Meeting Gertrude

Like so many people, I like to dabble a bit in genealogy. Growing up, I didn’t know much about my father’s side of the family. He told my brother and me what little he knew, but it wasn’t much.

Unlike a lot of people I’m less interested in statistics and who begot whom than I am in anecdotes of distant relatives. I started looking at web sites and eventually found a distant cousin who filled me in on some information, and she now keeps the clan informed through a family Facebook page.

Recently she posted a fascinating account of a distant aunt (maybe she’s another distant cousin; I haven’t quite figured it out yet). Gertrude was born in 1905 and grew up in Philadelphia. She took piano lessons as a child, and was trained in classical music. She was a telephone operator and eventually worked as a hostess in a restaurant.

She must have led a rather quiet life, but at the age of 72 she became known as a café entertainer. She abandoned her classical piano studies and learned to play contemporary songs by ear, and from what I read about her she apparently knew about 300 songs and could play and sing for hours.

A septuagenarian party girl!

I found a couple of articles published in 1986 in two Philadelphia newspapers following her death at age 80.

 From the Philadelphia Daily News: “(Feb. 22, 1976 Gertrude) was at a party and her version of "Dark Town Strutters Ball" was played on the piano. In the group was Judy Wicks, then-manager of La Terrasse restaurant in University City. They went to The Frog for a midnight dinner. They went back to La Terrasse for a nightcap.

“In a March 1985 interview with Daily News feature writer Dan Geringer, (Gertrude) recalled that "audition" at La Terrasse.

"’I played for one and a half hours, dear," she said. "She liked me and she liked my style, and from then on it was parties, parties, parties. Saturday night. Sunday night. Parties, parties, parties. And it was fun, dear. I've made a lot of fun for myself in my life. And they tell me I've made a lot of fun for them, too.’

“She and Wicks became close friends. (Gertrude) played at La Terrasse on holidays and at special events for the next eight years. The restaurant normally featured classical music. But (Gertrude) picking out the blues and ballads and pounding the jazz of the '20s, '30s and '40s with a smile and glint in her blue eyes cast a mood few could forget. Her unique sounds could throw a loop and pull the audience through a warp in time to sense a French Quarter music hall, a Harlem speakeasy or a Philly dance club.”

Gertrude cut a record album, one of those long-playing ones. On the cover is not a photo of her, but an artist’s rendering of a lively-looking older woman with a broad smile and twinkling blue eyes. There was an unopened copy of that album for sale on eBay. I bought it. It should arrive soon.

From what I’ve read about Gertrude, I wish I could have known her. She told the Philadelphia Inquirer: "I want to play till the last day I'm on earth. I can't imagine living and not playing. I want to do it till the end. Then if I go," she said, blowing a kiss to an imaginary crowd, "Goodbye? It's been fun! I've had a good time! Oooh! I've had a wonderful time, dear."

There’s so much I would love to be able to talk to her about. It’s impossible now, but in a few days I’ll be able to hear her play and sing.

There Oughta be a Law

Ever have one of those days when nothing goes right? I had a couple of those recently beginning with Friday the 13^th.

I will never admit to being superstitious, but sometimes there’s no other explanation. Friday the 13^th found me with a lot of stuff to do and it beat me up with more interruptions than I ever thought possible. I was not only spinning my wheels that day, I was kicking up gravel.

That was followed by another day of two power outages, several computer glitches, a looming deadline and absolutely no patience left.

It was a Murphy’s Law kind of day. You know Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.

There are many variations of Murphy’s Law, as evidenced by the fact that there’s a web site called Murphy’s Law.com.  Murphy has diversified some:

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.

A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).

If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.

A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example) or into the garbage disposal while it is running.

The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the cat will throw up on it.

After you bought a replacement for something you've lost and searched for everywhere, you'll find the original.

No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

If you fool around with a thing for very long you will screw it up.

In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence and then remains there.

Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference.

Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

 No good deed goes unpunished.

Those who know the least will always know it the loudest.

The probability of being observed is in direct proportion to the stupidity of ones actions

A knowledge of Murphy's Law is no help in any situation. If you make it through a Murphy Day, you win!

Murphy certainly gets around and messes things up. My favorite law, however, is Cole’s law. Shredded cabbage.

How lazy can you get?

It can never be said that I’m overly ambitious. I’m as lazy as the next person, but laziness does have its limits. Even I can see that.

I can remember when I was a teenager I picked something up off the floor by grabbing it with my toes and then bending my knee to bring it upward. I thought I was being super efficient. My dad gave me what for about it, chiding me for not bending over and picking the item off the floor. He said I was lazy.

What’s the big deal, I thought. I have toe dexterity. Fast forward to the present time, and I now wistfully look back at the gracefulness it took to stand on one foot to accomplish the task. I’d fall on my backside now if I tried it.

Well, maybe it was a little lazy. Most people do try to find the easiest way of doing something. We now have robot vacuum sweepers to suck the dust out of the carpet. We used to have to push a vacuum cleaner across the floor, and before that we had to drag the carpet outside and beat the dirt out of it.

But how lazy can you get when you buy frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

The jelly people, Smuckers, makes them. They’re called “Uncrustables,” and they’re sold in boxes in the freezer section of the grocery store. Actually, they’re not new. They’ve been around for a while.

I didn’t think they’d be as popular as they seem to be. I mean, what’s so difficult about slapping some peanut butter on a slice of bread, spooning jelly on top of it, and then either folding it over or adding another slice of bread? Give me a break! Who’s going to buy that?

