Category — Miscellaneous

I’m related to few Strattons.  So I got a bit excited when I came across Jon Stratton, author of Coming Out Jewish.  I found him on the Internet. Another Stratton writing about Jewish matters?  Maybe I was Jon, using a pseudonym.

Jon Stratton is a cultural studies professor in Perth, Australia. His mother was Jewish and his father Christian. He grew up in England, not knowing anything about Judaism orYiddishkayt (Jewishness).

I ordered Jon’s  book on Amazon. In 2000 he “came out Jewish” in multicultural academic circles, making a mark for himself by writing about “ghetto-thinking” — Jewish anxiety, basically.  He said he had been slightly different from his friends in England because his mother had made him “ring home” whenever he went out, while his chums never had to ring home.  Jon’s mother was an angst-ridden Jew from the Continent, he said.

My mother, on the other hand, was from the Delta (the Mississippi Delta) and didn’t worry much.  My mother left me off at freeway exits to hitchhike.  One trip I made a left on I-80 and wound up in South America.  She was even OK with that.

In 1990, at the Cleveland airport, I waited for my mom to arrive on the “snowbird” flight from Florida, and I let my then 9-year-old son run around the airport.  I told him, “If you wander off too far, you’re going home on the Rapid.”

He wandered off and I left him.

A Cleveland policeman called me a half hour later, and I had to go back to the airport — 20 miles one-way.  The airport cop gave me a “you’re a douche bag” smirk when I entered the airport police office.  The cop didn’t realize my son had practically memorized the Rapid Transit timetable and had ridden the complete Lee Road route.

I learned a lot about laissez-faire child rearing from my mom.  The only thing Continental about her was her airline.

If I ever get to Australia, I’ll buy Jon Stratton a beer, and we’ll talk about our mothers, I hope.  We’re  mishpocha.

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Footnote: I’m related to  few Strattons because my father changed the family name from Soltzberg to Stratton in 1941.

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Jack Stratton’s latest project. Also, check out the interactive map at Vulfpeck, which shows you where Vulfpeck’s fan base is.

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Yiddishe Cup is at Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights, 7:30 p.m. Saturday  (March 15)  for Purim.  Gonna have Tamar Gray, soul singer extraordinaire, with us.  Free and open to the public.

Pamela Paul, editor of the New York Times Book Review, keeps a list of all the books she has read.  She wrote about her list — that goes back to 1988 — in the book review.

I know somebody else who keeps a list.

My list goes back to 1973, Ms. Pam Paul!  (Actually 1971, but I can’t find the 1971-72 portion right now.)

My four literary horsemen of the early 1970s were Kerouac, Saroyan, Thomas Wolfe and Henry Miller.  Plus every beatnik writer.  Every beatnik.  That included Dutch motorcyclist/writer Jan Cremer and Turkish East Village beat Erje Ayden.

Here is my 1974 list, edited:

The First Circle  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Geronimo Rex  Barry Hannah
Kentucky Ham  William Burroughs Jr.
Confessions of a Child of the Century  Thomas Rogers
Strangers and Brothers  C.P. Snow
The Manor  Isaac Bashevis Singer
Pere Goriot   Honore de Balzac
Tropic of Cancer  Henry Miller
Blue Movie  Terry Southern
Monday the Rabbi Took off   Harry Kemelman
I’m Glad You didn’t Take it Personally  Jim Bouton
Call It Sleep  Henry Roth
My Friend Henry Miller  Alfred Perles
The Wanderers  Richard Price
Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head  Philip Whalen
Franny and Zooey  J.D. Salinger
The Boys on the Bus  Timothy Crouse
Nine Stories  J.D. Salinger
The Autograph Hound  John Lahr
Raymond Chandler Speaking  Raymond Chandler
Lolita  Vladimir Nabokov
My Last Two Thousand Years  Herbert Gold
The Slave  Isaac Bashevis Singer

***

Did you skim or read that list?  If you read it, here’s your reward — a continuation, with asterisks for really funny books. (At the end of the list, there is a prose wrap-up.)   My fav books, generally . . .

1975

Keep the Aspidistra Flying  George Orwell
Burmese Days  George Orwell
Fear of Flying  Erica Jung
A Fan’s Notes  Frederick Exley
The War Against the Jews  Lucy Dawidowicz

’76

Little Big Man  Thomas Berger
Hot to Trot  John Lahr *
The Fight  Norman Mailer
Miss Lonelyhearts  Nathanael West
The World of Our Fathers  Irving Howe
Bloodbrothers  Richard Price
The Rise of David Levinsky  Abraham Cahan
Tales of Beatnik Glory  Ed Sanders
The Idiot  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

’77

While Six Million Died  Lucy Dawidowicz
Thirteenth Tribe  Arthur Koestler
Chrysanthemum and the Sword  Ruth Benedict
The Last Tycoon  F. Scott Fitzgerald
Confessions of a Nearsighted Cannoneer  Seymour Krim

’78

Union Dues  John Sayles
All My Friends are Going to Be Strangers  Larry McMurtry
The Chosen  Chaim Potok
A Feast of Snakes  Harry Crews
The Basketball Diaries  Jim Carroll

’79

The Cool World  Warren Miller
Rabbit Run  John Updike
Airships  Barry Hannah
The Rector of Justin  Louis Auchincloss
Sophie’s Choice  William Styron
King of the Jews  Leslie Epstein

’80

The Pope of Greenwich Village  Vincent Patrick
Dubin’s Lives  Bernard Malamud
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz  Mordecai Richler *
The Right Stuff   Tom Wolfe
Tess of the d’Urbervilles  Thomas Hardy

’81

Jane Eyre  Jane Austin
The House of Mirth  Edith Wharton
Ethnic America  Thomas Sowell

’82

Zuckerman Unbound  Philip Roth
Maiden Rites  Sonia Pilcer  *
The Friends of Eddie Coyle  George V. Higgins

’84

God’s Pocket  Pete Dexter
Rabbis is Rich  John Updike
This Way for the Gas  Tadeusz Borowski
The Abandonment of the Jews  David Wyman
Survival in Auschwitz  Primo Levi

’85

Man’s Search for Meaning  Viktor Frankl
The Headmasters Papers  Richard Hawley
Bright Lights Big City  Jay McInerney
The Art of Fiction  John Gardner
Fathers Playing Catch with Sons  Donald Hall
La Brava  Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard junk mail

