Coming Up for Air

Sorry I've been so scarce.

After Thanksgiving we travelled including participation in a glorious 80th birthday party for my stepfather, the youngest octogenarian on planet Earth.

Life's been a whirl since then with scant time for blogging.

Monkeyboy had a violin recital. Nailed it.

He's part of a nine-voice children's chorus that will help celebrate Chanukah in a chapel at the Pentagon next week. Pretty cool opportunity to teach that, even when we disagree with what the politicians ask of the military, the profession of arms is a noble one, and worthy of respect.

He's got violin juries coming up too, but he's inherited my fearless disdain for tests and seems not to be fazed. He already rips through multiple-guess standardized tests as a matter of routine.

I'm overwhelmed at work.

Tutoring again this past Wednesday night was a G-dsend. The kids, and the teachers and principal too, are energizing folk.

RFB and I took Monkeyboy to an interfaith Thanksgiving service last week, in Old Town Alexandria, at a church dating back so far it was visited by both Revolutionary War and Civil War notables.

This Episcopal church's congregation and my shul's congregation have done this together for many years. In odd years we meet at the church and in even years at the synagogue. The visiting clergyman gives the sermon. It was quite moving.

I also was a witness to an exceedingly minor traffic collision where the guy who got bumped from the rear was my congressman, a few days ago. It was the other guy's fault. The congressman agreed, but there was no obvious damage to either car and the parties just decided to return to driving.

Any one of these things could have been a blog post.

Now they're just items in a catch-up-on-a-week-without-posting blog post.

That'll havta do.

OK, sorry, continue talking amongst yourselves.

As Linda Richman's son-in-law and imitator famously proclaimed:

I'm all verklemmpt.

Funny Santa Pictures

Funny pics of pumpkins got me a bunch of visitors, as did funny photos and images of turkeys.

So it's time for me to roll out some funny cartoons of Saint Nick:

Ted Says Hi

Longtime readers will remember that Ted joined our household the weekend after Thanksgiving last year. Since they told us he was 6 - 8 weeks old when we bought him, that makes him just over a year old.

So why has he outgrown his first running wheel and first little house? And why is he closing in on the size a smallish Ewok?








(Photos by RFB)

Trust None of What You Hear, and Less of What You See

French Military Victories.

The link above is a hoax. There are obvious clues when you get there.

1000 non-redeemable, non-transferrable points to the first who identifies one.

Humor, From My Mom

AFTER BEING MARRIED FOR 44 YEARS, I TOOK A CAREFUL LOOK AT MY WIFE ONE DAY AND SAID, "HONEY, 44 YEARS AGO WE HAD A CHEAP APARTMENT, A CHEAP CAR, SLEPT ON A SOFA BED AND WATCHED A 9-INCH BLACK AND WHITE TV, BUT I GOT TO SLEEP EVERY NIGHT WITH A HOT 25-YEAR-OLD GAL.

NOW I HAVE A $500,000.00 HOME, A $45,000.00 CAR, NICE BIG BED AND PLASMA SCREEN TV, BUT I SLEEP WITH A 65-YEAR-OLD WOMAN. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT YOU'RE NOT HOLDING UP YOUR SIDE OF THINGS."

MY WIFE IS A VERY REASONABLE WOMAN.

SHE TOLD ME TO GO OUT AND FIND A HOT 25-YEAR-OLD GAL, AND SHE WOULD MAKE SURE THAT I WOULD ONCE AGAIN BE LIVING IN A CHEAP APARTMENT, DRIVING A CHEAP CAR, SLEEPING ON A SOFA BED AND WATCHING A 9-INCH BLACK AND WHITE TV.

What's Hebrew School Like?

In response to my last post, evil-e asked of Bar/Bat Mitzvah:

This is something I have heard about a bit and never quite understood in regards to the Jewish faith. Kids have to do meetings and learn songs and reading before they cross into "adulthood"? Am I at least on the right track? I never knew so much went into this tradition.

Jewish religious school is kind of a more intense version of Christian Sunday school. In my synagogue, kids learn to recognize and decode the sounds of the Hebrew alphabet in the younger grades, and to read or chant various prayers in Hebrew.

They also learn the outlines of 5000 years of Jewish history and, in younger grades, do a lot of arts and crafts projects.

Occasionally they learn a bit of Jewish folk dancing that will get them laughed at if they ever try to demonstrate it in modern Israel.

K-3 meet once/week, on Sunday morning, for two hours.

4-7 Meet twice/week (two hours Sunday morning and two more Wednesday evening).

In 4th through 7th, there's more emphasis on learning the Saturday morning liturgy and on digging a little deeper into Jewish history and culture.

K-7 culminate in a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, where a child serves for most of the 1-and-a-half hour Saturday morning service as the prayer leader, and chants selections from the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures --- Genesis through Deuteronomy) and from the books of the Prophets (Micah, Isaiah, Hosea, etc), in Biblical Hebrew (a cousin to the dialect modern Israelis speak).

