An interesting data point emerging: for 3 states that I can gather the data for (GA, CT, FL), all now in the flat exponential tail, and all showing a positivity rate of 2.5%. it will be interesting if this continues…will the background covid level be around 2% from now on? For CT, as I also track number of tests, the number of cases/day is totally dependent on the number of tests performed as the percentage is constant. If the governor wanted to have more cases, just demand more tests.
Colorado back filled another week of data….totally screwed up now as the data consistency is completely gone.
Since this is an open thread:
Once or twice here, in discussions of anti-Semitism, I’ve mentioned the fact that many small southern towns, generally thought of as the last place one would find Jews, had a handful of Jewish residents and a Jewish-owned store or two. This was in fact “a thing,” as they say, a sort of movement, in both senses, of the early 20th c. I just finished a fascinating memoir by a woman who was born into one of those families: The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman. Her father moved to a little town in Tennessee sometime around 1920 and opened a dry goods store there. I strongly recommend the book if you are the least bit interested in that phenomenon. Or even if you’re not, and just want to read an enjoyable book. It’s touching and delightful.
As for the anti-Semitism: yeah, it was there–the title refers to the way the store was referred to by some of the townspeople, somewhat in a derogatory sense but just as much because it was so unusual. But as the Russian-born father says, it was nothing compared to Cossacks.
I never heard the term “Jew store”, by the way, though the little town where I went to high school was also an instance of this phenomenon. In fact I never heard it mentioned that the family who owned the department store on the square were Jewish. It only dawned on me years later, because of the name. But that was the 1960s, not the ’20s, and the novelty of the situation had long since faded.
We separated conjoined twins when I was in training. They did OK but one twin was the smaller and weaker one and finally did not survive after a few months. I didn’t watch the whole video but it looks like they share a liver. Surgery on livers is much better now and even live donor transplants are common.
In Asheville NC the Jewish presence in the history of the town was so substantial that there is a tour of the various stores and every year the is a Jewish festival that flies in corned beef and pastrami from New York City.
Thanks for posting the video. Got real dusty in here while watching it.
In Arizona we had the Goldwater family and their department stores.
Michael Goldwater, the grandfather of Sen. Barry Goldwater, established a trading post in 1860 in Gila City, Arizona Territory. In 1872, he moved to Phoenix.
Scroll down midway to read the history of the Goldwater family in Arizona: http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/2010/09/m-goldwater-sons-phoenix-arizona.html?m=1
I just finished a fascinating memoir by a woman who was born into one of those families: The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman. Her father moved to a little town in Tennessee sometime around 1920 and opened a dry goods store there.
Tony Randall (né Aryeh Rosenberg), Dinah Shore (née Frances Rose Shore), and Bea Arthur (née Bernice Frankel) came from families like this. Arthur spent her adolescence on Maryland’s Eastern Shore after her early years in Brooklyn. Randall’s parents were divorced; his upbringing was split between New York and Tulsa. Shore’s family started out in small towns in Tennessee, then decamped to Nashville when she was an adolescent. She moved to New York in her 20s; into her 60s you could detect a slight drawl in her voice.
Michael Kinsley (of The New Republic, Crossfire, and Slate) grew up in the Detroit suburbs. His parents had a strictly small town upbringing. His father’s family lived in a succession of New England towns working as tailors. His mother came from a family that settled in Uniontown, Pa. His grandfather owned a department store there.
One bit of good news: Clarence Thomas was discharged from the hospital this morning.
Apparently, Biden told US troops stationed in Poland that they will see conditions in Ukraine ‘when you’re there’. One of the features of having Biden as president is that you can’t tell if it’s just another in a long line of demented gaffes or if he’s actually signaling something.
My lawyer comes from a Jewish family in small-town South Carolina. And, on another note, I met a black lady who was educated in a Rosenwald school, one of many established by Julius Rosenwald, a Sears Roebuck founder, for blacks in the South to help fill the gaps left by the segregated and poor black public schools.
Had a college friend–class of, maybe 69–who was Jewish and grew up in Corsicana, TX. Has some harsh memories, but returned and set up a successful business. Lots less trouble this generation.
