If my audience will feel that these interpretations are also relevant to their perceptions and emotions, I shall feel amply rewarded. However, I shall not feel hurt if my thoughts will find no response in the hearts of my listeners.”
— Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith
Tag: arm’s length
Because the word “community” is over-used.
VOTE.
I MAY LOSE SOME FRIENDS by saying this, but: It’s no longer Republican v. Democrat — it’s fascist v. patriot. Choose accordingly. (And if you’re in the mood for an escapist polemic, have at.) 11/8 UPDATE: !!!!!
Disposathon!
SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE: IT IS easier to get rid of everything in one big purge than a few things in a bunch of smaller ones. The time: June 1985. Hopped-up on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and The Dharma Bums,…
Prosatio Silban and the Sudden Feline
(Three printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.) IT BEGAN WITH AN ALMOST automatic kindness, and led to an inevitable but gracious end. Prosatio Silban was tidying up after a somewhat slow morning…
Boulevard of Broken Animals
FIRST, THERE WAS THE ONE-legged California towhee. She didn’t actually start out as one-legged. But when we first noticed her in the backyard, one of her legs was badly withered. It eventually dropped off. We named her “Tikvah” — Hebrew…
The Mask by the Side of the Road
SONOMA IS A SMALL TOWN: small enough to be intimate, but also large enough to have its share of common human misbehaviors. Take the occasional gutter-detritus. The first time I saw an empty bottle dumped near a Sonoma curb by…
The road to a friend’s house is never long.”
— Dave Chavoya
Why I Love: My Dad
IT’S HIS CONTAGIOUS JOIE DE vivre. It’s his insistence that I watched Sgt. Bilko, Jack Benny and Ernie Kovacs reruns with him when I was a kid. It’s the skiing memories. (It’s also the memories of the Plymouth, New Hampshire…
Minute Mitzvah: Play Nice
Today: Don’t shame anyone. Explanation: When you make someone feel painfully self-conscious, you destroy a little piece of the world — and not only for them. Your own soul / psyche / personality suffers as well. In today’s hyperpartisan social…
My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
— John Dominic Crossan
Hunkerin’
THE PHRASE OF THE DAY — let’s face it, of the hour (or even minute) — is “an abundance of caution.” As I write this, I am anticipating a shelter-in-place order for my county (Sonoma) to begin today. No telling…
Blow ‘Em Out
AS DETAILED IN A PREVIOUS post (c. 2010), every March my sister asks what I would like for my birthday (it’s on the 22d, BTW) and my answer is always the same: “I already have everything I need.” That said,…