Category Archives: Culture

“A little something in other people’s minds”

SIMONE KLUGMAN

January 14, 1922 – April 29, 2021

From the editor: Shortly after Simone turned 91, she accepted my invitation to create this blog. Here’s the reason she gave when, to my delight, she said yes.

“Not everyone can be Mozart or Darwin and live on and on, but we all like to leave a little something in other people’s minds…so I am giving a green light to making a blog.”

That bright light has guided us through over 200 posts during the last 7-1/2 years. Simone’s thinking and writing have given us all so much pleasure and insight….

In this edition of Simone Says, we begin the celebration of her life. In weeks ahead, we will republish some of her previous posts that still have a grip on us today.

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Simone on her 91st birthday

A century ended today. My mother, who was a pillar of our family, died of a sudden heart attack this morning. She was an extraordinary person who had led an extraordinary life. She lived on three continents and spoke five languages fluently as well as bits of a few others. She had several careers, most notably her many years at the UC Berkeley Library, where she was a Reference Librarian and their first online searcher, back when no one knew what that meant. She survived her husband of 54 years, my father, by 23 years. She lived life on her own terms and knew exactly what she wanted. Of critical importance to her was that she not leave her home of 63 years in Oakland with her expansive Bay view. She got her wish.

She was a world citizen who influenced all her family, and she lives on in all of us. We all share a love of travel, reading, politics, writing, cooking, and critical thinking that we get from her. She would have wished to meet her great-grandchild, whom she loved dearly, but she at least got to meet him on FaceTime and in videos. He brought her much joy in her last year through his pictures, which she viewed on her computer. In her last years, she was known for her blog “Simone Says,” where she shared her views on many subjects. Glancing at it gives you an idea of the breadth of her interests. When I FaceTimed with her last Sunday she looked very much herself – cheery, pink-cheeked and interested in life.

Dina Cramer Manhattan Beach, California

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My grandmother, Simone “Measle” Klugman died a good death this morning.

She wouldn’t have wanted any fuss made about her, so I’m not going to tell you about how she lived, what she did, etc.

I would like to share with you what I learned from her, and how she shaped me.

She showed me that it’s okay to live how you want to live. She just did what she wanted with her time and never fretted about if it was the “right” way to spend time. If she wanted to read, she read. If she wanted to go to the store, she went to the store. If she wanted to cook, she cooked. I never saw her worry about if she was doing the “right” thing or the “best” thing or the most productive thing…she was usually just content to do whatever thing she wanted to do.

I can hear her voice clearly saying, “what would I want with all that stuff?” whenever someone might suggest something to add to her home, or a device she might enjoy. Until the end of her life, she regularly went to the library to get books and return books, seeing no reason to buy them and clutter up her house. She was thin her entire life, never seeing a reason to eat a piece of food she didn’t need. Always content to stop the moment she was full. It wasn’t that she made a point of being frugal, she didn’t re-use plastic bags or wash tinfoil and hang it out to dry. Rather, she knew what was enough for her, and only wanted that much, and only had that much of anything. About 20 years ago, she did splurge. Her last car was a Mercedes, but it was the smallest, cheapest Mercedes they made at the time

She enjoyed whatever she could do when she could do it. When she could no longer drive, she gave up her car. When she could no longer handle an airport, she stopped traveling. When she could not walk so well, she had the rugs taken up from the house so she wouldn’t trip on them. And never once did I hear her complain, or lament what she had lost. She never seemed bothered by the changing levels of her function. She just enjoyed this moment, and her ability still to get to her backyard bird feeder and watch the birds.

I could go on for a while, and I’ll stop with this observation for today…through 99 years of life, she kept enjoying all the little things. A great olive. Pictures of my kitten Mittens. A bird playing in her yard. She never grew tired or weary of enjoying her everyday life.

The last time I spoke to her was about 7 weeks ago, she couldn’t hear very well, so what we ended out doing was mostly this – I put the iPad on the ground, and we followed Mittens around. He came up and sniffed the camera, wanted away to play, and we just watched him together, and she laughed and talked to him and enjoyed 15 minutes of cat time through the screen.

