Foreign Accent Syndrome's coming! It's a long one with my part of the story at the end.

This is me with my maternal grandparents

I read about this on the weekend and I was stunned! It’s a crazy disease to get and sounds like something I would make up, an invention. We all learn that a good foreign accent gets us better a service at the public library, where they go head over heals to help you, but in reality, this one is a winner!

Brigid SchulteThe Washington Post
WASHINGTON (May 29, 2010)
Some people fall on their heads and wake up with their memories wiped out. A few revive with their personalities totally changed. Others die. Robin Jenks Vanderlip fell down a stairwell, smacked her head and woke up speaking with a Russian accent.
Vanderlip has never been to Russia. She doesn't remember ever hearing a Russian accent. She lives in Fairfax County, Va., was born in Pennsylvania and went to college on the Eastern Shore. Yet since that fall in May 2007, the first question she gets from strangers is: "Where are you from?"
"They say your life can change in an instant," she said in what sounds like a Russian accent. "Mine did."
For 42 years, Vanderlip, whose case is being studied at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Maryland, spoke with what neurologist Allen Braun called a typical mid-Atlantic American accent. But since the fall, her clipped way with consonants, dropping the final "s" from some plural words, saying "dis" and "dat" for "this" and "that," or "wiz" instead of "with," and her formation of vowels "home" sounds more like "herm," "well" sounds like "wuhl" identify her more like a Moscow transplant. The more fatigued she becomes, the thicker her accent grows.
What she has, Braun and other doctors say, is foreign accent syndrome (FAS), a legitimate though rare and little understood medical condition that can follow a serious brain injury. "It does sound strange," Braun said. "It certainly does sound like someone has a foreign accent."
The syndrome was first described by a neurologist in the closing days of the Second World War, when a Norwegian woman injured by a shrapnel hit to the head fell into a coma and woke up speaking, most unfortunately for her, with a German accent. (Fellow Norwegians ostracized her as a result, according to the medical literature.)
Since then, fewer than 60 cases have been reported worldwide.
Puzzled doctors have studied a Louisiana woman who, after a brain injury, suddenly began speaking with a Cajun dialect; a woman from the Newcastle region of England who speaks like a Jamaican; and a Boston man who developed what sounded like a Scottish burr. There are Americans who have developed British-sounding accents, Britons who sound French, a Japanese stroke patient with a Korean accent, and a Spaniard who acquired a thick Hungarian accent.
"The first time I heard about foreign accent syndrome, I thought, 'This is not true, this is somebody's joke,'" said Julius Fridriksson, who has studied brain images of patients suffering from the malady at the University of South Carolina, and who, as a native of Iceland, speaks English with a slight accent.
Then he began working with a patient who spoke with a southern U.S. accent all his life, but woke from a stroke sounding like a proper British gent. "This was an accent he could not control."
Scientists are quick to point out that these are not bona fide accents. Rather, in a way no one quite understands, the damage to the brain disrupts speech formation.
Shelia Blumstein, a Brown University linguist who has written extensively on foreign accent syndrome, said sufferers typically produce grammatically correct language, unlike many stroke or brain injury victims. But subtle changes in intonation make syndrome sufferers sound foreign. No amount of therapy seems to reverse that.
"I did have one patient who had a stroke and developed foreign accent syndrome, then had another stroke and it disappeared."
Two days after her fall, Vanderlip awoke unable to speak. Terrified, a friend called 911 and Vanderlip was rushed to the hospital, where an MRI showed she'd had a stroke.
Working with a speech therapist, she was able to make rudimentary sounds and slowly relearn how to speak, but with a Russian-sounding accent. When the accent remained after Vanderlip regained speaking ability, a neurologist diagnosed FAS.
Since the fall, it's not only her accent that's changed. She's become forgetful and tires easily. Formerly loquacious and eloquent, friends say, she's become introverted, can't speak coherently for more than 35 minutes at a time and has lost her job as a regional manager for the nonprofit Operation Hope. A single mother of two, she lives off savings and disability payments.
Andrew Uscher, a longtime friend, said many of Vanderlip's friends have drifted away as she has struggled with her injury, financial issues and depression.
"When we go out, people just assume she's from another country," he said. "It bothers her, not that people think she's foreign instead of American, but that it doesn't sound like her. It's not her normal speech pattern. And we all like to be true to who we are."
Nearly three years after she slipped on stairs at the National 4-H Council building in Chevy Chase, Md., grabbed for a handrail, hurled backwards, hit her head and screamed for help, Vanderlip filed suit against the 4-H, alleging the stairs were unsafe and seeking at least $1 million in damages.
On her answering machine, Vanderlip has preserved her old voice as a greeting. "Please leave your message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can." She sounds easy, confident, articulate. And American. Her eyes redden when she hears it.
"When I sound different, people think that I'm different," she said. "To this day, my daughter is nervous about me going on field trips or working in the classroom, because she's a little embarrassed about how I sound."
Vanderlip, who is studying brain injury education at George Washington University, said the incredulous looks she gets when she explains that she's a native-born American can get wearing. She watched, devastated, she said, as a Fox News Channel report on her lawsuit poked fun, with anchor Megyn Kelly repeatedly referring to her as "Inga from Sveden" and legal commentator Lis Wiehl saying, "She says she's going to be damaged because now some people think she has this nice, sexy Danish accent? I don't think so!"
She and her children have started taking vacations abroad, where she can lose herself in a polyglot of accents. "I feel there's no one to judge me in a foreign country," she said. "I don't feel so out of place."


