Friday links: 22 April, 2022

It’s Friday! Always nice to have the weekend juuuuuuuuuust about here. This has been a pretty good week so far, so I’m not desperate for a break like I have been some weeks! Yesterday was amazing; almost 70 degrees, full sun (enough for me to slightly toast my right arm, whoops), it was gorgeous out there and we did a bunch of our afternoon school sitting outside, plus we went on a really nice walk afterwards. Saturday’s supposed to be hot as well, but then back down to chilly. Ah well. Can’t have it all at once, I guess!

I haven’t been online all that much this week, but what I did find was at least both interesting and useful. Here we go!

 

Illinois Officials Recommend Residents Take Down Bird Feeders, Baths Due to Avian Flu

Ours will be coming down either later today or tomorrow (we’ve got some thunderstorms rolling in, so it depends on when we can sneak out there). I know this is a problem in multiple states, so if you’ve got bird feeders or baths, heavily consider taking them down until May 31^st to stop the spread of the EA H5N1 strain of Avian flu, which is hitting both wild and domestic birds. We love our birds; they provide us so much joy and entertainment at the feeder right outside our living room window, and that’s why we want to do everything we can to keep them safe and healthy.

 

Covid: Woman caught virus twice within record 20 days

If where you live is like where I live, you’re seeing way more of people’s faces than you’re comfortable with these days. Sometimes I’m the only one in the store wearing a mask. It doesn’t bother me; I’ve never had any problem with standing out or being different. But cases ARE going up. The wastewater data doesn’t lie, and it’s up, up, up. And now we’ve got evidence of people being reinfected within a three-week time frame? Not good news. Wear your masks, friends. Be careful about large gatherings, especially indoor ones. Multiple infections do our bodies no favors.

 

God Is Not a Consumerist

This is an article about Hanukkah (just a little bit), but it’s truly applicable for all holidays. Why are we so driven by stuff, and what does it mean? Is there any way out of this cycle? It’s hard: hard to explain why and follow through with our children, hard to make our extended family understand that we appreciate their generosity, but we don’t need anything (I’m thinking particularly of my mom here, who is wonderful, but whose love language is gifts). How can we better celebrate holidays in ways that don’t involve consumerism? Definitely something to ponder.

 

Simplicity as a Jewish Path

What a great article. One of the many, many things I love about Judaism is its demand for constant self-reflection: what are you doing with your life to help others, how are you living out these principles, are you helping the arc of the universe bend toward justice? It forces me to constantly reconsider what kind of person I am and want to be, and I love that so much. There’s a tradition of voluntary simplicity in Judaism, known as histapkut b’me’ut, and this article goes into what that means (and how the trauma of Jewish history has affected the way many Jews have struggled with this concept, which is entirely understandable). This article is giving me a lot of joy today, and you definitely don’t have to be Jewish in order to find inspiration in it.  

 

That’s it for today! There are a few places on the list for some scary weather this weekend, so if that’s you, take care and stay safe. Wishing you all a wonderful, peaceful weekend. Shalom, friends. : )

Friday links: 4 February, 2022

 Happy Friday! Anyone have any big plans for the weekend? As usual, not much going on here. Maybe a walk on Sunday, since it’s going to be 32F that day, and I have two bags of peppers that need to be chopped and put in the freezer. And I reeeeeeeeeeally need to get some laundry folded; I've been putting that off for, uh, a while now.

Here's what I found interesting online this week!

 

A Tennessee School Board’s Ban of ‘Maus’ Speaks to a Much Larger Problem

This is a good article (full disclosure: I’ve written for one of their sister sites). You may have heard about a school board in Tennessee banning the book Maus by Art Spiegelman recently, on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Ostensibly, they did it because of profanity and nudity. For one, I guarantee that every single one of those kids hears worse profanity every day in the hallways of their school (I sure did, and I went to small-town Midwestern schools, one of which was religious in nature), and second, the Jews in the book are drawn as mice. These people are concerned about naked mice (do they also have problems with Winnie the Pooh and Donald Duck not wearing pants?). And the school board member worried about promoting violence? She’s going to have a real bad time with, say, the Revolutionary War, or, uh, a LOT of stuff in the Bible (and I say this as someone who reads a bit from the Tanakh every day).

