GGS

9-52 – March

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March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.

Except maybe this year. We’ve had some really warm weather. I stopped wearing a jacket and put on my warm weather capris. And then it was twenty degrees. At least I had my gloves. I can usually get away with just getting in and out of the car if I have my gloves and my snood to cover my neck.

My March has a full calendar.

My oldest baby turns twenty. Twenty!

I have several spiritual retreats that I am looking forward to participating in, including a weekend retreat with artist Brother Mickey McGrath, a wonderful inspiration and teacher.

Our parish is having a parish mission for lent, which I’ve never done before, so I’m very excited for that.

Daylight savings time, and spring are both coming.

This month is no longer than any of the other thirty-one day months, but it has always felt like the longest month. It seems to go on forever, and sometimes that’s okay, but sometimes I wish it would just end. There are also no school holidays in March so that may be where the feeling comes from.

March has only begun and it is here to stay.

8-52 – Lin-Manuel Miranda

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​Lin-Manuel Miranda can be found all over online. He is currently (at least physically will be back after the tonight’s Oscars) in London working on the Mary Poppins sequel. He has a lively, vocal, opinionated, kind, social media presence. His official website is http://www.linmanuel.com and has all of his current projects and official means to follow him. Other ways of seeing and hearing him are: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

He spends a lot of time, along with his projects, talking often about his family, but he guards his son’s privacy. Please remember not to post pictures of his son if you see them out in public.

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Obama Book Club

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The Harry Potter series is one of my all time favorites. It has influenced my most recent years in ways that almost can’t be expressed, and I found it all by accident.

As part of my Jewish heritage, I am prohibited from working on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I was always taught that work included driving, shopping, cooking during the day, coloring, writing (how ghastly!) and computer work.

In lieu of any of those things, since most years I did not attend Temple on the High Holy Days, I wanted something productive, but not work to do, and so each year, I chose one or two books to read. I didn’t read as much then as I do now, and so on the High Holidays, my way to prayer was to sit quietly, contemplate G-d and the universe, and read a new book.

Right around when I was pregnant or when my son was born, my friend, another teacher, gave me to borrow, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I hadn’t heard the hype yet or at least it was at the beginning of its pop culture takeover, right around when librarians and teachers were discovering that boys actually liked reading if you gave them something interesting to read – a good policy for all genders.

So, I read it. I think it took less than the two days of Rosh Hashanah, and I needed the next one immediately. I joined legions of kids waiting on the hold list for the fourth book when it came out at the library.

In the interim, right after the seventh book came out, I discovered fan fiction, and then I was writing fan fiction and somehow started and became a group leader in an online community of a subfandom of Harry Potter called Daydverse. It was wonderful for the creative doors it opened up, but more importantly it brought me a group of friends of all ages and walks of life that I continue to be close to.

Harry Potter opened a new world for me, and showed me through the related tangents that I had different paths to pursue.

I am continuing to pursue them.

Like President Obama in this Entertainment Weekly article, I highly recommend the Harry Potter series to all age groups.

From the books, find the movies, and the careers of the actors; the actor who played Draco is now on one of our family’s favorite television shows, The CW’s The Flash. From there, check out JK Rowling’s Twitter. I have great admiration for her as a person, and she has a lot to say.

But always, always, always, begin with the books. The books are magical. You will cease to be a Muggle forever.

7-52 – Family

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​When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time visiting family. Every weekend was spent with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Or someone’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. I remember visiting rural areas way out east on Long Island or the wilds of New Jersey. It was probably more suburban than what we were used to in the city, but in my little kid memory, it was farmland with grass and trees and swingsets. Very Waltons. When we eventually moved to the suburbs they weren’t quite so rural. I can remember sitting in this huge wicker chair with my baby brother. It’s probable that I’m remembering a photo, and of course being three or so everything was huge.

My father used to drive us both days of the weekend to Grandma’s house – Saturday to his mother in the Bronx, and Sunday to his mother-in-law in Queens. Both she and my mother worked on Saturdays. In the Bronx, when my grandfather was alive, he’d take me for walks down the city streets, sometimes in my stroller, sometimes holding my hand, stopping at the basketball courts where I can still hear the bouncing ball in my mind, and then turning around to go back to his building. They lived on Castle Hill Avenue, the same area that Jennifer Lopez grew up in decades later. My father and I got stuck in his elevator once. That’s probably one reason I do not like elevators very much.

My other grandmother had a house. it was attached to another house in a row of attached houses. She had a garage and a basement and a backyard that we could never use because it was so overgrown. I didn’t know the street names, but I could find it by the landmarks, turning right at the white fence and so on.

This was how everyone spent their weekends. One uncle, my mother’s brother would also bring his children even though he’d sit in the same chair and read the newspaper silently while his kids, my cousins visited their grandmother, my grandmother.

My great-uncle who was just called Uncle would visit my grandmother who was his sister and his mother, my great-grandmother who also lived there.

I grew up with his two youngest girls, twins, my best friends all through elementary school.  We were one year apart. We went everywhere together. I was the third twin. We lived in the same garden apartment court and when they moved to Florida, my family moved soon after to Long Island. Continue reading

Obama Book Club

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As a young child, as voracious a reader that I was, I had never read Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It was my close friend’s favorite book.

During my freshman year at college, there was an auction. Two of the British exchange students would tuck you into bed with a glass of warm milk an read you a bedtime story if yours was the highest bid.

The book was Where the Wild Things Are.

I was the highest bidder.

It was fun and sweet and I finally heard the story of Max.

Let the wild rumpus begin!

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is on President Obama’s Entertainment Weekly Book List.

Look it up and have a flashback to your own childhood.

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Obama Book Club

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Continuing with our picks to the Obama Book Club, highlighted by this article from Entertainment Weekly, this week’s space goes to Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow.

I read this book right after reading his biography of Hamilton which was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s inspiration for his very popular Broadway msuical, Hamilton: An American Musical.

In both, I really enjoyed Chernow’s style and way of writing. Even as a fan of history, I sometimes find the reading of period writings to be a bit hard on the linguistics inside my head, but I didn’t find that in the Chernow books. In fact, it was strangely easy to imagine Hamilton and his contemporaries speaking and/or writing in hip-hop.

This biography of Founding Father, George Washington showed me a side of President Washington and his family that I hadn’t before seen or heard. It is by no means a simple read, but it is written in a way that is easy to understand. It held my interest throughout and I couldn’t put it down. It was one of those books that when finished, I wanted to read it again.

It has never been more important to recognize and know our history. Starting with the founding of our country as we look at our current global standing and the world around us.

Confidence will Follow

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Graphic – unknown creator. Quote by Carrie Fisher.

Stay afraid, but, do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow. – Carrie Fisher

This is something I’ve only learned in the past few months, maybe a year. I continue to carry this sentiment and Carrie in my heart. I can do it. I can.