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The Dolphin
Your Monthly Magazine from Living Happy Center
January 2012
Carole Kane, Editor-in-Chief
Living Happy Center Writers Group:
Frank Clark, Marlene Emmett, Nancy Goshorn, Maryann Hall,
Helene Herman, Glynis Hedley, Dr. Brad Holway,
Rev. Victor Langhorne, Dr. Arthur Lewin, Joyce Magnavito,
Nicholas Pascullo, Josephine Pico, Debra Sanchez,
Dimitra Savvidou, Tom Stanton
www.livinghappycenter.com
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Dear Friends,
Welcome to the January 2012 issue of The Dolphin, featuring longer articles from the Living Happy Center Writers Group. Just as a reminder, you will receive The Dolphin once each month. During the rest of the month you will continue to receive your weekly Living Happy newsletter.
This is such a great issue! You'll be entertained, educated, uplifted, and smiling.
There's fiction and non-fiction: a "good versus evil" battle; a movie review that will get you thinking; people relationships; being a volunteer; a trip to Ethiopia; and a trip back to the good old days.
As always, we welcome and love to get your comments... so please tell us your thoughts. You can click right here to reach us: The Dolphin: Comments
Happy reading!
- - Carole - -
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Devil or Angel 
By Helene Herman 8:10 a.m. on a Saturday morning in January and "good girl" in my head is coaxing me to get up, get dressed and get in my car to travel 25 minutes in the freezing cold to the gym. As I begin to push up from the warmth and comfort of my lovely bed, another, darker voice chimes in. "Since  when is going to the gym so blankety-blank important? And on a Saturday? Really? How many nights sleep did you lose out on, walking the floors with colicky babies? Or all the nights you sat with and tried to comfort a coughing, feverish small child in a steam filled bathroom? How about the wide-awake nights you spent trying to calm a sick child, while laying next to him in a bed sized for a person under 4 feet tall?" "But I was a young mother", answers the Good Me. "I loved those babies, was responsible for those little children; and I couldn't sleep anyway because of the part of my brain still listening for quiet in the night." "So, after all that you're still going to get up on a Saturday morning just to go to the gym? Are you nuts? Have you seen the price of gas? Go back to sleep." That little devil in me can be so, so persuasive. I lie on my cool pillow, under the warm comforter (what a perfect name), and tell myself it's late enough. I should get up. "Oh, really?" that taunting voice comes back again. "Says who? Since when is 8:10 time to get up on a Saturday morning? I remember when you'd leave out bowls of dry cereal on Friday nights and take your chances on the kids spilling the better part of a container of milk, just to grab a few extra z-z-zs.
"Your younger son would accuse his brother of swinging him upside down by his legs and other assorted tortures. After a quick warning of the torments you could impose if they didn't stop fighting, you would give them THE LOOK and climb upstairs and back to bed ,probably to dream about the day they would be grown and you would be able to relax and stay in bed till noon if it pleased you."  "But that time is gone", I think to myself.
My babies, my sons, are adults now and out on their own. They even apologize if they phone and wake me. I no longer answer to the demands of an alarm clock sending me flying into the shower, to start getting ready for work before the sun is even up.
My beloved mother, whose needs grew as my family's decreased, is gone now, as are the many mornings I left my bed to rush her to a doctor's appointment, an early blood test, or just to throw on some clothes to hurry over to her, to calm her fears and try to resolve her problems. All gone. I can sleep. The devilish voice is back. "Yeah, and after all that, you're even thinking about getting up to go to the gym? Why? So you can sweat and breathe hard? So your feet and arms will hurt and your body will be sore, your hair will get wet and your face red?" Now I recognize that voice from long ago. I remember when it told me to hit my sister, steal a piece of candy, cheat on a test for which I hadn't studied.
I remember it from my teenage years when I'd argue with my mother, lie about where my friends and I were going and if we'd be chaperoned. I recall that voice encouraging me to let my boyfriend...well. That voice never led me to do anything good. Times have changed. Friends and loves have come and gone. Music and dancing have changed. (The Beatles are still the greatest group ever - but that's another story.)
Priorities change, and one of my new priorities is me. Getting and keeping myself healthy and strong. Keeping the stress down and the good cholesterol up. Moving along with the changes in my life, which are certain to change again someday .
