AN AWE-INSPIRING WORK, The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events by Bernard Grun is one of those books that have to be seen, and leafed through, to believe. (My own copy, of the 591-page edition First Touchstone Edition which begins at 5000-4001 BCE, only goes up to 1978 CE; revised editions are available through your local independent bookstore.) As the title states, Timetables proffers to the curious what happened in each year (or, in the book’s early parts, each date1-to-date2 era) in seven categories: History and Politics, Literature and Theater, Religion and Philosophy, Visual Arts, Music, Science and Technology, and Daily Life. Continue reading “First Graf: The Timetables of History”
Tag: arm’s length
Because the word “community” is over-used.
No Boomer I
I was born in 1962. That makes me, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a Baby Boomer; a member of that generation born after World War II and before 1964. But I don’t feel comfortable with that identification. Not because it’s fashionable to vilify Boomers (actually, it’s always been somewhat fashionable to vilify every generation but one’s own), but because of my tastes and cultural referents. Continue reading “No Boomer I”
Our Own Little “Zone”
IF YOU WERE CONSIDERED A teenage weirdo in the late 1970s/early 1980s in Northern California’s suburban Diablo Valley, you could always find a place on Friday nights at an independent cinema-house in Walnut Creek, gathering with others of your tribe to enact the mythic and terrible rites associated with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Aside from the ritualized viewing experience itself, this weekly event included standing in line hobnobbing with dozens of fellow viewers outside the El Rey Cinema for an hour or two before the film started at midnight. Continue reading “Our Own Little “Zone””
The #popscope Phenomenon
AFTER I BOUGHT MY OWN telescope (an Orion StarMax 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain with equatorial mount), I would take it out in the early evenings on the sidewalk in front of our building with a sign leaning against the tripod that read, “FREE MOON TRIPS!” If anyone happened by (as they often did,) I would ask them, “Would you like to see the Moon?” Almost everyone did, and I took great pleasure in their gasps of awe as they saw up-close lunar craters for perhaps the first time.
Something of the same spirit infuses the nascent #popscope movement. Continue reading “The #popscope Phenomenon”
Why I Love: Travel
IT’S THE NOVELTY. IT”S TRYING to see new places through the eyes of their long-time residents. It’s the road-trip soundtrack, whether CDs, tapes or new-to-me radio stations. If flying, it’s seeing the landscape from a different perspective; it’s the tiny bottles; it’s the in-flight magazines and audio offerings (and it was eating the twice-wrapped kosher meal, at least when airlines still offered meals). It’s watching urban areas dissolve into countryside the further away you get from the city. It’s finding new places to eat, and eating like the locals. It’s testing the limits of my comfort zone. It’s the packing. (It’s also the unpacking.) Continue reading “Why I Love: Travel”
Now, More Than Ever
Leadership is not about the next election, it’s about the next generation.”
— Anon.
One Person’s Pastry is Another Person’s Ladder
CUPCAKES RULE. THE SOFT, FITS-IN-THE-HAND-SIZED treat, sometimes filled with flavored cream (and always with cream on top), is my favorite dessert. Shabbat dinner wouldn’t be Shabbat dinner without one (or maybe two). But cupcakes as societal re-entry mechanism? Better still.
The baked goods from Richmond, California-based Rubicon Bakery are the exemplar of the form — not too sweet, not too small, delicious either refrigerated or at room temperature. They are an affordable $4.67 for a container of four at my local Whole Foods. And there’s an added incentive to buy them: Rubicon Bakery’s employees are reinventing themselves after brushes with prison, addiction, and other un-bakerly challenges. Continue reading “One Person’s Pastry is Another Person’s Ladder”
PS:
So: We’re at CVS just now, about an hour after I wrote “And On, And On,”, waiting our turn at the pharmacy, when this woman sits down next to me and says, “I’m very sorry about what happened in Pittsburgh.” (This, after she circled around where we were sitting in what I had assumed was a somewhat suspicious manner.)
We talked a few minutes about what happened and why; she asked me about the Sonoma Jewish community, told me her feelings about the current White House occupant, and couldn’t have been nicer or more compassionate.
Sometimes, it pays to wear a yarmulke. Continue reading “PS:”
And On, And On
The eleven Jews murdered yesterday as they worshiped at the Tree of Life Congregation near Pittsburgh could be found in any synagogue, including my own: the former congregational president, the lay leader, the man with the famously dry wit, the shofar (ram’s horn) blower; the ones everybody loved and could depend on.
It could have been any of us. And in a sense, it was. Continue reading “And On, And On”
Why I Love: Sonoma
IT’S THE HISTORY. IT’S THE diversity of food, from restaurants to markets to semipermanent food-trucks. It’s the out-of-state license plates ringing the Plaza on weekends. It’s the eight-acre Sonoma Plaza itself: families having picnics, occasional Tai Chi enthusiasts or Morris dancers, the rose garden(s), the three fountains, the bridge over the duck pond, the ducks, the former chickens, the sundial, even the smelly gingko tree. Continue reading “Why I Love: Sonoma”
Out of the Ashes, Endlessly Turning
A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK, Ann, Geronimo and I fled the then-largest wildfire complex in California history.
We were voluntary evacuees who came home to find everything relatively intact, so our story had a happy ending. My niece and nephew-in-law weren’t so lucky; residents of Corralitos to the far south, they owned a house in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park that, like almost all the others in that neighborhood, burned to the foundation. Many people fared similarly, some worse.
“The Fires” were the second time in my life I faced a “will I die in the next five minutes?” moment. Continue reading “Out of the Ashes, Endlessly Turning”
Chosenness as Motivator
ONE OF THE MORE CONTROVERSIAL aspects of traditional Judaism is the idea that “Jews are the Chosen People.” Some (both Jew and non-Jew) take this to mean “superior” in some way (I’m looking at you, Grandma), and use it as an(other) excuse to resent and revile us; some Jews are so uncomfortable with the notion that they go so far as to pretend it doesn’t exist.
I can certainly sympathize with their discomfort, but as a Religious Agnostic, I’m not sure that that isn’t throwing out the baby with the mayim chaim (holy bathwater).
Full disclosure: I don’t believe in a G?d Who plays favorites or makes distinctions between one branch of Homo sapiens and another, or even between Homo sapiens and the other animals. But I think there may be some value in thinking there is — at least, a little bit. Continue reading “Chosenness as Motivator”