My cousin attended a prospective student meeting at Tulane and told me about the answer to a question someone asked a current student there concerning what traditions, quirks, and other strange things occurred on the Tulane campus.

The girl who answered told the students about some lady who's, like, a hundred years old or so who pushes a cart around and attends as many classes as she possibly can, or something to that effect.

"Sounds kinda weird," my cousin the New Yorker said.

"Actually, I think we know that lady," I said. "She used to attend our synagogue. She even came to our wedding," I blurted out without thinking, getting the strangest look from my cousin. He wouldn't have remembered her presence, as he was only an elementary-school kid at the time who was convinced that he and a cousin of mine on my mom's side of the family (that he'd just met) had been separated at birth somehow...but she was there. In one of our wedding pictures, she is standing in front of our ketubah - our marriage contract - and reading it with great interest. My grandparents and parents made sure she got a ride home that night.

She lived around the corner from me nine years ago and attended services and Torah study regularly at my synagogue. The lady was deaf as a post and couldn't sign or read lips, so the only way to communicate with her was to sit patiently with a pen and paper and write your responses to what she loudly said in conversation. I learned that Mrs. Hardy had traveled a great deal, that she lived alone, that she enjoyed seeing everyone grow and change through the years, getting married, having children...and I would see her dressed to the nines daily walking briskly with a cane all the way from St Charles and Prytania to Tulane University as I traveled down St Charles to work. When she learned that Dan and I were going to take a month traveling in Spain and Portugal on our honeymoon, she brought over an electric teapot with the correct kind of adapter on it for European outlets - she'd loved the Costa del Sol when she'd been there (especially Torremolinos) and assumed we'd be staying in one place for a while and would need some way to cook.

In April of the next year, we moved to Queens and stayed for four years. When we got news of the Federal Flood shortly after 8-29-05, one of the first people I did my best to check up on was Mrs. Hardy. Someone on the West Coast saw my post on nola.com about her and a TTY conversation resulted, in which I had to admit to the deaf caller who was sincerely trying to help that she probably wouldn't avail herself of any help available to the hearing-impaired; she just wasn't that kind of person. Mrs. Hardy was a soul who was an adventurer true to her name - there was an innate trust in her of the goodness in people, as well as a willingness to engage everyone as best she could: through conversations with pen, paper, and some loud talk. It was a profound relief to see her again at my synagogue when we moved back to New Orleans six months after the storm and the flood, and she took great joy in seeing that Dan and I had a son who was running around and doing his little guy doings.

Problem is, time was proving to be harsh on her. She didn't live close to St Charles and Prytania anymore, so we saw her less frequently at services and Torah study. She pushed a cart around for balance just as much as for convenience in carrying stuff....and even though she kept going to classes, there were signs that her mind was not as sharp as it used to be.

I learned through Twitter last week that Mrs. Martha Hardy, aka, the adventurous one, the world traveler, the perpetual student, the Granny Cart-Lady, and "Sophie Newcomb" had passed away on December 9th at the age of ninety-one.

Zichron l'vracha, as they say in my tradition...may her memory forever be for a blessing.

Update, 12-16: Clay passes on this link to Mrs. Hardy's obit in the Tulane Hullabaloo.

Seems my blog is beginning to look a lot like Adrastos', what with the holiday vids and all. Especially this past week, where I've been running 'round like a chicken with its head off trying to get things ready for my son's birthday and Hannukah. As it is, the gifts that need to go out to family and out-of-town friends haven't been sent out yet - thank God Hannukah is eight nights long. This week has really been the week I needed to do what my sister-in-law's holiday gift to me says - step back and use the F%$!-It Bucket. It works. It really does. I highly recommend it. I'm gonna make one for a relative of mine, 'cause I think she'd appreciate it quite a bit...after I give her the Basin Street Records CD...does anybody else think giving a woman a Jeremy Davenport CD might suddenly imply the giftee is a cougar in some way? And why does an older woman liking younger men have to have such a moniker anyway? Could be worse, I guess, like lecher, but the implications that something is somehow off about older women with younger men is still there. Why the hell can't people just be with who we wanna be with and have everybody else stay out of it unless bodily harm is involved?