Today, though, I'm getting up and going to the gym to work out, and I'm doing it for ME. Finally!
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A Journey Full of Riches
By Dimitra Savvidou
My aim is to motivate anyone who might read this, to offer time (not only money) to assist/help/encourage/be present for less privileged people. Each one of us has a voice, a voice that can make a difference in this world. Imagine what we can do as a team!
"V" is a confidential emotional support service for anyone in the UK and Ireland. The service is available 24 hours a day for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which may lead to suicide."
That's how "V" present themselves; that's what we first read at their website.
The statement is a true declaration! How do I know? I know, as I am involved
The journey started more than two years ago. It started by posting a simple application. I was called. I was interviewed - or I should say that I had a creative conversation accompanied with a nice warm cup of coffee. All process took its course and the rest is history, a pleasant, educational and productive history.
When I arrived in Northern Ireland from some African country, I never thought that my perception about charity organizations, non governmental organizations and donors of any kind, could change. I worked and volunteer with many such organizations, including small, unknown ones and grand global donors. I have witnessed good intentions; but mostly I have eyewitnessed red tape, bureaucracy, mismanagement, pride, politics, diplomacy and unfulfilled tasks and aims.
My faith to goodness, ability, capability, loyalty and true aspiration was restored as I commenced my training. "V" is not a briefcase organization. Volunteers of any walk of life dedicate their time - not necessarily their free time. They do make time to train, to fundraise, to meet, to support each other and the organization and to contribute in any possible way. Since the beginning, I met people who volunteer for decades. There is hierarchy but all participants are equal. Each person is unique and different but all are united. What they teach, they practice.
I learnt a lot, not only how to be a listening ear but mostly, I learnt more about myself, my weaknesses and my strengths. As I listen to the feelings and thoughts of callers, I become more empathetic than sympathetic.
I learnt that been a volunteer is not one way action. On the whole, we usually want to assist others or to fix it for them. Now, I know that I cannot fix anything; I just need to be present. The relationship between the Caller and the Volunteer is a vice versa liaison.
Volunteering is not only to assist others. It is, additionally, to gain self-awareness, develop our strong points and lessen our limitations. It is a wonderful journey to take, a journey full of riches!
(Note: As my purpose is not to advertise the organisation, I replaced the organisation's name with just the letter V for "volunteering").
Dimitra Savvidou
Writing, Teaching, Counselling
www.lovingministry.net
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Psycho Analysis
By Dr. Arthur Lewin
We spend our lives searching for meaning. Life otherwise would, in fact, be a tale told by an idiot filled with sound and fury signifying nothing. We actively look for, and we find, rhyme and reason. We make sense of the world. We tell ourselves stories.
Every story has a message, a moral, a lesson that is the reason why we tell it. Even our memories are stored away and organized in storied files. Every one of us tells stories, sees the world in stories, pictures our life as a story. Many are the tales of the individual who has gone astray, fallen from grace, only to realize the error of their ways and eventually rise again. This is precisely the theme of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho."
It begins with loud, eerie, foreboding music as we look down at the sunlit city of Phoenix. "We" being the audience which is given the perspective, the vision, of the director who, like God, can go anywhere and see anything. Bird-like we swoop down to a hotel window and peer in at a lounging couple. Her name is Marion Crane and she is taking a devilishly long lunch hour to secretly meet her lover.
Phoenix is the mythical bird periodically reborn from the ashes of its own incineration. Marion Crane will go on to embezzle a large sum and take flight to her boyfriend, unfortunately stopping at a motel en route, where she is brutally killed while taking a shower; and the music in the background is like the shrieking of birds. However, just before she dies she resolves to return and give back the money she has taken. Though she doesn't get the chance to, the fact that she intended to leads one to believe that she may have attained salvation, having repented of her sins.
The murderous innkeeper is Norman Bates. He appears a very shy young man. Ms. Crane at one point even toys with him. But he has a deadly fixation on his dead mother, and in talking with him she unwittingly touches a nerve that sets off a chain of events ending in her death. There are many signs and signals of her impending doom. For example, the man's name, Norman Bates. He looks normal enough, but that is just the bait. And when she sits in his parlor and chats with him, there are stuffed birds of prey on the walls glaring down at her. (Hitchcock's very next film was The Birds.)
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Look for the Director's subtle signs and signals!
