Between The Keyboard And The Chair

War is not tidy. It is not sanitary, sanitized, clean, nor anti-bacterial. War creates chaos, rubble, dirt, and dead bodies. These days, however, war mostly creates photo ops and sound bites.

Doesn’t much matter which war, but the most gruesome picture wins. No one reads the caption; no one vets the picture. If you have a really good picture, you can haul it out periodically and say it was from yesterday even if it was from a decade ago…or even a different war. As long as there’s enough shock value in the shot to get it on the front page of the world’s morning editions, you’ve succeeded.

My dad once told me World War II was the first real “photog’s war.” He explained that even though there were gruesome photographs taken during WWI, everyone had a camera in World War II and journalists were everywhere. The amount of photographic documentation is overpowering. Even the Nazis were copious about taking pictures of how the Final Solution was going. So it should come as no surprise that in subsequent wars, we were treated to up-to-the-minute pictures of the horrors taking place somewhere else in the world. And everyone who wants to get a message out understands the power of video gone viral. It’s really neither the medium nor the message that counts; it’s the image. The old TV adage, if it bleeds, it leads, is seriously ramped up.

Rabbi Yosi Gordon, a well known educator in these parts, is in Israel for the summer and had been posting his thoughts on his Facebook page. Yesterday, he made a comment that whacked me right between the eyes. He wrote:

Some terrorist organizations have all the luck. I really hate the idea of killing — what was it? — 17 members of a family in order to eliminate a Gazan police chief. It’s not a question of proportionality. It’s a question of 17 members of a family. Even if we “knocked” on their door with phone calls and fake bombs and a birthday present from Amazon. 

Jeffrey Goldberg is right again. If Hamas dies better than we do, they win. And they will die much better than we will, because babies crying in shelters is kids’ stuff compared to babies being all blown up. Emotional trauma is serious stuff, but dying is forever.

This is the voice of frustration with the media, and I think he’s spot on.

You have to wonder why the press is not marveling at Iron Dome and the fact that hundreds of rockets launched at Israel are being destroyed mid-air. You have to wonder why the media hasn’t exploited the human shield Hamas has set up as a barrier to air attacks. You have to wonder why there is not worldwide outcry at a government deliberately telling its population to stand up and die. And you have to wonder about a government who, knowing lobbing missiles at another, better-armed country will provoke a response, digs tunnels to smuggle but does nothing to provide underground safety for its citizens.

But maybe that’s just me. I always thought part of a government’s responsibility was to protect its people, not preach on television about how to embrace death. Clearly, I was mistaken.

So what are the choices?

Yosi suggests:

So here is how Israel can stop the war: don’t bomb. Tell the world, We’re staying home. We love peace. We’ll defend ourselves. Iron Dome and shelters and other defensive measures will keep us safe. We’ll invite the press to show pictures of Israelis trembling in protected areas, dashing for safety, embracing screaming babies, soothing terrified children. Tsahal can continue to do stuff that doesn’t photograph well, like undermining tunnels. But we’ll be the peace team. This has never happened before, in all of history. It will make headlines all over the world. What if they threw a war and one side didn’t show up?

Would that that were an option. 

But there are things we can do, too. All of us. On whatever "side" you're on. It doesn't matter, and the most obvious one is to stop clamoring for the 60-second new cycle. That constant spinning does more to spew mis’n’dis-information than Faux News. All of us aid and abet that process every time we share something on social media that we have not personally vetted in some way for accuracy. All we are doing is giving hatred a chance; we are adding to that mass of chum floating around cyberspace and it stinks, it’s wrong, and it’s unnecessary.

Yehuda Kurtzer, in his blog entry in The Times Of Israel, writes:

There is a long-standing critique of social media that many of us self-style our personal “brands” and images in ways that are far different (and look better) than the more complex realities of our lives; in crisis, and in moments of profound anxiety, this narcissism quickly transforms from being harmless to being destructive. Coupled with the built-in nature of the media – which reward speed and wit more than long-developed substance – the pitfalls of instant commentary and vitriolic response emerge easily, and the usefulness of the media for public discourse are undercut by their own limitations. 