She lived a good, long, happy life in the way she wanted, and went out of it in the best way possible, staying in her quiet home at the top of 52 steps for over 60 years until her very last day on earth.

It’s exactly what she wanted, and she got it, and for that, I am very grateful.

Zachary Cramer, Portland, Oregon

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The Editor again: We ask you, our appreciative readers, to submit your thoughts and memories of Simone directly to us. We will share them. We’ll also accept original writing that is in the spirit of Simone’s work or on topics she discussed.

Please send submissions to: icramer@gmail.com

Ladies Killed (part 2 of Lady Killers)

As women continue to take their equal role in the world, some who have made the most dramatic strides have been cut down by assassins. These woman have had the audacity to aspire to bigger roles, to step onto the world stage, to lead political parties, to govern countries. Their reward for this effort, in several important cases, was assassination.

Indira Gandhi with the Mahatma. (not her father)

Indira Gandhi was born in India in 1917, the daughter of Prime Minister Jawaahaaral Nehru. She was active in the National Congress Party and served as Prime Minister of India twice, from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984.

Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards in retaliation for a military operation meant to remove armed Sikh separatists from the Golden Temple in India.

Benazir Bhuto with Family.

Benazir Bhutto was from an aristocratic Pakistani family. She served as Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, she studied at Harvard and Oxford.

She was killed when leaving a rally on December 27, 2007. The killer was a 16 year old suicide bomber who was acting on the orders of the Pakistan Taliban.

Anna Politovskaya

Anna Politovskaya was a Russian-American journalist who reported on violence in Chechnya . She was also a political activist and a critic of Vladimir Putin. She wrote a book titled “Putin’s Russia, Life in a Failing Democracy.”

She was killed in the elevator of her Moscow Apartment, it is thought on orders from Putin.

Ironically her murder drew attention to her activities and put them in a spotlight.

So, yes women are now important enough to be assassinated. They have achieved this dubious status of equality with men.

Editor’s Note: Friends, readers, family….send us your comments!

The Lady Killers

We tend to think of assassins as being men. That’s not surprising as men seem to be more interested in that sort of thing. Women are seen as the givers of life, so it seems out of character.

And yet, throughout history, women have been driven to commit murder based on strong motives usually having to do with politics and power.

Charlotte Corday

Charlotte Corday, born in 1768, was from a noble French family. She was associated with the more moderate Girondin Movement during the French Revolution. She believed the famous French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat was turning the revolution on a dangerous path. Using her credentials as a journalist, she obtained entrance to his home and, famously, murdered him while he was in his medicinal bath. Four days later, she was guillotined. She said she had “killed one man to save thousands,” but this turned out not to be the case.

Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia Borgia was born in Italy during the Renaissance into the notorious Borgia family which was known as evil, violent and politically corrupt. Anxious to meet the family’s standards, she earned her reputation as a poisoner and disposed of several husbands in this fashion.

Shi Jinqiao avenged her father’s beheading in 1925 after tracking his killer for ten years. Her father had killed a Chinese warlord.

Idola Lopez Riano, nicknamed The Tigress, is said to have killed more than 20 people whom she first seduced during the Basque war of independence from Spain.

Violet Gibson arrest record.

Violet Gibson , an Anglo-Irish aristocrat tried to kill Benito Mussolini twice but failed both times. She spent the rest of her life in a mental asylum.

Squeaky Fromme

More recently and closer to home U.S. President Gerald Ford was targeted by two different female assassins in 1975. The attempts occurred within three weeks of each other. The first was Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme who pointed a semi-automatic pistol at the President in San Francisco and was immediately arrested. Seventeen days later Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at him in Sacramento. She missed.

So much for the “weaker sex” misnomer.

Next time: Women who were assassinated.

EDITORS NOTE: We hope you are enjoying these posts and we ask you most humbly to let Simone know that you are reading them. Your comments go a long way.

The Triumph of Idleness

In “The Art of Stillness” the author Pico Iyer says:
“In an age of constant movement nothing is more urgent than sitting still”.

