My Mom, Jackie

November 10, 1925 - September 20, 1988

I love you, Mom.

May your memory be a blessing.

Poozer Puttin' Up Scatch

Above is my son, Mister C, putting up the scatch, the roofing. (Enlarge the picture, so you can see that joyful punim!) The featured sheet is courtesy of my ex-Marine California niece and her three kiddoes.

Our final sukkah open house was last night. I have been surprised both by who has visited this week and who has not. Two more neighbors came by, one with his 2 month old baby girl, too sweet, my festive, wonderful sis-in-law came from Austin, a really nice couple from the havurah and my son and DIL (even though they were clearly exhausted from working all day...) It was amazing how many of us in that small group are in animal rescue - either officially or non-offically. Bonnie the Basset came out to schmooze.

Nice night, and I'll be sorry to see Sukkot end tomorrow morning. More pix to come this week.

Sukkah Pix , More to Come!

I cribbed these great pix from my DIL's blog, and will add more of the 300 that she took later! I'll post pix of the three other hand-drawn panels and of our ushpizin. The Tuesday night open house was so much fun. Two neighbors, a co-worker, and two members of our havurah came and brought their children. My now-retired therapy pet, Bonnie the Basset was a big hit with everyone, and she enjoyed playing the friendly livestock. The cats watched and wondered from the front windows! We drank kosher wine and had hummus, halava, dates, brownies, dried apricots and figs, pickled turnips, chips, and goat cheese. There will be one more big open house Saturday night! Come on over!

Stormy Sukkot

It is storming!! :>( We have needed rain badly since Ike, but why today? Some of the wonderful Sukkah panels bled slightly yesterday from the humidity…I can’t bear thinking about the wonderful designs drawn in “permanent markers” by my family and friends dissolving in this torrential downpour.
Earlier this morning, when it was still lightly raining, after two slightly hysterical e-mails and one voice mail from me, my Hub called me back to say that the panels all looked fine. That was before it started to rain cats, dogs, buckets and frogs. I have to stop myself from careening home to check on something that it’s too late to save anyway. I know I should focus on what is real, what is forever, what is never-ending, but I HATE real-life lessons. I prefer mine in books. They are so painlessly inspirational and neatly resolved with titles like, "Nothing Lasts But The Things That Truly Matter."
Impermanence. Fragility. Impermanence. Fragility…Sukkot.

The Sukkah Cometh

I bought (16) pine 2 x 2 x 8s and a bag full of 3.5 "long bolts with washers and nuts for the sukkah frame and assembled a practice side today while I was waiting for a load of laundry to dry. I wanted to make sure that my loosey-goosey design was actually going to work, so no one will find me sitting in the front yard the evening of October 13th, wrapped in a gaily decorated sukkah panel, pinned under the fallen frame and sobbing with my thumb in my mouth.
Oh, I've built things before, yes...yes, I have. Not that anything I've ever built is remotely plumb - somewhere from the great beyond, my master carpenter father is trying to grab the hammer away from me and show me how to fix that SOB!- whether it's the huge arty shelves in the living room, to the precarious but wonderful screened-in cattery tacked onto the back of the house where our cats go to sun themselves, commune with birds and squirrels and eat grass ( that is thrown back up promptly inside the house; that's just how they roll). I throw myself into these projects with bold abandon and a vague plan. From then on, all bets are off.
Stop the presses! More sheets have landed. My sister's came in, and yes, it has Palm trees (see my previous post), a Magen David and "that thing Jews put next to their doors." It's really very sweet and much appreciated. One of my nieces sent one drawn mainly by my 8 year old great-nephew. It's replete with stick-figure prophets and grapes. I love it. They evacuated from the Beaumont/Port Arthur-home-of-Janis-Joplin area during Ike and still made time to finish the sheet. My son & daughter-in-law worked on their contribution during Ike. Two cats with swishing tails watch a silhouette of a woman inside a brightly-lit sukkah while a Cardinal settles into her nest (see my Post-Ike post) high above in a tree. Touching, personal and beautiful. It's beginning to look a lot like Sukkot!

My Sister, Lucy Van Pelt

I didn't think that anything scared my sister, who I've always seen as a combination of a tough-talking, two-fisted old broad (and no, she doesn't read this blog or I wouldn't still be living and breathing to post another day) and a force of nature that had to be tracked - like a hurricane - if she was headed for Texas. During some Jungian workshop thrown by a friend of mine years ago, we had to pick from hundreds of picture cards ones that represented members of our family and arrange them in order of importance. The person of power for good or bad was placed in the center. Guess who was in the Center Square to Block as the Wicked Witch of the West...and... guess who got to be Dorothy?
But, oh, how the mighty have fallen. I have found her Achilles heel. She called me last week in a near panic because I asked her "TO DO SOMETHING CREATIVE!" Days passed and an e-mail announced that the upcoming weekend was "Sukkah sheet weekend!" I told her to calm down, not over-think it, that she could just draw a Palm tree and sign her name to it, and I'd be perfectly happy. Over the weekend another phone call: she found a video on YouTube with instructions on drawing a Palm Tree, but needed to buy a yard stick and she couldn't figure out where to spread the sheet out to draw on it and she's not creative and she can't believe that I'm asking her to be creative and...

