1. What are three things on your wish list and why?
   Regular things or impossible things?

   • I would like to see my husband more comfortable, maybe in a different facility. Not happening.

   • I really need my own car. I might be able to afford one by the end of the year.

   • I want to sell my house and find a better place for a woman like me. That one won’t happen either.

2. Do you miss your childhood?
   Childhood was always striving to be something more than I was. Smarter, prettier, less shy… It wasn’t all bad, I guess, but I don’t miss it. The one thing I miss from my childhood is the company of my dad.

3. What do you do on your spare time on the weekends?
   Spare time is spare time; I have plenty. My basic activities don’t change. If the U.D. and the Gentleman are around, I try to stay out of their way.

4. What do you appreciate most in your life?
   Having a roof over my head, knowing that I am not in debt.

5. Would you rather be rich or healthy?
   I know I shall never be rich. I would rather be in control of my health.

6. If you could go back in time, would you and why?
   No; you can’t change the past. Going back is more likely to give you regrets, which I really don’t need.

7. Favorite game as a child?
   I probably would be classed as “does not play well with others.” I loved games that required thinking. Other kids did not. If they wanted to play school, I always had to be the teacher. See the old post about toys and games.

8. What is your dream career?
   I have done it a couple of times. I like to be the “helper” in a thriving enterprise. Sure, I am the secretary; I type even when the boss knows how to type. I also do the bookkeeping, order supplies, keep the place going. I carry important details in my memory. I am willing to do the grunt work when necessary. Being a full-fledged member of the team satisfies my ambitions.

9. What do you do in your free time?
   Whatever I want. That’s why it’s free. (No one is paying.)

10. Favorite clothing stores?
    When I could go out and shop for myself — without helpers — I liked Burlington because it had a variety of sizes. I am no real size, and I hate to do alterations. When I was working, I used to go into the large lady stores and buy the smallest size. Those are too big for me now.

11. What TV shows can't you live without?
    Sooner or later you can live without any television show, no matter how much you loved it. If it hangs on too long, they will spoil it. This season’s Eureka reminds me of the last few Star Treks — the original series. Did you ever see the episode, “Spock’s Brain”?

12. Three things you need in your life are:
    Food and water; my computer; a comfortable bathroom.

13. What can’t you sleep without?
    If I am tired, I can sleep just about anywhere, including planes and trains. It is better if I have support for my back. It may be safer if I take an antihistamine, so that I don’t wake up headachy or bloody.

14. Who do you have a celebrity crush on?
    Most celebrities don’t impress me much. There was a time when I might have said Sandy Koufax.

15. What is your favorite season and why?
    I always tell people you shouldn’t wish your life away. But I love spring when it comes, with its great promise of hope.

16. What is your favorite wild animal?
    Please understand, I don’t know any personally. But I love monkeys, because they are so obviously intelligent and often display a sense of humor.

17. Name three of your favorite childhood shows
    Childhood shows, for me, are radio shows. “Jack Benny,” even before I understood his jokes. “Lux Radio Theater,” which aired movie plays, often starring the original actors. Saturday mornings meant “Big Jon and Sparky,” a great show that would not translate well to television; kids had to imagine what they were hearing.

18. If you could live as a character in a movie who would it be?
    It has been so long since I saw a movie with a character I admired… I know, Mr. Spock!

19. Favorite vegetables?
    I like so many, depending on where and how. Cooked vegetable? Eggplant. Raw? Peppers (green, red, yellow); onions; mushrooms; cauliflower and broccoli… I guess olives are a fruit.

20. Favorite fruit?
    Almost any fresh fruit except bananas. (One bad experience many years ago turned me off from them forever.)

21. If you had a dragon what would you name it?
    Puff, probably. Something better might be appropriate, once I got to know it.

22. What do you put on hotdogs?
    I put mustard on frankfurters, brown and spicy. I’m not sure I could call them hot dogs, inasmuch as I don’t care for hot dog buns; I like rye bread.

23. Do you play online games?
    I play some games I can only find online, but I don’t care to play with strangers. Every time I get a new computer, I discover that my old — really old — games are gone.

24. Whats your favorite way to get inspired?
    To read — books and newspapers; to watch television and listen to the radio; to watch people around me.

25. Do you have a middle name?
    No; it was just one of the many things my younger siblings received, but I did not. For the last forty-plus years, I have used my maiden name for an initial. My family name is a good identifier because it is so unusual.