Talking about it does not quite drive the point home. He suggests that for an observance of the Fast of Tammuz, we abstain from spreading hysteria on social media. The fast, albeit a minor one, is observed on Tuesday, July 15^th, and, like the Ramadan fast which is taking place now, extends from dawn until dusk. Why not use that period to abstain from spreading hysteria on social media?

We can be silent for a day. We can take a moment to read all the way through instead of skim. We can make it a point to verify before we share. 

If everyone thought through that process, if everyone took a moment to think, "What message am I sending?" we are half way to honesty. 

The other half can be found between the keyboard and the chair, and again between the mouse and the monitor. 

The choice is ours. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Know any widows or widowers?

When they are having grieving moments, it's all about them, not you. 

Unless you have direct experience in that condition, you don't know. 

Try to remember that. 

When We All Love Our Children More Than We Hate

I rarely write about Israel. This is not because I am ambivalent or uninterested. Quite the opposite. I think about making aliyah a lot, and wonder if I could really do it at my rapidly advancing age. I used to think I would, but these days reality sets in and I think it might just be out of reach...at least for the moment. But I have a close friend there, and even some family, including one little cousin who is currently serving in the IDF. And if you think I don't worry about that kid along with all the other kids, you have another think coming.

But uninterested? Hardly. I follow news out the Middle East with great alarm these days.  I am passionate…somewhat unreasonably so…on the subject. But like so many others, I am also conflicted. I do not particularly like Bibi Netanyahu.... but I don't get a vote on that one. I do not pretend to understand the building policies in and around Jerusalem....and I wonder if anyone there does, either. I don't understand the haredi and their obscene hatred for the rest of us...as if the concept of sinat chinam, baseless hatred, wasn't said to be the reason for the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. And while we're on the subject of The Temple in Jerusalem, how is it that the everyone is in agreement that the Mosque of Omar and Al-Aqsa Mosque sit side by side on The Temple Mount...as in the original Temple....as in the Temple that predates both Christianity and Islam....yet they say Jews don't belong in Jerusalem. These are great conundrums and I don't see anyone coming forward with any answers....especially the BDS people who have embraced revisionist history like some people embrace Creationism. I think they're about the same on the reality scale....somewhere between zero and one.

But this past week has put me over the edge. The kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers is unbelievably horrifying from so many perspectives, yet not unexpected. This is not the first time Israeli kids have been murdered and I fear it will not be the last. But the revenge murder of a Palestinian teenager is beyond comprehension. The kid was, according to the latest reports, burned alive. How did this happen? Who would sanction such an act?  This is a whole new level of barbarism. It is so NOT who we are that Bibi has called the family of this child.

Which makes me think....did Abbas call the parents of the murdered Israeli kids? Not that it matters.

Across Israel, there is such an outcry over the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir. Rabbis across the spectrum have condemned that action. Yet somewhere in there is a small group extreme right wingnuts chanting "Death to Arabs." After years of homicide bombings, missiles, kidnappings, murders is it such a shock that there is a group ready to retaliate in kind?

In any other country, maybe. But in Israel, this is anathema. BIG TIME anathema.

Israel is a nation where restraint has been the rule, not the exception. Yes, there are acts of incursion and retaliation, but Israelis do not set off bombs in cafes and buses. They do not preach the wholesale destruction of Palestinians from every pulpit, or teach it in the schools or in their children's television shows. No, they are not perfect and there is much to say about the destruction of housing and olive groves. But there is much more to say about a government that hides its missile launchers atop hospitals, schools, and in residential neighborhoods then fires at school yards and factories.But terrorists are terrorists no matter which side, and those found to be responsible for the death of Muhammed Abu Khdeir should be treated the same way Palestinian terrorists are treated. There can be no difference.

Still, I wonder what those vocal critics of Israel’s policies would do living under the conditions Israelis endure in their own land. Would they stand by and allow missiles to be fired at their children? Would they just pack up and leave the land in which they lived for three millennia in favor of a group that did not exist  as a national entity until the 19th century?  Where would they go?