From Wikopedia:
Foreign accent syndrome is a rare medical condition involving speech production that usually occurs as a side effect of severe brain injury, such as a stroke or head trauma. Two cases have been reported of individuals with the condition as a development problem [1] and one associated with severe migraine. [2] Between 1941 and 2009 there have been sixty recorded cases.[1] Its symptoms result from distorted articulatory planning and coordination processes. It must be emphasized that the speaker does not suddenly gain a foreign language (vocabulary, syntax, grammar, etc); they merely pronounce their native language with a foreign or dialectical accent. Despite a recent unconfirmed news report that a Croatian speaker has gained the ability to speak fluent German after emergence from a coma[3], there has been no verified case where a patient's foreign language skills have improved after a brain injury.
To the untrained ear, those with the syndrome sound as though they speak their native languages with a foreign accent; for example, an American native speaker of English might sound as though they speak with a south-eastern English accent, or a native British speaker might speak with a New York American accent. However, researchers at Oxford University have found that certain, specific parts of the brain were injured in some foreign-accent syndrome cases, indicating that certain parts of the brain control various linguistic functions, and damage could result in altered pitch or mispronounced syllables, causing speech patterns to be distorted in a non-specific manner. More recently, there is mounting evidence that the cerebellum, which controls motor function, may be crucially involved in some cases of foreign accent syndrome, reinforcing the notion that speech pattern alteration is mechanical, and thus non-specific.[4][5] Thus, the perception of a foreign accent is likely a case of pareidolia on the part of the listener.
For example, damage to the brain might result in difficulty pronouncing the letter 'r' at the end of words, forcing a rhotic speaker to use a non-rhotic accent, even if they have never spoken with one. In the U.S., non-rhoticity is a particularly notable feature of a Boston accent, thus the person might seem to speak with a Boston accent to the casual listener. However, many of the other features of a Boston accent may be wholly missing.
Some[who?] have suggested that in order to maintain a sense of normality and flow, someone with the syndrome then augments the accent effect by imitating the rest of the accent. Depending on how important a certain phoneme is to a person's original accent, they might find speaking in a different accent to be much easier and their usual accent very difficult to consistently pronounce after some motor skills have been lost.
The condition was first described in 1907 by the French neurologist Pierre Marie.[6] and another early case was reported in a Czech study in 1919.[7] Other well-known cases of the syndrome have included one that occurred in Norway in 1941 after a young woman, Astrid L., suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air-raid. After apparently recovering from the injury she was left with what sounded like a strong German accent and was shunned by her fellow Norwegians.[8] Another well-known case is that of Judi Roberts, also known as Tiffany Noel, who was born and raised in Indiana, USA. In 1999, at the age of 57, Roberts suffered a stroke and after recovering her voice spoke with what resembled an English accent, though she never had been to Britain.[9][10]
In January 2006 an Australian man suffered a stroke as a result of valium abuse while on holiday in Thailand. When he awoke his friends noticed he spoke with a mixture of Irish and American accents, sometimes swapping between the two mid sentence. This was the first recorded example of dual foreign accent syndrome.[citation needed]
A further case of foreign accent syndrome occurred to Linda Walker, a 60-year-old woman from the Newcastle area of UK. Again following a stroke her normal Geordie accent was transformed and has been variously described as resembling a Jamaican, as well as a French Canadian, Italian and a Slovak accent.[11] She was interviewed by BBC News 24[12] and appeared on the Richard and Judy show in the UK in July 2006 to speak of her ordeal.
In the July 2008 issue of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, researchers from McMaster University reported a study where a woman from Windsor, Ontario, after suffering a stroke, began speaking with what some people described as a Newfoundland accent.[13][14]
In 2008 Cindy Lou Romberg of Port Angeles, Washington, who had suffered a brain injury 17 years earlier, developed foreign accent syndrome after a neck adjustment from her chiropractor. A visit to the hospital ruled out a stroke. Afterwards she spoke with a Russian accent and even appeared to make the grammatical mistakes of a Russian speaking English, as if English was not her native language. She was featured on the Discovery Health Channel's Mystery ER show on the 26 October 2008 [15] and was also featured on the October 31 edition of Inside Edition.
In 2010 the first case associated with severe migraine was recorded. Sarah Colwill, a frequent migraine sufferer from Devon in the UK, experienced a headache so extreme that she had to call an ambulance. When waking in the hospital later her accent sounded Chinese.


Going forward from here, I thought about how old people, when I was a kid, at least all of them I knew, had Yiddish accents. There was a time when I almost believed that it came with age, which would make it coincide with FAS. However, at that time, most old people I knew had come to the US from Europe, either at the turn of the century or after the WWII. Therefore, all European accents I heard were Yiddish.

My grandfather had a thick Yiddish accent, but spoke English for most of his life. Arriving in the US as a young man and living until he was 92, he was a mostly English speaker except when he and my grandmother or my mother and father had something they didn’t want me to understand, then they would slip into Yiddish. As a coping mechanism, I learned to speak some Yiddish, at least enough to keep me current with what they were saying about me.

Late in his life we were all at a barbeque at our house when my boys, being pretty young, no older than 9, 6 and 3, urged me to come over and help them. They were talking to my grandfather and they all, including my grandfather, were frustrated.

What’s wrong”, I asked, and my grandfather told me in Yiddish that they didn’t understand him. I told him, “They could understand you if you spoke to them in English”. He said (in Yiddish)," I am speaking to them in English!” “You’re speaking to them in Yiddish!” I exclaimed.

He waved his hand at me, a sign of obvious frustration, and said he didn’t understand why they couldn’t understand, because I understood.

OK, so now that I'm old, I expect to develop a Yiddish accent which will help me explain this story a little bit better!

Extinguishing Behavior

In the late 60’s, in my graduate program, we were required to take Developmental Psychology. This was a great course for me; I learned much of life’s lessons, or at least the root of them.

As a young father of three boys, the lessons learned could, or should be brought to bear immediately. This was parenting training if there ever was such.

An important lesson to be learned was related to Operant Conditioning, and in that, Extinguishing Behavior.

Extinction is the lack of any consequence following a behavior. When a behavior is inconsequential, producing neither favorable nor unfavorable consequences, it will occur with less frequency. When a previously reinforced behavior is no longer reinforced with either positive or negative reinforcement, it leads to a decline in the response.

There it was, a simple solution to the world’s problems, or at least to my own.

This was, in simple terms, the seemingly non active act of ignoring stuff! Pay no attention and it will go away (eventually).

My second son was not easily ignored, nor is he still. He had a one track mind, and it was his track!

We were having a family dinner. My wife, our kids, and my in-laws were in the dining room in our house in Randallstown, MD, when son #2 leaves the table, and comes back in with a whistle! I can’t remember if it was a whistle I had given him (God forbid) or one he had found. The year must have been 1968, and he was two. He put the whistle to his lips and he blew!

Mr. Know It All (that’s me), the knower of Developmental Psychology, decides to extinguish the behavior. I tell everyone assembled not to pay attention to the little darling, but just pretend it’s not happening and it will go away.

He blows again and looks at all of us, smiles and blows again. He keeps stopping waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. He continues to smile, laugh, and blow on the
damned whistle!

After ten minutes of grinning through clenched teeth and telling every one to be cool, my experiment failed! I couldn’t ride out the assault! I grabbed him, the whistle and carried him out of the room.

