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Dublin Core
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Title
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Autobiographical writing
Text
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SHOPPING FOR CLOTHES
When you are a pre-teen, it goes without saying that your parents buy your clothes for you. For one thing, you don’t have any money. For another, you don’t know the first thing about shopping for clothes. It was during the depression, and though my mother knew about shopping for clothes, we didn’t have much money. Whatever new clothes I remember getting were bought at either Pesach or Rosh Hashanah. It almost made the acquisition of new clothes a religious experience, and it didn’t happen too often.
I have one vivid memory of my being taken to the shoe store on Southern Blvd. when I was about nine. (Yes, it was just before Rosh Hashanah and the start of school.) The salesman measured my feet and my mother picked out the style of shoe I was to get. I had no say in the matter. They were high shoes, not oxfords, and I really didn’t like them. When we arrived home, I told my mother I didn’t like the shoes, especially since all my friends wore oxfords. She became very angry and asked me why I didn’t say something in the store. I didn’t think I could voice an opinion. Adults made those decisions. Those were the last high shoes I wore. And my mother never bought me sneakers. She read somewhere that they were not good for your feet.
Elsewhere, I mentioned that those of us who were lucky enough to be on relief were also the beneficiaries of surplus food and occasional clothing handouts. The only piece of clothing that I remember is the jacket my mother obtained for me when I was 13. Whether my mother was able to get other clothes—pants, shirts, sweaters, or anything for herself-- I don’t know. I suspect that the clothes made in WPA factories were given to the poor. They certainly weren’t sold.
My mother did most of her clothes shopping in shops in the neighborhood and at Hearns at 149th Street and Third Avenue. She required special shoes and bought them at a store called Enselows And of course, she made her own clothes. I didn’t realize how impressed I should have been to see my mother take material that she had bought and a pattern, lay them out on the kitchen table, cut out the cloth and then sew it all together and end up with a skirt, a dress or a coat. When she had material left over after having made a coat, she might make a hat or a purse to go with it. One time, she created an “envelope” purse and embroidered a name and address on it. I thought it was corny and said so. I am almost in tears as I write this, remembering how I minimized my mother’s creativity. But this is supposed to be a story about my early experiences shopping for clothes.
When I was 14, I started attending Stuyvesant High School located at 15th Street and Second Avenue. I would get off at 14th Street and walk to school passing S. Klein “on the square.” Again, it was years later that I realized how clever their slogan was. It was a double entendre. It meant “on Union Square” and “on the level.” A digression: As a youngster, I though that Union Square was named after the union that had its headquarters there—the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Union Square was also the gathering place for left wing speakers, and where the annual May Day parade ended. It turns out that it commemorates the Union of the Civil War. In any event, S. Klein became the supplier of all my clothes from the age of 14 until I left New York for Washington, DC in 1965.. From my first days at Stuyvesant, I had a part-time job, which meant that I had my own money to buy whatever I needed—including clothes, with no adult supervision.
S. Klein was the Filene’s Basement of New York. I didn’t realize it then. I thought it was unique unto itself. Where else was there a store filled with bargains? Announcers would come on every few minutes telling shoppers that something was going on sale in a certain department for a limited time, and hordes of people would rush there, whether they needed it or not.
I suspect both Kleins and Filenes buyers were in fierce competition to buy up all the left over suits and coats and shirts and ties and slacks and sports jackets from the manufacturers that sold to stores like Brooks Brothers, and the fancy department stores and specialty shops, as well as the clothes left over in those stores at the end of the season. Years later, I asked a friend who had become a lawyer and who started to buy suits from Brooks Brothers why he didn’t buy his suits from Kleins. He asked me how long it took me to find something there. He was right. For him, time was money. I didn’t have the money but I had the time, and if I didn’t find it today, I was sure I would find it the next time.
I must admit that I would deviate from time to time, and check out Macys and Gimbels when I was around Herald Square (commemorating the newspaper the New York Herald, not someone’s name.) It turns out that Gimbels had a pretty good basement. It couldn’t match Filenes, but they must have cornered the market on discontinued and quality seconds shirts. Through high school, college, and until I moved to Washington in 1965, I dressed well and for very little. My mother made me aware of quality: the feel of the fabric, the closeness of the stitching, were the button holes hand made or machine made, how well the stripes matched, and whether the garment was union made.
