Getting It
Courtesy Microsoft Office
They do.
No explanations required. They. Just. Get. It.
With the school year coming to a close last week, I had made arrangements for the kids to attend a week of mini-camp and Session 1 at the JCC daycamp they’ve been attending for several years. Both Beernut and Poppyseed agreed that they wanted the opportunity to be at camp one last time before The Big Move. That Poppyseed waxed eloquently about her excitement to attend Aquamania as her minicamp session, I stupidly naturally assumed that Beernut was on board for that option this year as well.
I was wrong.
Though Beernut has finally learned to enjoy being in the water, the kids his age prefer to attend either the sports session or the field trip session during this week. Though he has absolutely NO INTEREST in being in either of those sessions, he feels awkward being in a different group.
All it took was one comment. I casually mentioned Beernut’s apprehension to Ariella, the Assistant Director, and, without hesitation, she wondered if Beernut would enjoy being a CIT for one of the younger groups.
“You mean they want me to help?” Beernut was astonished at the notion that Camp would place such trust in him. I could see him sit up a little taller.
Ariella knew that there was a place for Beernut at camp. And one that would give him the opportunity to grow.
“Let’s get you a walkie, Beernut, and get you over to your group.”
A high-five. He turned. And walked away.
Good Question
Did you happen to catch All Things Considered’s story on dads and music that played this past Friday? If you didn’t, here is a copy of the transcript. Listeners had been asked to submit the name of their father’s favourite song when he was the same age that the said listener is today. The emails and FB responses were collected over the course of a week. I was surprised to learn that an overwhelming majority of fathers chose a Jackson Brown song. I am guessing that my reaction was due, in no small part, that I’m fairly certain that my dad wouldn’t know a Jackson Brown song if his very life depended on it. [Though to be fair, I don’t think I would, either.]
But it got me to thinking; what was DadGiraffe’s favourite song when he was my age?
It is a good question because music tells us a lot about a person. And musical tastes evolve over time. So to select a particular moment in time gives insight into a younger version of our fathers as well as who they are today.
Oh, the answer? Händel’s Water Music. Played here as God intended, on a baroque trumpet, by Nate Mayfield:
And for a lighter take on Father’s Day, spend a little time with the Father’s Day edition of This American Life (available after 7:00pm).
What about your father? What was his favourite song when he was your age? Dads, what was your favourite song when you were the same age that your kids are now?
The Games We Play
A shiver of anticipation runs up my spine when I catch glimpse of the cover, peeking out over the mail basket. The actions are always the same; slip it under the mail pile until I can safely spirit it away to another room. I go about my afternoon and evening activities, all the while impatient to get to my private reading. Later, much later, I eagerly flip through the pages. A cursory survey, meant only to satisfy my impatience as well as whet my appetite. Reaching the end, I go back to the beginning. Slowly fingering my way through each page, lingering only on the pictures that capture my attention.
The Bas Bleu catalogue has arrived. Or, as I like to think of it, pornography for the bibliophile.
Several times a year, a catalogue appears in the post. Not once have its contents failed to delight, intrigue, and amuse me. And I don’t peruse its pages for just the pictures, of course. I love the witty, insightful book reviews about each carefully selected book. I play the following game each time: if I was forced to choose only twenty-five books from this issue, which ones would I pick? (Books only; no other items permitted, please. Also, it’s the first twenty-five that catch my attention.).
Though the Summer 2011 Catalogue recently arrived, I am still very much enthralled with its predecessor. Without further ado, and in order of appearance, my list of must-haves from Spring 2011:
- Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms
- The Lost Art of Reading: Why Book Matter In a Distracted Time
- Sorry, Wrong Answer: Trivia Questions That Even Know-It-Alls Get Wrong
- The Wives of Henry Oades
- Smarter By Sunday: Fifty-two Weekends of Essential Knowledge for the Curious Mind
- Pictures at an Exhibition
- Endless Night
- The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
- Flying by the Seat of Your Pants: Surprising Origins of Everyday Expressions
- La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language
- Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books
- Nightingale Wood
- The Happy Hollisters
- 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
- Hiding in the Spotlight: A Musical Prodigy’s Story of Survival, 1941-1946
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- Dancing with Mr. Darcy
- My Life in Graphs: A Guided Journal
- The Truth About Unicorns
- The Imperfectionists
- Two Old Women
- Names on the Land
- The Thinker’s Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words
- The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter
- Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children
A reminder that these are merely the twenty-five books that first caught my eye in this one catalogue. Not much effort would be needed to select other titles. Not to mention the website…the wonderful website…
Struggling to be Understood
The air was filled with laughter. Someone had clearly shared a joke and a few remaining chortles escaped as we entered the room.
