With my dog Max 1995

At this age, I may have lost count of how many people I’ve slept with in my life, but I can count on my hand the number of dogs with whom I’ve shared my bed.

Only two.

You always remember your first, and my yellow Labrador retriever, Max, was memorable. (Frankly, a lot more memorable than the awkward 19-year-old closeted gay boy who holds that human distinction )

For thirteen years, Max shared our bed in the city, the Hamptons, and a sleighbed in Vermont.  At over one hundred pounds, there was a lot of dog to love, and boy, did I love Max. I never minded sleeping on the outer edge of our bed when I snuck into bed late at night when I came in from a night out carousing with friends.

But once Max passed away, my husband Hersh issued an edict, “No more dogs in the bed.” I’m certain I argued my case, but going against a skilled litigator, my arguments fell flat.

Over the next 24 years, our bed was empty of any canine companionship. I would sneak Emerson and then Stanley onto the bed for a quick make-out session, but they slept on their own dog bed at the foot of ours.

When Stanley died in 2024, I may not have known who our next dog would be, but one thing I was certain of -they would be allowed to sleep on the bed with us. That reign of bed banishment imposed by my husband a quarter of a century ago would end.

With Moe

Now Moe is our constant bedmate, and I can’t imagine any other way. The bliss I have sleeping with Moe is indescribable. The joy and tenderness it has brought to Hersh is a delight to watch.

It brought the pack together in ways they were meant to function.

I get to wake up every morning with a sweet smile on my face, and in these times, that is really something.

How many of you sleep with your fur babies?

When little Johnny walked up to the classroom blackboard to work out an arithmetic problem, he had no idea the firestorm his chalk scribblings would create.

At the first sight of the threatening numerical combination of 8647 written out for all to see, his eagle-eyed teacher swiftly sent Johnny to the principal’s office, where a group of stern truant officers sat in wait. Without so much as a conversation, they whisked him off to a Juvenile Detention Center, where this would-be anarchist/ assassin would live out his childhood years.

This classroom caper is as farcical as the intense reaction to former FBI Director James Comey’s 2025 Instagram post of seashells spelling 8647, which has been so overblown as to transform a cryptic image into a major political and legal firestorm.

Meanwhile, daily there are social media postings of words and symbolic numbers that are hateful and dangerous, but allowed to be posted without consequences. Without accountability.  

There is so much hate in America.  Some of it is coded in language some in numbers.

So much hate.

I’ve lost count.

Of all the mass shootings.

Of murdered children, LGBTQ, African Americans, and Jews.

I’ve lost count of all the violence.

The vicious name-calling.

Defacing of property.

I’ve lost count of all the hate crimes in our country.

But some people are busy counting, playing with numbers that have until now eluded me.

Their numbers are codes for hate.

They are counting out who actually counts in their perverted world.

Discovering Numbers

Not long ago I learned firsthand as a Jew that  I don’t count.

Targeted on this blog with an anti-semitic rant that referenced the numbers 109/110.

“Ask yourself,” this coward smugly wrote, “why Jews have been tossed out of 109 counties.  Is it 109 counties that are wrong or is it the group who are forced to leave?”

He ended with “110 and never again.”

Numeric Shorthand For Hate

White Washing their world. Vintage illustration from school textbook “Exploring Numbers”

There is this mysterious world of numbers that has nothing to do with trigonometry but everything to do with hate.

When it comes to numbers white supremacists are interested in subtraction, not addition. Division, not multiplication.

This I learned.

When it comes to numbers white supremacists are interested in subtraction, not addition. Division, not multiplication.

The number 109 is white supremacist numeric shorthand for an anti-Semitic claim that Jews have been expelled from 109 different countries.

Various anti-Semites have compiled lists of alleged Jewish “expulsions” ranging from 100 to more than 1,000 in number, but the figure of 109 is the most commonly cited and probably originates with a list of “109 locations” appearing on a longstanding Australian anti-Semitic website.

Anti-Semites use this figure to claim that Jews must be a malicious and harmful people to have been expelled from so many places; they also use the figure to call for the expulsion of Jews from countries where they currently live.

The concept of 109 expulsions has also led to frequent use of the number 110 by white supremacists, generally to urge that the United States be the next and 110th place to expel Jews.

Learning Through Practice

The history of Jewish discrimination, hatred, and expulsion was, I thought, consigned to the past.