When I was going to graduate from high school and was about to buy my first suit, (no I didn’t have a suit for my Bar Mitzvah) I intended to brave the aisles and racks of S. Klein. However, my mother had a better idea. There was a small men’s clothing store on Fifth Avenue and 22nd Street owned by a man named Sam Zimbler. My father had done business with him, until my father died in 1931. My father’s business was buying left over odd lots from manufacturers and selling them to retailers, almost like the Filenes and Kleins buyers I described. My mother told me to go to Mr. Zimbler, tell him I am Louis Schlitt’s son and that I want to buy a suit for graduation. She said that he would sell me a good suit at a fair price. I felt awkward and embarrassed, but I did as my mother said. Mr. Zimbler was very pleasant. He showed me several suits in my size. I picked one out. He explained that the price on the ticket was not the price that he was going to charge me. He measured me for the cuffs. I paid for the suit and returned the following week to pick it up. My mother confirmed that it was well made, quality material and worth the price.
Other than that suit, all my clothes came from Kleins. But from 1965 to 1979, I was like the Israelites wandering in the desert—in a land without a real discount clothing store. Having to wait for sales at Hechts or Woodies. Phooey! What do Washingtonians know about real bargains? I even found myself patronizing men’s specialty shops like Raleigh’s. What have I become? I was afraid I was going lose my ability to find a bargain among the jumble of “shmatas.”
But then the Lord looked down upon me, took pity, and arranged for me to be transferred to Boston, in an office a block away from Filenes, and in 1979 I began shopping in Filene’s Basement in Downtown Crossing. I found the shoppers’ Promised Land. I hated to admit it: Filenes Basement out-Kleined S. Klein. With the extra added attraction of mark-downs. It was in 1957 that Julie Bernstein took me to Filenes Basement for the first time. I refused to recognize that a Boston store could be better than a New York store. Just as I am a convert from the NY Yankees to the Boston Red Sox, I have to admit I became a convert from Kleins to Filenes. I shopped Filenes Basement for 28 years. I almost never bought anything without a mark-down, How I loved to find an article with TWO mark-downs And now it too is gone.
10-28-08
Original Format
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application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Shopping for Clothes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"When you are a pre-teen, it goes without saying that your parents buy your clothes for you."
Date
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2008-10-28
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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text
Language
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en
Coverage
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1940/2008
Identifier
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1940s_-2000_SHOPPING_FOR_CLOTHES
Adolescence
Childhood
Clothing
Culture
Money
Mother
Shopping
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Text
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Born to Shop
I don’t like T-shirts with lots of stuff printed on them. They are supposed to be clever. I find most of them silly. But I saw one that had the ring of truth. It read: “Born to Shop.” I am going to get one of those for Fran.
For years, I didn’t want to believe it. Not my wife. The Born to Shop women are those on the “Real Housewives…” shows. Fran reads the NY Times, and serious novels and cookbooks. She discusses politics. She has a good understanding of what makes people tick. She is part of a Torah Study group. But I now realize that she is a compulsive shopper. She was Born to Shop. It is an addiction. Remember the question: Do you eat to live, or live to eat? If you change the question to: Do you shop to live, or live to shop, I am afraid the answer for Fran would be the latter.
I should have suspected something when, many years ago, I noticed the pantry, the refrigerator and the freezer filling up. There was no space to add anything. We had every kind of canned food jammed into every corner of the pantry. We had every type of spice imaginable. We had tea and pasta up the kazoo, and every other kind of food that can be considered non-perishable: olive oil, soup mix, cereal, kasha. Fran had been buying and storing them, and I was oblivious.
A special category of non-perishables is paper products. Fran is obsessive about paper toweling. It must be top of the line, with lots of perforations. Also tissues—facial and toilet. We have them stored under the sink in the kitchen and bathroom.
It is the same story with perishable food. The freezer is packed with frozen food. Some of the food is bought frozen, and the rest Fran has frozen—meat: cooked and uncooked, soup, bread. I have no idea what is in the dozens of packages. Whatever food is freezable, Fran has frozen. My occasional purchase of a half-gallon of ice cream can hardly find space in the freezer. I am so intimidated by all of the things Fran has squirreled away in the freezer, I am afraid to open it up, except to get some ice cream from time to time.