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After she finishes talking with Norman, once back in her room, she makes the decision to return and give back the money. She is quite relieved. Her taking a shower symbolizes her cleansing her soul, her "Baptism" into a new, honest life. Once in the shower, she peels the wrapper off a small white bar of soap thus foreshadowing Norman's pulling back the shower curtain exposing her small, white defenseless back.
When Norman does the deed he is dressed in the clothes of his deceased mother. Back in his Norman persona, he discovers the body. He is shocked and jumps back knocking a picture of a bird off the wall in her room, and it clatters loudly to the floor.
At the end of the film a dynamic psychoanalyst deftly explains Norman's psychosis. He does so standing in front of a dark file cabinet with dozens of little drawers representing the many dark secrets inhabiting Norman's subconscious. As he eloquently expounds his brilliant ideas, a light fixture shines brightly just above his head.
Meanwhile, Norman sits huddled in a nearby room thinking to himself, in the voice of his mother, that he "wouldn't harm a fly." As the scene fades, for just a split second Norman's face turns into a skeleton's head. Next we see Norman's car being pulled trunk first out of the muddy swamp. Inside that trunk is the body of Marion Crane, physically resurrected days after her soul was restored.
Many look for signs and symbols from the Divine in our daily surroundings. Likewise, when watching a movie, look for the director to scatter subtle signs and symbols, Godlike, throughout the film. See if you can divine them. These are just some of the many to be found in Alfred Hitchcock's landmark 1960 film, "Psycho."
Dr. Lewin teaches in the
Black and Hispanic Studies Department at Bernard M. Baruch College, New york www.readlikeyourlifedependsonit.com
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Why I Like Being Old
Author Unknown
The other day a young person asked me how I feel about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Upon seeing my reaction, she was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let her know.
Old age, I decided, is a gift. I am now the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometimes despair over my body - but I don't agonize over it for long.
I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family, for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself.
I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to be messy, or to be extravagant. I have seen too many dear friends leave the world too soon, before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
Whose business is it if I choose to read until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the old days, and if I at the same time wish to weep over a lost love, I will. I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten - and I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers? But broken hearts are what gives us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. I can say "no" and mean it. I can say "yes" and mean it. As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So, to answer the question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. I don't have to have a reason to do the things I want to do. If I want to 0play games on the computer all day, lay on the couch and watch old movies for hours, or don[t want to go to the beach or a movie, I have earned that right. I have put in the time doing everything for others, so now I can be a bit selfish without feeling guilty.
I sometimes feel sorry for the young. They face a far different word than I knew growing up, where we feared the law, respected the old, the flag, our country. I ever felt the need to use filthy language in order to express myself. And they, too, will grow old someday.
I am grateful to have been born when I was, into a kinder, gentler world. Yes, I like being old!
Contributed by Joyce Magnavito
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It's All About You
By Rev. Victor Langhorne
"My wife doesn't understand me. Nobody understands me."
"That's a ridiculous thing to say. With awareness, it is clear that no one understands you, not even you."
"Why do you say that? Of course I know me. I know me."
"Your personality changes from moment to moment. It is always changing according to the role your are playing, according to the supporting cast in the scene."
"You may be on to something. At home I do have a certain personality. At work, I am different. With women who are just friends, I am one way, with women I want to woo, I'm another way."
"But all your life you assumed that some people knew you so well, and when they didn't do what you wanted them to do, you took it personally, you got upset, and created drama over nothing."
"Yeah, like when mom forgot my seventh birthday, or was it my eighth? Why, it hurt so bad! What can I do? When I confront my wife about her slights, it causes conflicts".
"It's easy to answer why and to identify the solution, but you have to hear me out. The problem is in the very way the world is socially structured. The human population of the world is in the billions. Each is a dreamer. You are often unaware that other people are living in their own world sand dreaming their own dreams. So from the point of view you have, everything is about you.
"When your mother, your wife or others do not respond as you want or do not agree with your point of view, you take it personally. Sometimes you defend your point of view; other times you lash out in anger. You want them to be the way you want or to do what you want them to do, and if they are not or do not, you feel disappointment. However, if you exercise awareness, you will have the solution you seek.
"Never take anything personally - this will give you immunity to conflict in any interaction with others. You need not concern yourself with others' points of view. Nothing they say or do is about you. Let them dream their dream of their world. So what? It's their world! With awareness, you're immune from their emotions and opinions. You won't allow them to cause you to hurt yourself.
