Teacup Cafe XXIII

[The Sasquatch of Fangorn]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

I said we have the book, not that I'd read it...yet.

It is about what it says it's about though. I've read the blurb on the back many times.

Huh... never even seen it here!

[katya]

I think we have the book too. Never thought to read it though.

[hectorberlioz]

So is this the book everyone bought for the title, but never bothered to read? Sounds like what people did for Doctor Zhivago, and The Gulag Archipelago.

[Grey_Wolf]

"Aye luv the Aireesh and Aierland". The Green Isle sure is beautiful place - even tho Ive never been there.

[Mari]

Good morning! Well, my parents are off to Germany for a week of vacation. I shouldn't forget to buy presents... the next two weeks I have a birthday almost every day ~_~

But that aside; green tea with orange anyone? Very healthy AND tasty! Have a fresh clover-shaped cookie!

[Grey_Wolf]

Aye, my deir! that would luvely. And aye see ye will be home alone!

[Mari]

I'm always home alone during the week, seeing as that I live on my own and only go home for the weekends
But you are welcome to come over to my place though

*hands GW a cup of tea with a cookie* Here you go dear.

[Grey_Wolf]

Thanks, me deir! Aye meight jus' take ye up oint

[Nautipus]

Hey, guys. Here's a touching e-mail my dad sent me:



August 1942, Piotrkowâs, Poland. The sky was
> >gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All
> >the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish
> >ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had
> >gotten around that we were being moved. My
> >father had only recently died from typhus, which
> >had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My
> >greatest fear was that our family would be separated.
> >
> >'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother,
> >whispered to me, 'don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen'.
> >
> >I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it
> >off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a
> >worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking
> >against the cobblestones. He looked me up and
> >down, then asked my age. 'Sixteen,' I said. He
> >directed me to the left, where my three brothers
> >and other healthy young men already stood.
> >
> >My mother was motioned to the right with the
> >other women, children, sick and elderly
> >people. I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?'
> >
> >He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.
> >
> >'No,' she said sternly. 'Get away. Don't be a
> >nuisance. Go with your brothers.' She had never
> >spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She
> >was protecting me. She loved me so much that,
> >just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
> >
> >My brothers and I were transported in a cattle
> >car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald
> >concentration camp one night weeks later and
> >were led into a crowded barrack. The next day,
> >we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.
> >
> >'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers. 'Call me 94983.'
> >
> >I was put to work in the camp's crematorium,
> >loading the dead into a hand-cranked
> >elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had
> >become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were
> >sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps
> >near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my
> >mother's voice. Son, she said softly but
> >clearly, I am sending you an angel. Then I woke
> >up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in
> >this place there could be no angels. There was
> >only work. And hunger. And fear.
> >
> >A couple of days later, I was walking around the
> >camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire
> >fence where the guards could not easily see. I
> >was alone. On the other side of the fence, I
> >spotted someone a young girl with light, almost
> >luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a
> >birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no
> >one saw me. I called to her softly in German.
> >
> >'Do you have something eat?' She didn't
> >understand. I inched closer to the fence and
> >repeated the question in Polish. She stepped
> >forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags
> >wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked
> >unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled
> >an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it
> >over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I
> >started to run away, I heard her say faintly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.'
> >
> >I returned to the same spot by the fence at the
> >same time every day. She was always there with
> >something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or,
> >better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or
> >linger. To be caught would mean death for us
> >both. I didn't know anything about her just a
> >kind farm girl except that she understood
> >Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking
> >her life for me? Hope was in such short supply
> >and this girl on the other side of the fence
> >gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.
> >
> >Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I
> >were crammed into a coal car and shipped to
> >Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.
> >
> >'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.'
> >
> >I turned toward the barracks and didn't look
> >back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose
> >name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
> >
> >We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The
> >war was winding down and Allied forces were
> >closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May
> >10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at10:00 a.m.
> >
> >In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare
> >myself. So many times death seemed ready to
> >claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was
> >over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
> >
> >At 8 a.m. there was a commotion. I heard
> >shouts, and saw people running every which way
> >through camp. I caught up with my
> >brothers. Russian troops had liberated the
> >camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too.
> >
> >Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm
> >not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the
> >apples had been the key to my survival. In a
> >place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's
> >goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in
> >a place where there was none. My mother had
> >promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
> >
> >Eventually I made my way to England where I was
> >sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a
> >hostel with other boys who had survived the
> >Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I
> >came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved.
> >
> >I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean
> >War, and returned to New York City after two
> >years. By August 1957, I'd opened my own
> >electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
> >
> >One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England
> >called me. 'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.'
> >
> >A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid
> >kept pestering me, and a few days later we
> >headed up to the Bronx to pick up h is date and
> >her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind
> >date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a
> >Bronx hospital. She was kind and
> >smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown
> >curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
> >
> >The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma
> >was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned
> >out she was wary of blind dates too! We were
> >both just doing our friends a favor. We took a
> >stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty
> >Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the
> >shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
> >
> >We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing
> >the backseat. As European Jews who had survived
> >the war, we were aware that much had been left
> >unsaid between us. She broached the subject,
> >'Where were you,' she asked softly, 'during the war?'
> >
> >'The camps,' I said, the terrible memories still
> >vivid, the irreparable loss, I had tried to
> >forget. But you can never forget. She
> >nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in
> >Germany, not far from Berlin,' she told me. 'My
> >father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan
> >papers.' I imagined how she must have suffered
> >too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here
> >we were both survivors, in a new world.
> >
> >'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma
> >continued. 'I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.'
> >
> >What an amazing coincidence that she had helped
> >some other boy. 'What did he look like? I asked.
> >
> >He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six
months.'
> >
> >My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be.
> >
> >'Did he tell you one day not to come back
> >because he was leaving Schlieben?' Roma looked at me in amazement.
> >
> >'Yes,' That was me!'
> >
> >I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded
> >with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel.
> >
> >'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And
> >in the back of the car on that blind date, I
> >proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.
> >
> >You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to
> >meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the
> >following week. There was so much I looked
> >forward to learning about Roma, but the most
> >important things I always knew: her
> >steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in
> >the worst of circumstances; she had come to the
> >fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her
> >again, I could never let her go. That day, she
> >said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50
> >years of marriage, two children and three
> >grandchildren I have never let her go.
> >Herman Rosenblat and his wife live in Miami Beach, Florida.
> >
> >
> >This is a true story and you can find out more
> >by Googling Herman Rosenblat as he was bar
> >mitzvahed at age 75. This story is being made into a movie called Te Fence.