“What frivolity!” I observed, making polite conversation. Just because I was being scanned for a head injury was no reason to forget my manners.
The techs stared blankly.
Chief XRay Tech: What?
FrumeSarah: Frivolity.
CXT: What’s that?
FrumeSarah: Frivolity? Oh…you know. Filled with mirth.
CXT: blink. blink.
FrumeSarah: Um…joyful abandonment?
CXT: We didn’t abandon anything. Say, are like a teacher or somethin’?
DadGiraffe thought we might want to inform the medical team that this was normal behaviour for Frume Sarah and not evidence of any acute medical condition.
Disturbingly, when retelling the story to the ER doc, he corrected my pronunciation…incorrectly.
Yes, just an ordinary day in Frume Sarah’s World.
Thank you, Natasha
“Are you OK?”
My eyes flutter open.
Oh my God.
Everything was blurred. Snippets of Ice Castles flashed through my mind.
Oh my God. I’ve gone blind.
I blink a few times.
My glasses. My glasses must have gotten knocked off when I fell.
And so began Poppyseed’s 8th birthday party. Five minutes into her skating party, I was on the disabled list. Coming out of the second turn, I felt my legs slip out from under me, as I fell backwards, whacking my head on the hard floor.
“Let me help you,” said one mom. “Here are your glasses,” said another. They said a few other things as they guided me off the floor, but I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. The massive pain in my head was pulling my attention elsewhere.
I stood on the side of the rink for a few moments, waiting for the shakiness to pass. With a sudden onset of nausea, I caught PC’s attention and asked him to help me to a seat. The grandmother of one of Poppyseed’s guests sat with me while PC fetched a cup of water. Maybe some cold water would quell the pain. The nausea. The overwhelming flushed sensation. The blurriness.
And then I remembered her. Natasha Richardson. Having hit her head while on a beginning ski run in 2009, she refused medical treatment. Three hours later, complaining of a headache, she was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with an epidural hematoma. Because she had not been examined at a medical facility immediately after impact, a potentially-treatable injury proved fatal.
“Call my dad,” I quietly instructed, “I need to go to the hospital.”
Though I missed the rest of the party, seeking medical attention was the right decision. Having already survived a brain trauma, as the ER doctor explained, my head is just a bit more susceptible to further damage. A CT ruled out any bleeding or fracture.
Diagnosis? Mild concussion. Treatment? Rest. And time. Fortunately DadGiraffe thought to ask when I might be feeling better. For had he not, I would be really concerned that I was still symptomatic two days later.
But the pain is not as bad today as it was yesterday and, I imagine, is worse today than it will be tomorrow.
Though there doesn’t seem to be anything they could do to heal my bruised pride.
Still Flitting About
And today, I am over at TheSmartly. Head on over and join the conversation.
Gone to North Carolina
Not really. But today’s blog post is over at Good Girl Gone Redneck. Andrea is headed back to NYC this week and asked if I would pen a guest post. I was completely thrilled to be asked.
So head on over to NC and see what I’ve got to say. Feel free to leave your thoughts over there 😉
(Hat-tip to JT for the title)
Write These Words on Your Heart
ומלקחיה ומחתתיה זהב טהור
“Again.”
ומלקחיה ומחתתיה זהב טהור
“Good. Again.”
ומלקחיה ומחתתיה זהב טהור
“Good. Now we look at the trope.”
Mercha tipcha munach sof pasuk
“Right. Again.”
Mercha tipcha munach sof pasuk
“Uh-huh. Again.”
