Beautiful Yetta, a Jewish Chicken to love...

The city where we live, Portland, a northwest bubble, in the larger bubble, Oregon, is sunny and crisp today.  Summer seems to have taken time off; we wear light jackets.  We're sorry to have left high heat to our New York family.  We have also moved into an ethnically-challenged environment where all the women are white and the men are not bad looking and white also--to badly paraphrase Garrison Keillor.

Why a bubble?  Another glorious Saturday Farmers Market can distract from events that seem far away.  Issues with much traction  here revolve around the land and the environment--important, but what about threats to democracy?  

Terrible trouble is being brewed on the other coast by uneducated people blindly following a crazy fool whose cause is stoked by a woman who perverts feminism with every breath she takes.  I choose not to speak their names on this site.  Two blogs I read regularly for their insights Darlene's Hodgepodge from Arizona and  Citizen K from the state of Washingon enlighten readers on the dangers seeping from this execrable duo.  I thank them for doing the work. 

To celebrate the possibilities of diversity which might expand my own new city's bubble, I offer a children's book I'm about to mail to granddaughter Roxie in New York.  Each of my grandkids has been indoctrinated into my love of hens.  When they are older, I'll try to explain the reason behind this obsession.  I believe my maternal great grandmother in Poland must have raised chickens; this is an invention since no one was kind enough to share any of my ancestor story.

Ron, however, brings chickens closer to me via his paternal grandfather, the one who was brought to America from Bialystok, Poland by his sons who'd come before World War One.  The Blooms love to tell how this ultraorthodox Jewish gentleman, a ritual slaughterer (mostly chickens I assume) and scholar, arrived on the boat at Ellis Island with an explanation.  Wind had blown his professional certificate out of his hands and into the sea.  Now he could devote himself to religious study and be supported by his three American sons.

[Aside:  My sister-in-law, M.M., who reads my blog, is older than spouse Ron, will--I hope-- correct inaccuracies  in this story.]

Yetta, Jewish Chicken, entered my life through NPR.  Scott Simon of Weekend Edition Saturday has a long-running friendship with the writer, Daniel Pinkwater.  They entertain themselves and listeners by reading children's books together laughing as they go.   With four grandchildren (and on my own for suggestions),  I decided it was time to track down Pinkwater's books of which there are many.  Yetta is the most recent, a treasure even if you are not a chicken aficionado--lovable illustrations by Jill Pinkwater.  The text mostly in kids' book English plus much Yiddish, and a little Spanish too! 

Beautiful Yetta The Yiddish Chicken seems a timely addition to Roxie's (laundry helper on her June visit) poultry collection in New York; her family is about to move from the only home she has known for her first four years.  Tucked into its quirky, child oriented text about a lost chicken who lands in an unknown place is a message.  The book's flap, explains:

"Moving from city to country...appearing different from others, or adjusting to change...Jewish tradition teaches how we are to treat newcomers....From the Torah, 'The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.' "

Yetta, Roxie, and I want you to join us in hope that rises above and beyond what happens today.  I close my eyes and remember a conference in 1964.  Martin Luther King speaks of his dream to New York City teachers.  We rise to our feet; we are true believers.

Comments

[Hattie]

Yes.

[Lydia]

Your most profound post yet. I needed this tonight.

[Joared]

Ever so pertinent observations and sentiments. The book and the family story is intriguing.

As for chickens, having spent a few years in my youth helping my parents raise baby chicks to adulthood, gathering the hens output, completing the processes for marketing fryers and hens, I still appreciate these creatures. They do have personalities. I'm appalled with the conditions in which they are forced to live by those engaged in mass production of eggs and meat. But then, I think that, too, of some of the dairy and beef cattle so-called farms I've seen here in So. Calif. Mostly they've relocated to No. Calif. now. The milk ads about "happy cows" couldn't be further from the truth. We had two happy cows when I was young. My uncle's dairy farm had happy cows,too, but these commercial operations do not have happy cows.

[Gerrie]

Lovely post. I do feel as if I live in a bubble. Went to the Prairie Home Companion concert at the zoo last night and thought I am so far from a Glen Beck moment. My America is alive and well right here in Orygun!!

[Darlene]

Thank you for mentioning my blog. I do so appreciate it.

I once wrote a story about my fear of anything with feathers and of using my 4 year old brother to shoo the mean rooster away when I had to gather the eggs. I also told of ridding myself of the fear by holding a gentle little red hen my mother named "Singer" because she made a purring sound when you petted her.

[Kay Dennison]

Amen!!!!

[paula]

Well said! And, I'll look into that book. Thanks for pointing it out.
When we visit our relatives in California every year, I often feel they live in a different country that we do. Although they're all educated, intelligent adults, they seem to know nothing about what's going on in the rest of the US, or even care.
It's important for people to speak out against the madness of last weekend (and beyond!). Thanks for doing so on your blog, and doing it in a way that doesn't add one more hit to their names on Google.

[Anne Gibert]

I heard Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater reading the chicken book, and I am glad to be reminded of it. I shall buy it for my great grandson.

I am glad you didn't mention their names. I am happy to say I have never seen or heard one of them (since I don't watch TV), and the other, Alaska's shame, I trust will soon fade from the scene because she says the same silly things over and over and makes very little sense.

What a lovely post.