TEACHING JEWISH KIDS THEIR HERITAGE was, to me, one of life’s greatest joys; I began doing it for pre-B’nei Mitzvah students (read: 11-12 year-olds) in 2000, retiring when I got sick in 2008. It was the high point of any…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
One Nice Thing
IF YOU ARE AS SNARKED-OUT as I am, sick and tired of the recreational character assassination which passes for modern culture, please: 1.) Click on the “Comments” link below. 2.) Add either something nice someone did for you, or something…
One Day In 2010, With Feeling
STAN CLARK IS ON FACEBOOK. That means different things to different people, and nothing at all to those who don’t know that he’s Ann’s dad, a World War II veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor who, along with his young sweetheart…
Fanboy Fun Illustrated
OLD USENET HANDS WILL HAVE an easier time than others with this one, but: 1. Go to alt.fan.starwars. 2. Select the thread “A New Hope.” 3. Enjoy. Yes, it’s “just” two guys typing the first Star Wars movie at each…
Stone Groove Friday
AFTER MUCH CONSIDERATION, I HAVE come to the conclusion that of all God‘s creations or man’s adjustments thereof I should most like to be a rock; not so small as to be skipped by errant boys nor so large as…
Why Is This Night…
… DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER NIGHTS? Well … Aside from each evening — each moment — being unique and therefore different from any other before or since: On all other nights, the world rotates from sunlight into darkness. Tonight the…
Pithyism #13
A FUNERAL IS A GROUP of people standing around talking about someone they’d rather be talking to.
Sometimes I Hate This Job
I’M PUTTING OFF WRITING A eulogy. Doesn’t everyone? Linda Tomback is a good friend who used to attend our Saturday morning Torah study. Her death is the eighth in our congregation in the past two years; the first two were…
Perfuming Smacks (was Wadi, Inner Quay)
MORE ON THE EFFABLE FRAMING of ineffability: Back in November, I wrote a flashfictional fable (or, if you will, a flashfable [term (c) 2010 Neal Ross Attinson]) “Awe and Inquiry”. I called it that because it seemed an apt metaphor…
Another Roadside Definition
FUNNY THING ABOUT DEFINING GOD: Despite the impossibility of the task, it does draw one’s imagination and eloquence (or directness, if you’re lucky). I made a stab at it in http://metaphorager.net/working-definition/, tried to understand my understanding in /four-points-of-contact/ and reflected…
Wit Dealers
TERSE WORDSMITHS, ATTEND: WEIRD TALES, that neo-venerable publication whose pages were graced by the first fruits of H.P. Lovecraft and Tennessee Williams, is currently accepting submissions for One Minute Weird Tales, which they describe as “sharp little micro-stories of 20…
This Week In Torah: Vayak’hel/Pekudei
VAYAK’HEL/PEKUDEI (Exodus 35:1-40:38; haftarot I Kings 7:51-8:21 and, because Nisan starts on Tuesday making this a special Rosh Chodesh Shabbat, Ezekiel 45:16-46:18) WRAPS UP THE BOOK of Exodus by building the Tabernacle: the traveling God-tent whose structure and contents are…