Stir It Up

Flip looked up from his computer. "Barbara " " " " (indecipherable) line." He has Alzheimer's so all the words were garbled.

"What?"

He tried again. "Barbara " " " "." No luck. He walked into the kitchen and pointed to the glass mason jar in which we keep our coffee beans.

The charades game was on. "Barbara Boxer?" Blank stare. "Barbara Streisand?" Vigorous head shaking. "Bob Marley?" He nodded excitedly. Ahhh. "Bob Marley has a line of coffee beans!" He nodded again, beaming. And Flip wants to buy them. Of course.

"Are you thinking they have pot in them?" I asked. He looked hopeful. Ganja coffee. There are many flavored coffees on the market, it's not such a stretch. Jamaican Blue Mountain is my lifelong favorite coffee, but it sells for about as much as a Porsche, another brand I hold in high regard. I can't afford either, however.

Flip was intent on supporting Bob Marley's business enterprise. I reminded him that it would not benefit Bob Marley himself since he is dead. Flip looked crushed. Apparently he had forgotten. I felt bad for both of them, but I was on a roll. "He died in 1981," I added. I could have skipped sharing that detail. It was probably mean, although I was just trying to clarify something, anything, in hopes that our world would somehow return to its formerly reasonable state.

Rohan Marley, one of the singer's sons, founded the company as a tribute to the great reggae legend. He says, "My father came from the farmland in Nine Mile. There, he learned a deep respect for nature and humanity - respect that helped guide his life and ours. He said he would return to the farm one day. That was his dream."

Bob Marley's real name was Nesta Robert Marley. Maybe they're calling the new product "Nestacafe."

Why Can't I Own a Canadian?

I don't usually post things that I didn't write myself, but think this is hilarious:

In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.

The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, written by a US man, and posted on the Internet.

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev.11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14) I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan.

James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus,
Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education, University of Virginia

PS (It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian)

Ennui Is Me

I am a misfit. The Giants won the World Series tonight and while I am happy for them and their many fans, I couldn't care less. San Francisco is exploding with screaming, cheering, honking horns, dancing in the streets and general hysteria, but the whole thing makes me yawn. I am laying low in my apartment, avoiding everyone so I won't have to pretend to a manic joy I don't feel, which I could fake about as well as the Saturday Night Live Coneheads managed to blend with their neighbors. Besides, I look terrible in orange.

I know it's downright un-American, even subversive, to prefer a good book when I could be watching baseball on TV, but I haven't had a favorite team since the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles when I was a kid. Like all New Yorkers, I felt abandoned. Betrayed. I could get psychoanalytical and say that I never got over it, but frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Far be it from me to rain on anyone's parade. Our nation's pastime is a perfectly fine game. I have even enjoyed playing it on occasion. But one team's victory over another does not make me walk taller. I have never understood sport rivalries when so many other things are more interesting. In fact, I am so disinclined to commemorate a baseball landmark that I didn't even remember to post this confession, which I wrote last night.

Ode to Grandparents

Warren Charles Plauche',MD

I never had viable grandparents, although all four were living until I was grown. My father's parents lived in Brooklyn, New York, and I was on Long Island, but there was considerable bad feeling between him and them so we saw them only on State Occasions every several years. They had been separated since before I was born and I never heard them exchange a single word, although they sat on opposite sides of my aunt's Thanksgiving table. My grandmother supposedly disapproved of my parents' union, so they eloped two months before their planned wedding day, but always celebrated the official one. I have heard that she tried to break up their marriage even after my brother was born, but since I was not there and he, being six months old at the time, is an unreliable source, I don't know if it's true. Everyone who would know is now dead.

My cousin once told me that our grandmother taught her to knit and crochet and to this day, she said, she can do those things better than most people. I was fond of my grandmother but kept it to myself because I knew better than to express an opinion about anything which differed from my father's. My grandfather taught my brother to play chess, but since I was younger and female, he paid me little attention. He did write poems for me on all my childhood birthdays though, Edgar Guest-like rhymes on yellow cap, tucked into a card.

