Why is Albom crap? Or: It's a Wonderful Life Sucks. Ikiru is Awesome.

I know Mitch Albom is awful, awful, awful. And it's not merely because he's sentimental. Rather, he's mawkish. Not sweet, but treacle... not simple, but simplistic. And he does it on purpose, writing books easily digested by 4th graders.

According to an article online, his favorite movie is It's a Wonderful Life. Which made me think.

What makes It's a Wonderful Life suck, and makes Ikiru one of the best movies of all time? To me, Ikiru and It's a Wonderful Life take on the same issues, but Ikiru does so with honesty and integrity.

But there's much more to it, and it comes down to small differences and huge ones and it's all too much to think about right now.

When I can rewatch both movies and think about it, I'll have the best blog entry ever, and I'll be able to explain it so well that not only will I make sense, but people will even put the Albom books down and pick up something good instead, something that may be sweet, but even more important, is nourishing.

Fighting this Cold.

I am Fighting my Cold.

It's one of the things required of patients. (At least in the West -- we'll ignore Ayurveda's totally different take on sickness cuz it's too rational and unfun.) We must be in the right mindset to fight our illnesses. We fight our diseases. It makes a difference. Are you going to roll over and let that disease kick your wimpy ass? Or are you going to learn to defend yourself?

When Sally gets cancer, we reassure ourselves that Sally will be ok -- after all, she's a fighter. Meaning that she'll what? Well, that she'll do what everyone else will do. She'll dutifully go for her treatments. She'll take her vitamins. But beyond that, she'll adopt a hostility toward her disease. She'll think of her cancer cells as illegal aliens, as Nazis, as BHO himself if need be, and she'll creatively visualize the most horrific violence being perpetrated against the evil Cancer cells. Because the Cancer is definitely attacking her. And Sally is not going to take it. She's fighting back. She's going to beat it.

I have never been much for fighting. I may have blogged years ago about my way of thinking... I want to have people creatively visualize their cancers as themselves, basically. After all, cancer is when the cells refuse to die. The cancer cells are having trouble letting go and facing their mortality, just like we are having trouble. So if cancer patients visualize holding their little scared cancer cells in their arms and rocking them, comforting them, telling them it'll be ok, helping their cancer cells transition from this plane to whatever awaits beyond the veil. Surely that will work just as well as imagining hatred and violence and destruction.

So that's what I should do with my cold.... it lingers, and then my body aches come back, and clearly the virus(es) in my body are not ready to go. They clearly are enjoying being here on this world, in my body. And why wouldn't they? The weather is beautiful. I have a beautiful family, and great coworkers. The virus has been living vicariously through me the last couple weeks, and is enjoying my life too much. So I have to hold my cold virus close, rock it, whisper to it, tell it that there's a whole world out there to explore, loads of wonderful hosts within which they can explore the world.

myspace and Decemberists

i've been blogging on myspace. yeah. and here. a verse from a Decemberists song with an amazingly creative use of fontanelle. Damn.

My crane wife arrived at my door in the moonlight
All star bright and tongue-tied I took her in
We were married and bells rang sweet for our wedding
And our bedding was ready when we fell in

The sound of the keening bell
To see its pain erect
Soft as fontanelle
The feathers and the thread
And all I ever meant to do was to keep you
My crane wife
My crane wife
My crane wife

Myspace Mania & Self-Portrait Photo

Lee's Myspace! If you get here, please go there and req an add. I need all the friends I can get.

I wanted to take photos yesterday and my daughter was having none of it so I took myself. This actually turned out well as far as the cropping and tone and sharpening goes, i think. It's perhaps a teeny bit oversharpened but to me looks like what I get in the mirror. My eyes are hazel and can change from more brown to more green, as here. Course, you can't do this with photos of other people, of course... no woman would allow you to have this much accuracy in the skin and pores and hairs... and I'm not shaving over vacation, so there.

Happy New Year to all.

Gringo

I took this photo a month ago but it's still worth posting now because, well, because it's so damn cool. This is Gringo, my girlfriend's sister's family cat.

Hamas -- a Delightful Oddity

Arabs love to say that they aren't anti-Semites, since they, too, are Semites. And perhaps they have a point, because there are certain similarities between Arabs and Jews that bring home our shared ancestry. For example, Chutzpah.