See, you can't just give a gift anymore...you have to think about context, pop culture, and semantics atop the individual giftees likes and dislikes. AUGGGH!!! Pardon me while I grab me some motherf&%!ing candy.

So my parents send my son a marble run maze that takes a PhD to put together (You think I'm pulling your leg - it's a seventy-page instruction book.) I feel a major sugar high coming on.

So this week fittingly ends with a biblical downpour that cancels one Hannukah party for my son, keeps me at home from another Hannukah party, ensures that only five kids come to whack a rocket pinata at my son's birthday party, and just generally freaks out my dog. It was dump the candy from the bucket and fill it with alcoholic beverages time.

Yeah, I'm recovering. Barely. Pray for me.

Oy, Neil Diamond's done a gazillion Christmas carols, but which Hannukah song does he choose to do?



Think I'm gonna go see if Arnie Fielkow is running or not.

Happy Chanukah, everybody.

Only one night away from a double whammy - the first night of Hannukah and my 37th birthday.

As a friend of ours on our Queens synagogue's listserv has posted: A friend of Rabbi Kalman Packouz tells him that as he grows older he experiences a personal miracle on Chanukah. He eats one potato latka - and it burns for eight days.

Two points to make here:

• I don't cook latkes in that much oil - at least, I do my best not to.
• I'm not that old...not yet anyway.

Anyhow, if Adrastos can highlight everyone's favorite holiday brick of a treat, I can certainly find some paeans to potato pancakes that'll sit like clay in your gut.



The following is one my husband and I like the least of all of Jewish singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman's songs. It reminds me of how old I'm getting as well - seems like ages ago when she was my music teacher in my Jewish day school deep near the coast of Texas. Now she plays concerts that demand upwards of $50-plus for tickets. She got to Carnegie Hall, even...by practicing and teaching all us kids now-classic original music of hers as well as the occasional inclusion of "Mairzy Doats" and its like. I still wanna scream NO WAY! whenever I hear "A kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?"

But I hear the following, and I just wanna scream, period.



Sorry, Debbie.

All right. Now Greg's done it. I have to whip out the OGs.

The following ain't safe for work. The kids' ears'll bleed, I know. But the sight of Orrin Hatch whipping out his mezuzah on a chain is truly nauseating.



The GOP senator from Utah may have a recording studio, but the Jewish people will always be more shtetlfabulous in one little finger than he'll ever be with his weak-ass "hip hop".

And if you wanna rest your senses after viewing such a thing, head here...no, wait!...

Just a couple of questions/heads up this Monday morn:

Is this happening all over the country, or just here?:

Basically, the President of the LCTCS (Louisiana Community and Technical College System) Board has dictated that Delgado can not give pay increases with any promotions this year, despite the fact that Delgado has the money to do this and has budgeted the money to do this. His bizarre reasoning for this is that, since the other schools in the LCTCS system are strapped for cash and cannot afford to give promotions or raises, Delgado should somehow show more empathy for their hardships and not fund its promotions. Thus, they are currently asking any faculty up for a promotion to take on the added responsibilities associated with the promotion without any additional pay. Part of his goal is, supposedly, to do away with any position beyond "Instructor", thereby removing all promotions altogether. This would put Delgado (and probably the other community colleges) at a disadvantage in trying to hire better qualified faculty to teach, which would obviously have a negative affect on their ability to provide a decent education.

Address your letters to Dr. Joseph D. May , president of the LCTCS Board. You can google him and read about his vision and plans for the LCTCS. This may give you more ideas to address in the letters. We don't know if the letters will be read, but we hope the effort will produce a positive impact. This is an address I found when I googled the LCTSC Board: 265 South Foster Drive Baton Rouge, LA 70806 PH. 225.922.2800

1. Receiving promotions every four years is the only fixed means for teachers to increase their salaries. We work for 4 years prior to the date of promotion to receive these increases. This isn't work we are going to do, but work that has already been done.

2. These increases also determine teacher retirement income. Example: If someone was planning to retire in 2012,and was depending on their 2009 promotion to be the highest 3 consecutive years salary, their retirement income would be less because the salary increases were not given.

3. Our promotions correspond to promotions given to administrative and staff personnel. When administrators or staff are promoted their salaries increase without question.