The fact that he will read this lets you know I didn’t kill him, although I thought about it.

If I only could have waited it out. He should have been finished by now….

Medical Mayhem of the 60's

In the early 60’s, when I was working part-time in the Department Store, my wife and little baby came in to see me on a Saturday morning.

My son, in his stroller, was the picture of health and good grooming, as all over privileged young Jewish boys in Baltimore at that time would be.

His accessories included, as a foot correcting device, a medical brace. This was a steel bar with holders for his expensive Stride Right shoes, polished beautifully white and gleaming.

This custom device was prescribed by doctors to correct a foot gone outwards.

A co-worker, not from an over privileged background himself, came over to see me after my family had left and all but expressed his condolences. He had watched my wife and son’s visit and was stricken by the scene. He was expressing grave concern over my son’s having polio!

Now, the vaccine, developed in the 1950s, was credited with reducing the global number of polio cases per year from many hundreds of thousands to around a thousand. In North America, I knew of no cases, and even I was young enough to have taken the vaccine.


However, I felt his pain and assured him there was nothing wrong except over privilegeditis, a disease of young people thinking they have money.

Embezzelment is a just four syllable word...

Years ago I was working at a school where we had a questionable young guy working with us. He was a business guy, with a title, and I have no idea what his job was.

He prepared bills etc. for the Vice President for Business, who in turn passed these on to the President for check signing.

OK, it seems to me (and it did then) that there were too many business guys for our institution, but then I sound like all the people who have worked with me who are sure I have too many “business guys”.(Of course, some of these guys are women.)

It also meant, I think, that he ordered stuff for the school. Departments usually ordered some of their own stuff, with permission, but often the business guy did that and was the one who gave permission and kept budgetary records. I guess he had other responsibilities; he ordered, and he processed. I imagine we had clerks in there somewhere but it was so many years ago and I wasn’t that interested in anything that didn’t pertain to me directly.

One day the Vice President was handing the carefully prepared bills and checks over to the President when the President stopped and sat back. “What is this?” he said, staring at a Sears’s bill in his hand. “Why it’s the Sear’s bill,” said the Vice President for Business.

In fact it was a Sears’s bill for several thousand dollars, because it included a new tractor for lawn cutting.

“But we don’t have a lawn!” said the President, who wasn’t easily fooled.

It seems our business guy with a title had a lawn, however…………

It's all about misunderstood texting...

On my way back to work this evening, I had to stop at the liquor store to buy a bottle of cold white wine for the dinner I was about to attend. It was the pre-event dinner for our Annual Juried Student Show, a dinner (pot luck style but fantastic) done by our Gallery Committee for ourselves and the guest judges (usually two of them). The big bottle of red was in the car but I needed a cold white, and it was available.

Leaving the store, in the car going to the school, I received a text.

We now have laws in Ontario about driving and talking (hands free) and no texting. Given my eyesight and the size of my hands and my phone keyboard, there is no need for a law, I can’t do it anyway.

At the light I looked and it said, “XOXO, Love, Sandy”

“How nice” I thought, “my wife just wanted to tell me she loved me.” I left the house with her not being at home, and I beeped at her as I passed her walking our dog Max down the street.

It’s hot as hell out there, and she was so nice to send such a loving message, it made me feel all warm inside.

I quickly sent off a text message saying, “Thanks, I love you!”

I smiled and went on my way.

A bit later as I pulled into my parking space, a message came through saying, “Well, are you doing it or not!”

I was really confused! Do what? I looked to my phone again and looked at messages.

It seems my wife sent a very long message asking me to do an errand at the liquor store, and she signed it, XOXO, Love, Sandy.

The phone chose to separate the message into two parts, the part I didn’t see, and the part that said, XOXO, Love, Sandy!

The warm feeling went away and I was just plain hot. After I was finished with the event, I went off to the liquor store and picked up just what she needed, which clearly didn’t include yours truly!

A search through the records...

A funny thing, as someone was asking me today about if we knew whose children attended our kid’s classes, I remembered a story about such a question.

Years ago, some development people I knew got to worrying about just such an “opportunity”. Did we know whose children attended the kid’s classes? Maybe, they theorized, if we could find out, some kid all grown up and rich and famous or some parent, all rich and famous would bestow upon the school enormous sums of cash because we were responsible for all that early training.

They took off and ran with this idea and searched all available records going back for years. In the days before digital files, people pored through stored records in basements to try and find a name or a possible name and try and determine if that was the rich and famous name they recognized.

After much time spent in the records, they found one famous name. Unfortunately it was Alger Hiss (as a child)!

For those of you too young to know who this was, here is the Wikipedia version:

Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American lawyer, civil servant, businessman, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and UN official. Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.

On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist Party member, testified under subpoena before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (known as HUAC) that Hiss had secretly been a communist while in federal service, despite the fact that Chambers had previously testified under oath that Hiss had never been a communist. Called before HUAC, Hiss categorically denied the charge. When Chambers repeated his claim in a radio interview, Hiss filed a defamation lawsuit against him.

During the pretrial discovery process, Chambers produced new evidence indicating that he and Hiss had been involved in espionage, which each had denied under oath to HUAC. A federal grand jury indicted Hiss on two counts of perjury; Chambers admitted to the same offense, but as a cooperating government witness he was never charged. Although Hiss's indictment stemmed from the alleged espionage, he could not be tried for that crime because the statute of limitations had expired.

After a mistrial due to a hung jury, Hiss was tried a second time. In January 1950, he was found guilty on both counts of perjury and received two concurrent five-year sentences, of which he eventually served 44 months. Arguments about the case and the validity of the verdict took center stage in broader debates about the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the extent of Soviet espionage in the United States. Although a variety of evidence has been added to the debate since his conviction, the question of Hiss's guilt or innocence remains controversial to some.

Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are in the minority of scholarly opinion.

The development people decided that perhaps this was a useless venture, and the time could be best spent on more fruitful ideas.

Not another one!

“Oh no, another IKEA piece of furniture, where is there enough room in your house?” my oldest son exclaimed on the phone a few minutes ago.

I admit I keep writing about pieces of IKEA furniture stuffed in here. However, this is replacing things that will leave. My youngest daughter’s new room (new floor, new bed etc.) needed a new dresser, and we went with a Hemnes dresser from IKEA. I will admit that my household furnishings are made up of antiques (not just used stuff) and IKEA. This is called eclectic, or as I used to call it “Early Halloween”!

