Busy getting ready to move (before winter) to senior housing.  Remarkable how happy I will be to get rid of things I've treasured -- signatures, for instance, of Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys.  Don't understand it, but it's handy.

My son Dov is still here, and he suggests posting that farewell note I wrote at 2 am a couple of weeks ago. The local paper, the Democrat & Chronicle, used it as the final column, and it brought me a dozen or so gratifying emails (one, if I remember right, compared me to God? I can't be remembering that right).
Of course first I have to find that farewell note, and I have no idea how to.  Stay tuned.
Aha!  Dov says he just sent it to me as an email (I can still handle email) ...

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/marketplace/real-estate/2019/06/14/edith-lank-hangs-up-her-real-estate-column-after-nearly-44-year/1457007001/

I would point out, now that you realize I'm as far behind the times, computer-wise, as anyone my age, that somewhere around 1984 or so I was a computer pioneer.  Those first computers cost a fortune -- in 1984 dollars at that -- and they kept improving them so fast that I kept replacing them -- but somewhere along the line it all got ahead of me.

Well, anyhow, Dov says you'll find the final column at that address.
I thought that the syndicate didn't run it --  But yesterday I received a postcard from Washington!

Have a nice day.

Take a listen...

Dov  found this on a web site -- I didn't know any of these survived --  I had evidently tailored this talk to a group of Realtors -- it's not very long and I'd like to think you'd heard it so do take a listen.  I used to get paid for these!

http://askedith.com/audio/Edith-Lank-Funny-Letters.mp3

I''m Back!!

Yielding to popular demand from at least two correspondents, and with my son -- the one who's going back to Vancouver--  looking  over my shoulder and egging me on, we'll start posting again.  Dov emphasizes that "It wasn't your fault" things got complicated.  As usual, to serve me better, They improved this site and I couldn't get to it.  Besides which, of course, not a hell of a lot is happening here.  But I believe I have at least  half a dozen followers, so hello!  

Hi -- I''m still alive.  Just haven't felt like posting for months now.

It's okay -- feel fine.
I was picking the blueberries out of a fresh fruit salad this morning and flashed on a scene from around 1937 -- I'm with a group of Girl Scout campers climbing Mt. Monadanock in New Hampshire, and in front of us is a scraggy bunch of shrubs -- they're wild blueberries -- and we're FREE TO PICK THEM -- they're FREE.  Free food! I am so  astounded by the concept that I retained the memory -- I can still see that scene.

Worst Movies Ever

                   Yes, I'm still among the living!
Seems that to serve me better, They complicated signing on to this site. Google is involved somehow.  Finally got up the energy to solve the problem because I just have to tell you about the worst movie I've ever seen.  So far.
Until recently I would have said that was Reefer Madness -- one poster says THE BURNING WEED WITH IT'S ROOTS IN HELL -- yes, that's the way they spelled "its".   Reefer Madness is black-and-white and it shows up on cable now and then, or there's always youtube.
Thoroughly enjoyable.

At this age and unable to walk, I spend an ungodly amount of time in bed watching tv, and now to my amazement I've found an even worse movie there -- in color!-- perfectly fine title -- The Unexpected Bar Mitzva.   I guess you can take a look for  yourself on youtube?   Rotten Tomatoes lists it but without a single word of comment that I can find.

                                           Enjoy!

Dreadful Sorry Clementine #2

Dov tells me all I posted about that was the headline.  Dreadful sorry, clementine.  Left you hanging.
So a couple of days later I saw an orange disk on the green carpet behind the bedside table.  Did not recognize it.  Pulled it up with the grabber, recognized it.  You will remember it had already been peeled.  It was a bit desiccated (I think maybe that means dehydrated, hope so) and it was also somewhat dusty.


There are advantages  to being old and living alone -- nobody, for instance, to tut tut -- so I ate it.