’86

Babbitt  Sinclair Lewis
Wiseguy  Nicholas Pileggi
Providence  Geoffrey Wolff

’87

The Sportswriter  Richard Ford
The Great Pretender  James Atlas
Bonfire of the Vanities  Tom Wolfe

’88

Papa Play for Me  Mickey Katz
Life is with People  Mark Zborwski and Elizabeth Herzog
The Facts  Philip Roth
A History of the Jews  Paul Johnson
In Praise of Yiddish  Maurice Samuel

’89

Old New Land  Theodor Herzl
Architects of Yiddishism  Emanuel Goldsmith
From that Place and Time  Lucy Dawidowicz

’90

Paris Trout  Pete Dexter

’91

Patrimony  Philip Roth
Mr. Bridge  Evan Connell

’92

Devil’s Night  Zev Chafets
Rabbit at Rest  John Updike
Rabbit Redux  John Updike

’93

Class  Paul Fussell
Days of Grace  Arthur Ashe

’94

Lost in Translation  Eva Hoffman
How We Die  Sherman Nuland
Roommates  Max Apple

’96

Moo  Jane Smiley
Independence Day  Richard Ford
The Road from Coorain  Jill Kerr Conway

’97

Parts of My Body  Phillip Lopate
American Pastoral  Philip Roth
The Wishbones  Tom Perrotta

’99

Ex-Friends  Norman Podhoretz
Hole in Our Soul  Martha Bayles

’00

The Trouble with Cinderella  Artie Shaw
The Human Stain  Philip Roth
Winning Ugly  Brad Gilbert

’01

Up in the Air  Walter Kirn *

’02

John Adams  David McCullough
Selling Ben Cheever  Ben Cheever  *
The Corrections  Jonathan Franzen
The New Rabbi  Stephen Fried

’03

Samaritan  Richard Price
Funnymen  Ted Heller  *
My Losing Season  Pat Conroy
Fabulous Small Jews  Joseph Epstein
The Case for Israel  Alan Dershowitz

’04

The Da Vinci Code  Dan Brown
Good Vibes  Terry Gibbs

’05

Made in Detroit  Paul Clemens

’06

On Beauty  Zadie Smith
Prisoner of Trebekistan  Bob Harris
High Fidelity  Nick Hornby
Sweet and Low  Rich Cohen

’07

America’s Polka King  Bob Dolgan
Prisoners  Jeffrey Goldberg
Infidel  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

’08

A Random Walk Down Wall Street  Burton Malkiel
Lush Life  Richard Price
Dean’s List  Jon Hassler
Irrational Exuberance  Robert Shiller

’09

Rabbit at Rest  John Updike
How I became a Famous Novelist  Steve Hely *
Facing Unpleasant Facts  George Orwell

’10

The Great Indoors  Eric Broder  *
Pops  Terry Teachout
Olive Kitteridge  Elizabeth Stout

’11

I Feel Bad About My Neck  Nora Ephron
Open  Andre Agassi
How to Win Friends  Dale Carnegie
The Whore of Akron  Scott Raab  *

’12

I Married a Communist  Philip Roth
Pocket Kings  Ted Heller  *

’13

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine  Teddy Wayne *

***

I bought the Richard Price books for pleasure and investment purposes.  His books are probably worth nothing.  I have followed Price’s career since he was 25.  I knew a woman who dated him at Cornell.  Price is a Lit god around my house.

I like short books.  Most classics are long, so I’m bad at classics.  Funny books are my favorite.  Throw in a few jokes, or lose me.  I don’t need a strong plot.

I’ve read The Great Gatsby five times because it’s great and short.  I would read it more often if it was funny.

I can’t remember most of what I read.

A lot here — in this post — is a rip off of Nick Hornby and his Ten Years in a Tub, about books Hornby has read in the past 10 years.

I haven’t read much philosophy.  Any?  I’ve tried the Bible a few times.  Proust — I’ve done 50 pages with him.  I’m good with Shakespeare!

I haven’t read The Hobbit or War and Peace.  (Check out Buzzfeed’s “22 Books You Pretend You’ve Read but Actually Haven’t.”)

I’ve read many books about Cleveland.  Here are three random CLE books: A Fares of a Cleveland Cabby, Thomas Jasany; Confused City on a Seesaw, Philip W. Porter; and First and Last Seasons, Dan McGraw.  I’ve read all of Harvey Pekar.  Harvey didn’t write much.  Maybe 90,000 words total.   Thanks, Harvey.

I’ve read every klezmer book, I think.  Did you know a Polish academic, Magdalena Waligorska, cited this blog in her book Klemzer’s Afterlife (Oxford University Press)?

My wife occasionally takes my literary recommendations to her book club.  But not lately.  She recommended How I Became a Famous Novelist by Hely. That ruined my wife’s credibility.

If you read a book on this list, pick one with an asterisk.  And if you don’t think the book is funny, bail immediately.

I’m bailing.  Gotta list something.  What, I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll tally the people who liked this post vs. those who thought it was too self-indulgent.

At a nursing home gig, a resident told me she knew my late Aunt Bernice.

Another resident remembered me from my junior high days. Her daughter had played first-chair clarinet, to my second chair, in junior high band.

A third resident said he was the former dentist of Yiddishe Cup’s drummer.  “What’s your drummer’s name again?” the dentist asked. [Don Friedman! The great Donny Friedman!]

I said, “I’ll give you the drummer’s name, but first I’m going to be clairvoyant!” I guessed the dentist’s name, his approximate age (90), and what he had done that morning — three hours prior to the gig.

I got everything right, but the dentist wasn’t impressed. He wanted the drummer’s name.

Yid Yak

I guessed everything right about the dentist because 1. I had seen the dentist playing tennis at a nearby racquet club that morning.  A 90-year-old guy playing tennis is hard to forget.  2. I knew his approximate age because he used to play tennis with my dad.  3.  I knew his name because I had dated his daughter in high school.

The daughter and I had gone to see Cool Hand Luke at the Vogue,  then out for shakes at Manner’s Big Boy, Van Aken.  It was a fix-up by our parents.  It was my one-and- only date in high school.

I asked the dentist, “What’s Barbara doing?”  The daughter.

“She’s a piano teacher in Boston,” he said.

I just Googled her.  She teaches classical and jazz.   She used to be a radio DJ.

Did I make a major mistake not asking her out for a second date?

