I know almost nothing about Yiddish (except all the common words that have made it into vernacular English), but from my knowledge of German, I would guess that the translation is defective. The last word (“zikh“) is almost certainly a cognate to the reflexive German pronoun “sich“, so she’s “washing herself” (i.e., “taking a shower”), rather than just doing her “hair”. Given that mistake, I wouldn’t trust anything else (especially not “bobe”), unless it can be independently confirmed (preferably from the Hebrew letters in the first line).
P.S. However: I think the intended meaning is clear, along the lines of: “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.“
But it’s not like the grandmother can do anything about the land burning — at least Nero was Emperor! And if the land is burning, I could think of worse places to be than the bath, immersed in water…
I think this proverb suffers from the same disease that permeated The West Wing: POTUS has fallen off a bicycle! Everybody come in to the office, ASAP! We need to stand around talking! Especially you, assistant speech writer!
(I think it actually got even worse in a successor show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which was about an SNL type show, and there was some stupid drama about a kidnapping or something, and the major characters (who are supposed to be drug addled comedians, remember) are all sacrificing their lives by remaining in the studio to sit around watching TV feeds about the kidnapping… I’m wringing my hands till they bleed, isn’t that enough?! I remember this show came out at the same time as 30 Rock, and all the pundits were betting on this show being the clear winner — HA HA!)
@Kilby: I can’t read Hebrew, but “bobe” is probably okay. It’s usually transliterated “bubbe” and is obviously cognate with the Slavic “baba” like in Baba Yaga. And maybe the verb is only used for washing the hair?
The wise Grandma has seen it all. She doesn’t panic over current events. In fact, she prepares herself for tomorrow. For she knows that this, too, shall pass.
This is fine.
“But it’s not like the grandmother can do anything about the land burning”
Well, she could recognise the emergency that’s happening all around her and leave. Also, a bathroom is not a great place in a fire. The water might prevent you from getting burned, but you’re trapped in a small room and will likely die from asphyxiation.
I’m with Kilby. I think this is pretty clear too: It’s pointing out the foolishness of doing nothing relevant while an emergency is taking place.
Looking it up — “tsvog” literally means “to wash”, but is generally used to mean “washing the head” or “washing hair”, with words like “shvenk” meaning “to wash” more generally. So, yes, it could mean “Bubbe is taking a shower”, but “Bubbe is washing her hair” is better.
A bit more that I get from the proverb: besides the “this is fine” thing, another part of it is that “everything is going to heck, and the established generation is ignoring it.” So, another approximate modern translation of another part of this proverb might be “ok boomer.”
So Stan, I’d like to dig a little deeper: I get your point, there’s an emergency, DO something, but I want to push back with, do WHAT? Sometimes there’s nothing you can do, and I maintain that the wise man, in those times, doesn’t get worked up about the nothing he can’t do — save your strength, if you will, for when you CAN do something. Gramma is chosen in this proverb, because (yeah, sexist, ageist, etc., I know) she is of the family one of the more useless members (sexist, because probably grampa is more useless, but, hey, he’s a man, you know!) Maybe a newborn is more useless, but the newborn isn’t plagued by cognition of the events around him and his powerlessness to act, whereas gramma probably is, unless she’s senile… So yeah, the land is burning, there’s nothing I can do about it other that fret uselessly, so why not get on with life, be prepared for when I might actually be able to do something? That’s wisdom there.
Yep, that’s me, complete with cuppa coffee.
I like the idea of meeting Armageddon with freshly-washed hair, myself. Maybe have a mani/pedi, too.
Kilby: I don’t know Yiddish (or German), but I wouldn’t deem translating “washing herself” as “washing her hair” as defective. It seems more translating to get the intent across, rather than word-for-word. “Washing your hair” is borderline idiomatic in English for indicating that the person is doing something unimportant – e.g. a woman who wants to give a clearly poor excuse for not going out with someone says that she needs to wash her hair (in fiction, at least; not sure how much that actually gets used in practice).
While I get the point of those who say that there’s nothing grandma can do anyway, so she might as well wash her hair, this is unlikely to be the intent of the proverb.
larK: Well, as Stan said, even if the land is burning everywhere, it’s better to be outside than in an enclosed space.
Are you claiming that the intended meaning of the proverb is that grandma is wise, or are you saying that you disagree with the intended meaning of the proverb?
Agree with Kilby. Another version: Deck chairs on the Titanic.
