Carnibattles and Herbiwars

As any parent of more than one child knows, they are most often not at all alike. This has held true in our family. We are the proud parents of a Math adept, looks like mom, baseball playing boy and a Literature loving, looks like dad ballerina girl. Most of their differences we take in stride, but one creates considerable chaos: the boy is a vegetarian while the girl wants to eat nothing but meat.

With the boy it is pretty straightforward--he has always hated the taste of meat. Even as a baby he rejected his favorite pureed squash if it had meat added. As a little kid we would split kids meals--he would eat the fries and plain bun while I got the hamburger and the bun with ketchup.

Early on he flirted a bit with chicken nuggets but by the time he started school he wasn't eating meat. And except for an occasional hot dog on camping trips he hasn't touched any since.
 
The problem is he's not that keen on most veggies either, He really only likes potatoes (sliced and fried by dad preferably), zucchini(ditto), and tomatoes. Boy loves his tomato sauce. We all appreciate natures bounty, but he is a prime beneficiary of each year's canning. His idea of pizza is dough, covered in sauce, sprinkled with lots of sauce.

And pasta. Lots of pasta.

 OK eccentric but manageable. Were he an only child it wouldn't be a problem at all. But we must now factor in his sister, whom we call the carnivore. She wants any kind of formerly living mammal or bird her dad can fix for her, and most fish as well. She loves steak, hamburger, pork, bacon, and chicken. The problem is she only wants meat. She doesn't want veggies, or sauce, or fruit on the side. She rejects such wonderful cost cutting meals as meatballs and meatloaf "because you add stuff to the hamburger".

 Meanwhile their long suffering father, who can cook a gourmet meal on next to nothing, is stuck. We prefer a subtle combination of seasonings, veggies, sauces and meats. But we are stuck with a kid who chooses only from column A while the other orders exclusively from column B. We often resort to dinners like tacos and pizza so everyone can add their own ingredients. And the are a few things they both like, such as waffles and pancakes and french fries and bread.

 Most dinners at Meg's house are more like this spaghetti night:
1) We cook the meat in one pot and the noodles in another.
2) The boy comes in and cooks his sauce as he sees fit, thick with herbs, then pours it over his pasta.
3) The girl puts meat and maybe a little garlic butter on her otherwise plain noodles.
4) Finally we are allowed to combine the remaining ingredients and eat like grownups. 

 We know we wont have to live in this culinary ghetto forever. One day they will be grown and cooking for themselves. And we can wish them children who will want to eat nothing but lobster bisque, and calamari, and jellyfish salad, and pigs in a blanket, and Hungarian Goulash, and ants climbing up trees.....

I am the 47%

Normally I try to avoid politics in this blog, its just too divisive whereas I am all about finding common ground. But today I have to say something about Mitt Romney's speech that was reported Monday night in the media, because this is attacking me where I live and work.

What Mr Romney was heard saying is in part, as follows: "There are 47% who will vote for the president no matter what. All right there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing,to you name it. That it is an entitlement. And the government should give it to them...These are the people who pay no income tax, Its not my job to worry about these people. I will never convince them to take personal responsibility for their lives."


 Now I have to admit that I wouldn't be voting Republican this year anyway. The only Republican I ever voted for was George H W Bush in 1988, a good and honorable man who couldn't get the Republican nomination today (and neither could any other Republican president back to Eisenhower, but that's another story). This year a variety of civil rights and social justice issues guarantees that I will be voting democrat.But coming off a bruising 2011 when public sector union members were blamed for virtually every ill of modern society, hearing that the 47% of Americans who do not pay income taxes are essentially freeloaders was too personal an insult to let pass.

First of all most of us have money withheld from our paychecks and given to the federal government, we just get it back as tax return. The goverment still profits though, in the form if a tax free loan all year from us, before we get that money back. The tax credits that allow us to get most of our taxes back are mainly a product of the last Republican administration. Most of us use that money to stimulate the economy in a number of areas

.Also although we may get most of our federal taxes back, Mitt cant say the same about our local and state income taxes, our social security and medicare taxes, our property and our sales taxes. We are hardly free loading here. What is most offensive though is the assumptions in place. All poor people must support Mr Obama. All rich people must be attracted to Mr Romney. The president's chiefest support must come from the states that benefit most from these tax policies. People will chose their president on the basis of who will leave them paying fewer taxes.

To those assumptions let me point out that 9 of the 10 states that pay the least income tax are Red states. Most blue states pay more in taxes than they receive back in services. One of the largest groups of people who pay little or no federal taxes are soldiers. Another is college students. Another is the working poor, that's why they call it the EARNED income credit.We haven't done anything wrong. We are just a little slower climbing the ladder. Sometimes folks higher up break a few rungs, just to make it harder to get to that higher level.And yes people are entitled to some level of food and housing and healthcare. The result if it doen't exist will eventually be anarchy. The greatest country in the world can not be a country of haves and have nots and still be the greatest country in the world. Our Constitution says that one of the purposes of a government is to promote the general welfare.