4. How was $125,000 found for a newly created position during a time of financial cut backs?

Also, at a time when Second Harvest Food Bank is all over the place in desperate need of funding and food donations, and volunteer programs are setting up hot food lines at the foot of Elysian Fields Avenue by the river each night to feed the homeless at "The Wall", it looks as though the Wall will be taken away as a location to feed these people. I don't know the exact story - most of what I've heard says a neighborhood association is finally getting their wish of turning the Wall area into green space. Please enlighten me in the comments, if you would.

Anybody got a neutral ground or a location nearby to offer for the purpose of feeding the hungry, in the meantime?
_______________________

Last night, Edie, Dan, the little guy and I headed for Atlantic Aviation to see what waiting on the Saints to come home from an away game was like and pretty much confirmed it was like waiting on a Mardi Gras parade only with much more fast moving traffic, lots of passing cars honking to support the black & gold-clad masses, lots of people standing on SUVs for a better view, and only a few Kenner police cars there to keep people from getting run over or the players from leaving the parking lot molested in some way. It proved to be too cold for us to stand out there for too long, though, so we retreated to the car, listened to the geriatric bowl on the radio for a bit, and high-tailed an exhausted little guy back home after seeing the chartered flights land.

The euphoria hasn't quite worn off yet.



Update, 12/14: The Gambit now has the Basin Street Records video up in honor of the 13-0! Shortened version of "Saints Christmas", but with more Kermit mojo workin'.

I'll be putting in a word with Hannukah Harry while I'm at it.

Gonna be a hot time in this cold town tonight.

You think I'm kidding.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Who. Dat.

It's a little too easy to dismiss this as Oh my God, it's a white boy discovering police prejudice!

A few months ago I had a run-in with the Jeff. Parish cops. I'll preface this story by saying I'm a white man, college educated, from California, and I generally have all the socioeconomic privileges that keep me from being a target of police profiling. When these JPSO cops stopped me though, I feared for my safety. I was simply riding my bike along the River levee and decided to cruise through Kennar (sic). Big mistake. The two JPSO deputies that followed me for three blocks and then pulled me over first physically threatened me when I asked, "is there a reason why you stopped me?" Then after searching me and running my ID, they informed me to leave the area or else: "this is a crack neighborhood." They said. "White people don't come back here." I was riding not four block off Kennar's main strip.

The message was, 'don't ride through black areas, white boy'; 'don't come into Jeff. Parish at all.' JPSO enforces segregation in order to further criminalize the black poor that live in Kennar and other parts of the mostly white Parish. I was outraged but powerless. Seeing Seagal playing police man to bolster JPSO's image upsets me deeply. That is a terribly troubled and violent police force that need a different kind of exposure.

I experienced Steven Seagal: Lawman vicariously through other folks tweets the other night and caught some of it through posted episodes on A&E's website (A&E, people. How the mighty have fallen there...but that's another post altogether). It's funny mainly because of Seagal's monster ego being fully on display in a Cops-like context, so stopping people for "existing while black", among the other terrible things the West Bank's Finest (ahem) may either create for themselves or have to deal with after the fact, are shot through with the action movie actor's constant emphasis on his martial arts background and punctuated by many, many zaps of multiple Tasers. It's so bad, it's almost badder than bad. Almost.

When one looks deeper into the entity that is the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, however, the comedy does fall away, hard and fast. The same show that will keep Seagal in the public eye will also subject the JPSO to greater scrutiny - you know, the department also cited in a lawsuit filed against the Gretna police department who turned back people trying to escape from a flood-ravaged New Orleans on the Crescent City Connection shortly after 8-29-05** - an action singled out for condemnation by Congress; the law enforcement entity once headed by now-deceased sheriff Harry Lee, who once proclaimed that blacks in white JP neighborhoods ought to be stopped by the police (check Carnival 1987-on in the timeline for that policy in action). It's crazy for a police force to be perpetuating such policies, but to be turning them around and applying them in the service of white supremacist idiocy: this is a crack neighborhood...white people don't come back here...well, who are they to perpetuate segregation?

