Tin and I have spent every waking hour together for the past 48 plus hours. He is communicating so much better than even a week ago, but he has returned to the frequent use of no for just about every response. Do you want breakfast, no I don’t want breakfast. Do you want to go to the park, no I don’t want to go to the park. As I write this he is learning how…
About 5am this morning, I lit my dad’s yahrzeit candle. Twenty-six years since his death and coincidentally the yahrzeit candles burn 26 hours. The custom of lighting a yahrzeit candle comes from the Book of Proverbs 20:27 “The soul of man is a candle of the Lord.” This custom of lighting a yahrzeit for the deceased is very widespread and deeply ingrained in Jewish life. Many Jews who are otherwise unobservant follow this custom. So I took a…
Dog tired – two days of toddler not napping and mommy is about to go on an IV.
In the 70’s Jimmy Carter said we were in a malaise and so I was trying to think of the word for where we are now and I have to say we are in TRANSITION. The entire globe is going through a check list of what they believe in and what they support (either through apathy or engagement) and everyone I know is questioning the standard responses. So it is that today I spoke to…
In Franklinton, in someone’s yard, is a marquis that says: A wise son heareth his father’s instruction. Was dad being maybe a touch melodramatic? As tomorrow approaches and I contemplate my father’s own passing and my own parenthood in general, I am wondering if anyone who chooses to be a parent ever really knows what they are doing. Yesterday, after spending the day where my mother comes from, around her people, meeting a man who…
The day started in the usual manner of days around here at the LaLa, we had a lot to get done today the least of which is to get Tatjana to the airport early, but as is the case around here, I hadn’t even walked out the door when a lost dog appeared on my porch courtesy of a neighbor who found her and decided I might be able to help by calling the owner…
Watching Big Love makes me pull on the ties of religion that I was raised with, and you start to realize how much the institution of religion can succor and box you in. It’s amazing to me that more people in the world do not break free of these ties but then again, the succoring part is hard to ignore. When I was growing up my father was the equivalent of God – I really…
It appears from Doug MacCash’s article this morning that the board at Le Petit Theatre got their way and have sold half of the theater to Dickie Brennan. It’s a sad day for New Orleans and any one out there who believes this was the only road to salvation does not understand the fear tactics and short-sightedness of what went on behind the scenes. I liken this to the Tea Party having hijacked Obama’s agenda…
Every day I pick up the Times Picayune and every day on the front page some parent has decapitated their mentally retarded child, slammed an infant against a wall, beaten an eight year old to death or the like. I wondered really what the Times Picayune hopes to say about our world by prominently displaying these sad stories on the front page of our paper? Are we supposed to infer between the lines that the…
Tin woke up this morning in a goofy and lazy mood and the only thing to do was go along with it. T had some work to do and so I took the early morning shift and we walked to the park after breakfast but he wanted to stop and look in the bayou, he wanted to kick the deckboards on the bridge, he wanted to turn around and turn around and turn around. When…