A college kid told my band’s guitarist he went to Columbia University, and my guy said, “Where’s that?”

That knocked the college boy back a few SAT points.

College quiz question: What college narrowly missed being in the original Ivy League football conference?

Answer: Colgate University.*

Another fact: Yiddishe Cup once shared the bill with the Colgate glee club at a Cleveland wedding.

More: Former MIT folk dancers are a solid market for Yiddishe Cup.  Yiddishe Cup has played several simchas for MIT folk dancers.

Regionally speaking, I was loyal to Ohio State for many years.  My dad took me to Ohio State homecoming games every year.  My father lived in a corner of Ohio Stadium, in the scholarship dorm, the Tower Club, which was actually a barracks with cots. My dad often said some of the gentiles at Ohio State, back in the 1930s, thought Jews had horns.

A New Jersey woman — a potential bar mitzvah customer — called me and said, “I went to Ohio U. in the 1980s.  All the kids from Mentor and Madison [Ohio] thought I had horns.”

The Buckeye marching band had horns.  (Horns and percussion. No clarinets.)

The only time my father yelled at a TV was when Ohio State played Cincinnati for the 1961 basketball championship.  Who won?  [Cincinnati, 70-65.]

I attended a college-rejection shiva. The shiva — at Corky & Lenny’s restaurant in April 1968 — was for a friend who was rejected by every college he applied to. He got in nowhere!  He was ranked fifth, or so, in our high school class, but every college turned him down because the high school guidance counselor didn’t like him and wrote a negative recommendation.  (He was way too political for my school.)

We sat in the corner booth at C&Ls and drank chocolate phosphates, commiserating with our friend.  We were all in somewhere, and he wasn’t.

He eventually got accepted to Ohio State on a late application. Back then, if you had a heartbeat you could get into OSU.  He wound up in an OSU high-rise dorm with 16 guys per suite.  It wasn’t anything like the house system at Harvard.

***

I knew a college counselor at University School, a private boys’ school in Cleveland.  If the counselor put in a good word for you, you were in.  Harvard, Yale, you name it.  Harvey Mudd. Deep Springs.

The counselor didn’t believe his own myth.  Go to a school that was a “good fit,” he  said.  (“Good fit” was the watchword of  college counselors.)  This counselor went to Harvard, a “good fit” for a college counselor.

Here’s a tip for high school kids: on your application, focus on something esoteric.  Write:  “I want to be a klezmer musician because it is the cornerstone of my existence.”  Describe a setback you have faced. “My parents don’t like klezmer music. They are so wrong.  I’ve been thinking about klezmer my whole life.”

No guarantees, but give it a try.

—

*The statement about Colgate narrowly missing out on the Ivy League football conference may be apocryphal.

—

OSU Tower Club residents, 1937.  Click on the photo to make it bigger.  “Tower  Club,” a sign,  is on the stadium entrance to the left of “Toby.”)

I lost my Brooks running hat.  I owned two.  I lost them both.  I bought them at a running store in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I don’t usually lose things, except hats.  (I’m excellent with gloves.)

I went to Dick’s in Cleveland for a replacement hat and bought an Adidas. It constricted my head.  I got minor headaches from the Adidas.  (Granted, I didn’t give my head much time to adjust.)

Amazon, I tried that too.  Nothing appropriate.  I wanted a long-bill white cap with not much writing on it.  eBay had four such “old school” Brooks Infiniti running caps — just like my lost caps.  (Not like the trashy Brooks hats of today, with a lot of writing.)

Thank you, eBay! I bought all four caps. That’s excessive I know.  But only if I die soon. (Yiddishe Cup’s drummer, Don Friedman, has 10 pair of black jeans.  Steve Jobs had at least 50 black turtleneck shirts.)

I went back to eBay a couple days later, just to cruise, to see how the world of caps was holding up.  There were no “old school” Brooks hats left.   I had cornered the market!

My Brooks hats arrived from Mississippi. Then my wife found my lost cap, which was in the kitchen in a basket.  Somebody had put it there.  Not me.

Now I have five “old school” Brooks Infiniti caps.  Even better.

—
Check out Klezmerpalooza here.  Yiddishe Cup plays Sat.  Nov. 16 evening, Cleveland.

Re: my interview on NPR’s The Story today  (9/17/13)

Welcome, National Public Radio (The Story) listeners.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.  Like working out  . . .

Guys, give me a minute!

Please enter your email in the space on the RIGHT and click “subscribe.”   You’ll get one email a week, every Wednesday morning.  Just one email a week.  And I won’t sell your email address to anybody.

I’ve written a lot about real estate.  Check out the stories here.

I’ve written a lot about music too.

Byliner chose one of my essays as a top non-fiction magazine article of 2012.  The essay, The Landlord’s Tale, is the best thing I’ve ever written.

See you here every Wednesday, or else!   (Subscribe.)

Here’s a pic of my father:

Toby Stratton, age 50, 1967

I feel bad for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The PD is understaffed and demoralized. But I feel worse for myself. I want my local news, in print, on the breakfast table every morning.  (The paper is now home-delivered only four days a week.)

Yes, I’ve heard of the Internet and iPads.  I’m not going that way with my papes!

When John Gilligan, an ex-Ohio governor, died, I read about it two days late. That’s not right; I should have gotten that news sooner.

I’m signing up for Pony Express.

The Wall Street Journal stopped coming to my house the same day the Plain Dealer died (August 5).  All newspaper home-delivery got screwed up. A neighbor — nine houses away — still received the Wall Street Journal. I took hers. She didn’t need it!  (She has a different delivery guy, apparently.)

My cousin George, a big sports fan, is in a newspaper funk too, because he can’t read the Plain Dealer sports pages daily with his morning coffee.

Everybody over 50, please repeat with me: “Screw Newhouse!” (Newhouse owns the PD.)

My son Ted delivered the Sun Press, a weekly.  I was his sub.  My dad delivered the Cleveland News.  My grandfather delivered the Vilna Bugle (Shofar), maybe. My dad wouldn’t allow me to be a paperboy.  He wanted me to enjoy life more than he did.

I enjoy papes. Where are my papes?

—
SIDE B

This is a fake profile. The complete fake-profiles series is here.

WHATEVER IT TAKES

I’ve played Perchik and Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

Sometimes I get calls from small-town theater troupes to discuss Jewish stuff, like Fiddler. They ask about yarmulkes and the breaking of the glass, and chair lifting.