My mother's parents lived in California when I was born but moved to Ohio several years later. We visited them once, when I was seven, but I never saw them again until I went to college in Florida, where they were then living. My parents were more concerned with preserving my chastity than improving my mind, so I was shipped off to the least of the universities that accepted me because my mother's parents, two brothers and sister all lived nearby. I guess they assumed that this extended family would supervise my social life as stringently as they had to keep me "marriageable." To my relatives' credit, they didn't.

I adored my grandparents although I never felt as much a part of their family as my many Florida cousins who had known them all their lives. Every Tuesday, I took two buses from my dorm to my grandparents' house and we walked to Tyler's, their favorite neighborhood restaurant, for the Early Bird Special at 5:00. My grandfather would throw open the door and yell, "This is my granddaughter! Isn't she beautiful?" And every time, my grandmother rebuked him, "Charles, lower your voice." He would pull out my chair, grinning as he announced loudly, "I can't hear you, Daisy. I turned off my hearing aid." On their 50th wedding anniversary, he gave her a solid gold bracelet with large disks for each of their four children, engraved on the back with the names of the grandchildren. The largest disk said, "For 50 years meritorious service." He presented it to her at a large family party, and she read the inscription and threw it at him.

It has not escaped my notice that I have no grandchildren, although my three children are now adults with many qualities that would surely enrich another generation. But I only today put together this lack with the fact that I also lacked most of the experience of having grandparents, and I can't figure out what this means. No doubt some of you will dispute that it means anything at all, but I cannot believe it is random. Like any parent, I want my children to be happy in whatever way suits them. And while I would love to be a grandmother, it is absolutely, categorically, massively not about me. But it seems strange that I have thus far missed out on the grandparent issue from both ends if there is not a connection.

My brother knew all our grandparents better than I did because he was the only child in both families until he was six, when I was born, and he has eight grandchildren on both sides of the Atlantic. Did knowing his grandparents make it possible for him to be one someday? Was the die really cast all those years ago, when I was still a child myself? If I had known my grandparents better, would I now be swimming in grandchildren too?

Josephine the Plumber Got Nothin' on Me

I am inordinately pleased with myself. It does not happen often, so I am giving myself high fives and posting this in celebration. Doubtless you are wondering if I won a Pulitzer, Nobel, or Academy Award. Well, no. While those would all be nice and surely lead to unthinkable earthly delights, statuettes are nowhere near as useful as the award I gave myself, the one that will keep on giving. I changed a toilet seat.

I have had no previous plumbing experience. Flip and I spent seven years renovating an old house, but he did the plumbing and wiring while I ripped out paneling, painted, tiled and landscaped. He is no longer able to do mechanical things, so I am learning despite a decided lack of natural ability. Or interest. Necessity, as everyone knows, is a great motivator. In the grand scheme this is a pretty small achievement, but it reminds me that I can still learn new things. I won't say it shows that I can do anything because I'm a bit too cynical and self-aware for that, but I'll happily settle for being educable at an age when sadly, many people are resting on laurels. And while I hope that my epitaph will be a bit juicier, no accomplishment should be sneezed at.

I would like to commission an occasional poem to commemorate this extraordinary event. Where is that damn poet laureate when I need him? W. S. Merwin was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2010-2011 by the Library of Congress. I had to look it up. It seems odd that we are all familiar with the names of our leading generals in Iraq and Afghanistan, but our nation's leading poet is virtually unknown. I wonder if Merwin can change a toilet seat.

Great Artists Never Die

This has been an incredible week in the Art world. A painting which is almost certainly a lost Michelangelo has been found in Buffalo, NY. The painting, called "The Mike" by the family which owns it, was knocked off its peg by a tennis ball-wielding child in the mid-70's, so it was wrapped and stuffed behind the living room sofa. It has been there ever since. Martin Kober, a retired pilot, claims to have had no idea the painting, which he inherited from his great grandfather, was valuable.

