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Posts Tagged ‘pumpkins’

Ring of Fire

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on October 16, 2023| 1 Comment »

The war invades my thoughts. It seeps into my dreams.

A friend from the midwest asked what I thought of the war because I am the only Jew she knows. I said, “And I’m an Irish one at that!” I try not to watch the images, still I can see the brutality in my mind. Dancing with the Torah at night, dragged out of your ‘safe’ room in the morning and loaded onto a truck. Grandparents, babies, and children, sisters and brothers all herded into Gaza.

Did you know that fourteen of the 199 hostages are citizens of Thailand? They are not just Israeli citizens, some are also Americans, Italians, and Germans. I wonder how you negotiate with Hamas; do you trade Israeli soldiers for Palestinian prisoners?

Israel has a well-proven expertise in hostage rescue, which it trains for intensively. Set up in 1957, its secretive Sayeret Matkal unit is broadly similar to Britain’s SAS or America’s Delta Force. It shot to fame in 1976 with its Raid on Entebbe where its commandos rescued hostages from a hijacked plane at a Ugandan airport. The commander of that unit was Yonatan Netanyahu, the only fatality amongst the Israeli commandos. Today his brother Benjamin is Israel’s Prime Minister and it is with him that the decision rests as to whether to wait it out in the hopes of a negotiated release of the hostages or go in hard in the hopes of rescuing them by force.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67084408

On Friday night, a week after the attack, we gathered at home around a live stream Sabbath Service from the synagogue. We listened to the Rabbi grapple with grief. In the Torah portion, we went back to the beginning, to the Creation story – a tale of the forbidden fruit. But what if the apple wasn’t a test? What if we were given free will, and the test is yet to come?

In other news, I’ve been sewing quilted pumpkins to keep my hands busy. Bob and the real Pumpkin – who wants to be Einstein for Halloween – made a pin-hole box in order to view the partial eclipse safely. It transformed the ring of fire into a small white ellipse on cardboard! And the Bug is starting to look like a California skater girl.

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Scarecrows on the Brain

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »

It’s pumpkin patch fever in Nashville. The Farmer’s Market is filled with mums of every color and you can walk through an actual pumpkin house at Cheekwood Gardens. Tomorrow they will host the Halloween Pooch Parade! But yesterday, since Great Grandma Ada is visiting with cousin Nancy, we loaded up the grandkids and a wheelchair to stroll along the serpentine path of unique scarecrows as the sun descended through cypress trees. https://cheekwood.org

One scarecrow was dressed entirely in plastic water bottles, another was dressed like William Shakespeare covered with some of his famous quotes! One had a skirt made from crayons, and next to it stood an imposing black crow. One urged us to be the change we wanted to see in the world!

Civic organizations throughout the county sponsored each art installation, and I could imagine an Impressionist painter capturing the afternoon scene of families weaving through scarecrows in dappled light.

Late last night I foolishly wanted to catch up with the news I’d been missing since my travels to Minnesota. General Kelly’s speech, in defense of Mr T, was front and center and actually made my stomach churn. Making calls to Gold Star families is not something presidents should be doing. And why on earth would Congresswoman Frederica Wilson listen in on such a conversation? He was blaming the messenger, calling this Black woman who is a friend of the family, an “empty barrel.” We heard nothing about Niger and why these brave soldiers died in the first place. http://www.newsweek.com/niger-trumps-benghazi-four-us-soldiers-died-and-it-took-him-12-days-respond-688082

The soldiers killed in Niger were part of a 12-man team of Green Berets, training Nigerian soldiers in a remote part of the country. These soldiers belonged to the Third Special Forces group based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

As they were leaving a meeting with local community leaders on October 4, they were ambushed by roughly 50 fighters believed to be linked to ISIS (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is also active in the surrounding region).

The soldiers were driving unarmored pickup trucks and immediately returned fire. The firefight reportedly lasted roughly 30 minutes. It was eventually broken up via French air support and the soldiers were evacuated with helicopters.

At first only three soldiers were reported killed in action. One was separated from the group and found two days after the ambush by Nigerian forces. The Pentagon isn’t talking about this, the talk is all about how Mr T frames his Twitter feed. How he points his little finger at President Obama. How these soldiers knew what they were signing up for….

Sometimes I feel like I am walking through a nightmare of scarecrows, only they are real men, dressed in suits and trotted out to defend the indefensible.

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