[Grey_Wolf]

Very good story - thanks for sharing, my friend.

One could always had hoped that the Gulag prisoners would have had British or American soldiers come to their aid. But the russians were allowed to continue their butchery.

[katya]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

So is this the book everyone bought for the title, but never bothered to read? Sounds like what people did for Doctor Zhivago, and The Gulag Archipelago.

I read Dr. Zhivago! And I read A Brief History of Time too so ha!

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by katya

I read Dr. Zhivago! And I read A Brief History of Time too so ha!

Well you've also read Dostoyevsky, so I'm impressed with that too.

[hectorberlioz]

We all love St Patrick, but what about St. Brendan?
http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006405

[The Sasquatch of Fangorn]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

We all love St Patrick, but what about St. Brendan?
http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006405

Aye, a good man to drink to on this most glorius of St. Paddy's days!

[hectorberlioz]

Incidentally, his feast day is on my B-Day

[Mari]

Nautipus, that email off yours made me cry... on the one day I am actually wearing make up since I have something to do later...
Thank you very much for sharing this!

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by katya

It usually is, true, but since it would fall on Holy Monday this year, which for whatever reason is not allowed by the Catholic church, it got moved back to the 15th. It's something that happens only every once in a great while, not sure exactly how long. But anyway, St. Patrick's Day was the 15th this year, and yes it was the same day as the Ides, which left me wondering how I was going to fit two holidays in one day!

Neither the Catholic church, nor anyone else can move Saint Patrick's Day. It is, when it is.

[hectorberlioz]

And yet they did

[Nautipus]

Originally Posted by Mari

Nautipus, that email off yours made me cry... on the one day I am actually wearing make up since I have something to do later...
Thank you very much for sharing this!

No prob, It made me kida happy though. For that guy, that is. I dont garner joy from stories about death-camps.

Something to do, huh? Have fun, yeah.

[Mari]

Nope, no fun on this one I'm afraid. The make up was meant as a confidence booster

EDIT: I was crying with happiness with the later part, not for his situation in the camps. Though that was worthy of crying over too.