Mercha tipcha munach sof pasuk
“And now, we put the two together.”
I’d done this before. In fact, I’d gotten the preceding seven verses down rather quickly. It was the summer before my thirteenth birthday and I was hard at work on my Torah portion. Though my Bat Mitzvah service was still seven months away, my parents figured that stress-free schedule of the summer would be a good time to get the bulk of my preparation completed.
But then something went wrong. When asked to put the cantillation to the words from Exodus 25:38, I was rendered mute. And it made absolutely no sense. It was one of the simplest cantillation patterns in the entire system. The verse was only four words long. OK — two of the words were multisyllabic. But was that really what had me so perplexed?
That’s when the pounding started. A nice Andante. In this case, about 81 beats per minute. Neither the throbbing of a headache or the beating of the heart. This was DadGiraffe pounding the rhythm on the table. Not our table, but the one in the living area of the Rabbi’s Roost — the official residence for the camp rabbi up at JewCamp.
(pound)-(pound)-(pound)-U’mal-ka-che-ha (pound) u’mach-to-te–ha (pound) za-hav ta-hor (pound)-(pound)-(pound)
Again. And again. And again and again.
To this day, it is still not clear why setting that one verse to a rhythm made it possible for me to learn it. I didn’t need it for any of the other verses. Nor have I needed to rely on that method for any other verse in the ensuing twenty-seven years.
This portion comes easily to my lips. It has carved out its own nook in the deepest recesses of my cranial folds. But as I chant this same passage each year to mark the anniversary of being called to Torah for the first time, I cannot help but smile as I recall the struggle to make the text my own.
Remembe(RED) is a memoir meme. This week’s prompt asked us to recall something from our childhood that we still know by heart. In order to keep it tightly written, a limit of 600 words. On the cusp of womanhood, I stood poised to take my place in a chain of Jewish women. I just had to learn my Torah portion first… As always, constructive criticism is welcomed!
All Too Familiar
The highlight of my 10th grade history class was the mock trial we held in the Spring semester. It was a reenactment of the Nuremberg Trials and I was on the prosecution team assigned to Julius Streicher. In the prehistoric days before the Internet, such a project required many, many hours of library research. As a young Jew, it was particularly empowering to have the opportunity to “confront” the architects of one of the darkest times in our people’s history.
In my preparation, I sifted through scores of propagandist articles and cartoons that were run in the weekly Nazi rag, Der Strümer as well as comic books, games, and films. The Nazi propaganda machine was one of the most effective weapons in its arsenal for it reached every member of German society, stoking the flames of hatred from every conceivable angle.
But that was then. Not now. And it was there. And not here.
Except that such vile and hate-filled caricatures are here. Now.
This grotesque creature is the featured antagonist in a new comic book series, Foreskin Man. It is produced by the founder of the organization behind the proposed legislation to delegalize circumcisions and is being used to further their agenda. Legislation, by the way, that its supporters insist is not anti-semitic.
There are those who are quick to criticize the Jewish community for seeing anti-Semitism around every corner. But it seems that once again…sadly…we were right.
Haveil Havalim #318 — The Yom Yerushalayim Edition
Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs — a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It’s hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. The term ‘Haveil Havalim,’ which means “Vanity of Vanities,” is from Qoheleth, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other ‘excesses’ and realized that it was nothing but ‘hevel,’ or in English, ‘vanity.’”
***************************
Torah
It took eight thousand people just to schlep the Mishkan. Leigh Ann is examining the minutiae of the daily grind and how they help us work toward holiness in Parashat Naso — What’s the Point of it All?
Also looking at the sedra of this past Shabbat, Or Am I? is Counting the Blessings — Kvell, Don’t Kvetch. And The Edible Torah offers this synopsis of Parashat Nasso.
And The Rebbetzin’s Husband is Parenting from the Torah. Up this week? Sibling Rivalry.
As we prepare to celebrate z’man matan torateinu, Adventures in Mamaland offers these engaging and fun Shavu’ot activities for kids.
The Velveteen Rabbi takes us beneath the surface in The Handmaid’s Tale (Ruth).