Jews were historically harshly persecuted, denied entrance into certain professions, prohibited from owning land, forced to pay extra taxes, and excluded from the normal education system. They were gradually expelled from Europe: from England in 1290, from France in 1306 and from Spain and Portugal in 1492. They were also expelled from Hungary in 1376, from Sicily in the 15th century, from Bavaria in 1470, from Bohemia in 1542, and suffered pogroms in Russia in 1881, 1891, 1897, and 1903.

There is almost too much hate in the past to count.

Today 110 is sometimes combined with the numerical code 148 creating 1488-110

14 is shorthand for the 14 words, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

14/88 is a combination of the fourteen words and the eighth letter of the alphabet “H”  repeated twice standing for “Heil Hitler.”

I was never good at math as a child.

Numbers made me anxious.

But not half as anxious as I am today about the vicious use of certain numbers.

And the uncountable hate and destruction they bring.

People must be held accountable.

Even as I am firm in my resolve each of us counts.

 © Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2026 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

There was no McDonald’s delivery to the Oval Office during the King’s recent visit.

Despite his love of Big Macs, Donald Trump was specifically ordered NOT to serve McDonald’s to King Charles under any circumstances.

The Monarch utterly hates fast food. He is no Burger King.

But his grandfather, King George VI, had a soft spot for the food of the people.

There is a precedent for presidents serving guests a more laid-back fast food feast.

When it comes to casual cuisine, Donald T loves his Mickey D’s, but it may come as a surprise that FDR fancied Nathan’s hot dogs. When it came to enjoying the food of the common folk, Frankie D.’s heart was all a flutter for frankfurters.

Eighty-seven years ago, the lowly hot dog was ennobled by Royalty when it was served by President Franklin Roosevelt at a picnic at his country home for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England.

A diplomatic visit made gastronomic history. The Royals ate their first hot dog.

History is Made

It was not an insignificant visit. For the first time in American history, a King of England set foot on U.S. soil.

The Royals had been on a hectic 4-day American tour in the spring of 1939. Arriving in Washington DC in June, the King and Queen had been treated to all the formalities one would expect from a State visit. In the same opulent State Dining room where 70 years later platters of Big Macs and McNuggets would be served by the glow of ornate candelabras, the Royal couple was feted with a formal state dinner.

After a whirlwind tour of DC and a visit to the N.Y. World’s Fair, where they were given the red carpet treatment,   FDR invited the weary Monarchs to a casual picnic at his bucolic home in Hyde Park, N.Y. The Hudson Valley provided an informal backdrop for this visit of the British sovereigns and the nation’s first family.

Eleanor Roosevelt decided no All-American picnic would be complete without hot dogs.

But these would be no ordinary dogs.

No, these would be Coney Island hot dogs. Since Nathan’s considered itself “the king of hot dogs,” it made sense that their dogs were fit for a King. So, straight from Surf Avenue in Brooklyn to upper crust Hyde Park, the hot dogs were ordered.

When word got out that plebian hot dogs were to be served to the King and Queen of England  the public was dubious at best.

Snobs everywhere, including Roosevelt’s own mother balked at the thought of a hot dog being presented to His Majesty.  His proper mother, Sara Delano, was horrified not only at the choice of food but of inviting cooks, gardeners, and other staffers to the picnic.

Snooty folks looked down on the lowly frankfurter, though in fact the hot dog could trace its family history farther back than any living king.

A Hot Dog Makes Him Lose Control

But the pearl clutchers could relax.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth loved it. For the royal couple, this was a novelty never having sampled a hot dog before. The King, it was said, had been looking forward to sampling “this most favorite American snack.”

Sitting on the front porch of FDR’s new stone cottage overlooking the Hudson River was the perfect, relaxed setting to enjoy the picnic.  The hot dogs were served on a silver tray, but the Royals, like everyone else ate off paper plates,  albeit on a table and not balancing it like others on their laps.

Unsure how to properly chow down on a hot dog encased in a doughy bun,  the Queen politely asked the President for some etiquette advice on how to navigate a hot dog.

“Very simple. Push it into your mouth and keep pushing it until it is all gone,” the President was supposed to have said. Demurely, the Queen elected to use a knife and fork instead.

The King seemed to have no such reservation and enjoyed it with gusto, so much so he asked for seconds, which made front page headlines the next day. The “N.Y. Times” headline announced: “King Tries Hot Dog and Asks For More.” According to the article, “the King enjoyed his 2 hot dogs with beer.”

It was in fact front page stuff when King George VI attacked the hot dog at the Little White House picnic at Hyde Park. Wires burned with descriptions of the event and wireless, radio, and cable carried the word around the world.

