Know what else runs in my family – nurture and love. My mother was a nurse because she was a very caring human being. My grandmother (her mother) in her later years used to go to the hospital to rock babies. My cousins – male – have become nurses. I come from a long line of caregivers, which is why I am at my core – loved. To all the nurses on the frontlines during…
I know a lot about coping with anxiety because I’ve had it all my life. I didn’t realize until I started addressing it that it is rampant in my family – on both sides. Since Jewish people overindex to anxiety, I thought I had inherited it from my father’s Sephardic side, but turns it out, it’s everywhere in my family tree. What I’ve learned is that anxiety does not just happen. There is not an…
An email came in from Yelp today telling me they could help me set up my business to make deliveries. Here’s what my business offers: Live Music Community gathering Cultural events A place for all life events from birth to death My question for Yelp is how do I deliver these?
I am now a tutor, teacher’s assistant, short order cook, house cleaner and mindfulness mentor to an 11 year old who is marching through the house with an army blanket draped around his shoulders, a blue handkerchief tied around his neck, carrying a plastic sword. My son already has a PhD in costuming, while I’m seeing so many holes in the academic side of his equation. Kicking and crying about having to listen to a…
Instead of getting up at the butt crack of dawn as my friend Flower calls it (read: 4:30am) and making tea and Tin’s lunch and then getting in the car to drive him to school in New Orleans and then hustling to make a living and make the events at the Hall happen, I am getting up at 7:30 now. Tin has his morning meeting with his class online and then begins his 2-3 hours…
There are a handful of homeschool collectives in New Orleans, and there have been smaller groups focused on African American children. A friend of mine, who teaches at Newman, has three children who are all A+ students. Her eldest child told me that the ones to fear in the Academic Games are the homeschooled African American kids. I’ve thought very seriously about home school for Tin. He now goes to a school that began with…
Yesterday, I went to New Orleans to pick up Tin and was surprised by how many people were out and about. City Park was chock a block full of blankets with more than a few people on each one. I went to the feed store to get Stella’s food and kept trying to walk down the aisle alone, but this woman had come in and kept popping up and I was desperately trying to avoid…
My friend wanted to adopt a dog – she’s been wanting this for some time now and it just so happens she found one during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. So I met her at the owner’s house to see about this dog. The subdivision was a gated community with cookie cutter mansions each with a green lawn and a concrete driveway. Except for a slight alteration in style, you’d never know which house was yours.…
There is a rumor that Buddha said all life is struggle, but that is not what he meant. We struggle when we don’t accept what is. We struggle to change it, we struggle to wrest meaning out of it, we struggle to overcome it, and we struggle to not let what is change us. I self soothe at night by thinking of all the many splendor things that I’m lucky to have – shelter, food,…
Today the 100 Men Hall was going to have the most magnificent St. Joseph Altar. Months ago we met to make the cuccidati: There were multiple baking days of Italian cookies with Linda Belou and friends, a beautiful label designed by Ann Madden, and lucky fava beans bought at Central Grocery in New Orleans – we have pounds of them! We were so excited about the altar – alas, COVID-19 isolation made it impossible. In…