Let's be clear about one thing: Jews are not newcomers to Israel. We have been an identifiable social/cultural/national group since the word ISRAEL first appeared on the Merneptah Stele, circa 1200 B.C.E…which means, amongst other things, Jews have been on the land for more than 3000 years, almost 2000 of those years living under the oppressive rule of foreigners but never abandoning Jerusalem, the land, or the fervent belief that we would one day be our own nation once again.  I have to imagine the native American population must harbor the same dream. After all, their land was taken, they were removed, relocated, restricted, but never left, either. I think sometimes we have more in common with those nations than we do with anyone else.

What would happen if all the women stood up and said, "NO MORE!" ? Would the insanity stop? Would there be quiet long enough to untangle the hatred and begin the healing? 

The cycle of hatred must stop. The Israelis must stop antagonizing the peace process. The Palestinians must stop teaching hate in their schools. The G-d of Abraham, that G-d both Judaism and Islam share, abhors human sacrifice. No more children should be sacrificed on the altar of hatred that has nothing whatsoever to do with G-d.

In my very limited world view, it keeps coming down to the one idea…the same idea that Golda Meir so eloquently said,

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week 

אִם אֶשְׁכָּחֵךְ יְרוּשָׁלִָם תִּשְׁכַּח יְמִינִי

תִּדְבַּק לְשׁוֹנִי  לְחִכִּי אִם לֹא אֶזְכְּרֵכִי 

אִם לֹא אַעֲלֶה אֶת יְרוּשָׁלִַם עַל רֹאשׁ שִׂמְחָתִי:

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither

May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth 

if I do not remember you, 

if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my joy.

                                                                       Psalm 137:5-6

                                                                        circa 607 B.C.E.

When It Rains.....

Well, it's been a busy few days over at Chez WP. Father-in-law has been in hospital since Saturday night with a touch o'congestive heart failure. A bit of pumping fluids out and he should be right as rain in a day or two.

In between trips down to St. Joe's, I've been working really hard on not having my head explode from the news. SCOTUS has dragged us onto another excessively slippery slope with the long dreaded Hobby Lobby ruling. And then the 3 yeshiva boys. 

There is no way to assign a value of importance to either of these events. One is a matter of legalese and as quickly as it came, it was be revisited again and again under different auspices. The yeshiva boys, on the other hand, will be dead forever. There is no revisit, no undo, no way to turn back the clock to make it unhappen. 

But let's start with Hobby Lobby. I fully understand the intent of the Court when it says that religious freedom must be protected, and mandating insurance regulations may trample on those rights. I can understand that if you're working for a religious institution there might be limited questions about what they will or will not support. Every company has exclusions, even the one I work for. You deal with it. 

But we're not talking about religious institutions or not-for-profit agencies. We're talking about a multi-billion dollar corporation with over 500 doors, and more than 21,000 employees. It is not a mom-n-pop operation even though it is privately held by the family. Their mission statement is lifted from their website:

• Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical principles.

• Offering our customers exceptional selection and value in the crafts and home decor market.

• Serving our employees and their families by establishing a work environment and company policies that build character, strengthen individuals and nurture families.

• Providing a return on the owner's investment, sharing the Lord's blessings with our employees, and investing in our community.

Sure you do.

I really like the first one. Of course, that principle does not extend to its suppliers in China who enforce control over reproduction in draconian ways. They are okay with shipping American $$$ to a nation that openly persecutes Christians. And coverage for Viagra and Cialis scrips is just fine. 

Can you say HYPOCRITE, boys and girls?

Before ACA, Hobby Lobby actually covered the Plan B pills, Ella, and certain I.U.D.s in their insurance plans. It was only when it became a political issue in 2012 that they noticed they covered these things.

The award for Most-Blatant-Subversion-Of-Women's-Rights-Since-Getting-The-Vote award goes to SCROTUM Justice Samuel Alito who, in writing on behalf of the majority stated:

In any event, our decision in these cases is concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate. Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs. Other coverage requirements, such as immunizations, may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases) and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them.

