This year again, if you want a Limited Edition Bickel Family Chanukah card, you only need to send your mailing address to
with the subject line “Chanukah Card.” You don’t have to be a regular contributor, and you certainly don’t have to be Jewish.
If you’d rather have a digital version, that’s also an option: but those are a lot less fun.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’ll just say thanks for the card last year, Bill. It was fun.
It was the only holiday card my wife was confused about… :)
I even had to take a second look to figure out where it had come from, as I’d forgotten requesting one.
“. . . as I’d forgotten requesting one.”
You mean you don’t send him one back??? How uncouth. We gotta keep the USPS in business!
So what happens if I ask for a Hanukkah card?
lark: Wouldn’t you rather have a nice Hannukah card?
Alas, it appears that the thread digging through (almost) all of the possible permutations of “(C)han(n)uk(k)a(h)” was torpedoed by the meltdown.
Now that mom is in an assisted living residence run by a Jewish non-profit – it has a synagogue and the rabbi’s wife comes in on Friday just before sundown to light the Shabbas candles – I will see what spelling shows up on the signs and notices around the place next month. I keep telling her – I don’t care what the menu says, the dining room is kosher and you are not getting ice cream for dessert with meat dinners – it has to be some substitute for it – she complains the desserts are too big and too many of them have cream in it – not healthy.
A question that is, sort of off-topic, but still on-topic:
Years ago, I read that because so many Holocaust survivors were coming into Jewish-run nursing homes, the doctors, et al, were not wearing white coats, as doing so, they found, were triggers for many of their patients who had been in camps . . . and that’s all the detail I’ll go in here. This ‘medical-professionals-not-wearing-white-coats’ was waaaaaay before what is now, it seems, regular practice (I pity the white-coat industry, altho it may have segued into the ‘scrubs with designs’ industry).
I was wond’rin’, then, if this policy is in effect at your Mother’s nursing home? And, I think I just answered my own question . . . NO ONE wears white coats anymore. Still curious, tho . . .
“NO ONE wears white coats anymore”? Hey, I’ve got a white sports coat*, though I doubt it still fits me.
The two or three Real Doctors who make the rounds at the rehab center where my wife is currently residing wear white coats, and if I recall correctly, all of the Real Doctors at the hospital where she spent several days back in September and early October did as well. (And no one else in either facility does/did.)
I’m sure there’s a reason which I’m too lazy to look up which explains why white coats became identified with Real Doctors in the first place, but my instinctive guess is to show that “they can do their medical thing without getting blood and other vile colored effluvia from patients on their spotless duds, unlike the non-Real-Doctor-medical-professionals who assist them and have to deal with that Stuff.”
*no Pink Carnations, though. (Geezer reference?)
You were referring to ‘A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean’, right?
If we’re looking for a Geezer reference, we can also go with “tan shoes with pink shoelaces.”
No JB album with puns for that . . .
@ Shrug – “…why white coats became identified with Real Doctors…”
Doctors (particularly surgeons, remember “M*A*S*H”?) wore white then for the same reason that most chefs still wear white today: it looks clean and neat, but when it does (inevitably) get dirty, it can all be laundered with abusive methods (temperatures and chemicals) to get everything absolutely clean again. If the fabric were not white, the color would not survive this sort of treatment very long.
Andréa – Mom is in an assisted living residence, not a nursing home. We were amazed at the place.
She has a 2 room plus private bathroom apartment. One room is a sitting room with kitchenette (no stove, but has a microwave), the other a bedroom. One can bring their own furniture as replacement except the hospital bed has to stay. My sister has brought the 2 living chairs and mom’s “Bombay chest” from her living room for the sitting room. The bathroom is bigger than both of our bathrooms put together and has a roll in shower. Her two closets (hall and bedroom clothing) together are probably more closet space than we have total in our house. She can also hang whatever pictures and decorations she wants. TV service of course – you bring your own TV – not cable per her and not sure what company is providing the service – there is a channel of what is going on at the place.
Movies are shown twice a day in a dedicated small movie theater. Meals are included – if mom misses a meal (such as for a dr’s appointment) or does not feel like going to the dining room, they bring a tray to her room. There is a library, a gym a a crafts room, a board game room (included card tables) and a coffee house room -free fancy coffee and pastries. Since it is run by a Jewish non-profit there is also a synagogue, which is also used when someone comes in and gives a talk (we are thinking that I might offer them to give my talk on Jews in colonial American) and the chairs can be stored away for a large empty room. Almost forgot the pool table. There are reserved spaces for residents’ cars. There is wifi and a couple of computers that can be used. Per mom (take with a grain of salt) there is also a different Internet service for those who are running their businesses from their apartments. (Some residents are couples and it might be a case that one of them needs the help and the other does not.) There are excursions and also small buses that go on certain days to local stores if one wants to shop. She has her own mailbox also in a bank of boxes.
There is the wellness office. It is staffed by nurses and others under them. It looks like a small clinic and has two examining rooms. One room is the medications room – each person has a looseleaf book and the pages are their various meds bubbles sealed on cards. In front of each person’s meds in the book is a photo of them. They are given their meds at the time they are to take them. If mom will be out when she should need to take a med they have to give it to someone to give to her. They can do bloodwork there and some procedures can be done there (such as we found that they can check the battery in mom’s pacemaker there so we don’t have to schlep her to the doctor for same, flu shots given also).
Nurses and related staff do wear uniforms as does the housekeeping staff, wait staff, etc. There are 2 doctors associated with the facility but are not there full time – and I don’t think they wear any uniform as they are just coming in as needed.
The rabbi’s wife comes by on late Friday and holiday afternoons and lights the candles for the holiday. The rabbi (Orthodox) comes by also on a regular basis. While the place is Kosher there is a small “family” dining room that can be used when family is visiting that is not kosher and in her room is not kosher. I know that not everyone there is Jewish as a older woman in our reenactment unit who lived in the area and was French Catholic lived there for awhile before she passed away and it is obvious that some of the people are not Jewish.
She had been in their short term rehabilitation unit for a couple of months before coming here – across the parking lot. They are currently looking to put up senior apartment up the block – the other side of the Presbyterian Church center building.
Robert says it is like the hotels that used to be in Catskills in the 20th century with all the services and things to do.
In earlier times before the invention of artificial dyes in the 1800s dyes could wash out. White fabric/clothing could be boiled for cleaning with no loss of color.
In the 1700s the cheapest color was orange – dyed from onion skins. The most expensive was red from cochineal (Other reds were cheaper dyes but washed out easier than cochineal reds). Problem with washing was that color would fade – so those red British uniforms if washed too often could be come pink – a color for boys in the period. Typically what we call undergarments and were called “small clothes” were white so they could be boiled – something that continued at least into the 1950s. These in the 1700s would include shirt – long to the knees as underbreeches were not common so this was the main the undergarment for men and would also be used as sleeping garment (richer men might have separate ones as undergarment and sleeping garment – it was also the garment that men would have the most of. Their neckcloth was also considered to be small clothes although it was worn over the shirt and seen – was white for civilian men and black for military. (Men wore waistcoats – vests – over their shirts and under their outer jacket or hunting frock/shirt. These waistcoats came in a variety of colors, but were also considered small clothes.) Ladies wore white shifts under their other garments – long, sort of A-line dresses that slide on over the head and either did not a closure or tied around the top. They were also for sleeping and again, one would have more of them than other clothes. Women would also wear caps which were considered small clothes though they are seen. (Caps were fashion and also helped keep one’s hair clean when immersion baths were not common and the temperature in the house might be too cold to get one’s hair wet.)