Posts of ideas and memories to share appear here as they roll in, with the most recent posted at the top. Enjoy. Feel free to comment (with kindness) or to share your memory that any post might spark for you.
If you visit my blog and the first lines look crazy, you might have caught me updating LIVE and adding a story, and you might be seeing it in progress. Sorry, the magic is in the editing. 🙂 Hang in or come back! Or scroll down, wayyyy down, to read earlier posts.
Newest blog first…
Next installment will be on Walking Tall, model school, bannisters, backward walking
LISTS R US
Today, April 8, is as good a day as any to list my lists.
True, most of our passwords are memorized, if we allow our browsers to do so, but a hard copy list must exist somewhere as backup and for its portability.
Then there are all the lists, beyond the To Do, which today carries this one.
I have to find a Canadian web host. In part for economic patriotism, and apparently, Canada has more privacy legislation. Does privacy even exist in a world where software follows our keystrokes, eyeballs, search patterns, and purchase patterns? Handy and a harbinger of free will lost.
My lists list also includes financial lists, from assets to accounts to places I can tighten my metaphorical belt. So much uncertainty all over the world. Some of it is systemic flaws coming to roost but mostly emanating from one mercurial source. The silver lining is the massive review and reflection that is going on in an arena that was previously populated and driven by numbers.
Bring back the stories. They infuse memories that might help as well as humanity now.
There will be more on the need for lists, I just gotta get started on the first set on the Ruby Choose’day. My fave day of the week and often very productive.
Scents of the City
One of the advantages of living on the ‘Left Coast’ of Canada, in Vancouver, BC is the early arrival, in terms relative to the praries I am transplanted from or Eastern Canada where my siblings live, of the blossoms. First, the snowdrops peep out of the ground so low and so improbably during still the official winter weeks and dusting of snow.
Not long after, various other hardy blooms come, and soon the cherry blossoms in pale pink and the magnolia also in pink, but sightings of fuscia trees in other neighbourhoods. They burst forth when ready from elongated and tipped pods, all grey and fuzz-covered, looking like baby antler buds.
Anticipating the inevitable profusion of colours, yellow, scarlet, purple and pinks and greens of both the foliage and some blossoms helps get us all through the gloom of why the city has been nicknamed Raincouver and the region, the Wet Coast.
Death, Dying, Discounts, and Dignity and Planning….
It was on one such Thursday in the first week of April that I came out for information at a little ‘fair’ about advanced care planning – an umbrella term for death, dying, burial information and it being both Vancouver and 2025 and safe to feature – care for our diverse population be it ethnic or gender.
I took away brochures and single pages. They were meant to add information to what still needed to be gone and to confirm what I had, mostly, accomplished in setting up my will. THAT is an entirely separate chapter for me to write. And I will. See what I did there?
The location was lovely, but the bus situation home was confusing. I took a taxi there to eliminate guesswork and exhaustion on my part, as either transfers or a lot of walking to get to the one bus were required. So many blocks would need to be walked to go home that I chose to simply walk. It was a glorious day. And, as has been my strong feeling of life and gratitude for it when leaving funerals since my youth, it was the same wholehearted embrace of all my abilities to walk away from a place of death information.
With only my urban walking poles and not the walker, I stepped a total of 6,500 steps. More than any day, possibly two days combined in the past 1.5 years. Granted, the first leg down Burrard’s beautiful even sidewalks and cars on the 4 lane road took me to sit to rest between the Shoppers pharmacy counter and the blood pressure machine.
Always on a time limit to the next bathroom, I didn’t tarry. Scouting the prices and items suitable for my 20% senior discount, I came away with only mushrooms. Fine. Chocolate was outrageously priced, and so were my other snacks, pistachios and certain chips, and 2x a year, Hawkins’ Canadian family produced excessive salt and orange sprayed on cheese coating from the same plant in the Maritimes and long-term employees.. Cheezies.
I went home contemplating the best choice of colour for my Olympian effort medal.
In the evening, I went out for an item up 4th Avenue to another Shopper’s Drug Mart, to wheel a heavier item home using my Mercedes, as I refer to my black walker with cushioned seats and functional basket below.
And so, I managed to pack in 6,500 steps heroic on the first count and supported on the 2nd. The pitfall was wearing my rigid Birkenstock sandals with white socks. Fashonistas, avert your eyes. The truly missing bit was that tiny layer that makes a big difference – orthotics – and my ankles paid for that in weakness the next days.
Voting with My Feet
My feet made their presence known most on the trek to vote in the city’s by-election. A walk 2x as long as Google promised even on a day I was rested and took my walker for speed and ease while secure.
It was important that I vote. Tensions are super high due to uncertainty about housing and development in the city of Vancouver and the precarious pecuniary (money) situation many of us face. We live in one of the world’s most expensive cities. The times demanded I make even Herculian efforts to get out and vote TEAM,
Luckily, I was told by 3 people, at intervals blocks apart on my journey to fulfill my civic duty and privilege, to go into the express line for seniors and the disabled. Family also. I was prepared to limp and drool if my gray hair and heavy breathing while clutching my walk were not enough to get me to the VIP ramp.
People were patient, accommodating, and kind as I quietly said, ‘rolling up behind you’. Unfortunately for many others, they joined the line snaking around the block for 1-3 hours to vote before getting just inside the building and seeing an 8×11 sign taped to the glass saying there was this special care option.
4,500 steps that day and some questionable items in my grocery purchase on the way home. No light Saturday Night out for me!
To Write or Not to Write? The fortitude in the first words…
Dreamt of writing? Beginning can be natural and easy. You can write what you dream for your life and keep it private so what you imagine is not vulnerable to comment or crushing before you are ready to bring it to the public world. You can record the past to capture bright moments or diffuse difficult ones by putting them into print to see clearly in front of you.
