A couple was caught smuggling 70 pounds of Fruit Roll-Ups into Israel recently, according to Israeli tax authorities, and another airline passenger was caught with over 143 pounds. Overall, Israeli authorities confiscated 661 pounds of Roll-Ups in a recent week. Do the math, folks — since a single Roll-Up weighs only 0.5 of an ounce, that would be over 200,000 individual packets. [If one packet is 0.5 oz., then each pound is 32. 661 x 32 = 219,452.] Bottom line: we’re talking about shitloads of Fruit Roll-Ups.
How has this come to pass in the Holy Land? Well, a few months ago, a video posted on TikTok showed how to wrap a scoop of ice cream in a Fruit Roll-Up. What happens is the Roll-Up freezes instantly, making it easy to handle and giving it a surprisingly wonderful crunch. It’s become a craze, and the Roll-Up people are happy to roll with it.
With Roll-Up demand soaring, Israel soon faced an unprecedented Roll-Up crisis. Individual Roll-Ups started selling for $8 each, compared to a box of ten going for around $3 in the U.S. Hence, the smuggling. An individual entering Israel can bring in no more than 11 pounds of any specific food product.
Last week, Israel’s Health Ministry took a stand and issued a warning against Fruit Roll-Ups. The agency called the frenzy and the smuggling attempts “madness.” It noted that Roll-Ups are full of unhealthy sugar and oils. It offered an alternative: cucumber rolls. (Not kidding.] As of yet, they have failed to catch on. Hard to imagine why.
Here’s a woman wearing a dress made out of Fruit Roll-Ups. It must be worth a fortune in Tel Aviv. If she dyes her hair, she can give new meaning to “strawberry blonde.” She had to switch flavors because the last time she tried this, she was arrested and charged with grape. OK, I’ll stop.
Vague word had reached even me under my rock about Boston’s first female, and first minority-group-member (Asian-American), mayor Michelle Wu, but I was only today year’s old when I learned she is an accomplished pianist, and, as a nod to how shallow we are, very pretty.
She performed as the soloist in the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra last Sunday at the free Concert for the City in a packed Symphony Hall.
According to the NYT, “she captured more of the composer’s characteristic elegance than an amateur might. And she barely missed a note.” She’s been playing the piano since she was four. Music played a large role in her family’s assimilation to America. Brava, Mayor Wu!
Music plays a role in the poem featured in today’s Writer’s Almanac too. It’s called To the Woman at the Retirement Center, and it’s by Phebe Hanson.
You tell me when you were eight, newly arrived
from Czechoslovakia, your teacher made you memorize
a poem that began “I remember, I remember
the house where I was born.” Stranger
to our language you proudly learned all the verses,
practiced them over and over in front of your mirror,
but at the program when you stood to recite
in front of all the parents and other students,
you got as far as “I remember, I remember,”
and forgot all the rest and had to sit down shamefaced.
Now you live in this ten-story retirement center
where you cried most of the first month, so lonesome
for your son, transferred to another city, who couldn’t
take you with him because his new house wasn’t
big enough. Sometimes, you tell me, you slip away
from the recreation director who wants to teach you
how to turn plastic bleach bottles into bird feeders,
sneak up to your room, turn on the Bohemian radio station,
dance barefoot all by yourself, as you used to
years ago in the house where you were born.
CUNY was in the puzzle yesterday: City University of NY. It prompted Weezie to post the following paean:
“I’m always happy to see my beloved and beleaguered CUNY – City University of New York -mentioned. My mother dropped out of college at 19 to marry her first husband and follow him back east. The only nice thing I can say about him is that once divorced, he was a good father to my older brothers.
“Anyway, thanks to the CUNY system which was basically free back then, when my mom wasn’t waiting tables, she was able to go back to school part time, get her BA, and then eventually got her PhD in psychology. The CUNY preschools were a life saver for my mom and dad (husband #2) when my younger brother and I were little. And as adults, my little brother went to Hunter for his BA, I went there for social work school, and my second eldest brother went to Brooklyn College for his masters in mental health counseling, with honorable mention to my eldest brother and his SUNY New Paltz BA. It’s not nearly as financially accessible as it used to be, and it’s woefully underfunded by the state and city, but these schools have such a beautiful history of creating opportunities for moving out of poverty for working class New Yorkers, especially New Yorkers of color. I will always feel tremendous pride in and gratitude for our being a CUNY family. Here’s to public education!”
The clue today at 18A was “Onetime extravaganzas that included diving displays and water ballets.” AQUACADES. New to me, they were very popular water-based big-time musical shows back in the day. An aquacade was the most successful production at the 1939 NY World’s Fair. Folks like Johnny Weissmuller were in them. If you enjoy the Olympic competitions in synchronized drowning, I mean swimming, you would have enjoyed them. Here’s a short news clip:
I still have the program from when Linda and I attended:
See you tomorrow, everybody! Thanks for dropping in.
The Wellington Files 