Everybody Does It

We have been watching old episodes of the television series All in the Family. “Everybody Does It,” which first aired on CBS-TV on February 8, 1975, was the 29th episode of the fifth season (the 104th episode in the series). One particular incident in the plot was a great example of something that truly hit home with us but must seem a quite puzzling to younger generations:

 

Questions of honesty and morality come into the Bunker household when Archie borrows some tools from work for a home project. As the family tries to guilt him, their own crimes come to light. Gloria has been taking lipstick samples from the cosmetics counter where she works. Mike has been leaving coded messages in order to avoid accepting collect calls. The only thing Edith can come up with is that she took a bite out of a pretzel behind a vendor's back when she was eight. Archie tries to hide his crime from a co-worker that Edith has invited to dinner but whom he has offended. In the end, Archie finds that karma has come down on him as the plywood that he bought for the project has been stolen off the back porch, and the window breaks when he slams the door.

When we would travel back to college following breaks, we would place collect calls to our parents as a sort of “code” to let them know we had arrived safely. They, of course, would refuse to accept the charges. This way our folks knew we were back on campus without having to pay for that knowledge. In retrospect, I am sure the phone company was on to this but there was really no way they could have stopped it.

In our defense, long distance phone calls were quite expensive back then, particularly during the day.

 

When you made a long distance call, ATT Long Lines billed the time back to the local company who then billed you. In the daytime, businesses were using the long lines, and your usage of long distance was discouraged by higher daytime long distance rates.

 

A little humor cannot hurt during these dark times, right? Enjoy the episode!

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5v0y01

Love,

Rebecca

Red letter day

Barry and I were married forty-seven years ago today. When you think about all the reasons that couples do not make it to this milestone, it seems nothing less than a minor miracle that we are still, to quote an old song, “happy together.” These difficult times of lockdown must be especially challenging for unhappy couples. Although we would love to be going out and celebrating, we are just grateful to be here in our wonderful home enjoying a quiet day and “seeing” our grandchildren over Zoom. We hope that we will make it to that major milestone three years from now and be able to celebrate with our whole family together!

We have had a little too much excitement over the past week. Simmie and Ronen live in a house with a flat roof that decided to start leaking during the torrential downpours in the Boston area over the weekend. And Julia, who the pediatrician initially thought had a minor eye infection, turned out to have somehow gotten a small piece of glass lodged in her eye. Fortunately, that has now been removed and she seems as good as new.

I am sending along links to two videos about face masks. The first is a news report about the benefits of wearing them, which hopefully people will continue to do at least until a vaccine is available. Of course, if you think about this too much, you wonder a bit how we humans have survived this long without those masks! It is not going to be easy to return to “normal,” whatever that may be.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=265706771159373

The second is a very clever parody on this topic based on some of the famous songs from “Hamilton.” Humor truly is the best medicine.

https://youtu.be/m_HZectGDlo

Stay safe and well.

Love,

Rebecca

Fascinating piece on the spread of the coronavirus.

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-spread.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

This speaks for itself.

Love,

Rebecca

All time most popular post

I have been blogging for over eight years now, through two cancers and two new grandchildren. But it took me all of these years to discover that the overwhelmingly most popular topic about which I could have ever written is dogs! I am pretty sure my post from Sunday garnered the largest number of single day page views I have ever received – well over 100! That tally was reinforced by a large number of personal e-mail messages, many from people whom I did not even know were still following the blog. Quite a few included wonderful pictures of their own furry four-legged friends.

Maybe it is just a sign of the times – we are all in particular need of a reason to smile these days. I am glad I was able to share one. In our weekly video chat with Eliana and Maya last evening, we had a chance to “meet” Rory. She did not seem too impressed, but she does look like a very sweet animal, high praise from someone who is not especially fond of dogs.

Stay healthy and have a good week.

Love,

Rebecca

 

A new addition to the family

Eliana and Maya had long been begging their parents for this. It is nice to think that something really wonderful for their family and this lovely animal happened as the result of a pandemic.

These pictures pretty much tell the whole story. Welcome to your new home, Rory!

Love,

Rebecca

 

A misnomer?

According to Merriam Webster, the word “defund” is a transitive verb defined as “to withdraw funding from.”  The web site dictionary.com provides two definitions, namely

1.     to withdraw financial support from, especially as an instrument of legislative control: Many university programs were defunded by the recent government cutbacks.

2.     to deplete the financial resources of: The cost of the lawsuit defunded the company's operating budget.

There have been many calls in recent days in communities across America to defund the police. But that action seems to me to be a misnomer. Fully defunding the police – essentially abolishing police departments - would appear to be a poor decision. Unfortunately, crime does not disappear simply because we will it to do so.

Having said that, there is little question that police departments are being called on to do many things that could be more effectively, even optimally, handled by different sorts of public agencies, those that are more specifically designed and staffed to handle various social problems. But this does not make for a convenient catchphrase or sound bite.

The New York Times has an interesting article, embedded in which is a good discussion of the issue.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/what-does-defund-police-mean.html

I found this in an article in Fortune magazine:

So, what do people mean when they say ‘defund the police’?

Defunding the police is shorthand for a divest and invest model: divesting money from local and state police budgets and reinvesting it into communities, mental health services, and social service programs.

https://fortune.com/2020/06/08/defund-the-police-what-does-it-mean-protests-george-floyd

I guess “divest and invest” just does not make for a catchy slogan. But at the same time, clear and precise language may be exactly what we need to begin to tackle the problem. No matter how you express it, there is no time like the present to reflect and act on the things we can do to improve the lives of every American.

Stay safe and well.

Love,

Rebecca

 

So much and yet so little to say

This has been a very difficult week for our country. We remain in the midst of an ongoing pandemic that, despite some tentative resumption of life in some parts of the country, feels endless. Over 100,000 Americans have lost their lives in less than three months, and unemployment is nearly as high as during The Great Depression of the 1930s.

And then last week we were shocked to watch video of a white police officer in Minneapolis whose arrest of George Floyd, a black man, went horribly awry. The officer kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while the suspect was handcuffed and lying face down, saying “I can’t breathe.” All this occurred while three other officers involved in the arrest either assisted the arresting officer or prevented onlookers from intervening. By the time an ambulance arrived, Mr. Floyd was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. What had Mr. Floyd allegedly done? He had attempted to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a market. While police said that he resisted arrest (and it is not clear to me why it took four police officers to handle this), he was clearly unarmed and no immediate threat to the arresting officers.

This incident has resulted in massive demonstrations all over the country as well as in some major European cities, some of whom who have had similar reports of overzealous policing of their own in recent years. The fact that these enormous crowds of people have been so moved to come out during a pandemic is a clear indication of just how heartbreaking this incident, clearly not the first in recent years, truly is.

I have stayed away from discussions of politics on this blog, but it would be reassuring if we had a President who could at least pretend to be compassionate about all the suffering in our country right now. The coming pandemic was clearly recognized late last year and early this year by many health experts, and it is clear that many of the deaths could have been avoided had our senior government officials taken appropriate action. This has been done quite effectively in other countries, resulting in far lower rates of death from the disease, and because it started in Asia, and then spread to Europe before crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, we had a chance to act in time to have kept better control here. But we did not.

Rather than doing everything that could have been done to lessen the spread of COVID-19, our government is now trying to use brute force to prevent even peaceful protests in support of the black community during this painful and difficult time. Something seems to be terribly awry here.

I have gotten through two fairly serious bouts with cancer during the past eight years, but now I am truly worried for the future. We can only pray that our leaders will have the wisdom to solve these problems.

Take care and stay safe,

Love,

Rebecca