LUCK OF THE IRISH

When I first heard the expression “luck of the Irish,” it was from a person of Irish ancestry. Not wanting to question his Irishness or expose my non-native English, I tried making sense of it through context. That is how I managed many idioms and higher vocabulary in those years, my first living in the United States.

 

In that context, I took the expression to mean “bad luck.” Something akin to a curse following those who carried Irish genes.

 

Sometime later, another person with no Irish ancestry used the expression to point to another friend (who had an Irish father) as always lucky against all odds and in contradiction to that person’s abilities. In that context, luck of the Irish meant that Irish genes made for good luck.

 

Years after that and a much better command of the English language, I married a person whose family was Irish on his father’s side and found myself sporting an Irish surname. It was time to find out what sort of luck I had landed into.

 

This is what I found online:

"Luck of the Irish" refers to an abundance of good fortune, but its origin is often an ironic and derogatory term from the 19th-century American gold rush, used to dismiss the success of Irish miners as simply luck rather than skill or hard work. While the phrase was initially used with derision, it has since evolved into a broader, more positive expression for good fortune and the resilience of the Irish spirit.”

 

And so, Irish Luck is both bad and good. Leave it to the Irish to embrace contradictions.

      Happy St. Patrick’s Day 

CAT INDULGENCES

 

Once again, I’m allowing myself a post that celebrates my cats, with your indulgence. It helps that the goofy celebration of Purim is around the corner. 🎉

 

A few years ago, a friend who is not a feline fancier, asked me if having my cats makes moments of defeat better tolerated.

 

I remember my answer, which stands to this day. “They make EVERYTHING better.” 😻

{All right. Maybe first-drafting, with their playful paws trying to catch my typing fingers, is the exception}

 

So, I owe them. 😼😺😻

 

The curly font (sorry if it’s not fun to read) reflects their sensibilities. They insisted I use it here.

🐱🐱🐱

Exotic Christmas?

 

Christmas lights all around.

 

I have two close friends who, like me, are Jewish. Unlike me, they feel “excluded” at the sights and sounds of Christmas.

We’re the kind of Jews who don’t do “Hanukkah Bushes.” I’ve been guilty in the past of overdoing Hanukkah presents for my kids instead of Hanukkah Gelt, the traditional giving of money without fancy wrapping.

 

I now relish the modesty and wistfulness of our holiday of winter lights with a single Hanukah menorah and something fried.

My two friends grew up in a Christmas majority culture. I had the advantage of having grown up where Hanukkah was at home as well as on the streets, and Christmas was something you had to seek if you wanted to spot any of it in certain quarters.

Hanukkah was commonplace; Christmas was exotic.

For me, It still is, . I’m delighted looking at this celebration of lights, plethora of glistening wrappings under trees, music that mixes old beauty with some sappiness, and lots of people trying hard to look cheerful in colorful sweaters.

Unlike my two friends, I’m very comfortable being an outsider looking in. Christmas is exotic, still.

No need to say Happy Holidays to me. Your Merry Christmas is welcome. I’ll say it right back to you, and mean it.

Celebrate!

The Silent Pulse

Ever have a day where nothing goes right? If you can relate to Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, then you have and you know.

But what about the other kind of day? Imagine this: you wake up after a restful night’s sleep and the backache you had yesterday had vanished. Your cat greets you, and your dog wags his tail and they seem fine with each other, for a change. The coffee tastes delicious, and when you open your computer, an acceptance of an article you submitted eons ago comes in. You leave for a scheduled dental appointment, and where usually there are no parking spaces— the perfect one right in front of the dentist’s midtown office awaits you and, behold, the meter is already paid for the next ninety minutes. Your dentist is full of cheer and so are you, because, after she looks inside your mouth, she declares it looks marvelous and then she adds, “no cavities!”

And so it goes for the rest of the day.

Call it YOUR DELIGHTFULLY BRIGHTLY VERY GOOD DAY.

Many years ago, I attended a book launch where the author George Leonard spoke of his new book, THE SILENT PULSE. He explored this seeming perfection suggesting it can be created. It’s been on my mind ever since, though it remains mysterious. I experience these sorts of days as if I’m a character in someone else’s story, and I thank the author for this exquisite sweet very good narrative arc, even if it cannot last.

The Lunar Year Begins

Living in the San Francisco bay area, the celebrations of the lunar calendar are evident.

