Kristallnacht

Last night my companion and I attended a Jewish Sabbath worship service at the Temple-Tifereth Israel Synagogue in an eastern suburb of Cleveland, meaningful for us in many ways, and deeply moving.

I am appallingly ignorant about Judaism and apologize for knowing so little, given that Jesus and his disciples were Jews and their scripture was the Hebrew Bible, what Christians have for centuries been calling the Old Testament.

I do know that the people in attendance there were lovely and their worship behavior was reverent and majestic.  When we entered the large sanctuary we were greeted with "Shalom" and each of us handed a program and a worship book in Hebrew and English that is read from back to front, right to left, as is Arabic.  The rabbi who led the readings  directed the congregation to the page numbers in question and we were able to follow along pretty well.

This sabbath worship service remembered Kristallnacht, the nights in November 1938 in Nazi Germany when its Jewish population was attacked by stormtroopers and many non-Jewish civilians, destroying their homes, shops, and synagogues, and murdering many of them.  It was beginning of the Holocaust in which many Jews were imprisoned in death camps and massacred, up to the time of the invasion of the Allied forces and liberation of the camps in 1945.  The teens of the congregation lit candles of remembrance and read passages of history about the Holocaust.

Music was performed by members of the Cleveland Orchestra.  It included works of Ernest Bloch, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokoviev, John Williams' Theme from Schindler's List, and songs by Srul Irving Glick.

I'm thankful for the experience.  Shalom.

My Twins Are 50 Today

On November 12, 1971, in Columbus, Indiana, my life partner gave birth to a girl and a boy.  We did not know beforehand that there were two babies, so we were stunned even more when the blessed event turned out to be two events.  As I recall, the girl arrived at 9:50 PM, the boy at 9:54.  It was a Friday, as it is today.  I was in the delivery room with their mother and I saw them.  The first thought on seeing the girl was something idiotic like, Who is this strange creature? And, gosh, she's completely naked!  And alive!  And finally, My God!  She's my daughter, our daughter.  And a fine baby girl.  It's a miracle!  And when the doctor said, Get ready for another one, I was stunned, and in a few minutes I was totally stunned when a boy, tiny and red and thrashing his arms and legs like a windmill, also appeared.  We were parents of fraternal twins!  A boy and a girl!  Mother and infants were cared for and bedded down for the night and then I went home to the empty house and called everybody I could think of to tell them we were parents of a girl... and a boy.

They are 50 years old today.  We are grateful.  They have grown gracefully into the fine, mature adults they are today.  We encouraged them to become independent and they learned well.  I could write a book, of course, but today I just want to make note of this remarkable day.  Thanks, Higher Power, for the blessed events.  

End of DST 2021

 Autumn is well along, winter will soon be here. Today was beautiful, nary a cloud, blue sky all day and a reddish-orange sunset; still plenty of leaves, most of them yellow and red and orange, have not fallen; and I was up in spirits all day because I counted just a few of my blessings this morning when I got up in kind of a whiny mood.  I remained up because my daughters and son-in-law, and Dot, the black mouth cur, my grand-dog, visited today.  They winterized my windows, which will elevate the quality of life in my apartment this winter in northeast Ohio (in which I shivered last winter).

Tonight my girlfriend and I watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, opening with Tim Blake Nelson ("O Brother Where Art Thou") in the title role singing "All day I've faced the barren waste without a drink of water," cracking his voice like Hank Williams, accompanying himself with guitar riding on Old Dan.  He then shoots several bad hombres dead in various cartoonish duels.  Won't say more except it was entertaining throughout with several short stories, including James Franco, Liam Neeson, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, et al.  It's a Joel and Ethan Coen movie.  Then we watched Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher, based on a real Chickasaw man and his family and their pioneering settlement of Oklahoma after the Civil War.  Also entertaining.  And enlightening.

Before sleep, I will read more of State of Terror, by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny.  (Hillary couldn't be outdone by Bill, who recently teamed up with James Patterson for a couple of novels about terrorist plots.)  I now read books in large print if I can get them from the library.

It's past midnight now, but I get an extra hour of sleep tomorrow.