Since early Tuesday morning when I got an appointment get a vaccine at 6 pm tonight, I've known that today was going to be meaningful. , Getting the shot would be meaningful enough, of course. But just to add a meaningful cherry on top, tonight is the night I was going to say Kaddish at services …
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I spent the better portion of today cooking and trying to remember to think about freedom. I was cooking - and trying to think about freedom - because Passover starts tonight and it really is a Passover like no other. While we're doing something very low key tonight with our daughters, tomorrow we're hosting a large …
Did Frances Elizabeth Willard, the long-time president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), ever go to a Seder? If she went, did she follow tradition and drink four glasses of amazingly sweet Kosher wine? Or did she follow WCTU's dictates and, as many people do, drink four glasses of grape juice instead? I ask because tonight is …
The happiest place on earth is.... Not Disneyland or Disney World but... ...Finland? Apparently that's the case. In fact, in 2020, for the fourth year in a row, Finland was ranked as the happiest country in the world, according to the 2021 World Happiness Report, a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network that was released on March …
"The Goldberg Variations" That's what Nisa, my amazing sister-in-law said has been helping her through the past, difficult several months. It wasn't a random comment. Every Passover, over dinner, we go around the table (or the screen) and give each person an opportunity to talk about freedom and/or their narrow place, if they choose. Nisa explained that …
"Don't mind me, I'm just having a conversation with your father," said Joseph Mullin, executive director of Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History when he looked over the collection in January 2020, about three months before I started writing my #stampofthe day posts. "Not a problem," I replied, "do you mind if I listen in." I …
On April Fools' Day, I've been pranked by my own (late) father and his stamp collection. And, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I almost fell for it. In fact, I was getting ready to write a #stampoftheday post about how I had recently rediscovered that my father's collection included four rare stamps issued in …
"I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately," said President Woodrow Wilson on April 2, 1917. Wilson's somber tone was merited because, having narrowly won reelection in 1916 on a campaign that prominently noted "He Kept Us Out of War," he …
"The postman no longer rings twice," wrote Frank DeFilippo, in a recent column posted by news outlets in Maryland and Pennsylvania. In contrast, he added, "back in the day the Pony Express and its daredevil riders became early western cinematic celebrities for braving treacherous terrain, marauding bandits and worse weather than Texas and yet relaying …