26. Favorite kids name?
    I always liked Rebecca for a girl, because there are several in our family tree. (My U.D. is Rebekah.) I liked David and Robert for boys, but they were overused by the time I had a son.

27. Do you speak any other languages?
    It is very hard to maintain a speaking fluency if there is no one to talk to, so I now say I speak only English. I studied German, French, Russian, and Hebrew at one time or another. My high school Latin gives me a little understanding of Spanish and Italian.

28. Do you use Twitter?
    No! If FB is bad, Twitter is worse. Didn’t you read about Big Brother? If something is that immediately important, you dial 911.

29. Do you play Angry Birds?
    No.

30. Do you look at YouTube?
    Occasionally. If I don’t replace my speakers, I will have to borrow someone else’s computer.

31. Do you like Hello Kitty?
    Not particularly. I quickly lose interest in toys that are commercially overdeveloped. Don’t care much for Elmo either.

32. Have you ever cried because you were so happy?
    All the time. At every wedding, including my own. And just about every birth.

33. Who would you like to see in concert?
    Y’know, I can’t think of anyone who is still alive. Thank goodness for PBS.

34. Can you swim well?
    I swam well enough, though not as well as my friends. In college we had to pass a swimming test, five laps of the pool, at least one on your stomach. I did the crawl as long as I could, did a lap on my back, crawled back to the instructor and asked how many I had done. “Why did you do six?” Obviously, I lost count; I was too busy swimming.

35. Ever won a contest?
    Spelling bees in school. I wrote about the best contest in a longer post; look for the part about Inquizition. (Oh, I think I added that link earlier in this lo-o-o-ong piece.)

36. Ever won a giveaway?
    Like door prizes? Once or twice, usually second or third prize.

37. Do you get a full 8 hours of sleep every night?
    I sleep about eight hours out of each twenty-four, not necessarily all at once.

38. What tea do you like?
    Black teas, usually. Specialty teas, like Earl Grey or Constant Comment. I may add lemon or fresh ginger. I like it hot (temperature).

39. What coffee do you like?
    Kirkland’s Signature. It has been my favorite ever since I became a Costco member.

40. Do you shop at Walmart?
    Not if I can avoid it.

41. Do you shop at Target?
    Maybe once a year.

42. What do you order at Second Cup?
    That sounds like a coffee shop; we don’t have them here. I would order black coffee, of course.

43. Do you like homemade meals?
    Who’s cooking? I am a good cook who doesn’t get respect for what she can do, so I don’t. When I am home alone, I cook something simple for myself, because it’s not worth cooking something elaborate for just one.

44. Do you like homemade bake goods?
    Indeed! That’s one of the reasons I don’t bake any more.

45. Do you shop online?
    Sure. Anything I used to order from a catalog, I can now get online.

46. Name 3 stores online stores you would like to shop at.
    Hanes. Amazon. Jewish Source, where I only shop occasionally, because the prices are out of my budget.

47. What holiday don't you like?
    I don’t like Christmas, for more reasons than I can list here. If you’re curious, I can link you to a few good rants.

48. What do you eat more when you're sick?
    What kind of sick? I usually don’t eat much of anything when I am sick; I just drink tea. I might sip some orange juice, because it will affect my glucose level, and I will go to sleep.

That was really long; I’ll bet I missed a couple.

Fifty years ago I was in college. Obviously, I had other things to read besides juvenile fiction, and it would be another ten years or so before I even though about looking at books for children. I never noticed the “I Can Read” books until my little ones were starting to read themselves.

The Phantom Tollbooth was written by Norman Juster and illustrated by his friend, Jules Pfeiffer, who would go on to fame as a cartoonist. It is not just a quick little read; it is much more intricate. I don’t believe we had it in my kids’ school library — where so few children read fiction of any kind that I was able to inventory the whole fiction collection while school was in session. I requested it from the bookmobile, where the copy they found me had evidently been in storage.

This is the story of Milo, a boy who is always bored and not interested in anything. Whatever he was doing, he wished it was finished so that he could something else, and he never did anything that he didn’t have to do. He was never interested in school. A mysterious package arrives, containing a tollbooth, which he has to assemble before he can use it. Then he gets in his little car, pays his toll, and goes off on a great adventure to the kingdom of Wisdom, where words and numbers — that is, the lands of Dictionopolis and Digitopolis — are always at odds. Someone must, of course, save them.

