Six Marches

At Sholushudes someone said that the new Macabeats Purim video is not as good as their Chanukah one because they've grown self conscious. As a great comedian named Stu Trivax likes to say in his act when he banters with an audience member, "Interesting, now back to me." I relate to the idea of being more cautious with your public self, just in terms of this blog alone.


Six years ago to the month I wrote this post. Things have stayed the same and changed. Five years ago I posted lyrics to this haunting song and the post garnered a discussion between four readers and myself. I miss those give and takes. Four years ago in March I shared a vulnerable middle of the night proem (sic) and got some kind feedback from heart-smart readers.


Here's a piece from March '08. I'd forgotten I'd written this:


G-o-o-d n-i-g-h-t a-n-d G - o -d B-l-e-s-s. Hal wrote the letters with his index finger, into the air. He was 19 now and had been doing this air writing since he was 5. His mother, Jade used to say "I Love You," and spell it in the air at the same time just before she walked out of his room backwards, right before he fell into safe sleep.

Now he was working on a paper for his communications class and in his research discovered that most of the laugh tracks used in sitcoms were taken from the actual laughter on the old Red Skelton show. Everything about Red Skelton; the sad clown routine, the alcoholism, the fall-out with the network, and especially his sign off that conjured the divine, grabbed Hal by the heart.

He hovered over his lap top, looking at old clown paintings created bySkelton, and stopped. And sighed. And wrote in the air those five words. He imagined a plane writing the words in the sky. He imagined Skelton piloting a small jet. He imagined shaking the man's hand and he heard Skelton say to him, "My you're an old soul." That night Hal had a dream about The Carol Burnet show, in which Tim Conway looked into the camera and said, "I'm no Red Skelton, but I get by."


Two years ago in March I shared that we shared in the loss of one of the builders of the Frisch school.


Last year Pesach was in March, and I had beautiful sedarim in a home for the first time in many years. And I posted about it here.