following up

Thankfully, my children have better memories than I do. And some of the memories are actually true, so that’s good, too.

D#1 reminded me that her niece, my granddaughter about whom I wrote yesterday, did reveal 3 life-long dreams, but the order was a bit different than I remembered. Oh at least I remembered there were 3, so I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

The second one was different because she did get to experience it that day.

Her dream was to run down the middle of the street.

Now before you go reporting us to Child Services, this was a street that was closed off to traffic, with a path down the middle.

Sort of like this

but without the police detail.

So after she revealed this life-long dream, she and her cousins were allowed to run down the middle of the street for about 20 5 yards.

That seemed to do the trick for her.

Until she revealed the next life-long dream of eating the tons of candy.

Which brings me to the topic of the title.

What we go through in life is often just dealing with the present crisis. We rarely get to revisit old issues. I thought I had written about ISHI’s life as if he were an emergency room doctor, but perhaps not. But that is the case, running from one crisis to the next. And the reality is that is what we all do, but perhaps not as reactions to other people’s crises, but our own doing.

And we don’t often enough follow up (much less follow through).

And perhaps that’s what counting the Omer is about.

It’s looking forward, but following up. It’s reviewing how long it’s been since leaving Egypt, but moving towards a goal of getting the Torah. So it’s training us, those of us who have problems with time management in particular, how to pay attention to both where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

Sort of like in the middle of a road, with life-long dreams ahead and behind, well-accomplished.

questions posed last night to me at the mikveh

Being the shomeret at the mikveh gave me a chance to finish reading The Brain in Love and re-set my Omer calendar. And it gave a bunch of women a chance to ask me a few interesting questions:

1. Who’s joining you this year?
2. Can you house everyone?
3. Do you mind if I just toivel a few dishes? I’ll be very quick.
4. Will your husband be around tomorrow to ask a few questions?
5. When can I sell my chametz?
6. Are you finished cleaning for Pesach?
7. Do you have help?
8. Is it easier to do without children?
9. Are paper plates kosher for Passover?
10. Can you give me a good pareve kosher for Passover soup recipe?
11. When should I start talking to my daughter about mikveh?

Answers?

Sure.

1. Everyone in the northern hemisphere.
2. No, we have to branch out to a neighbor’s. Thankfully, we have very nice neighbors who will be away.
3. No problem…You should have let me know in advance so I would have known what room to put you in, but go ahead.
4. Of course. Actually, he’ll be in and out. Try and if he’s not home, leave a message. And if he doesn’t get back to you, try try again.
5. The sooner the better, please. See #4′s answer.
6. No, but almost! Really!
7. Do you consider my husband help? Sometimes I do.
8. Yes. No question about that. Still finding those Cheerios. Although sometimes, I have to look very carefully to figure out if it’s a Cheerio/Kix or a Lego head.
9. Yes. That seems to be the most common question this year. I guess people are going rogue. Just don’t use the really cheap stuff.
10. Sure. No problem. Just saute onions, add carrots, celery, then add some water. Then add whatever other kinds of veggies you want. Then add spices. Always add garlic. Sure, you can use an immersion blender. Add sweet potatoes. That gives it body and they’re so delicious! Enjoy!
11. Oh. Wow. She’s already 11? Yes, the sooner the better. That way it becomes a natural part of her expectation of life, without going into details about what happens afterwards. It’s just what Jewish women do.

Good luck with that, by the way…

this isn’t the promised land, is it?

It’s a global village we live in.

Or is it?

Isn’t the whole Pesach story about not being where we need to be? Even if you’re in Israel, I guess the point is that we’re not. We use the term “redeemed”, but we also use the word “rebuilt.”

It’s so comfortable here in America. I know, there’s a lot of tension around. But really, how could it not be comfortable when your local supermarket is wishing you a very sincere happy holiday?

After all, they’re marketing their market in a big way. I don’t remember such a production in the past. Yes, there was always the Maxwell House Haggadah.

But this year is different.