Winter Wallaby: I don’t know, maybe both? Can a proverb have an intended meaning? Who’s the definitive source? We learned yesterday that gunsel means something different than we all thought it meant. I am fine with having different interpretations of the same proverb, even having different people use the same proverb to mean opposite meanings. Maybe someone intended to encourage action, and someone else saw it as a perfect example of the uselessness of such action, so yeah, it’s both. You tell me to get up and do something by trying to shame me comparing me to gramma; I point out the pointlessness of trying to do something using your exact same metaphor. If my meaning wins out in the hearts and minds of listeners, soon the popular understanding of the metaphor will change to my meaning. (and maybe it had my meaning originally, but the hearts and minds were swayed to the “do something” school…)
The word “prodigal” has changed meanings because of how it was used in a proverb, and it wasn’t even the point of the proverb…
I think probably most proverbs are probably like those self-antonym words we have discussed.
Ha, I just read the comment after the one I was responding to, and I think it totally proves my point! Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is very much in my interpretation, ie: there’s nothing you can do, so why waste your time. It also makes me question which is the popular understanding of “Fiddle while Rome burns”?
larK: A proverb can have an intended meaning if people in that culture consistently use it a certain way.
With respect, it seems to me that you’re just being contrarian in claiming a different understanding of those English proverbs proves your point. In our culture, “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” is understood to mean “dealing with a crisis in a bad way that is pointless,” not “doing something perfectly reasonable.” I disagree with your analysis of those situations – there are better actions for a leader to take than fiddling while an area they’re responsible for is on fire – but I also don’t see the need to debate that analysis because it’s somewhat besides the point. The point is that in our culture, if you’re at a meeting, and you respond to someone’s proposal by saying “this is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” everyone will understand that this is a severe criticism of their plan. You could follow it up with a long explanation about how you’re not criticizing it at all, because you mean something different than everyone else by that phrase, but that’s just a confusing way of imposing your incorrect English usage on everyone else. You might as well say that their plan is a piece of “sh-t,” and then insist that this is a compliment because unlike other English speakers, when you call something “sh-t,” you’re thinking about how it’s a useful fertilizer for growing things.
I do think that if large numbers of English speakers use proverbs in different ways, the proverb can have different meanings, and even be self-antonymic. But an individual can’t just rewrite our shared understanding of words or proverbs on their own.
. . . or maybe those on the Titanic who knew there was nothing to be done wanted to be comfortable.
Lark: Yea, you have some very good points. I can see where you’re coming from, and I like your line of thinking.
However, instead of venerating the wisdom of the ages, I chose to see it as a mockery of the establishment. She’s not taking the most sensible action for a person in her position: fleeing. Although she should have enough wisdom being in her position in life, she attends to trivial, perhaps vain, pursuits. I think this can be applied more generally to establishment figures.
I agree with you, and think you misunderstand me. I think the original proverb that CIDUBill asked about is probably meant as a “don’t just sit there, do something!” admonishment, certainly the way it is presented above, but that that might just be the bias of whoever did that graphic; it’s a yiddish proverb, and I don’t know how they meant it, but to ME, even if it IS meant that way, I see it as a perfect self rebuttal to that attitude. OK, so, WHAT should gramma be doing, exactly?
As for the “Rearranging Deckchairs on the Titanic”, that was Phil Smith agreeing with Kilby’s interpretation that the yiddish saying must mean something like “Nero fiddled while Rome burned”. I know what rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic means, I am a native English speaker, I am not trying to assign any unconventional meaning to that phrase — however, THAT phrase is NOT an admonishment to do something, it is instead pointing out the pointlessness of a particular action in the face of a greater happening — so how does this affect the understanding of the yiddish grandmother proverb? If the grandmother washing her hair is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, then it means gramma was trying to do something about the burning land, only it was the wrong thing. Which is totally different: don’t do something useless vs. don’t just sit there doing nothing. Which then brings in the Nero quote: what does IT mean? I think it’s assumed that Nero, being emperor, could have done something; also, there’s wide understanding that he was culpable for the fire — fiddling while Rome burns has a certain element of trying to escape the consequences of your actions, or at least your responsibilities. Is gramma responsible for the land burning in the yiddish proverb? I don’t think so, but a few comments here DID raise the issue of culpability of the previous generation, and their inaction now. So a THIRD possible meaning. (Possible Meaning #1: Don’t just go on as normal, do something! Possible Meaning #2: Don’t do a useless thing in the face of an emergency! Possible Meaning #3: Ah, yeah, typical, cause all the problems, and then don’t do anything to fix them!)
Regardless of the exact meaning, the structure of the proverb is such that it assumes (begs) a lacking positive action: what is it that is assumed that gramma should be doing? And is there any irony in that assumed action? Is the fact that it’s gramma relevant to the potential irony, or is it meant earnestly? And is the intent an action at all, or just expression of exasperation? What is this proverb trying to tell its listener? You may think it’s obvious, but your obvious might be the exact opposite of someone else’s obvious. I for one don’t know what the intent is.
