What Dreams May Come Tuesday, 13 May 2008

Do dreams ever really die? Or do we simply tuck them away when we new dreams move in and shove them aside? And if we do pack them away, do old dreams ever rear their head, demanding attention?

My earliest memories involve sound. More accurately, muffled sounds — thanks to recurring ear problems as a little girl. My baby book recounts an early love of music.

[As a total aside, it was stated in the aforementioned baby book that "one of baby's favourite records" was Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. For the record (no pun intended!), it wasn't. That record totally and completely freaked me out to the point that to this day I cannot hear that leitmotif without getting physically ill.]

Any. Way.

Ah, yes. Music. It completely filled my soul since I was young and informed my childhood aspirations. The sum of my adolescent existence was comprised of rehearsals, lessons, performances, and so forth. Every bit of energy went into the support and fulfillment of that dream.

Until…

Until?

Until.

Until there was a new dream.

Remember that line from Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game? “There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty before the last revolving year is through.”

And so a new dream replaced the one of youth.

I have no regrets and I rarely look back.

Once-in-a-while, though, I am reminded of that old dream. Recently, I was the featured entertainment at a Sisterhood function.

The Program:

It’s A Good Day (Peggy Lee/Dave Barbour)
I Enjoy Being A Girl (Rodgers/Hammerstein)
Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man (Hammerstein/Kern)
Memory (Webber/Eliot/Nunn)
I Dreamed A Dream (Schönberg/Boublil)
Fifteen Pounds (Goldrich/Heisler)

My favourite part? When it was over.

Seriously.

I get nervous. Really nervous. Heart-leaping-out-of-my-chest nervous.

Weird, I know, because I get up on the bimah every week. But it is completely different. There is an adrenaline rush before the service begins but it in no way compares to the nerves I feel before a show.

I prefer the adrenaline, to tell you the truth.

And somehow, leading a service feels more real. More honest. It’s me up there. No fascade. No alter ego. No characterization. Just me.

And that’s how I prefer it.

I am living my dream. The new dream. Just the way I am meant to be doing.

Check out what the Ima has to say today. I love her stuff and REALLY love what she has to say about Mother’s Day!

Yom Huledet Sameach! Thursday, 8 May 2008

American astronaut Garrett Reisman sent a greeting from space to Israel for its 60th birthday. Reisman, 40, a mechanical engineer from Parsippany, N.J., is the first Jewish crew member on the international space station. He has been in space since March 11.

“Every time the station flies over state of Israel, I try to find a window, and it never fails to move me when I see the familiar outline of Israel coming toward us from over the horizon,” Reisman said.

Source: JTA

Stunning.

We had a kid’s book on Israel when I was growing up. Can’t seem to locate it but it had lots of pictures of happy Israelis. Happy Israelis dancing the hora. Happy Israelis sitting on tractors. Happy Israels picking oranges.

And then I finally made it to Israel a few months shy of my seventeeth birthday. Didn’t see any hora dancing that visit. Didn’t see a tractor til my third visit. And I’m pretty sure that the pomelos were being picked by Thai workers.

So the book was a little outdated…so what? The romanticization of the chalutzim and kibbutz life instilled in me a connection with the land that changed and evolved with reality.

Infatuation based on superficiality fades with time. Like true love, the complexities of a living and breathing modern Jewish state makes me love her more. Not less.

The Ima has drawn up a super list of 13 things she loves about Israel. Check it out.

And Happy 60th Birthday!

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There’s still time!!
Contributing to the Mother’s Day Flower Project is a wonderful mitzvah that combines social justice and education with celebrating Mother’s Day. For each $25 donation you make to the Mother’s Day Flower Project, JWI sends out a beautiful Mother’s Day tribute card to a designated honoree thanking her for inspiring you to give as well as delivers bouquets of flowers to 150 battered women’s shelters throughout the United States in time for Mother’s Day. Your contribution to the project also funds critical JWI programs that work every day to help battered women navigate the legal system; train women and girls to value and protect themselves; establish children’s libraries in shelters across the country, and much more.

What better way to honour the mothers in your life!

It’s Not Your Decision! Wednesday, 7 May 2008

Last year, the United Nations, referring to a completely different moniker issue, stated “individual countries could not impose specific names on the international community.”

