So. Ten years. And everything about then is still recent to me.

It occurs to me that there are relatively few poems or passages that speak well to the death of a parent: the one that occurs to me soonest is To the Lighthouse, which I know I've quoted before.

But anyway. Perhaps no quote today, perhaps just to remember with love, whose memory is always for a blessing, and just a prayer, the prayer:

Glorified and sanctified be God's great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon; and say, Amen.

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.

Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us
and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

He who creates peace in His celestial heights, may He create peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

Yahrzeit the other day. Went to services. I always find it comforting to listen to the older guys using Ashkenazic pronunciation and speed reading through the service, the droning of innumerable bees, some of them named Seymour. The other night I pointed out to Secundo the differences in the way we pronounced some of the words in the Kaddish. Let no teachable moment go unused.

Also, miss him such a lot, my father.

As another year rolls round. I took the kids to services tonight; Secundo got to hold the havdalah candle and dip it in the wine @ the end. He looked very serious about this responsibility. My father died during Passover. I'm not supposed to go to the cemetery. I know; I understand; I don't like it.

My rabbi explained that we shouldn't dwell overmuch during a joyous time; I said I understood, but that American culture isn't big on dwelling in general; we're in danger of the opposite, of forgoing mourning. I welcome the mourning in a way; I wish I had another way to feel close to my parents. It feels entirely in keeping with my disposition that feeling sorrow is how I stay connected to the two most important people in my life.

Magnified and sanctified be Your name, O God, throughout the world, which You have created according to Your will. May Your sovereignty be accepted in our own days, in our lives, and in the life of all the House of Israel, speedily and soon, and let us say, Amen.

May Your great name be blessed for ever and ever.

Exalted and honored, adored and acclaimed be Your name, O Holy One, blessed are You, whose glory transcends all praises, songs, and blessings voiced in the world, and let us say, Amen.

Grant abundant peace and life to us and to all Israel, and let us say, Amen.

May You who establish peace in the heavens, grant peace to us, to Israel, and to all the earth, and let us say, Amen.

Radio Days

Maybe b/c of George Carlin's death, I've had WBAI on my mind lately. It was my mother's favorite radio station, and she listened to it every morning.

My parents were radio people, which I'm sure was largely generational (they were children during the Great Depression). They liked having the radio on, my mother in particular, but rarely solely for music. And they were progressive, my mother in particular, and not especially long-haired in taste, though my father developed a fondness for classical music.

So I grew up listening to BAI. I had Larry Josephson's voice confused with Captain Kangaroo's; I heard him every morning as I ate my Cream of Wheat before school. Once she called up the station because she couldn't get reception and thought it had gone off the air, and Josephson made fun of her on the air, saying that some moron had called up asking what had happened to the signal, which rather put me off Josephson for a long time.

So I find myself looking up Mike Feder and seeing what he's been up to: I went to see him lo these many years ago after he'd gotten a celebratory writeup in the Times. My mother seemed to think he was poised on the brink of fame; I thought otherwise, but there was a story he told about a girl he'd been in love with in high school and college that's stayed with me over the decades; I remember hearing it the first time he told it over the air. I remember someone laughed at the wrong part when we saw him in person, and he glared at the woman and said, "Ha ha!" looking like an Old Testament prophet. I was afraid to have the wrong reaction during the rest of the show, reminded that the neurosis and unbalance aren't just an amusing shtick.

A Cautionary Tale

You'd really need to hear my brother deliver this one, but here goes.

Our great-aunt was living in Vienna (this would have been in the 1930's). Her sister lived across town in an apartment building. It didn't have elevators, so people had to take the stairs. Her sister had recently had a baby, whom she wheeled in a pram.

One night, our great-aunt had a dream that the baby was in the pram, which was falling down the stairs of the apartment building, a la Battleship Potemkin. She woke up from the dream, horrified, and set off across town on foot in the middle of the night to warn her sister (she described the distance as equal to that between wildest east Nassau and Brooklyn). When she got to her sister's apartment, she told them about her dream.