Notice that Grandma is literally in a bubble. To me the intent of the meme at least is clear- some people are oblivious (intentionally or not) to the disaster going on around them
@BtWW: Wow, that graphic was so weird I hadn’t even realized what it was. Bubbe in a bubble, yeah. So maybe you’ve got it.
I see where confusion entered: in my hasty follow up comment I said, “Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is very much in my interpretation, ie: there’s nothing you can do, so why waste your time.” I did NOT mean that what followed was my interpretation of what “Rearranging Deck chairs on the Titanic” meant; I meant that the meaning of the Titanic expression lent support to my interpretation of the Yiddish proverb, ie: there’s nothing you can do, so why waste your time. To be clear: that is not my interpretation of what “rearrange deckchairs on the Titanic” means, it is my interpretation of what the Yiddish Proverb under discussion means. (and after all this analysis, I’m less sure about what it means…) It was poorly and hastily worded, and I can see where it was misunderstood. Apologies.
@larK: I’m mostly just impressed that folks could be in such disagreement on the Intertubes and not resort to name-calling! Good on all of ya.
1. I (generally) speak and understand Yiddish. The translation is fine, although the word “tzvogt” was unfamiliar to me. The original saying is also one I had never heard.
2. The following website seems to think that the meaning is as Iark’s #1 (“Don’t just go on as normal, do something!”) or as I would word it, “Don’t be oblivious to what is happening around you.”…:
…since it compares it to 2 other Yiddish sayings:
* The roof is on fire and he’s thinking about a canoe.
* The place is on fire and he’s winding his clock.
@Pinny I’m still confused, though. Is grandma washing her hair doing something, or is it going on as normal? I think I’ve lost the plot!
I second that emotion . . .
Re Phil Smith III:
I vote for “going on as normal”.
Another vote for this Yiddish saying meaning that one is ignoring the serious events going on around us:
lark: I don’t think it’s obvious what the intent of the Yiddish proverb was. My point was that we can talk about what the proverb meant to Yiddish speakers independently of whether we think the proverb makes sense, or how we personally would deal with the situation in the proverb. It seems that you already agree with this point (I think?) so I made that point for nothing. :o
Leaving aside what the Yiddish speakers meant, and considering whether the mecahnics of the proverb actually make sense, I see two main possibilities: (1) Literally the entire country is on fire. Well, we’re all going to die very soon, so why waste your time washing your hair? (2) Large portions of the country are on fire, but not every single acre of it. Well, grandma can’t put out all the fires, but she could at least go outside. That’s safer than being in an enclosed building that will likely collapse soon. Either way, I can’t support grandma.
Maybe the “fire” is just overblown current hype of some nature. Grandma is just carrying on because she has seen it all in her long life and knows it is just one phase in many she has experienced. The deck chairs on the Titanic comparison is different, those folks knew their fate was sealed and couldn’t do anything about it. Grandma is just waiting for this latest issue to pass.
John K.: Nothing could have been done to prevent the Titanic from sinking after it hit the iceberg, but a number of the lifeboats were launched with extra space on them. If someone had done a better job organizing the flow into the lifeboats, another 500 people could have been saved. So there were actually better things to do than rearranging deck chairs.
Do you remember the TV movie “The Day After” from 1983? It was a nuclear war panic film and showed the devastation of a small town by a nuclear attack. Everybody has to get out of town FAST! So they all quickly pack and run to the car. But where is Mom? She’s in the bedroom making the beds. Dad has to slap some sense into her.
That’s what I thought of. It must be a TV Trope but I don’t know what it’s called so I couldn’t find it on tvtropes. Anyway, it’s the combination of panic and denial that some TV characters cope with by reverting to their normal routine.
After reading all of the various options discussed above, I think I’d like to withdraw my comparison to Nero @2. I believe the Yiddish proverb is intended to portray the grandmother as wise (or at least pragmatic), rather than foolish. Even if things are going to hell in a handbasket, she’d prefer to look good for the occasion.
I normally find TvTropes quite sensible, but I have great difficulty believing their claim that “The Day After” “literally ended the Cold War.”
@Winter Wallaby, TV Tropes has a very different culture from, say, Wikipedia. One generally doesn’t correct previous posts there except for very clear factual/spelling/usage errors.
“literally ended the Cold War.”
In the real world?! ‘Cause in the fictional world of the movie, yeah, a hot nuclear war does literally end the previous “cold” war…
Anyway, we all know it was David Hasselhof caused the Wall to come down…
If everyone was washing their hair, it would tie up water supply needed to fight the fire.