Pico Iyer at a Ted Talk

My parents didn’t see it that way. They indoctrinated me with the idea that idleness was to be avoided at all costs, even feared.

To my parents, even reading was a kind of idleness. There was nothing tangible to show for it. So when, as a child, I was alone in my room and became absorbed in a book, my mother would erupt into the room saying, “How can you read in all this mess?”

In those days, there was no talking back. I cleaned up the room and went back to the book. And as I read Pico Iyer’s words I reflected back on the past and found that it still affects me.

To this day I have this feeling that if I am not doing something useful like cleaning or dusting or cooking, I have failed somehow. My upbringing tells me appearances have the upper hand and rambling thoughts should somehow be tamed. Absorbing your surroundings with all your senses is not a valued endeavor.

However, I have learned to overcome these ancient attitudes, and have finally achieved the triumph of idleness

When I go outside and sit in a sunny spot in my very quiet totally private backyard I just look around and admire the colorful flowers, enjoy the sun warming my back, and observe a black and white cat vigorously washing his face. I do usually have a book, but it often sits in my lap and whatever I’m doing, I no longer hear “get to work” in the back of my mind.

I hear the birds and enjoy the peace.

Editor’s note: Simone turns 99 on January 14th….for a lasting gift, comment on this post (or any other one…there are hundreds)

Smart, Funny, Honorable…Our guy Alex

Answer: He redefined what it was to be a game-show host.

Question: Who is Alex Trebek!

A few words about Alex Trebek whose passing is a loss to tens of millions of his fans, of which I am one. For 37 years as the host of Jeopardy, he did a remarkably hard job and somehow always made it look easy.

He lowered the temperature of the program by eliminating all the hoopla, the jumping up and down and fake enthusiasm of other game shows. There was nothing superficial or artificial in the show’s choice of topics. They were picked for substance rather than popularity. Trebek and his questions emphasized knowledge and critical thinking. Alex often added his own intelligent comments.

The Canadian-born Trebek elicited interesting facts from the contestants during his interviews between the two parts of the game. The questions also grew in complexity as the show progressed. I was always learning something new. I think he spent time shaping the questions to ensure their quality.

I always felt both entertained and enlightened. I hope that there is a rich quantity of shows in reserve for future programs. I don’t know who will ensure the continuation of Jeopardy but I hope it will maintain its integrity and scholarship.

How were Jeopardy and Alex Trebek special for you? Please use the comments section.
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Editor’s note: Jeopardy not-so-trivial trivia…When the inventor of the show, Merv Griffin, sold his company to Coca-Cola in 1986, he collected $250 million.

But Griffin kept the rights to one thing, a little tune we all know too well which is played during Final Jeopardy. It is estimated that the Griffin estate’s earnings from that song are approaching $100 million.

Griffin said he wrote it very quickly as a lullaby for his five-year old son Tony and it was originally titled “A Time for Tony.”

It was retitled “Think” and has been used since 1984, when the Alex Trebek era began.

How Do You Justify Your Existence?

Let’s say you are here in the world for a purpose. You can’t “just be.”

But whose purpose? Some would say “there is a creator who had a reason for creating me.” But what if you don’t believe in a creator? Then what makes you what you are?

If you answer: I am here to procreate, that just postpones the question. Why procreate? So that your descendants can also ask the question “Why am I here?” We are back full circle.

Does everything have to have a purpose? What is the purpose of music, dance or art?

We are all members of a society. Each one of us participates in some function of that society. Often the society works to improve the welfare of its members by helping with jobs, family life or personal development.

We have skills we can use on behalf of this community. Here is a purpose we can reflect on. Is this society better off than when you entered it? If you can say “I leave this world in a little better shape than when I arrived,” perhaps that is justification enough for your existence.

How To Blog

Editors note: Today, we are republishing a previous blog post, but Simone has also provided us with some new remarks on the subject so we’ll lead with those….

The actual process of writing is interesting because you don’t know exactly where you will end up.