Headlines ranged from “King Bites Dog;” “With Mustard, is Royal Order” and “First Lady Triumphant; Royalty Eats Hot Dogs.”

Hot Dog Summit

Crafty as always, FDR had more on his mind than a menu when he called for this picnic . To him this would be an opportunity. Call it hot dog diplomacy.

The trip was undertaken in the shadows of WWII and Britain needed U.S. support. At the time, U.S. foreign policy was isolationists. On the brink of war, FDR realized the necessity of fostering closer political and social ties with Britain.

He needed to win the hearts of the American people.

Roosevelt planned every minute detail of the visit to ensure the King’s success in winning over the sympathy and support of the American people. The picnic was the perfect setting  for FDR to show that despite being royalty they were “just folks.”

FDR hoped the visit would change the perceptions of the American people which in turn allowed him to do more for Britain.

Three months after the picnic England declared war on Germany, and FDR was able to convince Congress and the American people to take steps to aid Britain while still maintaining American neutrality.

Did these hot dogs help save the Western world from the Nazis?

That’s hard to say, but several years later, entrenched in the War ourselves, Roosevelt was such a fan of Hot Dog Diplomacy that he had Nathan’s hot dogs sent to Yalta when he met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.

The rest is history.

This vintage security poster from Syracuse University in 1973 (L) was ironically directed at protecting your valuables like your stereo more than female student safety. (R) Sally Edelstein Syracuse Freshman 1973

Rape Academy is one school you never want your son to attend.

A website teaching men how to sexually assault women recently went viral. A shockwave was felt when CNN uncovered an online community they describe as a massive “Rape Academy” where men record videos of themselves abusing their unconscious wives and girlfriends after drugging them. Since boys will be boys they casually swap advice on drugging and filming the sexual assault of their partners while unconscious.

I’m repulsed.

But I’m not shocked, and I’ll bet most women aren’t either.

Rape Academies have always existed. They flourished in locker rooms, bars, and college dorms. Technology has just caught up.

In my day a college fraternity house could easily have been termed a rape academy, ground zero for drugging, boozing and date rape.

It was for me.

In 1973, Syracuse University promised its students that college life would provide lasting memories.

They didn’t disappoint.

Even decades later, college memories remain etched deeply in my psyche. Especially if like me, you were sexually assaulted. More than once.

My freshman year at the university indeed provided remembrances that still linger- the chimes from Crouse College, the freaks playing Frisbees on the quad, making a late night dinglerun, hanging out on M Street.

And date rape.

The boys will be boys mentality was in full force in the multiple fraternity houses  that lined the leafy tree-lined streets of the university.

These gracious, stately mansions on Walnut Avene, were the breeding ground for male entitlement.  Raucous, boozy keg parties were the norm.  So were sexual assault and harassment. These bastions of boys clubs filled with privileged white lads, smirking and high-fiving one another after each new “conquest,” followed in the Bret Kavanaugh credo – what happened at  Kappa Phi Delta stayed here.

But it also stayed in my mind.

More than once, I was sexually assaulted.

More than once, I would stumble back to my dorm up on the Mount, shaken, drunk, drugged upset, and ashamed.

More than once, flashbacks of a darkened room, the sound of  “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” blaring loudly in the background, quaaludes slipped into a drink, the weight of being pinned down against my will, the strained struggle of unwanted groping, the air redolent of pot, and the stale yeasty scent of Genesee beer would all flood back years later at unwelcomed times, so that even today the very smell of beer brings up a wave of nausea.

They’re Just Boys

It went unreported because that was the norm, too.

Because boys will be boys, it was so easy to brush aside bad behavior.

Because we convinced ourselves it was our fault.

Because no one would believe us. Because we want to forget it happened.

“Don’t any of you leave until you each promise not to tell.” Vintage Playboy Magazine cartoon by Buck Brown

There was no name for “date rape,” but how many women of a certain age are haunted by memories of waking up in a stranger’s room, naked, disoriented, realizing they’d been sexually assaulted. Hungover from a boozy party, they blame only themselves and the alcohol for the assault that was perpetrated on them. There was no outrage because no one would listen. In an era filled with protesting, their voices of protest were ignored.

In an era of student power, women were still pretty powerless.

The hallmark of a rape victim.

Unspoken of, the pain I experienced was swallowed, where it remained undigested for years, playing havoc with my psyche and my body. More than once.