So Kilby and CIDU Bill, tygalilee had it in the fifth comment?
@Andrea-
I read “On the Beach” in High School and it had a profound psychological effect on me. I would experience periods of depression and anxiety months after reading it.
Which is why I’d never read the book or, even worse for me, watch the movie in today’s fraught world.
@ larK – I’ll give credit where credit is due: Tygalilee’s reading @5 is very close to what I was trying to convey. The difference is very minor: whether the “burning” is really just a tempest in a teapot (thus insignificant and ignorable), or a major world-ending castastrophe (for which the grandmother wants to prepare for and look her best).
P.S. The latter situation reminds me of the idiotic advice given by some mothers in decades past: “Dearest, if you’re going on a trip, make sure to wear clean underwear, because if you have an accident, you don’t want to land in the hospital with dirty underwear on…” — as if the underwear is still going to be clean after one has the $#!+ scared out of them by a serious accident.
@Mitch4- Darn you, another book I have to add to me reading list!
OK Go, This too shall pass
I think this is also the song they use for the marching band in the grassy field video
I read and enjoyed several books by Nevil Shute. Probably best-known was On the Beach, but my favorite was Trustee from the Toolroom. I was a little confused by the title because I had seen some prison movies and thought it said “trusty” , a category of prisoner who were trusted with certain liberties in order to perform jobs and so on.
Yep – just put it on hold at the library.
“On the Beach” suffered from the usual problems of science fiction written by mainstream writers: not knowing when to handwave, and thus spouting nonsense; not equipping his submarines with sonar; etc.
Surprising for a mainstream author, all of his characters were the same. They all reacted pretty much the same way to stress and almost-certain death.
In case you’re having trouble reading between the lines, I do not recommend this book.
I almost forgot No Highway in the Sky, but actually I am not sure I ever read it. The movie however was one of those that got repeated on TV quite a bit, and my family seemed to watch almost annually. (Probably in the era not only before streaming and ubiquitous rental availabilities, but when broadcast TV screenings of movies was less common.)
I remember even as a fussy nerd preteen objecting to the dramatic element of the scientist having figured out a mistake in the metal-stress estimates and seeing that the likely failure time was fast approaching, indeed was “due” now, during the next flight! So the story treats this flight as probably doomed, and builds drama on the suspense. But of course that’s not how probability works.
I still get bothered by contemporary police TV plots where someone recites a statistic about how after (say) 48 hours the likelihood of recovering a missing child drops steeply, and everybody treats it as a specific deadline. Find the missing kid in the next ten minutes, or the 48-hour clock will tick over and they will be lost forever, the distraught family yells at the cops.
The No Highway movie featured an actress named Glynis Johns, whom I didn’t know for anything else, but whose unusual name stuck with me. Just a couple years ago at work, I met a school librarian whose first name is Glynis. Eventually I mentioned to her that the only other person with that name was this actress. And she confirmed that she had indeed been named for the actress, as her mother was a a big fan! But she didn’t know this movie, and it had been for a role in Mary Poppins that her mother swooned.
I remember her as having an unusual look and voice. I think the name is probably more common in Britain than in US.
I’m reading various books (yes, I move from one to the other) on England and WWI and WWII and the Simpsons (the Duke and ‘Duchess’ of Windsor, NOT the eponymous TV show, and there are so many unusual and, perhaps, unique names, no name surprises me anymore.
I used to say, whilst reading some of the names of our students, that mom and/or dad must’ve had alphabet blocks and tossed ’em on the floor to ‘create’ a unique name.
I remember her as having an unusual look and voice.
I saw her onstage back in 1973, and she spoke in a normal voice.
As opposed to Bernadette Peters (whom I also saw both back in the day and again a few years ago), whose breathless little girl voice is decades and decades past its sell-by date.
I thought that WAS her normal voice; same with Bernadette Peters.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I know almost nothing about Yiddish (except all the common words that have made it into vernacular English), but from my knowledge of German, I would guess that the translation is defective. The last word (“zikh“) is almost certainly a cognate to the reflexive German pronoun “sich“, so she’s “washing herself” (i.e., “taking a shower”), rather than just doing her “hair”. Given that mistake, I wouldn’t trust anything else (especially not “bobe”), unless it can be independently confirmed (preferably from the Hebrew letters in the first line).
P.S. However: I think the intended meaning is clear, along the lines of: “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.“
But it’s not like the grandmother can do anything about the land burning — at least Nero was Emperor! And if the land is burning, I could think of worse places to be than the bath, immersed in water…
I think this proverb suffers from the same disease that permeated The West Wing: POTUS has fallen off a bicycle! Everybody come in to the office, ASAP! We need to stand around talking! Especially you, assistant speech writer!
