SOMETIMES TABLETOPS ARE FOR DANCING

“When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.”  - Wayne Dyer 

          Within the Future World area at Epcot theme park, there is a restaurant where one can eat a leisurely meal while observing a day of life on a modern farm. The restaurant revolves around “The Land”, where the day begins with the crowing of a rooster and ends with a glorious harvest moon.  Much of the food served in that restaurant is grown right in the greenhouses of “The Land”, which gives additional meaning to the phrase “feel good foods”.  Often, the meal can take longer than just one rotation, so if one really lingers over dinner, the rooster could crow three times or more during one meal, making it seem as though three days have passed.

          It’s been years since I’ve enjoyed a meal in that restaurant, but almost every day I have a reprise of the feeling that many days have passed while dining on the banquet of one day’s activities.  As my world keeps spinning faster and faster, the days have become too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the books I want to read, all the friends I wish to see and all the children I long to hug.

          Sometimes, my day seems like a circus performance, trying to keep all my plates spinning.  It’s often overwhelming. The challenge is to balance what I must do with what I enjoy and want to do, and that is not always easy. Fortunately there is usually a natural flow and ebb to all my activities, just so long as I don’t let myself get sucked into other people’s expectations.

          Like many of my friends, I find juggling a busy schedule to be demanding, albeit rewarding.  There are frustrating days when I end up without the time to do what I really want to do.  There are lazy, bummed out days when I get nothing done. There are even days with no expectations, even though I’m usually looking for new challenges to make me discover things about myself that make me grow.

          Between the crowing of my rooster in the morning, and the moment I turn out the light at night, I try to live a balanced life – work some, think some, learn some, exercise some, play with my plants, keep in touch with family and friends, enjoy some music, agonize over the news, and try to find time for writing, day-dreaming, and even meditating, when so inclined.

          I’m not trying to be perfect. There is something to be said for the occasional dash of depravity, which is why I save some time for occasionally crossing a line, or splurging on something ridiculous; and when I do something foolish or outrageous, I deliberately do it with enthusiasm.

          Each morning when my rooster crows, I check my calendar for scheduled activities, and then think about what other activities I might want to put on my plate for the day.  I consider my mood, the weather, and whether I want to play, work or dance.  I’m not talking about ballroom dancing.  I’m using the term dance as a synonym for frolicking, the kind of playful behavior that keeps us young. 

          The world will spin, as fast or as slow as will happen. I’ve learned that I don’t have control over that. My goal is to set my table with challenges, thoughtfulness and a generosity of spirit. Then I let the world rotate, trying to stay aware of the wonder and poetry that exists around me.  I look for rainbows, listen for oboes, and try to remember that sometimes tabletops are for dancing. 

Future Shock or Future Success

March 27, 2011

“Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson      

       In the 1970 book, “Future Shock”, sociologist, Alvin Toffler, explained that the enormous structural changes in society were progressing at an accelerated rate, from an industrial society to a “super industrial society”. Toffler argued that the fast paced technological change would create social changes with increasing speed, and that would overwhelm people, leaving them disconnected and suffering from stress and disorientation – future shocked. He also popularized what was then a new term, “information overload”.

          In the beginning of the 20^th century we had been dazzled by the novelty of cars, airplanes, and radio. In the 50’s, television became so popular, it became the primary source of news, information and entertainment. Suddenly, people on the west coast were listening to the same news, at the same time as people on the east coast, and what was fashionable in NYC was also fashionable in Chicago, LA, and Boise, Idaho.

          The 60’s brought us many new inventions: halogen lamps, audio cassettes, compact discs, the bar code scanner, acrylic paint, permanent press fabric, soft contact lenses, Nutrasweet, the first handheld calculator, the mouse, the artificial heart, and the ATM to name just a few. And with all these lifestyle changes, the ‘60’s also gave us Valium.