Um…why not? Thirty-seven some odd years ago, two people selected a name that I now carry. Though they chose the name, do they retain some sort of naming rights? Hardly. As the name owner, I have every right to change the name if I am unhappy with the original name. And to some extent, I have done just that. As a kid, I was known by the pet form “Frummie.” I detested it. Despised it. Railed against it. And finally, in the 6th grade when I moved to a new school, changed it to the full version “Frume.” It worked. Sort-of. I was known to the kids at the new school by my preferred name. But when I returned home at the end of the day? Old habits are hard to break.

The following year saw me at another new school (a story for another day) but this time, people already knew me AND my despised name. Tried again in high school, but it wasn’t until I left for college — on the OTHER COAST — that my name change (name evolution, more accurately) finally stuck. With the exception of the one person who I had known prior to college who insisted on using my prior name, NO ONE at school even considered using it. So that eventually the only ones who use “Frummie” are people who have known me for a long time and feel entitled to use it.

Like Myanmar. You know…the country formally known as Burma? Or currently known as Burma, depending on whom you ask. Or “Myanmar also referred to as Burma” or “Burma/Mynamar.”

Really.

I won’t go into the hows or whys — look here for the messy details. What troubles me, however, is when the international community feels that it can determine the name of a place.

Or, in our case, the capital of a country.

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Still need a Mother’s Day Gift??
Contributing to the Mother’s Day Flower Project is a wonderful mitzvah that combines social justice and education with celebrating Mother’s Day. For each $25 donation you make to the Mother’s Day Flower Project, JWI sends out a beautiful Mother’s Day tribute card to a designated honoree thanking her for inspiring you to give as well as delivers bouquets of flowers to 150 battered women’s shelters throughout the United States in time for Mother’s Day. Your contribution to the project also funds critical JWI programs that work every day to help battered women navigate the legal system; train women and girls to value and protect themselves; establish children’s libraries in shelters across the country, and much more.

What better way to honour the mothers in your life!

For the Fallen Wednesday, 7 May 2008

A poignant niggun by RebbeSoul here.

[Thanks to Doda Mollie for the link!]

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Still need a Mother’s Day Gift??
Contributing to the Mother’s Day Flower Project is a wonderful mitzvah that combines social justice and education with celebrating Mother’s Day. For each $25 donation you make to the Mother’s Day Flower Project, JWI sends out a beautiful Mother’s Day tribute card to a designated honoree thanking her for inspiring you to give as well as delivers bouquets of flowers to 150 battered women’s shelters throughout the United States in time for Mother’s Day. Your contribution to the project also funds critical JWI programs that work every day to help battered women navigate the legal system; train women and girls to value and protect themselves; establish children’s libraries in shelters across the country, and much more.

What better way to honour the mothers in your life!

NPR Strikes Again! Sunday, 4 May 2008

PC doesn’t blog. But if he did blog, he would probably write something like this…

So my beautiful bride of 12 years enters our bedroom, turns off the light, quietly (as quiet as FrumeSarah can be) slides beneath the sheets, and murmers “Have you checked the tire pressure on the cars?”

HUH?!? Since when did this qualify as pillow talk?

“Seriously. Did you know that keeping the tires filled to the manufacturer’s recommended level will help the car use its fuel more efficiently, which ultimately contributes to the environment?”

Ah…now I get it. Frume Sarah has been listening to NPR again…

* This post neither approved nor endorsed by PC.

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Still need a Mother’s Day Gift??
Contributing to the Mother’s Day Flower Project is a wonderful mitzvah that combines social justice and education with celebrating Mother’s Day. For each $25 donation you make to the Mother’s Day Flower Project, JWI sends out a beautiful Mother’s Day tribute card to a designated honoree thanking her for inspiring you to give as well as delivers bouquets of flowers to 150 battered women’s shelters throughout the United States in time for Mother’s Day. Your contribution to the project also funds critical JWI programs that work every day to help battered women navigate the legal system; train women and girls to value and protect themselves; establish children’s libraries in shelters across the country, and much more.

What better way to honour the mothers in your life!

,,,bring May Flowers. Thursday, 1 May 2008

Where will you be this Mother’s Day?

At home? The dayspa? Brunch at a favourite restaurant? Or in a shelter for abused women?

According to 2007 National Census of Domestic Violence Services, conducted by the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), more than 25,000 Women Will Spend Mother’s Day in a Battered Women’s Shelter.

Those are the lucky ones. The women with the strength to flee the perceived safety of their homes and leave behind their abusers.

