For those of my friends who asked to see a copy of my d'var (from my Anshei Mitzvah class).

I am grateful to Rabbi Weiss and Cantor Green for their dedication, their humor, and the generous hours they spent to help me achieve my goal of becoming bat mitzvah… Read full post »

“Your tune is a ter’ble ‘boice’.”

Notwithstanding that pronouncement I made at four years old beside the piano where my mother sang in her whiskey (or more likely scotch) tenor, I loved my mother’s singing. She sang the songs of her own childhood – not the Y… Read full post »

What I Learned from My Father

Dolly Baruch

April 18, 2012

There were some awful things I learned from my father - how angry one can get, what gambling and drinking does to a family, how to walk on eggshells.

There were wonderful things I learned… Read full post »

Shiny black faceted bicone beads (my favorites), gloriously multicolored rainbow sequins changing color as I looked, feathers, fringe, tassels, braid, soutache, lace, crystals of every hue and shade, and thousands, maybe millions of colorful beads of every description, bugle beads, seed/… Read full post »

Today is the two year anniversary of my heart attack. The top picture is at the Parthenon last December.  The bottom picture is at the Hermitage a little more than two years ago, before I had the HA.

 You'll notice my son-in-law hasn't changed a bit - but I've… Read full post »

Episodic Christmas Trees

Dolly Baruch

December, 2011

Again, with the 4th grade – that year was important in my life – a boyfriend for the first time (I was in love with a boy named Romeo when I was nine years old). In 1948, a polio scare. I had awakened… Read full post »

Yup, that's right, that's me on a camel. Not my idea, I can tell you. Seems that Thanksgiving week I was in Cairo at the Giza Plateau. All I wanted was to have my picture taken NEXT to a camel.  I figured the vendors, who are incredibly aggressive, would take my… Read full post »

“I have nobody to blame but myself for my stupidity and actions, words, things that I did, that I thought I could do,” was Blagojevich's comment on his sentencing. The former governor of Illinois was sentenced on Wednesday to 14 years in federal prison for 18 felony corruption convictions… Read full post »

Saved by a Song

Dolly Baruch

Rotund jovial Mr. Blankenship hated and loved my mother. Mother more often than not inspired only love among men. She had that deep dimple in her left cheek. Her curly hair was cut in the latest postwar style. Her short and voluptuous figure, so… Read full post »

Fourth of July

Picnic and Stock Car Race – 1950’s Peoria

It’s the Fourth of July, early in the morning – only 5 o’clock. I wake to noises from the kitchen – mama is up already, bustling around downstairs. I can hear the pots rattling and can sm… Read full post »

My Amazing Adventure in Natchez: A Northerner’s Introduction to Southern Hospitality

On tour in the Deep South, checking out Jewish historical sites, synagogues, museums, civil rights history, and even some plantation mansions, with my Rabbi and 23 members of my temple, we stopped overnight in… Read full post »

 This is me about a month after my heart attack. Everything is gray! To see me in silver, look at my profile pictures. (And I'm about 40 pounds lighter in that shot).

Exactly one year ago, I had a massive heart attack. I am lucky to be alive. More… Read full post »

She fell down in stages, not so much as a falling down but more a crumpling down or maybe a slow motion folding down, like when you fold more flour into your dough mixture. Not a faint because she was conscious. It was, after all, a heart attack.

It… Read full post »

1) I make a mean chopped liver that everybody loves and I can no longer even TASTE it any more (not because I've lost my tastebuds) to see if it's salted properly.

2) I found a ridiculously restrictive food plan that really works for me and I don't even believe in it… Read full post »

Ever hear of sorla keporla? Probably not. It's mostly likely Yiddish, doubtless means a mixed up mess. I’ve never heard anyone else but my own family use the term.

It's a farmer's salad - sliced cucumber and tomatoes right out of the garden. My mother used to make it on hot summer… Read full post »

Because she wanted to go on a mother-daughter trip with me

Because she worked out the whole trip to Alaska using all my suggestions

Because she chose a wonderful time and cruise ship and excursions

Because she understood my tears and snuffles on the helicopter glacier trip

Because she took a… Read full post »

The first thing she thinks about is watering her shefflera. She’s been gone two weeks, her bags are still sitting in the corridor, the key is still in the lock, and she rushes into the kitchen, to the cupboard below the sink, takes out the pebbly beige plastic two gallon… Read full post »

1. The favorite dress of my California childhood - a shiny cotton chintz dress printed with splashy flowers on a sunny yellow ground (my favorite colors as a child - "brown and yellow").  It had a yellow sash - and my sister got to wear it after I grew out of… Read full post »

I don't often write about my mother. That's because she was a "a flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!" It seems impossible to capture her essence or any of the wildness she embodied - it changes with my own maturity and with the simple/complex details my iffy memory dredges up.&n… Read full post »

Today I took a 30 minute walk. It might not seem like much but for me, it's a triumph, a pleasure, and an inspiration.

 Monday was my last cardiac rehab class - 12 weeks completed. I "graduated," 25 pounds lost, 5 inches from my waist, and three points lower in BMI… Read full post »

 “You know she’s a Jewish girl don’t you?” Royd Weinstein whispered to Donald as they stared at my uniformed rump waggling over the varnished table top I was swiping clean with a wet rag. Before their eyes I expertly whipped the paper doily (“it’s all in the w… Read full post »

“This is a hat I’ve been wearing a lot lately.  It was from my grandmother, who loved life ‘til the end.” There are also some cryptic words about Kaiser Wilhelm in her notebook, but for the life of her, she can’t remember why she wrote that down, what they re… Read full post »

 Rose and Barnet (c. 1916)

Hilda and the girls 1945 (me and my little sister)

Max and the Ford 1945 (Salinas, California)

THE PROMISE

Think of that industrial town,… Read full post »

Death comes in threes they say and that is how it has seemed to me 

First his mother.

They wouldn’t help her die.

So when called by the police to come, the family was advised not to look

And they didn’t. 

“My mother has died”

she… Read full post »

Two fifteen Rodeo Road. That address had a resonance that I never expected to be a reality. But I had a chance to see it again and it was a revelation, and at the same time, nothing at all.  

The house in Salinas, California we lived… Read full post »