I make up stuff. I’ve been to enough Jewish weddings to know the rabbis make up stuff too — particularly about the glass breaking. There are many reasons why the glass is broken. All bobe mayses (old wives’ tales).

When I’m not acting, I do a one-man variety show. I play a little guitar, hand drum, even harmonica, and I sing. I know some Yiddish. I use backing tracks.

Here’s a promo pic from my glory days. I use it sparingly, now that I’m 59 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I should advertise in the back of Hadassah mag like Ruth Kaye and Caryn Bark. Who are they?

Who am I? I hear you.  I live in Jersey and play the nursing home circuit in the tri-state region. And I work Florida in the winters.

I’ve played Tevye three times. I’ve also played the lead in Jesus Christ Superstar at summer stock in Ohio.

Whatever it takes.

L’shanah tova. (Happy New Year.)

I had two hot water tanks go out in the same building on the same day,  a Friday afternoon.

Four guys can carry in a 92-gallon commercial hot water tank .  And I can pay $5,400 for their fun.

No plumbers were around.  They were all preparing their boats for Lake Erie weekend-cruising.

I reached Stack Heating.   Stack said he didn’t do commercial hot-water tanks.  Just boilers. I reached Royal Flush.  They said they couldn’t get it until Tuesday.  Dale at Madison Plumbing could do it Monday.  Pompeii said never. B & B Hot Water Tank said no thanks.

I started flipping through the Yellow Pages.  That is the end of the world.

I braced myself for calls, like “Mr. Landlord,  there is no hot water.  How am I supposed to go to work without showering? ” . . . “I have to stay at my parents’ house and it’s 60 miles from work . . . ”

It’s not pleasant, these scenes.

I  got Bill the plumber.  He came by and blow-torched the old tanks to dry them.  (The tanks had flooded because a sump pump had failed.)   The plumber gave the first tank a 50-50 chance of recovery.  The second tank had 40 percent chance, he said.  I liked his odds.

The first tank went on after six hours of pampering. We were good.

Still, it was no picnic.

 . . . Dear Landlord,  I have  deducted $275 from my rent payment because I  stayed in a hotel for three days due to the lack of hot water.

Didn’t happen!

—
SIDE B

In honor of the mildest summer ever . . .

WICKIN’ COOL

I threw out my dad’s wife-beater T-shirts. About time. My father died 27 years ago. The wife-beaters were balled up in my dresser drawer.

When it’s 90-plus degrees — which it isn’t often this summer — I think “wife-beaters.” I used to wear my dad’s wife-beaters around the house.

My wife bought me a wicking T-shirt with UV protection at Target. Only $11. It was cooler than the wife-beater.

I saved one of my father’s T-shirts for posterity and threw the rest out.

Underwear fashion is generational. My grown sons aren’t interested in my wife-beaters. My dad wore his wife-beaters under dress shirts for work, for his day job at the key company.

I’m going to buy a couple more ultra-light wicking T-shirts.

No doubt, my sons will pitch my ultra-lights when I’m either dead or not looking. By 2025, T-shirts will be spray-on from a can.

Meanwhile, I’m wickin’ cool.

—
A version of  “Wickin’ Cool” was on CoolCleveland.com 7/12/12.

Re: my op-ed in today’s NYT (8/17/13)

Welcome, New York Times readers.

I know you’re busy. You have other things to do.  Like working out  . . .

Guys, give me a New York minute!

Please enter your email in the space on the LEFT and click “submit.”  (TMI: Scroll down on the LEFT to a pink button that says “Yiddishe Cup Home.” You’ll see  “join the mailing list” there.)  You’ll get one email a week, every Wednesday morning.  Just one email a week.  And I won’t sell your email address to anybody.

I’ve written a lot about real estate.  Check out the stories here.

I’ve written a lot about music too.

Byliner chose one of my essays as a top non-fiction magazine article of 2012.

I’ve been in the Times op-ed section four times lately.  Who else can say that?  (Friedman, Brooks, Dowd.  They don’t count! They’re not freelancers.)

Subscribe to this blog.

At minimum, buy this album from my son the musician!  (I’m a stage dad, today only.)  My son has 100,000-plus hits on some of his YouTube videos. His pic was recently in Rolling Stone.

My op-ed today is a lot about family, so you might be interested — you still reading this? — to learn more:

My son Jack’s band, Vulfpeck, will be in New York  on October 4.

My son the lawyer, Ted, is a two-time Jeopardy! champion. The Times left that out!  Ted is a top-notch lawyer.  Ted, sue somebody for me.

Yes, I’m a proud dad.

My daughter, Lucy, and her husband,Tim, didn’t make the op-ed. (Lucy said, “Thank goodness.”) Here’s an equal opportunity addendum: Tim is a first-grade teacher, and Lucy is a corporate event planner in Chicago. Check out Lucy’s  event at the White House.

Shabbat shalom ( for those who celebrate).

See you here every Wednesday, or else!

P.S. I bought the paper — the Times.  The whole freaking Times.  That’s why I’m in it so much.  Bezos and me, we’re partying right now.

Stratton (white cap) surrounded by minority investors in NYT

My friend Jimmy plays basketball at age 55.  But he’s hurting.  Jimmy has plantar fasciitis and is temporarily out of action.

I’m glad Jimmy is hurt.  Some guys  think they’re going to be pain-free forever.  It’s  fun — sick fun — to watch them get zapped by the middle-age hand buzzer.

I ran into a guy who was on Penn”s all-star lacrosse team.  In 1955.  He’s 80.   He said, “You have to know when to quit, but it’s impossible to know.  I never know.”  He has stopped playing lacrosse, squash, basketball and singles tennis.  His advice: “Take up painting.”

I said, “I already do things like that.”  (I play klezmer music.)

Jimmy — my b-ball friend — wants to play basketball at 70.  Jimmy’s “painting” is cooking.  He makes an excellent roasted lamb.

Every decade or so, I throw out my elbow braces, thumb splints and knee braces.  Sometimes I get so emotionally attached to the stuff, it’s hard to throw out.  Like, if you sleep with a molded arm splint for three months, you can’t just pitch it.

I recently threw out my “Clarinet Tendinitis 1991” folder  containing exercise diagrams.