Although white Americans often think we've had few first-hand experiences with race, because most of us are so isolated from people of color in our day-to-day lives, the reality is that this isolation is our experience with race. We are all experiencing race, because from the beginning of our lives we have been living in a racialized society, where the color of our skin means something socially, even when it remains largely a matter of biological and genetic irrelevance. Race may be a scientific fiction - and given the almost complete genetic overlap between the persons of the various so-called races, it appears to be just that - but it is a social fact that none of us can escape no matter how much or how little we may speak of it. just as there were no actual witches in Salem in 1692, and yet anti-witch persecution was frighteningly real, so too race can be a falsehood even as racism continues to destroy lives, to maim, kill, and, on the flipside, to advantage those who are rarely its targets.*

The JPSO has a terrible track record of perpetuating this thinking and imposing it on everyone...the imposition of its racism on everyone no matter what color they are is ironically the only equal right they afford to us all - the right to harass everybody.

And Seagal has bought into that with every episode of his show.

Just something to remember in the midst of all the Zen Taser madness.

*White Like Me, Tim Wise

** changed to correct factual errors; my bad.

Allright, enough mushy stuff. Here's a hostilidays vid that'll burn you up:



...if it were an actual monkey that were harmed in that video, PETA would sue and you'd be out a whole lotta gelt. But there's a whole lotta people short of gelt these days, anyhow. And somebody found a solution to their financial woes:



Jury's out on whether or not I'll be doing the same after my latest round of car repairs. When I paid the bill and was walking out the door of the garage, the mechanic said he always felt like a Scrooge when he had to charge people as much as he charged me for the work on my car at this most wonderful time of the year. If he weren't such a nice guy at heart, I'd liken him to that Christmas character Krampus, but he really doesn't deserve to be sent back to hell if he does something wrong by Santa.

In a couple of days, my son turns seven.

Seven years and a little less than nine months will have passed since the day I turned green from smelling the gas I was putting in my car at the Magazine Spur station and decided to get a pregnancy test.

More years than that have passed since the day I was having lunch at Juan's with my not-yet-fiance-or-husband and telling him I was never going to have kids. Never say never.

This child of mine has grown like a weed. He's still a big sweetie, but he's also quite confident in himself, almost to the point where I fear for his willingness to open his mouth and share his opinions and facts about the world at any time and any place - and almost to what seems like an arrogant fault. His French teacher told me yesterday of how he was demonstrating his knowledge of the TGV, France's high-speed train, to her and how he punctuated it with, "Know how I know that? From my Big Book of Transportation!" (She laughed at the thought of such a book, and laughed even harder when I told her, "No, it's true, he does have that book!") A visit from Mrs Jindal to his school to demonstrate the new Promethean Board they acquired as a teaching tool showed that his outspokenness can pay off though, as he gave her the correct answer to one of her questions in a demo of what the board can do (Dan and my fellow coffee shop patron had the same question: "Did she know the answer?" Uh, yeah, guys.).

He loves the cars, trucks and airplanes, he was adamant that his birthday party invitations have an Airbus A380 on them and that he have a few games for his partygoers, and he's now getting into the Legos big time. The kid knows what he likes and dislikes and has no problems telling you. Turns out he gets easily freaked by some scary stuff in kids' movies (case in point: I had to take him out of Ice Age 3 after the carnivorous plant moment, which I thought was hilarious, a true homage to Die Hard With A Vengeance), but he loves Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. What'cha think, people, should I get him an Indiana Jones set or what?

He's also still got some love for the ladies: he tried writing a nice note on what his prospects were to a little girl in his after care (he wants to be a pilot for Delta when he grows up, according to the note). Watch out for the charmer, girls. I mean...really...watch out.

But overall, he's still a young 'un with all the accompanying growing pains that tend to be wearing on me a bit more than they are wearing on him. Or so I think, until he asks me why there are wars, or why there are kids who aren't as outgoing and friendly as he is that he tries to welcome into his orbit, or when he's going to be a big enough guy to do the things he wants to do - the stuff that sends his heart afire like being a semi-driving airline pilot, or getting married and having a job (yes, it's true, he thinks about that a lot), or seeing the animals he reads about regularly in the wild, or even owning a rat, a mouse, a ferret, or a turtle as a pet of his own.

