Every once in a
while Twitter gets more bolshie about serving up ads. This week is one of those
times; I do what I always do: block any account that serves up an ad in my
feed.
But in Elno’s quest
to drive his $8 subscriptions (evidently his plan to make up for the billions
in ad revenues he lost by displaying ads next to Nazi, racist & porn
content), he’s added one extra step to the process.
You block the
ad, and then get this opportunity to do away with ads forever, by renting a
blue check. The only way you can make it go away is to click on one of the two options.
In my case, “maybe
later” means “on the 12th day after Armageddon”.
Earlier this year, I shared with you some photos
of street
lamps in a neighboring cluster. That post included one kind of sad image of
a shadow of the very Art Nouveau lights. This past weekend I got a better shot,
so here it is.
You’ll forgive me if I say it reminds me of the Witch-king of Angmar.
On my Thursday morning walk I caught two foxes
playing in a sand trap on the golf course. They were on hind legs, batting each
other with their front paws. Sadly, they quit when they saw me, and I only got
these pitiful shots of them.
Then, Saturday morning I met up with possibly
one of them, in the green space* between my cluster and the ex-corporate HQ
behind us. And then someone showed up later that day to snarfle up some bird
seed.
I also listened to the resident hawk up in the
trees—not yet driven out of its habitat by the massive “luxury” townhouse
construction project on the ex-corporate HQ campus. And I realized how grateful
I am to have these creatures for neighbors (along with the birds and the
chipmunks), for their visits and serenades. That's big gratitude.
*I’m sure developers will buy that space, which
is about 20 x 40 meters, to construct a high rise of “luxury” condos with a
Starbucks on the ground floor, in about five years.
Yom Kippur begins at sundown tonight and
continues until dusk tomorrow. It’s the culmination of the Days of Awe in the
Jewish calendar, and the time for a sort of moral Spring cleaning—the Day of
Atonement, when you’re meant to rummage through your behavior over the previous
year, acknowledge your shortcomings with respect to your fellow humans,
apologize (to those they’ve trespassed against and to God) and resolve to do
better.
Then—having cleared the slate, so to
speak—you’re good to go for another year.
Well, the deal is that God opens the Book of
Life on Rosh Hashanah and inscribes your name in it, but doesn’t close-and-seal
it until the end of Yom Kippur. You have those ten Days of Awe to get your
ducks in a row.
In recent times, people have taken to issuing
blanket apologies for transgressions, presumably in
the hope that anyone who’s actually suffered at their hands will happen by at
the time the apology emerged, and will catch it in passing. And, of course, SoMe
has amplified this impersonalization of what should be
a very personal act of contrition.
I have never subscribed to the
one-size-fits-all approach to giving or receiving apologies, but that’s just
me. I mean—in the Roman Catholic Sacrament of Reconciliation, we’re meant to
hawk up actual things we’ve done, say
them out loud to the confessor and accept the penance we’re given. (Toughest
priest I ever knew wouldn’t give you any generic Hail Marys or Our Fathers; no,
no. If I’d been pissed off at my family, he’d tell me to go back and be
specially nice to them. Killed me, he did.)
Protestants generally have no truck with
confession and atonement. That may be because, being based on the teachings of John
Calvin, they’re guided by the tenets of Predestination: God decided long before
your birth whether you’re saved or damned, and nothing you can do here will
change that. Therefore there’s not much point in calling out your
transgressions, or promising to make amends—you’re headed where God sends you.
(Okay—there’s a lot of talk in some
fundamentalist circles about repentance and forgiveness. But that seems largely
to apply to Republican elected officials and some preachers who’ve been caught
doing something that they can’t wriggle out of on account of the video and the
forensic evidence. I take no notice of this.)
But I digress. This post is about Yom Kippur
and the mindful inventory of one’s transgressions with a view to amending one’s
trajectory in the New Year.
In synagogues and communities around the world
just before sundown tonight, someone will be singing “Kol Nidre”, a call from
the Ashkenazi tradition of Judaism. It’s a mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew,
declaring null any oaths or commitments made to God from one Yom Kippur to the
next, and asking for pardon for shortcomings in fulfilling those vows. The
idea, as I understand it, is to mitigate the sin of failing to fulfill a vow
that might have been made rashly. (It also annulled any vows associated with
forced conversion to Christianity, which was a thing for a long time.)
Both Al Jolson and Neil Diamond sang “Kol
Nidre” in their appearances in The Jazz Singer (1927 and 1980,
respectively). Johnny Mathis and Perry Como have also recorded it, which seems
passing odd to me. But I’m giving you Cantor Julia Kadrain of the Central
Synagogue (a Reform shul in Midtown Manhattan) leading it for Yom Kippur 5776
(nine years ago).