The East Asian Lunar New Year celebrations are, or were historically, based on the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar (occurring in late January or early February)

·         Chinese New Year

·         Japanese New Year (prior to 1873)

·         Korean New Year (Seollal)

·         Mongolian New Year (Tsagaan Sar) – may be celebrated a month later

·         Tibetan New Year (Losar) – celebrated a month later

·         Vietnamese New Year (Tết)

Today, February 5^th  2019, is the first day of the Lunar New Year and this time it’s ...

The year of the PIG.

If you are celebrating, many blessing on you. If you’re not, why not?

!Wishing peace and prosperity to all!

Greeting a NEW YEAR

To the purely rational mind, January first is just another day. This year it is a Tuesday. Another Tuesday.

But the change of a digit on the year-counter has an almost magical effect on the parts of us that are not purely rational.

A new year, and a parade of new hopes and dreams.

Some take stock in the year that just ended, achievements and regrets. I find myself doing that on the Jewish New Year, (Rosh Hashanah) as the ten days that follow it are meant to be days of reflection culminating in atonement. The secular New Year (Gregorian counter) is a time for renewed oomph and hope. No resolutions, just a vow to march on with stars in my eyes.

On January first, the verses of Thomas Hardy’s (1840-1928) Song of Hope are singing in my ears:

O sweet To-morrow! - 
After to-day 
There will away 
This sense of sorrow. 
Then let us borrow 
Hope, for a gleaming 
Soon will be streaming, 
Dimmed by no gray - 
No gray! 

While the winds wing us 
Sighs from The Gone, 
Nearer to dawn 
Minute-beats bring us; 
When there will sing us 
Larks of a glory 
Waiting our story 
Further anon - 
Anon! 

Doff the black token, 
Don the red shoon, 
Right and retune 
Viol-strings broken; 
Null the words spoken 
In speeches of rueing, 
The night cloud is hueing, 
To-morrow shines soon - 
Shines soon!

Happy New Year!

Christmas Weather

In some places it is---

In some it is---

{Hello, Down under^}

And where I am it is always---

{Even the lights dolphin ^ agrees it's springing spring}

I feel thankful for my Christian friends for sharing their lights with us

Merry Christmas

Broken Tradition

Third night of Hanukkah, and our yearly holiday party is still not on.

For many years we had a few families get together to light the Hanukkiya, the holiday menorah. I fried latkes and together we sang. Then we ate. The children played Pin the Candle on the Menorah, (yes, that Donkey’s tail had a Jewish version at our house) and spun the dreidel earning unshelled walnuts.

The children grew taller, we grew older, and the parties kept coming regularly on the first Saturday night of Hanukkah.

Ten year ago, my party supplies were ready. Invitations to the party sent, and we were all set. Less than a week before the party my mother died.

I just couldn’t have a party that year. The next year, on the very same date, my father died. No party.

It has stayed broken. Some traditions, once interrupted, just don’t make it back.
Mr. Monk, the feline guardian of the candles^, disappeared right after Hanukkah last year,

But we have the memories, and the stories are for as long as we remember to tell them. Like the story of that time long ago, when the Maccabees fought back and retook the temple and in the holy of holies the light of the Menorah shone again.

May your holiday lights shine bright

Johnny Tremain

As a way to celebrate the miracle that is our country, one encompassing much of the continent from sea to shining sea where, let’s face it, many wish to come to and few wish to flee from, may I recommend a classic book?

Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes, was the first historical novel written for young readers, and a Newbery medal winner. My kid-lit reading group read it some months ago, and saved me with this assignment from missing one of the best ways to appreciate the effort and enterprise that was the founding of the union of states.

I felt I was there, with Johnny, as his focus shifted from his personal struggles to be somebody in a world that did not bless him with privilege to the honor and privilege of fighting for something greater.

And the next time anyone says something about how divided our country is, let them situate themselves in colonial times, where many of the English king’s subjects in the Americas were not the least bit supportive of the colonial rebels.

Because what we have now is a vibrant, imperfect, but astonishingly successful nation, where disagreements are settled by a system of state-by-state voting.

That is something great, and worth celebrating.

Happy July Fourth and happy reading.

May 22nd in History

I stay away from politics on the Internet, because I have found that is makes good people behave and talk like bad people. Sometimes very bad people.

If you have followed any of my posts for any length of time, you know my fascination with “this day in history.” Lots of things happened on May 22^nd, this date in history. But the most interesting will bring out the venom of the politicos.

May 22^nd 1799, Napoleon declared Jerusalem for the Jews. Anyone who knows anything knows that it is central to the Jewish ancestral tradition in a way it is to no other tradition. But, whoa, don’t start me on that one.