He'll worry about things like, this morning, when I was going to get the brake tag renewed on our now-fixed car. He reminds me each religious school Sunday to pass him the money for his class' tzedakah (charity) collection in the morning. His capacity to worry about all kinds of things can worry me sometimes....but then he voices something that's more self-centered, like oh, what will happen to him in a certain situation?, or when can he watch a certain movie?, or can't I please pull out the birthday present his grandma and grandpa bought for him a little early?, and I am secretly relieved that I haven't been raising a complete saint, until the selfish goes too far and I have to rein him in. Basic kid behavior.

My son is an ongoing work in progress, as am I as his mother. We are proof positive that certain tasks are ongoing, that shaping one's life is never ending and having a hand in that process is an art in when to be a good parent and intervene and when to be a good parent and let it go. We are all still learning. But we're doing it together, planning for what we can but taking all the rest as it comes. No instruction books. Hell, we don't even have a TV with a converter box, forget cable or satellite.

Yet here we are, a couple of sillies.

I love that little character of mine. Happy birthday, little guy.

Well, crud, people. Seems the demand is outstripping the supply. Imagine that.

A report from Education Sector raises questions about the ability of charter schools and charter-management organizations to scale up as dramatically as their supporters might hope.

“The extraordinary demands of educating disadvantaged students to higher standards, the challenges of attracting the talent required to do that work, the burden of finding and financing facilities, and often aggressive opposition from the traditional public education system have made the trifecta of scale, quality, and financial sustainability hard to hit,” concludes the report, “Growing Pains: Scaling Up the Nation’s Best Charter Schools.”

As hard-hitting as the findings seem to be, the report is at the center of a controversy over whether the final text—released by the Washington think tank on Nov. 24—was watered down.

The main author, Education Sector co-founder Thomas Toch, asked to have his name removed from the final product. It “didn’t fully reflect my sense of the current conditions or future prospects for CMOs,” he said in an interview. “Charter schools are an important addition to the public education landscape and the best CMOs have produced great results. ... But the CMO movement has created only a few hundred schools in a decade, and even with more funding it would be difficult for CMOs to expand much faster without compromising the quality of their schools.”

Forget all the controversy surrounding the main author's claims that the report was actually toned down by supporters of school choice....just step back and take a look at the bigger picture.

In a perfect world, the charters wouldn't be relied upon as the only means by which public education could be reformed. They were never meant to be the cure for all that ails education.

In fact, many of the problems cited in the EdWeek article are problems that traditional public schools share - all of elementary and secondary education shares those problems, to some extent....but the added burden of a larger chunk of a charter's funding coming from private sources that are drying up in the current economic climate is making for some belt-tightening: ...the report as released last month omits some candid quotes from industry executives about the fragile economics undergirding some charter school networks and about how the credit crisis has affected the ability of charter school networks to raise money, as well as statistics showing the difficulty some CMOs have had in reducing central-office costs.

So the overall neglect of public education has brought us to this.

Even with the stimulus promised to the charters, the real problems are not being addressed. Why did we keep diverting finances for the education of our children to other things? Why did we keep supporting people in government at all levels who did this? Even if the money was going to the schools, but still ending up in the wrong places, why didn't we jump on that kind of thing much sooner and put a stop to it? (yeah, okay, here's one answer to that, locally speaking) Why the hell are too many of us so damned afraid to send our kids to truly integrated schools? Why can't we pay teachers more, no matter where they work, so that they don't have to take a second job? Benefits are not enough. They just aren't when you have to eat and get dressed and have a roof over your head, too.

We keep stumbling. Our children keep paying for it. And I keep beating this long-dead horse to a bloody pulp, as does Ms G.

Why we can't bury the thing and have a rollicking jazz funeral for it is beyond me.

Oy ve-E-eh-E-ey. More Hostilidays entries have reared their ugly heads:



Steven Wright once had a bit about sitting next to a beautiful blonde Chinese girl on a bus...

Well, here's the reality of Bucky Goldstein:



Those cowboys need to get schooled in dreidel spinning...hell, they need schooling in Judaism. Here's a primer:



My personal favorite part of the video? The Hillel/Shammai kung fu fighting. Nice to see the Talmudic battles of old represented.