I think Hubert Humphrey said it best: "The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. "

We are the 47%.

Reunions

Recently I got together with a number of my old college friends, the occasion being the 50th birthdays this year of 4 of us. Some of them I see every year or two...others I haven't seen in a long time, though in the modern way of things we all seem to be on Facebook. As it happened, one friend turned up that I hadn't seen since my husband and I were married 24 years ago.
We were all, once upon a time, theatre people together. We weren't all majoring in the subject, but we all had an interest, if not in acting then in helping behind the scenes. We also shared a willingness to work late hours on low budgets for little recompense except the appreciation of our friends and our own satisfaction at work well done. There were a lot of photos to look at, a lot of laughter and memories. It was a good time. And I found myself realizing that this group of people, both the ones at the party and the many others who couldnt be there, are the ones I feel the closest, most enduring connection with. (I can't even say apart from my family, for I met my husband doing a play.) Virtually everything good in my life has come in some way from those years and the people I shared them with. And that's worth celebrating whenever I get a chance.

The Morning After

My son wore his NYPD shirt to school today. A senior in high school, he and his classmates are among the last schoolkids with first hand memories of 9/11/01. Its never been something we talked about alot, but its never been a subject we dodged either. A few years later, his class was asked to draw pictures of what they remembered of that day and he drew a group of flags at half mast. I wasn't surprised. He has always been fascinated with flags. But at the time I remember his strongest reaction being to the absence of baseball. Why, he asked, was there no ballgame tonight? I told him everyone was too sad to play baseball, which seemed to satisfy his 6 year old heart as the ultimate expression of mourning and wandered off to his legos. He used to wear a flag shirt on this day, but after he acquired the NYPD it has been his garb of choice.

As a 911 operator I have some very specific memories of that day. Back then 9/11 was National Telecomunicators Day. We were having pizza brought in to us to celebrate. I am sure many other centers were doing similar things. We had also been through the trauma the previous week of losing a coworker in a housefire....they were actually bringing counsellors in that day for those who needed it. We weren't permitted a tv in our workplace, so our first word of what was happening came from radio. People kept slipping into the break room to see what was going on, but mostly we heard it described as it happened. No one knew at that point how widespread things were, everyone was taking precautions. We started getting calls about building closings and evacuations, and lots of calls from parents who wanted to know if school was being cancelled and should they go pick up their kids, a question I took quite seriously since I also had a child at school. For several hours we fielded numerous enquiries from parents who wanted to get their kids and ones who didn't know how they would get their kids. At that moment it was, I suppose, one of the few things they had any control over. Finally at lunch time the school board decided either option was acceptable parents could pick up kids if they wished but school would remain open. It was nice to have at least one answer on a day full of questions. (We decided to leave our son at school, some normalcy on an abnormal day,

Most of the callers were polite and helpful, if distraught, but towards of the shift there were a few hate calls. They were probably the most disturbing part of the day. So as you cam see I, like most everyone else, remembers the day well. We all remember where we were and who we were just before things went all wrong. What I think we have forgotten is the people we were on September 12th. Americans are great people in a crisis. We want to help, we want to get involved. Post 9/11 that was the most vivid thing about this country, all the people who volunteered and donated and helped. The city I live in raised enough money to buy the City of New York a fire truck. For a time we were the best possible people we could be.

Now where are we, bitter and divided. We have abandoned our clear eyed focus on what mattered for increasingly stupid arguments over birth control and religion and the President's birth certificate. Hatefullness seems to be the order of the day.So yes we should always pause to think and remember each 9/11. (We most assuredly not spend it interviewing Kardashian Stars, though I'd like to thank NBC for providing such a fine example of what not to do.) But perhaps we should stop on 9/12 as well and remember the people we were then, and could be again.

