Saturday, January 2, 2010

Juxtapositions.

When we were in Florida, eating lunch on our last day there, we had the happy misfortune of sitting next to a retired teacher from Kalamazoo, MI. Extolling (or complaining about, it was hard to tell) the ethnic diversity of his native city (caused, apparently by the willingness of Pfizer, which had a huge operation there, to hire anybody that was qualified) he said, "There are six Christian churches including a Catholic, Baptist, and protestant; there’s a Hindu temple, a Moslem Synagogue and a Buddhist whatever they call it…all within five or six blocks."
                                               (as transcribed by Shari Zirlin)

As I said to Shari, I’m almost 59 years old, I’ve heard millions of words in my life, but I have never heard the word “synagogue” come right after the word “Moslem.”

Today, driving back from Bensonhurst we passed Lutheran Hospital on 2nd Avenue. A block or so later, I saw a sign over a restaurant door that read
LUTHERAN HALAL.
Two more words, that, I imagine have never appeared next to each other in the English language. 

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