The simple act of writing by hand stimulates the brain and thoughts start spilling out. All you need to do is to arrange them in a coherent manner so that others can make sense of them.

And writing a blog is not like writing a story. In fact it is much easier since you don’t have to respond to an interior voice which keeps saying “and then what happened?”

Since you are not restricted by events, your mind can ramble like a wanderer in an attic with a collection of strange objects. You need to arrange them in some pattern, and suddenly you have a new reality.

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The original blog post (with new pictures):

It used to be that you could only write an “opinion piece” if you were a regular contributor to a newspaper and had your own column. Social media now allows anyone to write what they want anywhere, anytime. Short thoughts can be tweeted: (“You know who’s” favorite medium). Daily events and pictures can be shared on Facebook. and more ambitious writers can start a blog.

Not Simone

Why would anybody want to write a blog? The comparison I can think of is not a very elegant one, but here it is: You have something sticking in your mind that wants out.
So you end up writing something like a school essay on a topic of your own choosing.

In the act of putting down your thoughts, something of your personality will inevitably emerge and you have to be scrupulously honest because readers will detect any insincerity or posturing. For instance, if you really hate “The Nutcracker” or “Swan Lake” just say so! But at the same time, you are not in the business of writing about yourself and you need to safeguard your privacy, so no nakedness! There are good reasons why clothes were invented. Keep “confessions” for your diary.

You also have to remember that you are not writing a novel, so advice like “Show, don’t tell” does not apply to a blog. You do have to tell a story to keep your readers wanting to know more. There are no restrictions on what you can write about. I was asked once: Why don’t you write about advice? So I wrote a blog about why I don’t give advice.

When writing or editing yourself, simple, concrete everyday words are more potent than abstract ones or circumlocutions. But if only an esoteric word can adequately describe your thought, then use it. Some readers will know it too; others will guess or look it up. Avoid empty calorie words like awesome or terrific. Their meaning has evaporated from overuse. Uncouple often paired words. Shun all cliches. They add nothing to your work.

And finally, you need to enjoy writing your blog. Otherwise, what’s the point?

The Aristrocrat and the Bad Little Girl

When I was a little girl, I loved reading a series of books written by a woman who was born in 1799 to a noble Russian family and was said to be descended from Genghis Khan. Her name is Rostopchine Comtesse de Segur.

She received an aristocratic education and spoke five languages including French. (Russian nobles found it fashionable to have French governesses for their children.) Exiled from Russia during the Napoleonic Wars, she married into the French family of the Count Eugene de Segur.

The Count

The Countess had eight children and many grandchildren to whom she frequently told morality-based stories that she made up on the spot. At age 58, encouraged by her family, the Countess began to put her beloved storytelling into storybooks for the wider world.

From an early book cover

She started by writing about simplistic characters representing good and evil. (“prince disguised as pauper” type of tales.) But her characters escaped from those restrictions and acquired a life of their own. I loved her stories about a donkey named Cadichon who was ill- treated by his family, rebelled and grew wise in the process. Other stories were about General Dourakine (Dourak means “imbecile” in Russian).

The Model Girls

Then her fans requested stories about “model little girls” to serve as role models for aristocratic girls. So she created “Les petites filles modeles,” Camille and Madeleine. She also invented their foil in what became her most famous work, “Les Malheurs de Sophie.” Sophie was to be the negative role model who fell into one scrape after another.

But the readers had little interest in Camille and Madeleine, and perversely the misbehaving Sophie became a great literary favorite.

Didn’t the Countess know that misadventures are always more fun than exemplary lives? I doubt that any of the children who read her became little “Goody Two Shoes.”

Oh boy, how I loved that rebellious little girl.

Powers of the Book

TV News is different these days. It looks like we are watching a team in a single studio but in most cases, the anchors and reporters have separated themselves and are speaking to us from their own homes.

Books confer authority

It’s interesting to get a glimpse of the rooms they are in, the art on their walls, or even of a cat or dog on the sofa. On the PBS Newshour as Judy Woodruff, Mark Shields and David Brooks discuss the events of the day, I see a curious thing: they have all chosen to populate their rooms with books in order to add credibility to their comments and legitimacy to their prognostications.