My three sons learned to cook from me, and my daughters have learned to make IKEA furniture, they already know how to cook. I hope the girls are as good at understanding the pictographs IKEA produces as the boys are ay cooking.

My daughter basically built the body and I built the drawers. We don’t work together as a team that well, and we have so little space to work in that it’s often easier to work alone together.

We built the piece in my bedroom, clearing out a space, moved the body to her bedroom, and brought in the drawers as finished. My oldest daughter went to New York this morning so we had some building room available. We had a bit if space to spread out.

The two boxes weighed 134 pounds, and I believe it was one box at 34 and the other at100! I carried up the first one and opened up the second at brought it up in stages. When I brought it home from the store, the guy on the loading area helped me get it into the car, and my wife and I struggled to get it into the garage.

I think we may be done for a while with IKEA building, however, I see a ceiling fixture waiting for me to install and I always worry that they have some uniquely Swedish way of wiring things which will test the limits of expertise.

Taylor Swift at the ACC

On Friday, when my buddy Bert, ace framer and knowledgeable art appraiser asked, “What’s everyone doing this weekend?” My wife and I explained that the girls were going to see Taylor Swift at the Air Canada Centre on Saturday. “Who are they?” he asked.

I assume that not everyone is in to popular culture, and there are some people out there who don’t know who Taylor Swift is. I ran into a person last week who didn’t know Martin Short went to McMaster University, one of the local facts that everyone knows. I find a few local people who never heard of the Dundas Valley School of Art, which I find amazing because I spend my life making sure everyone does know about us.

My friend Bert may know about Tom Swifties, a popular linguistic anomaly of the dimly lit past.

Wikipedia says, “A Tom Swifty (or Tom Swiftie) is a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is attributed. Tom Swifties may be considered a type of Wellerism.

The name comes from the Tom Swift series of books (1910–1993), similar in many ways to the better-known Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, and, like them, produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. In this series, the young scientist hero, Tom Swift, underwent adventures involving rocket ships, ray-guns and other things he had invented. A stylistic idiosyncrasy of at least some books in this series was that the author, "Victor Applegate," went to great trouble to avoid repetition of the unadorned word "said"; elegant variation used a different quotative verb, or modifying adverbial words or phrases. Since many adverbs end in "ly" this kind of pun was originally called a Tom Swiftly, the prime example being "We must hurry," said Tom Swiftly. At some point, this kind of humor was called a Tom Swifty, and that name is now more prevalent.
The Tom Swifty, then, is a parody of this style with the incorporation of a pun.

Now, this is about Taylor Swift, or at least an offshoot of that event.
The girls took the train in from Burlington to Toronto, and walked the two blocks to the ACC. On return, they did the same thing. I was not there to see the event, but I saw the second train return at 12:43 a.m., as I was picking them up. I will assume the first train was full, and this was just the Burlington bound crowd, but I have never seen so many white teen girls of a certain age, in a single place in my time, at least not since a Monkees concert years ago. They were all mostly tall and thin, and trying for Taylor Swift lookalike status.

It’s funny, I guess, how so many girl performers attract girl fans. Maybe boys just don’t go to concerts that much, or maybe just metal shows. Easy for me to figure girls attracted to boy band stuff, but I never got the girl to girl performer attachment, but it’s big.

It seems to me if I were a young guy; I’d start hanging out at Taylor Swift, Avril Lavigne and other girl performers who attract large audiences of young girls’ concerts.

They dreamed of pedophiles sitting on the benches

Ten years ago we were involved in a playground building project at our children’s elementary school.

This was a labor of love, of course, and great care was taken to insure proper equipment was used and proper safety precautions were taken.

It was a huge task and I believe it required raising $40,000, a lot for a school council (PTA) to take on.

One parent worked tirelessly heading up the project and deserved full credit for motivating everyone involved.

It was installed during our second year living here and is a great asset to the neighborhood.

After it was in place, as a casual observer who used the facility, I asked about why there were no benches for parents, grandparents, etc. to sit in while the kids were playing. Frankly I was tired of leaning on things!

I assumed it was because of expenses, and was willing to donate more to insure a place for me!

I learned that our leader and a group of her followers were against benches because they encouraged sitters, who of course must be pedophiles. Pedophiles, it seems, can not lean, so they would not be available to watch kids from a leaning position.

I tried to fight this problem, but had larger problems to battle but that will take another story, which is coming. This one I chose to let sit (the only thing that was sitting) until the parent leader was gone, and the next batch of up and comers figure it out. Now we have benches to sit on.

As I live a block from the place, and walk my dog by there every day, I have yet to identify any criminals, homeless persons or certainly pedophiles sitting on the benches. As far as I know, these benches have not added to an increased crime rate in the neighborhood. They are just nice places to sit.

The Hulk, Stanley's Pizza and Dundas, Ontario

The cretion of Stanley's Pizza as it appears in the movie, The Hulk, being built in Dundas.

The co-creator of the Hulk, Stanley Lieber is a.k.a. Stan "The Man" Lee.

The fictional Stanley Lieber, of Stanley's Pizza Parlor, was once a student at Culver University who took at job at Goodman's Pizza and a good friend of the owner Marty. Marty left and Stanley took over. It eventually became the big hangout for the students and outlasted all major chains that tried to move it. Bruce Banner worked for there when he was a student. Stanley had hopped that Bruce would follow in his footsteps and take over the restaurant. He also tends to measure distress by how many slices of pizza it takes to get over it, Bruce was a three and might have underestimated.

Bruce actually delivers pizza for a week before trying to get the data, while also following Betty around. He delivers to a dorm room full of physics students who argue over a problem that Bruce knows the answer to. He then goes to the Alpha Theta Omega sorority where they take the pizza without paying. He says his "don't make me angry" line but they laugh and brush him off. He then considers other lines that may be taken more seriously, such as "It's clobbering time" or "I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice."

When sneaking into the lab Bruce finds student named Amadeus Cho studying for finals who he gives his pizza to. After failing to find the data Bruce receives a message from someone. Bruce believes that Ross may have found them but that seems unlikely.

After clicking Accept Bruce becomes frightened when an image of a monstrous creature rampages through walls, believing some did find him. Eventually the monster eats some pizza and Bruce realizes that it was just Cho joking around.

The pizza that Stanley makes for Betty is her favorite: plum tomatoes, shrimp, and peppers.
After leaving the pizza parlor Bruce thinks about jumping in front of a passing car but knows The Hulk would just stop him.

In the movie version of the story, Stanley’s Pizza was built in Dundas, Ontario. It lasted there for about three days. I was able to photograph it was they were building it.

