Moishe Oysher

Jan Peerce

Richard Tucker

Sophie Tucker

Groucho Marx (and all of his brothers)

Old Banjo Eyes – Eddie Cantor

Scissors, I can tell you that nobody ever asks me for ID when I go to the shnapps store. As my grandchildren say “Bubbie is old.” I am of legal age for at least 3 people plus a few more years for mazel.

Hi Ho Silver, awaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

“Yoohoo its me, my name is Pinky Lee.” (aka Pinchus Levy)

wringer washing machines

“Its Howdy Doody time.”

Polaroid cameras

“M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E” “We’re Mousketeers and we”re here to have some thrills, we know its true that a laugh can cure your ills.”

sardine cans with keys to open them

non-homogenized milk with cream at the top of the bottle

sucaryl

reel to reel tape recorders

The Ed Sullivan Show

Any cake with cream cheese frosting or lots of whipping cream (the real stuff, not an edible oil product) on it.

Goq: Sorry to have missed all of the festivities. I really wanted to play pin the tail on the dolts. I also wanted to break open the “joseph” pinata. It take so darn long to get to your place from the center of Canada and that is why I am alway late. Anyway, please accept my very best wishes for good health and happiness in the next year and for 120 beyond.

Queenie: (I am taking you up on your offer of being allowed to call you Queenie). you can give him potch from me as well. He says “this is so important in our time”. I guess the fact that over 50 percent of young Jewish adults are intermarrying and that the fighting continues in Eretz Yisroel aren’t so important. But, chewing gum (for the record, I think it looks terrible) is a big deal.

There was a thread about this a couple of weeks ago. It seems apparent that people use clips on their kippot so they stay in place. In fact, there are some kippot with little slits in the lining that you insert a clip into. Then nobody sees the clip but the kippa is securely in place. If wearing a kippah with a clip was a “style”, then why would newer kippot have “invisible” clips?

I admit I’ve fallen down on the job

I can’t even blame a story sob,

I have just been plain lazy

On these days hot and hazy

Other’s limericks I may have to rob.

“is it going to be 10 girls?”

coffee – possibly.

“You can put a picture of bowling pins. “

HaLeivi – I laughed out loud. Of course, you wouldn’t know, but my father used to own a bowling alley. He would be howling with laughter right now.

momma, nobody should have to “settle” and particularly not have to settle for mediocrity. That is no way to start a marriage. Perhaps you meant that they should be prepared to live on a smaller income than in the homes they were raised. That is completely different than mediocrity. If one, or both, of the people making up the new couple are mediocre, they, unlike some fine wines, will not improve with age. One, or both of them, will settle for low paying jobs or he may just take up space at a kollel without learning much – after all, he is mediocre and not much is expected of him. Most marriages like this are bound to fail. A couple should have a very long talk about how they see their future together before the engagement is announced.

Unfortunately my only sib, my brother, passed away 10 years ago on 23 Av. We did not get along well as adults. He had a chronic illness that affected his personality. He was extremely argumentative, particularly with me. Still, in spite of that, I do miss him and will say kaddish for him next week. I am the only left of my immediate family so I say kaddish for everyone – and I do it with love.

Hic. What did you shay? Yawn.

To me it means being nice to people regardless of their religion. As I said in a different thread, when I get a new neighbor, I always take them a cake or some cookies. It is just a nice thing to do and it often makes them think that Jews must be nice people. At least, one of my cake recipients told me that she knows several Jewish people and they are always doing nice things for other people.

There are actually some CD’s available with sounds that help induce sleep – like the ocean or rain falling.

Health – aren’t you also a landsman and a tinsman?

There are far more important issues these days than what is on someone’s kippah. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing IF this were the most pressing issue in contemporary Jewish life? Perhaps when Moshiach comes, it will be.

taking a break: Indian weddings are incredibly elaborate and do last for days. In many of their “circle” it is traditional to give gifts of gold – meaning large cash gifts a/o jewellery.

Aries: I am surprised at your Toronto wedding experience. I have been to several there and they are very generous with food. The only disappointment I ever had a TO wedding was when my cousin got married. I can’t remember what the entree was, but the dessert was some type of pale pink sorbet. At about ten o’clock when I expected a pastry/fruit table, they served coffee and more of the same sorbet – this time in fuschia and a plate of very goyishe cookies (1 per person) at each table. I had my taste buds primed for a piece of torte and I was sorely disappointed. I think if I had known there was no pastry table, I might have given a smaller gift.

haifagirl, the following article was in today’s paper. As soon as I read it, you were the first person that I thought of. Although the article is about speech, it certainly implies that better use of the English language can improve another’s impression of you.

Speech therapy

U.S. truck driver has written a guide book to help readers elevate their language skills and become more eloquent communicators

Elevate your prose

He likes to come across as the dad in charge.

He likes to cast himself as the patriarch.

I can’t think of it.

Words escape me.

You should have seen the bushes shaped like animals at Disney.

You should have seen Disney’s topiary sculptures.