The unfinished painting of Mary and Jesus may be the art find of the century. It is part of a series of Pieta paintings done by the great master, and Antonio Forcellino, an Italian art restorer and historian specializing in Michelangelo, believes it is authentic. He says it is even more beautiful than others hanging in Italian museums. When contacted by Kober, he assumed it would turn out to be a copy, but a scientific analysis of the painting proved that it is probably the real thing. Infrared and X-ray examinations of the painting -- on a 25-by- 19-inch wood panel -- show many alterations made by the artist as he changed his mind, with an unfinished portion near the Madonna's right knee.

"The evidence of unfinished portions demonstrate that this painting never, never, never could be a copy of another painting," said Forcellino. "No patron pays in the Renaissance for an unfinished copy." He added, "The first time I saw it, I was so struck by the strength of it that I felt breathless. Only a genius could have painted this; the darkness which underscores the suffering, the Virgin who looks as if she's screaming and the figure of Christ after he has been deposed from the cross. It's small, but the technique is extraordinary."

The ownership history shows a long and tangled path to that upstate NY living room. The work was done by Michelangelo around 1545 for his friend Vittoria Colonna, 45 years after he did his famed "Pieta," or pity, sculpture of Mary holding Jesus, housed in St. Peter's Basilica. The painting was given to two Catholic cardinals, and then to a German baroness named Villani who willed it to her lady-in-waiting, Gertrude Young. Ms. Young was the sister-in-law of Kober’s great-grandfather and she sent the work to America in 1883. It has been in the Kober family ever since. It is now stored in a bank vault, and will be restored and exhibited in Italian museums next year. It is probably worth about $300 million.

What a magnificent gift to the 21st Century this is! In Art there is hope, perhaps even the reason for our human existence. The key to our redemption. You would think that such an object of reverence would emit a radiance which could be seen and felt for miles around, like the Star of Bethlehem.

When is Zheng He Day?

Tomorrow is Columbus Day, and guess what? Christopher Columbus was an also-ran sailed. An imitator. A Johnny-come-lately.

Half a century before the first Europeans suspected the world was round, an armada of Chinese ships crossed the China Sea and ventured west to Ceylon, Arabia, and East Africa. Many scholars now believe that Zheng He, the most famous of the Chinese explorers, discovered America while circumnavigating the world. From 1405-1433, the treasure fleet made seven journeys to ports around the Indian Ocean, trading Chinese silk, porcelain, and lacquerware to Arab and African merchants for spices, ivory, rare woods and pearls coveted by the Chinese Imperial Court.

The fleet consisted of giant nine-masted junks and supply ships, water tankers, transports for cavalry horses and patrol boats, with a crew of 27,000 sailors and soldiers. The largest junk was over 400 feet long by 150 feet wide, while the Santa Maria, Columbus' largest ship, was only 90 by 30 feet, with a crew of 90.

It's interesting that the Chinese under the Ming Emperors chose not to exploit these newly discovered lands politically or commercially, as the Europeans did when they arrived. They did not slaughter or enslave any Natives. Zheng He didn't even open a restaurant. We may have to change a lot of place names from Spanish to Chinese when this hits the fan.

Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize was just awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for campaigning for political reform and human rights. His government has censored the news, blacking out all mention of it in the media, although his wife was allowed a visit to inform him of the honor bestowed upon him. She is now under house arrest and unable to communicate with anyone. Chinese authorities consider Liu a criminal and said that his winning "desecrates the prize," while the state-run newspaper called it "an arrogant showcase of Western ideology" which disrespects the Chinese people.

I wonder if Zheng He would be in prison if he were alive today, not for discovering new lands but for declining to turn them into mindless authoritarian states.