Paper Clips

April 25 was Yom Hashoah which is a day dedicated to remembering the victims of the holocaust and honoring the survivors.

In honor of the day, I saw an emotional movie that I will never forget. It is titled "Paper Clips." This real-life documentary was shown on HBO this week and is also available on DVD. It began as a lesson about prejudice. What happened next was a miracle. Because the movie is about middle school children, it is a perfect venue for teaching the Holocaust to children. Check out the details on line. Truly amazing.

This is copied from the movie website:

Whitwell, TN is a small, rural community of less than two thousand people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Its citizens are almost exclusively white and Christian. In 1998, the children of Whitwell Middle School took on an inspiring project, launched out of their principal's desire to help her students open their eyes to the diversity of the world beyond their insulated valley. What happened would change the students, their teachers, their families and the entire town forever… and eventually open hearts and minds around the world.

PAPER CLIPS is the moving and inspiring documentary film that captures how these students responded to lessons about the Holocaust-with a promise to honor every lost soul by collecting one paper clip for each individual exterminated by the Nazis. Despite the fact that they had previously been unaware of and unfamiliar with the Holocaust, their dedication was absolute. Their plan was simple but profound. The amazing result, a memorial railcar filled with 11 million paper clips (representing 6 million Jews and 5 million gypsies, homosexuals and other victims of the Holocaust) which stands permanently in their schoolyard, is an unforgettable lesson of how a committed group of children and educators can change the world one classroom at a time.

Group Hug

How about a group hug, everyone? I think we all need one.

On a lighter note, have you seen this one?

Instead of the birds and the bees, it's the bits and the bytes:

Bobby says: Daddy, how was I born?
Dad says : Ah, my son, I guess one day you will need to find out anyway! Well, you see your Mom and I first got together in a chat room on AOL. Then I set up a date via e-mail with your mom and after a while we met at a cyber-cafe. We chatted many times and found we had shared interests in clicking mouses and seeing each other's laptops and I was quite taken by your mother's floppies.
One night we sneaked into a secluded room, where your mother agreed to a download from my hard drive. As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of us had used a firewall, and since it was too late to hit the delete button, there wasn't time to soft boot and we stayed connected...and nine months later a blessed little Pop-Up appeared and said: You've Got Male!

Here's a couple more that I like:

Tech support: What's on your monitor now, ma'am?Customer: A teddy bear my boyfriend bought for me in the supermarket.

Tech support: What kind of computer do you have?Female customer: A white one...

Customer: I have a huge problem. A friend has placed a screen saver on my computer, but every time I move the mouse, it disappears.

A woman customer called the help desk with a problem with her printer. Tech support: Are you running it under Windows? Customer: "No, my desk is next to the door, but that is a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window, and his printer is working fine."

6 Weird Things

Swami tagged me over on her blog.

Here are the rules:
1. Reveal six weird facts/things/habits about yourself and then tag six people.
2. Leave a "You're Tagged!" comment to let the people you have tagged know they have to reveal six things (or the entire blogosphere will explode and it will be their fault).
3. Leave a comment HERE to let me know when you have completed your mission.

1. Swami's vomiting on an international border reminded me of this one. I threw trash over the Israel/Egypt border, from Israel to Egypt, on purpose.
2. I don't like veggies. I don't eat veggies. I also don't like basil, rosemary, or oregano. Name an item; I probably don't eat it.
3. I backpacked through Europe for two months.
4. I was engaged at the age of 16. I was widowed at the age of 28.
5. I am inundated with too much paper around the house. I am possessed by paper.
6. I once had a St. Bernard and a pet snake. The cat would sit on a chair to watch the snake eat the mouse. If the snake was shedding and not in the mood to eat, we had to keep the mouse in another cage. The cat would sit on a chair to watch the mouse until the snake was ready to eat it.

I tag:
1. Nutzy
2. Vols
3. Lasann
4. CSTL
5. CQ
6. Silvergirl
I'm tagging

Passover and Easter Greetings

Enough hilarity. Here, have some gefilte fish, matzo, and Easter supper ham. What are you doing for the Spring holidays? Every time we sang a Passover song last night, a couple of the people around the table decided they were Randy, Paula, and Simon and rated our singing. We were a little pitchy, Dawg.

Piano Man

Great concert! Billy Joel played for 2 1/2 hours (27 songs) without a break. When one of his beer-belly crew members in baggy shorts came on stage to sing AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," we thought Billy would take a break. But, no...he played back-up on guitar!

There were 9 performers on stage. I hadn't realized how prominent the saxophone was in so many of his songs. The sax and trumpet players were fantastic! The piano rotated a few times so Billy could face different segments of the audience.

A small teleprompter was right on top of the piano and keyboards so Billy wouldn't forget the words. He even used it for his "ad-lib" comments between songs. One interesting note is that for "We Didn't Start the Fire," he wasn't at the piano. He was at the microphone, and had his eyes closed the whole time. I don't think he used a teleprompter when standing at the mike on stage, but I'm not sure. It sure looked like his eyes were closed, and not looking downward at words.

For his 2 encores, he played with the audience. He'd pretend to leave the stage, then turn around back to the piano. Each time he retreated, the audience booed, when he approached the piano, they cheered. It was funny. Boo-yay, boo-yay, boo-yay, etc.

For "Good Night Saigon," 6 soldiers were on stage and everybody cheered for them each time the lights shined on them.

One of the ushers gave us a copy of the playlist. It was sort of like the East Coast Update spoiler thread, knowing in advance what would happen. Loved it!

Go Blog Urself

Hey Hey, look where I went. We went to a taping of the Tonight Show. Jay's guests were Rosie O'Donnell and an 8-year old inventor. The musical group was Fall Out Boy who performed their huge (?? from Puffy) hit "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me'" from their CD, Under The Cork Tree.

Rosie gave the audience these "go blog yourself" shirts. My size XL 46-48 will look great on one of the Biggest Loser contestants pre-weight loss.

The man who sat next to me was a dead-ringer look-alike for Jay Leno. I couldn't stop glancing over his way. I thought that maybe he was a "plant" and the cameras would pan over to him. But it was never mentioned so perhaps nobody from the show noticed him. And tonight?? Billy Joel, live, in concert!

Warning

Uh, what's the date of this post?