Monthly Archives: August 2014

Hanging On to (And Finally Letting Go of) the Chooba Diamond

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

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Originally published on December 5, 2012:

the chooba diamond- drawing by Julie Seyler

A Little Chooba Diamond on Her Hand.
Drawing by Julie Seyler

BY BOB SMITH

Have you ever heard of the Chooba diamond? I invented it when I was 11.
In 1965, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had a pretty big hit on pop radio with a song called, “Let’s Hang On.” It’s a bouncy anthem about love gone wrong featuring Valli’s powerful falsetto, and one of the verses begins like this:

That little chip of diamond on your hand
Ain’t a fortune baby but you know it stands
For the love (A love to tie and bind ya)
Such a love (We just can’t leave behind us) …

The chorus exhorts the girlfriend to:

Hang on to what we’ve got
Don’t let go girl, we got a lot
Got a lotta love between us
Hang on, hang on, hang on
To what we’ve got.”

Somehow, I misunderstood the first line of that verse.  I thought Frankie said, “that little Chooba diamond on your hand,” instead of “chip of:”

I’d had zero experience with diamonds (or engagement rings, or girls, for that matter), so I  assumed Chooba was a designation of origin for a rare type of diamond unknown to me.  The “ain’t a fortune baby” line made sense because he did say “little,” after all.  So in my quaint understanding, Frankie had purchased an engagement ring for his girl set with a minuscule, but nonetheless highly-prized and mysterious, “Chooba diamond.”

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Summer Reruns

18 Monday Aug 2014

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Loand juleon vacation

When The Write Side of 50 launched in November 2012, Julie was recovering from hip replacement surgery and Lois stated often, that, unlike many people her age, she had never had back pain.

Well, twenty-one months later, Julie has a new hip that’s as good as new, has traveled to remote corners of the world, and may very well hold the record in all of Manhattan for museum, art house, and restaurant visits.

Lois has had back pain due to trauma for nine weeks now, has moved twice, and got a divorce.

And the blog has remained afloat. (In no small measure, thanks also to the contributions of Frank and Bob.)

But they need a real vacation – a veg-out; a brain and body recharge. Maybe even a departure from the grid entirely – no e-mails, no worries. A beach bingo.

So they put the blog in charge of itself for one week. Starting tomorrow, The Write Side of 50 will be reposting four of its favorite and most popular pieces from that first year.

And also worth repeating – thank you! to all readers, followers, and contributors.

The Saturday Blog: Grand Opening

16 Saturday Aug 2014

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Tony's Little Gift Shop

Tony’s Little Gift Shop is long gone. But the sign announcing its grand opening on July 1, 1896 is still standing.

Breaking News: Robin Williams’s Death Not Worthy of TV Interruption

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

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rwilliams3BY BOB SMITH

Last night we were on the couch watching TV. Alex Trebek had just announced the close of the initial Jeopardy round, when the network news logo suddenly flashed across the screen, accompanied by blasts of militaristic brass music and marching drums, and the words “SPECIAL REPORT” in red capital letters:

“We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this Special Report from ABC News,” said the announcer, as my heart upticked in anticipation.

Has one of the local wars around the world blossomed into a nuclear holocaust?

Has an assassin’s bullet found the president?

Is a major U.S. city a smoldering ruin thanks to a terrorist attack?

Involuntarily, my mind reeled back to that November afternoon more than 50 years ago, when TV brought us the stunning news that President Kennedy had been shot dead in Dallas. What new calamity could this be?

None of the above – a celebrity had died.

The announcer, a square-jawed 20-something guy in a somber suit and serious demeanor, stared reassuringly into the camera. His hair was piled high on his head – dense, yet richly textured – like a freshly-baked chocolate souffle.

“ABC News has learned that Robin Williams is dead,” he said. “The gifted comedian and actor, 63, was found at his Northern California home earlier today. He appears to have died of asphyxia but authorities have not confirmed that, or any further details on the circumstances of his death at this time.”

He went on to note Williams’s brilliant comic talent, his long and varied TV and movie career, and the fact that he had long struggled with drug and alcohol addictions and severe depression. The report concluded after two minutes with the announcer promising “further details as this shocking and saddening story unfolds.”

Really?

Look, I loved and admired Robin Williams as much as the next guy. It seems anyone with a glimmering of talent today is called a genius, but he was the real thing – a comic tsunami, a dead-on, rapid-fire impressionist with both precision timing, and wickedly hilarious things to say. Loved him.