You have to love the PA Prime Minister, Ismael Haniyeh. He now proclaims that while Hamas and the Palestinians remain dedicated to wiping Israel of the face of the map, they are willing to offer an extended 20 year truce if Israel returns to 1967 borders. Such an offer! Allow Hamas to grow unchecked, developing better weapons, perhaps obtain nukes, ensure each family has huge families, all sorts of preparation, so that on the first day of the 21st year, they can overrun Israel and demolish the state. Oh, yeah.

And of course, although no European country would accept such a bizarre and outdated sort of truce, the Europeans will be shoving each other aside for the opportunity to exhort Israel to take the deal.

I have to work on being more positive, but if I pay attention to the news it's just not happening.

Chanukah Shopping Day Off!

Here is out Chanukkiah with its candles anxiously waiting. Burn, baby, burn! It is chanting in its high-pitched metal voice! It's bothering me so much that I am going to have to leave now and run errands. The first thing I'll do is go to the Fairfax district and see if I can get an oil chanukkiah and some gifts, then buying food for Shabbat and the rest.... it's going to be a great weekend.

Last night I had an odd experience. My sister had a wrap party for the movie she just produced and starred in at a karaoke bar in Burbank. It was weird seeing her in her movie-producing mode with all the producers, directors, editors, etc etc, all excited and eager and animatedly sharing info and their ideas and projects in development. These people are mostly still trying to make it big but I could tell they were also happy to be living their dreams. It was a reminder of the wonderful power of Hollywood and the opportunities it gives to millions of people to make their creative mark on the world. It was cool.

I gotta go!

Barak HUSSEIN Obama

I love how Republicans are already desperate enough that they are getting the word out that Hussein is Obama's middle name. Now, some have implied that Obama thinks his middle name is a liability because he doesn't have his middle name written anywhere on his senate stuff and other records, but then again, lots of people have middle names and don't use them. I don't think I've every done anything other than use my middle initial, and that's not because I'm trying to hide my middle name.

I think that if Barak Obama runs, that's it. He wins. And this is the reason why. Historically, people would be racist on skin color alone. Today, I don't think it's so much the skin color as the 'blackness' of one's attitude and bearing about which people who are reactive about such things feel negatively. And Barak Obama is able to pass for white in the demeanor department. Now, people who historically may have been resistant to black folks are itching to prove that they aren't racist. 50 years ago otherwise decent folks would straight-out declare their racism as a matter of common sense. No more. Only extremists are racist in the old way. Most folks who are scared/disgusted by black hip-hop culture long to prove to everyone including themselves that it's not the race. Me, for instance -- I hate hiphop but can quickly wheel out music from blacks or prominently featuring them to prove I'm not racist -- Stew/The Negro Problem, TV on the Radio, Bloc Party, Common, Blackalicious, Hendrix, of course -- and many other white folks are like me, I think. We don't go round thinking of things in race terms but find ourselves not digging current black culture and feel obliged to defend ourselves. What better way to prove that you are jiggy wid it than casting your vote for Obama?

Even the most conservative folks love to have black people they can support -- Colin Powell, Alan Keyes, TD Jakes. And Barak Obama doesn't have to win their votes anyway - he just has to win enough moderate votes to pair with the Democratic base. And he'll get those votes. Put someone like McCain against him and McCain loses the same way Dole did. Nice guy, let's keep him in the Senate, just too old and played, whereas our guy is the Future. Put someone like Guiliani, and he loses -- it's populist speechmaker against populist speechmaker, and Guiliani isn't really good at that stuff -- he's still running off of the fact that he happened to be around at 9-11. Put a real conservative against Obama like Frist and Frist loses -- the country doesn't want a conservative ideologue -- they want someone who will bring the country together. A conservative can try that language but it won't fly. Obama can do it convincingly. Bush won the first time on this sort of positive platform and beat Gore's petulant smug act. Obama can talk to us and not talk at us like Gore was prone to do.

I need to get my Obama 08 bumper sticker. Not to put on my bumper, mind you -- in LA only tacky people have bumper stickers on their bumpers -- but maybe i'll tape it to the inside of my rear window facing out.

The insane things you do for money.

Notice how many people are ill recently? Seems everyone has the cold or the flu. I only had a couple days of fever and I seem now to be getting better but last night and today I've had a KILLER headache. Not a migraine, but sinus-y pressure. So last night I went to bed with a headache, and though I slept fine, this morning I woke up with a headache.