May 22^nd 1942 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee disbands, and a new trade union, the United Steelworkers, is formed. Looky here; unions were both the best thing and what built the American middle class, or a cancer on our country— depending how your politics navigates your mind. Please don’t start.

May 22^nd 2015, Ireland declared Gay Marriage legal by popular vote. I like that this was done by popular vote and not by judicial decree, because legal marriage is a “communal acknowledgement” of status rather than a personal feeling. But, please, don’t start me on that one. (Well, I was the one who started— so woe on me.)

So here are some I hope we can celebrate together without bringing out the trolls and poisons that hatch in the mud:

760 14th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet

1819 1st steam propelled vessel to cross Atlantic (Savannah leaves Ga)

1842 Farmers Lester Howe and Henry Wetsel discover Howe Caverns in New York State when they stumble upon a large gaping hole in the ground

^All on May 22^nd.

But I saved my favorite for last:

                 May 22^nd, 1849 Abraham Lincoln receives a patent (only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions..

Oh, I forgot. There are some who are still mad about Lincoln. I’ll celebrate anyway.

All the Reasons to Like PURIM

The Jewish holiday Purim, celebrating the Jewish people’s (once again) salvation from mortal threat, starts tomorrow evening.

How do I like thee, Purim? Let me count the ways~~~ (Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

            *The chance to wear a goofy costume

            *The scroll of Esther is a hoot. J   Look it up and re-read if you don’t believe me

            *Hamantaschen, when made right, are delicious

            *Getting baskets of goodies (MISHLO’ACH MANOT) is fun, and giving such is even more fun

*It’s religious-observant “light,” perfect for the family I grew up in

*Jews are commanded to get seriously tipsy, which makes everyone daffier

*It falls right around my birthday

*And just for good measure, again— COSTUMES!

So even if you’re not Jewish, it’s a good time to join us.

{Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York—

Only the children are in costumes there^}

CELEBRATE!

GRATITUDE in Many Ways

It’s almost that time again, the time to give thanks, a.k.a. Thanksgiving.

There are studies that show living in gratitude makes a person happy(ier), healty(ier), and more productive. Did we need these studies to confirm what all cultures everywhere have long enshrined into their fabrics? Apparently we do. What the pious knew all along, the freethinkers needed academic research to prove.

Jews interject TODA LA’EL = Thank G-d into every other sentence.

Muslims do the same, only pronouncing it IL HAMDU L’EEL-LAH.

Catholics of yore used to say it in Latin, DEO GRATIAS

Hindus say BHAGAVAAN KA SHUKR HAI

Budhists just say THANK YOU.

I will do my best to remember that Thanksgiving is not a meal or putting up with irritating relatives, as the modern ethos reports on it. It’s a way of being.

I thank G-d for enabling me to write here, and I’m grateful to you for reading this. 

Ye Shall Dwell in Booths...*

*Leviticus 23:42

The seven-day festival of Sukkot is an odd one if viewed without context. Jews are commanded to make insecure structures with porous roofs that allow us to see the stars and let precipitation seep in. We are to eat meals and spend nights in those “booths” (some translate it as “huts”) for seven days.

All this— to remember our ancestral forty-year journey to the Promised Land, dwelling in tents for two generations.

All over the observant Jewish world, these structures are erected according to specification, and then decorated to the hilt. I have warm memories of this from my childhood in Israel, where even the marginally observant just had to have a Sukkah, (=Booth) even if we mostly decorated and rarely dwelled.

In my current home, I tried to give my kids a taste of it. Our non-Kosher hut (because it was a section of our entry-porch, and the only solid part was, alas, the roof) was not a place to sleep. But we had a couple of lunches in it, and like in my secular upbringing in Israel, we spent more time on decorating than being in there. The neighbor’s cat, though, adopted it immediately and did the Mitzvah for us.

{{{I highly recommend the movie USHPIZIN, one of very few made by ultra-orthodox Jews, and telling a beautiful tale that stars the holiday of Sukkot.}}}

The point was to remember. To recall where you came from and pay homage to the struggles of those who went before.

I no longer attempt a sukkah, even for our cats. But, you see, the holiday starts tomorrow, and I remember.

Thank You, GOOD People

The other day someone snatched a laptop from a café close to my neighborhood, jumped into a car and drove off. The laptop owner, a talented local musician who had his work stored on it, pursued the thief by clinging to the fleeing car, with tragic consequences. He was dragged, and died of his injuries.

This was an exceptional result of something that has sadly become all too common. Laptops, cell phones and IPods taken in full view of others because someone thinks they need not work or pay for what they want.