But have we really become so frivolous as a society that the death of a comic actor – even a transcendently talented one like Robin Williams – is considered breaking news that merits stop-the-world treatment? Has Entertainment Tonight hijacked the news?

No disrespect to Robin, but except for his immediate family and friends, I don’t think any of us will recount, decades from now, exactly where we were and what we were doing when we learned of his passing.

We interrupt this blog to bring you a special report: Mrs. O’Toole’s cat is up a tree again. The fire department is on the scene with a ladder truck trying to effect the rescue. Now back to our regularly scheduled (escapist) programming.

Getting in Touch with My Inner Nascar Redneck

11 Monday Aug 2014

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photo 2By FRANK TERRANELLA

I think that we over 50s stay young through new experiences. You say you’ve never been scuba diving? Jump in, the water’s fine. Never been to the opera? No time like the present. Recently, I crossed an item off my bucket list. I attended my first NASCAR race.

Now some of you may be wondering why it took me 61 years to try the most popular spectator sport in America. My only defense is that I’m from New Jersey and there is no NASCAR in New Jersey, never has been. The closest racetrack for me is 90 minutes away in the Poconos. So unless you have family or friends who are fans, NASCAR is not on your radar in the state with the most roads per square mile in the nation.

Only recently has a New Jersey NASCAR fan become a friend. My daughter’s boyfriend has been going to NASCAR races since he was a boy. So when he mentioned that he and his family were heading out to Pocono Raceway for the weekend, I expressed a desire to go along. So my daughter and I got up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning and headed to Pennsylvania to meet up with her boyfriend’s family who had rented an RV and were waiting on the Pocono Raceway infield for us.

If you’ve ever been to a horse race, you know that there is a center portion of the track that is usually green but not inhabited by fans. Car racing is a bit different. First, the track is about twice the length of a horse track and the infield is accordingly much larger. In fact, it’s large enough to accommodate hundreds of RVs. This is like the biggest tailgate you could imagine. Everyone brings grills, lots of food and unimaginable quantities of beer. In fact, everything about car racing is supersized. The racing is like horse racing on steroids; the tailgating makes football fans look like rank amateurs. Even the crowds, in excess of 200,000, are far beyond any other spectator sport.

It took an hour, but my daughter and I finally reached her boyfriend’s RV parked on the track infield. The first item on the agenda was breakfast, and the bacon, eggs and sausage were among the tastiest I’ve ever had. We took a walk around and noticed RVs with satellite television and RV’s with rooftop terraces. We also noticed a lot of Confederate flags.

Now I would expect to see the stars and bars south of the Mason Dixon line, but we were in northern Pennsylvania, about 150 miles north of Gettysburg in fact. So the presence of large numbers of Confederate flags was puzzling. The cars in the parking lot did not indicate that Southerners had driven north for the race.

photo 4 (4)

No, I found out that the stars and bars has become the flag of Redneck Nation. People who simply identify themselves as rednecks fly the flag, in some cases totally ignorant of its historical significance as a flag of slavery for African Americans. And as I looked around, the only people of color I saw were security personnel. There were also far fewer women than men. It seems that NASCAR is a predominantly white male pastime. Fortunately, I fall into that demographic, at least on paper.

As race time came around, we all went to the fence separating the infield from the track and watched the cars whizz by. I have to say that I enjoyed the race itself and all the people we met were extremely friendly. I am glad that I went for the experience of it, just as I was glad that I visited the Guggenheim Museum the previous Sunday. I think that the overlap of customers at the two is probably quite small. But I’m glad that it includes me. In fact, I would not mind attending another NASCAR race in the future. But this weekend, I’m going to the National Gallery.

Remembering Mesopotamia

07 Thursday Aug 2014

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The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

By JULIE SEYLER

There are many things to be said about Iraq, and the political pundits are weighing in non-stop on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, FOX, PBS from the left to the right. (This is in-between keeping us abreast of what’s going on in Honduras, Syria, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine and Afghanistan). I am speechless over the terror gripping virtually every continent, but with Iraq, I cannot help but remember sixth grade history when we learned that it sits amid the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, otherwise known as “The Cradle of Civilization”.