          When Future Shock was published in 1970, we read Toffler’s prescient predictions without an inkling of what was to come. The floppy disc was invented, and then the cell phone, the microprocessor, gene splicing and the MRI. Technologically, the world was spinning faster and faster.

          In the 80’s, Microsoft gave us Windows, Apple gave us the Mac, pc’s began to populate homes, digital cell phones were invented, and Eli Lilly gave us Prozac. We ended the 20th century with Viagra and the worldwide web, not knowing that we were facing one hell of a ride in the next decade.

          Fast forward to 2011. We live in a brave new world, where the internet has become a seamless part of everyone’s lives - a world of e-mail, wireless internet, Facebook, Google, Skype, and texting. So when an earthquake happens in Haiti or Japan, we know about it within minutes. We push a few keys on a cell phone and send a donation to the crippled area. 

          Think about all the methods we can use to connect to the internet – desktop computer, iPod, laptop, cell phone, TV or fridge! You can find anything you want, anytime you want, or connect with anyone you want, either by e-mail, telephone or Skype. Using Facebook or any social network, you can connect with friends and strangers all over the world.

          The internet has changed the way businesses function, and how the consumer buys their goods and services. You can buy your movie tickets online and skip the long lines at the theatre; or make dinner reservations online, even when the restaurant is closed. Looking for a handyman? Try Craig’s List. Want to check out a contractor? Try Angie’s List or Kudzu. Pay bills online, download financial information, or transfer funds from one account to another. You can even order books, movies, and medicines. All will be delivered to your mailbox at your earliest convenience. There is no limit to the kind of business conducted on the internet, all from the comfort of a desk chair.

          We are watching the political state of the world changing before our eyes because of the new technologies that make it possible to get this information in real time. We can watch insurgencies and speak to our journalists as things are happening, because of several new technologies, the most popular being Skype. Because of Cisco’s videoconferencing programs, important people can be interviewed face to face on TV without the need for the interviewee to travel to the interviewer,

          The revolutions in the Middle East and N Africa would not have been possible without the Internet, Facebook and other social internet networks. Even the Japanese people are turning to the Internet to get the news from the U.S., because they feel they are not getting accurate information regarding the nuclear disaster from their own government. These recent political events have exposed us to a greater understanding of the power of the internet.

          The new technologies have given the phrase “information overload” greater meaning than any of us expected in 1970. Are people overwhelmed, disoriented, disconnected and stressed from the speed with which our social structures are changing because of technology? For many people, the answer would be a resounding, “yes”. Many other people would say that life has been made easier with the new technologies; and still others would say that it has been a combination of more stress, more convenience, more responsibility, and easier access to entertainment and knowledge. Whatever we feel about the changes, we all have to agree that these monumental leaps in technology have brought about major social changes which require ever increasing technological education in order to keep up. In this time of drastic change all over the world, it is the learners who will inherit the future.

          In the 80’s, the Tofflers went to China to promote two sequels to Future Shock, both of which became best-selling books. Since then, China has pursued policies reflecting the Tofflers' emphasis on the growing importance of digital technology and the knowledge-based economy of the future. These policies were built on a foundation of strong education and have brought China into the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century at lightning speed, making China a major force in the world economy. If the education system in the U.S. continues to sustain assaults on the availability and quality of education, while China and the other nations of the world maintain their policies that make certain their people can continue to innovate and produce, there is no saying how long we will continue to be an economic leader in the world. To put it another way, how quickly will our decline occur? 

         The Toffler’s most recent book, Revolutionary Wealth, was published worldwide earlier this year and quickly again became a bestseller in China and elsewhere. This book focuses on how wealth will be created and who will ultimately get it in the 21^st century. Perhaps it might be a good idea for all our leaders to read this book and use this sociological expertise in the design of future political policies ...before it’s too late.

