Stuck With The Philosophy Majors (Click For Link)

By putting in my URL incorrectly instead of going to my blog I searched it and ended up at this site, where Mary Oliver and I are cited in a less than clear manner. Avrohom Yitzchok posted a quote of Mary Oliver, ("The cliche' works in poems as it works in any kind of writing - badly. Do not use the cliche' in a poem unless, perhaps, you are writing a poem about the cliche'") that I wrote out in poetic form (here), two years ago at Passover time. This fellow credited my blog as the source, but did not include Mary's name.

I also found that I am in the bibliography of the Motley's Crew article on Wikipedia.

The blogosphere is a funny place (not ha ha). As a friend of mine put it, "Once it's out there, it's out there." But that's true about any venue. My heart goes out to a friend who had pieces of her published books plagiarised and published as original work by a well known author (who seems to have done the same thing to others).

One teacher shared something about a student at lunch today. Another teacher said something about not judging. We all do judge, sometimes it feels like all we do is judge. Chazal were for judging. They never say, "Don't judge." They do say, "Judge favorably," Judge patiently," "Judge in an empathetical way," "Judge with the help of others." Seems to come up every day.

Another everyday issue is thankfulness. Somewhere I posted a poem with the line, "I thank you G-d for thank you." It may be in a comment. Somewhere in this space I talked about my noticing a line in Modim in which we thank G-d for a list of things, ending with the gift of being able to say thank you.

This is the poem in Hebrew with, with the English alongside, by Zelda that I saw some time ago in a JOFA journal on the coffee table in the home of a friend and then lost track of. When I saw it tonight (cited in full within a customer comment about the book on Amazon), I remembered really liking it when I first saw it. It was so simple, while also being profound and I wasn't sure others would like it. I felt happily validated when my friend liked it too.

I was struck by this article about love that I read today while walking home from the bus terminal. I was also intrigued by the author's website and the video there that are mentioned at the end of the article. And then I bought two plants.

I give a lot of tests, I must say. And they are always longhand. Not sure why I do that. I think it's mostly that I feel it's the right way to go. I'm giving a test tomorrow on Korach and Chukat, on peace and arguments, and life and death, and getting that everything is from G-d. I do think that I really believe that these ideas are important.

Every junior in my school has to ask 6 teachers to write a recommendation for him or her. Then the college guidance office writes a recommendation combining those six along with whatever other information they can get on the student. I was asked to do about 40, and still counting. I asked one of the college guidance counselors if they tell kids to ask me and the answer was yes. I think, mostly, I agree to write these because I feel it's the right way to go. A student asked me today and was thrilled when I said yes because I was his third one and he knew he wouldn't get any one else to write one. The fact is that there is not a kid that I know in the school that I do not see goodness in and about whom I couldn't write positive things.

tests to write tests taken mistakes made apology exchange fear i'm afraid music played ambivalence mainstay blog created fog hope will clear wish all my dears good night G-d bless just commentary all the rest.