Time sprints…

It seems as if watermelon and new keds sneaker season lasted ad infinitum. Brand new blue loose leaf folders, colored tabs to divide social studies from algebra and colorful pencil holders already? Do you remember new commercials for Fall tv shows advertised in July? Did Ginsburgs and Wechslers sport alpacas and madras blouses in July? Do the street lights go on so much earlier now than they did back then? Father Time, slow down dude, we need to take a breath and “relish” (hello Rutts) every last barbecued hot dog,

We wonder when self help books turned into “recalibrating the soul” GPS style. Zoom class your way out of persistent mishegas? Peloton, Pilates and “we”ll stretch you” stretch clinics now replace Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons and Jazzercise. Lululemon and  Sweaty Betty updated Danskin leotards and leg warmers. Hot rock massages, bikram yoga and acupressure lead the way to mojitos, Sweetgreens Guacamole Green Salad and red velvet cupcakes. Vic tanny vibration exercise machines- what?

I wonder where the days of climbing the monkey bars, wearing very tight white rubber bathing caps to ward off the chlorine effects when we swam and ring dings went? 

If the line was busy you called your friend back to tell her about the new colored bangle bracelet and lady bug pins you got to match your new outfit to wear to Temple for the holidays. 

So let’s hold on tightly to July. Treadmill our carvel dipped ice cream cone calories off and cherish our yesteryear memories.

We know we are blessed to have had foundations where Sly had “hot fun in the summertime,” and when the sun beat down and burnt the tar on the roof- we could go “Under the Boardwalk,” and be confident that the Lion would sleep tonight. Have a fun Sunday!

Grab another Drive-ins on Friday
Night Moment -feel good repost!

When the leaves were orange and the living was easy. What does the tooth fairy do with all the teeth? Why are the people in the front of the picture so much bigger than the people toward the back? Out of the mouths, when life was oh so mellow.

We bought our first pair of silk stockings which were to be held up by a stretchy pink and white striped garter belt. The days of Ozzie and Harriet, Susan Lucci and Soupy Sales.

We re-dialed after our friends line was busy the first time and screeched with excitement, Conrad Birdie style, over our anticipated coed- girl/boy party that evening. After we sat under a hot dryer with beer can sized rollers in our hair we brushed away the fumes from our eyes left by aqua spray. The decision to curl our hair rather than iron it straight was a good one, our hair came out just right. Getting ready “Was” the excitement. Our new madras blouse and alpaca sweater hung prominently in the front of our closet right above our shiny, new cordovan colored weejuns. Bright, new Penny, dated 1967 heads up in place.

A touch of revlon blush, a glimmer of light pink lipstick proceeded a spritz of Ambush and we were on our way. With dejavu on my breath I can still recall euphorically how it felt when I unbuttoned the wooden clasps that kept my new Pea Coat in tact. The boys gathered on one side of the room as the girls sifted through the 45’s on the other. At this point there was no bottle to spin in sight. Would the Angels sing tonight as our soldier boys danced under the Blue Moon?

The specialty years of pre-teening had a wonderful life of its own. We made room for our daydreams laced with Johnny Mathis lyrics. Our Barbie and Ken’s were repositioned and left to fetch for themselves in the back row of our minds. In the still of the night I hold tightly to the memories that Jay and the Americans knew were those Magic Moments. Make it a great Friday!

Raw end of the stick or right end of realty? Go over there and put your excuses in the “Doesn’t hold water bucket.” It contains and I quote – I couldn’t find your number, I lost my phone, I already found a 4th, 5th or 6th for the game, I thought it was Sunday and made another plan. I over booked my week lol and so on. The victims club has closed membership. The numbers of people who signed up exceeded the space limit. You’re not my cup of tea, I prefer not to sit at your table, you press the wrong buttons in me. “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now. From up and down and still somehow. It’s clouds illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all.” Oh, Judy Collins, both sides now, indeed. Lessons come wrapped in perfectly sealed, beautifully ribboned packages, we think not. Too little, too late, no worries. Once burned adages streaming in double digits. Option “Turn it off”- thank you Elder McKinley. The song from Book of Mormons. ” I got a feeling, that you could be feeling, a whole lot better than you feel today. You say you got a problem, well that’s no problem. It’s super easy not to feel that way!”