And then I drove 120 miles to a meeting with a headache. And then I presented at the meeting. And then I drove 120 miles back. Since I was driving along the 5 Freeway from San Diego, I spent some of the time driving along the coast. The freeway goes through the Camp Pendleton Marine base, which is mostly hills and scrub the Marines train on. So I often see military aircraft and vehicles when I go by. Today was all helicopters -- little helicopters hovering over the beach, big helicopters making wide circles... like my military knowledge? You then go by the San Onofre nuclear plant, which is always fun, because of the cameo it plays in The Naked Gun.. Did I mention I still had my headache? And now, a couple hours later, still have the headache. Woo hoo. It's a good one. And tomorrow I fly to the Bay Area for a meeting and then back. Sinus problems + plane == Pain. All to make my customers happy.

I'm Sick/Lionel Richie is Huge in the Middle East

When I got up this morning I thought I was feeling much better, and I guess I am. Not much bodyache, no fever, no dripping. But when I am seated here at my desk and trying to work I realize I am still off... my balance is easily messed with and my stuffy head is affecting my sense of balance, and I am coughing a lot more than I was conscious of at home. It must be irritating for those around me.

But enough about me. Lionel Richie. That's big news. There's a guy who is coming out with an article apparently entitled "Lionel of Arabia." I heard about it on the NPR news this morning. As this article from earlier this year says,Lionel Richie is huge in the Middle East... it's very funny. People love him there. He partially attributes it to his looks -- he could pass for any one of the many peoples in the region. The guy told a story about when Lionel Richie was at a resort in Sardinia, I think -- he had one couple come up to him and gush how they got married to "Truly" and as they were doing this, another couple came up to him and noticed the first couple and there was an awkward pause as they looked at each other, and then the second couple started to gush how they got married to "Truly" and then out came the wedding photos, etc... turns out that one couple was Israeli, the other Lebanese, and they were both government officials and had been at that resort for years and years and always stayed on opposite ends to keep away from each other... but what did they have in common to reach across the chasm of apprehension? Lionel Richie, of course. So cool. And when the US bombing of Baghdad started, people started playing "All Night Long" in the streets. Anyway.

Wordie!

OK, this is something that has to be a sign of nerdiness, but I love Wordie!. very cool idea. just make lists of words. What words, why -- that's all up to you. It's fun to see what words other people have. You get a feel for people and the kinds of words they list. And some lists are really neat -- here is a list of words used in Decemberists songs! Anyway. If you don't think this is interesting, you are definitely not a nerd.

I am feeling better but still sick and now I must sleep.

Bodum!

i took this photo of my Bodum Assam thermal mug. It's hand-blown and has two layers, see? That way the inside is hot and the outside stays cool. Or visa versa. And check out how you can see all the glory of my kind-of-capuccino? Or is this a latte? Well, you can see for yourself!

Home Sick

But that's ok. I've just discovered expertvillage.com.

So far, I've learned

1. How to build and play a Theramin.
2. How to build a straw bale house.
3. How to tell the differences between wildcat and coyote tracks.

This website kicks ass. I can actually use the tracking information, too, as there are often this sort of tracks after a rain when I hike the local trails.

I'm learning stuff from expertvillage.com, but that's not why I feel like I'm in college again. That's because of Rabbi Joe in Jerusalem's NP3 podcast. which is well over an hour a week on each Torah portion. I am learning a lot and also managing to keep up each week and read each portion. Past five years I've always petered out, read for a few weeks, forgotten, so this year I'm keeping up better. Not reading the Haftorah each week, but hey. Small steps. So it's like I'm taking a class because I listen to Rabbi Joe each week, read the material, think about it, and then post my observations and thoughts. Then, because so far, few people are posting, Rabbi Joe responds to what I put. It's cool, but I hope that soon there will be too many people commenting and it's too popular, beacuse people would get a lot out of it.

