Hawks in Spring!

Red-tailed hawk eggs are hatching in Ithaca, NY, at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. You can watch!

Cornell Hawk-Cam watching Big Red & Ezra nesting.

I'm sad to report that there are no eggs in the Cooper's hawk nest around the block, where we've watched a pair of hawks raise broods for three or four years in a row. The hawks have not returned this year. Perhaps they are using a nest somewhere nearby. Or perhaps something happened to one or both of them. All I know is that I have missed seeing them adding sticks to the nest in preparation for eggs and chicks.

Later this spring, I will miss the mother's imperious look from forty feet up in a tree as I shift my position on the sidewalk below to gain a better view of her face or her tail, or, even later in the season, the heads of her curious young poking up over the edge of the nest. I will miss hearing the male and female call to each other to signal a changing of the guard or the delivery of fresh food. I'll even miss the splatter painting on the street below the nest as it grows with the chicks, who learn (or instinctively know) to lift their hindquarters over the rim before releasing waste so as to keep their lofty home clean.

In mid-summer, I will miss the excitement of young hawks leaving the nest for the first time--tentatively trying their wings as they hop along a branch, then from branch to branch, and eventually figure out how to actually fly. I have watched this process for many hours over the last several summers. It never grows old, though my feet and legs get tired and my neck gets stiff. Getting to watch my very own live episode of Wild Kingdom is worth the discomfort.

Six-Word Story 6 (Illustrated)

Identical outsides; different insides. Lesson here?

Our Son's Smile

My son has the most beautiful smile.  I know.  Every mother says that about her child.  And we all should.  The problem is, I used to be able to capture that smile in photographs.  Then, my son's school hired a new school photographer.  You know, the person who comes once a year to take school photographs.  This guy stole my son's smile.  Or drove it away.  One way or another, my son could no longer smile naturally for a photograph.  He complained bitterly about the photographer.  "He makes us pose in unnatural poses."  "He wants me to show my teeth and I don't feel comfortable smiling with my teeth."

It's true.  I taught at my son's school and I witnessed this guy, firsthand, with the children in my class.  One little boy with the most angelic smile came outside for his turn on a lovely October day to be photographed for a school portrait.  He sat down where he'd seen the previous victim get up at the end of her turn.  I wondered what Josh was thinking of, because his smile looked so loving and natural.  I thought, "Wow!  He must be thinking of his mom looking at this picture.  She is going to just melt when she see's this face."  Then Mr. Photographer wiped it out with one sentence:  "Okay, show me some teeth!"  Instantly, Josh pulled his lips back in the most mechanical way to "smile" for the camera.  I cringed.  The shutter snapped.  Picture ruined.

So it must have gone with my son in his sessions with this man.  And for years now, we haven't ordered school portraits.  They just don't look like our child.  He doesn't like them and neither do we.  You can imagine how concerned I was about his bar mitzvah* photos.  Candid shots often came out looking great.  Posed shots did not.  Ever.  It was really hard to get my son to smile naturally if he knew a photo was being taken.

Because the use of cameras is not permitted in our congregation on the Sabbath, we arranged with our photographer to take pictures in the sanctuary the Sunday morning before my son's big day.  Marla Michele Must of Enchanted Photography (southeastern Michigan) agreed to meet us at Congregation Beth Ahm at 11:00 that Sunday morning.  When we arrived, she was already there, reveling in the beauty of our sanctuary, snapping pictures, and smiling broadly.  Her son, a school friend of our son's, was there, too.

We began our photo shoot.  And something happened.  Our son's smile came back.  I don't know for certain what combination of factors caused him to be able to relax and be himself in front of the camera.  Was it Marla's excitement?  Was it ours?  His?  Was it the presence of a friend watching and interacting with him from the side?   I won't ever know.  All I do know is that it felt magical that morning—really spiritual and joyful.  It felt to me like Marla was the key, the linchpin, that brought a sense of true celebration to all the moments she captured on "film."  Thank you, Marla, for helping us recover our son's smile.

