Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Every few weeks, we gather round our kitchen table on a Friday evening, light candles, do a little davening, eat a little challah, and usher in the Sabbath. It doesn’t happen every week, but, when we do it, we are always happier for it. Our Shabbat ritual has settled into a routine, now. We don’t [...]
I was one of the first generations to grow up with rap music. When I was a child (in the good old days of Reaganomics) rap fell into two categories: message rap (Public Enemy) and party rap (Run D.M.C.). Message rap discussed politics and institutional racism and other important things. (Sometimes, but not always, Flavor [...]
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Did you have a baby doll, once?
I had lots of baby dolls. Orange Blossom I received the Christmas my little sister turned one; when you squeezed her stomach she “blew” orange-scented kisses. And Martha Jean (renamed after my grandmother), my first treasured Cabbage Patch Kid.
Eventually, these dolls were lost to history, so to speak. I [...]
Traditionally, my New Year’s resolutions come with a hefty dollop of guilt. I don’t, by any means, think I’m alone in this. The very nature of a list of resolutions involves tasks that we feel a nagging need to do — lose weight, get married, lose weight before getting married, etc. Since my birthday is [...]
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Once, when I was taking an adult Bat Mitzvah class, I mused that, as a Jewish convert, the thing I missed most about Christmas was the smell of Douglas Fir in the hall. (Apparently, I’m not alone; the rabbi smiled and said, “everybody says that.”) I didn’t mention that I also miss my grandmother. Weeks [...]
Monday, December 14, 2009
Ten years ago last Tuesday, we went from a family of two to a family of three.
Everyone says that when you have a baby, your life is changed forever. What struck me, when our tiny, spindly little person arrived, was how oddly the same everything was. Most of my tiny, non-nuclear family was in the [...]
Monday, November 16, 2009
(Untitled Fantasy Novel is winning, though it’s a close thing. The dirty dishes are the real loser here.)
I’m at 22,241 words of a novel I never thought I could write. I am behind the NanoWriMo curve (I should probably be around 26,600 words by now) but I’m assuming it will all work itself out. All [...]
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Things I have been doing instead of blogging:
1) Halloween
My son is obsessed with the San Francisco Municipal Railway. (No, I don’t know why, either. We just roll with it.) I thought he would enjoy dressing up as a MUNI driver for Halloween.
I used my sewing machine! I made my own pattern! The funny thing is, [...]
Thursday, October 22, 2009
I’m the girl with the hair.
I’ve always been the girl with the hair. It’s always out of the ordinary: thick, puffy, definitely nappy, and, strangely enough, really long. My hair is my calling card, my icebreaker, whether it is cornrowed, natural, wet, pulled back in a bun, relaxed, or pressed within an inch of its [...]
This Columbus Day, while some protest and others laud the discovery of America – and some dispute if a land with inhabitants can even be discovered – I’m going to take a break from all the controversy and celebrate another, lesser-known explorer: my grandfather, Jewell ‘Burt’ Burton. If Columbus discovered Hispaniola, Burt discovered America.
When I [...]
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(heard) Middlemarch
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