And now, the refrigerator. Fran has managed to fill it with everything perishable that is not freezable: every kind of dairy product, cheese, yogurt, eggs, spread, salad dressing, condiments, sauce, relish, jam and juice. (I sneak in a couple of cans of soda and beer.) The two drawers at the bottom of the freezer have a variety of fruits and vegetables. Usually, they sit there for weeks, and if not eaten, they are thrown out. My diet is shaped by the foods that are on the verge of going bad. Sometimes Fran stocks up when planning to make something, but if she doesn’t get around to making it, the ingredients accumulate. When I see carrots or celery sitting around for a while, I add them to my salad. My shopping contribution is limited to orange juice and milk, and the abovementioned soda and beer. On Fridays, I may buy a challah from the Butcherie, and a Stop and Shop rotisserie chicken (reduced to $5).
Fran’s food shopping compulsion is compounded by her lack of trust in my shopping judgment. She suspects (correctly) that I will look for bargains. My offer to shop, is almost always rejected. Shopping gives her pleasure. If I go, I will be depriving her of this source of pleasure. Pushing a shopping cart is exactly like pushing a walker. Walking up and down the supermarket aisles is exercise. It doesn’t matter if it is Stop and Shop, Trader Joe’s or Shaw’s (formerly Star), they are all home to Fran. For a change of pace, Fran will check out the Russian store on Beacon Street, and when she goes to her podiatrist in Watertown, she will spend hours in the Armenian store. And come summer, it is Annandale Farms, and the Farmers Market every Thursday.
Of course, food shopping is only a small part of the shopping addiction. There is clothes shopping, gift shopping, book shopping and pottery shopping. Shopping for clothes—for herself or for gifts--will range from Bloomingdales, to TJ Maxx, to The Gap, to Goodwill Industries. They are all nearby, more or less. Just as the kitchen pantry and refrigerator are filled, so are Fran’s closets. In this case, with gifts of every sort, for future giving. Fran never goes anywhere empty-handed.
Fran has never become a fan of malls. When she goes to Bloomingdales, she goes to Bloomingdales, even if it is in a mall. (She may peek into a few other stores, but I don’t see her bring home anything from them.) There are no “Big Box” stores near us, though some of our neighbors do shlepp out to Costco in Dedham.
Speaking of Costco, Fran was in shoppers’ heaven when we visited friends in San Antonio, and accompanied them as they made their weekly visit to their favorite store. That place has everything, but for sale in quantities I can’t handle. And as you wander around, grabbing up bargains, they provide you with food samples, enabling you to shop without starving. When you are finished shopping, as a reward, you can get a foot-long all beef frankfurter and an all-you-can-drink soda for $1.49. Now that’s a bargain.
These days, Fran doesn’t have the energy she used to, and shopping is taking her longer. Nevertheless, the bundles are as big as ever. Fran was born to shop. Pushing a shopping cart may even be therapeutic. But it is an addiction, though not as harmful as alcohol or drugs. Have they formed a Shoppers Anonymous organization yet?
7-11-11
Original Format
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Born to Shop
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"I don’t like T-shirts with lots of stuff printed on them."
Date
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2011-07-11
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Born_to_Shop
Fran
Hobbies
Marriage
Money
Observations
Shopping
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
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It Pays to Shop Around
I have always struggled with the question of loyalty to a storekeeper or service provider, as opposed to shopping around for the best price. Growing up, we always bought our groceries from the same grocery store (Mr. Rosenbaum), our pharmacy needs from the same pharmacy (Mr. Sheinman), our meat from the same butcher (Mr. Margolis), and for our dry cleaning, we always went to Mr. Handwerger. It never occurred to us to go elsewhere. They were our neighborhood storekeepers.
Then in came the A and P. I have already written about the heart-wrenching decision that my mother made to no longer buy her meat from Mr. Margolis and her groceries from Mr. Rosenbaum. The forties saw a great many changes taking place. And the changes continued through the decades. Soon there were no more friendly, neighborhood storekeepers. They were replaced by supermarkets, and now it seems that some supermarkets are being replaced by “big box” stores.
I have also prided myself on being a smart shopper, but I concluded that this approach does not apply to the servicing of my automobile. I established a relationship with my neighborhood service station, and placed the servicing and repair of my car in their capable hands. I realized that they charged a little more, but I became their steady customer. I knew them and they knew me. They would not let anything bad happen to my car. When I had a problem, I would call their head mechanic and he would take care of me.
