Young Man-ners

The truth is I usually have no idea what I intend to blog about until I sit down at my computer and start to compose. Today’s topic, though, has been on my mind for quite some time: Manners. In particular, the manners of young men.

I do not profess to be the doyen on all things proper, even though I still send thank you notes, chew gum in private, and curse only before my nearest and dearest friends. But one rudeness that ticks me is when a person fails to hold open a door for someone else.

I may be going out on a limb here but I think many of us who began life reading books made of paper (even as we refuse to imagine life without our smartphones) like to lament that kids today are so wrapped up in technology that they have forgotten how to intuit a smile, engage in eye contact, or communicate using full sentences – hell, forget the full sentences, we’d settle for full words.

But I am here to tell you that no amount of preoccupation with digital advancements has made them ignorant of something I assume you will agree is important. And that’s the exhibition of good manners.

I teach freshman English at a local college. My office and my classrooms are situated in two separate buildings connected by a concrete walkway. I am always shuttling between the two, carrying my briefcase, purse, water, coffee, and a pile of bluebooks (Yes, stop gasping. Most colleges still use blue books). And with little, if any exception, the male students always hold the door for me. That includes the kid who is proudly displaying Old Navy boxers, or is inked and pierced in spades, or exhibits some other cool factor. If he gets a glimpse of me he will hold the door open; an effort that appears to be second nature to him.

This act of politeness goes a long way in my book.

So much so that when I grade his next in-class essay, I just might overlook his use of an ampersand rather than the word “and.”

Filed under: News,Relationships,Sons,writing
by Ellie Fisher
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19
Nov
2013

Happy Birthday Charlie

Today would have been my husband’s 66th birthday. That’s 24 birthdays that I have not been able to wish him “all my love forever” or “here’s to another wonderful year together.”

Instead I call my kids – now closer to the age their father passed away than to the ages they were when he did – and say with humor, “A corona at lunch today in honor of Daddy!”

This is not meant to be maudlin, but a celebration of one of the finest men to have ever lived. I may refer to Charles A. Fisher III in my writings, but I rarely discuss him in any intimate detail. I just assume no one really cares other than me, my children, my family – my mom in particular – my very, very close friends, and scores of men and women whose lives he touched as a teacher, as a marine fire crew chief in Vietnam, as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, and as a partner in a Philadelphia law firm.

Charlie Fisher: Fish to his closest friends; Buddy to me; Chuck to his fraternity brothers who knew how much he hated that moniker. A man with integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, compassion and wit. How lucky we all were to have him grace our lives.

Thank you dear readers for indulging me.

Now go get that lime and join me in a toast!

Filed under: Daughters,Events,Fathers and Daughters,Mothers,Mothers-in-Law,News,Relationships,Sons
by Ellie Fisher
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16
Oct
2013

Save the Nursery Rhyme!

Currently, there are no children in my house either old enough or young enough for nursery rhymes, yet children’s books too numerous to count fill the bottom shelves of my bookcase. So imagine my distress when I read an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that parents are no longer reading nursery rhymes to their children.

“Too scary,” began the comments from parents.

“Annoying”

“Too rhymey.” (No, really?)

Maybe I am alone in my thinking but knowing Humpty Dumpty fell down, broke his crown and all the king’s men couldn’t do a damn thing about it, really didn’t ruin my childhood, or my children’s.

For that matter, regardless of Jack’s weak-footing, I never feared I would go tumbling down and break my crown.

And Little Miss Muffet? I honestly believe if someone suffers from arachnophobia, it has little to do with her particular case.

Nursery rhymes are a part of childhood and are no more “violent,” (one parent’s description, not mine) than television, movies, the Internet, video games, Halloween, coal in your stocking, or, actual reality. We can shield our children as best we can from the horrors of life, but even they can distinguish the difference between the death of “Cock Robin” and the death of a loved one.

Nursery rhymes are merely nonsensical songs to them, ones they can feel pride in memorizing. It’s the very fact that they are “rhymey” that makes them easy to remember. “Georgie Porgie,” “Goosey Goosey Gander,” “Sticks and Stones,” at an early age, titles such as these help us form speech, sing, recognize rhyming, and connect to others who know the exact same words.

Fine, you may choose not to read: “Now I lay me down to sleep…If I shall die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take.” (As my daughter just told me: “Mom, some nursery rhymes ARE actually disturbing.”)

But “Jack Sprat?” He couldn’t eat fat. His wife couldn’t eat lean. So between the two of them they licked the plate clean. Hmmm. A valuable lesson on cholesterol, obesity, nutrition, waste, sustainability, recycling, marriage, compromise, health, sharing, and so on.