I was in Shaw’s the other day, picking up some of my kosher-for-Passover fish and looking to buy some Israeli products. There was a woman raving about a cake mix. She told her (presumed) husband that a lady came from 3 towns over just to get that cake mix. It was such a metziah.

No, she didn’t use that word. Just me. If she knew what a metziah was, she’d be making her own.

Presumably.

No, seriously, was it worth the time shlepping over from that town to buy that cake mix? Really?

On the other hand, have you seen Stop & Shop’s Passover circular? It’s actually quite inspiring. Seriously, great things for the kids to do!

Or their commercial? I’ve figured it would be on line already, but I can’t find it.

I did find this, though.

Stop & Shop Donates 1,000 Pounds Of Food To QJCC For Passover

Queens Jewish Community Council food pantry in crisis as holiday approaches.

And they have a video clip there, (which for whatever reason I can’t seem to embed here. No biggie).

Pretty impressive.

And yet…

shouldn’t we call them door-to-door salesmen?

Another guy showed up at the door a little while ago. Yesterday there were a couple of boys. They’re all so sure of themselves, that’s what’s so amazing. I’m never sure of what I’m selling.

And yes, we’re all selling our wares. Whatever job we’re in. And if we’re good, we sell dreams. Nothing is as good as we make it seem, since if it is a dream, then we’re separated from that. Grass greener, all that stuff.

Oh, what were these guys selling? Nothing I wanted.

You see, those of you of a certain age and who have not read or seen “Death of a Salesman”, there used to be people who made their small slices of fortunes by going door to door with whatever wares they had, the 50′s-60′s (apparently up to the 80′s) version of the old peddlers with their pushcarts. Wiki does its best to describe the phenomenon, if you’d like to see. It does mention that J’ Witnesses “are known for door-to-door preaching”.

They obviously haven’t been to my neighborhood.

Avon started out that way; that was based on the old Fuller Brush man.

So here’s a little bit that I just learned about something called the Green River Ordinance:

Municipal ordinances which prohibit solicitors, peddlers, and itinerant merchants from calling on private residences for the purpose of peddling or soliciting without the request or the invitation of the occupant are sometimes referred to as “Green River” ordinances (from the case of Town of Green River, Wyoming v. Fuller Brush Co., 65 F.2d 112 (10th Cir. 1933)). “Green River” ordinances entirely prohibit and declare the practice of uninvited house-to-house canvassing to be a nuisance and misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment (Rhyne, The Law of Local Government Operations, pp 495-496). Such ordinances have been upheld in the past by the United States Supreme Court. These types of ordinances have been ruled unconstitutional when they prohibit religious or noncommercial door-to-door solicitation. The U.S. Supreme Court on June 17, 2002 by a vote of 8-1, invalidated a Stratton, Ohio ordinance that required canvassers to register and obtain a permit from the mayor’s office before going door-to-door promoting any cause (Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc. v. Village of Stratton). The Court held that the ordinance violated the First Amendment as it applied to religious proselytizing, anonymous political speech, and the distribution of handbills. See MRSC Web Page, U.S. Supreme Court Says No Permit Required to Solicit for Religious Reasons…

Even though the 1951 United States Supreme Court decision has not been expressly overruled, more recent cases suggest that a total prohibition of door-to-door solicitation would be unconstitutional and unenforceable. In Project 80′s Inc. v. City of Pocatello, 942 F.2d 635 (9th Cir. 1991), a city ordinance prohibiting door-to-door solicitation unless the homeowner places a “solicitors welcome” sign on the house was ruled an unconstitutional infringement of free commercial speech. The court concluded that the ordinance did not provide the least restrictive alternative available to accomplish the legitimate governmental interests of protecting residential privacy and preventing crime. The Federal Court decision invalidating the Cities of Pocatello and Idaho Falls’ ordinances was the second time the Court had invalidated the ordinances.

What a great country.

So even though marketeers have gotten the message for the most part, due to mass media, there are still some vestiges.

And they manage to always find my house.

Okay, I know the phrase “charity begins at home”, but I like my tzedakah on my terms. I don’t want it peddled and I don’t want it pushed.

Hanukkah’s lesson about outside vs. inside

I’m not talking about where to light your Hanukkiyah. But in a way, I am.

I heard a dvar Torah the other day about the seeming conflict of the two ways that Hanukkah is described in the sources. One reason, from the Gemara  Shabbat 21 describes the well-known miracle of the little flask of oil that was found after the cleaning out of the Holy Temple from the bad guys’ defilement. And then there is the prayer that we add into daily services, Al HaNisim, that focuses on the miracle of the few and weak winning over the bad tough guys, but that doesn’t mention the miracle of the oil at all.

They’re both called miraculous, but they don’t seem to have anything to do with each other. We can use the typical reason that the early rabbis didn’t want to focus on the  war, but the later ones didn’t want to focus on the Maccabees/Hashmonaim, who were not the best role models, confusing their service in the Holy Temple with leadership. So we can leave it as a conflict of values of the ages. The person saying over the dvar Torah wanted to prove that the miracle of the oil led people to believe in miracles so they could attribute the winning of the war to a miracle.

I’m not so convinced.

Or we can say that the miracle of the Holy Temple was so inside, was so hidden, only seen by a few of the Kohanim of the day, that it wasn’t the main event. The main take-away is the defeat of the foreigners and the taking back the responsibility and the destiny of the Jewish people. That both agree on. And what is the important is the gratitude, knowing it was not by our own power that we were able to accomplish this. It could only happen with Divine help. And that gets reflected back onto the miracle of the oil, that we can repeat ourselves in these days, at these times, in a symbolic way to remember the gift that we were given.

We went to a brit milah this morning and we just returned from a wedding this evening. These are both inside events that are celebrated outside. Here in the Northeast, I don’t mean that they are outside per se, but the public shares the elements that will be henceforth only shown in private. The huppah stands in for the new home of the couple, so we’re getting a glimpse of their private space. It also teaches us the appropriate show of intimacy; the hint, the symbol.

And that’s enough.

So here in America we tend to light our Hanukkiyot by a window, but not outside. In Israel, where things are much more open, it’s outside.

Can you imagine feeling that confident about what belongs shown in public? Outside?

PB followup?

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Pottery Barn.

We appreciate the time you took to send your suggestions.  Please know when customers share their comments with us they are forwarded to the appropriate department for later review, so that new ideas and programs can be implemented if necessary.

If we may be of any further assistance, please contact us via email.  Alternately, you may contact our Customer Service Department directly at 1-800-922-9934 from 5:00 am to 9:00 pm (PST), seven days a week.

Kind regards,

June Homesley

Pottery Barn

Customer Service

Okay. That’s followup for sure. What a great name for working at PB, though, isn’t it?

Have a wonderful fill in all the blanks:

Shabbat

Hanukkah

Christmas

Kwanzaa

Boxing Day

I’m sure I forgot something but make it happy, whatever it is!

how to replace the mundane

I have to face reality.

I have been using Jean Naté Cologne for about oh how old am I? Let’s say 30 years. Maybe more. I don’t have the receipt from my first purchase, nor any memory of why I started using it. I know I had bottles of the After Bath Splash from my bat mitzvah years, so we’re talking about a really long time ago. But I don’t like the ABS. I do like the cologne.

Or at least I did.

It’s not being made any more.

Revlon discontinued it. This is the email I received from them over a month ago after trying to figure out why I couldn’t find the product any more.

Thank you for your recent comments from the Revlon website and your interest in our products.

Sometimes, because of fashion trends and limited consumer demand, it becomes necessary to discontinue an otherwise excellent product. Unfortunately, Revlon Jean Nate Cologne Spray is no longer being manufactured. Since fragrances are a matter of individual and personal preference, we are unable to suggest a substitute fragrance for you. We would encourage you to visit our fragrance display in retail stores in your area.

I told you I am used to being in the minority, but this is painful. I don’t like having to figure out something new because the old worked just fine.

Until it didn’t.

I don’t know how to find a replacement. I don’t really want to be sprayed at the Fragrance display because I’m in mourning. A little past denial now, but I used it every weekday for 30 plus years! For Shabbat I alternate between Chloe and Youth Dew. They’ll probably stop making Youth Dew soon so I bought a few to hold me for a while.

I’m not kidding.

I joined a group that looks like they’d be able to help me. It’s called Basenotes.

OMG they’re scary serious about their smells. It’s more serious than discussions about wine and liquors. Probably because those people drink. and are pretty happy.

Here’s an example of a recent review.

LP No. 9 by Penhaligon’s

The beginning of this classic fougere  with its  plenty of citrus, aromatic herbs, lavender and spices is severe, assertive, earthy and botanic. I agree who with writes that in this phase the fragrance seems a shadowy masculine, traditional with its combination of lavender, lime, a touch of moss, patchouli and bergamot. In this stage i catch the particular presence of terragon, an aromatic and “anisy” green note that i appreciate a lot in parfumery. It takes a while to start the floral-spicy explosion that is the middle stage before the fragrance morphs is a sort of delicate milky-musky floral with the dominant note of jasmine and carnation and with some rosey nuances whirling in the air. I smell some similarities with the scent of Dune Dior although this one is more earthy, classic and botanic. I guess some clove and cinnamon are in the almost tasty mix. Not bad, natural, finally soft but a bit poor in complexity and womanly sophistication.

They gave it a thumbs down, if you couldn’t tell. I couldn’t.

Of course any discussions they had about Jean Naté made me feel just a wee bit insignificant.

And boooooring.

But this note was an unexpected treat.

        Is it possible to ascertain what Heisenberg would wear?

According to that famous quantum physician’s uncertainty principle, determining the top notes would make it impossible to measure the basenotes, while focusing on the basenotes would prevent a reading of the top notes . Of course he might just put on L’Antimatière by Les Nez, which I am told smells precisely like Schrödinger’s cat.

Okay! Maybe I’ll have to check out this. I’ll keep giving them a chance, even just to find another gem like this one.

happy to share

I’ve been enjoying Dan Lewis’ NOW I KNOW (THAT’S HALF THE BATTLE) and his unusual information that my inbox brings me for a little while now.

Here’s today’s post:

He Knows When You Are Sleeping

On Christmas Eve, the legend goes, Santa Claus travels the globe leaving presents for good little boys and girls, under their Christmas trees and in their ornamental fireplace-hung stockings.  Bad children, continues the tradition, do not receive gifts; instead, they get lumps of coal in their stockings. After all, Santa knows all — who’s naughty, who’s nice — and can act accordingly. But it’s a big job, even with an army of North Pole elves at one’s disposal, so in the Alpine regions of central Europe, he enlists help.

Krampus is coming to town.

 

A goat-man creature bound to service by the Devil, Krampus’ origins trace back to Germanic traditions from before the advent of Christianity. Per the myth, Krampus goes from home to home (in some places, along with St. Nick), seeking naughty children. Some get off with a stern warning, but for the truly bad children, you better watch out. Krampus throws these children into his sack (or, in some traditions, into a washtub he drags behind him) and carries the child off, to be made into Christmas dinner.

Been rotten this year? No need to get nervous on Christmas Eve; if you’ve made it that far, you are in the clear. Krampus makes the rounds on the night of December 5th, being the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas. As is customary, many people dress up in Krampus costumes that night (as seen above) and take to the streets that night, going home to home “scaring” children. The custom further suggests giving these false Krampuses a drink (schnapps is recommended) to make them go away.

Or just be good, for goodness’ sake.

As I said, happy to share:).

And have a wonderful day!

what’s the worse thing that has ever happened to you at a wedding?

We went to a wedding the other day. It’s the first one we’ve been to since my FIL died. ISHI was the mesader kiddushin (the rabbi in charge), so it was work for him. I wrote before here about how the wedding is a show and you better try to hide the seams. And this is true for all weddings. There is so much drama beforehand, and it’s best that it isn’t known or certainly seen by the audience. Yesterday’s wedding had much less drama than most, thank G-d.

There were some funny moments that we can share. After the chuppah and after they had exited the synagogue sanctuary, the very exuberant groom swooped up the bride and was ready to carry her up the stairs, down the hallway to the room to the yichud room. ISHI had to insist that would be a very bad idea. Not just that that isn’t what we Jews do, but man, save your strength!