Dinner with the Monk...

Traveling from Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport to New York, my wife and I had settled in for a long, comfortable trip.

At the airport we had seen a group of saffron robbed Buddhist monks wishing well to a companion, who was to make his way to New York as well. They stood out from the crowd because of their colorful costumes.

I looked to my left and saw the traveling monk seated on the aisle a few rows in front of me, giving me visual access to his activities.

At some point, a way into the flight, lunch was served. Today’s special, at least in the “cheap seats” was lasagna and salad with ranch dressing.

The monk received his, and looked somewhat perplexed. He looked around at others trying to make sense of the lunchtime activities. This clearly looked to me like a guy who was given something he had never seen before. This made me think that perhaps Italy was not his original home (yes, he was Asian) or that this lasagna was perhaps not closely related to real lasagna, which he may have been used to.

In any case, he did fine with the accompanying bread, and was working up to the main dish when he spied the ranch dressing! The Ah-Ha thing in his head must have popped! He had figured out what to do. He opened the dressing package by tearing off a corner and squeezed out the ranch dressing all over the lasagna! (This was done before I could stop him, as I was trying to extricate myself from a window seat to get to him).

He smiled, tasted it, found a new western taste, and enjoyed his meal!

From the Kraft Family Kitchen

My wife asked me to make an appetizer for this morning’s brunch. We were having some friends in and I was trying to help. I don’t always get a chance, but today I was able to do a salad dressing (maple syrup dressing, very Canadian) and an appetizer.

The recipe came from the Kraft web site, and had arrived by email. As I was making it, I thought about Ed Herlihy, the voice for so many years of the Kraft Family Kitchen. As I made the food, I had a conversation with Ed, pretending he was giving me instructions.

I looked up information about Ed on Wikipedia, and it said:
Ed Herlihy (August 14, 1909 – January 30, 1999) was an American newsreel narrator for Universal-International. His voice was heard in countless films on every subject, making him one of the best-known voices in broadcast history. He also was a long-time radio and television announcer for NBC, hosting The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour in the 1940s and 1950, as well as doing Kraft commercials on their various TV series during the 1950s through the early-1980s. He was also Jack Paar's announcer on The Tonight Show.

Here’s the recipe and it was great! As you can see, I didn’t peel the cucumbers because it seemed not to need it.

Cucumber Roulades

1 English cucumber, peeled
1/4 cup Philadelphia Chive & Onion Cream Cheese Product
30 g smoked salmon, thinly sliced, cut into 12 pieces
12 sprigs fresh dill

Cut cucumber into 12 thick slices. Use melon baller to scoop out centre of each.

Fill with cream cheese product; top with salmon and dill.

Extremes

The photo used includes me, two of my sons and both of my daughters, sometime in the 90's.

After 350+ stories I loose track of what I’ve said and what I haven’t. I don’t intend to retell a tale unless it’s bringing back an oldie, but I’ve been reading through all of mine and I can’t find these, although I can’t be sure.

In the very late 70’s, my son was invited to a Columbia College (New York) potential new student reception at an Alumni Doctors house in Detroit. He was looking at schools and Columbia was a choice.

The house was great, and they had Admissions staff and alums and various folks along with potential students and their parents.

I went with my son, figuring as a college administrator I could speak the language as needed.

We had good treats and enjoyable conversation and a nice evening. When we were ready to go, we said good night to the host in his front hall. He said, “It’s so nice for you to come with your brother to this event.” I of course replied, “This isn’t my brother, this is my son!” He was startled and called to his wife to get out here quickly, “You won’t believe this one, that’s his son!”
In the early 90’s, I was out with my daughter, pushing her on the swings. We were having a wonderful time on the playground, when a young boy came over and said, “My grandfather comes out and pushes me on the swings too!”

The hard part to deal with is that these responses are to the same person (me) in the same lifetime.

The Big Greek Dinner

It’s hard to say more than this. We went to dinner last night at a place called Socrates in Burlington, ON. It was great and here’s what we had from their menu.

I can’t write, speak or move at the moment, it was a bit too much. I brought home food in for the first time in years. I always finish, not this time. The photo was not our dinner, it’s a generic one.
The dinner was $19.99 per person!

Cyprus Traditional Meze It has been said that Cyprus is the perfect island where food is “ambrosia” and wine is “nectar” Mezedes a great way to get to know Cypriot cuisine. It offers a little taste of many traditional specialties, and takes the decision making out of your hands, for a very reasonable set price. A warning though must be attached to this culinary experience the quantity and variety of dishes is immense, a true assault on your taste buds.

Pita
Fresh Tzatziki
Yogurt, cucumber, sour cream, dill with a touch of fresh garlic
Grilled Eggplant In a tomato sauce topped with feta cheese
Humus – Chick Pea Dip Chick peas and tahini with a touch of fresh garlic and olive oil
Melitzanosalada - Eggplant Dip Mashed eggplant, tomato, onion, parsley, with a touch of fresh garlic
Pantzarosalada - Beet Salad Freshly sliced beets and fresh garlic with extra virgin olive oil and vinegar
Halloumi - Cypriot Traditional Cheese Grilled goat cheese, known as the Cypriot Traditional Cheese
Cyprus Village Salad
Mushrooms
Homemade Dolmades

Pork Souvlaki
Grilled Chicken Breast
Gyros Smoked Sausage
Roast Potato
Rice

Eulogy

Eulogies were on my mind today for some reason. I thought I’d do a few words on them.

In the 50’s, my mother, who was one of those people concerned about public speaking, was asked to go to a church, somewhere in downtown Baltimore, to do a eulogy for a friend. I have no idea who it was for or why my mother was picked, but she was determined to overcome her fear of public speaking and take on the eulogy. I was a kid, but I helped her by listening to her practice, as she prepared and read from file cards, much as she taught me to do.

She survived that event but tried to make sure no one ever asked her to do that again.

As it would pass, I was a shy child. My mother, in order to cure me of such shyness, enrolled me in "popular song" singing lessons. While my children believe I can’t keep a tune, my shyness dissolved with stage performances, singing my way into the hearts of elderly patients who were forced to watch the kids perform.

So, when it was my turn to do a eulogy, I was ready.