"Don't take anything personally, not even your own opinions. That's the ticket to
freedom. Whatever you do has nothing to do with anyone but you. The only person who needs to be concerned about your dream is you. This awareness changes your world. All humans live in their own world, in their own dream. So, don't take anything personally."
Rev. Langhorne is Professor of Modern Philosophy
at Christian Newport College, Newport News, VA
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Bobby Meets His Match
By Carole Kane
"Bobby - are you home?" Mrs. Nelligan knocked a few times on his door and waited, unaware that he now called himself "Brooke." A moment later he opened the door.
"Hi, Mrs. N. Come on in. Oh - I see you've got my shirt done already. Thank you."
They went into his room, and she hung the clean shirt on the hook behind the door, her eyes darting around to check that the place was properly clean and neat. It was. Such a nice young man.
"Have you had your dinner yet?" she asked, noting the empty breadbox on the table.
"Well, no." He avoided her eyes. "I haven't had time to buy anything today. I was gonna go out in a few minutes."
She understood. She had noticed how loose his suit hung on him lately. But the boy never failed to give her the rent on time. Her mother's-heart went out to him. She wanted to help, but he was so proud. It had to be put in the right way, or she'd insult him.
"I'm glad you haven't eaten yet," she said brightly. "The Frigidaire is on the fritz and I've got too much stew downstairs. It's gonna go bad overnight. You want to have some with me? I'd hate to see it go to waste."
They had dinner in her big, spotless, old-fashioned dining room, with a beautiful lace tablecloth covering the big carved table. And she even had a homemade chocolate cake for dessert.
Brooke noted, embarrassedly, that the milk she gave him was ice cold. But he was grateful for her kindness, and said nothing about the supposedly broken ice box. Actually, she seemed to be enjoying herself as much as he was.
"My, it's nice having company for dinner," she said, handing him another slice of the cake. "It gets so lonely here sometimes, with the Mister, God rest his soul, gone five years already, and all three of my girls married, and my boy in the Army."
She paused a moment, then leaned towards him. Her thick black eyebrows knitted into a straight line that blended into the creases in her forehead. "You don't suppose you could keep me company for supper again, soon, do you? I so enjoyed it tonight."
It was a toss-up who was conning whom. They both knew it, and neither would mention it.
He ate supper with her every Wednesday after that. And it was the only really substantial meal he ever had.
A month after he started working at Outstanding Personnel, Brooke finally made his first placement. A young high school girl in her first secretarial job. It was about time!
Adapted from A Dream of Roman Candles by Carole Kane
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The Ethiopian Highlands
Part 2 - "The Salt of the Earth"
By Dr. Brad Holway
Leaving the abyss carved by the Blue Nile, we climbed a series of dizzying switchbacks, feeling every jolt as the bus wheels passed over protruding rocks and flood-carved dry gullies. The topography finally flattened out and we found ourselves on a high, windswept plateau; a sense of emptiness hung in the air despite the fact that every hillock seemed to be crowned with a small peasant village. Indeed, we were in the realm of lord and peasant, the ancient Province of Gojjam, the land of the Amhara.
Notwithstanding the empty-seeming vistas, the land bore the mark of millennia of human occupation. Save for the rockiest and steepest escarpments, the terrain was covered with fields of teff, the staple grain of Ethiopia. Near the villages were little vegetable gardens, neat and lovingly cared for by the peasants. Here and there we spotted small herds of goats or sheep tended by teenaged boys; this land was too desolate for cattle. The look of the beasts, shaggy and sporting long, curved horns, bespoke their closeness to the wild stock from which they had been bred. They seemed to belong here in this starkly beautiful tableland.
We suddenly turned to the right off the main road and proceeded uphill on a rough dirt track. Our tour leader announced that we would be visiting a traditional peasant village. Hopefully, the locals would receive us hospitably, he added. Ethiopia had just emerged from a bloody civil war and the country folk, often exploited or brutalized by one side of the other, were suspicious of outsiders.