A few months ago, I heard a squeak when I applied the brakes. I called my friend, the head mechanic, and he told me to bring the car in. He pulled off the tires, looked at the brakes and shook his head and said I need to get the brakes relined and I also need to get two new tires. My response: if he says so, it must be so. How much? $950. Wow. That’s a lot of money! He made it clear to me, that if I did not take care of it soon, there could be a problem. If he says so.. I knew that there are lots of other places that do brakes, and still more places where I can buy tires, but this is my friendly neighborhood service station, and I have been coming here for years. I now have new brakes and new tires. (And a gnawing feeling that I overspent by a couple hundred dollars.)
A few weeks ago, the side view mirror was damaged and I brought it to my friend to find out what could be done. He looked at it, shook his head and made a phone call. When he got off the phone he told me it would cost $430 to replace it. I thought that was a lot of money. He said that that is the cost of a replacement mirror that matches the car. We could save a few dollars for a black replacement mirror, but it would not look good on a silver car. I told him I would think about it.
While I was thinking about it, I got some duct tape and reattached the mirror. It did not look great but it served the purpose. Unfortunately, after a while, the mirror came off. It is not true that everything in the world can be fixed with either WD 40 or duct tape. Another observation: everything you need, can be found on Google. I Googled side view mirror, 2007 Toyota Camry, and up came hundreds of places where I could get one. The prices ranged from $20 up. I called a few of them, and settled on a Kool Vue mirror from Discount Auto Mirrors for $35.07 plus $10 shipping.
Now, how was I going to have it installed? I found a video on Google which gave me a step-by-step lesson in attaching the mirror. Forget it. I decided to go to a few of the neighborhood service stations that I don’t patronize, to ask them how much it would cost to install. The first said $94. The second said $90. That must be the going rate. I figured $45 plus $90 is less than $430.
I then decided to call my friendly, neighborhood body shop, figuring these guys do this sort of thing all the time. Since we have had a lot of body work done over the years, the owner knows me. I asked him how much he would charge to attach the mirror. He thought for a few minutes and said $20. That is a lot less than $90. I told him as soon as the mirror arrives, I’ll be over. When the mirror came, I came over. He gave the job to one of his workers who completed it in less than 15 minutes. When I went to pay the owner, he told me to give the $20 to the worker. A magnanimous gesture. I did, along with a tip.
I am beginning to have second thoughts about my friendly neighborhood service station. The job for which he was going to charge me $430, ended up costing me $70. I hope this has not been the case all these years.
7-20-12
Original Format
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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It Pays to Shop Around
Creator
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"I have always struggled with the question of loyalty to a storekeeper or service provider, as opposed to shopping around for the best price."
Date
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2012-07-20
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application/pdf
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text
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en
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It_Pays_to_Shop_Around
Money
Observations
Shopping
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Text
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Dear Fran,
I wrote this last year as a way of “getting it out of my system.” Before discarding it, I thought I should print it and present it to you.
BIG PURCHASES, LITTLE PURCHASES
In response to your charge that there was never a big purchase that you made that I liked:
The biggest purchases we have made are our houses. After leaving 514 Harvard St. which was my condo mistake before we married, we bought 40 Evans Road. We chose it together. It was a great house, but you had problems with it. We then bought 16 Greenough St. together. It was also a great house. When the stairs got to be a problem, we bought 77 Pond Av. together. I believe we can agree that each purchase was made as a joint decision, and that we both were happy about the purchases. No one had to persuade the other.
The next biggest purchase was the car. You may say that you deferred to me, but I believe we were in agreement with each car purchase, from the Ford through all the Toyotas. And I believe I deferred to you with regard to the color.
Other less “big” purchases: the dresser, the couch, various chairs including your office chair, the two arm chairs, and the dining room chairs, the halogen lamps (in NY), appliances: dishwasher, stove, oven, refrigerator, and microwave. All in consultation in which we agreed. Two chairs which have sentimental value: the Stressless chair which you encouraged me to buy before we married, and the bentwood rocking chair in anticipation of the nursing mother.
Other big purchases, which are not tangible, are “trips.” Though we agonized over them, we eventually agreed, and all’s well that ends well.
The problems are with the little purchases. I consider dishes, pots and pans and flatware—little purchases. True, I do not have the same interest as you, but I would like to be consulted. It is also true that if the items I am using are usable and not displeasing to me, I see no reason to discard them. Items are coming into the house which are displeasing to me. I am trying to ignore it. If you really like it, OK. I like to remember the print I wanted to buy, asking you what you thought, and you telling me to buy it, and it turned out that you had a print by the same artist, and they are hanging over our bed.