This week's portion, Va-Yetzei, is chock full of stuff we deal with in modern life and rabbis use it to talk about how we have to deal with the messiness off the world -- people like Laban that are going to cheat and swindle and try to take advantage, and we have to act like Jacob and have dignity and do our best anyway. Jacob has struggled all his life in one way or another and now he must have to struggls to keep up with the demands of starting a people and keeping all these women happy while raising mostly boys and selectively breeding sheep. Chaotic stuff! And I can't get around thinking that Jacob would be seen by the average American guy as the luckiest guy ever. He is married to two women and he's always having sex with them because they are always trying to have kids. And the moment they stop, they are offering up their handmaidens for him to have sex with so they'll have kids. But once you get past the sex, you see that Jacob has to be one tired guy. He's having relationships with four women. Even if it's the most patriarchal of relationships, there's still an awful lot going on, plus all the inevitable jealousies and competition and having to guard against what happened to his grandmother Sarah and her issues with Hagar... anyway. I've read this stuff before but never thought about it enough to get inside their heads a bit.

What if....

...we lived in a Christian nation?

It's funny that right-wingers claim that the US was established as a Christian nation and that we have a lot of "G-d Bless the USA" sentiments and the like, but when it comes to thinking and behavior that Christians would identify as Christian thought and behavior, most people aren't doing it. Just check this story out from CNN ... a woman has a Christmas wreath in the shape of a Peace sign and her Association is telling her to take it down -- a few people see it as bashing the war effort in Iraq, in which their kids are serving.

Of course, the Jesus encountered in the gospels didn't make any statements against war, but the story says angels pronounced "Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards Men" when he was born. One of Jesus' names is "The Prince of Peace." While the Peace sign was created by the anti-nuke movement, it's moved into general usage where most users don't attach lefty sentiments to it at all. So it's fitting to use it in order to express how Jesus = Peace on Earth, surely? Apparently not in SW Colorado. This area has one of the highest-concentrations of Evangelicals in the country, and we know we have right-wing Christians involved as there are claims that the Peace sign is Satanic -- who but a Christian believer will label anything Satanic? Anyway. It's weird. Honestly, I think that this nation is Christianist, if that's a word, but not Christian. The US has the trappings but not the soul. Except the Mennonites and Amish and Quakers, perhaps.

Car Issues and Hashem

So. I have had a tire with a slow leak and the leak got faster. I was going to have just that tire fixed, but then I realize, I'm traveling to San Jose for Thansgiving via my car with my daughter and girlfriend in the car -- I need to have my car roadworthy! I need to get this tire fixed but what about the others? What about the oil? Brakes? Nothing terrible but I need maintenance! SO I take the car to a service place near the train station and they are doing all the necessary work. Thank goodness I took it in because they found some other issues that would have been big hassles on the trip if I hadn't fixed things. The guy running the shop is really nice, a lay "Assemblies of God" minister with a son who's also a minister and he's really nice. Anyway. I feel lucky that the slow leak was bad enough I noticed -- otherwise I'd have not thought about this stuff at all and I could have ended up with any number of problems, so that's definitely counts as G-d helping me. Don't get me wrong, this sort of thing happens every second of every day, but most of the time it's too subtle for us to notice the way that G-d is helping us and giving us challenges. Anyway.

My Chemical Romance? Who Knew?

So, my brother the professional musician had mentioned My Chemical Romance before but I wasn't paying attention. So when he did it again in this raving tone that I don't often hear from him about bands that get mTV play, I thought I'd check them out to be polite.

Bizarre. The lead singer witnessed the Eleventh of September attacks in NY where he was a cartoonist. And as a result he decided to do something productive with his life.

So he went and joined the Peace Corp? Uh, no. He volunteered to read to shut-ins? Nope. He started a rock group.

Ok, fine. So the good causes are missing a bright-eyed young volunteer. But the world has a band that's made one kick ass album, The Black Parade. I think as a 41 year-old I may technically be forbidden to listen to this, but until They come to stop me I'll enjoy it.

Matisyahu's "Youth" says "Youth is the Engine of the World" and this is doubtless true. The energy of Youth drives things for good or for ill. Recently I think it's for huge Good, as surveys of the young are showing such compassion and concern for each other and the world that researchers have labeled these kids the "We" generation. But it's very sad that the particular youths in My Chemical Romance have made a great album that, like other great albums is obsessed. But unlike most rock, with Death. And it's sad that post 9-11, it's perfectly understandable.

We have a gorgeously conceived and realized piece of work that captures the anxious place that the world is at the early stages of this War of Terror. Fewer people are dying in wars than ever before, but we are feeling more unsafe, more aware of the transience of this existence, it seems. It's more on the surface. We used to have music that rocked like this obsessed with getting really slutty girls to have sex with you. Perhaps in the 70s many of the people singing about drunken sex were doing so to get away from the anxiouness from death. But now we're not even able to do that as a culture.