So, Scrotum Alito, how does this limitation work? But you do mean to tell me that if I'm working for a Jehovah's Witness and there's an accident at work, and I've lost a whole lotta blood, my employee insurance policy may not cover the transfusions needed to save my life? 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg cut right to the heart of the issue in a well crafted dissenting opinion when she wrote:

Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.

Contraception is just the test case. More is coming. Transfusions, vaccinations, chemotherapy ...they are all out there waiting in the wings with their fringe group sponsors. It will be about what can be cloaked as religious freedoms as it becomes class-based medical care for the rich. The working poor will be cherry picked into endless cycles of pregnancy, coat hangers will be back in vogue, and once again, hope of upward mobility will be mired in the grocery bills. The implication is huge and the cost in human life will be unimaginable.

SCROTUS is no longer concerned with We, the People. The five conservative justices are consistently finding in favor of Them, The Corporation With Deep Pockets instead of looking out for We, The Flesh And Blood People. It's hard to understand how they are protecting our civil liberties when they decide the corporations have the right to purchase an election. I always believed the Justices were the buffers between us and those who would diminish our individual us-ness. No longer the case, folks. We, the People, don't matter in that cowardly new world.  Just as the Taliban are cowards, afraid to face people and modernity, Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas are no better in the way they impose their version of religiosity on America. Kennedy, the swing vote, goes more and more where he thinks his bread is buttered. Their worldview, as constricted by the view past their tonsils, is exclusionary, narrow, and ultimately dangerous to the fabric of this nation. 

Who pays those five anyway? It sure as hell isn't us. 

And speaking of jihad....the murder of the three yeshiva kids will be off the pages of the newspapers in a day or two. That's because they're Jewish kids living in Israel, in the contested territory at that. But mostly because they're just Jews and not glamorous enough for most news outlets. 

Eyal, Naftali, and Gilad

Where were the reports of missiles fired at Sedrot and a factory being blown up? Where was all the human outcry for three teenagers hitch hiking home? Where was the Presbyterian church, so eager a week ago to divest their holdings in Israel, in protesting to Hamas and the BDS movement that killing kids isn't okay?  

I don't agree with everything Israel does, and I am not blind to the issues. But we're talking about the only free-speech democracy in the Middle East. The only one with a history of free elections and a diverse parliament. 

Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach were executed by Islamist terrorists. Their crime? Being Jewish kids. 

If you're looking for the through line in this blog, let me leave you with this: any group that wants to impose its beliefs on others is no better than the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Haredi in Jerusalem, the militant Buddhist Monks of Myanmar....or the evangelical extreme right in the United States. These groups are determined to turn your world into their world order. Whether it's by car bombs, shoe bombs, homicide bombs, or Molotov bombs, these people are ready to force you to bend to their will.

Right now, they have a a great partner in  our Supreme Court.

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Never take your freedom for granted; 

there is always someone out there who wants to take it from you.

Perfectly Pleasant

I'm sitting on the sun porch. The screens are all open and the birds are making their usual evening racket. The air is filled with the scent of the herbs in pots hanging from the deck railing.  Yes, I actually use them for cooking. The temperature is just right: not too hot, not too cool, just perfectly pleasant. The kind of evening you read about in books by Willa Cather or F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

Too early for the frog and the toad sex chorus, but they'll join in soon enough. They make the strangest racket when they get started. Used to scare the kids when they were little. 

Speaking of toads, while I was mowing this afternoon, an enormous brown hoppy guy jumped up right in front the tractor then scooted under the air conditioner. It was a big ol' thing, a classic American toad, all puffed up and it splayed its legs out when it jumped. Kinda cool, actually. There were also more baby bunnies than I want to know about. At least a dozen jumped outta my way between the front, the back, and the side hills. They are so cute, but then they grow up to be big PITA rabbits who eat my flowers and that does not make me a happy person. 

And speaking of flowers, there is not exactly a bumper crop this year; the trees need serious trimming and I hate the thought of what it's gonna cost to get the tree surgeon and his elves out here. Last time, it was a serious chunk of change all so that a little ray of sun can reach the front garden which more closely resembles a rain forest than a perennial garden it's supposed to be.