Regarding Jewish folk owning stores in small towns, I was reminded of the musical, “Hello Dolly.” So, I did some Internet sleuthing to make sure I had the facts right and it turns out the musical is based on a 1930, Thornton Wilder play, “The Merchant of Yonkers” which was based on an Austrian play written in 1842: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einen_Jux_will_er_sich_machen
For some reason “Hello Dolly” is set around the turn of the century, and I’m not sure what Yonkers was like then. So, maybe there is no connection. I assumed it was about a Jewish man living among gentiles in a turn of the century, American town, but maybe I assumed that because Streisand and Matthau played the leads in the movie?
And, apparently Tom Stoppard did a different adaptation titled, “On the Razzle.” Viennese playwright Johann Nestroy got a lot of mileage out of his libretto!
I assumed it was about a Jewish man living among gentiles in a turn of the century, American town, but maybe I assumed that because Streisand and Matthau played the leads in the movie?
The manufactured name given Matthau’s character sounds Knickerbocker, not Jewish. The Streisand character’s name sounds Jewish. I think at turn of the century, Yonkers would have been a discrete community surrounded by countryside.
Art Deco,
I agree on Horace and Dolly’s surnames. Were matchmakers common in the U.S. at the start of the 20th century, and if so, were they secular? I have no idea. I think of it in relation to Judaism, but maybe that’s just coincidence in my mind from the “Matchmaker” song in “Fiddler on the Roof.” Which had nothing to do with the 20th century nor the U.S.
I’ve seen ads for matchmakers in the contemporary south in the U.S. and I think I saw a reality TV series based on the occupation.
@ Rufus – back in the 1980s (YouTube comes to the rescue), CPB broadcast a production of “On the Razzle” which we videotaped (and I probably still have in a box somewhere). We watched it many times as a family, along with other notable theatrical broadcasts of the era, and all our boys ended up doing theater in school and throwing out memorable lines at opportune moments.
This video is rather fuzzy, which is too bad; it was a very “sharp” production, set and costume-wise, and maybe a better one can be found.
Stoppard was a favored playwright while we were in college (1970s); AesopSpouse and I were involved in productions of “Jumpers” and “The Real Inspector Hound”. We had a friend who appeared in “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”.
Anyone who hasn’t experienced a Stoppard play should try one – they are surreal but accessible, if you get my meaning.
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An interesting data point emerging: for 3 states that I can gather the data for (GA, CT, FL), all now in the flat exponential tail, and all showing a positivity rate of 2.5%. it will be interesting if this continues…will the background covid level be around 2% from now on? For CT, as I also track number of tests, the number of cases/day is totally dependent on the number of tests performed as the percentage is constant. If the governor wanted to have more cases, just demand more tests.
Colorado back filled another week of data….totally screwed up now as the data consistency is completely gone.
Since this is an open thread:
Once or twice here, in discussions of anti-Semitism, I’ve mentioned the fact that many small southern towns, generally thought of as the last place one would find Jews, had a handful of Jewish residents and a Jewish-owned store or two. This was in fact “a thing,” as they say, a sort of movement, in both senses, of the early 20th c. I just finished a fascinating memoir by a woman who was born into one of those families: The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman. Her father moved to a little town in Tennessee sometime around 1920 and opened a dry goods store there. I strongly recommend the book if you are the least bit interested in that phenomenon. Or even if you’re not, and just want to read an enjoyable book. It’s touching and delightful.
As for the anti-Semitism: yeah, it was there–the title refers to the way the store was referred to by some of the townspeople, somewhat in a derogatory sense but just as much because it was so unusual. But as the Russian-born father says, it was nothing compared to Cossacks.
I never heard the term “Jew store”, by the way, though the little town where I went to high school was also an instance of this phenomenon. In fact I never heard it mentioned that the family who owned the department store on the square were Jewish. It only dawned on me years later, because of the name. But that was the 1960s, not the ’20s, and the novelty of the situation had long since faded.
We separated conjoined twins when I was in training. They did OK but one twin was the smaller and weaker one and finally did not survive after a few months. I didn’t watch the whole video but it looks like they share a liver. Surgery on livers is much better now and even live donor transplants are common.
In Asheville NC the Jewish presence in the history of the town was so substantial that there is a tour of the various stores and every year the is a Jewish festival that flies in corned beef and pastrami from New York City.
Thanks for posting the video. Got real dusty in here while watching it.
In Arizona we had the Goldwater family and their department stores.
Michael Goldwater, the grandfather of Sen. Barry Goldwater, established a trading post in 1860 in Gila City, Arizona Territory. In 1872, he moved to Phoenix.
