Editorial: Give Dandelions A Chance

Hundreds of potential salads are waiting for us. In our public parks, in our backyards, and probably right beneath the windows of this classroom. You all know the flower: Taraxacum officinale, or the common dandelion. Yet familiar as they are, I know many people who strongly dislike dandelions. They classify the flower as a weed. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a ‘weed’ is:” A[n] herbaceous plant not valued for use or beauty, growing wild and rank, and regarded as cumbering the ground or hindering the growth of superior vegetation.”

While it’s definitely true that dandelions are widespread and grow wildly, I would like to remind everyone that they are strikingly beautiful, fragrant, and soft. Dandelions’ classification as a weed rests mainly on the biology of their growth pattern, which leads them to open/disturbed soil, which is usually found in areas inhabited by people.

The negative attitude towards dandelions is actually very recent, arising in the 20th century. The ancient Greeks ate dandelions, and the flower was used in traditional Chinese medicine. In Medieval Europe, people loved dandelions and removed grass from their lawns to give the room to grow. The pilgrims brought dandelions to America on the Mayflower; likely as a foodstuff and medicine.

The dandelion’s rumored medicinal benefits have recently been proven by numerous modern scientific studies. The plant has many nutrients, and the leaves are full of antioxidants which help protect the cardiovascular system. Most notably, dandelions helped the liver function, reduced insulin levels, and stimulated fat metabolization in mice.

In Europe, dandelions were prescribed for almost all ailments as a kind of catch-all. The plant was so popular because of its commonality, and gentle chemical nature. In short, it acts as a diuretic to clear the body of toxins, provides nourishment, and helps the digestive system function efficiently. In fact, dandelions have more nutrition than many common garden vegetables; more vitamin A than spinach, more vitamin C than tomatoes. The range of ailments they are reported to have cured is astonishing; dandruff, baldness, sores, toothache, fevers, rotting gums, lethargy, weakness, and depression. It was only in the 20th century that people discovered the underlying cause of much of these problems: vitamin deficiencies.

Now that we know the dandelion has practical benefits, why did attitudes about their character change so suddenly? Originally, dandelions were praised for their beauty, and there are hundreds of folk traditions and myths involving the puffy seeds. In Europe people used to write poems for the flower. The “war on dandelions” came with the rise in popularity of a closely cropped, uniformly green front lawn, often used as a status symbol. The practice of lawn maintenance has its roots with the aristocracy, who used to be the only people rich enough to pay someone else to clear their yard with a scythe. After World War II and with the rise of the suburbs, many Americans were moving into their own homes, with their own yards. Naturally they wanted to impress their neighbors, and lawns seemed to be the way to go.

Unfortunately, dandelions are attracted to areas with open or recently disturbed soil – almost the definition of a lawn. They are tough plants which grow quickly, produce a lot of seeds, are impossible to get rid of, and largely got in the way of the perfect lawn or flowerscape. I think the dandelion’s interference with lawns and landscaping in general is largely what got them such a negative reputation.
Nevertheless, I really appreciate dandelions and think we should re-evaluate our stance on them. Just because they are common doesn't make them any less wonderful -- take the sun, for example. Dandelions are gorgeous flowers just as much as the rose, and they don't even have thorns. Besides their beauty, dandelions can have medicinal benefits, and who isn't up for free salad? Think it over.

It's Almost June And I Haven't Exploded Yet

As long as I can remember and ever since I started going, waiting for my summer camp, Goldman Union Camp Institute (a.k.a GUCI, although I’ve learned to give this acronym LAST), to start was and is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I guess you could say I’m really good at it, since I have no choice in the waiting.  “Live eleven months for one,” as we say. Nowadays it’s a lot easier to make it to camp and still be in touch with everyone because of technology (no more frantic catching up on an entire year of someone’s life). I can finally talk with my cabinmates -- we have a group chat and talk every day, it’s like family dinner. We cover everything; what’s happening in their lives, what’s happening in mine, ideas for camp next year (we’re bringing a mini cactus as our mascot and my friend’s bringing her matching cactus onesie), and the obligatory “songleader so and so from GUCI came to my synagogue today!” whereupon I get lowkey jealous.

