Hanukkah starts tonight and we have all the menorahs (or Hanukkiahs, excuse me) on the counter ready to light. I have half of my business holiday cards written. We have a few Hanukkah trinkets wrapped for Tin. And I fear going anywhere near a shopping area for the next three weeks. But here are a few things to think about: Ben Franklin said “joy is not in things, it is in us” and I’d raise…
Is time going by – no, racing by – I woke up this morning and the calendar said it is December 1st! Good God Almighty – December already?
Hanukkah The story of Hanukkah is the story of religious freedom. In 168 BC King Antiochus the 4th, who inherited his kingdom from Alexander the Great, set up an idol in the Jewish temple and ordered Jews to worship it. He was a zealous Hellenist and wanted all people to follow Greek ways. A revolt led by Mattathias and his son Judah the Maccabee to overthrow Antiochus raged with the odds against the Jews; they…
Scott Menchin From the NYT: Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness.
Fighting an ever uphill battle of trying to discredit Obama, the right has pulled out race, religion, and even birth right, but the best was when they thought they had run out of ammo and grabbed onto elitism because they needed something with some real oomph to try to bring this man down. Here I received with my word of the day, a thought of the day: Elitism is the slur directed at merit by…
It’s hard to remember a time when I would blindly get a hamburger from anywhere but that only changed recently. Nowadays, I can barely tolerate to have my favorite kopuska made with ground meat from Whole Foods – it is only Justin’s grass fed beef or the other provider at the Green Market. Truth to tell, I’m not sure I’m even interested in ground meat no matter where it comes from. The awareness level of…
We decided to make Heidi’s birthday on November 30th every year, because it was this day a year ago that my mom died. We didn’t want the day haunted by sadness forever. Heidi is six today, my mother would have been 75 this December 28th. Tin’s guardian and our dear friend brought him a book from Germany to explain to him about my mother, his Mimi, passing. It is Jutta Bauer’s Opas Engel and it…
I went to the airport yesterday evening to pick up a colleague and friend of T’s from Spain – “how will I recognize him?” – why bother asking, this gorgeous Spaniard parted the crowd like Moses – while all the other guys were wearing oversized shirts and jeans and hoodies, this guy walks through the crowd impeccably dressed like only a Spaniard could. I wondered why I couldn’t have mustered a little more finesse in…
I became a mother at 50 and lost my mother at 50 – what could be more profound? A woman on the bayou told me she doesn’t know if she would be brave enough to become a mother at 50 and I said that’s because you were a mother at 20, so you don’t have to think about those things. Today the man at brake tag office was smiling as he was applying my new…
I was going through and taking myself off a couple of networks that I somehow got on – Xing, Plaxo – I already got off Facebook – I don’t need these things complicating my already complicated life. But today from LinkedIn – the one network I am staying on – I got an update about a woman who is doing a webisode and it’s fabulous – this is the third in I believe 18 episodes…