In the course of his travels, Milo learns about sounds, words, colors, and all sorts of new concepts. Suddenly he realizes that he really has a lot do do!

I have a difficulty with bored kids, because I really don’t get it. I grew up with the philosophy that, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” When I meet an adolescent who has no real interest in the world around him, I am stumped.

Should you find yourself in a similar situation, I definitely recommend The Phantom Tollbooth. It is such a different kind of story that it draws the reader in, regardless of his or her boredom. For me, it was like a new toy.

The picture of the interior is just the area in front of the door. The rest of the van is lined with bookshelves. The supervisor will order books for me if they are not on our local lists.

We have received word that the local PBS station will no longer be airing the Connecticut women’s basketball games. The PBS station was outbid by a sports channel, one I do not receive. Upgrading to a higher level is not an option. It would cost me more than my yearly contribution to PBS. I hope my fellow alumni are better situated than I.

It really is not fair, y’know, even though the university will make [a little] more money this way — or so they think. (I never quite trust this kind of promise.) Eighteen years ago, the PBS station took a gamble and did something no one had ever done before. And this is how they are repaid.

Naturally I wrote a letter to the newspaper, even before the story was in print. Two days later the story appeared, with comments from other people but not mine; I am blowing in the wind.

Could anyone say it better?

Many people have received mail that appears to be from me, but it isn’t. Please ignore the garbage. I should mention that this “phishing” has occurred twice after I had looked at the network that wants to link me in; it goes through my address book. Can’t trust anyone.

Stress wears me out, even if it isn’t my stress. Be well.

I like solid white tuna, preferably packed in water. You’ve heard that before. Once a week is not a lot of tuna to consume. And if I buy it at Costco, the price is significantly better. The typical can used to be six ounces, drained weight. As the popular
brands are reducing to five ounces, Costco has
seven ounces per can.

It is a strange thing how people who don’t believe anything from the Bible will accept everything they see online. Or maybe not so strange, when you see how some teachers present their subjects.

Here is the legend: tuna packed in water has been cooked in chicken broth. That would be bad. The formerly vegetarian U.D. has recently begun accepting some fish, but I could not in good conscience feed her chicken broth, even if she didn’t know it was there.

As you know, I am somewhat of a skeptic. First I read the label; there was no mention of chicken of any kind. I was trying to remember what I know about commercial canning and thought that the contents are cooked in the can. But I could be mistaken. So I wrote a letter to Costco.

My phone number is on my letterhead, and Costco phoned. A pleasant fellow explained that their tuna is cooked in vegetable broth. He went on to point out that the fish absorbs some of the broth, giving each can a higher drained weight. Perfectly logical, right? It tastes fine.

I promised I would explain, and I have. Okay?

But it has been a long time since I bought any meat. I used to wait until I was going to do a Peapod order, but I no longer have the storage space for that much groceries at one time. My sister keeps telling me how wonderful Costco meat is, and I keep thinking
she eats too much meat.

This was very nice-looking ground beef, almost as nice as when I grind a small piece of steak myself. It was a little more than I am used to paying, and those burgers looked enormous. I decided I might as well buy in bulk regardless, since I have no idea when I would get another chance. I would portion the package before freezing it.

Suddenly I was remembering my mother at the kosher butcher shop. “Chop meat, ” to qualify as kosher, must be kashered, ground, and sold on the same day. When my mother went in just before closing, she could often get a good price on whatever had not sold that day, because otherwise it was waste. And mom would come home with this huge hunk of chop meat.

Mom was portioning and freezing meat long before most other housewives, because dad had gotten a used ice cream chest that we kept in the cellar. It was so big that I could not reach packages on the bottom. Then again, I never did get very tall.

So mom would come back from the butcher and start making her little packages. Some were large, to be used in making a family dinner. But steaks and chops were always wrapped separately, in case someone came in and needed a meal after the rest of us had eaten.

As I worked on this package of six huge burgers, I was channeling my mother. I left a couple of them as is, in case a normal person wanted one. Of the rest, I cut about a third off each one, making three packages from two burgers. The unshaped ones will be good when I make something like spaghetti or stew just for myself.

