Neighbors

[Jersey Girl]

I haven't abandoned the thread. I'm busy is all. I just wanted to get something up here quick for my own purpose. Someone here (and I ain't sayin' who) was watching a survival channel (I think) and the guy was showing a kind of off the grid kitchen wherein he passed by an old timey upright refrigerator/ice box.

When we moved into our beach house, it had a small ice box just like that and I want to say the brand was Coldspot and the name was written in script. I haven't researched the brand names yet. Anyway, I was thinking about how I grew up with ice picks, meat grinders, axes, knives, and fish scaling utensils. These were never kept away from me. I knew better than to touch them. I was allowed to have my own pocket knife and was allowed to use that and another collection of knives to throw at the trees. I was also allowed to use my own archery set in the back yard and all of this...without supervision.

The house also had an old timey ringer washing machine in the back yard, I don't recall being allowed to use it. We had a big pot belly type coal stove in the kitchen with a coal pile dumped in the back yard. Also had a big oil drum up on cinder blocks and that's where we burned trash.



I'm not going to say that the safeguards with which we raise children today aren't improvements but I think that children today are strangers to the kind of risk taking that builds confidence.

Anyway, no one need reply to this. I'm going to incorporate it into something else I'm putting together in real life. Then again, some of this has to do with mental health and current societal conditions...culture of fear so if anyone wants to make a similar reply that's fine.

[Jersey Girl]

MeDot you are in trouble! I just watched the trailer for the Avalon film. I'm having it delivered on Monday for a rather ugly price from Amazon. I think I'm going to love it and probably cry through it.

Thank you!!!

Hope you love it as much as I did. Interesting thing about the script: It poured out of Levinson in a matter of days. He didn't have to work or struggle with writer's block. The story just flowed out of him.

MeDot all I can say is that when we post on these board we're never sure that people get to know who we really are. You are one who has somehow managed to discern who I really am.

I finished watching the movie just a half hour ago. It is an absolute MASTERPIECE.

I don't know how to describe the impact. It is so intricately presented in overlapping and meshing detail after detail of the historical/cultural/sociological matter and of the relationships involved. The two brothers who went into modern business would likely have been my parents generation. I would have been Michael bearing witness to the family events and stories. Keeping them all his life and passing them on. I have heard it said that there is one in every family, the historian who knows the value of such things and the people who told the stories and keeps them alive. In my family, that is me and while I struggle to remember certain details that escape me, I have a long term memory for small details that the rest of my family does not.

The one main thought and feeling that kept washing over me is how I WISH I could go back and sit at the table and listen again to the old stories of my family beginnings, crossing over, and beginning again just to be enveloped by the generations of my relatives talking, laughing, crying, and make sure that I had the stories right because I know that I don't. If I think hard enough, I can hear their voices and their accents.

My husband hasn't seen it yet but he will appreciate it as well. He lived with and loved his grandfather like that. Thank you for recommending this film. It was outstanding and I'll watch it repeatedly! And cry that good kind of cry!

[MeDotOrg]

Hope you love it as much as I did. Interesting thing about the script: It poured out of Levinson in a matter of days. He didn't have to work or struggle with writer's block. The story just flowed out of him.

MeDot all I can say is that when we post on these board we're never sure that people get to know who we really are. You are one who has somehow managed to discern who I really am.

I finished watching the movie just a half hour ago. It is an absolute MASTERPIECE.

I don't know how to describe the impact. It is so intricately presented in overlapping and meshing detail after detail of the historical/cultural/sociological matter and of the relationships involved. The two brothers who went into modern business would likely have been my parents generation. I would have been Michael bearing witness to the family events and stories. Keeping them all his life and passing them on. I have heard it said that there is one in every family, the historian who knows the value of such things and the people who told the stories and keeps them alive. In my family, that is me and while I struggle to remember certain details that escape me, I have a long term memory for small details that the rest of my family does not.

The one main thought and feeling that kept washing over me is how I WISH I could go back and sit at the table and listen again to the old stories of my family beginnings, crossing over, and beginning again just to be enveloped by the generations of my relatives talking, laughing, crying, and make sure that I had the stories right because I know that I don't. If I think hard enough, I can hear their voices and their accents.

My husband hasn't seen it yet but he will appreciate it as well. He lived with and loved his grandfather like that. Thank you for recommending this film. It was outstanding and I'll watch it repeatedly! And cry that good kind of cry!

I am so happy you like it. It's one of my favorite movies. I grew up in LA's San Fernando Valley, which was in the process of converting from orchards to mile after mile of Ranch style tract homes. Pretty much the exact opposite of the Row house architecture.

But as you noted, the movie is about so much more. Much commentary about the movie has to do with the Jewish experience in America, but I think there is so much more to learn here that is relevant to the American experience.

He wrote the script in 3 weeks. He said it just poured out of him. I sometimes think that artists become the vessel for an idea that is bigger than themselves.

Anyway, you get it, and it warms my heart that you do.

[Jersey Girl]

I am so happy you like it. It's one of my favorite movies. I grew up in LA's San Fernando Valley, which was in the process of converting from orchards to mile after mile of Ranch style tract homes. Pretty much the exact opposite of the Row house architecture.

But as you noted, the movie is about so much more. Much commentary about the movie has to do with the Jewish experience in America, but I think there is so much more to learn here that is relevant to the American experience.

He wrote the script in 3 weeks. He said it just poured out of him. I sometimes think that artists become the vessel for an idea that is bigger than themselves.

Anyway, you get it, and it warms my heart that you do.

Oh I get it alright. The rich cultural context blew me away. I never knew things like the street markets (department stores were already a feature of my childhood) but I was very aware that some folks of certain nationalities brought relatives over bit by bit and how they gathered in their own neighborhoods, their ethnic ghettos. My relatives lived in row houses in Newark. The old folks stayed and the younger folks headed to the suburbs. Just like in the movie.

As I think back to my relatives telling their stories, they never edited their language or the details for us kids. We heard it all! There may or may not have been glasses of whiskey on the table for some. We heard their love for each other and how some of them (always the women, I'm not joking) fought (literally fought) for their loved ones. I never got knocked into the middle of next week, but I heard stories about people who did! So I kept with the children were seen and not heard philosophy and dared not chance it! They impressed me that my great grandmother was the center of their universe, the matriarch, and how much they respected and loved her. They were very tough people with hearts of solid gold. I have just so many good memories like that but mostly I felt that I was connected to something bigger than myself...the very same connections I think are lacking in today's world and how we've become so isolated and intolerant of each other which was the spark for this thread idea. When you live in a multigenerational household like I did for half my childhood, you learn how to get along with people. If you are fortunate enough to have contact with generations all your life, you become more understanding, I think, of people and their flaws.

I was thinking about the bloody assault scene witnessed by Michael. The closest I ever came to seeing something like that was when my grandfather came home from the bar after work (he lived with us) having gotten the crap beaten out of him, bleeding profusely from his nose and then getting a steak (we could afford steak?!?!) on his black eye. I remember the blood most of all. I think that particular bar itself is still there. There were 2 bars in my town. (My gosh, I do think I have a book inside of me to write for my children.)

But do you know what? I think of all the relatives, people, and situations I was exposed to in early childhood and I think it made me more tolerant of people and their weaknesses (what we call "issues" today), and I loved them all (even the ones that scared me a little) because they all belonged to me.

The separation of the family as they pursued the American Dream. That really just cut me. The whole movie just kind of made my heart go quiet and drew me into it, and took me back in time. But I left the film with a sense of deep appreciation and love for my own relatives, so I think that's what I'll keep with me.