New Orleans travelog #7
French Quarter - Monday, 23 Apr 2023, 3pmWe've been doing a bit of sightseeing each day in New Orleans. Yesterday we met with a local friend for another self-guided tour around the French Quarter and Faubourg-Marigny. Today we discussed options for sightseeing before we walked out to lunch at Café Beignet. We intended to ( Read more... )

5 Days in the Desert travelog #9
Barstow, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 7:15amOkay, I'm running behind on getting pictures from this trip ready to blog- as always. I'm going to pull this entry forward since it's topical to Christmas and I don't want to leave it in the queue until the 27th or whenever ( Read more... )

The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah began this evening, Dec 18. I'm not Jewish myself but I'm married into a Jewish family and have had many Jewish friends since teenage years. That's given me many opportunities to learn a fair bit about Jewish traditions. Among the things I've learned is that we non-Jews tend to have a lot of misunderstandings about ( Read more... )

When we were shopping at Costco last weekend we spotted this little number I've never seen before:


( Read more... )

Thanksgiving '22 Travelog #9
Near Harrisburg, PA - Sat, 26 Nov 2022, 1am

As I explained yesterday, my inlaws don't just do one holiday meal, they do two. They pair up with family friends to celebrate with big meals twice. It's an outgrowth of how they celebrate Jewish holidays such as Passover and Rosh Hashanah. Second Thanksgiving, at least, is ( Read more... )

Author Salman Rushdie was attacked on a stage last Friday. He was about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, before an audience of several hundred people in an outdoor amphitheater, when an assailant ran across the stage and stabbed him in multiple places. At least one other person was injured while trying to help ( Read more... )

The Supreme Court Monday issued its ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. The case concerned a high school football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who was leading students in prayer at midfield after football games. Lower courts upheld the school district's decision to put Kennedy on paid administrative lead for illegal promotion of religious ( Read more... )

White Plains, NY - Sunday, 13 Jun 2021, 10pm.

Our friends are now married... thrice over. After getting married in a civil ceremony last August (after Covid had forced them to cancel plans for a traditional wedding twice) they got religious-paperwork married by a Jewish rabbi yesterday and then religious-ceremony married by a rabbi in front of ~60 ( Read more... )

This morning as I walked downstairs I felt a moment of nostalgia. "It's Christmas morning," I remembered. "What presents have magically appeared under the tree?"

Of course it's been eleventy-someodd years since I believed in Santa Claus or presents magically appearing beneath a Christmas tree. It's also been not much less long since I actually ( Read more... )

The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah begins later this week, on Dec 10. I'm married into a Jewish family and have had many Jewish friends since teenage years, so even though I'm not Jewish myself I've taken many opportunities to learn a fair bit about Jewish traditions. Among the things I've learned is that we non-Jews tend to have a lot of ( Read more... )