I did biofeedback back then.  I did it just once. I went to a blind masseuse who believed in inducing terrific pain.  His dog should have stopped him.  Deep tissue / deep purple.   He was eventually accused of  rape.  (Different customer.)

I have a new bag of orthotics — mostly knee braces.

I’m supposed to balance on one foot for 30 seconds with my eyes closed.

Try it.  If you succeed, you are well. If  you don’t, you’re  still OK; you’re “worried well.”

You’re well. Be well.

Whatever happened to Sylvia Rimm?  She dispensed child rearing advice on public radio and in the newspapers.

She advised my wife, Alice, and me to subsume our individuality; create a united front to raise our kids. We did that for a few days.

Alice often quoted Sylvia Rimm — whenever Alice wasn’t quoting Freud, Spock, Leach or Brazelton. Alice wanted our kids to gain a “sense of mastery” — skills, basically. For instance, a trip to Disney World was garbage, according to Alice, because the kids wouldn’t learn anything.

Alice was overruled; we went to Disney World anyhow.  The kids loved Figment, a Disney character, and went ape for Miss Piggy. And don’t forget the Ninja Turtles. At Epcot the kids spent time on the floor at the Moroccan restaurant, wrestling.

Good times. Let ’em roll.

Our children took many lessons — ping pong, gymnastics, Hebrew, accordion. We didn’t allow much TV — mostly Mr. Rogers and The Simpsons. (When our kids grew up and moved out, they watched every show from the past 40 years.)

I liked Bettelheim’s book A Good Enough Parent.   I liked the title.

My then-teenage son took my car to the SAT exam.  I needed the car because my band equipment was in the trunk, and I had a gig! I took my wife’s car to the SAT testing site and swore loudly at my son in the parking lot. An adult, overhearing me, said, “Hey, ease up!”

Was I out of line? Ask Bettelheim, the expert.

Where is Sylvia Rimm?  Also, where is Eleanor Weisberger –- another Cleveland child therapist. I think she’s dead.  [Wrong.  She’s 93.]  What about child expert Susan Glaser? [She’s around.] Does every Jewish woman in Cleveland dispense child rearing advice?

I just Googled “Sylvia Rimm” . . .

Dr. Rimm is a psychologist, director of Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio . . . Dr. Rimm draws experience and inspiration from her wonderful husband; her very successful children: 2 daughters and 2 sons, and their spouses; and 9 vivacious grandchildren.

Rimm shot: her very successful children.

We want Bettelheim!  Bruno lied, beat up kids, and had a foul temper. He made the rest of us look good!

—
I wrote “Taxi Driver.” Check the story out, from today’s CoolCleve.

Dr. Lester Adelson, 1960s

Lester Adelson, the former chief deputy coroner of Cuyahoga County, was fun and morbid. He said he wanted to write a book called My Life is Death.  He  said he missed ice picks.  “Nothing against frost-free refrigerators,” he said. “But back when people went at it with sharp objects, they could generally be stitched back together again.”*

He was at the coroner’s office 37 years.

Adelson said to me, “The only violent natural death is lightning, you follow?”

I didn’t.

He said lightning — the electric charge — zaps you immediately.   You die by “lightning.”  If you drown or get hit by a tornado,  you don’t die by “tornado” or “drowning.”  You die of more arcane causes.

Adelson said, “I don’t remember my mother’s labor pains, but you’re born in someone else’s pain — your mother’s — and you die in your own.”

He liked to quote Shakespeare.

Coroner / Shakespeare / bowtie / Harvard grad / Jew.

Interesting.

Dr. Lester Adelson.  He even wrote an article for the New England Journal of Medicine (Feb. 4, 1960) about the various deaths in Hamlet.  Claudius poured poison into the ear of Hamlet’s father.

Adelson wrote: “When one considers the sensitivity of the human ear, including the external auditory canal and the eardrum, it appears difficult to accept the proposition that a drug can be poured into the ear of a sleeper without arousing him, as the Ghost asks one to believe.”

“If the elder Hamlet’s eardrum had been perforated . . . ”

Adelson retired from the coroner’s office in 1987. He died at 91 in 2006.

—–

*from a Plain Dealer editorial, 3/20/06.

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“No More Greasy Fries,” the vid:

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Annette Ezekiel Kogan, Golem bandleader

The Workmen’s Circle annual free Yiddish concert is 7:30 p.m Sunday (June 23) at Cain Park, Cleveland Heights.  Golem performs. No tickets necessary.  Simply show up.

Shul Guys is a Jewish motorcycle club in Cleveland.  What kind of name is Shul Guys?  A wussy, disgraceful name.

There is a Jewish club called Hillel’s Angels.  Better.

My friend Ralph Solonitz  is the leader of the Vilde Chayas (Wild Animals).  I think it’s just him.

Ralph

The mayor of Beachwood, a Jew, belongs to a motorcycle club that hangs out at the Chagrin Falls Popcorn Shop.  Some of the guys in the mayor’s club ride trikes. That’s not motorcycling, that’s day care.

Bertha Solonitz, 2012

Ralph has long hair, a leather jacket and black boots. He’s a 100% kosher hog (and this blog’s illustrator).

Ralph’s mother, Bertha, is a big fan of Yiddishe Cup.  She follows the band around, or vice versa.  I  said hi to her at a Holocaust survivors’ luncheon, and she said, “You know who I am!”

“Yes, your son is a great artist!” I said.  Maybe that’s why she follows the band around.

Mrs. Solonitz is from Lithuania.  Ralph’s father, Julian, was from Lithuania, as well.  Ralph’s father grew up in Vilna, now in Lithuania, though for a long time in Poland.  Mr. Solonitz fought in the Polish army (part of the Soviet army) during World War II.

Julian Solonitz, 1946

Maybe Ralph rides his motorcycle and wears the leather gear because he hasn’t liberated anybody lately, like his dad did.  Ralph’s father was with the army unit that liberated Majdanek concentration camp.

Maybe Ralph has freed somebody and not told me.  Ralph should take his motorcycle out to Vrooman Road and liberate the Slovenians in Lake County.

The Cleveland Jewish News periodically runs stories about Jewish motorcycle clubs. It’s an easy story to write.  Just name-drop: Shalom n’ Chrome from South Carolina, the HawkChais from Iowa.  Harley, Son of David  is a Canadian documentary that used two tracks from a Yiddishe Cup recording.