Countless women have similar stories. Often, like me, more than one. From unwanted advances to forced sex acts, women are questioned, vilified, doubted, and kept silent.

But make no doubt about it, we still live in a culture where much of this behavior is laughed at or excused away.  It’s all part of school hijinks, college capers, drunken parties… boys being boys just trying to “get some action.”

Today, something remarkable began happening, though, when the revelations of the horrors of the rape academy came out. The men may have swapped tips on how to get away with the assault, but women are coming forward on social media.

On Threads, hundreds of women are sharing the full names and last known locations of men who raped them.

Schools out. Everyone should be held accountable.

End the silence.

I am honored to be a chosen winner for American Illustration 45. “Undercover- Facts of Life at Sleep Away Camp 1969” gauche on board by Sally Edelstein

In the late 1960’s, a world before screens and social media made sexual content just a click away, a pre-teen like myself learned the facts of life at summer sleep-away camp. Late at night, when the lights went out, the lurid worlds of adulthood and sex could be revealed through gossip and steamy romance magazines, viewed through the yellow glow of an Eveready flashlight.

While teens today learn from online porn, sex-ed for me was also media-driven – raunchy pulp magazines, a mix of veiled advice and confession-style narratives.

After taps had been played, the whispering began among bunkmates, each tucked in our beds with the properly made hospital corners. Candy bought at the canteen that day was unwrapped as we dove headfirst into the world of scandal, sex, and shame in magazines like True Stories, True Confessions, Photoplay, and Modern Romance. The titillating titles screamed, such as “What Drove this Girl” Any Boy! Any Man! Any Time.”

As much as I devoured them, I was not quite ready to completely leave the innocent world of high school romance that was Archie and Veronica.

I am honored to be a chosen winner for American Illustration 45.

Many thanks to the jury and Mark Heflin for selecting my work “Undercover -The Facts of Life at Summer Camp 1969” for inclusion.

This year’s distinguished AI45 Jury included: This year’s distinguished AI45 Jury included: Josh Cochran, The New Yorker; Victoria Escobar, The New York Times Magazine; Toby Fox, Rolling Stone; Emily Glaubinger, Anthropologie; Sarah Lee Grillo, Axios; Marina Grinshpun, The Robb Report; Sara Loane, Al Majalla; Randy Minor, New York Magazine; Linda Rubes, The Wall Street Journal; Ploy Siripant, HarperCollins; Lizzie Soufleris, Architectural Digest; and Raghu Vadarevu, The Marshall Project.

I just struck ephemera gold!

On the afternoon of my mother Betty’s yahrzeit, a day spent reflecting on the fact that her passing now spanned the entirety of my childhood, I learned something about Mom’s own childhood that I never knew before.

The woman I knew as a worry-wart had, as a teenager, been voted “Most Cheerful” by her 1940 graduating class at Brooklyn’s PS 141.

I would not have ever gleaned this insight about my then 14-year-old mother, Betty Joseph, but for a decades-old, saved autograph book.

In an act of perfect synchronicity on this special day, the daughter of Mom’s life-long childhood friend sent me relics of their shared childhood that were new to me.

That afternoon, sitting in my cluttered message box, was a key to the past, in what I think of as ephemera gold. Photographed pages from the 1940 autograph book of Betty’s best friend, Florette, kept by her daughter Hope.

Mom and Florette were chums from Montgomery Street, who played potsy on the streets and rode to elementary school together riding in the rumble seat of the Dodge driven by Mom’s family chauffeur.

The rectangular autograph book with the gorgeous blue and orange leather cover commemorating the N.Y. World’s Fair 1940 was already familiar to me.

I had Betty’s copy.

Graduation autograph books are now as antiquated as a rotary phone. Why write when you can text? Autograph books were once an end-of-school tradition, a rite of passage before entering high school.

My own book from 1967 had not changed much from my mother’s generation, but for its very plain blue cover imprinted with the name of my school, unlike  Mom’s with its iconic symbols of the World’s Fair – The Trylon and Perisphere embodying its theme, “Building the World of Tomorrow.”

As a child I had been fascinated with what lay inside the pristine zippered book that my mother kept in a special cardboard box stored in the breakfront in the foyer of our suburban home. The pale pastel pages were filled with poems, silly ditties, and well-wishes written in distinctive Waterman’s ink. Penned by classmates in elegant script,  they would move together to attend Erasmus, the storied high school in Brooklyn. Over the decades, I read and re read the hopeful messages for the future, the future that I was now living in.

But what I discovered in Florette’s book was news to me.