The child also gives a mini-sermon, called a d'var torah, in English, summarizing the Torah portion (s)he's just read and relating it, in some way, to his/her life and to the world around
her/him.

(S)he then steps down from the pulpit and joins the congregation for the first time as an adult member of the congregation --- one who can be counted in the 10 adults necessary to be present before certain prayers are said.

(It's called a minyan and can generally be considered a Jewish quorum.)

The reception and other parties thereafter vary in their crassness or vulgarity.

(See Keeping Up With the Steins, to see a not-very-exaggerated tale of what I'm talking about here. Jeremy Piven (of Entourage) is awesome in it, as are Gary Marshall and the kid who plays the young man becoming Bar Mitzvah.)

If we can retain them another three years (grades 8 -10), back to once/week, the kids learn Jewish culture, history, ethics and lots of other cool stuff.

These topics build on lessons the kids learned when they were younger, but it's now possible to cover them with a more realistic view of the world around us and to really engage the kids in discussion and/or disputation about ethics, morals, and what was in the Washington Post last week.

Thanks for the post idea, e-e.

Tutoring Helps Your Sanity

Work was aggravating on Tuesday. A lot.

Tuesday night I didn't have time even to change out of my suit when I got home. Just long enough to collect a couple of Monkeyboy's leftover chicken nuggets, kiss him and RFB hello, rifle through the mail, kiss them goodbye, and race off to a Religious School and Youth Committee meeting.

Where we proceeded to spend two hours and change to conduct forty-five minutes worth of business.

ARRRRGH.
(I made it home in time to read to Monkeyboy --- we're halfway through a pretty good Star Wars: Rogue Squadron novel --- so I guess that's something.)

Wednesday, work was aggravating. A wee bit less than Tuesday, but the diminished aggravation was offset by a comparable amount of trepidation and butterflies, because I had to make a presentation at an important noon-time meeting.

I did ok. Again, two hours to transact maybe an hour's worth of real business, but what're ya gonna do? Stumbled through the rest of the day being only mildly productive, but thoroughly grumpy and out of sorts.

Wednesday night was great.

I tutor on Wednesday nights, usually helping kids with Bar or Bat Mitzvahs in the spring who need some extra help to be ready on the prayers they're supposed to lead.

As often happens, the kids made my week. The three 7th graders I met with were uniformly attentive and were really trying to make our time together worthwhile. If they're seeing me, they've usually goofed off along the way and need some quick remediation, or I'm doing an assessment of whether they fit into that category.

Picture being a 7th grader, chock full of energy and hormones, and having to go to two hours of religious school on Wednesday night and two more on Sunday morning, on top of your full school week. It's a wonder they don't tear the roof off the joint on a regular basis.

Instead, my time with each of these three kids renewed and re-invigorated me. (I'm pretty sure it helped them, too.)

And then I met my fourth kid of the night.

Having had almost no religious school exposure whatsoever, this 6th grader, after attending a couple of cousins' Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, decided that was a rite he'd like to celebrate as well.

He asked his parents.

This is the exact opposite of the traditional pattern, where parents have to sort of cajole, demand and physically schlepp their kids off to religious school once they hit pre-adolescence, and on through Bar/Bat Mitzvah in 7th grade and Confirmation in 10th.

This kid, warned that he was starting from scratch, and that he'd have to do a lot of extra catch-up work, and that his bar mitzvah would still probably have to be a year or so late, said, in effect, "Bring it on!"

He's learning a whole new alphabet, and a language written from right to left, where the vowel sounds appear underneath the letters.

And a set of tunes his peers have been learning since 1st or 2nd grade.

At a time in his life when regular schoolwork is getting harder and more plentiful.

Kinda put my own gripes and grumbles in perspective.

Every one one of the 4 kids I met with last night said thank you. Good for them; they're growing up to be mensches.

From me, each got a hearty Todah Rabah. Which I think they know, and if they don't they can look up, means Thank You Very Much.

One Year Tomorrow

The first post on this blog is dated 11/10/06. So with this post, I have been blogging for a year.

Almost 250 posts, from the sublime to the ridiculous, with pit stops at the inane, the profound, and the inscrutable.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Onward and upward!

Cogito Ergo Sumthing

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

Descartes walks into a cafe. He sits down, and in due course, a waitress asks:

"Will you be having a croissant this morning?"

Descartes replies, "I think not."

And disappears.

Jeannemarie Devolites Davis Gets Shellacked

For background, read this and this.

The story has a happy ending:

...Virginia: Democrats take control of the state Senate for the first time since 1995 by picking up four Republican-held seats – two of them in Northern Virginia. GOP state senator Jeannemarie Devolites Davis ... gets shellacked by Chap Petersen, and only wins five precincts (out of 47) in her Fairfax County district....