Consider joining the Vilde Chayas.  Ralph needs company.  And you get this jacket:

Sam and Frank — Cleveland cops — grew up on E. 79^th Street and St. Clair Avenue.

Sam said, “I’m going to have a silver wedding anniversary and invite my three ex-wives.”

Frank said, “If you and the commander — plus your exes — get together, you’ll need the FOP Hall.”

Frank said, “I remember when you were an old man.” (Frank was 37; Sam, 47.)

Sam said, “I’ve got 1139 days left.”

Frank said, “We’ve got to make you a short-timer’s calendar.  I had one in the service with the finger on it.”

Sam and Frank, on a drug sweep, rolled down St. Clair Avenue, Collinwood, in a junker at 1 a.m.

Sam said, “Where did we get this piece-of-shit car?”

Frank said, “Mentor.”

“Where in Mentor?

“At the flea market.”

“Right.”

At Pepper Avenue and 140^th Street, Sam said, “He’s moving. That car is moving.  Let’s catch him dirty while he’s rolling.”

Sam threw the guy up against the car hood.  He was dirty; he had a joint on him.

Frank said, “Let him go. Let’s go to Mandalay [playground] and get some white guys.”

—

SIDE B

Here is the annual “inside baseball” post.  Your name might be in here . . .

BLURTS

We interrupt this blog to tell you this blog is four years old.

First off, thanks to the major comment writers.

In no particular order, thanks to Marc, Jessica, Gerald Ross, Seth, Gerry Kanter, Ted, Adrianne Greenbaum, Bill Jones, Mark Schilling . . .

David, Irwin Weinberger, Jack, Don Friedman, Alice, Ken Goldberg, Steven Greenman . . .

Charlie B, Ben Cohen, David Korn, Jack Valancy, Ari Davidow and B Katz . . .

Special thanks to Ralph Solonitz. I encourage him to draw as many pics as possible.  Works out well.  I met Ralph about 22 years ago when he designed Yiddishe Cup’s logo.  That’s still your best logo, Ralph.

I have an essay, “Renting the American Dream,” in the latest City Journal, which will be online soon. Also, CoolCleveland.com runs Klezmer Guy blurts regularly.  Here’s a blurt (Carma) from today’s CoolCle.  My older son left his car at the Rapid Transit parking lot for two months.  Check the story out.  It’s funny.

Please see the “categories” listing on the right side of this blog.  I recently added a new category, 13 BEST POSTS, as judged by me.

“Categories” is also a good place to read 78 posts in a row about real estate.  Spend a couple weeks reading archived posts!

No doubt I could increase my comments tally by writing “thanks” or “hi” after every comment.   But I have standards.

And they are low. When I stumble upon a new blog, I immediately read the posts with the most comments and feel guilty about that.

The bell rings, round five.

—

I wrote  Carma for today’s CoolClevelandcom e-blast.

My son Ted parked his car at the Brookpark RTA lot and flew to Las Vegas. The RTA lot was cheaper than the airport lot.

My son didn’t come back.  He thought he was going for a vacation, but he got a job in Las Vegas and stayed there.

My son’s 2007 Ford Focus sat in the Brookpark lot for two months, until my wife, Alice, and I loaded our car with jumper cables and a generator-pump and drove to the RTA lot, which is next to Ford Engine Plant #1 and a couple strip bars.

I said to Alice, “Ted’s car is technically in Brook Park, not Cleveland. That’s good. If the car has been towed or stolen, we can deal with Brook Park red tape better than Cleveland red tape.”

The car wasn’t towed or stolen.  It was there. The doors were unlocked. The tires were low. There was a bottle of bourbon in the backseat.

I drove Ted’s car to the Lusty Wrench in Cleveland Heights the next day.  Sam, the mechanic, said, “The car is basically in good shape with 89,000 miles.  The battery will not make it, and as you know the side-view mirror is taped on.   The tape is not a bad solution.  The rear tires are round, black and hold air, but they’re not very good.”

The car was serviceable.  It worked.

I want to know, Is Greater Cleveland really this safe and accommodating? I need more data.  Please leave your car for two months at a Rapid stop and tell me what happens.

I was in the grocery store parking lot, listening to Terry Gross interview poet Donald Hall on the radio.

Gross asked Hall how he liked being old.  Hall couldn’t complain, he said, but then he did for several minutes.  He talked about how he had recently published a story in the New Yorker in which a security guard at the National Gallery had treated 83-year-old Hall like a child; the guard had leaned over to Hall, who was in a wheelchair, and asked, “How was din-din?”  (Hall is poet laureate emeritus of the United States and a recipient of the 2010 National Medal of Arts.)

I could listen to Hall talk about aging all day.   I didn’t really want to get out of my car and shop for prunes, yogurt and salmon.

I used to be younger. Take 50.  In 2000 my then-teenage son attended a New Hampshire summer camp an hour from Hall’s house. I visited the camp on parents’ day.  Should I look up Hall,  my old English professor?  I had studied with Hall 30 years earlier.

Maybe Hall lived way back in the woods.  Maybe he sat on his front porch with a shotgun.  I didn’t know.

Hall’s house was not deep in the woods.  It was about 50 feet from a federal highway and across from a summer camp.  (There are a lot of camps in New Hampshire.)  He could sometimes hear “Reveille.”

Hall was happy to see me, and said quickly, “I’m rich.”  He had made his money mainly from royalties, from a how-to-write college textbook and his award-winning children’s book Ox-Cart Man. Only a poet would ask, “Are you rich?” He added, “How about you?”

“I’m doing OK,” I said.  Look, I had a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp. Enough said.

When I had graduated Ann Arbor in 1973, Hall had discouraged me from returning to Cleveland. He had said, “Why do that — to sell insurance?”

Nevertheless, I returned home and “sold insurance.”  I entered my family’s real estate biz.

Donald Hall and Bert Stratton, 2000

In New Hampshire, Hall took me to a fancy restaurant near his farm.  I said, “I own and manage apartment buildings.  I’m a landlord.  And I play clarinet.” Meaning I can improvise. I’m still in the arts!

My first year at Michigan, Hall had looked like a stock broker.  He went hippie about a year later, I think. In New Hampshire he wore a dye-tied shirt, and I was the guy in the polo shirt.

Donald Hall at his family farm, 2006. (Photo by Ken Williams / Concord Monitor)

Hall quit his tenured job at Michigan in 1975 and moved to his grandfather’s farm near Wilmot, New Hampshire.  Hall did freelance writing.