I began learning about the Holocaust in depth when I was nine years old. Yes, it was horrifying to learn about, but that’s the entire point. How can we ensure that these horrors never happen again if we don’t teach about them? I’m not a hundred percent sure what that school board was thinking, but I have a few ideas, and, as someone who leaves in-person synagogue services and walks out past the armed guards hired to prevent us from getting murdered, none of them make me feel very safe. Add this to the Tennessee pastor who held a book burning the other day (you read that correctly), and I’m so, so very glad we left Tennessee when we did. I have so many friends still there, and I'm so sorry that they're doing this to your beautiful state.

Speaking of people behaving badly around books…

 

Documents reveal nature of threats made against St. Charles Public Library employees

This isn’t too far from me.

A local group of people got a bug up their behinds about the fact that, two years into a pandemic in which almost 900,000 Americans have died of a preventable, airborne virus, the library requires its patrons to wear masks in the building. So, like the petulant, whiny toddlers they are, they threw tantrums in the building and made horrific threats toward the library staff, to the point where the library had to close down.

Classy move, people. Ruin it for everyone.

The group behind the threats is known around here, and they’re scary and dangerous. I’m disgusted that this is what our society has come down to: people too good to follow the rules, so they ruin opportunities for everyone by making violent threats. Awesome message they’re teaching their children, and odds are good that that will very much come back to haunt them when their children get older.

On a lighter note…

 

A short guide to the 100 most nutritious goods, as ranked by scientists

An interesting look at what one group of scientists consider healthy. I don’t eat the seafood on the list- even if I did eat animals, I have huge concerns over the amount of microplastics researchers are finding in fish- but this is a pretty fascinating list.

 

That’s all I’ve got this week. I’m making a run to a local grocery store this morning, then coming home to do more volunteer work. I’m making a taco dip for dinner that I’ve been craving all week, so I’m looking forward to that. So glad I’m feeling better this week than I did last week!

Have a great weekend, everyone! : )

What's Been Going On: Thursday, 13 January - Sunday, 16 January, 2022

Happy Monday! Oof, what a weekend that was. I’ll get to the why in a little bit, but I hope you were able to find a bit more relaxation than I did. My daughter has today off from school, so we’re enjoying a nice day at home. Potentially a walk at some point today; it’ll be a balmy 30 degrees Fahrenheit, which is definitely warm enough to get out there for some fresh air (and lots of complaining from my daughter, but that’s just a given!).

Here's what I’ve been up to!

 

Thursday, 13 January, 2022

Super quiet day!

After breakfast and coffee, I posted my Thursday post and got dressed. I put some chickpeas in the Instant Pot, and then it was time for school drop-off.

At home, I took out the recycling and compost, then settled down for a little over one hour of volunteer work (working on compiling lists of Tennessee food pantries). When I wrapped that up, I prepared the start of dinner, Chana Saag (a chickpea and spinach curry that we all enjoy). I took lunch to my daughter, had lunch myself, then did 30 minutes of my Read Harder book (American Literary Almanac by Karen L. Rood) and read Rookie Move by Sarina Bowen the rest of the afternoon.

I put the rice in the rice cooker, ran to the library to pick up a book from interlibrary loan, then finished cooking the rest of dinner. After we ate, I did my Duolingo and showered, read my book, put my daughter to bed, continued reading, and watched three episodes of Killer in Plain Sight with my husband before going to bed.

 

Friday, 14 January, 2022

After breakfast and coffee, I wrote my Friday post, got dressed, then posted Friday’s post. My daughter was heavy on the attitude this morning; school drop-off was NOT a fun time!

At home, I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, took out the compost and recycling, then tidied and swept the living room, I went over my Hebrew flashcards, then spent 30 minutes on my Read Harder project. And then I got a message from someone from Freecycle, and I was off to pick up a fishbowl for a future terrarium project! It was just across town; I wouldn’t have made the trip if it had been further, but being so close made it worth it. Stay tuned for whatever I do with this- it’ll likely be a while, but I’m excited about it!