By the way next to the bucket that holds no water, there is a “forgive everyone everything line.” Our world is in an inflammatory state of tragedy and horror. Hold on tightly and give tzedakah because you want to, not because you have to do. Have a good Wednesday!

Eddie Redmayne won an academy award for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everythingin 2014. The movie, captivating in its portrayal of the brilliant and funny Stephen Hawking, the physicist who made landmark advances in physics and math. His career spanned 50 award winning years. Amongst the prestige of his awards was The Albert Einstein Medal in 1979 for his scientific findings. The keeper of odds beat his for 51 of his 76 years of a five star life. He was diagnosed at 21 years of age with ALS, an extreme deleterious motor neuron disease. His body and voice, although physically bound and compromised never got in the way of his mobility or his Voice. He never allowed his limitations to get in the way. He knew the thrill of discovery has no mate. This was his fate and he never bemoaned it. He finished the marathon of life even if it was after dark and amongst the last of the racers up first avenue.

On any given day finding an excuse to hang in bed, binge watch a  Netflix series and order in food is often too close at hand (not an easy feat for those in the know.) I can only imagine even Stephen Hawking couldn’t count the number of days he allowed himself one of those. A favorite and meaningful quote of his was “it would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.”

So on Pi day we say good-bye Stephen. Wondered if he planned it that way or was it just the “odds.

When guns have more rights than women.
We march to gain control.
Our bodies, ourselves, our credo.
We stand united and determined and yell.
Overturning our dignity.
The fire, the fury, the horror.
We beg to know the “why’s.”
We sit and wipe our sorrow.
Children shot dead in Uvalde.
Our constitutional rights dispelled.
In a huge destructive hand-basket,
Our world has gone to Hell.

And then one day the sky fell down.
No chicken little warning- the house fell on the witches legs and just like that the emperor had no clothes. Cinderella lost more than her slipper and the three blind mice could no longer run. Mother Goose stopped singing nursery rhymes to her grandchildren- and stood by as women prisoner’s exercised around the “mulberry bush.” There were no rainbows and cloudy days were here again. Severus Snape knew that “the dark arts are varied, ever- changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many- headed monster, which each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before.” Even though Tom (Tom and Jerry) was the antagonist, all of us felt for Tom. “After all what good is a cat if he can’t get the better of a rat.” From our own little corner in our own little chair- uh! oh! we spied with our little eye a black cat crossing our path. And to quote Elmer Fudd in his garden of evil- “Shhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits. Only in that case, the hunter gets hunted always. And then we ran into Mary Poppins who offered us a spoon full of sugar. It helped the medicine go down. We began to believe again and just like we know pruning our flowers helps them to grow bigger and brighter the prince of tides helped our ship sail in. We turned the beat around, stopped playing victim, ran from villains, and got behind the literal wheel to claim our power back. If you believe in magic, follow toto down the yellow brick road, and know that somewhere between a curtain and the wizard is a place called Home.

Back to the Future!

No Rhyme-All Reason. Landlubbers, drindl skirts and bell bottoms. Tennis sweaters, weejun penny loafers and madras blouses. Typewriters, wax dipped monogram letter seals and loose leaf notebooks. Bon Bons- jujubes, chuckles and double bubble. Chocolate yoo hoo’s, dairy queen sundaes and red licorice strings. Dave Clark Five, Connie Francis and Charlotte Russe . Dobie Gillis, pink erasers, papagallos. Loden pea-coats vinyl jackets, mary jane patent leathers, and white shoe polish for ked sneakers. Apple Brown Betty in Swanson tv dinners, buitoni ravioli in the can and potato sticks. Sewing class, emenee toy trumpets and the morning show “Just for Fun.” The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance and Flower Drum Song. Won-ton soup, chopped suey and egg foo young. Peanut Butter and Jelly on Ritz Crackers with Campbells tomato soup. Spaldings, Jacks and 45’s. Army, Navy Stores, Kresge’s Dept. Store and Alexanders. Mohair sweaters, shift dresses, mini and maxi skirts, baby doll dresses, colored tights- stirrup pants. Science projects on Oak Tag, pencil sharpeners and No. 8 pencils. Revlon Rum Raisin lipstick and Mary Quant make-up. Shalimar, Joy, Ambush, jade east, english leather and Old Spice. Po-ke-no, parchessi and Simon. Bonanza, Gunsmoke and Wagon Train. Make it a throw back Thursday!