Scroll down midway to read the history of the Goldwater family in Arizona: http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/2010/09/m-goldwater-sons-phoenix-arizona.html?m=1
I just finished a fascinating memoir by a woman who was born into one of those families: The Jew Store, by Stella Suberman. Her father moved to a little town in Tennessee sometime around 1920 and opened a dry goods store there.
Tony Randall (né Aryeh Rosenberg), Dinah Shore (née Frances Rose Shore), and Bea Arthur (née Bernice Frankel) came from families like this. Arthur spent her adolescence on Maryland’s Eastern Shore after her early years in Brooklyn. Randall’s parents were divorced; his upbringing was split between New York and Tulsa. Shore’s family started out in small towns in Tennessee, then decamped to Nashville when she was an adolescent. She moved to New York in her 20s; into her 60s you could detect a slight drawl in her voice.
Michael Kinsley (of The New Republic, Crossfire, and Slate) grew up in the Detroit suburbs. His parents had a strictly small town upbringing. His father’s family lived in a succession of New England towns working as tailors. His mother came from a family that settled in Uniontown, Pa. His grandfather owned a department store there.
One bit of good news: Clarence Thomas was discharged from the hospital this morning.
Apparently, Biden told US troops stationed in Poland that they will see conditions in Ukraine ‘when you’re there’. One of the features of having Biden as president is that you can’t tell if it’s just another in a long line of demented gaffes or if he’s actually signaling something.
My lawyer comes from a Jewish family in small-town South Carolina. And, on another note, I met a black lady who was educated in a Rosenwald school, one of many established by Julius Rosenwald, a Sears Roebuck founder, for blacks in the South to help fill the gaps left by the segregated and poor black public schools.
Had a college friend–class of, maybe 69–who was Jewish and grew up in Corsicana, TX. Has some harsh memories, but returned and set up a successful business. Lots less trouble this generation.
Regarding Jewish folk owning stores in small towns, I was reminded of the musical, “Hello Dolly.” So, I did some Internet sleuthing to make sure I had the facts right and it turns out the musical is based on a 1930, Thornton Wilder play, “The Merchant of Yonkers” which was based on an Austrian play written in 1842: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einen_Jux_will_er_sich_machen
For some reason “Hello Dolly” is set around the turn of the century, and I’m not sure what Yonkers was like then. So, maybe there is no connection. I assumed it was about a Jewish man living among gentiles in a turn of the century, American town, but maybe I assumed that because Streisand and Matthau played the leads in the movie?
And, apparently Tom Stoppard did a different adaptation titled, “On the Razzle.” Viennese playwright Johann Nestroy got a lot of mileage out of his libretto!
I assumed it was about a Jewish man living among gentiles in a turn of the century, American town, but maybe I assumed that because Streisand and Matthau played the leads in the movie?
The manufactured name given Matthau’s character sounds Knickerbocker, not Jewish. The Streisand character’s name sounds Jewish. I think at turn of the century, Yonkers would have been a discrete community surrounded by countryside.
Art Deco,
I agree on Horace and Dolly’s surnames. Were matchmakers common in the U.S. at the start of the 20th century, and if so, were they secular? I have no idea. I think of it in relation to Judaism, but maybe that’s just coincidence in my mind from the “Matchmaker” song in “Fiddler on the Roof.” Which had nothing to do with the 20th century nor the U.S.
I’ve seen ads for matchmakers in the contemporary south in the U.S. and I think I saw a reality TV series based on the occupation.
@ Rufus – back in the 1980s (YouTube comes to the rescue), CPB broadcast a production of “On the Razzle” which we videotaped (and I probably still have in a box somewhere). We watched it many times as a family, along with other notable theatrical broadcasts of the era, and all our boys ended up doing theater in school and throwing out memorable lines at opportune moments.
“It’s not proper!” was a favorite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eax58Njwt0
This video is rather fuzzy, which is too bad; it was a very “sharp” production, set and costume-wise, and maybe a better one can be found.
Stoppard was a favored playwright while we were in college (1970s); AesopSpouse and I were involved in productions of “Jumpers” and “The Real Inspector Hound”. We had a friend who appeared in “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”.
Anyone who hasn’t experienced a Stoppard play should try one – they are surreal but accessible, if you get my meaning.