Written in perfect Palmer Penmanship were words that both made me smile and took me by surprise.

To see in print that my mother, Betty Joseph, was voted  “Most Cheerful” in her 1940 Brooklyn elementary school graduating class was heartwarming. To receive this never seen before images from the autograph book of her best friend Florette Shapiro, 86 years later, was magical.

How my mother would kvell knowing her lifelong best friend’s daughter, Hope, shared them with me.

To be honest, The Most Cheerful honor took me by surprise. My mother had so many wonderful, stellar characteristics, but cheery would not be the first to come to mind.

But here in her pal’s autograph album was hard evidence of another reality. A distinction I never knew young Betty held. Perhaps the optimism and the sunshine of promise that the New York World’s Fair and The World of Tomorrow offered was infectious.

By the time I knew my mother, some of that sunny optimism had gotten clouded over, and a patina of sadness seemed to lurk behind her big blue eyes.

Dimmed first from the premature death of her beloved father, a primal and unexpected loss that she never quite recovered from, and later a husband who would betray her profoundly, it silently chipped away at that once most cheerful young girl.

But how it makes me smile to know there was a time her cheerful spirit was so strong, she was honored for it by her clasmates.

And I have a document to prove it.

Today, my mother has been gone the length of my entire childhood. 18 years. Those first 18 years seemed like an eternity as I was growing up. An entire lifetime, in fact.

Yet now 18 years seems to have passed in a flash. It could be 8 years or sometimes it feels like 18 months.

Grief time doesn’t follow physics.

It has been 18 years since I could pick up the phone to speak to my mother, something I took for granted those first 18 years, when more often than not it was a phone call to pick me up from school. I miss her sweet, gentle voice with the subtle New York accent, though I have been told I only have to listen to my own distinctive voice to hear hers. But I channel her words in my mind everyday.

For 18 years, she was always there when I stumbled. And for decades after that.

In these 18 years, I have stumbled, often, but the encouragement and love my mother gave me every single day help me up again.

My mother is still very much alive in my memories and in the stories I share. With each passing year, my love deepens, as does my respect, appreciation, and awe of all she did.

Silently, lovingly holding up all those she loved.

I hold her tight in my heart now.

Now that we know Donald Trump was cosplaying a doctor and not the son of God on his recently posted AI-generated image, we can more readily accept his astute medical recommendations.

From the stable genius who robustly recommended Clorox to cure COVID, he has now determined a cure for cancer.

Diet Coke.

According to Dr. Oz, another medical wiz-kid, Trump argued that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass if poured on grass and therefore it kills cancer cells inside the body.

No wonder his administration has cut funding for cancer research. The answer is right there at your supermarket soft drink aisle, all along.

In Dr. Donald’s ER, it’s Diet Coke STAT!

But no grass-killing diet soda allowed on this avid golfer’s gorgeous green fairways.

We all know a luxuriant course is the number one priority for Trump.

Lucky for him, he can keep those links lush and verdant courtesy of forever pesticides. Yes, Dr. Donnie throws carcinogenic caution to the wind thanks to the EPA approval of toxic PFAS. Short for Per and Polyfluoroalkyl, they are colloquially known as “forever chemicals” because that pretty much describes how long they last in the environment.

PFAS, the synthetic “forever chemicals” used since the 1940s, are known for not breaking down in the environment. They contaminate water and soil, leading to human exposure linked to cancer.

The only hazard Trump is worried about is the water hazards on the golf course.

And not to worry, after 18 holes of golf, a round of Diet Cokes at the Clubhouse will knock out any pesky cancer that might have snuck in.

Breaking the silence is never easy. Revealing shameful long-held secrets in public is even harder.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday in Beverly Hills, Lonna Drewes  described how Congressman Eric Swalwell drugged her and raped her in a West Hollywood Hotel in 2018.

To those who doubt, listen to her words. Hear her voice.

This is gut-wrenching.

Every. Single. Word.

Her flat affect is exactly that of a rape victim. I recognize myself in her as she wipes away the tears she was trying to hold back. I applaud this brave, brave woman.

Why did she wait to tell her story?

It wasn’t doubt.

It rarely is.

It was fear,

It almost always is.

It was for me.

Representative Eric Swalwell resigned in disgrace. His resignation took effect at 2pm ET Tuesday. As he should. It’s what Democrat politicians do.

You don’t re-elect them to the presidency.

How many Republicans demand accountability when their own is credibly accused?

When do we break that pattern?