In case you were wondering why I didn’t buy the small package of organic meat, I usually don’t bother. For one thing, you are paying a lot more money without really knowing how much better the meat is. (If I wanted to pay more than I have, I would go to Trader Joe’s for kosher meat.) But I am pushing seventy-two years old now, and I figure that anything meat can do to me has already happened. The same goes for tuna — which I will explain on another day. I truly believe that I won’ suffer greatly from food additives at this point.

There is a possibility, of course, that if the diabetes doesn’t get me, I will die of aspartame poisoning. Ahem.

I am just in time for the return of “Sherlock” on PBS.

Doesn’t look much like Basil Rathbone, does he? People think he’s taller than he is, because he wears a long coat and has chosen a shorter sidekick. Or so he says.

When I read the old stories, I don’t remember the plots. But I do seem to recall the mysteries. For example, “that’s not his wife, she’s his sister!” Either I have remembered the good stuff, or else I have learned enough of Conan Doyle’s style that I can fill in the gaps.

Meanwhile, I am indeed enjoying the Sherlock of the twenty-first century. There are little side jokes; you could miss them if you aren’t paying attention. And some bigger ones. In “Scandal in Belgravia” — not Bohemia — The Woman, Irene Adler, receives them in the altogether. Eventually, he persuades her to wear his jacket. His phone is in the pocket, and she changes her ringtone. Every time she texts him, you hear the sensuous sigh…

I figured out some of the internal mysteries here too; maybe I have learned something from the old books after all. Or these writers have learned it. In any case, I am looking forward to more “Sherlock.”

I keep wondering whether the Postal Service makes any profit on junk mail. They are currently airing a commercial for their localized ads, “only 15 cents per delivery.” I don’t think we have ever used any of their coupons, except the occasional restaurant discount. We receive at least ten catalogs a week. (I use them to line the garbage can.)

I did think this was cute:

I hope whoever created that has copyrighteded it for an announcement card.

We did go to Husband’s care meeting last week. He didn’t feel well that day, and he didn’t attend. At least that gave us a chance to mention some things that would make him self-conscious or angry.

However, I always worry when he isn’t quite with it. I phoned the next day; the nurse said he was fine that morning. But that afternoon they decided to take some “precautionary x-rays.” I guess they were okay, because no one has called to say otherwise, but I cannot get them to answer the phone on that floor.

Y’know, I can Google anything. I was good at searching, even with the older search engines. But sometimes Bartlett’s Quotations is quicker — if you know how to use the book.

I don’t know what brought that to mind; I do know that it’s a misquote. I read it that way in Little Men.

April showers have come in May. I think we had as much rain in the past four days as we had all last month. And, son-of-a-gun, I have grass growing. I didn’t think I would see any for another season. I need to call the lady with the lawnmower.

Enjoy Cinco de Mayo.

So I went back to look at that and found that only the bare bones remained. I believe I have already mentioned all of that stuff elsewhere. Since I prefer to be discreet, I try not to include specific information about my family — although some of them certainly splash enough detail around FB.

When I was in high school, I read Orwell’s
1984, which was absolutely the scariest book I had ever read up to that time. The part that bothered me most was the mindset of the population, willing to report their friends for very little reason. The part about “Big Brother is watching,” not so much.

I had been taught to be an honest person. I never did anything to be ashamed of, so why would I worry about who saw it? (I guess I was still too naïve to worry about the bathroom or the bedroom.) Who ever thought about such things as identify theft and embarrassing pictures?

[Some forty-odd years ago, my husband did take a photo of me nursing the baby. It was a Polaroid, so that we would not have to submit it to a professional developer. It was just for us, not to share.]

In any case, prudence was expected of every respectable person. That girl who walked around downtown wearing a man’s shirt over a pair of tights — even if they were black — had a reputation that was not respectable. My mother, who had worked with her briefly, was horrified; she finally understood why my friends and I did not associate with her.

One of my greatest aversions to social media in general is that all sorts of potentially humiliating information or pictures are disseminated without thought of consequences. The more immediate the app, the more likely that someone will send out something embarrassing. It may not embarrass the sender but, please, have a thought for the recipient.

I don’t care about that zit on your behind or the state of your digestive system. Really. I do not want to know about your sexual exploits or any similar gossip.

I will admit that I can’t blame everything on FB. What happened to everyone’s sense of modesty and good manners? Dinosaur, that’s me.

1. Are you in a job that you truly enjoy?
   I am retired; that’s a good start. (And yes, I worked until I was more than sixty-five.) There are possibilities that could make it more enjoyable, but they are not viable alternatives just now. Ask me again next year.