There’s also plenty of videos GUCI online (including that hour long video of Shabbat song session that I watch way too much), and I have memory boxes full of letters from my parents and my cabinmates’ parents (yes that’s a thing occasionally), our cabin essays from when we led prayer services, those cheesy mystic ballroom dance face masks, toothbrush bracelets, etc. Basically as time went on there’s a lot more to remember to camp by and it’s gotten exponentially easier to exist until June 14.

But I almost feel like I’m cheating at the waiting game since I have so much memorabilia. I can talk with my friends anytime, and I honestly don’t have a choice in the waiting. That said, it’s not like a skill isn’t proved unless it can be done blindfolded after being in solitary confinement for 3 days (In 1st grade someone told me that’s what I had to do to become a piano master). There’s also many things from GUCI that I can’t recreate, like the lifestyle and the entire community and the constant guitar music.

I also remember how waiting wasn’t always so easy. When I was younger, I couldn’t keep in touch with people as well since I didn’t have a cell phone or Facebook (and the first year I got my phone, I couldn’t remember my number to give to anyone…...classic). I remember crying in the middle of December because it had been so UNBELIEVABLY LONG already and there were so many months between myself and June.

Yet no matter how badly I wanted GUCI to  start, I couldn’t speed up time right? Wrong. As i’ve gotten older time has seemed to speed up a LOT, to the point where junior year was a blur and I can’t believe it’s spring already. I was shocked when it became September.  I don’t know why this perspective shift is happening to me so suddenly but it’s really freaking me out. Especially because I’m finally starting to understand that super depressing song (Which we also sing at camp) which I hate and love, The Circle Game.

Overall, I believe I’m great at waiting for things I have no choice about -- a wonderful skill right?! Funny how many other people seem to have this skill too! Either way, I’m pretty proud that I didn’t spontaneously combust one of those winters while looking through our cabin photos, and this year there’s only three months left.

The Telltale Pocket

We were walking out of Borders after window shopping when I saw it -- the most beautiful bookmark in the world. It was shiny and in 3 dimensions. When I moved my head, the shiny fish swam with and at me. My six year old self was filled with awe, and a need to show this bookmark to everyone I knew. I turned around. “Mom, can we get that bookmark? The fish one? It’s only $2.50.” “No, we don’t need it and we’ll be late to the movie.”

I was torn. I wanted that bookmark so badly, no, I convinced myself I needed it. At that moment it was (next to The Lion King) the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. Without thinking things through at all I made my decision. I darted towards the circular shelf with the bookmarks and pulled the fish one into my pocket. For a moment I felt triumph; no one had noticed. But then, immediately, I was crushed with guilt. To this day I don’t think I’ve ever felt so guilty as I did then. It was like I had betrayed everyone I ever knew. Even people I didn’t know, like Moses, who was crying and holding out the Ten Commandments we learned about in Hebrew School last week. But in my mind it was too late; I had committed a crime, and wretched criminal that I was, I had to stick with my decision and save what remained of my honor.

I somehow left the store without any alarms going off, and we went to the movie and no one was the wiser. Or so I thought. Apparently I was clutching the fish bookmark in my pocket with all my strength and as conspicuously as possible. My mother asked me several times what I was holding, but I just said “Nothing” or “I just like my hands in my pockets” (even though the other one was swinging by my side). I honestly don’t remember the movie at all; I was sweating, waiting for a lightning bolt from somewhere, and clutching the bookmark as though my life depended on it. “Thou shalt not steal” kept running through my mind, and I wanted to fix it and pretend this never happened, but how could I get back to Borders? Apparently I was acting weird throughout the movie, and mom noticed. When we left she demanded to see what was in my pocket. I literally thought I was going to die right then and there.

Instead she saw the fish bookmark, realized what I had done, and talked with me seriously about how stealing was wrong and I should never do it again. I found this far worse than yelling and a punishment, because I felt like I had let down my mom and our entire family honor and reputation (I had a tendency to blow things way out of proportion when I was younger). My punishment was to walk back into Borders and return the bookmark to the store and apologize to the clerk. I remember nothing of the return because I think I literally repressed the memory. It was only later that my mom told me she and my dad laughed about this event for hours. My mom was a prosecutor for ten years, and she said I looked guiltier than any of the murderers she’d convicted.

While my career as a professional thief was over, I had learned valuable lessons beyond the fact that I should never go into the intelligence services. The experience gave me something concrete to base my moral compass on, and really hammered home how stealing was wrong, even when “It’s only $2.50” and no one notices.  All in all, it was just really embarrassing and I’m glad it’s over.

