DUers, what did your dad do or say during your childhood that has influenced how you live

[tea and oranges]

175. My father the iconoclast

Irv, a Jewish progressive agnostic, liberated a concentration camp as a young army lieutenant. He well understood the effects of unchecked hatred.

When I was 5 he put me on his lap & propped the Margaret Bourke-White book of pictures from the Holocaust on my legs. "These are your people. This is what was done to them." The book dug into my thighs w/ a vengeance, but I said nothing for I knew my pain was nothing compared to what I was seeing.

We moved from Philly to S. Florida when I was 4. I was solemnly told that if I was ever at a friend's house & heard their parents say anything bad about black people I was to come right home, because they hated me too.

We never had milk as a beverage b/c Irv said the milk lobby were liars & milk would kill you. We never had white bread or white rice. Dessert was fruit, usually picked from a back yard tree. Did I raise my son w/o sugar & vegetarian? You bet I did!

I was taught to speak out, that silence was collusion. I grew up shy, but knees knocking I stand up in class, auditorium, wherever, & say what's on my mind: At a storyteller's conference: "I know you bill yourself as a feminist storyteller, please explain to me & the other people here exactly what's feminist about the story you just told" to a male storyteller who told a horrifically sexist tale. "Please get back on topic, I find what you're saying about your dog upsetting" to a psychology professor who told of conditioning his dog to enjoy spankings. Yep, my dad taught me to do that. Sometimes people come up afterwards & thank me; sometimes they hate my guts. Shrug! I'm Irv's daughter.

There was no censorship in my parent's house. When I decided to read the works of Freud at age 13 (what could it possibly have meant to me?) that was cool, I just had to read in the family room.

He died just before Florida was the deciding factor in GWBush's election, which would not have made him happy. Up until his last years he attended elder hostels & other classes. I got used to him calling me wanting to discuss the plays of Ibsen or revisionist views of Eisenhower.

To say Irv was the biggest influence in my life is an understatement. You see, I never really had a chance to be anything other than a progressive, peacenik, atheist, vegetarian, natural foods eating feminist. For that I'm forever grateful.