Apparently, it’s a marketing thing. Kids see it advertised on TV and they beg their moms to buy it. It isn’t really a whole sandwich. It’s a glob of peanut butter in the middle of a slice of bread, a glob of jelly, and another slice of bread and the whole thing is smooshed together and the crusts are cut off and then it’s frozen. It thaws quickly, so the marketers say. But you’ve wasted the crust and part of the bread! I’m too lazy to do the math, but I feel certain that those frozen sandwiches cost four times as much as one even a kid could make.

Maybe it appeals to people who don’t really care what they eat. Hungry? Get a pb&j out of the freezer. But what does it taste like? Remember those jars of peanut butter with stripes of jelly running down the jar? Peanut butter and jelly all in one jar. Easy. Or lazy. I think they still make it. It was awful.

I haven’t tried the Uncrustables. Something about the concept just doesn’t seem right. And I’ll bet money they don’t taste good. I did a Google search on them, though, and found a site where you could learn how to make a homemade Uncrustable so your kids can have a fresh homemade snack.

News flash: You always could do that. If you weren’t so lazy.

Can’t buy happiness

Recently it was announced that someone from New Jersey was the only winner of the most recent Powerball jackpot -- $429.6 million, give or take a buck or two.

The news anchors were exclaiming what a lucky person that winner is. Most people would probably think so, and all of us at one time or another have imagined what we’d do with such an obscene amount of cash. A lot of that involves telling off the boss and leaving the current job.

For some winning meant sharing the wealth, according to the blog Lottosend.com

In 2010 Violet and Allen Large blew headlines with their prize of 11.2 million dollars. They are always thinking of other people, so they tried to help everyone. After the victory they secured all the necessary family and his parents only after that they gave the money to charity. The largest charities accept donations from them and thereby have helped many sick people.

Christine and Colin Weir, after their surprise victory in 2011, became richer by $ 250 million. They decided to open a charitable foundation to help children with different rare diseases. Their donation of the money was given to a little girl with paralysis, the young artist and neighbor orphan. Weir says that their charity has prompted many people to help others.

Carolyn and Jim McCullar won $380 million in 2011. They alleged that the purchase of luxury items for them isn’t important in life, they think about the future of their children and grandchildren. Instead of spending money on a round the world trip, they invested in profitable business to the next generation – to not feel the need of finance.

But there’s luck, and there’s luck. Some lottery winners ran out of luck almost as soon as they hit the jackpot.

Take for instance William "Bud" Post who won won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988 but was $1 million in debt within a year, according to the web site Business Insider. A former girlfriend successfully sued him for a share of his winnings and his brother was arrested for hiring a hit man to kill him in the hopes that he'd inherit a share of the winnings. After sinking money into various family businesses, Post sank into debt and spent time in jail for firing a gun over the head of a bill collector. Bud went on to live quietly on $450 a month and food stamps.

According to CBSnews.com, Urooj Khan of Illinois died July 20, 2012, one day after collecting the lump sum option on a $1 million win. A medical examiner initially found that the 46-year-old Khan died of natural causes, but another official asked for a deeper investigation, which revealed the lottery winner was fatally poisoned with cyanide.

Tonda Lynn Dickerson, a former Waffle House waitress, got served a big plate of karma when she refused to split her winnings with ex-colleagues and was forced to pay the tax man $1,119,347.90, Business Insider reported. How did it happen? Dickerson placed her winnings in a corporation and granted her family 51% of the stock — qualifying her for the tax.

It’s been said love of money is the root of all evil. It’s also been said that if you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gives it to.

Go ahead, say what you really mean

Last week, former Speaker of the House John Boehner called presidential candidate Ted Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” The way people reacted to that you’d think Boehner said something original. Even the Satanists were offended, according to the website RedState.

Politicians have been dissing each other since the beginning of time. Abraham Lincoln gave as good as he got, and the Founding Fathers were experts at political potty mouthing.

Here, courtesy of Insults.net, are a few examples of political insults from history.

... as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65)

A crafty and lecherous old hypocrite whose very statue seems to gloat on the wenches as they walk the States House yard. William Cobbett (1763-1835), on Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), American statesman and scientist

A lamentably successful cross between a fox and a hog. James G. Blaine, American politician, on Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-93), American soldier

Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus Abe, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robber, Swindler, Tyrant, Field-Butcher, Land-Pirate.
Harper's Weekly on Abraham Lincoln

Garfield has shown that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angleworm.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-85), 18th American president, on James A. Garfield (1831-81), 20th American president

He has a bungalow mind. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), 28th American president on Warren Harding (1865-1923), 29th American president

He has all the characteristics of a dog except loyalty. Sam Houston, American politician, on Thomas Jefferson Green (1801-63), American politician

He slept more than any other president, whether by day or night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) on Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. H. L Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and critic, on Warren G. Harding (1865-1923), American president

He's thin, boys. He's thin as piss on a hot rock. Senator William E. Jenner on W. Averell Harriman (1891-1986), governor of New York

His idea of getting hold of the right end of the stick is to snatch it from the hands of somebody who is using it effectively, and to hit him over the head with it. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright, on Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th American president

How can they tell?
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) on hearing that American President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) had died

Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks. John Randolph, American politician, on Edward Livingstone (1764-1836), American politician

One could drive a schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact. David Houston, American politician, on William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), American lawyer and politician

One could not even dignify him with the name of a stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole on the air. George Orwell (1903-50) on Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947)

Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer, on Congress

The General is suffering from mental saddle sores. Harold L. Ickes, American Secretary of the Interior, on Hugh S. Johnson (1882-1942), American soldier

We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself.
Chicago Times (1863) on Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863)