After a turn in the road, we spotted the village, a cluster of tukul, the circular mud-and-wattle huts typical of that part of Ethiopia, crowned by conical thatched roofs. The settlement was still a bit uphill from us but the locals had already spotted the bus. Human figures spilled out into the open space, spurred by curiosity. We reached the top of the escarpment and I was stirred by the primal beauty of my surroundings, which tugged at some chord in my subconscious. We were atop a mesa strewn with gigantic boulders; I felt an archetypical, Jungian deja-vu as I beheld a vista that reminded me of the Archaic Greece of Homer, of the heroic Mycenian Bronze Age.
We arrived at the village but were told to stay in the bus until our interpreter, Berhane, obtained permission from the village headman to visit the settlement. Berhane spoke with two men and disappeared inside a tukul. Meanwhile, the villagers surrounded the bus and stared at the exotic visitors. "Faranjiyyah, faranjiyyah!" (Foreigners, foreigners!) they yelled; it was obvious that many, particularly the younger people, had never seen a non-Ethiopian before. They were a handsome, varied lot; their color ranged from a parchment-like off-white to almost black; likewise, their features ran the gamut from the Arab-Yemenite type to those one finds among some Kenyans or Ugandans. One could read the history of the Amhara, Semites who crossed the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula and intermarried with indigenous Africans, in the faces of these villagers.
Berhane returned with the headman's blessing and we exited the bus, glad to feel the earth under our feet. The women and girls exhibited their shyness by scattering and returning to their homes. The menfolk were bolder. They smiled and laughed softly, regarding the panoply of odd foreigners. "Salam", I said and they laughed again, amused that I had greeted them in Amharic. Some of the boys knew a bit of English and a couple of the older men spoke rusty Italian, a legacy of Mussolini's occupation of Ethiopia. With some effort, we were able to communicate. I gave several cigarettes to the men, who smoked them eagerly but awkwardly. Several of them approached with an innocent curiosity and one gently touched the hair on my arm, bleached golden from several days of African sunlight. Once again, I heard that soft Ethiopian laugh that I will always associate with my journey.
One of the teenagers who had been speaking to us disappeared and then returned. It turned out that he was the headman's son. Speaking the best English he could muster, he invited us into his family's tukul. We followed him, ducking our heads and entering single file. We were offered food and drink, but only our porter Ahmed and I accepted; my fellow tourists, though seasoned travelers, were squeamish about accepting local victuals. The boy's mother bade us relax and we took our seats on a mat that lay on the hard earthen floor. She put two bowls between us. One contained something that was like a cross between cottage cheese and yogurt, but more pungent-tasting, since it was evidently
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Ethiopian Injera.
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made from ewe's or goat's milk. The other bowl contained berbere, the red spice paste you find throughout Ethiopia; it is generally made of clarified butter,red chili peppers, cloves, fenugreek and cumin. The woman handed us several pieces of injera, a spongy, crepe-like bread made from teff flour. The boy then gave us each a glass of talla, a homemade teff beer. The idea was to scoop up some of the white stuff and the berbere with the bread and wash it down with talla.
I was in the world of Jungian archetype again, back in the Grecian Bronze Age of my mind. The headman was about sixty but looked older; he was thin and haggard. He lay on kind of a pallet, covered by blankets and sheepskins. He was evidently not well, but still felt compelled to offer his hospitality, laughing that soft, almost silent, Ethiopian laugh. His wife, not much more than half his age, was a beautiful woman with a bright smile, imbued with a poise and grace that one would not expect to see in such a remote location. The son, who resembled his mother, was handsome in a rather soft way. The scene was out of Homer; I was the guest of an aging patriarch and his young wife, who had borne him an heir in his twilight years. I fancied that guests were often served such fare in the Aegean of Odysseus, tended to with like grace, a combination of formal etiquette and a general feeling of warmth.
Meanwhile, the village girls had recovered their courage. One, about nine years old, looked inside and giggled. "The faranjiyyah is drinking the talla!" she cried to her friends gathered outside. One by one, they looked inside
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hopeinethiopia.wordpress.com
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and joined in the giggling. I picked up the glass of talla as if toasting, to show them that I understood and that I saw the humor in it too. It madethem giggle even more. Berhane then reappeared, telling Ahmed and me that it was time to go. I bade adieu to my hosts. The travelers and the villagers exchanged waves as we boarded the bus, denizens of different realities who had shared their common humanity for a precious hour or two.