(I think it actually got even worse in a successor show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which was about an SNL type show, and there was some stupid drama about a kidnapping or something, and the major characters (who are supposed to be drug addled comedians, remember) are all sacrificing their lives by remaining in the studio to sit around watching TV feeds about the kidnapping… I’m wringing my hands till they bleed, isn’t that enough?! I remember this show came out at the same time as 30 Rock, and all the pundits were betting on this show being the clear winner — HA HA!)
@Kilby: I can’t read Hebrew, but “bobe” is probably okay. It’s usually transliterated “bubbe” and is obviously cognate with the Slavic “baba” like in Baba Yaga. And maybe the verb is only used for washing the hair?
The wise Grandma has seen it all. She doesn’t panic over current events. In fact, she prepares herself for tomorrow. For she knows that this, too, shall pass.
This is fine.
“But it’s not like the grandmother can do anything about the land burning”
Well, she could recognise the emergency that’s happening all around her and leave. Also, a bathroom is not a great place in a fire. The water might prevent you from getting burned, but you’re trapped in a small room and will likely die from asphyxiation.
I’m with Kilby. I think this is pretty clear too: It’s pointing out the foolishness of doing nothing relevant while an emergency is taking place.
I agree with billytheskink — if someone doesn’t recognize the reference — https://imgur.com/Uubhkr8
Looking it up — “tsvog” literally means “to wash”, but is generally used to mean “washing the head” or “washing hair”, with words like “shvenk” meaning “to wash” more generally. So, yes, it could mean “Bubbe is taking a shower”, but “Bubbe is washing her hair” is better.
A bit more that I get from the proverb: besides the “this is fine” thing, another part of it is that “everything is going to heck, and the established generation is ignoring it.” So, another approximate modern translation of another part of this proverb might be “ok boomer.”
So Stan, I’d like to dig a little deeper: I get your point, there’s an emergency, DO something, but I want to push back with, do WHAT? Sometimes there’s nothing you can do, and I maintain that the wise man, in those times, doesn’t get worked up about the nothing he can’t do — save your strength, if you will, for when you CAN do something. Gramma is chosen in this proverb, because (yeah, sexist, ageist, etc., I know) she is of the family one of the more useless members (sexist, because probably grampa is more useless, but, hey, he’s a man, you know!) Maybe a newborn is more useless, but the newborn isn’t plagued by cognition of the events around him and his powerlessness to act, whereas gramma probably is, unless she’s senile… So yeah, the land is burning, there’s nothing I can do about it other that fret uselessly, so why not get on with life, be prepared for when I might actually be able to do something? That’s wisdom there.
Yep, that’s me, complete with cuppa coffee.
I like the idea of meeting Armageddon with freshly-washed hair, myself. Maybe have a mani/pedi, too.
Kilby: I don’t know Yiddish (or German), but I wouldn’t deem translating “washing herself” as “washing her hair” as defective. It seems more translating to get the intent across, rather than word-for-word. “Washing your hair” is borderline idiomatic in English for indicating that the person is doing something unimportant – e.g. a woman who wants to give a clearly poor excuse for not going out with someone says that she needs to wash her hair (in fiction, at least; not sure how much that actually gets used in practice).
While I get the point of those who say that there’s nothing grandma can do anyway, so she might as well wash her hair, this is unlikely to be the intent of the proverb.
larK: Well, as Stan said, even if the land is burning everywhere, it’s better to be outside than in an enclosed space.
Are you claiming that the intended meaning of the proverb is that grandma is wise, or are you saying that you disagree with the intended meaning of the proverb?
Agree with Kilby. Another version: Deck chairs on the Titanic.
Winter Wallaby: I don’t know, maybe both? Can a proverb have an intended meaning? Who’s the definitive source? We learned yesterday that gunsel means something different than we all thought it meant. I am fine with having different interpretations of the same proverb, even having different people use the same proverb to mean opposite meanings. Maybe someone intended to encourage action, and someone else saw it as a perfect example of the uselessness of such action, so yeah, it’s both. You tell me to get up and do something by trying to shame me comparing me to gramma; I point out the pointlessness of trying to do something using your exact same metaphor. If my meaning wins out in the hearts and minds of listeners, soon the popular understanding of the metaphor will change to my meaning. (and maybe it had my meaning originally, but the hearts and minds were swayed to the “do something” school…)
The word “prodigal” has changed meanings because of how it was used in a proverb, and it wasn’t even the point of the proverb…
I think probably most proverbs are probably like those self-antonym words we have discussed.