So, there’s this chain of specialty bakeries
called Crumbl Cookies. They have a store near me in the People’s Republic, in a
nothing-but-eateries section of a local shopping center. I noticed it because
it’s next to the place I patronize for kabob.
Last year I had a conversation about it with my
physical therapist—I just don’t get how making one single thing can be the
basis of a successful business model. (I also don’t get the lasting power of Nothing
Bundt Cake, except they may have an advantage in corporate catering.) She
said she’d tried them, and they were acceptable. But I’ve still never got round
to going in to check them out.
A couple of weeks ago I got a fancy for the
lamb and chicken kabob platter, so I trotted over to the shopping center and
noticed this:
I wondered if they were going out of business,
or maybe had a super big sale going on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place that
is entirely takeout this full, outside of maybe a Massachusetts ice cream
parlor in July. And as I waited for my combo platter, I watched people
streaming by with pink boxes—some quite wide and maybe an inch tall, and some
the size of a box that would hold a couple of cupcakes.
Well, The Washington Post got wind of
the raging phenomenon and decided to review the product. Turns out they didn’t much like it—too sweet and tending to
be underbaked. Evidently that’s because of their size; by the time the edges
are done and headed toward burning, the centers are still near-raw.
In these crazy times, we none of us are assured
of anything. Aside from human-induced climate-related natural disasters, we’re
surrounded by two major kinetic wars; worldwide cyber crime aimed at crippling
infrastructure, healthcare and communications; the global rise of right-wing authoritarianism;
and a presidential election here that pits a proven upholder of the
Constitution against a convicted felon whose campaign relies on unprecedented lying
and incitement to violence to support winning at all costs.
The costs to be paid by everyone but him.
Plus—I’m still being chewed to shreds by bloody
mosquitos. In October.
My point is—no matter how battened down we
think our lives are, we’re all one layoff, one aneurysm, one rogue Waymo or one
batshit crazy True Believer away from everything turning upside down. So I’ve
taken to trying to focus on the things around me—in whatever format they might
appear—that remind me of the grace and blessings that do exist, even if they’re
ephemeral.
Today it’s the hibiscus that my neighbor
planted. (Y’all know how I love hibiscus.)
She gets actual sun (unlike my yard), and she
recently set out a bunch of plants and shrubs, including these stunners. I don’t
know where hibiscus originated, but these guys remind me of the colors or
Mexico, or the Little India neighborhood of Singapore. Just in-your-face
look-at-me vibrant hues. You just have to smile when you see them.
Today I’m grateful for my neighbor, her garden
and these beauties. How could I not be?
Today’s earworm has to be from Kris
Kristofferson, who died Saturday at age 88.
Son of a career Air Force officer,
Kristofferson earned a degree in English at Pomona College, where he also
played football and boxed. (I have to frame this by telling you that Pomona
plays in the same athletic league as Cal Tech. But still…) He won a Rhodes
Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, where he studied (among other
literature) the poetry of William Blake.
You may or may not know this, but while a
Rhodes Scholarship is an academic honor, you also have to be an athlete; it was
founded by that Muscular Christian White Nationalist Cecil Rhodes, who
definitely believed in mens sana in corpore sano.
He left Oxford to take a commission in the U.S.
Army, where he flew helicopters in Germany. That made his parents happy, but
when the Army proposed his next assignment as teaching English literature at
West Point, he resigned his commission and moved to Nashville.
It was time for him to live his life as a poet.
His family disowned him.
Kristofferson came on the country music scene
in the 60s. Though that’s not really my jam, his songs resonate deeply. They’re
largely about fleeting relationships that nevertheless provide a bright, if
short, light. They are also deeply sensual. Like the opening verse from “Help
Me Make It Through the Night”:
“Take the ribbon
from your hair
“Shake it loose and let it fall
“Layin’ soft upon my skin
“Like the shadows on the wall.”
Whoo-ee, that is some hot stuff right there.
Kristofferson’s biggest hit was probably “Me
and Bobby McGee”, written in 1970. I first heard it sung by Gordon Lightfoot,
and Janis Joplin went No. 1 on the chart with her posthumously released cover
that same year. I confess that for the past week I’ve been stuck on “With those
windshield wipers slappin’ time and Bobby clappin’ hands, We finally sung up
every song that driver knew.”
“Bobby McGee” gave us the catchphrase “Freedom’s
just another word for nothin’ left to lose; nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s
free.” If you look, you can find the threads of Blake in Kristofferson’s work.
As with JD
Souther last week, there’s so much to choose from with Kristofferson. But I’m
going with “Loving Her Was Easier”. He was an amazing balladeer, and there's a whole lot of Blake in the imagery.