*Bar/bat mitzvah--Jewish rite of passage at which a child becomes, for ritual/liturgical purposes, a fully responsible adult in the community.

Six-Word Story 5

Again, nearly midnight, despite best intentions.

Six-Word Story 4

Warmth, sunlight, crocuses. My heart soars!

Catalyst

I am amazed at how one event, one moment in time with a unique confluence of factors, can catalyze positive energy that results in a cascade of life changes.  Here's what I'm talking about.

Almost two years ago, I was laid off from a job I once loved, but which hadn't been enjoyable for a long time.  The environment I was working in was painfully full of fear, conflict, hypocrisy, and disappointment.  It left me spent, deeply discouraged, just surviving through the aftermath: two years of self-doubt, self-loathing, fighting for my dignity as I applied for one job after another and rarely heard anything.  Suffice it to say that, although I had turned around some aspects of my life on my own, to do so took a tremendous expense of energy, which often flagged.  The resulting state of mind  did not qualify me as a healthy, never mind happy, person.  I was depressed.  Deeply so at times.

In January, unexpectedly, when I certainly didn't feel ready for it, something changed.  I attended the bar mitzvah--the ritual of Jewish adulthood--of a camp friend of my son's.  My family and I spent the entire weekend with people who seemed to exude love, warmth, and celebration of life--this boy's family.  By the end of the weekend, though I didn't know it yet, the self-protective, insulating walls I had built up over years of being knocked down time after time by life's events seemed to crumble.  I was vulnerable again.  I was feeling my powerful feelings--of all kinds--without cushion or anything to numb me.  It was exhilarating and scary.  It was exciting and wonderful to feel anything again and, at the moments that what I felt was related to fear or pain, I grieved profoundly.  The highs and lows shook me.

It so happened that as soon as we came home from that bar mitzvah, I had to kick myself into high gear for my own son's bar mitzvah, just six weeks away.  Anyone who has ever planned a major life event to which many people are invited, and involving multiple gatherings for different sub-groups of invitees, numerous service providers, and complex recordkeeping--this one is coming to this event but not this event, and so on, not to mention last-minute changes--knows that I had my work cut out for me.  Add to that the fact that I was my son's coach for all the service skills he had to master for his ceremony, and you've got a recipe for major stress.

Riding on the energy I felt from that weekend in January, I somehow managed not only to get everything I needed into place (with substantial help from my spouse), I seemed to be attracting more positive energy.  I still had moments of depression.  Self-doubt didn't leave me altogether.  Yet, positive energy drove me forward, in large part manifested in the form of service providers who, one after another, reached beyond my high expectations, and made me feel as if we were their only client--or their favorite one--waiving charges, being flexible about numbers and deadlines, and helping with things that were not normally within the definition of their jobs.

All the events of the weekend seemed perfused with light.  Even when things went wrong they went right.  I felt buoyed by love.

Since then, the trend has continued.  Postponing focus on my new business for "after the bar mitzvah is over," I have found a network of new entrepreneurial women who are supporting each other through the learning curves and growing pains of starting a new business in a tough economy.  I have found a life coach, inspirational speakers and teachers, old and new friends to talk to, and new clients for my business.  Each day, something happens that seems to point in the same direction, with the same message.  "The past is over.  You are able and worthy.  Go forward with confidence.  You are not alone; you will be supported."

Timing is everything.  In the darkest time of the year, this process began.  How fitting.  And how fitting that the deluge last night, with an impressive heavenly light and sound display, gave way today to plentiful warmth and sun.  I pray that the process continues.  You can be sure I'll be doing everything I can to make it do so.

Six Word Story 3

Work commands attention.  Hope generates energy.

Janice Alone

You are far away from me.
I see you rarely.
The times in between are half-life to me.