2. If you could do any job in the world what would it be?
   I would like to be a copy editor, which I
   have done on small projects. It may be a lost art, since publishers no longer care whether that is the appropriate word, whether it is spelled properly, whether the grammar and punctuation are correct.

3. If you could be a character in a novel who would you be?
   Dr. Temperance Brennan. She is brilliant, her knowledge covers several different categories, and she is a beautiful older woman.

4. When it comes to spending time with those you love, do you think it should be about quality or quantity?
   I would spend as much time as I could, because it’s always quality time.

5. Is there a job/career you wanted but realized you couldn’t possibly do for one reason or another?
   Oh, yeah! First I wanted to be a doctor, until I realized that just preparing for it would leave less time for a life outside my work. Then I thought nursing — same subject, less preparation — until I realized that what bothered me most was seeing anyone in pain. So I studied the science, which I still enjoy, and worked at more “mental” jobs.

6. If you could live anywhere in the world or out of this world, where would you live?
   In the long run, it’s not the place so much as it is the people with whom you share it. At my age, of course, I have to factor in good health care, which is not available all over.

7. Where would you most like to visit and who with?
   I would still like to visit Israel. I would like to travel through with my friends who live there.

8. Which skill would you like to learn?
   Something musical, maybe to play an instrument well. It might also be fun to learn to make or repair them.

9. What made you laugh today?
   Something in the funny papers, but I can’t remember just what.

10. What are you looking forward to tomorrow?
    What day will I post this? There’s a care meeting for my husband this week.

11. What is your sign and do you believe in horoscopes, etc?
    Basically, I am a Gemini, but on the Hebrew calendar I am Taurus. I have to say it is probably a difficult combination for other people to live with. Believe? All you have to do is compare two people born on the same day, and you know there are stronger factors in there.

12. If you could change one thing about your life thus far, what would it be?
    Not insisting on certain things when I should have. Or, to put it another way, being a Gemini when I should have been a Taurus.

13. If there was one charity you could give a huge contribution to, which charity would it be and why?
    I honestly don’t know. I tend to give small contributions to a lot of different causes. If I had a lot of money, they would still be varied, though the amounts would be larger.

14. Should smoking be legal?
    I can’t tell someone else what to do. I prefer that they don’t do it around me.

15. What are your views on the smoking ban in public places?
    Are you asking the same question twice? I have no problem with laws that make it easier for me to avoid smokers.

16. Why do you blog?
    I write. Sometimes I like to share what I have written. Sometimes I don’t.

17. Do you have a favorite author?
    Favorites come and go. I am not a static person.

18. Can you play any musical instruments??
    Not any more. I played the violin from the time I was in fifth grade until my junior year in high school.

19. What would your ideal car be?
    Do you remember KITT on “Knight Rider”?

20. Describe yourself in one short sentence.
    I still don’t know the answers.

21. What do you look for in a spouse/other half?
    I still have a spouse, old and sick. I am not sure that I want to look for another.

22. Worst meal you’ve had?
    It would have to have been in someone’s home, where as a child I did not have the right to say “I can’t eat this.” Fortunately, I no longer remember just what it was.

23. What do you do to relax in the evening?
    Read or watch television.

24. Do you get along with your siblings?
    If I keep my mouth shut.

25. Do you have any regrets?
    I suppose I do. My husband smoked cigarettes for sixty years, and he is paying the price. I sometimes wonder if I could have gotten him to stop, but he had already been smoking for twenty-five years before I met him…

I should mention that saving memes doesn’t mean I’ll complete them someday. I am discarding the next one.

Anyhow, I remember Mom knitting sweaters, as well as ripping them out when they got too small. She would wind the used yarn around a glass milk bottle and wet it, so that it would dry straight and be usable again. I remember her taking the maroon wool and
making a bigger sweater, adding tan yarn so
that there would be enough for the new sweater.

But I know she didn’t teach me to knit, for one basic reason: she knit American style and I knit European style. Whoever taught me, it wasn’t Mom. (The only time I knit American style is when I knit left-handed. For simple stitches like stockinette, it is easier to change knitting style than it is to keep turning the work. My dad taught me that!)

This came to mind because I just found a sweater that my mother started, sometime after I had become the expert knitter. She showed it to me because there was something wrong with it; she didn’t know where she had made the mistake. Having done it myself, I found it immediately. She had stopped in the middle of a row and restarted in the wrong direction. I fixed the error and gave it back to her.