Payback is sweet.

27 September 2008 4:30 pm

Remember that scene in Ghostbusters when Sigourney Weaver opens her fridge and is blinded by the light (among other things...)? That same scene played out in my kitchen yesterday (sans the appearance of Zul, although nothing much fazes me post-Ike!) when the power (FINALLY!) came back on at 4:30pm. I had scrubbed it to within an inch of its life -I am pretty sure that it wasn't this clean when it was new - once we started seeing power trucks on our street and was fairly blinded by its bright, clean, cool beauty with its beckoning shaft of light at 4:30 pm yesterday. Nothing quite like a natural disaster to get me to clean the refrigerator.

All kidding aside, some 250,000 in the Houston-area still have no power and/or running water and 400 people are still missing. Hoping that most of them have simply been unable to re-connect with loved ones...may they turn up safe and sound.

And, on another sad note, Friday we said goodbye to Paul Newman, a wonderful man who made a difference in so many lives, completely without fanfare. May his family have peace and privacy in this time of loss and grieving.

We will have Mr. Smith's birthday / Rosh Hashanah dinner after all: honey-tasting with challot and apples, baked honey-mustard chicken, baked leeks with olive oil and rosemary, mashed sweet potatoes (Garnet Yams to be precise), spinach, orange and pomegranate salad, and rice followed by a bangin' banana split cake.

Wishing you all a L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu! May you be inscribed and sealed for another good year.

Post-Ike

Thanks to everyone who's called or written. Really, sincerely, thank you.
I had a good cry early Shabbat morning. There is a Cardinal couple who show up at the bird feeder regularly - the male is the classic showy red and black struttin'- his -bad-self and the female a classy gray with pale red undertones both with Tintin's cockscomb hairstyle. The male was out there feeding and calling his heart out for the female, who I presumed was killed in the storm. This is prime bird migration time along the Texas coast and the losses to wildlife are immeasurable. After I got back from my havurah -(which met in a building without power, so our perpetually over-heated rabbi was schvitzing mightily under his tallit), I checked the bird feeder again. The little gray and red lady had returned to her mate, and I startled my mate with cries of joy.
This is day 11 without power at our home. Life has had a different rhythm for the two media junkies within: playing cards, Scrabble, dominoes, then retiring to read in bed until we fall asleep. Mr. Smith sweetly inquired on Eruv Shabbat if this was what "being Orthodox is like." Life has been unexpectedly sweet, slow, quiet and focused. It took a hurricane to settle my ever-distracted mind and reflect upon what is essential and what is true as the Days of Awe approach.
For now, we are connected to simpler things: the politics that absorbed us 12 days ago is like something from another life, and we've barely been able to grasp the economic horror show now playing in lives near you. Our new fave raves are neighbors sharing ice, finding an open movie theater, kids skateboarding, people walking the neighborhood, cheering when we see a power truck, counting our blessings in the wake of destruction, loss of homes and lives. We (and our loved ones including all dogs and cats) are all just fine. Houston is still in shambles, but is struggling back to life. Galveston is uninhabitable still. It will come back, too.
I'm still channeling my inner-Pollyanna and hoping for the best, here in the land of the haves and the have-nots.

Hurricane Ike

Today will be spent boarding up the big picture window, filling containers with water, clearing the deck and yard, cleaing the house in case MIL needs to stay with us. Cell phones and iPod are charged, we've laid in enough cat and dog food, peanut butter and tuna fish for a week. We have batteries, although I'm not sure if they fit the lanterns or radio... we've had a typical Gulf-coast laissez-faire attitude to hurricane prep, even post-Katrina. There ARE plenty of candles; the supermarket had a close-out sale on Shabbat candles last month, so I stocked up.
Ike is approaching and the latest path projections bring it right through our hometown, so we can't brush it off any longer.
Hurricanes were exciting adventures as a kid. Carla rip-roared through here when I was 10 in 1962, keeping me out of school for days, reading and playing Scrabble by flashlight on pallets in the living room , watching the tall Oaks bending at improbable angles in the gale, wading through two feet deep water in the yard when the eye passed over us and all was still. I was awed by the destruction only later, when we drove down to what was left of the bars and beach houses along Galveston Bay. People searched for the remains of a bar whose walls were rumored to have been papered with dollar bills. The miles of driftwood along the beach hid snakes, Daddy said, so we were careful.
Shabbat Shalom everyone. Be safe.

