Tonight is Kol Nidre, the holiest night in the Jewish calendar, the night that begins Yom Kippur--the Day of Atonement. I am not at synagogue tonight and won't be tomorrow because I didn't plan properly. I had dinner around sunset; technically my fast has begun. And so I'm thinking hard about trespasses and forgiveness. And other stuff ( Read more... )

I joined Facebook long after it became a Thing, and only after being shamed into it by a coworker. Within the space of 24 hours, I had over 300 friends. Said coworker was blown away and asked how it had happened, given my reluctance to join. "Life," I said. "A long career," I said. "Lots of friends," I said. With time and the peculiarities of the ( Read more... )

I spent a good portion of the day on the couch, feeling rather low energy, and so had the TV turned on to something mindless, in this case the TV series "Ancient Aliens." I remember my mother having a copy of "Chariots of the Gods" in the house. The idea (in case you're unfamiliar with it) is that aliens visited Earth thousands of years ago and are ( Read more... )

I don't typically think of myself as "rich." Comparatively speaking, financially, I'd say I'm comfortably middle class, if such a thing still exists in these United States. Every now and then--such as my trips to Kenya or Europe--I am reminded that my self-perception isn't wholly accurate in the context of the larger world, that I have resources ( Read more... )

So . . . we all gathered at the Six Arms today, ostensibly in honor of Jay. A lot of folks were there. I knew all of them. We greeted each other, hugged. We ordered food. We talked a little about Jay. We talked about a lot of other things. And then ebourne and I left. We went and had ice cream. And . . . that was it ( Read more... )

So . . . it's Mother's Day in the US. For those of us who lost their mothers young, it's always a tough day. I miss my mom. I was angry at her for years -- when she got sick, when she died. I was angry at her for how she dealt with my father's death, but that's mainly because at 11 years old, I didn't truly understand what she was mourning, and I ( Read more... )

As I start this journal entry, it has no title because I'm not sure of all the ground I'm going to cover; I know it will be wide and deep. Perhaps the entry will have a title before I'm done ( Read more... )

I was going to make a "Five Things..." post this morning. But one of those five things was provoked by Trish Sullivan's post about sexism in SF and the Rod Rees debacle, which I still haven't been able to find anything about online; my Google-fu has failed me. But the Google brought up the Resnick/Malzberg genderfail, and it quickly overcame the ( Read more... )

8/25/13: ETA I wrote this after having decided not to write about it. I filtered it tightly. Then I privacy-locked it. At this moment (two months later), I'm unlocking and unfiltering it because I have things to say to which it pertains, and it's time.
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I spoke with davidlevine about this last night because I was so upset, but I woke up ( Read more... )

In my last post, I mentioned that this past weekend I'd received news of a death. The death in question was that of my brother's best friend's wife. While this may seem like a distant connection, it's closer than you may think for reasons that will become clear.( Cut for flist mercy and for cancer and triggery stuff )