Why should it be?
I have a full life.
Yet you magnify everything.


When you are far it all seems small and gray.
When you are far everything seems enveloped in shadow.
When you are far I crave your arms like a ship seeking a harbor.


When you are near I feel alive.
When you are near I bask in your glow.
When you are near I glow.


Why must you go?

Insight

Perhaps one of the reasons the Talmud considers each individual to be an entire universe is because each of us is a universe of experiences, abilities, tastes, talents, emotions, and myriad other qualities.  Discovering a new person can be like exploring a universe, an adventure as exhilarating and invigorating as any.

This morning I was texting back and forth with a new friend.  This insight struck because I said (typed) something tongue-in-cheek that anyone who has known me for a long time would have recognized as such.  She took me quite seriously.  I explained where my comment had come from and she got it.  As we ended our chat, I smiled to think that we are on the brink of discovery.  We get each other in general.  We each know we've found a kindred spirit.  And yet we still have much to share of ourselves, much to explain, much to explore.  My new friendship and the promise it holds truly delight me.  I've been smiling a lot.

Six Word Story 2

Love burgeons. Brews. Confessed, everything changes.

Six Word Story 1

Unemployed sixteen months. Contemplating what's next.

The Jewish Gay Network Fights for Its Own Life as Well as the Lives of Others

An organization I helped found and about which I care deeply is fighting for its life right now.  I won't bore you with all kinds of details.  Suffice it to say that the economy has taken a toll on the community's ability to support our work.  We are figuring out how to streamline our operations and continue to do good things for the Jewish LGBTQIA community here in Detroit.

That's what I want to talk about.  It's the local part.  We don't only affect the people in our local area.  What we do here can have effects we can only guess at.  When we helped two seniors at our local Jewish High School to start a GSA and then they went off to college, the experience, no doubt, had reverberations that affected people we don't know and probably never will.

When we go into a supplementary school to do diversity/inclusion training with the faculty and anti-bullying training with the students, our influence can also travel far, wide, and for a long time.

We could even serve as a model for a Jewish Gay Network of Iowa or Kansas or Florida or Belgium for that matter.  You never know!  Or a model for a Christian Gay Network or a Muslim Gay Network.

These are just a few examples.  I can think of so many more.  The point is that where you live should not matter.  Yes, in Judaism we are told to take care of those in our "neighborhood" first.  The problem is that those in our neighborhood are hurting financially.  They are hard-pressed to give.  That is why I am asking everyone, everywhere, to participate in our campaign to continue working in the Detroit Jewish LGBTQIA community for another year.

Please click HERE.  Watch the video I made to tell about who the Jewish Gay Network is and what it does.  Then pledge whatever you can afford, small or large, to help us on our way.  The Point campaign is one that ensures you will not be charged unless there is a critical mass of support for an idea or a group.  That is why I used the word "pledge."  Your credit card will not be charged unless we reach our goal of $9600 by December 31st.  WE STILL HAVE $4,111 TO GO!

Enough said.  You know this is important.  You know people who are LGBTQIA.  Maybe you are a member of this tribe.  Please share what you have with us.  You never know what or how much good you will do!

Priorities

This morning's snow needs
Shoveling. I drop my son
And do yoga first.

Dreading Winter

First thick, sticky snow
Fell last night and lined each twig
Needle, branch, and trunk


In spite of myself
I liked the suggestion, the
Decorative touch


White-arced, slick, black streets
I wish I'd snapped a picture
Before it melted

Great-Horned Owls--and Others--in the 'Burbs

I thought it was thrilling on Monday night to hear, through an open window, a Great-Horned Owl somewhere near our house as I got into bed.  Imagine my excitement last night, when, sitting in the family room working at the computer, I heard, through windows closed against the 28 degree F chill, not one, but two owls hooting their hoarse calls over one another.  I opened a kitchen window and stood giggling with delight every time they repeated their calls for over fifteen minutes.