And speaking of serious chunks of change, I have to replace the throne in the "powder room." That's the first floor guest bathroom for those of you who don't live in an over-sized barn like this one. It's the only not-white throne in the house. It's Innocent Blush. As is the sink. So the question rose, if I cannot get the same color, as it is being phased out, and have to change the color of the throne, do I have to change the sink...and if I'm doing that, why not bite the bullet and do the counter (it's only like 4' long) with a drop basin? Well, Home Depot to the rescue....they have the toilet in stock. Did you know the toilet seat is separate and costs like thirty bucks???????? I'm gonna see if the old one will fit. 

And speaking of things that need replacing, after 26 long, hard, disgusted years, the kitchen floor that Armstrong declared defective the first month we lived in the house, refused to replace, and subsequently destroyed by removing the top layer of acrylic in at attempt to convince me all I had to do was wax the damn thing....is finally going away. That's 77 square yards of floor including the laundry room that I have to figure out what to do with all by myself. (Apologies to Busy Timmy)

And speaking of other things I have to do all by myself, the window guy who is replacing the windows on the sun porch where I am sitting, mentioned the front right tire of the tractor was low. No prob! Just whip out the ol' air compressor.....only I cannot for the life of me remember how to turn it on, so I leave a message for Junior Son who knows all things mechanical, being a mechanical engineer and all, and gee, isn't this why we sent him to college? Nuthin. No response. Then I remembered he doesn't do phone any more, so I sent the following IM:

He called. He walked me through it and I now can turn on the air compressor all by myself. With a newly filled tire, I mowed the lawn and whilst doing so, disposed of half-eaten gosling in middle of back yard. No, I didn't chop it up with the blades. I got a shovel and delicately deposited the headless-footless carcass  in the weeds near the pond where the appropriate wildlife might handle it in a natural, yet discreet manner. 

If you haven't figured it out, I'm not complaining. I'm relishing the fact that I am upright and taking oxygen. Five years ago, this stuff woulda put me under. I never could have dealt with the toilet and the trees and the tires. But now, it's simply what I do. It's not special. it's not grand, it's living. It's getting up, going to work, putting food on the table and electricity in the sockets. It is what it is.

And while all this is going on, I am counting my blessings. I have a job, a house, a father-in-law who keeps me grounded, parents who even over 90 are there for me when I think I'm losing my way. I have a bro who makes me laugh, kids that think I'm just weird, and a couple of seriously close friends and relatives who discreetly prop me up when I am falling over. And I do occasionally want to fall over. Believe me when I tell you I know just how lucky, fortunate, blessed...if you must, and thankful I am. Seriously. Everyone should have the opportunities I have had. 

• Everyone should have good parents....and if you don't, you should have the opportunity to overcome the set back by having good mentors and teachers. 
• Everyone should have the opportunity to get the best education possible. That doesn't necessarily mean college...it means learning to do what you love so you can love what you do and make a living wage at it. 
• Everyone should be able to access decent health care, be able to make informed choices about their own bodies, and then have access to health facilities to act on those choices. 
• Everyone should have a roof overhead. Children should be safe in their own beds.
• Everyone who is a citizen of these here United States should have easy access to a polling place. 
• Everyone who wants to come to America to participate in this grand experiment should have access to a route to make that happen. 

There is a reason lots of people want to sign on, and it's not to bomb the subways and the airports; it's to give themselves and their families a better life. And why not? They look out or up and see America as a place so different from their own that it's like a beacon. Of course, the gold is always shinier on the other side of the fence, but......

Watching the primaries in various states is not really lighting up the sky, is it? And Cantor's defeat in Virginia is not exactly a harbinger of good things to come. I'm not exactly buoyed by the idea they're running the same sponge cake against CongressClown Kline as last time. This is the guy who couldn't remember people in Mendota Heights knew how to color in the little ballot circles. 