It Might Be Worth Forwarding, If It Were True

12.20.2010 
 

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”  ~Winston Churchill

For many years, I’ve been on a mission to stop the forwarding of hoaxes. I used to just ignore them, until I learned that there’s no such thing as a harmless hoax.  Most of my friends know if they can’t verify, then just don’t forward it; but it is clear that some people forward e-mails just because they want them to be true. 

On one recent afternoon, I received no less than six e-mails from friends asking me to verify or debunk an e-mail they had received.  One was an email about Tommy Hilfiger making derogatory comments on the Oprah show; one was about unlocking cars by cell phone if locked by a keyless or remote control; and another was a slide show of “paintings” purportedly by an artist from the Ukraine. 

There were more; several of a political nature; an e-mail purporting to be from Adobe claiming that recipients can download an upgraded version of Adobe products by following links in the message; and the ever present message about a virus coming via e-mail.    

          Hoaxes are not just harmless pranks or errors in judgment. A hoax is a deliberately fabricated lie masquerading as truth.  A hoax can be spread for malicious purposes: to steal your personal information or spoil someone's reputation. A hoax may be absolutely innocent and created for God knows what reasons, but hoaxes all have consequences, some even have unintended consequences.

Let’s use the Tommy Hilfiger hoax as an example.  This story began in 1997.  It tells the tale of Tommy Hilfiger appearing on the Oprah show, making racist comments and stating that he wished African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and Asians wouldn’t buy his clothes.  The forwarded e-mail suggested that “we put him in a financial state where he himself would not be able to afford the ridiculous prices he puts on his clothes.”   

Oprah stated that she had never met Tommy Hilfiger, and the ADL investigated the accusations and found them to have no basis in fact.  Still the e-mail continues to circulate.  Can you imagine what impact this has had on the Tommy Hilfiger business?  Does it make you wonder if the e-mail was designed as a form of corporate sabotage for the benefit of Hilfiger competitors? How many minorities were pained by reading the racist comments?   And can you imagine how much time Tommy Hilfiger must spend defending his reputation? 

The artist who is credited with the slide show of paintings, which are obviously photographs, feels violated that someone unknown to her would spread this e-mail with her photo and biography, when the work was actually done by a photographer with the same name. She is pleading for someone to make some order of that mess in order to protect her reputation, and to give credit to the photographer who created the photos.

The Adobe e-mail referenced above is in fact a phishing scheme to collect credit card information from unknowing victims by using a widely respected corporate name.  Following the instructions of said e-mail would result in unauthorized use of your credit card, and would require a lot of time in order to resolve the ensuing mess, not to mention the stress.

Virus warnings may seem harmless, but be aware that they are almost always not real, and the people who create viruses can use known hoaxes to their advantage. A good example is the AOL4FREE hoax. This began as a hoax warning about a nonexistent virus. Once it was known that this was a hoax, somebody began to distribute a destructive Trojan horse in a file named AOL4FREE, attached to the original hoax virus warning. The results were anything but harmless.

The internet is used to spread all sorts of misinformation on every topic, but no topic has become as pervasive as the ever increasing political hoaxes, mostly motivated by the desire to ridicule or besmirch opposing politicians or political institutions. It doesn’t matter if the false rumors are about Sarah Palin, President Obama, John McCain, Al Gore or any other political figure.  These people are elected officials and deserve respect as well as truth.  E-mails that are misleading or unsubstantiated are an affront to everyone who receives them.  They are poisonous to the political process and present a danger to our democracy.  If our opinions are colored by lies, we cannot make properly informed choices in the voting booth.  

The Internet has made it so easy for this ugly game to endure. We now spread faulty information faster and more efficiently than in the pre-digital era.  The good news is that we now have fact checking sites.  The leaders in this field are Snopes.com, PolitiFact.com, or the granddaddy of them all, Factcheck.org, sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.  I urge you to make frequent use of these sites, whenever you are about to forward an e-mail. If you forward a hoax, you become an accessory.  

