I Go Ga-Ga for GOOGLE....Images

I remember when I was in grade six ("sixth grade" to you Americans!) my English teacher tried something in creative writing. It was a springboard, as it were, for a photojournalism assignment.

Along the ledge in front of the chalkboard, she laid out several b & w pictures torn from magazines and we were to write a brief headline and piece about that photo.

I don't recall exactly what I wrote, but I do know it had to do with loneliness, and children, as it was a photo of an empty playground with an idle swing.

I've always loved photos and captions and trying to combine the two. There are always contests sponsored by magazines and newspapers to do exactly that: give a header to a photo, or a bit of dialogue to the people featured in a photo.

And I'm a fan of GOOGLE images...always searching for just the perfect one to accompany my blog posts.

So why don't we try an exercise, just like I did in grade six? You don't have to write a story, but you can write a header and/or a brief description to the pic.
These free-for-alls don't always work in blogs, I've noticed. People are hesitant to participate oftentimes. But I just want to experiment a bit, so let me have my fun!

Here are my contributions to the photos above:

re. top b&w photo: "A penny for my thoughts!"

re. top colored photo: "No, honey -- you're not supposed to close the Murphy bed with me still in it!"

re. Groucho: "Hmmm...and I thought he really meant that I should bite the bullet."

re. artsy image: "Psst...aren't we a couple of bad asses!?"

You may comment on these images or link to your own in the comments and entitle them or add some commentary.

So, Nu? Say Something Already!

Over a year ago, I worked on /freelance copy edited this book. It was quite a challenge for me.

I am not a native Yiddish speaker, and you could even say I'm not a Yiddish speaker, but I understand quite a bit. But even my father, whose mameloshen would've been Yiddish and then Polish, did not know all the expressions I had to verify. He explained to me that many of the expressions were regional -- so, if you lived in Lublin, you might've cursed differently than if you lived in Tarnow.

Go figure -- "gei in drerd" ("go to hell") would have to be phrased differently, depending on where you lived. In my mind, "drerd" is "drerd"!

In any case I was at the Toronto Jewish Book Fair last Sunday, looking at books on display, and spotted this Epstein book. It looked familiar to me at first, but I was a little "fermisht" and it didn't register that I'd worked on it. I picked it up and riffled through the pages and then it hit me -- yup, this book was my baby. I had a hand in it. G-d, I hope I did a good job with it.

...if not, Lita Epstein will be cursing me -- left, right and center!

So why not pick up this book if you can...and put it to good use. I'm sure you have friends and family members on whom you can try out these expressions! :)