When I arrived in Calgary at ACAD, we had a Director of Student Services who was quite ill and already on medical leave. She and I became friends over the next few months as she wanted to get to know me, and I was pleased to know her, even though we knew this would be a short lived experience. When she passed, her closest friends were willing to put a eulogy together, but no one was confident enough, due to their closeness with the deceased, to do the duty. I was asked to perform, and thought maybe this was the plan from the beginning. It was a wonderful, public event at school, with musicians and poets, picked by the late Director. It was a beautiful thing!

When my mother died in 1997, we rushed from Washington to Baltimore and just made it to the cemetery in time. Two of my sons were with my mother at the end, and her sister and her family were there as well. I was traveling with the immediate family from Calgary.

The Rabbi asked me, “Who will be doing the eulogy?” I said, “You’re the Rabbi, don’t you do it?” (The truth is, what the hell do I need a Rabbi for if he’s not saying the words?) He told me generally families do it. I knew I couldn’t do that for my mother, I was a wreck as it was.

I said, “Jews do this?” He assured me they do and he was an expert in that.

My son, the lawyer, was standing by, and looked like a deer in the headlights when I told him, OK, maybe I asked him, to do the eulogy. What the hell, he had at least three minutes to prepare.

He did a wonderful job, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

So, if you need such service, call on me, unless you’re close to me, in that case, call on my son. He’ll probably charge you, but so will a Rabbi, and he won’t do it!

Editorial note:
Within ten minutes of posting this story, my phone rang and I was informed that a young man (in his 40’s) that I knew had passed away. I think I’ll try and write about happy stuff for awhile.

Conversation overheard at the Dollar Store...

A very cute young woman, well tanned with a large gold hoop in her nose was talking to the Dollar Store cashier about someone she was buying all sorts of art supplies for.

“How old is he”, the cashier says. “Twenty-nine”, the young lady responds. The look on the cashiers face is questioning, so she asks what she’s doing and she is told that he’s in the hospital and she’s making a big card for everyone to sign and bring to him.

“Oh, what’s wrong?” the cashier questions, and she’s told, “Oh, he’s been stabbed!”

“Is he alright?” says the cashier, and she finds out he’s been stabbed four times, three times in the back and once in the side, but he’ll be fine if he can get over the trauma.

This conversation continues for a bit and the young woman goes to pay the $1.91. She uses a debit card and is refused twice.

I have moved into anther line because this could go on all day, and even though I’m interested, I need to check out of there.

She goes to her truck and gets cash and returns to get her art supplies.

I am dumbfounded by this whole conversation.

In Barry Levinson’s movie “Diner”, there is a memorable line that fits this situation, and many others: “Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?

What goes around.......

I found this in yesterday’s email and I had to share it with you:

Today I had an early appointment at the doctor's, and so I workedyesterday, on Mother's Day. When I got to the doctor's, they said itwas for tomorrow. I had to rebook and was somewhat perturbed as I'm sure I would have chose Monday with this being the easiest day to rework my schedule.

Anyway, since I was free for a bit I decided to go for breakfast inWaterdown. (I don't know why I was drawn to go there, other than the fact my Doctor is near and it was closer by.) Sometimes I pop in to theGoodwill store next door just to have a look around, which I did do after breakfast. I was on my way out, browsing around as I go, when I nearly tripped over a painting on the floor.

I was stunned, as this was a painting that I did during one of DVSA’s Acrylic Painting classes, back in 1995. I had donated it to the DVSA Art Auction and it sold for a fair price. (I even knew the winning bidder assomeone I grew up with from my hometown.)

Part of me wished I never sold it as I always missed that painting, being that it was the only one I ever did like this - swirling fall colours, with leafimprints and real leaves blended into the expressionist abstraction. I had collected and hand-pressed autumn leaves that had fallen from trees in the Dundas Driving Park.

So here I was now, starring at it for sale in the Goodwill!

I wondered why he never tried to return it to me but perhaps that would have been awkward or inconvenient, or whatever. I am really happy to see it again, in good condition and available for purchase. I bought it on the spot.

I put it out there (to the universe), shared it, and then it came back to me.

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

After years of wondering, I asked a friend of mine, a well known pharmacologist:

“It seems to me you are the kind of expert who can answer a simple question. It will be simple for you, not for me.

When you take a number of pills at one time, as I did this morning, how do the right pills (or chemicals I guess) know how get to the right places?

This morning I took Vitamin E, a low dose diuretic, and a Aleve, for a short lived back pain.

So, how do the things get to the right places?”


“Arthur” (he said),

“I love your question. Simply put, the drugs (the active chemicals in the pills) are absorbed into our blood and usually go to almost all of our cells in our various organs (some organs, like the brain, have an extra barrier that excludes some, but not all of these chemicals). The chemicals can act, however, only where the cells have the right kind of receptor for them, so that's how drugs exert their somewhat specific effects. Notice I said "somewhat". The side-effects of drugs arise for two main reasons:

1) The drug is not as specific as we would like. So, for example, a drug like the antihistamine Benadryl does its job by blocking the histamine receptor, but it also happens to block another receptor called a muscarinic cholinergic receptor and that results in the dry mouth, constipation, urinary retention and even the rapid heart rate that some people experience.

2) Sometimes the target receptors that the drug affects is in several organs or cell types, including the ones responsible for the symptoms being treated and other organs that are just innocent by-standers when they get zapped by the drug because they also have that receptor. In the case above, that antihistamine Benadryl is meant to block the histamine receptors in certain cells in our peripheral organs such as our bronchial tubes and skin, but since Benadryl also enters the brain, it can block the histamine receptors and the muscarinic receptors in the brain. This might be responsible for the drowsiness associated with some antihistamines (you've see that warning:: Do not operate machinery when taking this drug). This resulted in the introduction about 25 years ago of the group of antihistamines that are supposed to be more-or-less free of this drowsiness side effect (today these are drugs like Claritin, Allegra and others, accounting for $billions in sales).

Incidentally, sometimes we take advantage of the side effects to treat entirely unrelated diseases. For example, Benadryl and other antihistamines are not bad short-term sleep aids. I happen to like Nyquil for long plane trips such as my trip to China. Fortunately, as far as I know, none of the three drugs you mentioned are associated with major side effects, but some diuretics might lower potassium, so your doc might want you to eat a banana or orange every day. I hope that general answer helps. In July, when I see you, we can, of course, discuss this over a beer until are really bored.”

False Alarm

Friday evening was lots of fun. We went to a dinner party at a friend’s house, and six of us drank and ate lovely food, and had a great time. The evening was a success, and we made our way home at about 11:30 p.m.

