INSIDE A MODEST HOME ON Sonoma’s East Side sits our town’s best-kept open Jewish secret. Dubbed the “France Street Shtibbl” (or, for non-Yiddish speakers, the “France Street Beit Midrash (house of study)”), our living room has hosted a semi-monthly (or,…
Tag: people
Friends, Women, Countrymen: I’ll tend thee through years.
Words to Bring Back: “Illicitator”
– Definition: n. An auctioneer’s shill – Used in a sentence: “Some of these political rallies seem to reek of illicitators.” – Why: It’s obscure, yes, but how many illicitators have YOU spotted recently?
Words to Bring Back: “Civics”
– Definition: n. pl. (construed as sing.) The division of political science dealing with citizenship and civic affairs. – Used in a sentence: “My old high school stopped teaching civics years ago.” – Why: It’s needed. Boy, is it needed.
Adventures of a Lidded Yid
“ARE YOU A PRIEST?” ASKED the workman as I passed through a local condoplex. “No, just a Jew,” I answered, smiling. “That’s good,” he said, also smiling, and went back to his repairs. He was not the first person who…
Best. Haircut. EVER.
WE HAD LIVED IN SONOMA for about a third of my lifetime before I visited Allen’s Hair House, about a half-block south of the Plaza. I had become fed up with being charged $20 for a chop job by my…
Fie on Death, and the Pale Horse He Rode In On
He was a man. Take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again. — William Shakespeare, Hamlet When I first moved into an Oakland apartment in 1986 with John Woods “Wheels” “Spoonhead” “Calvin Biggins” Wheeler,…
“When young people ask me about death, I tell them: ‘We die a little every day. When you get to be my age, you get used to it.'”
— Near-centenarian Richard Meyers
Not Like It Used To Was
Mom in the drug store Called out to her son: “Brooklyn!” Am I getting old?
Overheard in Sonoma
(For Leah Garchik’s back-page-of-the-San Francisco Chronicle feature.) Ms. Garchik, I was walking on the west side of Sonoma Plaza this morning when I passed a middle-aged touristy couple, just as the man was saying to his female companion, “Someday, she’ll…
Pithyism #65+
Once you turn 30 (or thereabouts), no one calls you an “old soul.”
My Letter to the Mayor of London
Here is what I said to Mayor Sadiq Khan via his website. You may want to write your own. Dear Sir, Please accept my humble condolences and healing prayers for those injured and killed in the recent terror attack; I…
Confronting Evil
(From a friend, for Yom Hashoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day.) April 15, 1965 יוסף דוב סולוביצ’יק JOSEPH SOLOVEITCHIK Dear Dr. Vogel: I received your letter. Of course, you may quote me. The gist of my discourse was that Judaism did not approach…