Friday is the first night of Passover, one of the bigger holidays on the Jewish calendar. I’ve been hosting since before Mom moved to Milwaukee, but since she’s been here there’s no way I’d ever be able to think of not hosting. This will be the first Seder in years I haven’t had at least … Continue reading The Great Millennial Mashup Family Seder of 2012: A story of deliverance from slavery
Category: lifestyle
I really need to be working on my newspaper story about Miriam-Khaye Seigel’s wonderful recording of Yiddish music, “Toyznt Tamen.” I also want to write about Stephen Wade’s “The Beautiful Music All Around Us.” Sweetheart and I saw and heard him last week at our local Repertory Theater*. But I want to hold off until I have … Continue reading Procrastination, beautiful music and a sneak preview of “The Real Beekeepers of Flyover Country”
I sure wish I were as good at my own life as I am at other people’s. I am not kidding. I am terrific at other people's lives. Most of us are, at the very least, better at other people’s lives than we are at our own, and for the simplest of reasons. We are not … Continue reading How to be terrific at other people’s lives, featuring a vintage bee veil and a $10 ukulele
You know life is getting stressful when the prospect of multiple injections in your mouth followed by the replacement of every filling on two quadrant’s worth of teeth sounds like a great way to spend an afternoon. To be fair, a part of that is my new-ish dentist, Dr. J and her hygienist, L. Dr. … Continue reading A trip to the dentist, featuring “tooth-colored” filling material and a few good bands
It's been 41 years since the day my father dropped my sister and me at school. Neither of us knew that would be the last time we saw him. Debby was in eighth grade and got dropped first. I was a freshman in high school, so got an extra six minutes of one-on-one time. What … Continue reading Memories of a futureless present in Urban Bucolica: a yahrzeit post about last words
This past weekend Tuki and I walked with R & Bailey again. We talked about her TV spot. She’s a city forester and was interviewed by a local station about damage to the trunks of her city’s streetside trees because of the extreme cold. She was pretty pleased with it but wished the reporter had included … Continue reading Trees on TV and a review of Judith Claire Mitchell’s “A Reunion of Ghosts”
If I ever get pulled over for “fitting the description,” the description will be “garden-variety middle-aged white lady.” It’s been an accurate description for most of my life (with the exception of the age part, which is following the conventional trajectory and means that if I live long enough, I'll be a garden-variety old white … Continue reading Pan-African Nationalism basics, plutocratic cookie pigs and Rabbi Hillel
So, the Academy Awards were this weekend. We watched a bit of them, which sparked a thought about the day before. Sweetheart was at work and I was performing my weekly “take a lame-ass stab at bringing some order to the Landfill I Call Home” exercise in futility when the phone rang. It was R, calling to … Continue reading A walk in the park, and why there should be an Academy of Cashiering Arts and Sciences
Things are a little hectic here in Flyover Country at the moment, so I am going to post a photo of my dog inspecting the bouquet of birthday flowers my sister and her family sent Mom, who turned 87 this week. Mom is not the only senior citizen in our family. Tuki, the aforementioned dog, … Continue reading Tuki: My heart on four legs
So, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. You know. Roses, chocolate, celebrating romance with your honey – assuming you have a honey. Sweetheart and I don’t really do much for Valentine’s Day. We talked it over early on in our relationship and agreed that being nice to each other on a regular basis was enough of a … Continue reading Forget the birds: This Valentine’s day it was “all about those bees”
the sentence factory 