Ha, I just read the comment after the one I was responding to, and I think it totally proves my point! Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is very much in my interpretation, ie: there’s nothing you can do, so why waste your time. It also makes me question which is the popular understanding of “Fiddle while Rome burns”?
larK: A proverb can have an intended meaning if people in that culture consistently use it a certain way.
With respect, it seems to me that you’re just being contrarian in claiming a different understanding of those English proverbs proves your point. In our culture, “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” is understood to mean “dealing with a crisis in a bad way that is pointless,” not “doing something perfectly reasonable.” I disagree with your analysis of those situations – there are better actions for a leader to take than fiddling while an area they’re responsible for is on fire – but I also don’t see the need to debate that analysis because it’s somewhat besides the point. The point is that in our culture, if you’re at a meeting, and you respond to someone’s proposal by saying “this is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” everyone will understand that this is a severe criticism of their plan. You could follow it up with a long explanation about how you’re not criticizing it at all, because you mean something different than everyone else by that phrase, but that’s just a confusing way of imposing your incorrect English usage on everyone else. You might as well say that their plan is a piece of “sh-t,” and then insist that this is a compliment because unlike other English speakers, when you call something “sh-t,” you’re thinking about how it’s a useful fertilizer for growing things.
I do think that if large numbers of English speakers use proverbs in different ways, the proverb can have different meanings, and even be self-antonymic. But an individual can’t just rewrite our shared understanding of words or proverbs on their own.
WW: http://kuny.ca/blogs/2010/427/quotes/lewis-carroll-i-dont-know-what-you-mean-by-glory/
(I’m agreeing with your comment, in case that isn’t clear!)
Maybe this was her thinking . . .
. . . or maybe those on the Titanic who knew there was nothing to be done wanted to be comfortable.
Lark: Yea, you have some very good points. I can see where you’re coming from, and I like your line of thinking.
However, instead of venerating the wisdom of the ages, I chose to see it as a mockery of the establishment. She’s not taking the most sensible action for a person in her position: fleeing. Although she should have enough wisdom being in her position in life, she attends to trivial, perhaps vain, pursuits. I think this can be applied more generally to establishment figures.
I agree with you, and think you misunderstand me. I think the original proverb that CIDUBill asked about is probably meant as a “don’t just sit there, do something!” admonishment, certainly the way it is presented above, but that that might just be the bias of whoever did that graphic; it’s a yiddish proverb, and I don’t know how they meant it, but to ME, even if it IS meant that way, I see it as a perfect self rebuttal to that attitude. OK, so, WHAT should gramma be doing, exactly?
As for the “Rearranging Deckchairs on the Titanic”, that was Phil Smith agreeing with Kilby’s interpretation that the yiddish saying must mean something like “Nero fiddled while Rome burned”. I know what rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic means, I am a native English speaker, I am not trying to assign any unconventional meaning to that phrase — however, THAT phrase is NOT an admonishment to do something, it is instead pointing out the pointlessness of a particular action in the face of a greater happening — so how does this affect the understanding of the yiddish grandmother proverb? If the grandmother washing her hair is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, then it means gramma was trying to do something about the burning land, only it was the wrong thing. Which is totally different: don’t do something useless vs. don’t just sit there doing nothing. Which then brings in the Nero quote: what does IT mean? I think it’s assumed that Nero, being emperor, could have done something; also, there’s wide understanding that he was culpable for the fire — fiddling while Rome burns has a certain element of trying to escape the consequences of your actions, or at least your responsibilities. Is gramma responsible for the land burning in the yiddish proverb? I don’t think so, but a few comments here DID raise the issue of culpability of the previous generation, and their inaction now. So a THIRD possible meaning. (Possible Meaning #1: Don’t just go on as normal, do something! Possible Meaning #2: Don’t do a useless thing in the face of an emergency! Possible Meaning #3: Ah, yeah, typical, cause all the problems, and then don’t do anything to fix them!)
Regardless of the exact meaning, the structure of the proverb is such that it assumes (begs) a lacking positive action: what is it that is assumed that gramma should be doing? And is there any irony in that assumed action? Is the fact that it’s gramma relevant to the potential irony, or is it meant earnestly? And is the intent an action at all, or just expression of exasperation? What is this proverb trying to tell its listener? You may think it’s obvious, but your obvious might be the exact opposite of someone else’s obvious. I for one don’t know what the intent is.
Notice that Grandma is literally in a bubble. To me the intent of the meme at least is clear- some people are oblivious (intentionally or not) to the disaster going on around them
@BtWW: Wow, that graphic was so weird I hadn’t even realized what it was. Bubbe in a bubble, yeah. So maybe you’ve got it.