 

I messed around on the computer until it was time to take my daughter her lunch, then I had lunch myself and curled up in the chair to finish reading Rookie Move. And then I pulled out my grandmother’s cross-stitch to get some work done on that while watching YouTube videos. We had leftovers for dinner, I did my Duolingo, and I continued with the cross-stitch and YouTube until it was time to attend my synagogue’s virtual services. The husband and I watched three episodes of Killer in Plain Sight before going to bed.

 

Saturday, 15 January, 2022

I ran the dishwasher before having breakfast and coffee. I got dressed, scooped the litterbox, tidied my daughter’s room and the kitchen, the unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher. I folded a load of laundry, then swept and tidied the living room. And then I ran to the library to pick up another interlibrary loan book! I love when I get those emails.

After lunch, the family went on a three mile walk. It had snowed overnight, so there was a fresh coat of snow over the old, iced-over snow, which is what made this walk possible for me (hurray for no slipping!). It was cold at 23 degrees Fahrenheit, but the sun was out and we were all dressed properly, so we didn’t really feel it. My daughter’s attitude was out in full force, however!

My husband made cocoa and I helped our daughter with her math homework, and then I pulled out Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way to begin studying chapter 3. I’d barely started when notifications began coming in about the hostage situation at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.

When it comes to the Jewish people, what happens to one of us happens to all of us, and every single one of us knows that it could have easily been us in that situation. Our synagogues have high-tech security systems complete with cameras, intercoms, and codes needed to enter. Police are stationed there outside every Friday night (or Saturday, depending on when services are held) and Sunday, for Sunday school (which is when most children’s Hebrew and learning classes are held). The juxtaposition of our rabbi wishing us a peaceful Shabbat and then having to walk out past the armed policemen standing guard is jarring, to say the least, but it’s absolutely necessary, and what happened in Colleyville is why. We’re all vulnerable, all the time; it’s just an unfortunate fact of life that comes with being Jewish.

I got the chapter done, but I kept pausing to refresh my Twitter feed for updates and to pray for a peaceful outcome, because I was desperate for updates on the situation. I made a batch of cinnamon-vanilla waffles and scrambled eggs with onion, garlic, and pepper for dinner. I ran the dishwasher, did my Duolingo, showered, and put my daughter to bed. All the time, I was hitting refresh like a madman and praying.

I began reading The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis, and my husband and I watched two episodes of Killer in Plain Sight. And when he went off to the bathroom to brush his teeth, I refreshed my Twitter feed and let out a cry of relief when I saw that all hostages had been released safely. Baruch HaShem, I felt such a massive, full-body sense of relief upon reading that news. I cried a little. I’m so sorry for the trauma my fellow Jews suffered during that ordeal, and I’m sad that the man who took them hostage felt that that was his only means of receiving attention. I’m sad that he had to be killed for this to be resolved, relieved that my fellow Jews are safe, and desperate to live in a world where something like this never happens again. Can we make that happen, please?

 

Sunday, 16 January, 2022

After breakfast and coffee, I got to work, writing three book reviews to catch up on what I’d read this past week. I got dressed, cleaned up the living room, then unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, and sat down to begin working on this post. : ) I also managed to schedule three doctor appointments for myself (two regular yearly checkups and a follow-up). I’ve been putting this off for ages, so that’s a win!

After lunch, my husband and I did a twenty-minute Pilates video that pretty much wrecked me for the day, so I took a nap afterwards and then continued reading The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis. My husband made macaroni and cheese for dinner. I did my Duolingo and showered, then read my book, and my husband and I watched two episodes of Killer in Plain Sight before bed.

 

No school today for my daughter and no work for my husband, so at some point in the night, she crawled in with us and we woke up all snuggly. I love mornings like that!

Nothing really big planned for this week, but I’ll have to shuffle a few things around, as we have a planned power outage on Wednesday from 10-1. Other than that, more of the usual! Wishing you all a wonderful, productive week. Stay safe, and stay healthy!