Category Archives: History

Selling Love and Tupperware

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Tupperware parties! A historical footnote, but in the fifties and beyond, women, mostly homemakers, sold the plastic food containers at house parties.  It was a way to make money, but also a way to socialize, to share stories of family, children, and heartbreak.

But most modern women work, whether by choice or financial necessity. And as the ranks of single women grow, there’s less opportunity, and less time, to sell the stuff.  So what are women selling now?  Love, and lots of it.

Oprah, Rori Raye, Arielle Ford: all selling ways to find soul mates, relationships for life, the ‘One.’ Just $297 for three lectures!  A bonus seminar for $97!  Or buy the book and the CDs and get 15% off.  It’s for love! Romance! It’s worth it!

I’m sure these (mostly) women are genuine and sincere. But it’s like a broker who says “give me your money, and I’ll make you rich.” The outcome is elusive, but the path the same: pay up if you expect any returns.

Still, many of the lessons they teach are invaluable. I do believe that many of us have focused too much on what we need to do in life — not on how to live and love in life.

Forgotten Heroes

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Emmanuel Fisher (Sept. 25, 1921—July 22, 2001) was a British composer and conductor who was probably best known as the leader of the London Jewish Male Choir. But as a young army private during World War II, Fisher served in the British medical units that helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

He did not know about Hitler’s “Final Solution” until he arrived at Belsen in the spring of 1945. “It was so horrendous that I thought in years to come I’d think that I’d exaggerated it, unless I kept a diary,” he told The Independent in June 1998.

“The whole thing was just like a bad dream,” he wrote in his diary. “I almost pinched myself to make sure that I was awake. … It was too unbelievable to believe. I was stunned.”

Aged 24, he was nurse, mother, and father to 150 to 200 patients. Within eight days, 6,000 patients were brought to the unit for treatment in army barracks outside the camp.

Tens of thousands died from disease, neglect and starvation. Among the victims: diarist Anne Frank.

Fisher’s diary is now archived in the Imperial War Museum. Watch his dramatic story in a videotaped interview conducted by the USC SHOAH Foundation: