who do you think wrote this and

when?

1. Since most women do not know themselves, they should try to do so.
2. A woman who buys an expensive dress and changes it, often with disastrous result, is extravagant and foolish.
3. Most women (and men) are colour-blind. They should ask for suggestions.

4. Remember, 20 percent of women have inferiority complexes, 70 percent have illusions.

5. Ninety percent are afraid of being conspicuous, and of what people will say. So they buy a gray suit. They should dare to be different.
6. Women should listen and ask for competent criticism and advice.
7. They should choose their clothes alone or in the company of a man.
8. They should never shop with another woman, who sometimes consciously, and often unconsciously, is apt to be jealous.
9. She should buy little and only of the best or the cheapest.
10. Never fit a dress to the body, but train the body to fit the dress.
11. A woman should buy mostly in one place where she is known and respected, and not rush around trying every new fad.
12. And she should pay her bills.

I lovelovelove #4 the best.

The question is whether we can count ourselves among the 10%.

May those of you in the know know this without having to guess. I’m guessing that most of you won’t have a clue.

I think I’ll let you guess and I’ll tell you later …

what can i tell her i’m reading?

The woman who I only see (or at least rarely see except) at the mikveh was once again there last night when I was the shomeret.  I knew that she would expect me to say some kind of wise statement, if not more, since this has become a habit.

A nice one, I think.

But could I bring the book that I really wanted, or would I bend to meet social expectations?

So maybe sometimes, social expectations do help us, even if we weren’t ready for the help.

Now that I think of it, I wrote about my two current book choices a bit ago, with my previous algorithm challenge to Amazon.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson

and

Mourning Under Glass: Reflections on a Son’s Murder by Dr. Naftali Moses PhD.

Now which one do you think I read there last night?

So when she asked me for my wisdom, I could tell her what I just had read, and I think it’s profound enough to pass on.

But, if I may (and I may, since I’m in charge of this and it is mostly mine), I will say that Jenny’s book is not exactly what you’d call light reading, either. Profound in its own bizarre way, and quite moving when you think about all the things she had to overcome and did with not much more than a sense of humor to guide her.

But I regress.

This is the background for what I told her that follows, from Mourning Under Glass: (p. 122)

In traditional discourse, the literal name of G0d features prominently.  God is often referred to euphemistically as “the Name,” since pronouncing the actual name of God is prohibited. The different names of God are held to be indicative of His various attributes, and a good portion of Jewish mysticism is devoted to studying the various names and their permutations. Some of the names of God are so ineffable that they were secretively passed down only to select individuals in each generation.

A name refers to something without actually being that thing. A name exists in the realm of language, in a community’s cultural connection to the real world. But words are are by definition only ephemeral ghosts of the reality to which they refer. The word “water,” no matter how brilliantly evoked in the most creative language, cannot compete iwth the direct apprehension you get of water when a bucketful is emptied onto your head. God the Creator is the most Real there can be, yet at the same time He is also the most intangible to His creations. Naming God or referring to God’s names is linguistically the closest one can get to God, while simultaneously serving as a reminder that this name-calling is not actually the Real thing. The names, so indicative as to be ineffable, is still just that–a name, and not God Himself. It is a marker of the presence of absence.

Here’s the section that I restated for her:

The call to sanctify God’s name by the mourner is an acknowledgment of this difficult state of absent presence. This is also the temporal framework of the kaddish. Its language points to the future. Together with his community, the mourner offers a prayer that recognizes the lack found in the present. G0d’s name will be magnified and sancitified–hopefully “speedily and soon”. Eventually, there “will be much peace from the heavens” and it will be God who “will make peace for us and all Israel.”

I will stop quoting here.

The absence is magnified.

I knew she would get that.

who said that?

And what did they say?

Was it Anais Nin?

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

Or how about Steven Covey?-

American minister, self-help speaker

1. In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.
2. Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are – or as we are conditioned to see it.
3. Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world.
4. Our character is a composite of our habits.
5. Begin with the end in mind.

Or…

Was it the Talmud?

Maybe all of the above?

ART and ORGANISM			.
. BIOLOGICAL BACKGROUND: INPUT and PERCEPTION We see the world not as it is, But as we are  TALMUD (and Anais Nin, and Goethe, and Stephen Covey)

Professor Greenberg continues:

The limited range of worldly sensations we are capable of detecting become percepts when they interact with the organism. Our first constraints are the physical and chemical peculiarities of the sensory organs embedded in the boundary between the world and our consciousness of it. But next, and almost immediately, they interact with and are affected by previous experiences. We learn to see, we develop theories of what a sensation probably represents. The theory is corroborated by various cerebral modules that provide confidence by testing the information: does it correspond to the real world? does it cohere with other experiences we have had? THUS, We see the world as we are. To understand INPUT, we must also consider the organism’s umwelt (sensory world) as well as the process of establishing truth (high confidence in the reality of a percept or belief).

.
All the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half-create, And what perceive. 
Wordsworth, ‘Lines composed above Tintern Abbey’ 1798

link for pesach

I know, everything is always about me.

So I’m selfish. Is that a problem?

No, of course I’m being a bit facetious–it’s just that we can imbue life with meaning beyond just the proverbial stinky cigar.

So when I read a post about great marketing, I turn it into a great Pesach message.

Arthur Germain, from Communication Strategy Group, refers to to storytelling to build a brand as brandtelling. As he explains on his site, “Brandtelling is built on the foundation of connecting people through a story that is relevant, real and repeatable.” While this approach is often used to sell products, many of the principles can apply to individuals building personal brands. For the ultra private among you, this very action might be cringe-worthy. After all, selling yourself is not as easy or as comfortable or selling products and services. Nonetheless, it’s fair to say that in an increasingly wired world, where first encounters are often online, a little personality can go a long way. A great story? Even better. Whether interviewing for a job or making a presentation, a strong personal narrative could be the one thing that keeps you on top.

Here are a few tips to turning on your personal branding story without turning off your audience.

1.  Discover your story

2.  Re-write your story

3.  Share your story

Isn’t this exactly what we do on Pesach at the seder?

In fact, what’s striking is that we don’t just tell the story, reading straight from the Torah as the Exodus from Egypt unfolds; we tell a re-telling, linking ourselves to our gratitude for being in Israel and all the gifts that we have received there.

So we’re already doing exactly this, re-telling.

And that’s what I’m doing here.

And I’m re-posting the photo that’s on the Fast Company page, which is a representation of this idea.

Now to figure out what is our brand…

borrowing again, since it’s Friday

Prayer

by Marie Howe

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

“Prayer” by Marie Howe, from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. © W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.  (buy now)

borrowed: 30 Dr. Seuss Quotes to Live By

As it say, from MAMIVERSE.COM.

I think I like #21 best.

Or 24.

I might like another one tomorrow and that’s okay, too.

because friday’s a short day

I will borrow freely from an old Monday Morning Memo (January 16th, to be exact), because I lovelovelove these quotes below!

This photo of Tom Grimes was taken in March, 2008, when he was emcee of Wizzo’s 50th birthday celebration in Tuscan Hall.

Tom is known around the world as President Plenipotentiary of that
famous time-wasting society,
The Worthless Bastards.

Brett Feinstein of Virginia is Vice-President. He’s VP because he wastes less time than Tom but he is definitely a bigger bastard.

Here are some of Tom’s recent thoughts:

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s an action worth?”

“Art opens the door to our vast, unconscious library.”

“Written words let me dawdle. Spoken words make me dance. I prefer to dawdle.”

“What you didn’t do is what you did” (My son explaining how his dad gets in trouble.)

“Hamlet was a sniveling intellectual who babbled for most of his storied play… then he shut up, cut to the chase and cut people up. There’s a lesson to be learned there.”

i think i should start talking more about marriage

So I’ll start with a poem and work my way up from there:

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Harmony in the Boudoir

by Mark Strand

After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and
tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything
he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each
word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more be-
hind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true
self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her.
“So you see,” he says, kicking off his slippers, “I am more than
what I have led you to believe I am.” “Oh, you silly man,” says
his wife, “of course you are. I find that just thinking of you
having so many selves receding into nothingness is very excit-
ing. That you barely exist as you are couldn’t please me more.”

More to come–stay tooned!

from Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo on Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur

Jealousy on Erev Yom Kippur – To Dream Harder (TTP-197)

Written by : Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo

In former times, no hours were more extraordinary in our forefathers’ lives than those just before the onset of the awesome day, Yom Kippur. These comprised moments of such  intense religious upheaval in the human soul, that it was as if the world had become a different planet, one in which all normal human needs and worries fell away. The solemnity of these awe-inspiring hours was hard to survive (1). Testimonies of these moments have reached us through the writings of our forefathers and by oral transmission (2).What was our forefathers’ secret to reaching this state of mind and heart?The venerable Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook z”l, Chief Rabbi of Palestine before the Jewish State was established, mystic, and one of the most original thinkers ever, draws attention to a strange phrase at the end of the Al Chet confessional prayer, which is said on this awesome day: “My God, before I was formed I was of no worth, and now that I have been formed, it is as if I had not been formed.” Rabbi Kook explains that the first part of this confession is indeed easy to understand. Before I was formed I was obviously of no worth since I did not yet exist! The world was not yet in need of me.  But once created, why should man say that his existence is as if he had not been formed? Is not the fact that he now exists proof that his life is of great significance? What, then, is the meaning of this strange confession that his existence is as if he does not exist? Rabbi Kook goes on to explain the import of these words in a simple but penetrating way: When I was not yet formed, I was obviously of no worth, since the fact that I did not yet exist meant that there was no need for me to exist.  But now that I have been formed, it means there must be a reason for my being. There must be a mission that I am to fulfill, something which only I am able to accomplish.  Consequently, my existence is of crucial importance not just for myself but for all of mankind and the entire universe. Yet, what is it that I now confess at this solemn hour? That I have neither been living up to that mission nor succeeded in my attempts to accomplish it! If that is so, then my whole existence is called into question. As such, I have returned to a situation in which my existence is of no value, as in my prenatal condition. So, now that I have been formed, it is as if I had not been formed. (Olat Re’iyah, vol. 2, page 356.) This awesome thought is the focal point of Yom Kippur. Am I worthy to have a claim on life? Or have I been born but lost my right to live? This is by far the most important question for man to ask. The trembling of the earlier generations on Erev Yom Kippur was indeed that of great pachad (fear) – not fear of punishment or death, but of not rising to the challenge of living in God’s presence and fulfilling one’s destiny! Our forefathers understood these hours to be decisive. These were hours of great spiritual embarrassment. What if I have not lived up to my mission? A mission which only I can accomplish among all the billions of people? And only now, at this very moment in history! What if I fail? Then this mission will never come true! Neither now nor later!    For what purpose, then, have I been formed? It was this sense of inadequacy that was acutely felt during those hours in the lives of our forefathers. Yom Kippur is also a day on which we are prohibited to eat, but we need to understand the significance of this prohibition. Why is the denial of food so important? One of the great teachers of our people, Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heschel (1748-1825), the Rebbe of Apt, also known as the Ohev Yisrael (lover of all Jews), provided a significant answer to that question. On the fast of Tish’ah b’Av, the day commemorating the destruction of both temples, he would say, “How is it possible to eat on such a day?” Just thinking about the disasters that befell the Jewish people can cause a total loss of appetite. There is no way that one is able to eat on such a day! On Yom Kippur he would ask, “Who needs to eat?” This is a day when man surpasses himself; when he outdoes himself;  when man lives, at least for a few hours, on a plane where the question whether he is worthy to have been created must be answered with a dazzling YES. During these hours the Jew lives on the plane of angels, and angels do not eat (3). But perhaps there is still another meaning to the question “How is it possible to eat on such a day?”  Only once a year is a Jew granted just over 24 hours to contemplate these words: “And now that I have been formed, it is as if I had not been formed.” Who, then, has time to eat or even think about food at such an auspicious time? The great tragedy of our generation is that for many of us, even as we enter Yom Kippur and observe its laws, there is no longer a feeling of pachad (fear) or trembling before God. We have lost the art of grasping the greatness of the day. It becomes more and more difficult each year. Even when we fast and say the prayers, we are not haunted by the question of having been formed versus not having been formed. In secular society there is no longer a feeling of shame regarding what we do with our lives. Everything is fine. We have been deadened by daily needs, occupations and pleasures. We are “allrightniks” – neither contrite nor embarrassed. But with a little more thought, we Jews can realize that we are privileged to have one day in the year to be jealous of our forefathers’ religious authenticity. We should wish to give millions of dollars for the ability to participate in an hour of such genuine religious experience as they had on Erev Yom Kippur. Their great secret was trembling in awe of the Master of the World while fully cognizant that they could actually turn their lives around and say, “Yes, I have been formed and I am worthy.” Who would not dream of experiencing such hours? Just reminding ourselves of this dream makes Yom Kippur a day of great meaning. We should at least dream bold dreams, and we should dream harder. Gemar chatima tova. ***** (1) This may be the reason why we start saying the longer viduy (confession prayers) during the afternoon prayers even before Yom Kippur and before partaking of theseudah hamafseket, the last meal eaten prior to the fast. The upheaval in the soul at that time would be so great that one could indeed die from the experience before Yom Kippur has even started. (2) See for example: The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik by Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, vol 2, pp 169 and 170, Ktav, 1999, NY; also Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity by Abraham Joshua Heschel, edited by Susannah Heschel, pp 146-147, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996, NY. (The author is the grandson of theOhev Yisrael and bears his name.) (3) Heschel, ad loc.

borrowing again, but so aptly

Fire

by Wyatt Townley

It’s only the body
It’s only a hip joint
It’s just a bulging disc
It’s only weather
It’s only your heart
It’s a shoulder who needs it
This happens all the time
It’s very common
It’s unusual
For people your age
For people your age
You’re in great shape
Remarkable shape
It’s nothing you did
The main thing is
It’s temporary
It’s only a doll
In a house that’s burning

“Fire” by Wyatt Townley, from The Afterlives of Trees. © Woodley Press, 2011. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It says printed with permission. That’s not really true, but I’m linking to them and I’m not claiming it’s mine, so is that enough?