Only two days later, DD had gone for a walk with a friend in a nearby town. While visiting the Berkeley Rose Garden, now fragrant and in full bloom thanks to a good rainy season, her IPod managed to evaporate. At first, she assumed she had possibly left it at home. But when she returned, the whole family scoured the house and, no IPod.

It seems very possible, in light of the oh-so many swipes and snatches, that someone may have helped themselves to her pocket when she was distracted, smelling the roses, so to speak. But it was also possible, just maybe please –let-it-be, that it fell out of her pocket, and was still somewhere on the ground.

But if so, what were the odds it wasn’t picked up and pocketed after that?

DD remembered that the Rose Garden closes after dark. But she and DH drove there, and with the help of flashlights, it took but a minute to see that although the garden gate was indeed locked, someone had left her IPod off the ground right next to the gate.

And there was more. When an IPod is locked, apparently there is no way to open it and see who the owner might be. But there is one thing you can do, and that is take photos with it. The people who found it and left it so thoughtfully where she could come back for it, also left their faces by way of saying Hello.

We don’t know this family, but we love them. If you know them, thank them for us. Small acts like this make up for a lot. I’m also thankful for the many passers-by in Berkeley who chose not to take the IPod as it sat, waiting for DD by the gate, for five hours.

I will make sure to pay it forward, somehow.

This Is Called an ANNIVERSARY---

How do we count them?

By one plus one, by five plus five, by ten plus ten, and then...

If we’re lucky, we get old. If we’re very lucky, we get old together.

©1993 By Karen Shapiro

{Best wedding present you can get if your friend is a talented artist}

We get silver anniversaries, and then our hair tells the same. Hair color gives us gold at the golden anniversary.

Black & White photographs make all those colors timeless. They also fade less, and so once a year we can look at them and think---

We weren’t babies. But my, we were young(er). ^

Celebrating INDEPENDENCE

Achieving independence is not a little thing.

 Maintaining independence may even be a bigger thing.

Learning to balance independence with interdependence is the greatest thing of all. 

Countries, like individuals, families and clans, are not lone wolves. We’re at our best when we find and sustain the precious balance of autonomy and interconnectedness. 

This is what I resolve to continue to work on, and celebrate today.

This Day in History

Many things happened on this day in recorded history, some good and many bad. But I choose to focus on something great that happened this date a century and a half ago. I’m only sorry I’m a year late to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary.

 

 

1866 US House of Representatives passes 14th Amendment. (Civil rights)

 

 

It is this amendment that finally fulfilled America’s declarations of independence, which stated all men were created equal and endowed by the creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (It would take a few more years before this would come to stand for all men and women.) It is the fourteenth amendment that made former slaves into full citizens.

 

 

Here is what section one of this amendment is says:

 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

 

 

Aspects of this important constitutional clarification are debated even to this day. But most Americans hold it as part of the fabric that is our nation, one that is based on an idea, not on a nationality or racial ancestry or a specific religion.

There’s what to celebrate.

 

{From the front page of the Cleveland Leader June 14 1866}



What Party?

I often say that I’m not a party-person.

After sending a note to a friend, where I mentioned I avoid parties, I got to thinking.

(This is not about Democrats and Republicans, though I’m not fond of those kinds of parties, either.)

What is a party? If I’m not going to like ‘em, I should define what I don’t like. Don’t you think?

Small dinner parties are fine. Eight or fewer people can have a meaningful conversation, and even benign conversations will at least leave me with a sense of connection.

As soon as that word, connection, popped in— I realized what sort of parties bothered me: the ones where a connection was not possible.

You know what I mean, right? Even if you like to go and let loose at such, you must know what I’m talking about. The ones that are all Rah-Rah-Boom-Boom-Hop-Hop--isn’t-it-swell-and aren’t-we-swell-to-be-here gatherings.

Only the young’uns replaced the word “Swell” with “chill.”

Either way, it’s a form of feeling part of something, which always left me feeling less part of anything.

Nothing makes me feel lonelier than a large, noisy gathering. Being alone in my room feels less lonely.

I can’t find a word for my affliction. It’s not a phobia, fear of crowds, or social anxiety per se. It’s a dislike, such as you may have for eating sardines. (Yes, I picked that one because sardines get crowded, too.) I don’t break into a cold sweat, and I appear functional. You wouldn't know I didn't belong.

And afterwards I feel emptier than before.

This post is a long-winded way of explaining why you won’t find me at rallies, birthday mega-bashes, marches, galas, or national conventions.

You will find me here, writing just to you.

Incidentally, this is my #300 blog post, and this is the party for it.