JuicyLesson 235: RIP Betty Berthiaume: Mother Outlaw and Great Pal of Mine .. . Did California Chrome Win the Belmont? Go LA …

Betty Moscovitch, Lee’s lovely, lively, loving and very intelligent mother, passed away Sunday evening as she neared the end of her 96th year. May she rest in peace.”

Betty is featured with me on my Shadow Honda 1100 cc. mini-beast.

Betty was never totally comfortable with Lee and I living together and was always badgering us to get married, well badgering Lee, actually. “If Jerry asked you to marry him, would you do it?” Stuff like that.

Betty’s baseline with me was if I was making “her kid” happy, she would be happy too. She once said this: “You’re making my kid happy and I want to get you something.” She was also quite the flirt: “Lee. Tell Jerry that I love him, not that I’m in love with him, but that I love him.”

Funeral Tuesday, Paperman’s, 2 P.M. for those of you who knew Betty and want to pay their respects.

Don Henley’s “Not Enough Love in the World” starts us off today. Smooth number. Very smooth.

There’s definitely not enough loving and affection in this world.
Too much other stuff.

Much more love needed.
Tenderness and affection too
will do
For me and for you, too.

… and while you’re listening think about and reflect on how fast the month of June is going … I knew a fast girl named June once, but that, as they say, is a colour of a different horse.

So take it away, Don.
http://youtu.be/aiNq8gvkbcg

Heading for home …

Moving right along to the running of the Belmont Stakes in NYC, Saturday, (yesterday), June 7th, 2014. For those of you who don’t yet know, California Chrome won the third jewel of thorough-bred’s Triple Crown, making her the first horse in 38 years to win all three legs of the Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness (Baltimore) and now, the Belmont … or did she??

Don’t know what gets into me sometimes.

Check this out. As I type this last bit out, I am watching, more like listening to, actually, the programme MASH.**

I love that show. Check out the TV guide for the History channel if you’re interested and you have the time daily at noon or five. I myself usually manage to free myself so that I end up watching more shows than I miss.**

**on Wednesday or Thursday, I plan to discuss the use of MASH as a teaching tool, to wit the episode when the white American doctor Hawkeye, headed out in a jeep on a three day pass from his post at MASH 4077, in a TV series set during the Korean War (1950-’53), and a Communist soldier get down on their hands and knees and together – the soldier with his bayonet and Hawkeye with his “army hat” – and start digging a grave for a dead kid on whom Hawkeye had worked, under tremendous stress, but unsuccessfully.

Prior to the kid’s passing, Hawkeye tells his captor:”I get it. As long as he lives, so do I”, but that’s not the way it turns out. Tune in tomorrow.

Anyway, one of today’s episodes of MASH contains a sub-plot centred on the efforts of a certain corporal Klinger, a transvestite, to get into Westpoint and therefore, out of the army. Didn’t even spell his name right on the test.

“You mean I lucked out?”, asks Klinger. “First thing you got right all day”, responds the amiable colonel Potter, ably portrayed by Harry Morgan, who, previously had opined, with Klinger absent of course, that “Sophie, my horse would have a better chance of getting into the Point than Klinger does.” Right on mon colonel. Point is the COHENcidence … sometimes I think these things are proof of, most simply put, G-d’s existence; other times I don’t believe they’re anythng more than pure COHENcidence.

But when I say above “Heading for home … ” I ain’t talking about that. What I am alluding to is my JuicyLessons.

When September 9th rolls around, in about three months, in other words, G-d willing, I will have accomplished my goal which is to produce A Juicy Lesson Per Day for a year, with Saturdays off, a total of 312 or 313 lessons in total. Read my Mission Statement for a full description of my goal.

That being said, what’s gonna happen? Loren Lann thinks that I won’t be able to stop. I, on the other hand, beg to differ.

Too much pressure to keep up the pace. I’ll just go quietly off, for a little while, try to understand what I’ve learnt, where I am, and where I am going and want to go, and then produce a lesson, now and again, whenever the urge or inclination hits me. I know something about what being under constant pressure to produce – which I have never really felt before with the same intensity – does to me; it makes me ill-tempered, irritable, and slightly frenzied, out of control, screaming, yelling and generally freaking out … but only to a point.

On the positive side, the JuicyLessons have been inspirational and very revealing as far as my character development goes. I don’t want to say too much right at the moment, what with being in the middle of things and all – but that being said, doing the Juice has made me feel valuable and, still, valued, respected and liked, if not loved by many of my students, friends and associates alike. Thanks Darren Szickman. I will never forget that conversation at the Orchard. It’s not that often that I end up bawling.

Writing makes me happy. I know that. Overall, I have enjoyed producing the JuicyLessons even though there was/is pressure, pressure to the extent that it got me up in the mornings before I was ready to get up because I knew I had to produce a Lesson before midnight that day. Even though I had all day, literally, to get it together, I found it impossible to relax with it hanging over my head.

Best feeling in the world is waking up in the morning and realizing, as the new day dawns, that that day’s JL is already done and “all” that remains is to do a final re-read, add an illustration of some kind, and post the particular lesson on Facebook.

After that, I send it off to around 100 lucky people.

All of this sometimes takes as much as two hours to do but at least there is no pressure to produce anything original unless you count the addition of a cartoon, as something ‘original’. Yet it still takes two hours.

Peace.

RIP Betty. We will all miss your presence but you will always live on in our hearts. BH