Right In Front of My Ears

I have agonized, re-agonized, post and pre-agonized for a very long time about what Hebrew name I would choose when I finally formally went through conversion (oh, how I cringe at that very concept, to convert to something I already am and believe I always have been...but there I go again.)
I toyed with Batshere (but cutsy Mr. Smith repeatedly voiced a rude mispronounciation of it; what a wag!), thought about Chana (but "grace" I am not...), and landed on Miriam for awhile (meaning: sea of bitterness, how about that to define myself forever?! Plus, I'm no dancer, although I can resort to rock and roll flailing when the occasion calls for it.)
So. I was downloading some music into my iPod yesterday and saw it.
"Tzena, Tzena, Tzena" made famous in 1950 by the Weavers with Pete Seeger, one of my heros. It's been one of my favorite songs since childhood, one that I always sing fragements of or hum its melody. My name had been right in front of my ears my entire life.
Exuberant, saucy, has many meanings, layers, versions, and interpretations.
Call me Tzena.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyX-Rc8A1cg

First Sukkah Panel!

Weese brought her Sukkah panel with her from Austin, and I'm almost moved to tears by the thought, care, beauty she put onto that white sheet. There are two women - almost life-sized- dancing in the desert. They are Weese and I in our younger years, one dark-haired, one blond. Their clothes are loosely appliqued in gorgeous, luminous sea-green fabric for me and diaphanous black with deep purple flowers for her. Her bare toes peek out from under her gown. This woman has always gone barefoot. At the bottom, she inscribed in beautiful Hebrew: Melek Ha'Olam Eloheinu.
Weese and I have been friends since the 70ies, and I give her total credit for maintaining our friendship. She is one of the most loving, nurturing, forgiving, non-judgemental, surviving lovers of life I have ever known. She has just decided at age 50 to become a nurse. I could kiss those toes.

Twitterpated

I, ahem, just learned to text today. I feel like I just learned to walk or something. I am a big girl now. So text me already. Twitter is next, but I'm gonna make it easy on you. Here's my Twitter for the next 365 days.
4:45 am: stumbling into kitchen to feed cats, then dogs, tripping over several in the process. I saw an article that said if you drop dead in your house alone with your pets, the dogs will wait a decent interval before they chow down on you, feeling guilty even then, but the cats, ah the cats, my beloveds, tuck right in before you cool off.
7am: work, snack, work, work, snack
4pm: back in the nest, slumped on the couch reading and hanging with aforementioned dogs and cats while Mr. Smith naps
5:30pm: Mr. Smith rises and serves a fine cup of coffee to me, the restorative cup, my cocktail. His coffee, like him, is the best in the world. He puts so much thought and effort into it.
6:30pm: ringing the dinner bell
8pm: snoring on the couch. Don't even think about waking me up unless something really trashy - I mean informative- is on TV.
10pm: official bedtime, climb into bed with Molly, Miss Formerly Feral kitty for safe and restful, sleep, sleep, sleep.
Shabbat Shalom, Everyone, shabbat menuhah.

Elul Already??

The High Holidays approacheth. I (she who usually falls asleep instantly every night...) was wide-awake at midnight planning my Sukkot menu. After all, it's only a month and a half away! Now that I'm going to build a sukkah, I'm panicking already at the idea of having visitors - not just the symbolic kind - those I can handle, they'll stay on their brightly-colored poster...but the kind that might have to actually enter Animal House (we live with 6 cats and 4 dogs) to use the facilities or come in if it rains. Oh the humanity! Oh the cleaning!

Between that and fretting about my non-kosher (but cruelty-free) kitchen and possible kosher guests, I'm remembering why I'm such a hermit. Oy.

Here's the week's menu, plotted between 11pm and midnight last night: Butternut Squash soup, pumpkin baked with stuffing, fruit salad, potato/cauliflower/green bean salad with vinaigrette, dates and figs, felafel, Israeli chopped salad, tabouli with pomegranate, roasted pumpkin seeds, roasted garbanzo beans, carob brownies, apple cake and fruit salad. Kosher wine, apricot tea, coffee.

What If I Gave A Blog And Nobody Came?

Thanks for posting Bec, and saving me from the dreaded "zero comments curse!" I checked out your blog, loved it! I will be posting regular updates on the sukkah project in the weeks to come. Hopefully, I'll include a photo of the Civic Club president fainting dead away at the mere sight of it. She once sent around an e-mail to Civic Club members (mandatory membership in our 'hood) tearing her hair and rending her garments because someone had offended "our dear lord and savior" the baby jeezus by putting out some heavy trash for pickup the week before x-mas. Who knew he was so freakin' sensitive; maybe he should look for a new line of work?? That's life in the bible-belt...