If you had asked me, I would have said that she finished it herself. But I see signs that I finished the knitting. There are no seams in the sleeves, because I always did sleeves in the round. And there are no shoulder seams, because I wove front and back together.

I must have given it back to her after the knitting was done, because you could tell she did the finishing. There is grosgrain ribbon on the facings. I never did that; I used a pattern that had knitted facings. I wish I could find my old patterns. Nevertheless, it is nice to have a sweater that, unlike my old favorites, is not worn out from thirty years of use.

In any case, I haven’t tried to knit much since my eyesight got worse. Now crochet is easier. I enjoy remembering what I used to do.

The best thing about commercials is that you can ignore them. I am losing patience with just about every one that I see — including public service announcements — maybe because I can see who the targets are. And I wonder why those targets don’t understand how they are being manipulated.

Colleges and technical schools are still flooding the airwaves with the message that their programs prepare graduates for better jobs. Unfortunately, the job openings are not appearing, at least not around here. People are going off unemployment, which does not last forever, by taking lower level jobs. Paralegals lose out when law school graduates cannot find placement as attorneys, so the paralegals take the jobs that once would have gone to legal secretaries. Secretarial work is very easy in comparison with what one had to be able to do before computers got so clever, and law firms are delighted to have such well-educated secretaries.

The stupidest thing I saw on a (fictional) series about lawyers was a guy who supposedly had learned enough to graduate from law school but couldn’t produce a writ. Any darned fool can do that now; just follow the instructions online!

When I saw a news item this week about the Chernobyl anniversary (it seems like yesterday), I remembered a clueless fellow I worked with at the time. In giving us the news, he said, “if you had any relatives there, they’re probably gone.” I just pointed out that I had no relatives in that region, as the Nazis had gotten there first. (Do not start telling me that never happened.)

Just a note, because I have been recording them: I awoke with an attack of vertigo on Saturday morning. Nothing much different from the last one, about nine months ago. The best treatment is antihistamine and sleep (upright) till it wears off.

This past weekend I met a media specialist who seems interested in what I know about libraries. Whenever the local libraries ask for support from patrons, they don’t want to hear it. No doubt that is because I keep saying something like, “a library’s first obligation is to help its readers.” No other business seems to know that, so why should libraries be different.

At least I had fun looking up the old posts.

After our taste of spring, we hit another patch of cold weather. That’s New England for you.

Granted, it wasn’t much. However, I should tell you that, in all those years, I never once received a thank you note. Just sayin’.

I am well aware that the various management practices are the result of an accountant who thinks he
knows how to run a business. There is no
advantage to pointing out that a synagogue is somewhat different from a business, y’see, because he knows everything. He has decided to send acknowledgements in the form of invoices; I guess the big contributors pointed out that they need a paper trail for tax purposes. Somehow, I received a bill for more than $300.

Well, of course, I have no intention of paying it since (1) I am not a member and (2) I never agreed to the charge. After I sent my angry response, I realized that perhaps this was a typo…

Of course, it was. They sent me a corrected statement with a zero balance, along with an apology from the typist. But those on the board still don’t get it.

What they don’t get is further contributions. And no doubt, they will wonder why they have less support; I imagine that I am not the only one who received a bill. When religious institutions complain about losing members, about lower attendance at services, they never seem to realize that support works in two directions.

Having a rabbi to turn to when there is a question about Judaism is a good thing, but rabbis don’t run the congregations. I am well enough educated that I can find my own answers. I would not need a rabbi now unless someone is getting married or if someone dies. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Sad, isn’t it?

You’re familiar with the genre, of course. Some woman encounters an inconvenience that she sees as a big problem. She builds her molehill into a mountain, so that she can spend the next two hundred pages trying to climb over it. I lose patience.

This a story about a friendship between two women who have lost contact, or just lost interest, with their old friends. Feeling alone, they happen to meet at a synagogue service and realize they have something in common.

They are perhaps an odd pairing. One woman is in her early forties, a published author and somewhat artistic. The other woman, in her late fifties, cannot write at all; as a librarian, her talent is in matching children with books and turning them into lifelong readers. (That’s no small talent, y’know; it is almost a lost art. I never met a media specialist who was that good.)