Sure, sex is there in hip hop, but honestly, it doesn't even feel real. It's too tied to the business of pornography and strip joints. The guys do it to demonstrate absolute power over the women. But hip-hop's women do it for the money. And the guys don't care as long as the woman is on her knees so that it there's at least the appearance of domination for his friends to see.

Anyway. For a wonderful album that will make you feel sad and worry about how best to live your life as you slide inexorably towards the gaping maw of Death... My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade.

Powells -- Proof of G-d's Existence?

Powell's Books is the most insanely cool bookstore in the world. Portland has many neat things to recommend it as a city to visit but the number one reason for me is Powells. The City of Books. Takes up a whole building. It's in sections and they actually have a fold-out map to the bookstore. Pretty darn cool. All the new books are arranged alongside the used books so often you can choose betweeen new and used of the same book, which is very cool. And they have a coffeeshop in one corner. But you can't get to it directly. You have to discover the entrance by walking through the whole store so it's like a secret.

If I could live anywhere in the United States it would be Portland. You have lots of historical buildings and new shiny scrapers in a manageable city gorgeously laid out right next to a river with drawbridges and all sorts of other neat stuff. People walk all over. People ride bikes all over. Everyone is cooler in Portland. In Portland people are just fucking cool. In Portland everyone's reading and drinking and there are tons of great microbrews. It rains a lot. It's so damn green it's like your RGB balance is off.

And they have the best bookstore in the world. Seriously. I am not sure that there is an afterlife, but Powell's is all the proof I need that there is a G-d. When I am enclosed in its warm, full, and enfolding stacks, I feel like I am in Olam Habba. Seriously.

Gut Shabbos to you.

Hartford trip Photos

I'm too lazy to put them here. Go see them here.

There are Limits

Ok. Went to D-Land last Friday. Stuff is decorated for Halloween. Including the Haunted Mansion.

Huh?

Isn't that like trying to tart up a prostitute? Isn't the Haunted Mansion, by its very nature, more than Halloween-y enough?

Well, of course it is. Perhaps if you think about D-land's mania for beating the crap out of every cross-selling opportunity, it will start to make more sense. And so the Haunted Mansion is being used as a giant 3-dimensional billboard to advertise a movie. Their movie The Haunted Mansion was a flop. So which movie? The Nightmare before Christmas. Very odd. Kind of cute. But it's contrived and fake and such a stretch. It just didn't feel right. The regular Haunted Mansion was spookier and scarier. The folks at D-Land must have immediately been confronted by someone on the planning team raising the simple objection that uh, the Haunted Mansion, the essence of Halloween, does not need to be decorated. It IS Halloween already. And everyone else saw a boundary to be crossed and decided they had to go for it, that some was good, but more would be better.

I think the same sort of unnatural stretching is being used in the new movie The Short Bus. Rather than just have explicit sex in pornographic movies, the makers of this film (including the actors - the movie was kind of a collaborative/collective thing) decided to make a movie that had explicit sex but was a real movie with a real story and themes. It's getting mixed reviews, more good than bad. Of course, many mainstream reviewers are just not going to see the movie. No serious religious reviewers (except pagans, perhaps) will see the movie. And those who DO see the movie and write for papers like the Village Voice, LA Weekly, etc, all the Alternative press, will be under pressure to praise the movie, because we live in a world where a movie like this is, merely because it transgresses all sorts of boundaries, deemed Art.

(And we all know that today, we are too intelligent to think that Art can be Bad. It's all Subjective. And so it's all Good. So the same movie without explicit sex? That can be judged on its merits, but toss in explicit sex? That's Good merely because it makes some people uncomfortable. No effort, of course, can be made into investigating whether the uncomfortable people have a legitimate critique, because their critique is Just Their Opinion. All opinions besides positive ones are Just Their Opinion.)

Anyway. Haven't seen the movie. But sex in movies, real or faked, is problematic --

Most of the time, as appears to be the case in this movie, not really necessary to tell the story, and thus gratuitous. Stories of love and lust have been told for what, a hundred years in film? Hundreds of years in books? And there are thousands of great books dealing with these issues perfectly well without explicit sex.