She tried to get around the regulations.

She tried to circumvent the regulations.

I didn’t pay any attention to it.

I took little notice of it.

Eloquent alternatives

without my knowledge/unbeknownst to me

now that I think about it/in retrospect

I’m afraid that/I fear that

asking for trouble/courting disaster

swear words/colourful language

former friend/erstwhile friend

take advantage of/avail yourself of

I do not understand/the point escapes me

In his first speech to Parliament as prime minister, Winston Churchill could have said something like this:

“Looking forward, the outlook is for a not insignificant number of casualties, a great many initiatives to be undertaken and a great concentration of labour.”

But he didn’t.

He said: “I have nothing to offer but blood and toil and tears and sweat.”

Churchill, in the words of one of his contemporaries, “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Like many of the great orators and writers of our time, the prime minister knew the words he used and how he used them were at least as important as the ideas he needed to get across.

In 2006, the same idea occurred to an American truck driver.

In between runs, Tom Heehler was taking night classes at Harvard, where, he says, discussions with classmates and professors woke him up to just how poorly spoken he truly was.

He had no problem producing intelligent thoughts. The problem, Heehler recalls, was how to translate his thoughts into intelligent words that reflected who he was — someone smart enough to succeed at an Ivy League school, for starters — and what he wanted to express.

Determined to become more articulate, he began “collecting words like butterflies.”

“Whenever I would happen upon a particularly eloquent word or phrase, which you do quite often hanging out at Harvard, I would write it down and then pair that with what I would have said otherwise,” the 48-year-old student, who is 72 credits away from his bachelor of arts degree, says over the phone from his Florida home.

“Rinse and repeat 5,000 times and you’ve got yourself a book.”

Heehler is currently on hiatus from Harvard to promote The Well-Spoken Thesaurus: The Most Powerful Ways to Say Everyday Words and Phrases (Sourcebooks, $14.99).

In the book, he posits that people who write and speak using eloquent language acquire and project more power.

“As important as your words are in shaping your behaviour, they are even more important in the way they shape the behaviour of others,” Heehler writes. “Your manner of speaking is, if nothing else, the central factor upon which people form assumptions about you. Whatever your ultimate goal in life, chances are good you’re going to have to communicate your way to it.”

He is a case in point, he says: A truck driver with no professional writing credits who convinced a publisher to pay him to write a book that presumes to suggest how others should go about writing and speaking.

“When you’re well-spoken, you acquire what’s called ‘executive presence,’ the ability to project power by virtue of your demeanour,” says Heehler. “And to me, nothing is more important to your demeanour than your own words.”

But mobilizing the English language, he stresses, is not about arming yourself with a bunch of $10 words or affecting an air of intellectual superiority to impress or intimidate your audience.

“If you cast yourself as the Charles Emerson Winchester the III character (from TV’s M*A*S*H), you’re going to expose yourself to ridicule, and rightly so. This is what I mean when I say in the book, ‘to speak like an academic without sounding like one.”

The book’s message, he says, is that anyone can become well-spoken in a short period of time, and that eloquence is no longer a pedigree, position, who your parents are or what school you got into.

The secret to eloquence, according to the author, lies in simplicity — the ability to use ordinary words in extraordinary ways. “From Homer to Hemingway, Lincoln, Churchill, King, Obama — their words are why you know them,” he writes in the book.

It’s a simple matter of replacing common, everyday words with “eloquent alternatives” – not just synonymous words, but words that are rhetorically related in some way. More powerful words. Heehler calls them “powernyms.”

Take the phrase: “It makes me want more.” A conventional thesaurus might include such synonyms for the verb “makes” as “causes” or “forces” — neither of which would improve the wording. Whereas in The Well-Spoken Thesaurus, the powernym is “leaves” — as in “It leaves me wanting more.”

In addition to hundreds of powernyms, the 391-page book also features a section called Rhetorical Form and Design, with 17 lessons highlighting specific techniques to elevate written and spoken language, many of which are employed by such linguistic alchemists as Margaret Atwood, Norman Mailer, Ken Kesey and John Steinbeck.

The technique of omission, for example, turns “I never get tired of,” into “I never tire of.”

Heehler admits The Well-Spoken Thesaurus has been criticized as being prescriptive — dictating how language should and shouldn’t be used. But he urges readers not to judge the book by its cover (which features a sample of well-spoken alternatives under the headings “Don’t say that” and “Instead Say This”) and insists he’s not prescribing a one-size-fits-all approach to language.

“The words and phrases I suggest as replacements are precisely that: they’re suggestions. They require a measure of discretion on the part of the reader, as do the words in any thesaurus,” says Heehler, who writes the blogs The Saurus Rex (Bad language and the people who traffic in it) and thewordsilearnedatharvard.blogspot.com. He also created Fluent in Four Languages, a free online course where students learn to speak French, Italian and Spanish simultaneously.