More Mystery

Adding to the festivities of my 92nd birthday this week, there arrived a delightful picture book, printed on thick stiff boards --


                        

It came (I think) via Amazon , and after a brief effort to find the sender's name -- to no avail -- I sat down and read it.   Not all that time-consuming.  But by the time I'd finished, Companion had finished filling the bird feeders, taken out the trash, said goodbye and left.
                                so WHO SENT THIS?

Mystery for You

So yesterday I sat at my breakfast table  (in the scooter, lately it's too painful to bother transferring to a kitchen chair) and peeled  a tangerine to end the meal.  (Actually it was something sold as a Darling Clementine, a bit smaller and less juicy than a tangerine.) 
And then thought wouldn't it be cozy to eat it while reading in the bathtub (one nice thing about being old and living alone is that there's no one to be upset by unorthodox living habits) so I scooted the peels over to leave them in the kitchen sink -- cannot grind them up because of what I did back in the 1950s which I won't take your time to discuss as it's really off the subject (when  our first disposal -- garbarator -- was installed, the electrician started to put the off-on switch in front of the sink, and I -- nervous and a bit afraid of this new device -- said  "no, no, not where the children could play with it" so it's up on the wall where now I can't reach it) and scooted off down the hall to the bathtub. But then remembered the Handyman was coming and because it's below freezing out there today I'd written a sign that said "Door's unlocked, just come in" (these days it takes quite a while to  get to the door -- and this is a ranch house and the bathroom door is at the end of the entrance hall, and I leave the door open when I take a bath because otherwise the room could get super-heated.)  Never mind what the handyman was coming for -- it's off-topic (change furnace filters, drain hot water heater, fix dishwasher)  so I decided instead to go back to bed and eat the clementine there while I read the morning paper (still 


seven days a week and still defiantly in four sections even when sometimes now a section 
is just a single sheet of folded newsprint) so I continued down the hall  to the  bedroom, dismounted, plugged in the scooter to re-charge while I was reading and getting dressed -- tossed the newspaper up near the pillows and pulled myself into bed and now we come  to the mystery, which perhaps you can help me solve.
Where  was the darling clementine?
I tottered back and unplugged the scooter, got in and searched.  It was not in the kitchen.  Not in the bathroom.  Not in the bedroom.  Not in the scooter.
Not in the bed.  At least, I've looked as thoroughly as I could -- I  have visions of it quietly rotting away between the sheets somewhere before Companion  comes next week to change  the bed.

Where is the darling clementine?

Mystery

I'm  told some grad students in History are having problems because they can't read cursive documents.  Well, and then there's just plain old-lady handwriting -- what do you suppose is going to happen on Sunday? Am I supposed to be somewhere?  Will someone be expecting me?
I do have some Smith in-laws, over in Albany, but that rings no bells.
If I made some appointment for the totally impossible hour of 8 am, I'm sure I'd  remember. This must be 8  pm.

I live in suspense.



p s Just noticed --I must have jotted IRS on the 15th -- so this  will  count as a cheerful reminder for those of us who withhold.  Let's make America great again.

Maybe from now on I should print everything in CAPITAL LETTERS

Truth in advertising

That "sachet" is a squirrel repellent.

Or maybe it isn't.

Illiterate creatures

I found these anti-squirrel bags on the Internet.  They contain something that repells squirrels, keeping them away from the birdseed in the feeders.  

Or maybe not.

Obituary

Well, the obituary pages paid off again today.  We have a gentleman (no age given) who 
"joined his wife Evangeline amongst the stars from whose dust they were made.  Now reunited they explore the fields of Elysium. Together as they had almost always been they gaze down upon their children...grandchildren...and new baby Katherine with contentment, peace and love.  From the heavens they reach One final time To bless us all, ...

I think I'll just let you read the rest of that for yourselves, if that's okay.  Services, you won't be too surprised to note, at the 
Universalist Church...