Would You Mind If Your Family Blogged About You?

Largely it depends what they blog about. Are they discussing my present self, or me when I was a child? As it happens, my parents are professors and occasionally mention me in their classes, so I’ve grappled with this question before. They usually tell tales of the stunts my brother and I pulled when we were younger. Sometimes these stories even pertain to the class material. For example, when I was eight and my brother Benjamin was eleven, my parents got a miniature “safe” to guard the Halloween candy. The small box was complete with a set of buttons to open the door. Ben and I tried various methods to crack the code. He hid a camera in the room to try and capture the code, but it was blocked by angles every time. Eventually I realized that each button had its own tone, and I listened to the code input until I figured out what it was. It turns out there is an actual criminal who used the same method, which now causes all buttons to have the same tone when pressed.

Those stories don’t bother me; they happened a long time ago, and I (mostly) trust my parents not to say anything embarrassing about me. When something new happens that my parents want to share with their class -- perhaps Ben or I made a noteworthy snarky comment -- they check with us to make sure that we’re ok with it, which I appreciate. A system of checks and balances, no?

Nonetheless, blogging is something different. A class of students may soon forget the tale they heard, but a blog is far more permanent. Even if my parents took down a post or edited it, someone could already have read it and screen-shotted it. To be fair, what my parents would post on that blog would probably be innocuous, but I’d still rather not have my baby photos posted on the internet -- those would be among the first things, I’m sure. “It’s only our profile picture, Miriam! I didn’t post any other pictures. Please, this is such a great photo of you!!” “This was taken right after I was born it is not a good photo!” …..Maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but similar things have happened.

It also bugs me a little that my mom would probably still write about me as though I were a little kid. The other day she was talking to a stranger and referred to me as “her little girl” – read 5 years old – and my brother had to mention I was sixteen. I understand that she’s just being sentimental, but people have mistaken me for younger then I am for a long time. It wasn’t until this year really that I looked my age. For example, when I was twelve people thought I was eight. It put everyone off a little bit to see someone who looks eight use “parsimonious” as an adjective, I am told. It hurt when everywhere I went people asked me if I was old enough to do this or that, or if I really belonged in this class, and wouldn’t I like to check out a children’s book instead of Pancho Villa: A Biography. Thus it especially annoys me to still be referred to as a young child. But overall, as long as I could edit what my parents posted beforehand, I’d be all right with a blog.

My Grandfather the Atheist and his beloved Holy Book: How do I make Sense of this?

What possessions does my family treasure? Treasure is a strong word, with powerful emotional connotations. For me, treasure is not only something cherished, it is an object that has some quality that makes it rare and irreplaceable. As I think is the case with most people, my family treasures objects from our past, objects that are seen as their heritage. The item that instantly came to my mind was my great-grandfather Leo’s tanakh.

“Tanakh” is an acronym composed of the first letter of Judaism’s divisions of the Old Testament. It comes from “Teaching” (Torah), “Prophets” (Nevi’im), and “Writings” (Ketuvim). A tanakh is an extremely common book, just like the Bible; they’re everywhere. So what makes ours special? To begin with, Leo’s tanakh is incredibly old -- well over 100 years. It’s very small -- about 5” by 7” -- but very thick; I can hardly hold it in one hand. Leo’s tanakh also has that Vogue mystical book look: dark yellowing pages, that beloved musty smell, warped pages from water exposure, peeling brown covers missing small chunks around the edges. And of course the biggest appeal of them all: it’s written in a language I can’t read and don’t (yet) understand. This is Indiana Jones level for a six year old, and I still have a reverence for the tanakh today.

Yet when my family discovered the book, our first emotion was surprise that Leo had a tanakh in the first place -- nevermind one that he brought with him everywhere. As a committed atheist and Communist, we would never have expected him to carry a religious book. Why did Leo keep the book with him? It’s a question I pondered a lot out of simple curiosity when I was younger. Now the question resonates more as I’m making important life decisions, such as what colleges I want to go to, and what I’m looking for there. These concerns are quite ordinary and far removed from ancient Jewish texts of the Old World. But in making these decisions I’ve been thinking a lot about how Judaism fits into my life right now, how I want it to work in the future, and how important a factor it is to me in the college search. For example, Notre Dame is a great school, 18 on the national list. On the other hand, 89% of the students are Christian. I need to decide how much statistics like these mean to me, and how much they will influence my decisions.