Excerpted from a longer report, here on cbsnews.com.

'Nuff Said

Seven Strange Things About Me

Meilikki tagged me.

The Rules
A). Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
B). Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
C). Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
D). Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1) I only applied to one school for college and one school for law school.
I score well on those stupid fill-in-the-bubbles multiple-guess tests. As a political junkie going back as far as I can remember, I knew I wanted to go to DC for college. I toured three. At GW, the admissions officer assured me I'd get in if I applied. Of the three schools, only GW didn't require an essay. Voila.

When it came time to apply for law school, I really didn't want to leave DC. Again, my grades were good and my LSAT scores were compelling. GW waived the $35.00 application fee for undergrads and recent alums. Voila again.

2) I cry at weddings, including my own.
O.K., if that's not sufficiently strange or random enough for you: I cried at Rhoda Morgenstern's wedding.

3) I know way more about my father's life from a book than from personal experience.
See here for details.

4) I took a week off of a class in college for Luke and Laura's Wedding.
It met twice that week, during the 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm time slot.

Priorities: No contest.

A bunch of us dressed up and drank champagne the first day, but as soap operas tend to drag this kind of thing out, the wedding took all week. By Tuesday, we were down to sweats and more common-place intoxicants.

Did I cry at Luke and Laura's wedding? Of course I did.

5) On Wikipedia, I'm one of a group of fans who speedily revert vandalism to the article covering our favorite rocker.

6) All four of the original blogs that inspired me to start blogging have now gone inactive.
I've been blogging just under a year.

7) In the mid-late 80's I was on the National Board of Americans for Democratic Action by virtue of being Vice Chair of their Youth Caucus, called Youth for Democratic Action.
I took the position because my much-more-politically active friend, who was Chair, needed someone who

A) could correct the grammar in her letters without being an asshat about it,
B) wouldn't plot against her, and
C) she'd never canoodled with.

Because she was a girl, tradition dictated that her Vice Chair be a boy.

All the other potential candidates for Vice Chair (the other male-types on the Steering Committee) didn't fit into one or more of the categories listed above. Most were disqualified on all 3 counts.

OK, now I'm supposed to tag 7 random people:

Bob,
Tom,
Steve,
Rebecca,
Ashley,
Jasmine, and
Pat.

Since these are truly random people, in the sense that I do not know any of them, I cannot notify them of the tag on their blogs. If any of them have one.

Anyone who'd like to answer this meme, please consider yourself tagged, too.

If You Don't Vote, Don't Grouse*

O.K.

Just in case I haven't made my feelings clear about the stakes I see in tomorrow's elections.

VOTE
VOTE VOTE VOTE!
VOTE.

*Title for this post stolen from a bumper sticker I remember seeing pasted on the side of a refrigerator in Ithaca, NY in the late 60's or early 70's. It was drawn by Charles Shultz and the character delivering the line was Lucy van Pelt, that great hero of all genuine grousers, everywhere.**

**vote

Mother Jones

Meilikki has a wonderful biographical essay up today, about Mother Jones.

She was a pretty remarkable woman. Years ago, I posted a review of a Mother Jones biography on Amazon.com. The book is called "Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America". It was written by Elliot Gorn.

Mother Jones was a character of mythic proportions, created by the all-too-human Mary Harris Jones. The author takes the position that while many of the details of her life - as portrayed in Mother's speeches, writings and autobiography - are impossible to verify or demonstrably false, they stood for a larger truth.

Gorn obviously has sympathy for Jones and does a good job of putting her life in its context, but this book is no easy read. It is written in the dry verbiage and cadences of academia.

An unequivocally positive addition to the library of labor history, but don't try to read it at night before bed unless your aim is to hasten sleep.

That was too harsh. The book is worth slogging through. Mother Jones led a genuinely American life. She's the kind of icon that still holds up three and four generations later. She also coined my two most favoritest labor union slogans:

"Don't Mourn, Organize!"

and

"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!"

They remind me of what the early leaders of American labor put on the line to get so much of what we take for granted today. These giants --- these miners and truckers and automakers and needleworkers and longshoremen and all the rest --- won us:

Child labor laws,
Health and safety regulation,
Decent wages,
the right to organize.

The weekend.
Overtime.
Health Insurance.
Pensions.

Many of these are threatened today.

Read this speech by Mother.

Then pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

There are elections next week and Big Elections in 2008.

The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

A necessary, but not sufficient, next step is voting.

Ultimately, we will all be judged by our behavior toward the least among us.

Jeannemarie Devolites Davis Inadvertently Uses Classic Vote Suppresion Scam

Elders who have fought the good fight to enfranchise the disenfranchised for longer than I've been able to string together complete sentences say this echoes a classic, grass-roots voter suppression scam.

It was an accident, Jeannemarie?

OK, you're incompetent.

Because if it was on purpose, somebody's probably eligible for 6 months at a Club Fed.

Click here for the story.