My youngest was almost asleep, and my oldest daughter was out for the evening, and I made my way up the stairs and fell into bed at about midnight. My wife was guilty about leaving Max, the Wonder dog, in the crate all evening, as the kids were out. Therefore she put him unto bed with me. I protested, snuggled with him for a bit and fell asleep.

At 1:19 a.m., ADT called to tell me an alarm at my school, a back door had been opened, and asked if I wanted to meet the police there.

I wanted to sleep, however, to be fair, I can’t assume it’s a false alarm, and forget it. Too much is at stake. While there is little or nothing to steal, I fear vandalism, or even having to replace aging computers that may or may not be completely backed up as they should be. Mine sure isn’t, and I was out today looking at portable hard drives.

I pulled on some jeans and a shirt, a sweater and a coat, as it was cold and had been raining, and drove to school to meet the police.

About every 18 months to two years, an alarm goes off. Twice in the past ten years that I’ve been here, it’s been an actual break in. We’ve had birds, bats and recently a falling wire set off the alarm. However, nothing ever sets off an alarm at six p.m., it always happens in the middle of the night!

This time, after touring two very nice police officers through the building, we all agreed no one could possibly get in or out of the building and it was a false alarm. Given the wind and rain that evening, it is possible that the door sensor malfunctioned. It did not go off again this weekend so I think it was a one time event.

I sure hope so. I get tired running around the place looking for burglars!

A Mothers Day Weekend Story

I was planning something else but It’s Mothers Day weekend and I should do a Mother story.

I called my mother at least once a day, pretty much from the time I finally left Baltimore in 1978, until she died in 1997. Some times I called many times, and she usually chastised me for doing so. Her complaint was if I got so used to calling her all the time, when she “was gone” I’d miss doing it way too much. There was a weird logic to all that, but I continued to call anyway.

She had called her mother every day, which only ended when we lived with my grandparents, so there was no need to call. My Aunt called my Grandmother every day as well.

My mother was, of course, right! I only stopped because she died, and to this day I find myself wanting to pick up the phone and call.

I really think this blog, which goes out to the infinite, is a poor excuse in my communication with the dead. This way I get to tell all my stories to my mother, or at least to the world with a hope my mother receives them.

I was looking for a good mother story to tell, as if this weren’t enough. The one that comes to mind is really about my mother and her sister, and the only significant part is the end.

We see the two sisters, my mother at about 75 and her sister being only in her late 60’s, credit cards in hand, chasing each other around a restaurant table, fighting with each other to get the check!

The first part of that story doesn’t matter, the end is history!

Lunch Wars in Itami

Itami is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan.

Wikipedia says:

As of 2008, the city had an estimated population of 194,488 The total area is 24.97 km².
The center of Itami became a wealthy town by the middle of Sengoku period. It was named Itami-go (town of Itami) and known as the only Japanese town within a castle (usually Japanese castles were located far from domestic areas). Itami-go was a part of Castle Arioka which Araki Murashige ruled under Oda Nobunaga. After the uprising and defeat of Araki, the castle was torn down.

Today's city was established on 10 November 1940. Great portions of the city were damaged in the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, but were quickly rebuilt.
Most of Osaka International Airport is located in Itami (hence the common name "Itami Airport"): it is Osaka's primary domestic airport, although all international flights and many domestic flights shifted to Kansai International Airport in 1994. Despite the airport's association with Itami, the terminal complex in truth sits in the neighboring city of Toyonaka, and the Itami city center is connected to the airport only by a long tunnel that passes beneath the runway and tarmac.

The city is also famous for Koyaike Park, which features a large model of the Japanese archipelago set in a circular pond. The park is a frequent sight for passengers on flights into Itami Airport. Moreover, Itami is one of the important sake-brewing cities in Japan. Some historians claimed Itami was the place where seishu, clear sake, was invented.

In the 80’s, mentioned in yesterdays notable trip to Japan story, we visited the town of Itami.
You can see, here is a photo of the Mayor of Itami and me, standing in front of City Hall. As well, here is a photo of our “lunch”. This event, which started out as a nice, simple welcoming gesture, worked its way around to a lunchtime drinking contest.

The contestants were the Mayor and yours truly, who had been “seduced” into the event without realizing it’s a national sport, especially in the town where Sake was invented!

The saving grace in all of this was the fact that the Mayor had to leave to make an appearance, or I may still be sitting there drinking cold sake from little wooden boxes.

A night out with the boys...

That's me at the left front sitting on the floor almost 25 years ago.

The first trip to Japan I took was in the late 80’s. We had a group of 14 Art College administrators and spouses, along with the then Director of the Alliance of Colleges of Art and his wife. We visited the Osaka School of the Arts, a post secondary college for all of the arts. We went as the invited guests of the Osaka College and stayed on for a few days on our own to see the rest of the area. We spent time in Osaka, Itami and Kyoto.

For the moment, I’d like to focus on my night out with the boys.

After a large banquet (as pictured), the tired band of travelers prepared to board our tour bus and head back toward home (the hotel). The Chairman of then Board of the school (standing and making one of many toasts) indicated (through translators) that the women will be going back on the bus, while the men would be going on for an evening out with the boys to a Japanese Hostess Bar.

Wikipedia says: Hostess clubs are a common feature in the night-time entertainment industry of Japan as well as other east Asian countries and areas outside Asia with a high east Asian population. They are establishments that employ primarily female staff and cater to males seeking drink and attentive conversation. Hostesses are known as kyabajō, literally club girl, and are generally hired for their looks and/or personality. Hostesses light cigarettes, pour drinks, offer flirtatious conversation, and sing karaoke in an effort to keep the customers entertained. Hostesses can be seen as the modern counterpart of geishas, providing entertainment to groups of salarymen after work. The clubs are distinguished from strip clubs in that there is no dancing or nudity. A club will often also employ a female bartender, who is usually well-trained in mixology, and may also be the manager or mamasan. While drinks tend to be more expensive than at regular bars and there is generally a substantial cover charge, many places offer nomihōdai (bottomless refills) for certain drinks - usually just shōchū.
Hostesses need to drink with their customers every night, and it is not uncommon that they develop alcohol problems as a result Most bars run on a commission system in which hostesses receive a percentage of sales.
Patrons are generally greeted warmly at the door and seated as far away from other customers as possible. In some instances, a customer is able to choose with whom he spends time, while most often that is decided by the house. In either case, the hostess will leave after a certain amount of time or number of drinks, offering the customer a chance to see a fresh face. While most establishments have male touts outside to bring in customers, it may also fall upon a (usually new) hostess to do so.
In addition to their on-site duties, hostesses are generally obliged to engage in paid dates dōhan with patrons outside of the bar and regular working hours. This system generates repeat patronage of a particular bar by developing attachments between particular customers and hostesses. Sometimes sex occurs on these paid dates. Hostesses may be deducted pay for not having enough dōhan dates.