The Lost Prince

My kids are all out of town and "Mother, it won't fit in the suitcase" -- so bit by bit I'm giving away stuff I'll never use again and furniture that gets in the way of the electric scooter. Books I'll never read again go in a separate bookcase.  When I wrote the sign                                                                       "FREE -- PLEASE TAKE", my son with the economics degree suggested I'd get better results with:  
                                                                                                   "Take a book -- $1
                                                                                                      2 books  --$.75
                                                                                                       3 books --$.50
                                                                                                       4 books -- $.25
                                                                                                       5 books -- FREE"
At any rate, even with my few visitors that bookcase has a nice turnover.  Someone even took, recently, the big two-volume textbook from the freshman Survey of English Literature, a work that that started with Beowulf and -- back in 1944 -- never even mentioned Jane Austen.
Every now and then, though, I find a book I'd like to re-read, and those go in a different bookcase.  Looking it over recently, I discovered that the titles I can't quite part with aren't all that impressive.  Not much there in the way of challenging classics.
But there was a copy of what I would have said was my favorite book (had anyone asked me) back when I was 11 or 12 -- The Lost Prince, by Frances Hodson Burnett.  I'd borrowed some of her other books from the library -- The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, but The Lost Prince I'd taken out over and over.  During the Depression I never dreamt of buying a book, but I set out, one day, to make my own copy.  I must have given up after just a page or two, because all I remember is a notebook page filled with not very impressive penmanship.
 
So when did I buy this battered and much-mended copy?  In college, when I finally discovered second-hand bookstores?  This copy does contain the bookplate I'd made as an assignment in journalism school's printing course -- as close to attempting Art as I ever got. The linoleum block is supposed to be a view down Lake Keuka from my folks' porch.
 But then I found, at the bottom of page 133, an imprint that said "Portland Psychology Assn". I must have already been teaching at a college in Maine when I found a second-hand bookshop with this copy.  And why do you suppose that Assn owned it?
Well, I had some trouble, yesterday, keeping it in order on my bathtub reading rack.  The pages kept falling out, and I can no longer read a book straight through.  It took two days, but I'm here to tell you, The Lost Prince, with its 1916 copyright and 12-year-old protagonist, is still delightful. I'm keeping it.
                                                       Highly recommended.

Hair

Thought I was through with blogging, but this hair thing has been obsessing me so -- yes, I know it's irrational  but maybe talking about it to you will help me let go of the irritation.  

How come I only noticed a few weeks ago? How long has this been going on?  Did the Pope recently issue an edict saying you can't anchor a cable tv network unless your hair is below your shoulders...you can't make a commercial for this year's automobile unless your hair is long and almost -- but not quite entirely -- straight?

  Women are ironing their hair again?...we might as well be back in the '80s.  
And what's the word I'm trying to remember (I once heard that the nouns are the first to go, and that's true) -- aha!  extensions!  That's the word!  I've been dealing with hair for more than nine decades now, and I happen to know it takes at least a couple of years to grow hair down to your shoulders, so we're talking hair extensions, right?  or did everyone on TV suddenly decide to wear wigs?  I can't tell just looking at them -- what do you think?
Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention. Maybe it's been happening over a period of a few years and I just never noticed? 

And why does this whole thing irritate me so?

I see by today's paper that Si Newhouse Jr. has died.

Sometime around 1945 I found myself sitting next to this freshman at the typewriter lab in the journalism school at Syracuse.  Evidently trying to impress the kid with how the school would make him a professional, I bragged that I'd spent the past summer at the Penn Yan Chronicle-Express -- to which this freshman responded that he'd spent it as a reporter on his father's Staten Island Advance.

Which, come to think of it, was the paper for which a generation later my son Avi Lank covered some good stories at one point...