One would think we would have learned from the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast which created a panic when it aired in1938. Today the lessons endure: always remain vigilant.  Just because something has landed in your Inbox, don’t assume that it’s true.  We grew up in an era of journalistic scrutiny, where we could believe whatever we saw in print.  The Internet has changed all that.  Anybody can write whatever he wishes - lies, distortions, slander, hoaxes, scams, whatever; and each of us is free to scrutinize, ignore, or believe it.  A tiger can smile; and a snake can say I love you.  Be careful out there! 

Life Is Testing Our Moral Compass

“A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.” -  Winston Churchill

      

          Morality has become a complicated issue in the multi-cultural world we live in today.  It affects our behavior, our conscience, our society, and our ultimate destiny.   Turn on the news.  Moral issues and judgments are everywhere.  Oppression and revolutions in the Middle East, social and political battles in the mid-west, Wikileaks, financial crimes, abuse of children and women, corporate abuse, environmental issues and let’s not forget politics.

          Politics & morality are not words that are usually uttered in the same sentence, although we often pretend that our political values are based on moral principles.   I’m not just talking about the morality or ethics of our elected officials; or the crimes we hear about daily.  I’m also referring to the moral values upon which we, the people, base our own lives, and the politics within our social groups, organizations, corporations, and religious institutions.  Politics consists of relations involving power or authority and refers to the methods and tactics used to control the decisions and actions of the unit, whether political or social.

          In politics, many seem to consider that what the majority wants or likes is moral and immorality is what they dislike.  But that can’t be possible since our decisions change so frequently.  Can the majority be immoral?  Can the majority have wrong values?  These questions are as valid in our social situations as they are in government.  If ethics are just the will of the majority, they merely represent the whim of the moment, just another form of fashion.

          We are all faced with moral decisions every day, and everyone adheres to a moral doctrine of some kind.  Immanuel Kant said that moral judgments are binding on all human beings no matter what kind of society they live in.  Morality is the core of our personal philosophy, our attempts to define right and wrong, what we ought to do as distinct from what we may in fact do.  It begins with our personal behavior; how we conduct business, how we interact with our friends, how we treat strangers, how we care for the needy, how we vote, and how we live.  “Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness."

          We must decide for ourselves where the conscience originates and how we form our personal code of conduct,  Many people hold to the idea that the conscience is a matter of our hearts, that concepts of right, wrong, and fairness are "programmed" in each of us, hopefully based on sympathy, education and social ties.  In reality many base their moral decisions solely on their personal “needs”, the desire for wealth, health, pleasure and recognition. 

          Each one of us is the judge of our own daily behavior, whether we are conducting business, playing cards with friends, leading a group event, or any other personal interaction.  If we believe in an ethical code of conduct, and practice it in our personal lives, we will also judge the morality of our political positions and votes, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent.  Hopefully all these judgments will be based on ethics, not our finances or personal welfare. 

          The world we live in has become complicated.  It is full of conflicts and angst, often putting our moral compass to the test.  We should be as concerned about morality as we are about cholesterol.  Then perhaps moral courage would not be such a rarity.

Defragging the Brain

”The existence of forgetting has never been proved:  We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in?  That’s how it begins.  Then one morning, you open the refrigerator for some orange juice and find the sponge you were looking for last evening when you did the dinner dishes.  So far, it’s all a laughing matter, until one day, your husband tells you that in your hurry to keep an appointment that morning, you neglected to flush the toilet.  It never occured to me that the day would come when routine tasks once performed by rote, like locking the front door or sweetening the coffee, would require that I stay focused on the task.