After that, they were always very, very careful.

So Secundo made the mistake of saying that the Beatles were only known for "Yellow Submarine," b/c that's the only song that he knows. Which made me go through about 50 YouTube videos to show him "In My Life" and "Twist and Shout" and "Here Comes the Sun," etc., etc. He was unimpressed, though he was surprised to learn that "Strawberry Fields" was a Beatles song, and he thought "Hello Goodbye" was something that I'd made up.

I'm having a major attack of Boomer nostalgia, apparently, I assume b/c I was at my cousin's and we listened to "Alice's Restaurant," of which I remember almost every word and which we sang along to, not b/c I heard it every Thanksgiving, but b/c I heard it all the time growing up, b/c my mother loved Arlo Guthrie b/c she loved Woody Guthrie. And Henry Wallace. And pre-electric Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. Most of whom I perforce love (especially Phil and Pete; it makes me sad/happy to hear the different covers of "Little Boxes" on Weeds every week). Or maybe I'm just in my usual state of mild clinical depression.

Interesting what still sets me off: my mother's name, in Hebrew. This prompted two older guys to mumble, "Over there. She's crying," and then someone gruffly shoved a box of tissues in my face. Which for some reason I found really endearing

Things We Did Today

Went into the city to take the kids to see Belial et la Bete, courtesy of my fabulous uncle and his friend, a former second-grade teacher, thus someone w/a high tolerance for kid nonsense. We dropped the kids off w/their cousins and headed out for some cholesterol. Things I've noticed since last time in NYC: street signs now have the block numbers on them? Is this new or did I never notice before? More signs indicating turnoffs, ways to tunnel, etc. Also: pedicabs. We rode in one, b/c my dogs were barking (@#$% shoes), and the spousal unit thought getting a cab would be impossible. The pedicab ride: dangerous. Bumpy. The driver, a jovial Brit, insisted all four of us could fit. HAHAHAHAHA! If two of us were on the other two's laps, which meant I was holding Primera in a death grip for 20 blocks. Also, we forgot to negotiate beforehand. Stupid of us. Secundo the Anxious spent the entire ride explaining why the pedicab was safer than a bicycle while Primera wondered loudly what the odds were of getting killed. And boy howdy, that pedicab fit through some narrow spots.

Were I by myself, I might have found it larky if expensive. What with the two offspring, my dearest work, not so larky.

They were freaking impossible on the way home, and some cranky woman was sitting next to our little unit. Secundo wanted to play Geography; we settled on a word rhyming game that his sister found boring, so I suggested they try playing the hand slap game, and then there was an argument over the rules, b/c we're dealing w/two Aspies, so double the rigidity!! Spouse and I did some demos. Then the mother and son next to us started playing too, after covertly watching all the slapping and laughter going on. Fun for the whole family.

In Another Country and Century, My Namesake is Murdered

One can find amazing things in the Yad Vashem database, including the death date of the woman I was named for, shot near Vilnius in September 1941. What a shock to put in that specific name and find, indeed, that specific record--such and such a woman who was married to such and such a man (the right name, the right occupation, the right small town). And on that date, said a man named Yaakov Safirshteyn in 1955, she was massacred with her husband: they were 72 and 73 years old.

Also, I am reminded again of the fabulousness that is the Wrightslaw website. I'm going to their boot camp in a few months, and honestly, I haven't been this excited since scoring Born in the USA tour tickets. It's all right there. I love sites like that. There's them as likes Reed Martin, but my boss doesn't, for what's probably the excellent reason that he plays agnostic on autism etiology and my boss is fanatically pro-mainstream science (as I usually am, for that matter).

Memorial Day. My dad used to get a laugh out of it when my bro and I would thank him for saving the world for democracy. He fought in the Big One, Dubya Dubya Two, writing down cloud formations for the Air Force, I think.