Meanwhile, CongressClown Kline panders to the rural base out here, pretty much ignoring little ol' Mendota Heights with her manicured lawns and collection of SUVs. The clown likes to believe his entire district is rural.....dotted with giant tractors and combines.,..you know, manly things. 

Speaking of tractors, while mowing today, I took a corner a teensy bit wide, knocked over the recycling bucket. All I could think was, "I've killed R2."

The joys of home ownership. Everyone should have the opportunity to experience them.

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

See what happens when you're on the sun porch too long?

You ramble.

It's All Magic

Youthful director with belief suspended

In my previous life, I was a working theater person. I hold a Master of Fine Arts in directing, have been an artistic director of a small theater, coached singer/actors...specializing in opera, and spent some 20 years as a working children’s playwright. Although I left the active field a few years ago, I have close friends who remain in the business. The point of all this is to admit I am still a theater person. Not an actor, a theater person. I love the business of show much more than I love show business.

I love the stats and the numbers and the technical expertise it takes to get a show on the boards. I was a huge fan of the original ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT when they used to talk grosses and nets, who was casting, who was taking what where. When it became PEOPLE on tv, I was gone.

It should be no surprise, then, that I loved the Oscars more when the technical awards were presented on the telecast. Movies aren't just about pretty faces on a screen; movies are technology and science and art all rolled into one. Yes, you have to have actors, but a good director can make a bad actor look good, and a good cinematographer can make a lousy director look brilliant. It's all about the collaboration of sets, lights, costumes, sound, and then the actors. Without the consummate joining of artistic forces, you get Norma Jean Baker, not Marilyn Monroe. 

Flying

When offered California, I turned it down in favor of live theater. I wanted the real magic, the kind that’s about immediate suspension of belief. It's live, in person,...and on Broadway, 8 times a week. Sure, actors work hard to learn their lines and their movements, but tech people make magic. PETER PAN cannot fly without the flies guy. The entrancing uber-marionettes of  THE LION KING could not dance without the technowizards,  and I won’t even mention the dark magic of SPIDERMAN.

Straight plays need the magic of technical theater just as much to morph from the plush seat into whatever world the playwright creates. Without those magicians, it’s just a bunch of people reading stuff out loud.

Tech people know it’s their job is to be invisible. Nobody really wants to see the strings, the cables, and the trapdoor. The audience wants to be dazzled and it’s up to the tech folks to do that. Originally, only sets, lights, and costumes were recognized Tony categories, but The American Theater Wing and The Broadway League came to their senses and added Sound Design for a Play and Sound Design for a Musical to the list of Tony awards in 2008.

I remember that announcement, and how both Steve and I greeted it with cheers. Long had we felt sound was one of two missing award categories. We were thrilled to see sound designers finally recognized as the artistic contributors that they are. It was a huge milestone in recognizing the growth of technical expertise as art. Sound was more than placing a microphone. It was introducing the noise of the play, those sounds you need to hear in the back of your head to know you are where you are supposed to be….on a train….on a street…..in a hot flat with a fan whirring in the background. Our world is not silent; the stage should not be either. Honoring those achievements in sound is no less important than honoring achievements in sets, lights, and costumes.

And now, in a seemingly inexplicable move, The American Theater Wing announced they are discontinuing the sound category beginning with the 2014-2015 Tony season.

When I decided to write about this, I understood I would not be writing about the executions in Iraq this past week, or the kidnapping of teenagers in Israel, or even this week’s version of stupidity by the GOP. I know that a sound award is narishkeit in light of world events, and I fully understand that this may be deemed trivial.

Broadway sound board

But it is not. Our nation needs art and people who produce art, especially the ones whose faces are not on the marquees of this world. We need the men and women who work behind the scenes to give us the entertaining experience we’ve paid to have. Recognizing those artists whose work contributes to the gestalt of the show is crucial to our understanding of how that production gets to be on any stage. It doesn’t matter if it’s Broadway or the Elk River Community Theater; designers design wherever there is a production to be mounted. If reaching Broadway is a pinnacle of success in one’s field, then sound cannot and must not be excluded from recognition. Recognition is not to be underrated. Everyone needs it...especially the people who work on behind the curtain, in the dark, out of sight. Everyone wants to feel their work counts. 