My memory is sometimes so retentive, so obedient, so dependable; at other times, so bewildered, so tired, so not there.  Why is it that I can remember that Hattie McDaniel was the first black woman to win an Academy Award, but can’t tell you the name of any actor or actress who won an Oscar in the past few years?  And, how can it be that I remember my friend’s dress and her date for the senior prom fifty years ago, but can’t remember that I promised to bake a cake for her party next week. I can sing along to any Hit Parade song or Broadway Show from the 40’s through the ‘80’s.  I can even tell you the name of every song on every Neil Diamond album.  But when I read the headlines from the 2009 Grammys, my brain asks, “Who is Rihanna or Chris Brown?”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could buy more memory for our brains, like we do for our computers?  I figure that the human brain is like the hard drive on my computer.  We should be able to clean it up, reorganize it, and throw away the clutter.  Then we would have made room for the new information that comes at us daily.  At the very least, we need to defrag the files, so that we can find the information more quickly. 

It’s so embarrassing when someone mentions that cute blond from Laugh In and I say, “I know, the one from Cactus Flower, the one who’s had too many lip injections.”  Sometime between the posing of the question and 3:00 in the morning, I’ll remember the name Goldie Hawn and be embarrassed that it took so long to make its way from my brain to my mouth.  I figure a good defrag of my brain would speed up the process by at least a few hours.

          One thing I am sure of.   Once something happens, it can’t unhappen.  Our brains have a way of holding on to the good times, the funny times, the sad times, all the events that make us who we are.  It saves and organizes all the facts we have learned along the way, all the music we have heard, the sunsets and storms we’ve seen and the fragrant smells of flowers, bonfires and cinnamon toast. We call this memory.  Memory is the compartment of our brain that stores the past, all the things we never want to lose. Where I left my cell phone doesn’t seem to fall into that category.  

          Scientists tell us there is a physiological reason for failing memories past age 50.  Without getting too technical, short term memory is stored in a different part of the brain than long term memory; and the short term area is less stable, more likely to be affected by medications, distractions, and lack of concentration, even something as simple as a lack of Vitamin B-12.  There is limited space in the area where short term memory resides, so every time you add something to an already full short term memory space, an older fact is deleted

One report suggests that when you have something very important that you really need to remember, you should say it out load a couple of times.  I’ve tried it and it works.  But now people are staring at me and wondering why I’m talking to myself in Publix.  Not only talking ... I’m even repeating myself.  But I don’t care.  At least I’m not forgetting to pick up the oatmeal.

Diamonds Are Forever

Written in 2004 after a family trip to Leipzig Germany.  – published in several newspapers and magazines.

Diamonds Are Forever

A reflective essay about returning to Germany

by Renée Snyder

      

      “Achtung bitte”, a soft female voice announces over the speaker system in the Frankfurt airport.  These are the first German words I hear spoken on German soil and the utterance stings a bit, as though it has been spoken by an SS officer in a movie.  Can’t they find another word instead?  After an hour of several more announcements initiated the same way, the words no long bite, as I board the plane for Leipzig ready for my personal evolution of tolerance and acceptance.

      I had expected that I would never step foot on German soil again, but three years ago, something changed.  In my role as family chronicler, I recognized my special duty as the guardian of our family history.  Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to just preserve it in a book.  I needed to see it for myself.   I wanted to see the city my parents called the “diamond of Germany”, and I needed to be able to see it through the eyes of my sisters and brothers, since I was just a child when we left in 1939.   The city that once expelled us has now invited us back.

      Our plane approaches Leipzig/Halle airport, flooding me with a dichotomy of excitement and trepidation.  My mind wants to be open and receptive, but I fear my heart won’t follow and my animus towards Germans will interfere with my objectivity.

      The moment we arrive and are greeted at the airport with a long-stemmed rose, and a warm welcome from Thomas, the coordinator of the EinladungsProgram, my fears begin to fade.   Thomas explains that we are part of a group of forty-two Jewish people who left Leipzig because of fascism.  Nine members of the group are my family of five siblings, some spouses and a nephew.  The other thirty-three people came from all over the world, and like us, many of them are back on German soil for the first time in sixty-five years. 