I also remember when we married and went through our books, it turned out that at least a third of our books were the same. And we like the same things in music and art. I think we both have good taste in clothes. I don’t like to be put down with regard to my taste in food. And yes, I have no great desire to go to expensive restaurants, or drink expensive wines.
6-24-14
Original Format
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application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Big Purchases, Little Purchases
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"Dear Fran, I wrote this last year as a way of 'getting it out of my system'."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-06-24
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application/pdf
Type
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text
Language
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en
Identifier
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BIG_PURCHASES
Fran
Marriage
Money
Shopping
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https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/71642/archive/files/633593bc217cefea82c98b362df357dc.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=VA9WqYSmMku6gTPbmRtVUjQYFDiZRI8gPz2I7zy2aFEviEkkHEiMAO5v8qob4T%7Euposiu4LL1lMlez1eJeRO7ftGdxzmbzrxY3ns3cGaAMqE9TnZjGJxCVNcYNQeIOmfMMaXm6IlexI8M2fglb9rNQvMOed4bAv-dA1Trtsxyz8UTgAch8V8i8CCARkP1FtZ%7EFKX7HVq5XC-CFC0IBK1Wm8CiXL5d5-oTigFw6uz3rWacJsevA5A5cx0TLoA3PqY0gNVIsrYNwn6yHzDasUgKiiG5lf1vBzBArlX2o4vJRQicUqFdMLZle3a1HfgxrUVEGuSEl2-zOYOHJ5BPYfbjA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
59474af1683cc2fede9fceee45b16ee6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
THE RACE IS ON
By now, most everyone has heard that smart-ass remark of some of my contemporaries: “I don’t even buy green bananas.” It is said by folks who think they are being clever. They are the same people who refer to south Florida as “God’s waiting room.”
I do buy green bananas, and I don’t refer to south Florida as God’s waiting room. But what I find myself doing more and more, is looking around my home for things I should use up before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I mentioned some time ago that, since I was a teen-ager, I have been saving blocks of commemorative postage stamps in anticipation of there dramatic increase in value. They have not increased in value so what I have been doing is using them on letters and packages. I had accumulated so many, I may not be able to use them all up. The race is on. Can I use up the stamps before I am used up?
A related item to stamps: note cards. I cannot go to a museum without stopping at the museum store and browsing through their collection of art reproduction note cards. They always have dozens of boxes featuring different artists, and I always end up buying one or two boxes, and some post cards. What really makes my day is when I find, in a corner of the store, note card boxes of an artist that had been featured in a show. The show has moved on, but the boxes have remained, and the museum wants to get rid of them. And they mark them down, usually half price! There is nothing the matter with them. If the artist deserved to be featured last month, his or her work is still worthy of being bought, admired and mailed.
A number of charities send potential contributors attractive note cards, for which they expect a contribution. Sometimes I send a contribution, sometimes I don’t. The charities keep sending them, and they keep accumulating, along with the museum note cards. I have therefore decided not to buy any more special occasion greeting cards. Instead, I take one of my pretty note cards and write “Happy Birthday,” Happy Anniversary,” “Happy New Year,” “Get Well Soon,” Congratulations on Your Graduation, Bar or Bat Mitzvah, Wedding, New Home etc. This way I can kill two birds with one stone. I get rid of both stamps and note cards. The race is on.
Over the years, whenever we stayed in a hotel, motel, or on a cruise ship, we would abscond with those fancy bars of soap that they provide. The fancier the accommodations, the fancier the soap. I don’t think we fooled the chambermaid. Nobody is that clean that they use two bars of soap a day. We come home with a healthy supply. You might say we cleaned up. We squirrelled them away, under the sink or in a drawer. The time has come to use them. We will stop buying soap at CVS or Stop and Shop, and start using our stash. We can also give them as gifts, but I suspect the potential recipients have their own soap from their own trips. The ones who don’t, like my grandchildren, wouldn’t appreciate it. The race is on.