This visual element of books is often used as a ploy by those who want to persuade us. In advertisements, there, in the background, is the shelf with the books. Sometimes the room is full of books, sometimes it is only two or three sickly worn paperbacks sharing shelf space with other bric-a-brac. The important thing is that books are present.

Why do we accord such respect to books?

I think it is because they allow us to look at the world from a different window from the one we habitually use. This different widow reveals insights and feelings which we often share but also shows us different landscapes which we had never seen before.

Mario Vargas Llosa wrote: “We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist; reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life,
a way of traveling without leaving home”.

Another way to measure the importance and power of books is through the people who would destroy them.

In 213 BC, Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the burning of books of poetry and history because he felt threatened by the ideas they represented. The library in ancient Alexandria was burned many times. After the invention of printing, it became more difficult to eradicate books when they were present in many copies.

John Milton said in 1644: “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature but who destroys a good book kills reason itself”. And Heine wrote, “Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.”

In 1933 university students across Germany burned 25,ooo books including authors such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Ernest Hemingway.

As long as there have been books, there have been men who burned them. As recently as 2012, in Timbuktu priceless manuscripts were being burned. People risked their lives to protect them and smuggled out 350,ooo of them. In China Mao Zedong ordered books burned if they did not conform to party propaganda.

Books pose a threat to some but procure delight and happiness to others. In addition to their contents they are a great artifact in and of themselves. The book is one of the most capable, easy, accessible, never-breaks- down technologies ever invented. You can read it anywhere, indoors or out. It does not need to be plugged into anything and so is always available. You can pick it up anytime or put it away. You can sit in the sun with it. You can go back and reread something that struck you. You can skip pages of boring material. If you can’t afford to buy one, you can borrow it from the library. As long as there are books in a library you will never be bored.

Books preserve the ideas and knowledge of all time, for all time.

The House on Karl Netter Street

Simone’s daughter (along with an editor she knows) is planning a trip to Israel. She mentioned the trip to Simone who recalled a street address in Tel Aviv from 80 years ago. A google search found a picture of the house and this blog post was born…..

I lived at “#3 Karl Netter str” in Tel Aviv at the start of World War II. After 80 years of non-remembrance, any recollections of this house were buried in a deep inaccessible area of my mind. I vaguely remembered a balcony. I looked at the picture Dina had sent me and suddenly there it stood like an apparition vibrating with memories.

#3 Karl Netter Street, Tel Aviv, Israel

Many memories.

Karl Netter was a Frenchman who was a promoter and pioneer of Jewish colonization in Palestine. He founded the colony Mikveh Israel where asparagus, artichokes and other crops were grown. He also founded the Alliance Israelite Universelle

Karl Netter street is modest, but it runs close and parallel to the much more elegant Sderot Rothschild Boulevard, with its tall trees and paths on both sides of a planted divide with comfortable benches.

Sderot Rothschild

Looking at the house and the streets put me in mind of the balconies I remember from Tel Aviv. Israeli balconies are more than ornamental but rather wide and roomy living spaces where people eat and sometimes sleep in hot weather. When we lived there, we had no air conditioning and no central heating. Men in undershirts conversed with each other across the street. Privacy was not in particularly hot demand. It was all very informal.

Israeli Balconies

Our balcony was also a place to sit quietly with a book and listen to classical music.

Our house also had an outsize air raid shelter. Although the second world war never officially arrived in Tel Aviv, it was being fought very close by in what was then called the Western Desert. Generals Montgomery and Rommel were having it out in what is now Libya, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

I also remember a promenade that was parallel to the seashore which became a favorite strolling and cycling place for inhabitants and visitors. The promenade went all the way to Jaffa which we knew as the place which exported oranges wrapped in white paper all over the world.

Tel-Aviv Promenade (these days)

Now though I can no longer travel I can still go back in memory and I can always think of a white sunny city as the ideal place to live.