Hats

I think I have always been interested in hats of all shapes and sizes.  Sun hats; school hats; beach hats; party hats and even the Queen's hats.  I have written three "hat" books and I have even made hats myself, including a white satin top hat for a bridegroom.

Once on a trip to Paris, my mother (the Grandma of "Grandma's Hat" fame), went into the well known "Christian Dior" shop and came out having purchased a beautiful green straw hat, which she wore with pride, for many years. That one certainly suited her auburn hair! Her only regret was that the label was on the inside! How we used to tease her.

My Grandmother owned a fashionable boutique which catered to the rich and famous, as well as a few "royals", during World War 2. As a young child, I spent many happy hours playing in that shop, with buttons, baubles, bows and wonderful silk flowers, which were kept in cardboard boxes. I also spent time in the back of the shop, behind a heavy velvet curtain, with the ladies at their sewing machines. They were in charge of alterations and I was in charge of picking up pins as they fell to the floor. For this task, I was given a magnet and a special pin tin. A real job for a six year old.

But my best time of all was when Granny closed the doors at the end of the day. Then I would carefully wash my hands and sit on the pink satin stool in front of the dressing table with its triple mirrors and try on some hats! Oh, how the staff laughed at my poses and of course, I played up to my audience. Some hats were obviously far too big for me but many were not. The cocktail hats were often quite ridiculously silly confections of ribbon, lace and feathers, much like the "fascinators" of today. Sometimes bewitching, I suppose, and fun to try on but they don't seem to serve any real purpose.  I wonder if men find them attractive?

"A Hollywood actress, trying on a hat in a shop in Beverly  Hills, asked the price.  Upon hearing it, she exclaimed,

"Why, that's ridiculous!"

"Madam," replied the saleslady, "So is the hat!" "

                                                                   - Hedda Hopper.

Rosemary Kahn

Learning from Rose

 You might have read this before, if so, it is well worth reading again. It is a story that has done the rounds, but has a message each time you read it. 

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder.

I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being..

She said, 'Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?'

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, 'Of course you may!' and she gave me a giant squeeze..

'Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?' I asked.

She jokingly replied, 'I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids...'

'No seriously,' I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

'I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!' she told me.

After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake.

We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this 'time machine' as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.

Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor.

Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, 'I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know.'

As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, 'We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing.

There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die.

We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it!

There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up.

If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.

Anybody! Can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets.

The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets..'

She concluded her speech by courageously singing 'The Rose.'

She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives. At the year's end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those months ago.

One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep.

Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.

When you finish reading this, please send this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they'll really enjoy it!

These words have been passed along in loving memory of ROSE.

REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL. We make a Living by what we get. We make a Life by what we give.

G-d promises a safe landing, not a calm passage. If G-d brings you to it, He will bring you through it. 

Competitions

Some years ago I wrote a piece about the many people I had observed buying magazines, not necessarily for the articles themselves as such, but for the competition prizes offered therein.

This fascinated me at the time. I knew of at least one woman who would buy up to thirty magazines a month and then laboriously fill in, cut out and send off all the entry forms.  At this time she told me that she had already won sunglasses; beauty kits; two handbags; a scarf; beach towels; costume jewellery and a suitcase.

Now years later, I was waiting for a friend in the coffee shop attached to Exclusive Books and to pass the time, (I was early and she is always at least fifteen minutes late), I selected a few magazines from a shelf nearby, out of interest. I am still not a buyer of magazines, so I was curious to see how they had changed.

Well, they are certainly glossier on the whole but those obviously for women up to the age of forty, contained the usual fashion (most of it hideous), make-up ideas; diet tips; exercise advice; and all they could regurgitate about pregnancy; childbirth; breast feeding and child rearing; recipes and healthy lunch box ideas, etc., as well as many “success” stories. These covered the range of illnesses overcome; huge financial obstacles and lack of any form of support and how they had managed to turn their lives around and do good / make vast sums of money / renovate houses /  start their own successful businesses / travel to distant shores / put themselves through University / and finally to proclaim themselves unsung heroes or heroines, or have someone else do it for them. This is not to belittle their individual achievements, which are undeniably great in many cases but to wonder if these people had really managed all this as easily as some had reported, almost single-handed, and if they had given adequate credit where credit is due?

Then of course, there seemed to be sections devoted to the antics and activities of film and stage stars, very few of whom would make good role models. So all in all, these magazines were a supposedly eclectic mix of nothing much to attract my fancy or attention, until I found the “WIN” pages!

My, how those have changed! No longer did I find the “small” offerings of the past. Now each magazine tried to out do the next – 

WIN A HOUSE

WIN A CAR

WIN A SEA CRUISE

WIN A TRIP to Disneyland for the whole family!

Win a computer / I-pad / state of the art music centre

Where have our values gone, now that simply filling in a form or questionnaire can put one in line to receive one of these huge gifts? What sort of world are we actually living in, if this is what one has to offer in order to entice people to buy a glossy magazine?  It very much seems like the beginning of yet another decline and fall of civilization! I do suppose it is really to try and keep in line with the fast pace of life and today’s tear away, disposable, here today and gone tomorrow type of life style. 

I prefer a slightly slower, calmer pace, at my age and if I were to enter a competition, I would be very pleased to win anything at all, as long as it was tasteful and had its uses! What do you think?

Rosemary.

Things that go bump and Crash in the night

Things that go bump and Crash in the night
   Musings from Life by Rosemary Kahn

It was well after midnight. I know, because that is when I turned off my bedside light. Reading in bed is such a pleasure, especially in winter!