      The airport is in a suburb, which gives us the opportunity for some sightseeing on the way to the hotel.  As we pass two automobile manufacturing sites, Thomas makes a reference to the GDR and points out that since reunification, Leipzig and its surroundings form one of the fastest-growing economic regions in Europe.  It is the first time I notice that East Germans count time from the reunification of Germany in 1990, much like survivors speak of “before the war” and “after the war”.

      The sight-seeing conversation is interspersed with some meaningful references to the program that is planned for us in the coming week.  "We want to show how Germany has changed.” Thomas tells us.  His contempt for the Fascism of the 30’s and 40’s seems equal to ours albeit for different reasons, and his love affair with Leipzig reminds me of my parents’ affection for their diamond city.  My feelings of apprehension are turning to raw anticipation.

      As we approach the Marriott Hotel we pass Leipzig's Train Station.   The Hauptbanhoff has long been famous for being the largest railway station in Europe and a major transfer point for trains to just about anywhere, even though the station is a dead end, meaning trains pull in and then must back out.  My mind flashes a picture of trains filled with people on their way to concentration camps, but I quickly return to the present as we are told that the station also features three floors of underground mall.  This combination of railway hub and crowded mall creates staggering foot traffic in front of the station.  

      I wonder, “Is there anyone in Leipzig who might remember a family named Katz that used to live here in the 1930’s?”   Probably not; but one of the advantages of returning with a group of former Leipzig residents is the opportunity to find these connections through them.    On our first day of touring, we stop at the memorial to the Napoleonic Battle of Leipzig, where the group exits the bus to view the superb panorama of Leipzig’s city center.  My sister starts a conversation with a nearby woman and asks her name.  When the woman answers, Mary's heart begins to race as she asks a few more questions, locates the woman’s husband and queries, “What is your name?”?”

      “Hans Last” he replies.

      “Ich bin Mary Katz” my sister divulges.

      “Marichen” he screams, with uncontrollable excitement.

Hans was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945, one of only two surviving members of the family that lived on the same floor, in the apartment next to ours at 41 Nordstrasse. 

      “Your cousin Wolkowitz? … Did he survive?” Hans enquires about his childhood best friend.

      “See the tall man over there”.  Mary points to David standing a short distance away.

      “And Wolf, where is he?”  Hans asks, referring to his other close friend.

      “Over there.” Mary responds, designating my brother Billy.

        “We’re all here, together”, spreading her arms to include my other sister and me who are standing alongside.

      “You must be HelaLili” he says to Helen, and then turning to me he puts his hands in front like a fisherman displaying the size of his catch,  and with unbridled nostalgia he indicates the size of an infant, and declares ” little Regina”. 

      Hans had come all the way from Australia, hoping to find someone from his past to connect him to his early life and the wonderful times he had before Hitler’s regime destroyed life for every Jew in Germany.  The excitement is indescribable.

     

      During the first tour of the city, I am surprised by Leipzig's beauty.  I had preconceptions of a shabby, socialist metropolis marred with scars of WWII and grayed by it’s domination by the Soviet Union, but the refurbished city center and its magnificent historical buildings have an aura of charm and splendor.  We drive past Augustusplatz, which is unrivaled by any other area in Leipzig and is a fairly complete lesson in the architectural history of Leipzig.  The neo-Baroque Mende Fountain is a place where my father used to take the children to feed the pigeons and take family photos.  The north side of Augustusplatz is taken up by the new Leipzig Opera House, which replaces the structure seen in the background of our old family photos.  The new Leipzig Gewandhaus, which forms the southern side of Augustusplatz, is closely associated with Leipzig’s international status as a city of music.

      The University of Leipzig also has its home in Augustusplatz.   Since its creation in 1409, it has been home to many important people, most notably Goethe and our Aunt Mary who graduated from the University of Leipzig in the early 1920’s, one of the few Jewish women in attendance here at that time.   The bus takes us past the Mendelssohn Conservatory of Music.   We inquire if this is the same building that was the conservatory in the 1920’s, and the affirmative response confirms that this place is where Tante Gina and Onkel Abraham studied piano and violin, before their lives were cut short at Auschwitz in 1942. 

