Even though it is probably odd to say Yom Tov (good day) to someone on Yom Kippur, a somber occasion, in the United States, a lot of people say Good Yom Tov, even more weird. But even weirder still, a friend was listening to the shofar link that I posted and said while she was listening, Pete Seeger began singing Good Night Irene in the background on her iTunes and she said, “it actually worked,”…
I got this off of Wikipedia: Yom Kippur, also known as the Day of Atonement, is one of the holiest days of the year for Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days (or sometimes “the Days of Awe”)… According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each…
A friend called and said her widowed father is getting married – what the hell, he has such a short time left on this earth – go for it. It’s been months since his wife died. Similarly, another friend is lamenting that after two years her father wants to remarry, she said her mother is not even cold yet (two years?). Another friend tells me her husband will have a date for her funeral. I…
A few weeks ago I was lamenting that I had not been out dancing in a long time, so last night at Mimi’s with Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue playing, I cut a rug. Mostly I danced by myself but T actually got up and danced two slow dances with me and then Dancing Man and I danced a few songs as well. As I said earlier, Gal’s on her way to California…
I learned that Gal Holiday is moving to California – big bummer for us who were used to getting to see the band plenty. Like T said, “They always make feel good.” We’re going to see them tonight at Mimi’s, because very soon, we won’t have the luxury of just picking a day and going out dancing. I told her that California will be good for her, will make coming home (she will) that much…
We just finished the fourth season of the Wire and like the seasons before this one, there are indelible images now fixed in my mind about local and state politics. I think through four seasons of the Wire I’ve learned that life in the projects is bleaker than I imagined, inner city children need a strong parent to survive in the most challenging conditions, the school system run by the government, any government, is FUBR…
Tin is very taken with the moon and stars and now is branching out to include the sun and sky and clouds in his repertoire. When we see the moon, we always recite what my mother taught me, “I see the moon, the moon sees me, god bless the moon and god bless me.” And we sing twinkle twinkle for each star. Today I saw a woman wearing a tee shirt that said: The sun…
We woke this morning to an almost twenty degree temperature drop – WALA! – fall, we hope. The dogs and I went for a longer walk than usual and tried to start the day off on the right foot. Then I come home to the headlines – John Mayer quits Twitter (read: just got a clue), Oprah’s gift creates a frenzy (revised: money corrupts even Oprah), Obama’s message is garbled (interpretation: it’s the economy, stupid).…
I ran downstairs to get some notes I had left on the kitchen counter and Tin was walking backwards throughout the house. Seeing how Monday is going, and how it seems everyone keeps saying how good it used to be, maybe we should all walk backwards today.
I keep wondering who this guy is – Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was elected Prime Minister of Turkey in 2003 threatening the longstanding secular tradition of that country (since 1937 the Turkish constitution adopted secularism and gender equality as explicit state policies). But more than 70% of the voters turned out recently to reform the government and give Erdogan even more power – but will it be to move the country to the right a…