For both Leo and I, our schools and our Jewish identity were linked. It turns out that Leo got his tanakh when he was three years old (around 1898) on his first day of cheyder, a religious school that all Jewish boys went to. When Leo was fifteen -- younger than we are currently -- he saw the Romanian peasant uprising brutally beaten down by the monarchy, a sight that turned him into a revolutionary and an atheist. He then left the religious school to work in his father’s woodshop, a choice that hurt his father, who was a learned man and bible scholar, and wanted Leo to become a rabbi. Instead, Leo became a historian. Although he wasn’t religious, he still loved the tanakh, and occasionally read the Prophets. This book stayed with him his entire life, from his journey to Austria as a young man, his midnight flight from Berlin to Prague after Hitler took power, his years in the US, then Mexico, then Israel, and then his return to Austria after World War II -- another decision I have spent a long time trying to understand.

Leo traveled the entire world, and during all this time kept with him the tanakh he received when he was three, and didn’t believe in. His son, Friedrich, also carried the tanakh when he grew up, despite being an atheist. For a long time I wondered about Leo’s attachment to the tanakh. How could he treasure something so much that he did not believe in? And then I started asking myself questions. Why is reading from the Torah important to me, and why do I love Shabbat services, even though I don’t believe everything they say? I think that for both Leo and I, these practices formed a link to the past (albeit a rather imagined/recreated “past” for me), and were our way of staying connected with the Jewish tradition. The sense of community and history we revisit through these practices outweighs the practical teachings themselves. We may neither of us believe in God, but as the saying goes, we believe in the Jewish people.

PS: Here are some photos:
 

Take me Back to Paradise City

The time in my life that I would like to revisit would be when we lived in NYC. When was in 5th grade, 2009-2010, my family lived in New York since my parents had gotten one-year teaching offers at NYU. It was the best year of my life so far, thanks to a range of different factors. Some of the biggest influences came from my friends. For starters, I was shocked by the fact that I had friends. The last few times I had changed schools it hadn’t worked out that way. I was also astonished that I had made friends so quickly. Within a record-breaking two months the four of us had formed a band and chosen names from our favorite fantasy series. From then on we were literally inseparable.

We all loved books and were constantly talking about what we had read or what the others should read. One of my friends knew the manager of a local bookstore, and he gave her the manuscripts of unpublished books to read, which she shared with me. My friends also knew all the cool places for 5th graders to go in New York: bookstores, Central Park, the one really good ice cream store, Chelsea market, and so forth. My best friend, Julia, also loved horses and took me to the stables a few times, so I could watch her lessons.

Also, I was literally closer to my family. My grandparents, Jana and Friedrich, lived three blocks away, and my dad’s parents, Grandma Lorraine and Grandpa Leonard, were an hour’s train ride from NYC in Westchester. I usually visited them on weekends, a throwback of sorts to when we lived in Chicago. At Jana and Friedrich’s, we played Scrabble and I practiced my (spoken) German with them. My grandfather also told me fascinating stories about Pancho Villa and the Mexican revolution, a subject he specialized on as a professor of Latin American history. In Westchester Grandma Lorraine would show me her backyard and house plants. She has an amazing green thumb; she grew an ENORMOUS jade plant from a single leaf. I would watch TV - cable TV - with Grandpa Leonard. What we watched was quite varied, anything from sports games, Broadway, or opera, but I always had fun. I especially loved listening to Grandpa’s jokes throughout the program.

And then there was Saturday, also known as “family day.” Every week we found something to do together, which is not hard in NYC. We went bike riding, visited museums, took part in walking tours, saw movies, and once mom and I got to see the opera Don Giovanni at the Met itself!

All in all, I really miss New York City, and occasionally the simplicity of 5th grade life, but mostly I miss the closeness I had with my family, my grandparents, and my friends. During that year, I gained a lot of friends. It was something that I struggled with before then, and has helped develop more relationships now.  But at the time it was a huge surprise to discover that I could make friends, and that people beyond my family actually liked me. I also found everything in NYC exciting and new, doubly so with friends. I remember the year as a kind of bildungsroman of how to make friends, and what to do once one has them.

Now a Non Fiction Writing Blog

Hello, I'm just letting you all know that this blog is no longer for the 20th century novel but for non fiction writing.