Tea bags have been proliferating in our kitchen and pantry. Fran can not resist the exotic tea bags that seem to be sold everywhere. Growing up, I was unaware of anything but Liptons, Tetley, Swee-touch-nee, or Red Rose. And loose tea. You buy a box of tea bags, and when you are running low, you buy another. During the depression, many families “shared” a tea bag, making two cups from one bag, or even putting a bag, that was only used once, in a saucer to be used a second time. No more. Today’s homes, including mine, have dozens of boxes of a wide variety of teas: green tea, black tea, herbal tea, organic tea, caffeine-free tea, fruit tea, artichoke tea, chamomile tea. One package describes the tea as “a cheerful blend of aromatic fruits flavors and spices.” Another, Bigelow Blueberry Harvest Herb Tea, “rich and bursting with blueberry flavor.” Though we present several boxes whenever we have friends over, I don’t believe we will ever run through them all. The race is on.
Finally, there are a few more items that I feel I should use up, but doubt that I will. One is writing implements. From time to time, I bought packages of a dozen yellow number 2, wooden pencils. At other times, I helped myself at the offices in which I worked. Now, pencils in my home are everywhere. I put rubber bands around bunches of them, and stick them in desk drawers. Another bunch is in a container on my desk. I find I use them hardly at all.
Then, the transition was made from pencil to ball point pen. Wherever you went, you were given ball point pens. Most had advertising printed on them. The hotels and motels that supplied me with soap, also supplied me with ball point pens. Other institutions had fancier ball point pens with pocket clips and a button on the top, enabling you to extend (?) and retract the point. They also had advertising, but fancier. Now I have more ball point pens than pencils. One thing I learned about ball point pens: They dry out and die. I have had to throw out several old ones. So part of the race is to use up the old ones before they dry out. The other part of the race is to use up the rest before I dry out and die.
12-27-14
Original Format
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application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Race is On
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"By now, most everyone has heard that smart-ass remark of some of my contemporaries: 'I don’t even buy green bananas'."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-12-27
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
THE_RACE_IS_ON
Aging
Hobbies
Observations
Shopping
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https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/71642/archive/files/4fdda1467d4a1a357b3686d236c3497f.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=JTOJtoHlt%7E6KW4wENmoccbFBilgxEQdZz4LI7YTcsbw0VExLs0-oG3acSLOTmhy0S%7EP1Y6m7tb4rfYknW6Ja6DWYvYQhiCXSxHVzwu-cffhbrX6kiE9HTECAoxY5N6a12lVx25OgYmOEZZk7qylJhKmLHTcSsV1JVaK1FW2EyR-P615OJitTCcP8-XSRVNn-WcSB3nCEVjj56XUBmZC9bfiTO7HVmffnI5HZhkQHdHeRia331ZjXxvXrZ%7ES9WSuWJlw2GVSDNT-h2GB9RAKFiNCtCr-zWA5aejRqKvODvoKpGTj5F2DZojuQVr3Ck7wn1WcvhFoWq6lh-0QM1bou8g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
9dc8bf6f48bc065f34ce312758420e3f
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
AN ARGUMENT A DAY
Thirty-four years! That is a long time. When I look back to July 26, 1981, I see a lovely couple, in love, getting married, and expecting a baby in November. They were surrounded by friends and family. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and after the ceremony, a great duo, sax and guitar, were playing. The next few years were almost idyllic, but then, it seemed to go downhill. Arguments, disagreements. The bright spot, and the glue that held the lovely couple together, was their son David.
But then David grew up, and went away to college, and the lovely couple got older and more argumentative. And then it was found that she had lung cancer. You don’t argue when someone has cancer. Treatment—surgery, chemo, radiation--followed by semi-annual checkups, and almost miraculously, year after year, the medical team found her cancer-free. But the treatment had taken its toll. Hearing loss, energy loss, difficulty walking, breathing, sleeping,
And the arguments, which had diminished, renewed. Complaints, demands, bickering and anger. No matter what he did, it was not good enough. When he went shopping, he always bought the wrong thing, or he bought too much or too little. True, he looks for bargains, but so does she.
When they planned a trip, whatever he proposed was wrong. True, he did not want to spend as much time (and money) as she, and it usually ended up that he would go along, and it was fine. Large purchases were always a bone of contention. But all the above were occasional. And this is about an argument a day.
These days, not a day goes by without some disagreement. And they are always generated by her. He knows not to complain, because if he does, it escalates.
Lights, fruit flies, temperature, garbage, mail, appointments, newspaper,
Punctuality, car scrapes, meals, misplaced items, comment re coming to bed late. Comment re stuff on tables, in corners, in study
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
An Argument a Day
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"Thirty-four years! That is a long time." (Fragment)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
en
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981/2015
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AN_ARGUMENT_A_DAY
Fragment
Fran
Marriage
Observations
Shopping