September
By Helen Hunt Jackson
The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bearing down.
The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.
The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.
From dewey lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.
But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.
'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet;
One day of one September
I never can forget.
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Our family has a tradition that every Rosh Hashanah, my father takes us out to the Original Pancake House in Bethesda en route to synagogue. So before the family service, I had eggs benedict, Adam had chocolate crepes, Paul had a spinach omelette and so on...I require this sustenance to put up with the mob scene in the synagogue lobby before services, one of the most ill-managed crowds anywhere, and where apparently Paul managed either to lose his wallet (which he never took out) or have his pocket picked in the midst of a very affluent congregation. There is so much elbowing and jostling that it's really quite believable that someone could do this, but whether someone would on a religious holiday...I don't want to think about it. Paul thinks it is conceivable that the wallet somehow fell out of his pocket and out of the car when he took off his suit coat after services -- he returned in the evening to look for it where we had parked, but didn't find it. Which means that around leftovers from Wednesday night with my parents, we had an evening of canceling credit cards etc. and an upcoming morning of getting a new driver's license for him.
The service itself, at least, was quite entertaining -- I can recite most of the text from memory but instead of a sermon, the family service generally has a parable or Baal Shem Tov story or minor Talmudic incident acted out by the rabbis and cantors, each of whom is a bigger ham than the next. This year the tale was "Pirates of the Chasid-i-m" and the story involved a pirate captain and his crew -- the head rabbi and two associate rabbis in pirate hats and garb, one of the associate rabbis being 5' tall and extremely pregnant, the other being 6'6", so seeing them next to each other is always amusing. The story was about how the fearsome Jewish pirate captain snuck away from services to deliver firewood to little old ladies while making it seem like they were doing him a favor by taking it, and allowed for much creeping around in the aisles by the rabbis and ARRRing and waving plastic swords and axes around, plus a costume change using the senior cantor as a screen. Considering how often I disagree with the politics of the rabbis when they talk about Israel, it is a good thing my kids are still young enough for the family service!
And this is the tile mosaic set into the walkway just outside the building.
Gacked from pretty much my entire flist:
1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com.
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top fifteen results.
I wanted to save my entire top 40:
1. Multimedia Developer
2. Costume Designer
3. Set Designer
4. Anthropologist
5. Website Designer
6. Special Effects Technician
7. Historian
8. Desktop Publisher
9. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
10. Animator
11. Actor
12. Criminologist
13. Fashion Designer
14. Video Game Developer
15. Director of Photography
16. Computer Animator
17. Activist
18. Comedian
19. Graphic Designer
20. Artist
21. Political Aide
22. Writer
23. Casting Director
24. Critic
25. Musician
26. Print Journalist
27. Archivist
28. Database Developer
29. Translator
30. Composer
31. Web Developer
32. Market Research Analyst
33. Medical Illustrator
34. Computer Programmer
35. Business Systems Analyst
36. Public Policy Analyst
37. Makeup Artist
38. Magician
39. Professor
40. Clergy
I've done #8 (KMAS), #11 (amateur stuff in high school and grad school), #22 (lifelong), #24 (since college), #26 (since high school), and a bit of #39 (instructor at DePaul while a grad student at Chicago) and #3 (same amateur stuff in high school and grad school). I have no idea what I said that led the quiz to believe I have any visual artistic ability or interest, besides saying I love the arts in general and I love photography. I would feel justified in so many things right now because "Magician" figured higher on my list than "Professor" except that "Business Systems Analyst" came out even higher, and "Criminologist" in my top 15 -- no way!
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