It's not the first time I've heard a Great-Horned Owl.  That was several years ago.  I awoke from a deep sleep in my parents condo guest room in Pittsfield, MA, in the Berkshire mountains.  We were there on one of our summer visits.  I lay in bed, wide-eyed, straining to hear every note.  Yet, one expects to hear wild creatures of the night in the mountains.  Here in the suburbs, the presence of wildness is less predictable, more of surprising when it occurs.

Over the last several years, the number of species--both avian and mammal--frequenting our suburban Detroit neighborhood has grown.  If you've never been to this area, you may not realize that there is little organic about its layout.  Major streets, for the most part, go North-South or East-West, spaced one mile apart.  Mostly flat, the edges of the mile-squares they create are trimmed with commercial spaces, professional offices, and other non-residential structures, while the insides of each mile are filled with private housing--subdivisions the locals call them.  Lower and moderately-priced housing is typical of most American suburbs.  The lots are one quarter- to one third-acre.  The houses range from 1000-3000 square feet, including basements.  The older subdivisions tend to have more, and more mature, trees than the newer ones.  We live in a square mile that was developed in the early 1960s.

Then there are tracts of land, somewhat hillier and more woodsy, where wealthier folks dwell.  Their properties and houses are less regular, more amply apportioned and separated from their neighbors by patches of woods that were not disturbed when their houses were built.  And many of these property-owners, lately, have been selling parts of their lots for use by people who want to build a new house, or developing part of their own land to sell off.  My theory is that, as the habitats birds and mammals have lived in for decades are cut up, cleared out, and built on, they are moving, however reluctantly, to nearby subdivisions that have settled down since the last time they traversed these lands.  Brush that didn't exist before has established itself.  Trees that were newly planted saplings in the early '60s, when these lands were developed, tower, fully grown now.  So the kind of subdivision where I live is the next best thing to where they have been hanging out for the last several decades.  The birds have it easy.  They can fly across automobile-laden roads.  If those on foot make it across two to four lanes of two-way, 40-45 MPH traffic, they add to the growing impression I have that we are living in a mini-wildlife preserve.

During the spring migration last May, I was so impressed by the number of new species I saw on my property that I made a list of all the birds and mammals I had seen in this vicinity--within a mile or two of my house, on my property, or in the skies over my property.  By the end of the summer, I had listed over 50 species of birds (several nesting here), four species of squirrels, and several other mammals, including fox and coyote.  I suppose, after all, this is their land, and we are mere tenants.  When their digs are flooded with and destroyed by development, they retreat to "higher" ground. (I flatter myself!)  And with the exception of the woodchucks who feasted on my cucumber, nasturtium, and carrot leaves last summer, I welcome them with pleasure.

Little Things 2: The plainest day

Overcast.  Intermittent rain.  I missed my window to go outside and harvest the last of my herbs. The light is already dimming.

My son reads his homework on the futon.  The dishes are all washed.  Julia arrives home with a treat in her bag for all of us:  pre-season (packaged) egg nog--organic, naturally, because if you're going to splurge, you want the cleanest, the purest, sweets.  My son smacks his lips with wide eyes.

In just a few minutes, we will meet with another possible caterer for our son's bar mitzvah in February.  This is the third option we've explored.  It's not easy having a bar mitzvah while one of us is unemployed and the other is underemployed.

Nothing is easy.  Yet everything is good when I pay attention.  Everything is just fine.  We have nothing to complain about.  Oh, yes, aches and pains here and there.  Nothing serious.

Just a great deal to be grateful for, even on a cloudy day with winter on its way.