And speaking of #Torah, over at Davka, R. Mark Hurvitz shares some background on his father, z”l, on the occasion of his 25th yahrtzeit, and wonders what would his dad think about “Tweeting #Torah to the Top.”
The Mystery Woman shows how there is Unity in Diversity.
Israel
It seems that the seasons don’t always take note of the date on the calendar, as we see over at Me-ander.
Israelis have a reputation of being….well, brash. Remember how we compared the sabra to the cactus? Prickly on the outside, sweet on the inside? Shiloh Musings asks (and answers) Why are Israelis “Nicer” of Late? She also ruminates on The Six Days War and The Sin of the “Golden Calf.”
Esser Agaroth was less-than-impressed with Netanyahu’s recent speech. He explains why in PM Netanyahu Made a Speech & Got Standing Ovations from Congress: Big Deal!
Yoel Meltzer admits that it is not an easy solution, but shares why he thinks this is the only one in The Preferred Option: Israeli Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
Celebrate Yom Yerushalayim with Jacob Richman from Good News from Israel over here and here. Miriyummy joins the celebration too. Esser Agaroth muses about this year’s observance which included several stops…and food was involved. While David, over at JewishBoston, struggles with what it means to celebrate a modern military victory as a religious holiday.
Truth, Praise and Help adds to our celebration of Yom Yerushalayim with Jerusalem: Yours, Mine and Ours.
As always, Joel Katz updates us on Religion and State issues here and here.
Judaism
The blogosphere is a great way to get to know people we might not meet IRL. Ilana-Davita introduces us to Rabbi Josh Yuter in Interviewing a Rabbi.
Ever wonder how folks got to your blog? Over at To Kiss a Mezuzah, Susan did a search and discovered that quite a number of folks phrased their search in the form of a question. Here are her answers.
Is the “official” version of Conservative Judaism “more religious than most non-Orthodox American Jews want to be?” On The Fringe explores this in Too Jewish?
Though it seems like a ways away, the High Holy Days will be upon us in a blink of the eye. Don’t be caught unprepared; take The Edible Torah’s Omer Challenge: Day 44.
And I share the impact one individual can have in Removing the Stumbling Blocks.
Kashrut/Food
With Shavu’ot rapidly approaching, Isreview has dairy on the brain with reviews of some yogurt and ice cream. The Bible Belt Balabusta teaches us how to make an Edible Mt. Sinai. The Shiksa in the Kitchen has whipped up a Vegetable Moussaka just perfect for Shavu’ot. And Ilana-Davita has rounded up a slew of Shavu’ot recipes. Yum.
Humour
Chavi wants to know if you agree with the following observation people have made about her in Funny, You Look More Jewish When You Wear Glasses
Culture
Batya makes a very good observation in Jew or Muslim? You Can Tell by How It’s Tied.
The Phrase of the Day: “Staying By” So-and-So over at You’re Not Crazy for Converting to Judaism.
It’s Music By A Jew. Amanda at Blessed Little Bird asks, “But Is It Jewish?”
Personal
Over at Just Call me Chaviva, an insightful multi-post series on tzniut. It is well worth the time to read how different women approach the concept of modesty. Chavi takes time to answer her own questions.
Having read all the posts in Chavi’s project, Lizard, over at For Your Honor, considers her own reaction to the posts in Spillover.
Over at 2 Boychiks and 1 Meidele, Leigh Ann offers a less traditional interpretive version of the traditional prayer for one’s children at Rosh Chodesh Sivan. (Chodesh tov!)
And the Ima wonders Where Has the Magic Gone?
Finally, Summer Stock Sundays are back over at Around the Island.
**********************
And that concludes this week’s edition of Haveil Havalim. I hope that you enjoy reading these posts as much as I did!
Next week will be hosted by To Kiss a Mezuzah. You can participate in the next edition of HH by using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Frume Sarah is Shabbos-observant -- in a Reform way, that is. Please note that from Friday afternoons until one hour after sundown on Saturday evenings, Frume Sarah will be unavailable, in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.
Comments made during this time will be held in a queue, to be moderated afterwards.
Thank you for your understanding...and gut Shabbos!!! 
Frume Sarah's World 