The bus returned to the main road; we were off to Bahir Dar, a city on the shore of mysterious Lake Tana, the highest navigable lake in Africa and the source of the Blue Nile. I looked back to get a last look at the village, now fading in the distance. The setting sun cast purple and slate-blue shadows across the land. I knew that my memories of that day would stay with me for the rest of my life.
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My 'Hood
by Josephine S. Pico
The earliest recollections I have of my youth take me back to the 1940s in the colorful Borough known as Brooklyn. I'm sure you've heard of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Ebetts Field, Nathan's hot dogs, and Coney Island. The neighborhood I grew up in was culturally diverse, not that I even realized it at the time. However, the majority of people who resided on 39th Street were of Italian descent. Everyone spoke broken English with a Brooklyn accent. I thought this was how everyone in the world spoke until I started school. To this day people know where I come from whenever they hear me speak. My mother was of Polish descent so we had diversity right within our immediate family.
We rented two floors in the house next door to the owners. It had a small front yard with a gate separating the yard from the sidewalk. The house was located in an industrial section of town, close to some large factories called the Bush Terminal Buildings. Only a few blocks further down was the waterfront and a ferry dock.
I remember a small sandwich shop where the factory workers hung at lunch time. There was a soda machine by the front door of the shop. In those days soda came in glass bottles with tin caps on top. The tin caps had to be removed by some gizmo attached to the machine. You put the bottle under the gizmo and pushed down, dislodging the cap which fell into a storage unit beneath. After the workers left, the neighborhood kids made a rush to collect as many caps as they could (me too). For the life of me I don't know why we needed so many dirty bent soda caps. I would imagine we made up some games to play. It was the post-depression era and we didn't get a lot of expensive toys and games so we had to use our own creativity. I can remember a jump rope and a rubber ball, and then there was the pail and shovel for playing in the sand when we went to Coney Island. These toys were our childhood treasures.
There was a small neighborhood vegetable store in the middle of the block where you could purchase food. Most times we were sent there with a note but never any money because the owner knew you and your family. However, many of our purchases came right to our door. We had a milk man, a bread man, a fish man, an iceman, and even a man who sharpened knives and scissors. There were many peddlers who plied our neighborhood with their horse-drawn pushcarts. My mom would wait for their distinctive yell and rush out to make her purchases.
There were two floors in the house. The first floor was comprised of two large rooms, a kitchen and a living room. There was also an enclosed porch off the kitchen which led to our one and only bathroom. The kitchen of course was the largest room in the house because most of the living was done in the kitchen, not in the "living" room. The kitchen boasted a large black stove that was used for cooking and for heating. Food was purchased daily and usually cooked and eaten the same day.....we didn't have a refrigerator or freezer, just the old "ice-box" which is exactly what the name implies, a box with ice in it. When my family purchased our first refrigerator, years later, it was a Frigidaire. No matter what model refrigerator we purchased after that, it was always called a "Frigidaire." Now there's a descriptive name for you. As I look back now I believe that anything of any importance was always accomplished around that large kitchen table.
The second level housed two large bedrooms. My two sisters and I shared one room and my parents the other. There were open grates in the floors to let the heat from the old black stove in the kitchen rise and warm the upstairs rooms.
Saturday night was usually bath night. Baths were taken rather early while the house was still warm. On those Saturday nights we would be in our pjs early and snuggled warmly in bed. I would listen to the radio or read the Sunday comics (which came out with the late edition of the News or Mirror on Saturday night).
Very few people in those days owned a car. The most popular mode of transportation for those who lived in the city was the trolley or the subway. One of the city trolley's ran right in front of our house. It was powered by electricity and ran on tracks. I guess after a while I got used to the clanging of the trolley bell as it rolled past our windows, because the noise didn't bother me. Eventually, the bus replaced the trolley and the world became a few decibels quieter. Since traveling was difficult, most people worked, shopped and played within walking distance of their homes. It seemed like a special occasion when we traveled out of the neighborhood. A subway ride to Coney Island was always a big adventure for me as a child.
The country was still young and struggling and the times were simpler. Some major inventions were on the horizon. In the coming years these inventions would make life easier, but would make living more complicated.
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See You Next Month!
We hope you've enjoyed our stories.
Stay happy, go move that body!
Be kind to yourself, love your family.
Treasure your friends, dance, be playful and free!
And give thanks !
The Living Happy Writers Group
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