Table for Four Plus More!The feeling of being excluded stinks! We recently learned of a reach out program called #operationshabbotshalom. It was started by a lovely guy we know who heads a modern orthodox day school in Westchester. We met him 18 plus years ago through one the modern orthodox temples in New York where some of the grandkids attend school. He is renowned and in fact the son of the Rabbi Emeritus at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. Shout out to Josh Lookstein. Fast forward, post (bh) Summer 2022 and we are out and more about. One pervasive and lingering side effect for so many resulted from the feeling of being isolated. The common denominator was negotiating our safety from our own ships during the the many phases of the universal storm. #operationshabbotshalom was set up as an “effort to bring people together after a year of distancing.” Friday afternoons are designated to reach out to people who could use a call. Come one, call all. You in turn get the calls too. Social lives have an ebb and flow. There are times when we are inundated with invites to join the party. There are periods where empty calendars feel italicized in yellow marker fashion. Differentiating between alone and lonely is a tough call. In an attempt to make up for lost time we schedule our days and nites in bulk. Some days we almost look forward to cancelled plans. We can then get into our sweats, no make-up and hair pulled back mode. It gives us a moment to get off the treadmill of activity, tap into an evening of take-out Chinese food, netfiix and a Vodka we nurse through binging Teheran. We are tired. Tired of the reboot. Lots of time and sometimes tortured energy to create a syllabus that is new but contains components of what was. Unplug and hope we what we lost, was either no longer serving us any good, or in fact stored in the elusive cloud. So just for today, when you find the time, perhaps reach out to someone who may be going through a narrow calendar of events. Leave the door open and let them know in a more than merrier way, that they will never walk alone, as long as you are around.

Jared Kushner your arrogance expected.
Your attorney was pleading not whining.
Your fidelity to shekels and pesos,
Leaves your credibility, less than shining.
The apple nish fallen too far,
Your pedigree was bought with a check.
You represent behavior disdainful.
Your values wreak with disrespect.
Entitled and privileged and so on,
You had an enormous head start.
Nepotism led you down a path,
Not coming from simply the heart.
Somehow we wished you knew better.
Your children will learn of the truth.
Get off your high horse, the music you’ll face as you’re pulled out of the illusive glass booth.



“The parents of 10-year-old Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio—one of 19 children killed by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde—testified virtually before a June 8 U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on gun violence.”
We have had the fortuitous opportunity to share time with grandchildren for what is now almost 17 years. Whaaaat? Yes, from baggies of cheerios to drivers permits we have kvelled all the way through. From day 1 we took an oath of safety first. Nothing got in the way of crossing streets, holding hands in museums and eyes on the prize every precious minute. One of our best takeaways were sleepovers.

We would close the blinds and it would be the stars, the moon and Us. “More french toast”- coming right up.

Very Best of times. 

Yesterday the good times continued as we celebrated a right of passage a “zimrah,” a musical celebration.

Good-bye kindergarten, hello first grade. Grateful, gracious and lucky in more than one way as we have come to learn.  

Cut to Oct 18, 2018 Shabbat morning at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. A day of prayer in a random synagogue engaging in a sermon of prayers and gratitudes. An assailant stormed in Nazi style and committed the deadliest rampage against a Jewish Community in our country’s history. The murderer’s life was spared and he was deemed in “stable” condition. As far from the truth as can be imagined. We are positioned as we enter a school, a house of worship, a sports or entertainment arena to now wonder if we will walk out.

We are mired in prayer today choosing to focus with eyes who spent formative years in the 1960’s when we walked into a Shabbat service, our school, the bowling alley, or the local candy store and banked on leaving with more than we came in with. And no Lexi Aniyah Rubio never got her ice cream. BH