Freeda's Quick Cobbler

We make this with blackberries, but you could use other berries or fruit. It's easy and it's delicious.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put ½ stick butter in 2 quart, rectangular glass baking dish and place in oven until butter melts.
3. In a bowl, blend together
a. ¾ cup sugar
b. ¾ cut flour
c. 1 tsp. baking powder
4. Then add ¾ cup whole milk to dry ingredients and mix together.
5. Pour this mixture over the melted butter in the baking dish. Do NOT mix or stir.
6. Then, over that, add about 1 ½ quarts of berries or fresh sliced fruit. Again, do not stir or mix.
7. Bake for 45-55 minutes.
8. Serve warm with ice cream or gelato.

Identity

I am not Jose Gonzales. Over the past several months since I got a new mobile number along with my iPhone, I have gotten a number of calls from debt agencies. “This call will be monitored for compliance reasons.” Usually, the call comes in from an 800 number with a voicemail message to call back some other 800 or 866 number regarding a debt claim. When I call back, the customer service representative always says: “Jose Gonzales?” No, I’m not. I never have been and assume I never will be. I don’t know Mr. Gonzales. This just must have been his old telephone number. And the rep always apologizes and says that she will correct the records. Well, we shall see. I don’t hold out much hope. Jose Gonzales, where are you?

Postcards

I got a postcard the other day from APC, the backup battery folks. It said that if I went to a specific web page and put in the “keycode” from the postcard, I could get a special offer for a trade-in as well as a free pocket tool knife. And who wouldn’t want a pocket tool knife? (By the way, what modifies what in that phrase? Does it refer to a knife that serves your pocket tool?)

Well, this morning I dutifully logged onto their site and entered the “keycode” in the proper space. After a while, the message came back that there was some sort of error and it couldn’t connect. I tried it later in the day and got the same thing.

In today’s mail, we got a postcard from a local restaurant that had two offers. One of them said: “Update or join our e-mail club and received a FREE DESSERT!” Well, who wouldn’t want a free dessert. I went to the web page they have on the postcard and looked through every link on that page to no avail. There was nothing where I could look at my “frequent diner’s profile” (I am a member of their Frequent Diner Club) or join an e-mail club or anything like that. I did send them an email asking WTF.

So, dear advertisers, if you want to send me a postcard with an offer or two, at least make it possible for me to try to take you up on it.

What's My Name? - Part 2

Okay, so my last name is Hirsch. And, unless one has a hyphenated last name, other names in an ancestry are not mentioned. For me, some of them are not remembered at all and were only discovered by my wonderful daughter-in-law.

So, let’s sort all this out just going back no more than three or four generations.

Hirsch paternal line came also from Ulhman, Epstein, and Lebenfeld.

Hirsch maternal line came from Michel and Wright

Messing (my mom) paternal line came also from Rothenstein and Sliverman

Messing maternal line came from Silberstein and Jaques

Put them all together and they spell Maurice L. Hirsch, Jr., M. L. Hirsch Jr., Maurice Hirsch, Bud Hirsch. And these family names just scratch the surface.

What's My Name?

My birth certificate says it’s Maurice L. Hirsch, Jr.
Everyone calls me Bud.
My dad was Maurice L. Hirsch.
Everyone called him Maurice.
Very few call me Maurice, but I do answer to it.
The suffix of “Jr.” can cause computer database confusion as if it’s my last name.
It’s really long when I attach my academic degree to its end.
Some of my name badges are shortened to M. L. Hirsch, Jr. for lack of space.
My email addresses include two that are my full initials: mlhjr

I used my full name for everything I published during my academic career.
I have used my full name for my poetry to date.
It’s what I write when a signature is called for.
It’s what comes up with the most stuff in Google.

In one of my poems, “Accessory to the Second,” I discuss the whole “Jr.” thing and conclude:

• Yes, I know it’s not usual for a Jew to be named after someone who was alive at his birth.
• Even though Dad is gone, he’s Maurice L. Hirsch, not me. So, I keep the next-generation tag.

When I was a boy, I disliked my given name. Maurice was not what a guy was called in the 40s and 50s. I was always Bud Hirsch unless forced by some legal or parental reason to use my full name. As I grew up, I began to like Maurice. While I used it in business correspondence, around the time I went to graduate school I began to really like it as a name, its tie to my father, and its flow as a whole thing. Sure I was and am Bud to any and all, but my name is Maurice L. Hirsch, Jr.

Now I am faced with a different dilemma. My poetry coach says, with good reasoning and evidence, using my full name is just too long for editors. She asked me to choose between Bud Hirsch and Maurice Hirsch, to drop the middle initial and the suffix. And she asked me to register on some author sites with this new, shortened name. Given my protection and use of my full-blown name with all its length, two periods, and a comma, for all these years, changing this representation of my persona is hard.

I chose Maurice Hirsch, the other too informal for me for a poet’s/author’s name. I guess I’m Maurice Hirsch in any case and it’s no disrespect to or ignoring of Dad to be that name with no qualifiers. But only for professional reasons.