Joan Baez Sparkles at the Michigan Theater

I was blessed to attend a concert given by Joan Baez at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor tonight.  Wow!  Her violin-like voice has matured into a rich, earthy cello.  She makes alterations to melodies to accommodate changes in her vocal ability, and never has she sounded so musical.  There is a mellowness to her performance, yet her energy is strong and keen.  I enjoyed thoroughly her channeling of Bob Dylan in the last several lines of  "Don't Think Twice It's All Right."  Her "Suzanne" was haunting.  She sang a song I did not recognize in support of Occupy Wall Street "and everywhere else," as she put it.  It charged us to think of the common people, the lowly of birth, the working people.  (If anyone knows which song I'm referring to, please leave a comment.)  Her rendition of "Jerusalem" moved me to tears.  I, too, long for the day when "the children of Abraham will put down their swords" and live in peace.

I was struck by Joan's repeated compliments to the audience.  The first comment went something like, "You are  great audience.  Some nights I really have to work. Other nights I get to play.  Tonight I get to play."  Apparently, she doesn't always get an audience that has been appreciating her for over 50 years.  The house was filled to the brim with folks who were probably teenagers anytime between 1960 and 1975.  (My!  Do I look that old?)

At nearly 71 (her birthday is in January), Joan appears healthy, sparkling brightly from the stage, and glowing with inner, as well as outer beauty.  It was a privilege to be in her audience.  She is one of the great singer-songwriter-activists of our generation!

Here are some websites about Joan Baez for those who'd like to learn more.  You can find lots of her music on YouTube.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Baez
http://www.joanbaez.com/officialbio08.html (The photo above appears at this web location. I borrowed it and would gladly credit the photographer if I knew who took it.)

“Justice, justice you shall pursue:” A kavvanah before Ashamnu

An acrostic, the Ashamnu is translated in various ways.  One translator, choosing to create an acrostic in English that parallels the Hebrew, if not literally translating it, has us confess as a community to xenophobia—fear of or antipathy toward the stranger, the “other.”  I often wonder as I chant, “We are xenophobic,” if it really applies to me.  After all, I am, at heart, a lover of diversity and of all kinds of people.

So maybe I don’t have a xenophobic approach to the world in attitude.  However, I propose to you that I am guilty—perhaps most of us are—of not doing enough to secure the civil rights of others, be they children, women, gay, lesbian, or transgender, people of color, immigrants, or people of low socioeconomic status—at least some of whom, by the way, are other Jews.

Our tradition teaches us:

V’ahavta l’reyacha kamocha.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  –Hillel

Kol yisrael arevim ze ba’zeh.  All Israel is responsible one for another.  (And this can be expanded to include all people.)  –Tradition

Tzedek, tzedek tirdof.  Justice, justice you shall pursue.  –Deut. 16:20

Like it or not, whatever our attitude, if our actions are not pursuing justice (first for ourselves: one “tzedek,” then for others: the second “tzedek”) then perhaps we are guilty as a community, and as individuals, of xenophobia.

I wish all those observing Yom Kippur an easy and meaningful fast.  G'mar chatimah tovah. May you finish [the fast] sealed [in the Book of Life] for a good year.

Why did the weekend fly by so quickly?

Because Shabbat is one kind of freedom and Sunday is yet another.

Because family time is precious as our son grows up quickly, too.

Because the sun shone and the breeze blew and the birds flitted, called, and sang.

Because hanging out with friends is a sweet pleasure.

Because time really does speed up when I’m relaxing and having fun.

I’m grateful for a weekend that flew by.

Little Things 1: Math Homework

As I sit here in my peaceful house on a greyish day, anticipating Shabbat--the Jewish Sabbath--and remembering 9/11/2001, I realize it's the little things...

My son lies on the deck doing his math homework out loud, the neighbor's cat stretched out next to him, listening and purring so loud I can hear from inside.  Math has ever been a thorn in my boy's side and Jax (the cat) has always been a comfort.  The boy also has a teacher this year whose teaching style is far more suited to his learning style than last year's teacher was.   So, his math anxiety decreases every day.  And math homework time doesn't raise my blood pressure and test my patience.   My son sounds calm and happy as he works, and I am grateful.