But sometimes, sex is necessary to tell the story. Unfortunately, that sex is generally transgressive and abusive and so very hard to watch, and probably damaging to whoever sees it. The best example of this is Irreversible, the 2004 French film that had a nine-minute, brutal anal-rape scene, among other terrible things. But the violence and transgression and horror of this protracted, real-time violation is a central part of the movie and not at all gratuitous. The movie, thematically, is all about the permanent damage done by all sorts of terrible things. Similarly, another French film, Baise-moi, that came out a couple years earlier, deals thematically with violence towards and marginalization of women by having its female characters spend the movie having sex and killing men. Similarly, there is nothing gratuitous about the sex or violence in Monster.

Perhaps I am arguing that all happy sex that ends well is gratuitous, and I think that's a perfectly valid argument. For instance, some scenes in movies take place in bathrooms. Do we need to show streams of urine leaping from privates to urinal or bowl? Do we need to hear the shit plopping into the water, the farts echoing from the walls? Course not. We get the idea. We know what a bathroom involves. And there are boundaries that are not violated if one is wise. We are still reeling from the idiocy of the Baby-boomer generation deciding that boundaries were bad because they stopped movement past a point. But sometimes, there need to be boundaries. We do not see a problem with guardrails on curves or staying to one side of the yellow lines when driving. We understand the need for walls and roofs. We don't think it's necessary to poke our heads into a jet engine simply because we're told not to. Often, the boundaries of society are much more important for us, and yet because the consequences of violating the boundaries are not immediately apparent, people think the boundaries archaic, sexist, prudish, reactive.

Well, off to work.

And Good Shabbos to all.

The Easiest Mitzvah for Me

.... is Bikkur Cholim, visiting the sick.

My coworker is in hospital and I saw her last night. It's hard for me to do most mitzvahs but for some reason, perhaps because when I was a child, I wasn't allowed in.

I remember going to visit my great-grandmother in a nursing home. They didn't allow children in there so she waved to me from a window. I never saw her other than that that I can remember. And of course when my mom gave birth to my brother and I was eight I couldn't go in and my dad showed my sister and I my mom's window and we waved to the window.

My dad was in the hospital when I was in high school and I visited him, of course. Then my friend Richard got a brain tumor and I visited him in hospital before he died. It's just an easy thing that seems to me like such a no-brainer. I mean, you get credit for just showing up. How hard is that? For me, it's easy, and I like it. I like the fact that by simply showing up I can make someone feel better. I like taking my daughter and teaching her this mitzvah. I can do it better, but I can do it. And for whatever reason, others can't-- it's too hard for them because they HATE hospitals. I like them, even though they are lonely places. But it's easy to make them happy and comfortable, all you need is visitors. Anyway. tons of mitzvahs I can't do, don't do, don't even know about. Visiting the Sick? I'm making good progress on this one. Especially that it's this week. I am not mature enough not to want to make G-d happy. Look! I'm doing a mitzvah!

Speaking of G-d, I feel like the couple in Ushpizin. Right when I was worrying about how I was going to come up with the money to pay for my daughter's 8th grade trip to DC and New York, lo and behold, I get a settlement on this class-action lawsuit I had with an old employer... many times more money than I need.

I remember a year or so ago I was in a gas station and this guy came in and started talking to another guy in line and basically started 'witnessing' not to proselytize but to share. He was just out of jail, newly clean and sober, trying to find a job, struggling, and was talking about the good things that had happened to him. He said something along the lines of "If He's taking care of me like this when I haven't even got all my shit together, can you imagine what my life's gonna be like when I'm really together and walking with Him?" It was the most sincere expression of gratitude to G-d I've ever heard and I think of that now. G-d is showering me with gifts and love and assistance and I'm so weak and wimpy in my attention to G-d and what G-d needs me to do in this world. Can you imagine what my life will be like when I really get going? (Don't tell me about the increased challenges that come along with increased practice and discipline... shhh).

So, anyway, when I got the check I immediately got out my prayerbook and called my girlfriend to have her say a blessing with me, and we said "Baruch ata Hashem, hatov v'hamaytiv" - Blessed is G-d who is Good and who Creates Good. And then she tells me that just when SHE was worrying about how she was going to pay her taxes and other expenses this month, today SHE got an unexpected check in the mail that more than covered things.

Now, on one level I think we are probably the weakest little baby souls because G-d has made our lives so easy, but I'm very glad to have such a doting Father to overlook our failings and help us and shower us with love and help.