At the New Hampshire restaurant, Hall said he had traveled to the Amazon River on a private jet with a Michigan grad who had made it big in the movie business.  The student owned a movie company.  Hall said, “His family was in the grocery business in Detroit, until I warped his mind.”

Hall warped many minds. He told me to guard against bitterness.  His late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, had died five years earlier at 47.  I had known her from English classes.

Hall had endured colon cancer, which was supposed to have killed him, but didn’t.  Instead, his wife died from leukemia.  He said, “Every generation thinks they know more than the next generation.  Schopenhauer was writing about this in the 1700s. You don’t know more than the next generation.” Hall wouldn’t even let me pay the tip.

The next day I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, and flew back to Cleveland to evict people, fix leaky faucets and collect late rents.  It was not poetic.

Eleven years later (2011), I mailed several of my published articles to “Donald Hall, Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire.”  (He didn’t use email.)  I wrote: “From your student — your 61-year-old student.”  I dated the cover letter.  Hall was always big on dates.

Don wrote back, “I know you know I know that you feel old and know you are not.”

I bought my prunes, salmon and yogurt at the grocery store, plus a couple beers.   I want to make it to Hall’s age.  On the radio he sounded spry and happy.

—

Attention, Michigan residents.  Please come to the Klezmer Guy show at The Ark, Ann Arbor, Feb. 15.  8 p.m. $20.   Features Bert Stratton on clarinet and prose, Gerald Ross on ukulele and Hawaiian lap steel guitar, and Alan Douglass on piano, sunglasses and vocals.  

—

Attention, Clevelanders.  Attend Purim at Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights, Feb. 23.  Yiddishe Cup becomes Sly and the Family Stein on Purim. We’re going to play Jewish music and soul music.  Free.  Open to the public.  7:30 p.m.

I interviewed for a position on the library board.

I like to read, and I know two people who have been on the board and liked it.

I wondered, “Will the school board ask me what books I’m reading?” (The school board oversees the library board.)

In 1967 at Johns Hopkins’ admissions office, I talked about my Holocaust reading. The Holocaust wasn’t yet the “Holocaust.”  I made a good impression in Baltimore, I think. (I was pre-med.)

Re: the library board interview. I recently read How Music Works by David Byrne and Shit my Dad Says by Justin Halpern. I have also read to page 100 in Malamud’s A New Life, a novel about a college instructor. For the first fifty pages, I was interested in the goings-on of a 1950s college English department. Then less so.

Nevertheless, “I’m reading Malamud” might be the ticket.

The members of the school board sat on a dais at the board of education building, and I took the “witness stand” in the center of the room. Only three school board members — out of five — showed up. One MIA board member was a playwright; the other, a guy from my synagogue. My A-team was absent!

Question 1: How would you make the library better for students?

Students?  They are the species who play computer games and horse around in the teen room? I’ve been in that room, like, never. “I would maintain the library as a first-class multicultural, multimedia center,” I said.

Question 2: What do you do at the library besides take out books?

Not much! “I was at the dedication of the Harvey Pekar statue,” I said.

Question 3: What would you do to help the library’s finances?

“I vote for the levies.” What about Malamud?

Question 4: Are you willing to commit to a seven-year position?

“Yes, but actuarially speaking, who knows.”

A chemist beat me out for the job. In an email, the library director thanked me for applying and encouraged me to apply again.

First I need to walk through the teen room and get a better feel for the young adults’ needs. I’ll do that right after I finish Malamud’s A New Life.

—

Side B

MR. OO

I got a call from Oo (rhymes with “boo”), looking to open an Asian food market.

I said, “How do you spell that?”

“O, O.”

“O, O, 7?”

“Yes.  Hah-hah.”

“Is Oo your first name.”

“No, that’s Kyawswar.”

“You Chinese?”

“No, I’m from Burma.”

“Close enough,” I said.

“Yes, very close.”

“Is this going to be an American mini-market or an Asian market?” I said. “I don’t want 40-ounce malt liquor and cigarettes.”

“Asian market, sir.  Our people like rice, the vegetables, avocados.  Maybe cigarettes. The high school boys from the school [across the street] buy the fruit juices.”

Oo rented the store. He’s  industrious.  He owns two sushi stands at Giant Eagles.  That’s not all . . .

I told my wife, “Oo had a nail salon.”

“Who?” she said.

“Oo.”

—
Footnote: Consider “U Thant,” the former UN secretary general from Burma. Thanks to Ted Stratton for this  U/Oo connection.

—
Byliner chose my essay “The Landlord’s Tale” (City Journal) as one of the top 102 nonfiction journalism pieces  of 2012.  Read the essay here.

Snickers used to be my bar.

It’s everybody’s bar.  It’s the number one seller in the America.

The pic above is John Lokar, the candyman, 1981.  He owned L&M Candy on East 185th Street.  He had everything, including baseball cards and tobacco.

I also had a taste for Nestle Triple Deckers.  Long gone.

My wife had a nostalgic longing for Valomilks.  She recently bought one at a specialty store and didn’t like it. Too sweet.

My dad was a Planter’s Peanut guy, and he also liked Mr. Goodbar.  I used to buy a Mr. Goodbar before I visited his grave.

Kit Kat: not bad.  Kit Kats were from Canada when they were good.

Canada, that’s a great candy-centric vacation.

Chunky . . .

I miss Chunky.  No, I miss the idea of Chunky.  I miss Arnold Stang (who did Chunky commercials).

My grandmother Anna  Soltzberg had a candy store at 15102 Kinsman Road, Cleveland, from 1927 to 1937:

I studied this photo with a magnifying glass.  Here’s the inventory:

Mr. Goodbar, Ivory soap, Sensen breath mints, Boston Wafer, halvah, Ringo, Lux and Lifebuoy soaps, Coca-Cola, peanut bars, chocolate-covered cherries, Maxwell House coffee . . .

Uneeda biscuits, Dentyne, Lifesavers, Tootsie Rolls, Oh Henry, and cigars: White Owl, Dutch Master, Websters, Cinco, Murad, John Ruskin and Charles the Great Pure Havana.

Candy was a low-cost entry point for immigrants.  John Lokar — the man with the gigantic Snickers  — was a Slovenian-American candy wholesaler.  I bought new baseball cards from him in 1981.  Didn’t make any money on it.

When did Snickers come out?