Heehler’s book is pretty much the antithesis of one released by Winnipeg linguist Jila Ghomeshi earlier this year. In Grammar Matters: The Social Significance of How We Use Language, the University of Manitoba professor argues that judging people on their spoken and written language is a form of prejudice based on dubious claims to right and wrong.

Her goal, she writes in the book, “is to attempt to debunk the idea of a ‘correct’ grammar by addressing grammar fans.”

Heehler, however, says it would be denying human nature to deny that grammar matters a lot when it comes to how we’re perceived by others and how we perceive ourselves.

To this day, he still collects eloquent words and phrases, using flash cards to help with memorization. And, as always, he plans to use them sparingly — and not when he’s, say, on Facebook.

“We all use colloquialisms and I don’t think we want to give those up,” says Heehler. “I’m not suggesting that people should, when they’re tweeting or interacting on social media, present themselves as if they were on Meet the Press.

“To become well-spoken, you don’t need to replace every single word you use or even many of the words. You really only need to replace one or two per paragraph. The last thing you want is to over-egg the pudding.”

[email protected]

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 16, 2011 C1

In the province I live in there is a Home Care program – it is NOT income based, but based on health needs. Among the services they provide are nursing care, personal aids for assistance with bathing and dressing, cooking services and home cleaning. I have had various services during the years. In the past 5 years I broke both of my hips and had 2 more surgeries for hip replacements. I also have severe back problems and cannot bend over far enough to do some household chores such as changing my sheets and vacuuming. I have had cleaning services for several years – which is one hour every 2 weeks. You are assessed yearly by a “case coordinator”. At one time these coordinators were all RN’s and now they have mainly social workers doing the job. How a social worker can assess medical needs is beyond me. I recently was assigned a new coordinator and from the minute she walked in, I just felt in my bones that she was a “cholerya”. She looked around and said:”you live in a nice place and have such beautiful furniture and ornaments. I find it very difficult to believe that you cannot afford to pay for your own household cleaning.” Like an idiot, I began telling her that I inherited a lot of things, that I used to have a house and a husband and a good job, but now I am on a fixed income. It was none of her business (I later found out) and when I said that paying for help would be a hardship, that should have been enough. After she left, I got angrier and angrier. I made it my business to find out who her supervisor was and I wrote a letter to her (with a cc to the cholerya) documenting the entire visit. I received a phone call in less than a week and things were ironed out. So, you can’t judge people by what they have because nobody knows what financial position they are presently in. Yes, there are many abuses of the system but I think that even if for every 3 abuses, there is a genuine person in need, that is how it must be. You cannot judge a book by its cover.

80: I think that a backyard BBQ reception would be terrific for a wedding. If you want it more upscale, you can hire someone to do the cooking and serve barbequed chicken or steaks – cooked to order. With a nice array of salads and side dishes, some fresh fruit and a small pastry table, it could be a lovely affair.

I think the title “healthy baking” is an oxymoron. Once you start making all sorts of substitutions, something has to change – it must be either the texture, the flavor or it becomes too heavy. If we keep baking as an occasional treat and only eat a regular size portion, for most people no harm is done. Granted there are a few people with health issues that are not allowed sugar, regular flour, etc. For the rest of us – if we keep everything in moderation, there should be nothing that we cannot eat.

(I once made a fat free low cal cheesecake – I think the recipe was from Richard Simmons – I can’t remember what the crust was made from, but the filling had 2 pounds of fat free cream cheese, egg substitute, etc. After we tasted it, the entire thing went into the garbage. I decided then, that I would rather have a small piece of the real thing than a large piece of the ersatz.)

How could someone withold the fact that they have epilepsy? In the first place, it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of and it should never be kept a secret. Can you imagine if a person had a seizure and nobody around them knew that they had a seizure disorder. They would be rushed to hospital and likely have thousands of dollars of unneccessary testing, when they likely only need an adjustment in their medication, if even that. The person with the seizures should always be wearing a Medic-Alert bracelet. If they were keeping the illness secret, they wouldn’t do this. Are people also ashamed to say they have lupus or any other chronic ailment? Epilepsy is usually a highly controlable disease. I find this entire secrecy issue to be very problematic.

I didn’t mean to disparage online degrees. I don’t know much about them. It wasn’t the online part of Rabbi Booch’s question that was problematic, it was the “quick and easy” part. A four year bachelor’s program that actually takes four years and involves research and study and exams, may be worth the equivalent of an “on campus” program for a graduate school. I have taken distance education programs in the past (in the precomputer era), but they did involve traveling for opening seminars that lasted several days, then submitting monthly papers to a preceptor. At the end of the program – after submitting 12 papers, there was a closing seminar of several days and an exam. After all of this expense and work, I received a certificate. This was not for a university degree – just a post grad nursing management program.

“Would you have taken him with you? “

Only if the place I were moving to did not allow 4 legged pets and then I would need a 2 legged dolt to guard the place. Hopefully, he could be easily housebroken.

pba, have you found a good minyan to daven with in Nome? And if you think that it can get cold in Canada, just wait until your first far northern winter.