Still young?

One of our long-time favorite recipes is “Nachos Sauce” from Molly Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook, originally published in 1974. We make a big pot of this without the cheese, divide it into containers, and freeze it, adding the cheese when we reheat it to eat over rice and vegetables. It makes a great dinner.

You may be wondering why I am talking about this old recipe. One of the key ingredients is beer. Since we plan to prepare a batch of Nachos Sauce this week, Barry added a 6-pack of Corona to our Whole Foods order. The delivery man knocked on the door and informed Barry that he would need to see a valid ID before he could leave the beer. All I can say is that Barry was quite flattered that his thinning gray hair was not sufficient to prove he is old enough to buy alcoholic beverages!

Meanwhile, we finally had a chance to return, albeit briefly, to the New York Botanical Garden. The storms this area experienced a couple of days ago did some damage to some of the trees, and as a result our favorite area, the Native Plant Garden, was not open. The Native Plant Garden first opened to the public in 2013, the year after the Monet exhibit that we had visited so many times while I was undergoing treatment for the primary CNS lymphoma. We hope to get back soon to be able to return to the Native Plant Garden. But meanwhile I did try to take a few pictures of some of the other areas we visited.

Hope you are all well and keeping your spirits up. It is no easy feat these days.

Love,

Rebecca

And the winner is....

Well, many of you got it! Of course, it might have helped that I had titled the post “Some Nerve.”

In Merriam-Webster we find

Definition of chutzpah

: supreme self-confidence : NERVE, GALL

It took a lot of chutzpah to stand up to him the way she did.

Dictionary.com has

          chutzpa

noun Slang.

unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall.

audacity; nerve.

Back in 2012, Forbes ran a piece entitled “Why Chutzpah Is The New Charisma - And How To Use It To Get What You Want.”  

But perhaps the best simple explanation is the one on Wikipedia:

Chutzpah (/ˈxʊtspə, ˈhʊt-/)^[1][2] is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. It derives from the Hebrew word ḥuṣpāh (חֻצְפָּה), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation but the form which entered English as a Yiddishism in American English has taken on a broader meaning, having been popularized through vernacular use in film, literature, and television. The word is sometimes interpreted—particularly in business parlance—as meaning the amount of courage, mettle or ardor that an individual has.^{[citation needed]}

As of yesterday, over 150,000 Americans have died from infections with COVID-19. There have been over 4.5 million confirmed cases, and over 30 million job losses, and many grandparents who have not seen their grandchildren in months. Some of our government officials speak as if they have done a great job managing this crisis. THAT is chutzpah!

Have a safe and healthy weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

Some Nerve

Please forgive me if I have written about this before, but one of my practices over the past couple of years has been to play “Spelling Bee” in the New York Times. Each day, there are 7 letters given, and from these 7 letters the player must come up with words consisting of at least four of them, with one specific letter, which appears in the center of the grid, being required to appear in each word.

Today, the letters are:

 

 

 

Here are 15 of the 16 words I have found:

Attach

Catch

Catchup

Chat

Cutup

Hatch

Hutch

Pact

Patch

Path

Phat

Putt

Putz

Taut

That

Tutu

Can you find the word that uses all 7 letters? I will tell you that the word is 8 letters long (i.e., one of those 7 letters appears twice in the word).

Do not drive yourselves too crazy with this – I will try to remember to post the solution tomorrow.

Love,

Rebecca

Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test

On a completely different topic, during a recent interview with FOX TV reporter Chris Wallace, President Trump noted his performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MOCA). I had to go back through the last few years of my posts to confirm that I had once before written about this commonly used exam, on 21 January 2018. A copy of the actual test can be found on this link:

Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test

At the time, I noted two things. First, it was and continues to be quite sobering to recognize just how low my cognitive function had sunk during those darkest days in early 2012. And second, I would certainly hope that the MOCA would be a test any United States President, let alone any individual in a much less consequential position, could easily pass.

So, I find myself, once again, absolutely stunned that this could be used as “proof” of competence to be in the position of power in which he finds himself. I am not really in a position to judge his mental acuity. But, please, no matter how much you may all think of me or love me, do not under any circumstances give me the codes to the nuclear arsenal simply because I can now ace this test!

Love,

Rebecca

Sing Gently

Just in case you missed it, I feel compelled to share this incredible video. American composer Eric Whitaker recorded 17,672 singers from 129 countries singing his composition, “Sing Gently.”

 

May we sing together, always,

May our voice be soft,

May our singing be music for others,

And may it keep others aloft.

Sing gently, always,

Sing gently as one.

 

May we stand together, always,

May our voice be strong,

May we hear the singing, always,

And may we always sing along.

Sing gently, always,

Sing gently as one.

 

The word that comes to mind is, simply, WOW!

Love,

Rebecca

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