How many more women will spend Mother’s Day trapped in a violent relationship?

For the 10th consecutive year, Jewish Women International is encouraging people to honour the mothers in their lives by purchasing a special bouquet for mothers staying in domestic abuse shelters on Mother’s Day. Thanks to the generosity of so many, JWI has sent more than 2,000 beautiful Mother’s Day bouquets to hundreds of domestic violence shelters around the country, brightening this special day for thousands of women and their children.

Contributing to the Mother’s Day Flower Project is a wonderful mitzvah that combines social justice and education with celebrating Mother’s Day. For each $25 donation you make to the Mother’s Day Flower Project, JWI sends out a beautiful Mother’s Day tribute card to a designated honoree thanking her for inspiring you to give as well as delivers bouquets of flowers to 150 battered women’s shelters throughout the United States in time for Mother’s Day. Your contribution to the project also funds critical JWI programs that work every day to help battered women navigate the legal system; train women and girls to value and protect themselves; establish children’s libraries in shelters across the country, and much more.

What better way to honour the mothers in your life!

Bedtime Story? Thursday, 1 May 2008

Unsure how to explain death or illness in an age-appropriate fashion, parents often turn to books to help their kids understand such difficulties. Death of a loved one or pet, moving, job loss, divorce — there is a book for everything. Almost everything, that is.

Finally, a book that explains to a young child how to handle his or her mother’s plastic surgery

Nope, not making this up.

In a recent article, Newsweek shared the background behind My Beautiful Mommy. Just in time for Mother’s Day. In age-appropriate language, the mother in the story explains to her daughter why she’s having cosmetic surgery.

You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn’t fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better.

And like all good children’s stories, there is a happy ending with mommy who is now “even more” beautiful than before her procedure.

Anyone else just the slightest bit bothered by this???

Self-Portrait Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Poppyseed
Age “4 and a half!”

No Words… Wednesday, 30 April 2008

If you are in Israel, the victims of the Shoah will be remembered beginning this evening. For the rest of the world, we will honour them beginning Thursday night.

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Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freight Car (Dan Pagis)

Here, in this carload,
I, Eve,
with Abel, my son.
If you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of Adam,
tell him that I …

[For a critical understanding of this poem, look here.]

At Your Service Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Recently, I have had three wonderful interactions that reinforced the basic rule that good customer service makes for a loyal customer base.

1. Have you seen this clip?

I fell in the love with the lyrics and with just a little help from GoodSearch (which donates money to my shul — or another non-profit of your choice) discovered that it was written by Marcy Heisler with music by Zina Goldrich. Through a series of strange events, I ended up ordering their CDs through a site that they are no longer running. I, of course, did not know that at the time and after waiting…and waiting…and waiting for the discs to appear, sent an email to them. Well! Within a few hours, they had not only refunded my money but put the CDs AND the songbook into the mail. At no charge. Marcy happened to mention that they would be in SoCal the following month and of course I immediately bought tickets.

Which we never attended due to Peach’s ear surgery.

But we will definitely go the next time!!!

2. Some of you may recall that XM Radio has run a special Chanukah station the past two years. I listened loyally and heard the funniest guy this past year. His name is Sean Altman and he might be better known to parents at the brains behind the group that sang the theme song to “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

So I headed over to his website and sent him an email to let him know that I really enjoyed his music. He asked me to say something nice about his music…and sent me his CD so that I could listen to it before writing a testimonial.

How nice!!!

3. Not long ago, I ordered a book from Amazon and eagerly awaited its promised two-day arrival. Which slowly but surely turned into not one or two but three weeks. I’m not sure what I was waiting for…but I kept hoping it would be sitting on my doorstep when I got home from work. So I sent off a query to customer service. Hours later, Amazon responded with a heartfelt apology backed up by action; another copy sent overnight at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE!!! Reinforcing my loyalty as an Amazon customer.

So here’s the thing; it doesn’t cost extra to treat customers well. In fact, treating customers poorly can have a negative effect on the bottom line.

Where’s the Torah? Hillel said it best. “Do not do unto others what you would not want done to you.”

What if the employees at a local and unspecified bureaucratic office took this to heart? I am thinking that when I asked them whether my kid’s interdistrict paperwork was to be sent to the elementary department or the special ed department that I miraculously would have received the same answer from all FOUR people with whom I spoke. Saving me two trips and a heap of aggrevation.

And that’s MY Torah.