The heritage of Iraq is one of greatness. It descends from the Persian Empire, a civilization once populated by the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Akkadians and their sophisticated comprehension of the world should be celebrated, not forgotten. The Sumerians recorded the first written word, (circa 2900 B.C.), figured out that a circle was 360 degrees, and grasped that the planets circled the sun and not the other way around:

Constellations that we still use today, such as Leo, Taurus, Scorpius, Auriga, Gemini, Capricorn, and Sagittarius, were invented by the Sumerians and Babylonians between 2000-3000 B.C. These constellations had mythical origins, the stories of which are common throughout the western world.

From excavations and archaeological digs we know that these earliest urbanites brewed beer, wrote poetry and were savvy commercial traders. We also know that they were craftsmen. Within the ancient tombs and buried cities, archaeologists have discovered golden filigreed crowns, necklaces of delicately chiseled leaves, and beautifully sculpted silver spouted vessels which were used either for libations or cult objects.

Jewelry found at the Royal Tomb of Ur. 2600-2200 B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jewelry found at the Royal Tomb of Ur. 2600-2200 B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kneeling bull holding spouted vessel. 3100-2900 B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kneeling bull holding spouted vessel. 3100-2900 B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

To remember all this and to balance it against the knowledge that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, “ISIS”, now known simply as the Islamic State, has not only eclipsed Al Qaeda as the world’s most powerful and active jihadist group, but seeks to monomanically annihilate history is beyond heartbreaking:

In areas that fall under their control, the jihadists work carefully to entrench their rule. They have attracted the most attention with their draconian enforcement of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic Shariah law, including the execution of Christians and Muslims deemed kufar, or infidels.

The goal of ISIS is to destroy. It boggles the mind, but perhaps it is not so novel or exceptional, given that it was war and violence that ultimately brought down the Persian Empire.

And yet there is wisdom being spoken and hopefully it will prevail. Ali al-Nashmi, a professor of history at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, was quoted in The New York Times on July 27, 2014:

The world lost Iraq, but we must fight, you and me and all the friends, to do something, something mysterious and very far off. We must teach history in the primary school and show our kids Iraq’s great civilization.

Five Stages of Liberal Grief

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

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stage exportBY FRANK TERRANELLA

There are five stages of grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying.” As a lifelong liberal, I have been going through them since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

Stage 1: Denial — When Reagan was elected, it seemed to me that this was just a “throw the bums out” reaction to the incredible inflation and gasoline shortages we were experiencing at the time. It didn’t help that Jimmy Carter was perceived as weak on Iran and that Nightline reminded us every night for 444 days that 52 American diplomats and citizens were being held hostage. It turned out that Reagan and the Republicans were like the house guest who never leaves. They occupied the house on Pennsylvania Avenue for 12 years. And then with only a break for a conservative Democrat who gave us “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Defense of Marriage Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the repeal of Glass Steagel, we had another 8 years of so-called “compassionate conservativism.”

Stage 2: Anger — By the time George Bush was “elected” in 2000, my denial was over. Now I was angry. I was angry first that an election had been stolen and then that the thief was hell-bent on starting a war in Iraq. For the first time since the 1960s, I marched in the streets and took part in vigils against the war. The anti-war efforts were completely ignored by the Bush administration. The anger dissipated after a few years.

Stage 3: Bargaining — By 2004, a helplessness feeling had set in. What could we have done better to elect John Kerry? Clearly our message had not gotten out. Were we doomed to have a President who was a joke to the rest of the world? Perhaps we could compromise some principles in order to elect someone who was not a liberal but was at least a moderate. The bargain we struck got us Barack Obama who immediately took compromise to a new level by adopting the Republican healthcare plan.

Stage 4: Depression — As I watched a Democrat expand the use of drones, wiretaps and deportations to unprecedented levels, depression sank in. This was “our guy” doing this. What is it going to be like when the next inevitable Republican takes over?

Stage 5: Acceptance — Just this year, as I turned 61, I came to the realization that I am never going see the kind of nation I thought I’d see when I first became socially conscious 45 years ago when my age digits were reversed. I also will never get to travel to the Moon or own a flying car. In the decade or so that I have left before senility sets in I will have to accept that I live in an imperfect world. Good ideas don’t always beat bad ideas. Altruism doesn’t always trump greed. I have officially entered the cynical sixties.

But just to be sure I don’t get too cynical, I have also this year been given a wonderful grandson in whom I can place all my youthful hopes and dreams for America. I may never get to see a kinder and gentler America where guns and wars are rare and where equality pervades every segment of society. But Bryce may see it. One can only hope.