They discover that Good Harbor, near Rockport on Cape Ann, has therapeutic value for both of them. Its beach is comfortable for long walks; its waters are beautiful when stormy as well as serene. And they form a bond, even though, as Kathleen tells Joyce, “I am old enough to be your mother.”

The characters are well drawn and believable (mostly). Kathleen does have some real problems, and Joyce somehow can say the right words to assure her. Kathleen, who has lived in Rockport for years, can solve a few inconveniences for Joyce as well.

Personally, I was somewhat drawn to the rabbi — a woman rabbi. Once upon a time, there was no such thing. For 5,600 years or so, Judaism flourished without the help of women, or so the men believed. (The closest Yiddish word to the female for rabbi actually refers to the wife of a rabbi.)

When I first began religious school, a few women had been allowed to learn enough to be rabbis, but their usual task was to minister to people in hospitals or nursing homes. Women were taught to read certainly, and they learned enough to be able to teach children, but they were not equals. If you know “Yentl,” you may understand the frustration.

Thus I am somewhat in awe of these women who managed to forge new pathways. This particular rabbi is smart enough to use the women in her congregation to help themselves as well as the synagogue.

You never know what treasures are found at the bottom of a pile of books. That’s why I have to look at every single one before I give them away.

How long ago was it? Well, I can’t say for sure whether this was a time when she was moving in or moving out. However, now that she has removed much of the detritus, I have begun looking through the materials I had treasured. Most of them have to go; there will never again be room for all of them. I find the
occasional scrap of paper in a book, like a
receipt dated more than ten years ago.

Most will be donated to the bookmobile (if I think they will circulate) or to various charities. Some are interesting to friends, and I always love to share with someone who reads books. I will have some trouble giving up a few of the books that were special to me.

At least I found my diplomas — high school, college, business school… It has always been interesting that, the more important they were to my résumé, the smaller they were in size. I suppose I don’t need them any more because I do not expect to apply for work again, but they are, after all, part of my history. I am keeping the yearbooks too.

I donated about thirty books by Dell Shannon/Leslie Egan/Elizabeth Linington. (One author who used different names for each of her series.) They were very popular when I first worked at the library, and I bought them all when I was a stay-at-home mom. But they are dated, and even though I know how to put them into perspective, I really get annoyed when a police procedural doesn’t recognize DNA.

I picked up several books that I could not remember reading. When I began to read them now, I realized why I had never finished them. They are pretty bad, not my cup of tea, as my husband would put it. One of them, for example, was a badly disguised story about Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier; I can find better biographical information on line.

It’s easier to give up fiction than it is to give up reference books. The encyclopedias are not that important; there is information on line. But atlases are different, because they let you see the perspective. (Looking at maps online is harder; they give you a dot on the globe, or else there is a detailed map but you can’t see where it fits in the larger picture.) I have foreign language dictionaries, including foreign language science dictionaries.

I found a copy of Alice in Wonderland in German. I still have The Cat in the Hat in Yiddish.

I found a pile of children’s books, both new and used; I shall coordinate with my son. There is another new copy of Horton Hatches the Egg. I must have been buying with grandchildren in mind long before there were grand- children on the horizon. Since I already gave one to Lila, I shall keep this one for myself.

Also on the “keep” shelf are my Agatha Christie novels and my Foundation series. I have to tell you, it is very hard giving up some of these books.

This party, unlike Lila’s last party, was at home, but it was a big deal. At least, I consider having thirty people — or more, I lost count — a big deal. I think all the
kids had a good time in the bouncy house
and the crawling tunnels. The food was ample and good, as usual.

Yes, it was a nice party, but I really enjoyed the evening before and the next morning. Lila has been a good conversationalist for some time, but now Charlotte is prepared to join in a little. I started to sing a counting song, figuring that they would be able to supply the numbers once they got the idea. And Charlotte picked up the song and sang with me. I believe she is the more musical of the two.

However, y’know, she still does not want me to pick her up. Her preferences are her daddy and her “Poppa,” that is, her maternal grandfather. She really doesn’t want her “Vovo” — other grandmother — to pick her up either.

I traveled there by train, very comfortably. The U.D. and her Gentleman drove me home, which was exceedingly kind, especially as they had had a busy day before they drove to Easton. I am not as good a passenger as I used to be, but I was tired enough to sleep most of the way.

We had really good weather in between a couple of rainstorms. I went for a longish walk while the girls napped. (Only my left side was tired.)

Can’t wait till I see those little girls again.