      Near the site of Augustusplatz is the oldest and largest church of Leipzig, the St. Nikolai Church.  It was here that the peaceful revolution began which paved the way for the liquidation of the communist regime and finally to German unification in 1990;  and it is here that a church leader heads an organization that is involved in actively bringing Jews and Jewish life back to Leipzig - a notion that boggles my mind. 

      Old family photos taken in front of our house, with the St. Michael’s church in the background, give us a landmark to guide us to the proper location of the place where we used to live.  We walk the five long blocks in the direction of the church steeple, looking for something familiar, but the area preceding our block is completely new, an indication that this area had been badly bombed during the war.  When we arrive at the vicinity of our home, we see many buildings that look similar to the one we lived in, but our house on the corner has been destroyed by the WWII bombings.  In its place is a Nursery School, sheltered by a piece of wall, painted with beautiful graffiti, which remains standing from the original building.  We continue walking to the next block where David lived with his parents in the same building with our grandparents.  The building is being renovated and is covered with scaffolding, but nothing can keep us from approaching the entrance.

      As we stand at the front door of 49 Nordstrasse, peering into the window, to the carved banister of the staircase leading to the second floor apartment where my grandparents had lived, I think about how my parents hid under that staircase on the morning after Kristallnacht, when they ran the short block from our house to this house to get my grandparents to safety; only to find the SS men, with guns drawn, already pounding on my grandparents’ door, ready to ship them to Poland.   David steps back to indicate the room that was his bedroom and then points to the glassed-in atrium style room on the corner of the building.  He remarks that our grandfather had kept his sewing machine in that room, but Mary recalls that room as our grandparents’ bedroom.   None of us worry about the discrepancies in their recollections. 

      One evening, there is a concert given in our honor at the Alte Handelsbörse, (The Old Stock Exchange) a gilded baroque structure.   The orchestra conductor announces they will be playing the music that was being played in Leipzig during the 20’s and 30’s; the room swells with the universal language of music and we are all swept away to another time. Mary nods in agreement when I whisper, “Mother used to sing this song”, and Billy sways to the strains of The Blue Danube Waltz which never sounded so rich or more fitting.  I look over at David, whose father was the orchestra conductor at the Crystal Palace Hotel, and I realize that this is exactly the music that Uncle Abraham must have played for the dinner guests in the 1930’s.  

      One day we shop in the magnificent city arcade Madler Passage and have lunch at Auerbachs Keller, where Goethe used to dine. Another day we stop for lunch in a restaurant that was frequented by the composer Mendelssohn. We make a trip to the St. Thomas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach flourished as the organist and choirmaster.   At the site of the former Temple which my family attended, we visit the memorial to the 14000 Leipzig Jews who were killed during the holocaust.  We admire the original floors with their Mogen David pattern in the building which formerly housed the Carlebach School, the only school available for Jewish children during the Nazi regime.   We attend Shabbat services, banquets, meet with dignitaries, playfully kibitz with waiters and converse with shopkeepers.  We are enjoying the city, its history and its people without the intrusion of any more ghosts from the past.

      Towards the end of the week, we are invited for a group visit with the mayor.  After some poignant speeches, we are all asked to sign the city guest book, an honor that is extended only to visiting dignitaries.   I am deeply stirred by the Mayor’s comments, and moved to tears by the ceremony to sign the “Golden Book”.  The others in the group seem to be equally emotional and I realize how much healing and closure has occurred over the past week. 

      The Rotary Club arranged for us to be invited to the homes of some Leipziger citizens for dinner and friendly conversation.  Our hosts are a retired, world renowned orchestra conductor and a concert violinist, and the evening is filled with intoxicating conversation. Horst talks of how his travels allowed him to see that citizens in other countries had personal freedoms not granted to East Germans and tells of his involvement in the peaceful demonstrations of 1989.  His fascinating stories are filled with his profound love for music, liberty, and Leipzig.  By the end of the evening, we are making plans to get together again in Florida next December.  

