I try to focus, really I do, but things keep changing

If he were still alive, today would be my grandfather Nathan Silberman's 146th birthday. Unfortunately, he left us just over 50 years ago in December 1970, three months before what would have been his 96th birthday.

All through his life my grandfather said he was born on the first day of Spring. I cannot remember when the vernal equinox somehow stopped occurring on March 21st and started occurring on March 20th, but I read this week that because of time zone differences between North America and the place our days begin (the International Date Line in the middle of the Pacific Ocean), Spring would not begin on March 21st in North America at all during the remainder of this century.

Grandpa would be so disappointed.

In Charlestonese, the type of English spoken in parts of coastal South Carolina, people say that buds wobble in the sprang (translation: birds warble in the Spring). Well, buds ain't the only thang that wobbles.

Did you know that Earth's axis also wobbles like a top? Well, it does. The North Pole won't always point to Polaris. The wobble takes something like 26,000 years to complete one circuit. It's called 'axial precession' and you can read all about it 'rat cheer' (translation: right here).

In other news, the answer nobody on Jeopardy! knew on Friday evening was "What is a hunter?". The category was Biblical Occupations and the clue mentioned the book of Genesis and Nimrod. At least someone knew that the answer to "_________ were abiding in the field keeping watch on the night Jesus was born" was "What are shepherds?" and the clue didn't even include "over their flocks".

Until next time, T.T.F.N.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Today is my mother's birthday. Ruth Elizabeth Silberman Brague would have been 107 years old today.

Unfortunately, she died at the age of 47 when I was but 16. I am going to show you a few photographs of her from long before I entered the picture. I was born in 1941, a month before her 31st birthday. These pictures are all from the 1920s and 1930s. I do not have specific dates for any of them.

In my all-time favorite picture of her, taken around the time she graduated from West Chester State College in 1930, she wore a black dress and a long necklace made of what looked like mahjongg tiles linked together. It has somehow managed to become lost. This one was taken a few years later: :



Here she is with her mother and sister:


Here she is with her brother Jack. He called her Roothie-Poothie. He became Dr. J. DeWolf Silberman, M.D., and set up practice in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania:


Here is my mother with her sister Marion, probably in New York:


And here she is with her parents, my grandparents, Rosetta and Nathan Silberman, possibly on the boardwalk in Atlantic City:


Long-time readers of this blog may remember some of these photos as I included them in posts in 2010 and 2013, ancient history as time is counted in the blogging world.

Some years ago I wrote the following sonnet. I was remembering two small oval-framed photographs of my mother's grandparents, Max and Sarah Nussbaum Silberman, taken around the turn of the twentieth century, that I once saw in my uncle's house. I wish I could show them to you as well, but I cannot. Perhaps you will think of some old photographs of your own relatives as you read it.

On Being Shown a Photograph of an Ancestor
by Robert H. Brague

Those things speak most that never say a word,
Like eyes that meet on streets when strangers pass;
The loudest cries so often go unheard,
Like silent prayers reflected in a glass.
Though never have we spoken, there’s a bond
That shatters my veneer, my thin disguise;
You look beneath the surface and beyond,
And all of time is frozen in your eyes.
Departed generations in between,
Like links of chain from viewer to the viewed,
Peer over Heaven’s edge, survey the scene,
Hold their collective breaths, and don’t intrude.
While thoughts of love, and death, and DNA
Swirl through my brain, they bow their heads and pray.

Potpourri (say it soft and it’s almost like praying)

Today is the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox having occurred at 7:04 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time -- or does that happen tomorrow? Spring came on March 21st when I was young. Now it seems to arrive on March 20th. Life on earth can be so confusing. For example, it’s the first day of autumn in the southern hemisphere.

Tomorrow is the 138th anniversary of the birth of my maternal grandfather, Nathan Silberman. He was born in 1875 in Pennsylvania and died in 1970 in Pennsylvania. The farthest south he ever traveled was to Mount Vernon in Virginia. The farthest west he ever traveled was to Minnesota. When he and my grandmother were raising their four children, every summer he took them to Old Orchard Beach in Maine. He played the clarinet and the violin. Not at the same time, in case you were wondering. Happy 138th birthday, Grandpa!

I did something this morning I have never done before. Jethro got me up at 5:30 a.m., insisting that he be taken outside so he could perform his morning, er, performance. It was still dark, of course. I always put him on a leash and walk him because our yard is not fenced and occasionally he will not come back when called. He is a good boy except when he is not, much like many of us. Back in the house afterward, I emptied the dishwasher and put all the clean dishes and glasses and silverware and cups into the drawers and cabinets where they belonged. Then I turned the lights out in the kitchen and started walking in the dark back toward the bedroom where Mrs. RWP was still sleeping. These are all things I’ve done lots of times. What was different this time was that as I made my way along the pseudo-hallway between the living room and dining room, I slammed headlong into the side of the grandfather’s clock. There was such clanging and banging as you have never heard as the brass weights and the pendulum expressed their displeasure at being disturbed. I had to flip on the lights and calm them down (the clock parts, not the lights) with a laying on of hands, hoping all the while that Mrs. RWP would not be disturbed. She wasn’t. I was not hurt, though the earpiece on the right side of my glasses is a little out of whack. Maybe I knocked some sense into my head. I hope so.