Things in Bloom

My parents had had a beautiful garden. Before we sold the house, I dug up a bunch of peony roots and irises and, one evening at dusk, a lilac bush, which really didn't want to leave its sunny home. This morning I noticed that the lilac bush survived the winter and seems to be covered in future blooms. It's nothing much, but it made me happy. My father, who loved gardening, would be pleased.

Because I Am Having a Bad Day

I will quote poetry, as is my right. Edna Millay, today--"Dirge Without Music":

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Miscellaneous Things That Make Me Happy

Today's Newsday had an article on reviving Grease, so the headline was "The Glory That Was Grease." Not quite up there with my favorite apocryphal headline, which was an article about Ari Onassis thinking about buying Buster Keaton's home: "Aristotle Contemplates the Home of Buster." Still, it'll do.

Also, yet another reason why I adore my brother (well, both of them, but this story's about just one): we were going through a very miscellaneous collection of CD's, selecting and rejecting through that mysterious five-second calculus people perform, especially when it's something we've never heard of (performer + record label x distance from original source^genre, etc.). So this one CD was a classical piece based on I think Babi-Yar, and we look at it for about a split second, and my brother says, "This looks good" and laughs and tosses it on his pile. Which, you know, who wouldn't want a classical piece based on Babi-Yar?

Addendum: My much-smarter-than-I-am friend David suggests it was Shostakovich's Symphony 13, based on Yevtushenko's poems; unlike me, he actually knows something about music.

To two of my favorite menfolk:





BTW, the cake has an OU hechsher.

I'm about done w/the Dana Buchman book. Honestly, I'd have considered returning it about thirty pages in, but she donates the proceeds to charity, and God bless, it's well-intentioned. Next up: the new biography of Lyndon Johnson. Because I don't have the machisma to read the Robert Caro book, but our family loves us some Great Society bios.

Coney Island Baby/Brooklyn 2006

Picture Time

And for my 501st post, my West Coast family. Note that with the exception of my East Coast brother, everyone is very tall and buff. Also, I love that hat.

Just for my brother's potential amusement: more adventures in eating. So yesterday we went into NYC, the spousal unit and I. He wanted to go to a famous steak place; I wanted something from Zagat's. His stomach was bothering him, so I won. So we go downtown, in the heat and dust, b/c I wanted Union Square Cafe, and while I didn't know the address, how hard could it be to find, b/c the name was Union Square Cafe? Except of course it's not directly on Union Square, and after about three seconds in the aforementioned heat and dust we were pretty wilted, but there was a Virgin Megastore right there, so we went in and grabbed a Zagat's and looked up the addy and phone number.

It was a waaaay off hour, which on the Guyland would still mean service, but there meant it wasn't one of their regular seatings. So we ended up with the limited bar menu, which consisted of soup, sandwiches, ersters, and like that. We went with some kind of soup that had nettles ("stinging nettles," the bartender added unnecessarily) and halibut in it--delicious--and then we split the greatest tuna fish salad sandwich ever, and then I had some kind of strawberry tart thing avec sorbet, and lo, it was good.

The couple next to us was ordering Bloodies and trying different flavors of vodka to see how it affected the Bloodies. We just had water. It was wicked hot out, after all.

Special Request Going Out to My Nephew

Justice to the Bruschetta!

No Panne, No Peace!

(So okay, this is inside pool: someone in my family, ahem, who claims to love me, decided it was funny to read one of my flakier posts aloud to the assembled....)

Yesterday was Secundo's birthday; coincidentally or not, it was also my grandfather's birthday; Secundo was named for my grandfather (which would have made him, I suppose, Secundo the First, or perhaps Primo). Secundo is now seven, making him no longer a little kid. Didn't some famous Jesuit say, "Give me a child until seven and I'll show you the man" or words to that effect. I suppose Secundo has been molded in Mommy's own little Jesuit school, then.