I see where confusion entered: in my hasty follow up comment I said, “Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic is very much in my interpretation, ie: there’s nothing you can do, so why waste your time.” I did NOT mean that what followed was my interpretation of what “Rearranging Deck chairs on the Titanic” meant; I meant that the meaning of the Titanic expression lent support to my interpretation of the Yiddish proverb, ie: there’s nothing you can do, so why waste your time. To be clear: that is not my interpretation of what “rearrange deckchairs on the Titanic” means, it is my interpretation of what the Yiddish Proverb under discussion means. (and after all this analysis, I’m less sure about what it means…) It was poorly and hastily worded, and I can see where it was misunderstood. Apologies.
@larK: I’m mostly just impressed that folks could be in such disagreement on the Intertubes and not resort to name-calling! Good on all of ya.
1. I (generally) speak and understand Yiddish. The translation is fine, although the word “tzvogt” was unfamiliar to me. The original saying is also one I had never heard.
2. The following website seems to think that the meaning is as Iark’s #1 (“Don’t just go on as normal, do something!”) or as I would word it, “Don’t be oblivious to what is happening around you.”…:
https://www.yiddishwit.com/gallery/fire.html
…since it compares it to 2 other Yiddish sayings:
* The roof is on fire and he’s thinking about a canoe.
* The place is on fire and he’s winding his clock.
@Pinny I’m still confused, though. Is grandma washing her hair doing something, or is it going on as normal? I think I’ve lost the plot!
I second that emotion . . .
Re Phil Smith III:
I vote for “going on as normal”.
Another vote for this Yiddish saying meaning that one is ignoring the serious events going on around us:
https://www.liveabout.com/yiddish-name-for-grandfather-1695428
“The country’s on fire, and grandma is washing her hair.” This is similar to the expression about Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Humans focus on minor matters when ruin is at hand.
lark: I don’t think it’s obvious what the intent of the Yiddish proverb was. My point was that we can talk about what the proverb meant to Yiddish speakers independently of whether we think the proverb makes sense, or how we personally would deal with the situation in the proverb. It seems that you already agree with this point (I think?) so I made that point for nothing. :o
Leaving aside what the Yiddish speakers meant, and considering whether the mecahnics of the proverb actually make sense, I see two main possibilities: (1) Literally the entire country is on fire. Well, we’re all going to die very soon, so why waste your time washing your hair? (2) Large portions of the country are on fire, but not every single acre of it. Well, grandma can’t put out all the fires, but she could at least go outside. That’s safer than being in an enclosed building that will likely collapse soon. Either way, I can’t support grandma.
Maybe the “fire” is just overblown current hype of some nature. Grandma is just carrying on because she has seen it all in her long life and knows it is just one phase in many she has experienced. The deck chairs on the Titanic comparison is different, those folks knew their fate was sealed and couldn’t do anything about it. Grandma is just waiting for this latest issue to pass.
John K.: Nothing could have been done to prevent the Titanic from sinking after it hit the iceberg, but a number of the lifeboats were launched with extra space on them. If someone had done a better job organizing the flow into the lifeboats, another 500 people could have been saved. So there were actually better things to do than rearranging deck chairs.
Do you remember the TV movie “The Day After” from 1983? It was a nuclear war panic film and showed the devastation of a small town by a nuclear attack. Everybody has to get out of town FAST! So they all quickly pack and run to the car. But where is Mom? She’s in the bedroom making the beds. Dad has to slap some sense into her.
That’s what I thought of. It must be a TV Trope but I don’t know what it’s called so I couldn’t find it on tvtropes. Anyway, it’s the combination of panic and denial that some TV characters cope with by reverting to their normal routine.
After reading all of the various options discussed above, I think I’d like to withdraw my comparison to Nero @2. I believe the Yiddish proverb is intended to portray the grandmother as wise (or at least pragmatic), rather than foolish. Even if things are going to hell in a handbasket, she’d prefer to look good for the occasion.
Mark, tvtropes.org allows you to look up shows and movies as well. They (mis?) classified the scene you mention as “too dumb to live.”
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheDayAfter
Honestly, I can’t imagine any Yiddish proverb dissing Granny.
Mother-in-law, yeah, but not Bubbe.
Whoever created that image seems to be in the “This is fine” camp. She’s showering in the flames.
I normally find TvTropes quite sensible, but I have great difficulty believing their claim that “The Day After” “literally ended the Cold War.”
“Even if things are going to hell in a handbasket, she’d prefer to look good for the occasion.”
. . . and be kind enough to help others on their way, too . . .
AND if you have two hours to spend getting depressed . . .
And another one I could never watch (reading the book was bad enough, and this was YEARS ago) – On the Beach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue8hC5qqMt4
This might be a better version . . .