Proud Moment

     In the 1940s during The War, I had a summer job as county correspondent for the Rochester daily newspapers.  Typed each story (double-spaced, one side only) twice with different lead paragraphs, kept carbon copies (remember carbons?) and took my offerings to the 3 o'clock Greyhound bus for the 50-mile trip to the city.
     I was instructed to clip my stories if they appeared in the fat State editions of those dailies, paste them up (minus headlines, alas) in a long roll, and every week measure that roll with a long string. As a stringer (it would be years before I ever heard the word "free-lancer") I was paid --could it have been ten cents? --per column inch.
     It occurs to me only now -- why the string?  Why not just take the tape measure to that roll of clippings in the first place?  Did I mail in that string or something?-- can't remember.
     So just now, more than 70 years later, I googled "stringer" to see if I'd remembered right, and yes, there was the word.   But when Wikipedia started to discuss the etymology of "stringer" it appeared nobody knows where the term came from. The possibility that stringers were considered second-string journalists was offered.  There was no mention of  measuring one's clippings with string.
     So I typed in my contribution.  First time I ever did that, ridiculously easy, and there it stands on Wikipedia!
     I've forgotten so many things -- but I remember exactly where I was standing the day in August 1944 when I phoned (long-distance !! in the middle of the day !! before the rates changed !!) to tell the State Editor that I'd be leaving to return to college.
     Just one telephone in our house, on a party line (our ring was one long one short) -- and as I stood there in the kitchen that unknown Editor said -- I've forgotten a lot now but I remember his seven words exactly -- 
    "It's been a pleasure receiving your copy."

No Longer Heard

Cleaning out a desk drawer, I find three pieces of scrap paper -- 
and I can't take a picture to show you because my camera is no longer working. 
I don't feel capable of learning to use a new one. 
My cell phone is a dumbphone -- if there's a way to take pictures with it and transmit them to you I don't know how and I no longer feel capable etc.
Maybe I can find a vintage Canon SD1100 IS on ebay -- stay tuned. Meanwhile, here with no illustration to dress up the post is what it says on those pieces of scrap paper.  What do you suppose I was intending to write?

rumble seat
Sue Barton, Student Nurse
Dionne quintuplets
hand signals
house dresses
Dutch bob
matching panties
double dutch
popsicle stick "free"
Red Fairy Book
Shirley Temple paper dolls
tire blowout
dry cereal
floor wax
matching panties
penny candy
bathing cap
tourist cabin
mastoid
root beer barrels
candy cigarettes
diptheria

Profitable Hobbies

Yesterday I found a box of old letters Norm had saved from the few years before we were married.  He job-hunting; I putting myself through college (one could do it in those days) and freelancing articles to magazines.  I wrote “I just finished re-typing that article about you.  It’s not bad and I think it’ll sell – it’s about 2,000 words.” 

Well, I evidently did find a market for it, and the magazine may have paid something like a penny a word.  Twenty dollars would have been a lot of money in those days. 
That was a long time ago and I forgot the whole thing.

     Fast forward SEVENTY YEARS.

I get a phone call from a woman who lives one suburb over. She’s been reading the November 1947 issue of a magazine called Profitable Hobbies, and she finds an article about a Norman Lank who tape-records festivities like weddings and bar mitzvas.  There’s a picture of the young man, with his impressive huge recording machine. And the byline on the story reads Edith Handleman.  

“So,” she says, “Norman Lank had a real estate company here, and Edith Lank writes that column in the Rochester paper so I wondered…”

Which left me wondering how on earth she happened, 70 years on, to be reading the November 1947 issue of a magazine called Profitable Hobbies. 

The Past is a Different Country

     Well, I got down the cardboard box with the letters Norm had saved, from 1946 -- my senior year at college.  I was writing during class, which was held in a Quonset Hut.   Over the summer, the war just over, and the GI Bill promising to pay tuition and living expenses, Syracuse had promised to admit every returning veteran who applied.  Over the summer, enrollment had gone from 10,000 to 20,000 --
     hence the Quonset Huts.  I wrote that the side near the coal stove was warm, and I was wearing a mitten on the other hand.  
     There were men in class!  Not even boys -- men back from the South Pacific, from Europe, from the Battle of the Bulge -- and here's what I wrote --
     "The smoke in here is pretty thick -- seven cigarettes, one cigar and two pipes all going at once."
     The past certainly is a different country.