Growing up I was never upset by the old woman who had so many children, she didn’t know what to do so she gave them some broth without any bread and then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed. Well, I suppose I may have been if I knew any families living in shoes. But I didn’t.

If we as parents and grandparents stop sharing nursery rhymes great literature may not be far behind. Because as scary as any nursery rhyme may be, none is more so than the classic tales of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” or Roald Dahl’s “The Witches.”

And I’m fairly certain that if we stop introducing the works of such literary geniuses to our children, we’re bound to feel pretty awful.

Even worse, I believe, than those three little kittens who lost their mittens.

Filed under: Daughters,Events,Fathers and Daughters,Grandparents,Mothers,Relationships,Single Fathers,Single Mothers,Sons,writing
by Ellie Fisher
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23
Sep
2013

Good Ole Summertime

Summer is so over.

Even if the temperatures continue to hover in the eighties and even though the Autumn equinox doesn’t arrive until September 22, you and I both know when we talk about summer now it’s in the terms of “next.”

This occurs because in 1894 the United States designated the first Monday in September to honor the American worker. Labor Day was supposed to be a day of parades and speeches that recognized the contributions and sacrifices of workers, but its placement on the calendar imbued it with even more importance. It is the day that delineates between the end of summer fun and the beginning of school/work drudgery. (Thank you to the retail industry for softening the blow a teensy bit.)

It places powerful demands on us. Such as:

You have to stop wearing white. Okay, you don’t have to, but I do. It’s been ingrained in me since I was old enough to actually care what I wore to school.

You have to stop cutting vegetables for gazpacho and start slicing store-bought root vegetables for hot soup. Again, you can eat cold soup now that Labor Day has passed, but I can’t. (And I assure you that this has nothing to do with my pathetic homegrown crop of tomatoes. Or should I say tomato?).

You have to rip out those pastel pink impatiens and begonias just when they’ve filled out and look gorgeous, and replace them with mums. Again, you don’t have to, but I do. Pink annuals clash with the mums’ rich earthy tones of rust and orange.

Every year I tell myself I will throw caution to the wind and treat Labor Day solely for the purpose our forefathers had intended. I WILL wear white. I WILL eat cold soup. I WILL let my pretty annuals be killed off by the first frost and not die by my hand.

I WILL.

Right after I break the lock on my swim club’s chain link fence and take a quick dip. Who shuts down a pool when it’s still 85 degrees?

Filed under: Events,News
by Ellie Fisher
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09
Sep
2013

Helen Thomas: My Fellow Unipresser

I cut my teeth in journalism as a Unipresser. Wire service reporters and editors that worked for United Press International including my idol, Walter Cronkite, were known as Unipressers. A few days ago one of the greatest and most famous Unipressers died. Helen Thomas was 92.

Most people knew Helen Thomas as that diminutive lady who sat in the front row at every White House press conference during the past 10 presidencies. That’s TEN! She served as the senior White House correspondent from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama. In that role, she had the distinct honor of getting the last word in by ending every news conference with: “Thank You, Mr. President.”

When I went to work as a reporter for UPI at the age of 22, Helen was the one Unipresser who made my colleagues the most proud (Cronkite had already jumped ship to television). Our lone competitor back then was the AP. But we had Helen Thomas. She was smart, confident, unpretentious and completely unaffected by her own prestige.

Particularly as a woman in a field that when I began was predominately male, I looked to Helen Thomas as a trailblazer. She not only was the first woman to serve as a White House bureau chief for a wire service she was also the first female officer of the National Press Club, the White House Correspondents Association and the Gridiron Club. Think of those institutions as the National Honor Society, and then some.

Occasionally, I covered stories with her. As a reporter in Philadelphia, I wrote many of the sidebars and color pieces when the president came to town. As a bureau chief in Trenton and later as the New Jersey state editor, I sometimes accompanied Helen to the political conventions and campaign stops. Again, she was the star. I was along for the human interest.

In 1999, I attended a signing of her book, “Front Row at the White House.” Despite pushing eighty, her mind was still as brilliant and her remarks as savvy as they had been when I first met her in the mid-1970s. Sadly, we both commented on how journalism – particularly the print media – had changed. UPI itself had been bought and sold so many times it no longer resembled the powerful organization for which we had once worked.

Before I sat down to write this blog, I looked for my copy of the book Helen had signed for me. Though it had been more than a dozen years, I could still recall her inscription even before reading it again.

She wrote: “To Ellie. With my very best wishes to a fellow Unipresser. And fondest memories of what was once the newspaper business. Fondly, Helen Thomas.”

One more loss in the world of print journalism.

Filed under: Events,News,Relationships,writing
by Ellie Fisher
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24
Jul
2013
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