@Winter Wallaby, TV Tropes has a very different culture from, say, Wikipedia. One generally doesn’t correct previous posts there except for very clear factual/spelling/usage errors.
“literally ended the Cold War.”
In the real world?! ‘Cause in the fictional world of the movie, yeah, a hot nuclear war does literally end the previous “cold” war…
Anyway, we all know it was David Hasselhof caused the Wall to come down…
If everyone was washing their hair, it would tie up water supply needed to fight the fire.
So Kilby and CIDU Bill, tygalilee had it in the fifth comment?
@Andrea-
I read “On the Beach” in High School and it had a profound psychological effect on me. I would experience periods of depression and anxiety months after reading it.
Which is why I’d never read the book or, even worse for me, watch the movie in today’s fraught world.
@ larK – I’ll give credit where credit is due: Tygalilee’s reading @5 is very close to what I was trying to convey. The difference is very minor: whether the “burning” is really just a tempest in a teapot (thus insignificant and ignorable), or a major world-ending castastrophe (for which the grandmother wants to prepare for and look her best).
P.S. The latter situation reminds me of the idiotic advice given by some mothers in decades past: “Dearest, if you’re going on a trip, make sure to wear clean underwear, because if you have an accident, you don’t want to land in the hospital with dirty underwear on…” — as if the underwear is still going to be clean after one has the $#!+ scared out of them by a serious accident.
@Mitch4- Darn you, another book I have to add to me reading list!
OK Go, This too shall pass
I think this is also the song they use for the marching band in the grassy field video
I read and enjoyed several books by Nevil Shute. Probably best-known was On the Beach, but my favorite was Trustee from the Toolroom. I was a little confused by the title because I had seen some prison movies and thought it said “trusty” , a category of prisoner who were trusted with certain liberties in order to perform jobs and so on.
Yep – just put it on hold at the library.
“On the Beach” suffered from the usual problems of science fiction written by mainstream writers: not knowing when to handwave, and thus spouting nonsense; not equipping his submarines with sonar; etc.
Surprising for a mainstream author, all of his characters were the same. They all reacted pretty much the same way to stress and almost-certain death.
In case you’re having trouble reading between the lines, I do not recommend this book.
I almost forgot No Highway in the Sky, but actually I am not sure I ever read it. The movie however was one of those that got repeated on TV quite a bit, and my family seemed to watch almost annually. (Probably in the era not only before streaming and ubiquitous rental availabilities, but when broadcast TV screenings of movies was less common.)
I remember even as a fussy nerd preteen objecting to the dramatic element of the scientist having figured out a mistake in the metal-stress estimates and seeing that the likely failure time was fast approaching, indeed was “due” now, during the next flight! So the story treats this flight as probably doomed, and builds drama on the suspense. But of course that’s not how probability works.
I still get bothered by contemporary police TV plots where someone recites a statistic about how after (say) 48 hours the likelihood of recovering a missing child drops steeply, and everybody treats it as a specific deadline. Find the missing kid in the next ten minutes, or the 48-hour clock will tick over and they will be lost forever, the distraught family yells at the cops.
The No Highway movie featured an actress named Glynis Johns, whom I didn’t know for anything else, but whose unusual name stuck with me. Just a couple years ago at work, I met a school librarian whose first name is Glynis. Eventually I mentioned to her that the only other person with that name was this actress. And she confirmed that she had indeed been named for the actress, as her mother was a a big fan! But she didn’t know this movie, and it had been for a role in Mary Poppins that her mother swooned.
I remember her as having an unusual look and voice. I think the name is probably more common in Britain than in US.
I’m reading various books (yes, I move from one to the other) on England and WWI and WWII and the Simpsons (the Duke and ‘Duchess’ of Windsor, NOT the eponymous TV show, and there are so many unusual and, perhaps, unique names, no name surprises me anymore.
I used to say, whilst reading some of the names of our students, that mom and/or dad must’ve had alphabet blocks and tossed ’em on the floor to ‘create’ a unique name.
I remember her as having an unusual look and voice.
Oh yes. Here’s a good example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LAO5ZXYma0
I couldn’t imagine living with that voice.
I saw her onstage back in 1973, and she spoke in a normal voice.
As opposed to Bernadette Peters (whom I also saw both back in the day and again a few years ago), whose breathless little girl voice is decades and decades past its sell-by date.
I thought that WAS her normal voice; same with Bernadette Peters.
P.S. Speaking of “clean underwear“:
P.P.S. The two-week arc began here, skipping Sundays.
No matter what happens – bubbe goes on with on with her life and schedule. The fire will take care of its self. ?