This is where I was for about two hours this morning, at the Friends of the Highland Park Library Book Sale. I volunteered for a little over an hour taking the money from the sales, and then I came back with my daughter to buy some books. Despite the pouring rain, patrons were coming in and buying books. Those running the sale told me that the sale has been a success (they have made over $3000). In the middle of the photo is Mort, who spent a lot of his time this past week putting together the sale, and on the right is George, another sale organizer.
So, what did we buy? I bought a biography of the Rema, the story of Rabbi Moshe Isserles. It says in the introduction that certain liberties where made with re-creating his life, but I think I will get a feel for what life was like in 16th century Cracow. My daughter selected a Mother Goose book (we already own one, but this one has different illustrations), a Berenstains Bears book, and Meet Samantha, an American Girl book. I also threw in a copy of the Princess and the Goblin, thinking at some point my daughter will enjoy this classic.
I’m currently reading Mary Poppins, the original book by P.L. Travers. It is delightful, and one can see how it inspired the producers of the more famous movie. I hope to post excerpts from the book in the next week. But now I need to get back to my holiday preparations.
Lorri writes a beautiful blog called Jew Wishes. Her posts are heart-felt, as well as being well-written. She reviews books, films, cookbooks and gives general information and insights on Jewish topics. I particularly liked her post on repentance (with two film recommendations), where she writes:
Pent up anger and other emotions lead to an unhealthy state of mind, external presence, and physical being, and it distorts our lives. To forgive is also to repent, and to repent includes forgiveness. Repenting for our unhealthy attitude towards another person must include forgiveness for what we feel that person has done in order to hurt us.
As this doesn’t sound like a classical interpretation of teshuva (repentance), I would love to do more research on teshuva and emotions to find out if I can reconcile the traditional approaches with this more emotional approach. Hopefully, more on this topic soon.
It was a nice surprise to wake up this morning to find she had awarded me a blog award! As I have just given out this award to five of my favorite mommy bloggers (attention: ALN, SuperRaizy, JugglingFrogs, Baila, and Hadassah), I’m going to wait until after the holidays before I do anything with this one. But Lorri did have the rules on her post, which I neglected to include, so I’m going to include them here, in case my mommy bloggers feel so inclined to send the award onward ho to some other deserving bloggists:
Here are the rules:
1) Add the logo of the award to your blog
2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3) Nominate at least 5 other blogs (I changed this to five)
4) Add links to those blogs on your blog
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs!
FYI, comments are NOT closed. If you ever see that, it is a mistake. I don’t know how that happens! Please let me know if you see comments are closed on a post.
I took some photos of my oak leaf hydrangea on Friday.
I bought this plant several years ago. At the time I really had in mind the type of hydrangea that has the blue or pink clusters of flowers. But the plant nursery did not have any of those, and the man recommended this one. The truth is, I find the flowers, which show up in the spring, not as exciting as the ones on the other types of hydrangea. The real beauty of this plant is the leaves. And now with autumn they are exhibiting lovely shades of red.
Apples Growing Up in the Sky at Lee Turkey Farm in New Jersey
We visited Lee Turkey Farm in East Windsor, New Jersey last Sunday. I took a mere 150 pictures that day. I’ve already posted apples, pumpkins, and a girl pulling a cart.
1802 Home at Lee Turkey Farm, East Windsor, New Jersey
I love old nineteenth century homes. This one at the Lee Turkey Farm entrance, built in 1802, has such pretty details on the top cornice.
The fields of Lee Turkey Farm in East Windsor, New Jersey
In the distance in the above photo, where there are itty bitty signs of scarecrows, is the corn maze. My son, his friend and my husband did the corn maze while my daughter and I hung around the playground. They only got six out of eight clues. It wasn’t easy, but they enjoyed it.
Above are the “scarecrow” signs at the entrance to the corn maze.
Pulling a cart of apples that is twice as heavy as me
Thursday Challenge: the theme for this week is “LARGE” (Big Things, Tall Things, Buildings, Cars, Airplanes,…).
I’m not big on photographing cars or airplanes or skyscrapers, but I did enjoy watching my daughter dragging that cart around when we went apple picking last Sunday.
My friend Jientje of Heaven in Belgium loves awards. It is fun to live vicariously through other people’s photos; recently, she traveled to Portugal, and anyone who visited her blog got to go along. One of my favorite of her recent posts was her poppy photos; she found them in every nook and cranny in Provence! One of the photos she took was a of a fish head; since I need a fish head for a post on Rosh Hashana, she said I could use it (and I will be sure to link back to her!). Somehow a fish head from Portugal seems authentic, like one that might have been used back in the 15th century by the Jews of Portugal. Jientje is not Jewish, so she probably wasn’t looking for traces of the Jewish community on her trip, but I did get interested in exploring Portugese Jewish history.
This wasn’t the first time she gave me an award. I’ve already given blog awards to some of my daily favorites (including Ilana-Davita, Gail (I just linked to one of my favorite songs), Mom in Israel (who’s in your neighborhood?), Daniel Saunders, Robin (bougainvillea alert), Batya (she’s got my garden!), Michelle (a Paul McCartney tidbit here)).
I’m going to give this award to a category I’m going to call the late-night mommy bloggers. This are women who write late night posts amidst their busy lives:
I’ll Call Baila – I did call her, when I was in Israel, but we didn’t manage to meet. I had fun working on this post of her town with her. She recently started working full-time again. And she wants you to send funds so she can see Paul McCartney (or did that happen already? Oh, well).
SuperRaizy – Her latest has been to draw attention to those protecting child molesters instead of exposing them. Yes, it is outrageous. She also would like to see Paul in concert, but for her, you’ll have to pay for the airfare, too, as she’s in New York. Unless Paul is playing in New York soon?
HaddasahBo – Her latest post really touched me. An excerpt:
Of course when I got home I had a complete and total meltdown. What was I thinking? That I could manage to work and run the house and be a good mom and have some me-time? Hardee-har-har! … But I managed. My nap energized me. I woke up, the kids got home, we cooked supper, we did homework, we ate together, laundry got done, I even cut the boys’ hair, I managed to get them all showered and pajamaed and bedded – and ended off the evening with a lovely conversation with a new friend (that’s me-time right?) .
A Living Nadneyda – Always striving to keep the balance. She’s got some great posts on therapy that I am planning to read carefully, after I finish this post.
Juggling Frogs – Yup, the blog name says it all. I loved her post about worm boxes. She brings lots of enthusiasm to all her posts. And to her twitterings, too. Did I mention she was the very first person to comment on my blog?
So, thanks, Jientje, for another opportunity for hakarat hatov (recognition of good).
Received in a synagogue announcement late last night:
This Thursday, September 25 at 7:30 there will be a rally at the corner
of 3rd & Raritan Avenues. The purpose of the rally is to express our
disappointment that the Mennonite Central Committee, the parent
organization of the 10 Thousand Villages store, is hosting the
president of Iran for dinner while he is in New York, and to protest
Ahmadinejad’s calls for genocide against Israel.
Ahmadinejad is basically a modern day Haman. He has threatened to destroy Israel and has held a Holocaust-denial conference. One of the hosts is someone named Penny Pritzker. I’ll let you do the research.
One traditionally eats pomegranate on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and thus I have been working on a watercolor of a pomegranate as part of my series on the food symbols of this holiday.
The prayer that one says, the yehi ratzon, is as follows:
“she’nirbeh ze’chu’yos k’rimon”
“…that our merits increase like (the seeds of) a pomegranate.”
Lorri writes a beautiful blog called 
You can read more about the pomegranate in this