In the Beginning...

Welcome! Wilkommen! Bienvenue! Shalom!

A momentous day in the life of Bungalow Babe in the Big City. I borrowed my son (Adam J. Goldman -- visit ajgoldmann.blogspot.com)* from his regularly-scheduled life as a Columbia University student and asked him to explain the inner workings of blogs to this time traveler born in 1960. Ten minutes later, I think I've got it under control. Enough, at least, for the rudimentary aspects of blog-keeping, that is, the verbal entries. Such advanced matters as linking, pictures and other stuff will hopefully follow as my cyber-proficiency increases.

Ya might be wondering, though, with this disclaimer, how I got that way-hot image of Stephen Colbert onto the blog. The answer is that I copied it from my wallpaper. No, silly, not from my actual walls (though, come to think of it...) but from my laptop, where it recently replaced the way-boring image of Stonehenge that had been there since I bought the machine.

Stephen In the Shower became my wallpaper this past Friday after I copied it onto my desktop after spending, oh, about an hour cyber-stalking Stephen while I should have been doing at least twelve other, more pressing tasks, including working. Yes, life is a series of difficult decisions and we must learn to live with the consequences.

I won't dwell on my admiration-obsession with Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report and honestly would not even have written about him/it right now were it not for the fact that I copied this image onto my very first blogger entry as Bungalow Babe in the Big City sorta, almost as a test. So, please, let's move on...

About this blog: I intend it as an experiment. Not in the pretentious, experimental-art way, but in the "let's see how it goes" pragmatic way. As someone whose life is fairly filled with commitments to work, family, physical fitness and friends (sometimes, scarily, in that order), I'm frankly a bit worried about committing to the upkeep of this blog...though not worried enough to refrain from even embarking upon the journey of blogging.* So before you grow too attached to Bungalow Babe in the Big City...

It is the evening of a magnificent day in Manhattan -- sun-drenched, shimmering, shockingly cold. I spent the majority of the day at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (www.mjhnyc.org) in lower Manhattan, drawn by the new exhibit Life in Shadows, about hidden children during the Holocaust. Going through the exhibit with Little Babe, my ten-year-old son, I was exceptionally moved throughout, in fact, I found it hard to keep from weeping. Anyone who has a child or loves children will be touched by the stories of the Jewish parents who made the brave and risky decision to hand their children over to Christian families, orphanages, monasteries and other venues, knowing that the chances of either's survival and eventual reunion were slim to non-existent.

Tonight, I want to debrief Little Babe on his reaction to the exhibit.

There is much to say about the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which is a cultural treasure. The location and the architecture alone make a trip there completely worthwhile. Just walking along the southwestern-facing windowed corridor on the third floor of the museum was a treat, offering a wide view of New York bay, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, New Jersey and more. Their permanent exhibition explores the contributions of Jews to world culture and it was fun reviewing the roster of writers, composers, filmmakers, directors, actors, singers, dancers, conductors and other cultural icons who were Jews.

There is much to say, but I'd like to focus my comments on Ours to Fight For, which celebrates and documents the role of Jewish American GI's in WWII. Aside from the artful layout of the exhibit, which takes you into rooms and shacks and through corridors, and the cool assemblage of artifacts, weapons, uniforms, documents, newsreels, mezuzahs, dogtags, photos and videotaped interviews with the GI's, one cannot help but admire the unified spirit with which the leadership and citizenry of America entered into WWII, confident in its knowledge that its soldiers and forces were engaged in a battle with sheer evil.

Viewing this exhibit in the winter of 2006 -- against the backdrop of the travesty of the War in Iraq made me painfully away of how America has plummeted from greatness during the administration of George W. Bush.

Hey, I could go on, but need to get to the gym (www.jccmanhattan.org) if I am gonna work off the donut I ate mid-afternoon. My daughter Middle Babe announced that she is en route home for dinner with her bf so I just popped some Trader Joe's spanakopita (www.traderjoes.com) into our oven and will wash some lettuce for salad before abandoning my family for my rendezvouz with the treadmill. We tend to eat dinner together most nights, but tonight is the Sunday evening of a vacation weekend so I'm jumping ship. Anyway, HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) made some pierogie for Little Babe and Adam (aka Big Babe) is making some gourmet concoction which smells pretty damn good. I'd better get outta here before I get seduced into eating anything more!!!!

Thanks for reading this far, if you have indeed read this far.


Bungalow Babe in the Big City




* You'll be introduced to my younger children as Middle Babe (daughter, age 17) and Little Babe (son, age 10) in due course. I was going to call my oldest son, Big Babe, but he's already 21 and has his own blog, so he can fend for himself.

** I first identified the urge to blog sometime over the summer while staying at my actual bungalow -- Rosmarin's in Monroe, NY. A few summers back I had a weekly column called Bungalow Babe in the excellent local paper, The Times Herald Record (www.th-record.com). Borrowing the name of my column for my blog seemed a stroke of genius; it enabled me to export a bit of my summer sensibility back to the Big City, where I spend the majority of the year.

In any case, I have been too busy and cyber-intimidated to create the blog until today when I came back from my visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to find Adam rifling through his old papers in a frantic search of some (very fine) poetry he had written two years ago and which he feared lost when his computer crashed last year. Turns out, he had e-mailed the poems to me while I was living in Oxford, England and I was able to locate them and e-mail them back to him. In gratitude, he shared his expertise with me and...voila!!!