Pimp My Sukkah

Each year around the High Holy Days, I start feeling sorry for myself since my family isn't Jewish and, until recently, I haven't been affiliated with a synagogue or havurah: wah, wah, no one sends a card to me at Rosh Hashanah whine, whine. No one understands about Yom Kippur, wee, wee, wee.Blech. (and I'm using that in the Mad Magazine sense, not talking about a stove cover used on Shabbat...)This year, I decided to get everyone involved! Here's the e-mail I sent to one and all:
In October, I am building a sukkah, and I need your help. What, might you ask, is a sukkah? A sukkah is a three-sided temporary dwelling that -in part - symbolizes the 40 year trek of the Jews through the desert , highlighting the transitory, uncertain, but beautifully abundant nature of life. Sukkahs are built in the middle of High Holy Days** & left up for seven days: we often eat and sometimes sleep in them! Friends and family stop by for meals and singing, too. Here's where you come in. Sukkahs come in lots of forms, large, small, pre-fab, plain, all as individual as the people who erect them, but the best ones are homemade with loads of decorations. My Sukkah is going to be a large wooden frame with "walls" of decorated white sheets. The roof has to be natural material through which you can see the stars and feel the rain, so I'll use some palm fronds from my tree. I'd like to send you a plain white sheet and some indelible markers or paint sticks for you to use to decorate it. Typical decorations would be olives, pomegranites, pumpkins, gourds, Stars of David, biblical-looking towns, palm trees, prophets (7 prophets are supposed to "visit" the Sukkah!) , camels, sheep, "Israel or Bust" signs, you get the idea. Sign your names somewhere on the sheet and if you want to add any embroidery or sewn-on beads (wooden or glass) to your artwork, go for it. Anything rain-proof is great! These sheets will be out in the elements then will be cleaned and used again, I hope, year after year. I'll also send a stamped-self addressed large padded mailer for you to return the sheet in and later, pix of the finished sukkah. All you have to do is have fun and be creative.I thought of this idea because most of my family is far-flung and not Jewish (although we have Jewish ancestry from my Mom), nor are many of my dearest friends. I want you all to be "with me" in some way during this special time, and I would be both tickled and honored to be "surrounded" by you while in the Sukkah. I'll add a few chairs, a small table, candles, fairy lights, paper lanterns some hanging fruit, paper chains and toast you with a glass of wine! If any of you are in town during Sukkot, (you know who you are...) you hafta come over and hang out in the Sukkah. I'll send the dates later.So, unless you want to embitter and depress your (circle one) Aunt, Sister, Ma, In Law, Best Friend, please give it a go! So far, everyone seems jazzed about it, can't wait to see my sheets!

Welcome Readers!

Dear Diary,
By way of introduction, here's an ad I "almost" placed on Craig's List until my trusty common sense prevailed.

Looking for Friends Who May Not Have Much Time to Get Together And Aren't Crazy About Talking On The Phone But Like to E-mail?

Are you a "woman of a certain age" (I'm 56) who's out of step with most people in your age group? Would you rather talk about Isa Chandra Moskowitz' s Post-Punk Kitchen than Rachael Ray's 30 minute meals? Marjane Satrapi than Danielle Steele? Freecycling than Martha Stewart? Would you rather dig into Indian food than a burger and fries? Convert a car to run on french fry oil than buy a new gas-guzzler? Go to Women's Roller Derby rather than get a manicure? Would you like to go back in time and vacation in the Catskills to see the late, great Borscht Belt comedians rather than stake out the grassy knoll in Dallas on November 22, 1963?? Are you holding your breath and turning blue until the movie version of "Watchmen" comes out?
Are you now or have you ever been interested in any of the following?
cats (we have 6!) dogs (4!) animal rescue, animal welfare, nature
tikkun olam , celebrating Shabbat!
organic gardening & composting
international cooking/restaurants
mystery novels, film noir /docs / non-blockbuster movies
graphic novels (latest fave rave: "Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword" by Barry Deutsch)
studying Hebrew
alternative medicine
music (Klezmer, Patti Smith, Joe Strummer, Beatles, Pete Seeger, blues, jazz, native folk music from everywhere - a little of everything)
puppet shows (tip o' the hat to Houston's Bobbindoctrin)
theater
women's roller derby
all things Indian (the country) & Japanese
Israel
Japanese game shows
classic tv

This list pretty much sums up why my circle of friends is so doggone small. Thank G-d for the handsome, witty, ever-available Mr. Smith, my best friend, who relishes almost everything in the above list and keeps me laughing.

Here's one shameless, but sincere plug: check out the CD "That Purple Bastard" on iTunes- a cerebral, spooky, electronic wonderland by my son (yay!) aka Curtis Crunk.

So, let me hear from you already. Shalom y'all.