One of the many problems that occurred was that not all of the men were the visiting administrators, some were the spouses. However, in order to look “correct” to our hosts, the men went to the club and the women went to the hotel.

None of us knew the rules of the place, and we all were surprised by the activities.
It was a fun evening of continued drinking of very expensive, watered down booze (we determined) along with eating “treats”, the last thing we needed, which included a big, fried thing fed to me by a very beautiful young lady. She described it, in the little English she knew, as “sea monster”, which I determined was a sea urchin, best left uneaten, but eaten because of proper protocol.

She called me "Jumbo", which we all agreed was very funny, within our own little group of men with a few women. Every now and then, it seemed to be about every ten to fifteen minutes, the girls changed. They were timed by a manager or handler who moved them around so as, as we figured, not to keep them in a “relationship” for too long. Our host, however, was provided with a traditional, kimono clad woman, while we had less traditional “hot chicks”. The traditional woman seemed to spend the evening with the Chairman.

There was some dancing among some of our hosts and the women, and some groping was displayed. Those of us new to this activity were confused about our roles, but with enough drinking, all language barriers and inhibitions broke down quickly.

The ladies accompanied us back to the bus, gave us gifts (boxes of cookies) which must have been provided by our host and we all went back to the hotel on our own bus.

Tired, sweaty and delighted, "Jumbo" returned home and quietly passed out in my bed. My wife understood completely and smiled at me when I came in, and let me collapse.

Who wears short shorts!

In all of the upheaval developed during the recent renovations at my house, that I hope you’ve been reading about, stuff got moved! It’s everywhere!

We had to pack up both girls’ rooms and move it out, then move it back, so we could pack the hall bookshelves and move them, so the carpeting could go in, and the window that needed replacing got replaced. There are still lots of boxes everywhere, and my daughter has moved back home from Montreal!

I was gone for two days moving my daughter home. I was going to say that on this blog but my wife insisted that I not tell the world that we would be gone for two days. It seems she’s a bit paranoid. Actually, I agreed with her as it’s not a great idea to let everyone know you’re gone.

So, in the move in and out, we lost a box of shorts! My daughter had six or eight pairs, including new ones, in a box that disappeared.

My wife decided to discuss this a few days ago at 3:00 a.m. This was a trajedy of biblical proportions! I was not amused. I didn’t care! However, it was of no consequence. The shorts were gone and I must have dumped it, or my wife donated them to a women’s shelter along with other clothing!

Yesterday afternoon, as I stayed home to do good deeds, my wife and my youngest daughter went to the mall to spend an afternoon and a fortune, buying shorts. They are all quite cute and I smiled and was happy when they came home!

Yesterday evening, my oldest daughter, having been home for a day cleaning out boxes etc. came up with a box of shorts, surprisingly, under her bed!

My youngest daughter now has more shorts than a Department Store!

A big camp story

The photo is from August, 1953. It’s the end of the day camp season at Har Sinai Temple in Baltimore. I am 11 years old.

The camp story is one I’ve been thinking about, and remembered the photo, somewhere hidden in a box. It took 45 minutes to retrieve the photo, but it helps me to see the story.

The cast of characters is beyond my memory, but I will attempt it. I will do a left to right but it won’t do much good. I am in the top row center, as should be obvious. The two guys on my left and the three on my right will have to remain nameless; I just can’t come up with the names. It’s been 57 years!

The two adult guys on the right end are the junior councilor and what I believe to be Dave Davidson, Camp Director. This may mean, given my recent camp stories, he may have bought Sightseeing camp the next year or sold it the year before. He is the camp director, and not Rabbi Shusterman, spiritual leader of the Temple and the camp!

In row two, the man ion the end is Ed, our councilor, who seems to be about 25 years old, a bit odd for a councilor today, but these were different times. He may just look older given the styles. The next two guys are not named, but next is Allan Rehert, my best friend in those times, Arnold Posner and Steven Posner, the focus of this story, and sitting alone in a group is Steven Goldbloom, on the right.

We all went to camp in the camp bus, a commandeered yellow school bus and sang camp songs for hours as we chugged through Jewish neighborhoods all over Baltimore picking up fragile, over privileged little boys for their summer “camping” adventure. We had arts and crafts, sports and nature, a trip to a pool somewhere (not remembered), camp lunches with “bug juice” (Kool-Aid) and spiritual guidance on Fridays with Challah (Jewish ritual bread) involved.

The focus is, as I said, Steven Posner. He didn’t come to camp in the bus, he came to camp in a chauffer driven limousine.

This was 1953, and the morning focus for the councilors, was Steven’s arrival, not because of him, but they all had a shot at sitting in an air conditioned new Cadillac limousine! This was not his fault, nor was he a bad guy, he was pretty much, at that time, like the rest of us, he just had something we all only heard about.

His father, Victor Posner, was and continued to be legendary, and remained, until his death, one of the richest people in the US, always on those lists. Their family problems in later life are legendary, as I researched, and are all available using Google. I have nothing to say about this, it’s only one summer experience, and my learning, at 11 years old, how money can screw up a perfectly normal summer experience.

The primary effect of one kid being driven to camp in a limo somehow changed my life. I had a problem processing all this through the years. It just didn’t make sense to me.

In the summer of 1968 my wife and I went to dinner at a friend’s house in Catonsville, MD, and I was driving a recent model Cadillac sedan, which belonged to my in-laws. I had it at my house while they were on a trip, and we used it from time to time so it wouldn’t sit. I experienced a similar thing, which reminded me of this story, when my friend as asked me if he could have a ride in the car. “Of course”, I said, but couldn’t quite figure it out. He told me the story of his life and how poor he had been as a child, and up to that point he’d never ridden in a Cadillac.

Times change, and Cadillac’s have been replaced by big German cars, but the effect is the same.

I may never quite understand the social implications of the whole thing. I have owned a Cadillac (just once) and a big German car (just once) and it had no major affect on my life. I do understand the impact of car air conditioning (probably the main point), the chauffer (with uniform in the day) and the big new limo, but it never got to me the way it got to them those hot summer days in Baltimore in 1953.