      The last day of our trip, we are taken in groups of two to speak to school children about our holocaust experiences.   We take turns telling short anecdotes about our escape from Germany and what life was like for our families during that time.  Soon the teens begin to ask questions about how it feels to be a stranger in a new land and what it is like to be persecuted.   I ask if they have witnessed any sort of discrimination in their school.  They don’t even understand the word.  These children of parents who were educated by the Russians don’t understand segregation or social distinction, a characteristic of being East Germans.  Before we leave the school, one of the teachers takes us down the hallway to a display of a class trip to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.  Among the photos and descriptions, I find several original poems written by some of the students and I am moved by their sensitivity to the horrors of the holocaust.  Mostly I am touched by their strong desire to try to comprehend how such atrocities could have happened.

      I have no answers for the children, and no explanations for myself.  I can’t understand how the ideology of a madman was allowed to flourish, or how I could have returned to this country and made friends with its citizens.   Before this trip it would have seemed unimaginable to me that Jews are again settling in Germany and re-establishing Jewish communities here.   What seems unthinkable today is the often virulently negative comments from many Americans about Germany and my decision to visit there.  

      Leipzig is a city that invites one to take advantage of freedom and experience self-realization. They call this "Leipziger Freiheit".  Like my parents, who referred to pre-Nazi Leipzig as the “diamond of Germany”, Leipzigers still view their city in grand terms with perhaps a touch of arrogance.  Like a diamond found in the smoldering ashes of destruction, the city is being re-polished into a brilliant gem.   Refining and burnishing it to exceed its previous luster and elegance, the citizens are like jewelers who understand that diamonds are timeless treasures with history and urbanity; and Leipzig is just that.

Copyright 2004 © Renée Snyder

What This Country Needs Is A Good Five Cent Nickel

A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. - Senator Everett Dirksen

         

           It was little more than fifty years ago that the fictional John Beresford Tipton became famous for giving a million dollars, tax free, to a worthy individual, while the country watched the ensuing drama in the form of a weekly TV show.  It was hard then to put our arms around a million dollars, when salaries and expenses were so much smaller than the numbers we’ve become accustomed to in the 21st century.   To put things in perspective, in the early fifties, a college graduate, from a good university, could be offered $45 per week for his first job.  Minimum wage was 75 cents an hour and that was thought to be approximately one third of the average wage in the United States.   

          According to a survey from a well respected market research firm, the number of millionaires in the U.S. has grown to roughly 8 million, roughly 3% of the population.  Even more astounding, according to Forbes, there are presently more than 400 billionaires here, headed by Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates, and the majority of the ultra rich were born between 1952 and 1957. The word, “billion” is thrown around so much, we’ve become accustomed to hearing budgets and buyouts in the multiple billions, without really understanding the meaning of all those zeros.

          A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases. They asked us to think of a dollar in terms of time.  A billion seconds ago it was 1959.   A billion minutes ago it was the first century of our calendar. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age and a billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.   Now take a look at our national budget.  At the rate our government was spending money in 2008, a billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes! And that was before the current financial crises requiring even more government spending.

          So if John Beresford Tipton offered you a billion dollars, which you would only be able to spend after counting to a billion, consider this.  If it takes a second for each number (which is a little unrealistic), then it would take about 24 hours to count to 86,400. One can count to a million in less than half a month, but it will take more than 30 years to count to a billion.

          Now, consider this... In a blink of an eye, our understanding of the concept of a billion dollars has become almost irrelevant, because the word trillion has crept into every day language and budgets.  That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point.  It would take a military jet, flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills. 

          The National Debt continues to increase more than $4 billion per day!   It might not be very long when a child says good night to his mother stating “I love you a gazillion quadrillion” and the Mother will be able to comprehend the scope of the number.