Archive for April, 2015

“Next Year in Jerusalem” – My Thoughts and Wishes for You on This Weekend

April 5, 2015

April 2, 2015

This holy season is a time of the year that the veil between the worlds – between the earthly lives that we are living now and the eternity that awaits us all – is at its thinnest point, as a dear friend once pointed out to me.

This evening, Christian peoples begin the Easter Triduum, the three-day observance that culminates in the Easter morn celebration of redemption and deliverance from sin and death. Tomorrow evening, Jewish folk begin Passover, their week of remembrance and thanks for divine deliverance from bondage in Egypt.

The Earthly Jerusalem, seen from the Mount of Olives. Redeemer's Gate, on the city wall that overlooks the Kidron Valley and Gethsemane, which is at the foot of the Mount of Olives, will remain sealed shut until Judgment Day.

The Earthly Jerusalem, seen from the Mount of Olives.
Redeemer’s Gate, on the city wall that overlooks the Kidron Valley and Gethsemane, which is at the foot of the Mount of Olives, will remain sealed shut until Judgment Day.

Meanwhile, all around us the earth is coming back to life in the glorious season of spring. I can’t help but think that even those who don’t profess or practice a religious faith share with those who do the same feelings of wonderment and appreciation of our here and now, as well as eager anticipation of the blooming, the ripening, and the harvest that are to come.

That same friend also remarked that our earthly life is but a moment of time that stands between two eternities.  How true. But before we exit our moment and pass through that veil and finally know what dreams may come, much remains for us all to do.

I especially love the way our Jewish friends conclude the Seder on the first night of Passover with the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem.” Those words reach forward to the coming of the Messiah and to complete spiritual redemption, which is represented by Jerusalem.

Rabbi David Hartman explains it inspiringly. Every year, he writes, Jews drink four cups of wine and then pour a fifth for Elijah, the prophet who would be sent before the coming and great day of the Lord.

“The cup is poured, but not yet drunk. Yet the cup of hope is poured every year. Passover is the night for reckless dreams; for visions about what a human being can be, what society can be, what people can be, what history may become. That is the significance of ‘Le-shanah ha-ba-a b’Yerushalayim’ (Next year in Jerusalem).”

So let us take this special time to love and embrace and celebrate it all – our families, our friends near and far, our health, our work, our fair and blessed land that still flows with milk and honey.

Let us drink that cup of hope and dream those reckless dreams. Let us renew once again all that we are about, and envision all that we may yet become. Then, when we do take our leave, we’ll have done our parts to make the world a better place for those whose brief moments in time have not yet come.

Happy Easter. Chag Pesach Sameach. And to all, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

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Rest in Peace, Eddie LeBaron – One of My Earliest Football Heroes

April 5, 2015

Sad to hear of the passing of Eddie LeBaron, one of my earliest football heroes. He died last week in Stockton, CA at age 85.

Eddie played at College of the Pacific for Amos Alonzo Stagg. He graduated in 1950 but was drafted into the Marines. He fought in Korea and earned two Bronze Stars. Then he came back to football and played a total of 11 seasons in the NFL. He was a four-time Pro Bowler even though he stood only 5-7…a Doug Flutie type who, unlike Doug, got to show what he could do as an NFL quarterback.

I saw Eddie play on TV a few times during the final stages of his career when he was with the Dallas Cowboys. It was a big disappointment when the team went with a youth movement and made the wooden Don Meredith the first-string quarterback.

In 1962 I wrote a letter to Eddie and asked him how I could become a great passer like him. In January 1963 I got this autographed picture post card that read “Tommy: The most important thing in passing is practice and strength in the fingers and forearm.”

Thanks Eddie – for your kindness in getting back to me, but most especially for your service to our country. Rest in peace!

LeBaronpic and card

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History I Never Knew – EEEWWW! The origin of vinaigrette, and the real lives of our stinky ancestors.

April 3, 2015

I usually order vinaigrette salad dressing when I go to a restaurant. I think I’ll go back to Greek, now that I know where the term “vinaigrette” came from.

Vinaigrette Box

Vinaigrette Box

Back in Victorian times – think the 75 years or so before the era of “Downton Abbey” – fashionable ladies carried their vinaigrette everywhere. Depicted here, the vinaigrette was a little perforated box filled with aromatic herbs and a vinegar-soaked sponge. It was handy for sniffing in times of “olfactory distress.” The ladies’ attendants also found the vinaigrette handy in reviving their mistress after she had swooned and fainted for one reason or another.

 
Apparently, there were plenty of occasions of olfactory distress back in those days. A great deal of the ladies’ fainting must have been caused by the relentless assaults of offensive aromas.

According to “The Royal Armpits” in the latest issue of Mental Floss magazine, our forerunners stank. To high heaven, they stank. The article’s subhead wryly points out,  “We should be thankful they don’t make history books scratch n’ sniff.”

 
So how bad was it? Hard to imagine, but it started ‘way back before the Victoria era. People in those days thought that baths caused disease by opening the pores and allowing diseases to invade the body – the exact opposite of what happens.

