Party - Movies - Crepe Myrtle - Wasps

Scott and I drove downtown to a party given by Ron Abrams. Here's the view from the balcony overlooking the lobby at Castings Condo.

We parked in a lot right across the street, then walked for 15 minutes trying to find the place, and met up with John, Ron's Korean interpreter for his Korean clients, and his wife Sun, who, like us, were also trying to find THE ENTRANCE.

It's on a cobblestone street.

His apartment is tiny and the place was mobbed! I met his daughter Zoe who was there to introduce her 3-month-old son Aaron to the Philadelphia mishpucha. Her lovely blond-haired daughter Miryam was there playing with toys on the floor.

Miryam calls Ron "Zayde Ron."

Zoe, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, formerly worked at Google. Now she's at Facebook. Loves her job, ten times more than Google. But didn't you love the Olympic torch that ran for the 16 days of the Olympics?

Boy, do the Jews know how to eat!

Scott and I scarfed down lox and bagels. We had the Nova lox which is less salty, tho all lox is cured salmon, which uses salt as a preservative. Luckily he had bottles of Perregrino Sparkling Water for the thirsty among us.

Best of all were a diabetic's dream:

Ron got these around the corner at a hole in the wall - a tart shope.

My gift to the little boy is a donation in his name to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. This same center kept tabs on the Wisconsin shooter of the Sikhs. In a funny email I got, former idiotic racist presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was quoted as saying, "Well, at least they're not Americans."

How can this melting pot we call America contain so much misunderstanding?

My son Dan, a history buff, suggested I watch the 2004 movie "Downfall," about the last days of Hitler. The Fuhrer and his cronies were holed up in a bunker underneath the Reichstag in Berlin. The film is an amazing character study of Hitler and his colleagues.

The director did massive research to make this an accurate film. Since some of the Nazis were still alive - after serving prison terms - he talked to them about conditions at the bunker. 

None of them could think for themselves, they were so under the sway of this mesmerizing madman. They allowed themselves to be mesmerized. They liked not having to think! But make no mistake. Hitler was not insane. He knew exactly what he was doing and learned, by doing, how he could manipulate people.

The acting was brilliant! Here's Hitler with Frau Hitler. They were married right before he killed both of them. Known for throwing temper tantrums, his aides would tremble with fear when he got angry. Scott read in "The Third Reich" by Wm H Shirer that he would throw himself on the floor and writhe, and gnaw on the legs of furniture.

A man with the emotional development of a two-year-old leading Germany.

My son Dan learned of the movie thru YouTube parodies of Hitler. The director of Downfall demands their removal, but so far there appears to be no copyright infringement. YouTube is quite strict about that.

Last year I bought a 'crepe myrtle' for my front yard. August is bloomin' time. So far, I've got succulent-looking purple berries on the slender, four-foot tall myrtle.

Scott and I have a compost heap in his backyard. He was carrying out his scraps when he was stung by a wasp. Apply ice immediately, I told him.

We discovered the nest is deep underground. He flooded it with ammonia but the wasps didn't leave. I called my friend Beatriz, a biologist, who suggested hot water after they've all come home for the night.

This sounds terribly cruel, I know, but the bites really sting. There are hundreds of them flying in and out. I can see them everytime I walk over.

Wasps, said Beatriz, help the environment by eating bugs. They feed it to the waspettes. I didn't wanna write children cuz it's too sad.

In the Hitler movie, Mrs. Goebbels, wife of the propaganda minister, had five or six beautiful children. When she learned that Hitler was gonna kill himself, she got down on her hands and knees and begged him not to die.

What shall we do without you? she wept. You are our future? Life means nothing without your National Socialist point of view. Life would be utterly meaningless.

Corinna Harfouch plays Magda Goebbels, a loving mother but a cold woman. She wanted to marry Hitler but chose Joseph Goebbels instead so she could be close to Hitler.
She poisoned her children, who called out Papa! He turned a deaf ear. Another Hitlerite who could not think for himself. After she poisoned her children, she took out a deck of cards and began to play solitaire.

These are really bizarre people who behaved in inexplicable ways knowing they were about to exterminate themselves.

I urged Judy Diaz to see the movie when I wrote her my first postcard since she moved to Niwot, Colorado.

The postcard I used was a photo of Grace Catherine which served as an invitation to her birthday on Sunday. Two years old. She takes swimming lessons at the Y.

I took them 60 years ago at the pool at Cleveland Heights High School.

When I was a kid growing up on Marlindale Road, I would look out the window to tell the time.