Another odd little thing happened that I will share, too. Since ISHI was not supposed to be in the room with the music (not that he couldn’t hear it outside the ballroom oy vey what is wrong with people and how loud does it have to be before everyone has nerve damage and oh I forgot my earplugs?), they arranged for him to eat in the very nice anteroom, not in the kitchen, as one other person shared with him him. And it was a very nice little round table, not a cocktail table, but a tad larger. But it was set with two place settings. Romantically right next to each other.

When I saw this, I became a bit uncomfortable. Who in the world were they placing next to him? Who else was in the avelut period and was not supposed to be in the hall with the music celebrating? Well, I knew there was one other woman, but she had told us that she and her husband would be attending the chuppah and then leave right afterwards. There was another woman, but I didn’t think she cared to be sat out of the limelight.

And if it were a man, oh that was much too weird to contemplate!

I went into the ballroom with the other guests to sit at the table where I was assigned. I just didn’t want to think about it.

ISHI came in, looking for me. Uh oh. Something now was making me feel very uncomfortable.

“Remember that seat that they set up next to me?”

Um, yeah.

“They set it up for you! The head waitress came up to me and asked me where is your wife, and I told her that you had a seat inside. She thought for sure you’d want to sit next to me!”

I did.

I didn’t like sitting inside. I figured I’d play nice and do the first dance and then leave the room.

I felt so much better after that.

And that’s what I did. Once they pulled the bride over to the groom’s side for people to perform little shticklach for them, I left.

Oh, the title of this? It has nothing to do with that story, in case you were wondering. Earlier in the day, before the chuppah, I was exchanging stories of things that can and do go wrong at weddings, and how ISHI always knows to expect the unexpected. And I added how once we went to a wedding and someone died. And she added,

“I was about 5 years old and I went to a wedding where the ex-husband came with a gun and started shooting. My mother pulled my sister and me down under a table, like you see in a Western.”

Okay, you win.

no i haven’t found a red poppy pin yet

but there’s still time.

There’s always time, right?

Last year, I wrote about the power of a symbol, the red poppy, for Veterans Day. And I am pretty amazed that a lot of people (really a lot) have looked at this in the last week, in particular. Obviously, people are moved by symbols and ritual. Look at how people do up Halloween, if you need any proof of that.

If I needed any other reminders, today’s Writer’s Almanac selection zeroed in on it:

When the War is Over

by W. S. Merwin

When the war is over
We will be proud of course the air will be
Good for breathing at last
The water will have been improved the salmon
And the silence of heaven will migrate more perfectly
The dead will think the living are worth it we will know
Who we are
And we will all enlist again

In the sense of Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, will we/can we ever learn?

So should we all be down protesting, joining with the 99%?

I don’t know about you, but…

We don’t have to revisit the 60′s. I was an “outside agitator” then. A few of us from high school went to the local university to join in the protests against the Viet Nam war. I remember how simplistically I thought and how simple it looked to me. War was wrong! We shouldn’t be there! We should get out!

Actually, that was true. But to give credence to a bunch of teenagers, or even to overgrown ones…

I am disgusted by so much of what the tent protest has turned into, an excuse to fall into empty catchphrases and yes, Antisemitism. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please look at Urban Infidel’s findings, if you have the stomach. A few years ago, I read an amazing book, The Death of  the Grown-Up, by Diana West. She blogs also at DianaWest. Yes, for sure, she’s very straight-laced conservative. But what I admire the most about her is the way that she does connect the dots, of how the fear of growing old allows the uninformed youth (of any age, really) to take over popular culture, which gives way to multiculturalism and not too far behind, giving in to the giving in to all other forms.

Except your own.

We make excuses for everyone, but have no standards. Yes, 1% should not have all the wealth, but blaming the right or the left obviously doesn’t work. They’re both guilty. Let’s kick all the elected people out of office, abolish all privileges, and then see who wants to be elected.

We are owed nothing except respect. What are we doing after that?