 

Elizabeth I - never had the luxury of Dove Body Wash.

Elizabeth I – never had the luxury of Dove Body Wash.

Queen Elizabeth I once stated that she “took a bath once a month, whether I need to or not.” Henry VIII had a foul-smelling, festering wound on his lower leg; you could get a whiff of it from three rooms away. The royal doctors made it worse by tying the wound open, thinking that the sore needed to run in order to heal. They even sprinkled gold pellets onto it, keeping it infected and putrefying.

 
Over in La Belle France, Louis XIV, “The Sun King,” had such bad breath that his mistress doused herself in perfume to ward off the stench. His predecessor, Louis XII, once declared, “I take after my father. I smell of armpits.”

 
Outside those royal rooms it was just as bad, if not worse. In cities, people would simply toss the products of their bathroom visits out into the street. In 1900, in New York, there were about 200,000 horses within the city. That means a daily output of five million pounds of poop, most of which was just swept to the curb.

Louis Quatorze - could have put Scope or Listerine to mighty good use.

Louis Quatorze – could have put Scope or Listerine to mighty good use.

 

Wealthy Londoners employed an army of “night soil men” to cart the stuff away. They disposed of it in dumps on the outskirts of the city. One such place – typical British humour – was named “Mount Pleasant.”

 
The invention of the flush toilet made it even worse. In the summer of 1858, so much human excrement clogged the Thames River that it became known as the year of the “Great Stink.”

 
There was also the smell of death. In London, butchers killed and disemboweled animals right in the streets. One greedy British pastor sold “burials” to his flock, but didn’t bury the bodies. He stashed 12,000 of them in the church cellar, and the fumes made churchgoers pass out.

 
Even in churches where the dead had been properly buried, the smell of the people was too much to take. Thomas Aquinas approved the use of incense because the faithful’s odors “can provoke disgust.” In Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the people who bought the tickets in the cheap seats were known as “penny stinkers.”

 
Yes, I am very glad that our history books are not scratch ‘n sniff. And I have a suggestion for historians.

 
Let’s revise, once again, those notations that describe calendar eras. “BC” is now “BCE,” and “AD” is now “CE.” I say that we do away with them.

 
The most accurate way to depict former times is to start back at the beginning. Make the year that Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden “Year One, B.O.”

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“Next Year in Jerusalem” – My Thoughts and Wishes for You on This Weekend

April 2, 2015

April 2, 2015

(Slightly updated, originally posted in 2012)

This holy season is a time of the year that the veil between the worlds – between the earthly lives that we are living now and the eternity that awaits us all – is at its thinnest point, as a dear friend once pointed out to me.

This evening, Christian peoples begin the Easter Triduum, the three-day observance that culminates in the Easter morn celebration of redemption and deliverance from sin and death. Tomorrow evening, Jewish folk begin Passover, their week of remembrance and thanks for divine deliverance from bondage in Egypt.

The Earthly Jerusalem, seen from the Mount of Olives. Redeemer's Gate, on the city wall that overlooks the Kidron Valley and Gethsemane, which is at the foot of the Mount of Olives, will remain sealed shut until Judgment Day.

The Earthly Jerusalem, seen from the Mount of Olives.
Redeemer’s Gate, on the city wall that overlooks the Kidron Valley and Gethsemane, which is at the foot of the Mount of Olives, will remain sealed shut until Judgment Day.

Meanwhile, all around us the earth is coming back to life in the glorious season of spring. I can’t help but think that even those who don’t profess or practice a religious faith share with those who do the same feelings of wonderment and appreciation of our here and now, as well as eager anticipation of the blooming, the ripening, and the harvest that are to come.

That same friend also remarked that our earthly life is but a moment of time that stands between two eternities.  How true. But before we exit our moment and pass through that veil and finally know what dreams may come, much remains for us all to do.

I especially love the way our Jewish friends conclude the Seder on the first night of Passover with the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem.” Those words reach forward to the coming of the Messiah and to complete spiritual redemption, which is represented by Jerusalem.

Rabbi David Hartman explains it inspiringly. Every year, he writes, Jews drink four cups of wine and then pour a fifth for Elijah, the prophet who would be sent before the coming and great day of the Lord.

“The cup is poured, but not yet drunk. Yet the cup of hope is poured every year. Passover is the night for reckless dreams; for visions about what a human being can be, what society can be, what people can be, what history may become. That is the significance of ‘Le-shanah ha-ba-a b’Yerushalayim’ (Next year in Jerusalem).”

So let us take this special time to love and embrace and celebrate it all – our families, our friends near and far, our health, our work, our fair and blessed land that still flows with milk and honey.

Let us drink that cup of hope and dream those reckless dreams. Let us renew once again all that we are about, and envision all that we may yet become. Then, when we do take our leave, we’ll have done our parts to make the world a better place for those whose brief moments in time have not yet come.

Happy Easter. Chag Pesach Sameach. And to all, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

Posted in Events and Society | 2 Comments »