So long, Art

In our house we have two huge sports fans: my son and myself, one casual sports fan, my daughter, and my musician husband who roots for the halftime show. Those of us who follow sports in this house pretty much live and die with the Indians and the Browns (though as fans of curses we have a warm place in our hearts for the Red Sox). Following the Indians (and to a lesser extent the Browns) through the 70's and 80's was a lesson in living with frustration. My son, on the hand, did not have his formative year blighted by baseball frustration as he arrived 2 months before the Indians made the first World Series in 41 years. (Yes there is a picture of him, in his little Indians uniform watching game 1 with his great grandma)
On the other hand, his football fandom has been tarnished by what happened a few days after that World Series ended, when Art Modell announced that he was moving the Browns to Baltimore.
Although football has always been secondary to baseball for me, I still was a Browns fan, partly due to many years spent watching the team's games with my father, who remembered the true glory days of the Browns in the 50'S and 60'S and would talk endlessly of Paul Brown, Otto Graham. Marion Motley, Lou Groza, and Jim Brown. I know that had he been alive still in 1995 he would have gloried in the Indians and been heartbroken over the betrayal of Browns fans by Art Modell.
This was a team that was loved and supported by its fans and it was financial mismanagement that got them into the hole they were in, not poor attendence. They left, not for the new stadium they could have in Cleveland eventually anyway, but for the huge cash payouts made directly to Modell for moving the team. The NFL went along, with only the owners of the Steelers and the Bengals opposing the move. Fans were left with a few crumbs of comfort: there would be a new stadium, and a new team, and that team would be called the Browns. Art could take the players, but they wouldnt be wearing orange and brown. But when the franchise became available it somehow wound up in the hands of the man who brokered the deal with Baltimore, and although the new stadium is beautiful most of the teams have been dreadful.
To a person who doesn't follow sports this may all seem unimportant. But sports teams do matter. To people in other parts of the country it is often the single most important instance of a city's visibility. If the sports team goes so does part of that community's identity. Just ask Brooklyn.
So all this ran through my head yesterday when I heard Art Modell had died.
The news media in Cleveland has tried to be fairly balanced, writing about what a great guy he was personally, how much he did to bring football into the television era, all the charity work he did and so forth. To me it just makes the whole thing worse. When someone who is supposedly so wonderful and involved in the community does something that so thoroughly betrays rhe interests and needs of that community, what is one to think? I think it is actually worse than when someone is a clear outsider to the community with no interest except the profit margin. When someone who has lived in a place and spent a lifetime with a corporation moves it out of town, or shuts it down completely doesn't that sting more than when Bain Capital types do the same thing?
Sadly, at least in this part of the country, that will be the mixed legacy of Art Modell.
On the other hand, Lebron James will never have to worry about being Clevelands most hated sports figure.

Line 27

Like many Americans, I come from a ethnic mix that could only happen in this country, my mother being Irish and Manx and my father Hungarian and Slavic. I love genealogy, but cannot go back further than great-grandparents in any direction before I come up against a boat. In this respect I am envious of my husband whose people have all been here since the mid 1800's or longer and also came from places like Holland and Switzerland where excellent records were kept.

As a child I grew up very aware of being Irish (with an Irish grandmother born on St Patrick's day how could I miss) especially the history and culture, particularly the music. (Trying to learn anything about my Manx heritage was another adventure). The heavy focus on the Celts occasionally annoyed my father ("you're Hungarian too you know", he'd mutter, somewhat amused). Ironically one area that we were very Hungarian was the cuisine, since my mom never learned to cook till her mother in law taught her. But when I tried to explore in more detail that side of my family tree I ran  into not only boats, but the Iron Curtain.

It wasn't my dad's fault either; as the youngest of 7 kids (and 11 years younger than the next oldest) his immigrant father was quite assimilated by the time he came along. Fluent in English by then, Hungarian was only spoken when my grandparents wanted to talk in front of the kids. My grandfather seldom spoke of his roots, telling his children "We're Americans now."

My grandmother lived with us when I was a child, but her stories were mostly about my dad's childhood, not hers or my grandfather's. Because my grandfather died when I was a baby,(the only one of my grandparents I never knew) I felt a particular desire to know him better.

And then the Ellis Island records went online.

As soon as I could get online with my poky computer without crashing I went searching for my grandfather. I knew the spelling of the name had been changed, supposedly on Ellis Island, because we had a a Hungarian prayerbook that my grandfather had brought with him. I typed in the name in what we believed to have been the original spelling and got a hit. I told the computer to take me to the page.

There it was, the log for the Cunard ship Pannonia, which arrived at Ellis Island on November 9, 1907 at 1048am--and on line 27 I found my grandfather.

I can't describe the thrill I felt as I stared at the screen. Finally I felt I had made a connection with the side of my family I had neglected for so long. It was one of the great moments of my life.

In a few minutes of Internet searching I confirmed everything I had ever known, and picked up more. He had been trained as a butcher. His next of kin was his mother, whose name was Kathy. I had the name of the town he had come from, the location he was staying at in New York. I had his age and height. I knew he was literate.Because Austria-Hungary was a big empire at the time his exact ethnicity could have been uncertain, but here it stated "Magyar".   His boat had sailed from Fiume and could carry 400 regular passengers and 800 in  steerage.

The Ellis Island site also has a link to all the ships that came through immigration, so I was able  to view a picture of the Pannonia, and learn a little of  its history.  The Iron Curtain had come up a little bit.

Since then, with greater digitization and availability of records, I have learned more about my family. For example, Ellis Island was totally innocent in the matter of the name change, it happened some time after the 1920 census.

I have learned several lessons from this particular exercise in genealogy. First is the vital importance of oral records. If a family member tells you something, write it down.  If the kids or grandkids give you one of those memory books for Christmas, fill it out.  (My Irish grandmother filled one out and my mom and aunts made bound copies for all the grand kids. It has been invaluable.) Share info with other family members. Remember what you are doing now will be your descendants' genealogy, so take lots of pictures and label them.

And if anyone in your family came through Ellis Island go toEllis Island's web page and check it

out.  Looking at the documents is free, free, free (you can purchase prints if you like).

The site is very informative and easy to use. And I wish you the same thrill I had when I landed on Line 27 for the first time.