certified to dive into deep water, but as he was much larger than I, I reluctantly complied. 

My dive was decent. I swam underwater. But as I surfaced I spouted I could not tread water. I sank, only to be raised above the surface by the head of the waterfront who, when I responded to his inquiry in the negative if I knew how to swim, admonished me never to enter deep water again before successfully learning to swim. 

My instructor had pity on me so he gave me the Intermediate card with the proviso that I truly earn it next year. 

How convenient. Armed with that card I evaded the mandatory swimming requirements at my high school and college. 

I am not proud I do not know how to swim. I made sure our children learned. Dan even became a certified life guard, one summer working at FDR State Park’s public swimming pool where he alone recorded a dozen saves out of the more than several hundred that season.  

My antipathy towards swimming is deep seeded. In two videos taken when I was younger than five, I can be seen struggling to get out of the water. In one, my mother is holding me in the pool of the Takanassee Hotel in Fleischmann, NY., where our family spent several weeks each summer. In the second, we are at the shore, probably Rockaway Beach, and Meyer Engelstein, a close friend of my father, is struggling not to drop me as waves break around us. 

Much the same way I never learned to ride a two wheel bike as a youngster because my father let go and I fell hard on the pavement, I must have had some traumatic early childhood experience that has prevented me from feeling, from breathing, comfortably in water. 

Eventually, when 40, I learned to bike. Despite attempts to teach me to swim, I never learned.  

I am constantly surprised by friends and acquaintances who sheepishly admit they too cannot swim. A few months ago David G. suggested I join him at Westchester Community College’s beginners swimming class for seniors. 

I agreed, but when it was time to sign up, somehow our communication got scrambled. I have no doubt it was my subconscious fault. Given another chance, as David masters advanced beginners on Sunday, I enrolled in the beginners’ class. Friday was my first lesson. 

Asked by Angela, the instructor, what I hope to accomplish, I unhesitatingly said I wanted to learn how to tread water.