Speaking of Potpourri/popery, I’m not Roman Catholic but I am liking the new Pope Francis I more and more. He seems to be a humble man, down-to-earth and filled with common sense.
Here is a portion of an interview from last year in which the then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio said some interesting things to a South American rabbi. You should read it. It couldn’t hurt. It might even do you some good.

The very idea of a South American rabbi makes my brain turn cartwheels.

Here is Nathan Silberman with his youngest daughter, Ruth (my mother), around 1930:



Here he is in 1946, when he was 71:



Three days ago I turned 72.

Time flies when you’re having fun.

This is Abraham Skorka, the South American rabbi who is the new Pope’s friend:



Care to join me in a couple of cartwheels?

This is Mount Vernon (George Washington’s home) in Virginia:



Nobody said a post had to be organized logically.

As A.A. Milne, or maybe it was Walt Disney, would say, Ta-Ta For Now.

Though April showers may come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May.

Here is the photograph for the month of April in that 1975 Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, School District Centennial Calendar that I told you about in my last post.

Clicking on the photograph should give you a closer view.
I apologize for the blurriness, which resulted from my inability to keep my hand steady while taking a picture with my cell phone.

The man sitting in the chair at the left is my maternal great-grandfather, Max Silberman (1845 - 1914), who was born in Germany and came to America as a teenager. He opened Silberman’s Department Store in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, in the late 1870s or early 1880s. The sign on the wall next to him reads, “Gloves, Suspenders, Knit Jackets, Trimmings, Ladies & Gents Underwear At Wholesale Prices.” The woman standing next to him is probably my great-grandmother, Sarah Nusbaum Silberman (1849 - 1925), who was also born in Germany. I have seen only one other photograph of her, taken when she was much older. (If it is not my great-grandmother, it might be Max’s sister, Caroline, increasing the possibility that the next person in the picture is their brother, Henry.)

See the four young boys sitting on the curb in front of the store? The second boy from the left is, I think, Nathan Silberman, my grandfather, the son of Max and Sarah, who was born on March 21, 1875, and died on December 20, 1970. If that boy is not my grandfather, he sure looks a lot like my youngest grandson, Sam. As an adult, my grandfather played the clarinet in the Pennsylvania National Guard Band during the Spanish-American War and helped found Jenkintown’s volunteer fire department. Later he owned a real estate and insurance firm in Jenkintown for many years; my Uncle Sol Silberman continued to run it after my grandfather retired. The office was on West Avenue between the Post Office (where I met Norman Land) and the bank at the corner of Old York Road (where my cousin Philip worked during his college years). On the window in gold letters were the words, “N. Silberman and Son.”

I believe that Max, Sarah, Nathan, Nathan’s wife Rosetta Aarons (1878 - 1937), her parents Solomon Aarons (1847? - 1902) and Rachael DeWolf Aarons (1847? - 1932), and even Max’s parents, Jacob (1813 - ?) and Fannie (1823 - ?) Silberman, possibly along with other relatives of mine, are all buried in Adath Jeshurun Cemetery in Philadelphia, but I’m not sure.

After having had family members live in the same small town in Pennsylvania for well over a hundred years, not a single member of my family lives there now. We cousins have scattered to the four winds.

[Editor’s note. In no way did I mean to imply that by playing the clarinet in the Pennsylvania National Guard Band during the Spanish-American War, my grandfather helped found Jenkintown’s volunteer fire department. No, indeedy. They were two separate and totally unrelated events, and this note would not have been necessary if I had put the word also before the word helped in the sentence in question. --RWP]

[Editor’s note #2. Perhaps it also would be more accurate to say he played clarinet in the band, not the clarinet, unless it was a very small band. --RWP]

[Editor’s note #3. If the Silberman and Nusbaum families had not emigrated to the United States, their descendants would probably have been killed in a World War II concentration camp, and you would not be reading this post. --RWP]

This song (3:04) is a metaphor for happy endings everywhere.

When did March 20th become the first day of spring?

Your Honor, I place into the record Exhibit A:


When this photograph was taken, this dapper gentleman was 71 years old. A decade earlier, when he was in his early sixties, the doctors discovered that he had cancer of the colon. They performed a colostomy and told him he had six months to live.

Oh, he lived. He lived for almost 35 more years. He outlived all of his doctors.

Finally, just three months and one day before his 96th birthday, he died on December 20, 1970.

He is Nathan Silberman, my maternal grandfather. He was born in 1875. I am now two years younger than he was when the photo was taken in 1946.

We always said my grandfather was born on the first day of spring. For several decades now the vernal equinox seems to have occurred on March 20th, not March 21st. When it changed, and why it changed, and whether the earth is speeding up or slowing down or merely sliding a little backward or forward in its orbit like a yo-yo on a string or possibly tilting a little more or less on its axis than it used to, I do not know. Perhaps it is related to the reason a leap day was not added in century years 1700, 1800, and 1900 but one was added in 1600 and 2000. I wish someone would explain it to me.

But this I know. Today, March 21st, the real first day of spring, is my grandfather’s birthday. He would be 135.

Your Honor, here is Exhibit B, a photograph of him with my grandmother and my mother around 1930.