American Theater Wing and Broadway League: taking away the award is a terrible slap in the face to all of technical theater. Don’t do it.

Wifely Person’s Tip o’the Day

I mentioned there were two categories we thought were missing from Tony recognition. The second is Production Stage Management for both a play and a musical. Anyone who has ever worked the boards knows this is the single most unsung, under-appreciated, underrated, and absolutely essential position behind the scenes.

They need a couple of Tonys BIG time. 

What Comes Around

That first, grass-less spring - 1989

When we moved into the house we built 25 years ago, it was the biggest tar paper and chicken wire shack you could imagine. When the snow melted and the stucco went up, our property boundaries were pretty clear...we had no grass and everyone around us did. It was easy for Asta the Wonder Springer to figure out her patrol perimeter without ever needing a leash or a tether.

Sometime during that first summer, Asta encountered the great blue heron. Oh, he was magnificent! Our neighbor explained the bird had had a mate, but the summer before she hadn't returned to the pond with him. Seems herons mate for life, and this guy was a widower. He hung out all summer near the house, watching with interest as the sod was laid and Asta patrolled. One really hot day, Asta made her way through the weeds and out onto the promontory into the pond. The heron, who had been standing there, immediately took off. Asta parked her butt on the mud and just sat there. Thus began a beautiful friendship.

Every year the heron came back and and every year they inched closer and closer together until they were spending many a companionable dusk hour side by side; Asta sat and the heron stood on one leg. After a few years, the heron took to announcing his arrival by standing in the middle of the backyard staring at the house...until Asta came out. The summer after Asta died, the heron came into the yard day after day after day...until the puppy arrived. Big Blue had no interest in meeting this white bundle of trouble. Still, it isn’t really spring until Big Blue shows up in the yard and stares at the house until one of us sees him.

the new kid on the block

This spring, however, I was worried. Very worried. I'd seen a heron, a young one not quite as big as our old guy, but not our heron. A couple of days ago, I spotted a new fellow hanging out in a tree over the culvert that feeds into our pond. It was a black crowned night heron. I'd seen them before, but this guy was taking up residence in the tree. Since he never moved while Peri was running around the yard, I thought I might be able to get a picture. Slowly, I crept down there and had just taken the first shot when a duck started quacking and the heron took off.  I was about to walk away when suddenly there was this flapping noise.

Big Blue rose straight up from the culvert where he must have been fishing. It was just like when the Enterprise rises from the water in INTO THE DARKNESS. Turning as he came up, he saw me. He paused for just a second or two and we stared at each other. It was as though he said, "Oh, it's you. No prob." And he dropped back down into the culvert.

I was so relieved to see him. Deliriously so. One more thing in my world had not changed when so many others had.

This past Saturday came and went the way all days come and go. But in my world, it was on June 7^th five years ago that Ziggy shuffled off his mortal coil and slipped the surly bonds of this world. But next Friday night at sundown, the 16^th of Sivan will begin and we mark his passing on the Jewish calendar. We’ll light yahrzeit candles before lighting Shabbat candles, and we will say kaddish for him in shul. And when the sun goes down and the day ends, we will begin another year without him.

So where does Big Blue fit? Well, it’s like this. The year after Asta died, spring was really late and so was the heron. I asked Ziggy if he thought the heron wasn’t coming back. Ziggy shook his head. “Nah, I think the weather has slowed things down,” he said. “He knows the fishing is good here and no on will bother him. I think he’ll come back because this is his home.” Then he looked out over the yard and added, “Besides, I can’t imagine summer without him hanging out. He’s a part of our landscape.”

Ziggy’s the one who isn’t coming back, but he is very much still part of our landscape. It’s true, I’m changing some things in the house because it is, after all, my house now, and I feel only a little bit weird about making decisions without him. Five years into the process of moving on, I have my moments, but they’re fewer now, and no one but me ever really notices, and that’s okay.