I must have been asleep for about an hour, when a loud crash woke me. I lay quietly listening in the dark for any other noises. There was a rasping and scraping sound and then silence. I did a mental check - all the downstairs doors were locked on the inside; the security gates were locked; my car was locked and in its garage. I crept out of bed. It is always quite light in my bedroom, inspite of the curtains being closed. The apartment block to the right of my building has had very bright spot lights installed and my neighbour had left his garden spotlight on as well. This lit up my own garden and I was able to see down to the gate, which was locked. There was no movement anywhere. I stood and watched for several minutes. 

Should I risk going downstairs, or should I go back to bed? Where exactly had the crash come from anyway? It had sounded very close by. Perhaps it was just a ferral cat, of which there are a number in the vicinity, on the prowl. It might have knocked over a pot plant on one of our patios. With a sigh, I decided to go back to bed. I felt safe enough upstairs and all was quite again and I refuse to live in fear. After all, we have electrically operated security gates and seven rows of electrically wired fencing all round the property. We also have a security guard cycle patrol on duty 24/7. I climbed into bed and my last conscious thought was,  

"What a way to live!"

The Demise of Handwriting as we have known it.

When I was about 32 and teaching a class of very active 6/7 year olds, one of my pupils shouted out during a writing lesson, "Mrs Kahn, when you were young, did you write with a feather?" The rest of the class burst out laughing and so did I. It was funny, although the children could not have really known that. At that stage of their lives they had no real concept of educational progress or of the passage of time.  

 

I have always felt that it is vital for children to be taught to write legibly and neatly and I am most certainly not ready to give up that idea, not quite yet, anyway.

 

I do concede, however, that learning to type quickly and accurately is just as essential these days. So my question is, why can't children be taught both skills, perhaps in a new and imaginative way?  They serve  different purposes after all but I do I believe that learning to write is a very important  skill for the general development of the child. I do not intend to go into details here, but many studies have indicated this.

Therefore, I find it immensely dissatisfying and indeed very worrying, that in America, 41 of their States have already declared that it is no longer a requirement to teach children handwriting, although each individual school is at liberty to decide that for themselves! I would like to think that most schools will continue to do so as part of their regular curriculum, slotted in somewhere, perhaps in Arts and Crafts lessons, should those lessons still exist. When the current batch of teachers retire and new younger ones step in, I am sure the age of technology will take over completely. Perhaps then the only writing that will be required of children will be the ability to sign their names, and we all know that most signatures are entirely illegible in any case, so any old squiggle will do!  I should imagine that practically anyone can do that, without resorting to the good old "X", which would be a giant step backwards. 

What do you think?

Do send your comments!

Rosemary

What Has Happened to our Polite Society?

  What happened to good old fashioned "Service with a Smile"?

I think the beginning of this Century will go down in History as the age of Rudeness.  

Matters seem to get worse by the day. P's and Q's hardly exist and has anyone recently received a Thank you note from any young person to whom you have sent a card or gift. There are a few exceptions, of course, but as a general rule, you are lucky if you get a one line email.

Just this week I have been ignored yet again when trying to pay for purchases at the check-out counter in my local supermarket, because the "lady" at the till happened to be having a long conversation with her friend at the next till. She could not be bothered to return my cheerful greeting, or to make eye contact with me. Not until I had said very loudly,  "Are you going to serve me, or should I call the manager?", did she deign to ring up the few items I had placed on the counter. She took my cash and handed me my change whilst starting up another conversation, this time with a packer.  I believe that this sort of behaviour is not uncommon. Many people on talk radio shows have commented on it.

Last week I had an appointment to see a doctor in a fairly large hospital. I arrived a little early, knowing I would have the usual forms to fill in as a new patient. On entering Reception, one lady behind the counter was eating a sandwich and had a mug of coffee in her hand, which she used, without a word, to point me towards the opposite counter.  The lady there was sucking a red lollipop, which she did not remove from her mouth for the entire time it took her to take my name and give me the necessary forms; to ask for my I.D. Book and Medical Aid card, which she took away to photocopy. She handed the items back to me with a "lollipop-in-mouth" smile, stick bobbing up and down and that, as the saying goes, was that.

Two weeks ago I was in a long queue at the Post Office. I counted 21 people, all waiting to be served.

There were five empty counters. One elderly lady asked whether there was a strike on, or if  their staff were off "sick"?  "No," came the reply, from the one and only person trying to get through all the customers, "They are all on tea".

"How can this be allowed? Where was the postmaster?", someone else asked.

"Gone out". Was the curt reply. And with that three of us walked out.

Have you noticed how no one returns calls these days?
How one is kept holding on for ages, only to be told that the person you need to speak to urgently, is in a meeting?
Is that all anyone does these days? Attend meetings and then NEVER return calls?

Shopping is no longer the  treat or a pleasant experience it was when I was young.  There is no one around to help you and if you should be lucky enough to find someone eventually, they are so disinterested, you almost feel sorry to have bothered them.

I could go on and on - rude drivers; inconsiderate cyclists; etc; etc. Perhaps I should end with one last piece.

On a recent trip to the Cinema, I asked for two seats near the back on the aisle.

"Sorry, I can't do that," said the young man serving me." I can give you 5 rows down."

I sighed and took the tickets, only to find, as the lights went down, that there were only 3 other patrons besides us, in the whole place! Takes the cake, doesn't it?

by
Rosemary Kahn