My Blogging Life - Part 3,511

10:30 AM - Some recently shared with me that they'd be hosting a controversial speaker, but they'll cover up the controversy by not having the speaker not speak about the controversial parts. Why not just get a different speaker? Why do something, in general, when there are good odds that it will hurt you, and the best you can most likely do is break even. This is a question we bloggers wonder about, or should wonder about, all the time.

10:47 AM - I'm seeing the dentist soon. My weeks get intense and my dentist is open on Sunday, so that's when I go. 

I noticed and thought of this during the Torah reading of Parshat Yitro on Shabbos: When Yitro tells Moshe his idea about the judges it says Moshe heard him - "vayishma Moshe." This is a parallel to the famous opening words of the parsha saying that Yitro heard about what G-d did for the Jews. If you hear, then you will be heard. This is why The Shma is so important...

2:06 PM - I saw my dentist and seem to be - beli ayin harah - in the clear for a while.

I'm doing errands in the big city.  I have Wish I Were Here by Sarah Shapiro with me.  I am always so taken by her writing. She allows herself to be vulnerable and shares from her kishkas. Today I read her recollection of being unsure if someone was asking for charity or not, because they exuded such happiness.  The she described her touching conversation with the poor woman in Geulah, who in fact was asking for money.  She describes different people's lives and the elusive pursuit - that we all share - of happiness. 

I'm writing a test that I'm giving tomorrow.  Something about testing, actually many things about it that I'm not in love with.  Still, I am in love with teaching.

I just came up with this thought while writing a comment response: People talk about treatment of others as though it were peripheral to life; how we treat others is life.

Sitting in Starbucks;

the store is dark and noisy

filled with refugees

2:49 PM - A week ago at this time I was waiting on twenty hotel rooms.  And then I heard a survivor of genocide speak.  And then I watched the Super Bowl.

I leaned a lot from the Super Bowl and the surrounding coverage. I learned that "you can't throw and catch." I get why people like football.  I didn't hate the two games I watched in the past month, the only two football games I've seen in my life. Still, I don't get why it's called football.  I think that baoy-ball or injury ball would be better names.

5:36 PM - Ran some errands, ate, wrote a poem about the just late Whitney Houston and just returned to the home office.  Just discovered that my friend and colleague Rock Davis, story teller extraordinaire wrote a book called The Apple Tree's Discovery.  


7:11 PM - I'm thinking of putting out my second book of haiku and yet I feel like it's not most people's thing.  Sigh.

I bumped in to a student today who graduated a couple of years ago from the school I teach in.  He asked, "How often do you see the fruits of your labor?" It's a good question regarding life in general. Dear reader, write an essay on that.

Here's a parsha thought.  One of the recent sweet moments in my teaching came along when a nice quiet boy approached me and asked if I could help him, outside of class, with a speech for his brother's Bar Mitzvah. He wasn't so taken by the idea I link to here. What I came up with for him was another Rashi on the first pasuk. Rashi notes, commenting on the words, asher tasim lifneihem, that Moshe was being commanded to teach the Torah as many times as was needed, in the clearest way possible - like a set table. This is lesson for life, to keep and share the Torah in an organized and clear manner.

8:08 PM - I am reconstructing my bathroom.  Early last week my super fixed my two broken sinks and repainted the damaged ceilings and walls, and while he was at it, the rest of the bathroom.  There seems to be a rule in the minds of many that workers need not out back together what they took apart.  So, slowly, slowly, I've been putting that room together again.


8:28 PM - That talk with my (former) student today still lingers.  He was very much into the idea that students should show appreciation to their high school teachers. He cited a YU Rosh Yeshiva who tells his students that there are other rabbis who were with them earlier and more consistently in their lives. That Rav tells his students to choose one of the earlier candidates to perform their weddings.  This student expressed interest in visiting and speaking with  my class.  I look forward.


8:35 PM - My colleague who rides me to work just called.  He's going to another colleague's son's bris in the morning, leaving around six... He's parked far away, which raised the issue for me of walking.  Who's have thunk that a trip and a fall in July would still be an issue the next February?


9:07 PM - Time keeps slipping.  Internal life churns on, thoughts and reflections flow steadily and give me some satidfaction satisfaction  Externals are harder.  I took care of laundry, ate, and and and and but if I write one poem it boosts me more than a thousand errands.

There's a good book named Errands

As I went out before my neighbors' mother and mother in law told me that their daughter fell on Monday and is in a body cast for six weeks, and she and they are thankful to G-d that it wasn't worse.  Hashem Yeracheim.  Please.

10:12 PM - Time slips away.

10:19 PM - Just discovered this amazing story:

G-d gathers all the animals and says: “I want to hide something from humans until they are ready for it - the realization that they create their own reality - ” “Give it to me. I'll fly it to the moon,” says the eagle. “No, one day soon they will go there and find it.” “How about the bottom of the ocean?” asks the salmon. “No, they will find it there too.” “I will bury it in the great plains,” says the buffalo. “They will soon dig and find it there.” “Put it inside them,” says the wise grandmother mole. “Done,” says the Creator. “It is the last place they will look.” — Native American Legend

11:18 PM - Whitney Houston died last night, I wonder why I care,
In part it's because it's a loss of human life of which I've been made aware

However, it goes deeper.  Was she any person? Was it any life?
She was a strong, vulnerable person, weak powerhouse, addict, abused wife

I find myself saddened, intrigued, enlightened, and confounded

The opposite of strong is not weak,
they are co-exist as partners, with a magical mystique

Nothing like children, we move on to the future now,
Trying to learn to balance the I and the Thou

Eyes forward, we move ahead,
Keeping it together with invisible thread

Yes, yes
G-d, please, bless

11:59 PM - Good night and G-d bless, I write, seven plus years into my blogging life.