1930.  Frank Mars named the bar after his horse. (Googled.)

Here’s an ad from the December 1980 Candy Marketer.  Lokar gave it to me:

Jaw Breakers.  I haven’t had one of those since the Center-Mayfield stopped their 25-cent Saturday matinees.

Reese . . .

Who was Reese?

—
For relatives only: candy-store photo . . .   Anna Soltzberg, apron; her husband, Louis Soltzberg, behind counter; her sister-in-law Lil Seiger, behind counter; and two unidentified women.
—
Anybody have strong feelings about MilkyWay? I doubt it.

I was in my car in the grocery store parking lot, listening to Terry Gross interview poet Donald Hall, my old English professor.

Gross asked Hall how he liked being old.  Hall couldn’t complain, he said, but then he did for several minutes.  Hall talked about how he had published a story in the New Yorker in which a security guard at the National Gallery had treated 83-year-old Hall like a child; the guard had leaned over to Hall, who was in a wheelchair, and asked, “How was din-din?”

I could listen to Hall talk about aging all day.   I didn’t really want to get out of my car and shop for prunes, yogurt and salmon.

I used to be a lot younger . . .

Fifty, for instance.  In 2000 my then-teenage son attended a New Hampshire summer camp an hour from Hall’s house. I visited the camp on parents’ day.  Should I look up my English teacher?  I had taken courses from Hall 30 years earlier?

Maybe Hall lived way back in the woods.  Maybe he sat on his front porch with a shotgun.  I didn’t know.

Hall’s house was not deep in the woods.  It was about 50 feet from a federal highway and across from a summer camp.  (There are a lot of camps in New Hampshire.)  He could sometimes hear “Reveille.”

Don Hall at family house, New Hampshire, 2006 (Photo by Ken Williams/ Concord Monitor)

Hall was happy to see me, and said pretty quickly, “I’m rich.”  Hall made his money mainly from his award-winning children’s book Ox-Cart Man. Only a poet would ask, “Are you rich?” He added, “How about you?”

“I’m doing OK,” I said.  I had a kid at a New Hampshire summer camp. Enough said.

In 1973, when I had graduated college, Hall discouraged me from returning to Cleveland. He had said, “Why do that — to sell insurance?”

I went home.  I “sold insurance.”  I joined my father’s real estate biz.

Hall took me to a fancy restaurant near his farm.  I said, “I own and manage apartment buildings.  I’m a landlord.  And I play clarinet.” Meaning: I can improvise. I’m still in the arts!

Donald Hall and Bert Stratton New Hampshire, 2000

My first year at Michigan, Hall had looked like a stock broker. He went hippie about a year later, I think. In New Hampshire he wore a hippie shirt, and I was the guy in the polo shirt.

Hall quit his tenured job at Michigan in 1975 and moved to his grandfather’s farm near Wilmot, New Hamphsire.  Hall did exclusively freelance writing.

At the restaurant, Hall said he had traveled to the Amazon River on a private jet with a Michigan grad who had made it big in the movie business.  The student owned a movie company.  Hall said, “His family was in the grocery business in Detroit, until I warped his mind.”

Hall warped many minds. He told me to guard against bitterness.  His late wife, poet Jane Kenyon, had died five years earlier, at 47.  I remembered her from English classes.

Hall had struggled with colon and liver cancer, which was supposed to have killed him, but didn’t. Instead, his wife died from leukemia.  He said, “Every generation thinks they know more than the next generation.  Schopenhauer was writing about this in the 1700s. You don’t know more than the next generation.”

Hall wouldn’t even let me pay the tip.

The next day I drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, and flew back to Cleveland to evict people, fix leaky faucets and collect late rents.  It was not poetic.

Eleven years later I mailed several of my published op-eds to “Donald Hall, Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire.”  (He doesn’t use email.)  I wrote: “From your student — your 61-year-old student.”  I dated the letter.  Hall is big on dates.

Don wrote back, “I know you know I know that you feel old and know you are not.”

Get out of the car.  Buy the prunes, salmon and yogurt –- and some beers.

I want to make it to Hall’s age.

—
Donald Hall, 84, is poet emeritus of the United States and a recipient of  the 2010 National Medal of Arts.

Donald Hall and Barack Obama, 2011

—

by Ralph Solonitz :

My cousin David owned a GMC tractor-trailer, which he parked in the May Co. lot in University Heights.  David may have been the only Jewish long-distance trucker in the Heights.  Maybe the only long-distance trucker, period, in the Heights.

In 1975 David borrowed several thousand dollars from my father, Toby, for the truck.  David had a contract with International Truck of Rock, Minnesota.

David moved to Pennsylvania and never repaid my dad.

In high school David had stolen hubcaps.  He had been a Shaker Heights juvenile delinquent.

David even looked like James Dean. My cousin Danny once said, “David’s dad was the most handsome man you ever met.” David’s dad drifted around Cleveland, playing pool.  David’s dad and mother divorced in the 1950s.

When David’s mother heard David hadn’t repaid my dad, she made payments, but she never fully repaid the loan.

My father’s attitude was “win some, lose some.”  Toby believed in lending money to family. My dad had borrowed from his Uncle Itchy to buy his first house.

Last year I called David’s sister. This was a big deal; David and his sister were  out of the cousins’ loop. David is now in his seventies and has had several heart attacks, his sister said.  He is living in a hotel that his son runs in Florida.

No more truckin’.

No more David as family black sheep. Stolen hubcaps and an unpaid loan, is that the worst of it in my family?  I think so.

Now, my wife has an estranged cousin who stole sterling silver . . . Stop.
—
“David” is a pseudonym.

—
SIDE B

FITBIT

I became bionic.  My daughter, Lucy, gave me a pedometer.

I can count my daily steps. I can even monitor my sleep patterns, but that’s too much data — even for a guy like me who likes data.

Brisk walking. If you do it, ipso facto, you’re a dork.

I gave up jogging last year. My right knee wasn’t into it anymore. I miss the “sweat” of jogging.

I walk.

Should I post my step count here? Dieters post their calories online.  Bicyclists post their heart rates.

My step count today is _____. (Will post up at 11:59 p.m for maximum effect.)

Your count?

—

For a couple new illustrations by Ralph Solonitz, please  scroll down to “KlezKamp 2012,” which went up last week.

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Yiddishe Cup plays at First Night Akron on New Year’s Eve.