  

One day, the heron won’t come back either. I will grieve for that big bird, and I will grieve for another ending. But until that time I will not dwell on the prospect. Besides, I have a new kitchen floor and counters to pick out.

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Left to her own devices, Mother Nature's inclination is to grow stuff.

Always leave a buffer zone between you and the pond for her version of landscaping.

All This From An Illegal Alien

Seven weeks after Passover...and you can count 'em precisely on your own fingers...comes the holiday of Shavuot...which means "Weeks" in Hebrew... which comes from the Hebrew word shevah...which just happens to mean seven......getting the picture here? Seven is a magic number. It happens to be a prime number as well, but that's another story. In this story, we're talking about counting seven days of seven weeks for a total of 49 days of the counting of the Omer, the measure of barley brought to the Temple in Jerusalem each day between the two holidays. It's a harvest thing. And on the 49th day, we observe the moment we stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai and received the Torah...the Law.

I rather like Shavuot. It's a gentle holiday, it kinda comes with the start of summer and there's always a picnic on the lawn after shul lets out. When the kids were little, I always had a hamper full of enough good stuff to feed any and all comers. Cousin Bud used to always come for a bagel and lox. The rabbi always stopped for a bit of creamed herring (my personal secret recipe) on a Trisket. And cheesecake. Lots of cheesecake. There was t-ball, soccer, and softball. Volleyball sometimes, gaga always, and lots of good old fashioned running amok. 

There's also a tradition that comes down to us from the Kabbalists of the 16th century...the Tikkun Leil Shavuot. People stay up to study all night long. In our shul, people teach on different topics throughout the night. I've taught at several and it's just an amazing thing to do. It never hurts to learn a little bit more. 

Shavuot is also the holiday when we read the Book of Ruth. This is a terrific story, and just one more case where the book is sooooo much better than the movie. It's not very long, but right now, it's pretty timely.  The juxtaposition of receiving Torah and reading Ruth used to baffle me. Not so much any more. I see the books as necessary complements. Torah, with its 613 positive commandments gives us more than just law. It gives us a calendar, that thing which turns a ragtag group of people into a community. Reading Ruth on the same day we mark receiving Torah is a confirmation that we are more than just a bunch of laws. We are a living, breathing people who pay attention to not just the law, but to the cycles of our lives...the calendar, the life cycle, the agricultural cycle.... But back to the Book of Ruth.

The books begins with the end of Naomi's time as an immigrant in Moab with her husband and sons. Her sons married Moabite women. All three men have died, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law with no way to earn a living. Naomi decides it's time for her to return to her own country.

The daughters-in-law want to follow, but Naomi tries to send them back to their families, telling the younger women to find new husbands and live a fulfilled life. Orpah goes, but Ruth refuses, and utters those oh, so famous words:

Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back from following you. Where you go,  I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people are my people, and your G-d, my G-d. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried.

And so they head to Bethlehem.  Naomi could return legally, but Ruth, a Moabite, was not exactly welcome in Judah since the countries were usually at war. 

In order to survive, Naomi sends Ruth to glean in the fields of her kinsman Boaz. Under Jewish law, the farmer must not cut the corners of his field, nor may he pick up any sheafs that have fallen. Those are left for the poor, the ones who need public assistance. In the scheme of things, her decision may not seem like much, but the world changes because of it. Ruth eventually marries Boaz because of the Levirate law that requires a kinsman to marry a widow. Boaz and Ruth have a son, Perez. Perez has a son, Jesse. And Jesse has a son.....David. Yes, that David. 

c. 2012 by Lee Prohofsky.

The one who would become King David was the great grandson of Ruth, a poor, illegal alien.

Ruth is the embodiment of why we have laws. It should be no surprise that we read her story on a holiday that celebrates the law and the harvest. Nope. No surprise at all. 

Naomi and Ruth probably would've liked the picnic part. Especially the kids running amok on the lawn. Moms and grandmas like that sort of thing. 

The Wifely Person' Tip o'the Week

A calendar is more than a place to mark birthdays and anniversaries;

it's a good place to chronicle the comings of your life