Committing your first words to paper or a page on the screen is your first decision. Fail to follow through at the risk of having the disembodied spirits of your thoughts stumble about aimlessly in your head and heart. All else flows from that first word you put down.
It is bold to ‘just begin,’ and it begets the attention of the universe to help you. I am told this any time I get stuck – not for words- but the fortitude to ‘put myself out there’. Starting and sending in finished work for clients was never as great an issue as writing my own experiences.
Your next steps are simply to add words and create a sentence. When you get to the end of that first sentence, uncensored, you lay down another sentence until you have formed a paragraph.
Repeat.
To begin the process of pulling out your unique message first to yourself and then the world, you need only to master the physical ability to hold an instrument of expression. A pencil, pen, or, for fun, a tool that emits colours as your thoughts take form on the page. I sometimes use voice dictation to send myself a note in an email, as I am fortunate that the software accepts my voice and intonation fairly accurately.
At the very least, it is more legible this way but it is not my preferred way of writing.
Here is a link to some love written by me in April 2012 for the practice of writing by hand and the boost it and doodling give, free of charge to your brain and soul!
I am a big believer in the beautiful and collaborative communication between the physical movement of a hand transcribing the thoughts and inspirations between it, the arm, and the mind at the other end. One fuels the other’s energy and stokes creativity.
Writers sometimes don’t fully know what we are thinking until we see it.
So, feel free to explore and to pour your expressions onto any size paper you like. I like a big paper canvas so I can use colour or markers and if I am having a messy handwriting day I write larger for clarity and I use all of the space as if it was a painting. It helps me discover yet more – be it boundaries or bold new thoughts!
As always, there is more to come, so stay tuned.
Share a thought or a special tip for others to use.
I’m in the Kitchen a Lot (1st course entry on cuisine)
Movies I grew up with set in army or shipboard kitchens, and possibly prisons, often had someone sent to KP or kitchen patrol. The scene usually included a man hunched over a pile of potatoes, wielding a peeler. It was a demotion from regular duties and military life because it was a lesser use of someone’s time, despite Napoleon saying, ‘An army marches on its stomach.”
I find myself now in the kitchen a lot. Why?
As a single senior, I am solely responsible for my care and feeding. A lot about my well-being, body, and spirit revolves around nutrition. During the lockdowns, a good friend, a bit older than me, used to her husband doing all the cooking (he passed quite a while ago), and she found it hard to get into the kitchen and produce very much that was satisfying. She always said, “You eat more healthfully than I am.”
The truth of it is that I liked food. I like it clean, quality, fresh, and simple. Organic is a nice to have, unless we are talking the ‘dirty dozen’. I fork over (see what I did there) the cash for those choices, beginning with my beloved berries.
I don’t mind touching my food, which is good because there are many steps repeated daily unless you want to buy ready chopped foods whose origins, age, and sanitary status are unknown. They are often in bacteria-laden bags. All summarized by a former friend from Stuartburn, Manitoba, when she pronounced in a kind of frenemy way decades ago, “I’ve never known anyone as devoted to fresh food as you. Where I grew up, even the cans on the shelves were often past their best before date.”
Many ‘eaters’, as I call those who consume but do not produce our food, don’t like the times it takes to select at the store (and some don’t even know the name of most of the produce or how to pick good ones), schlep it home, unpack, the clean and prep, the cooking if needed, and then the clean-up. Let’s not forget the last step – the compost bin.
It gave me great pleasure to feed people at my table over the years, and I would still love to be feeding people, but in person. Circumstances have changed. Service is not the problem. I sold a big and expensive set of Lagostina stainless steel cookware with lids from little pots to a Dutch oven for a song. I now can do anything with only 2 Wolfgang Puck stainless steel saucepans with see through lids and chrome knobs. They produce soups to stews, boil water for tea, and even turn out steaks direct from the freezer perfectly, as well as toast made with radiant heat.
For silverware, “tfu tfu tfu” as my silly mother-in-law (now 2x Ex due to my divorce and her death) would say to ward off the evil eye before she bragged. I do have the Birks silver plate set she started for me both as a lovely bonding tradition and the suspicion that I needed an introduction to social status. The first couple sets for the marriage (no wedding or registry) and then one pricey set each Chanukkah after that,. So, I am ready with 12 place settings. Emily Post etiquette devotees can have the right piece from appetizer to dessert and butter knives and tinier tea spoons as my guests.
If you know of anyone in need of a beautiful, not overly ornate (making it hard to clean and polish) set, let them know it is on offer. Cheap!
Why not use them? The new generation has their taste and money to buy what they prefer, and many only spend big on ‘vintage’ when it is someone else’s, not their own family.
Plus, the secret to solo food service and living life well in general is to treat yourself like a guest, so I use 4 of those place settings. No need for elaborate serving pieces.
I will leave my culinary conquests here for now. I have already jumped up from the desk multiple times to get my reward ready: a 6-ingredient salad using whatever was in the fridge, Bulletproof Brain Fuel as the oil and ACV, plus Celtic gray salt, nuts and seeds from ‘the larder’ nearby. Low salt canned Sockey salmon salad with chopped celery and green onion on heavy European organic rye. I will be paying for the rye gut wise as it is a grain…but woman can’t live by gluten-free alone. Plus, it is one of my ancestral foods. More on all this on the next course served up some time in the future.
I’ll share the secrets of Rose Kennedy, my mother’s kitchen love, and the foods of ‘my people’.
Please leave any comments, questions, suggestions, or your stories. I will relish them. See what I did there?
Bouncing into basketball memories…..
It was high school in the 70s, and I had the fun and duty of representing as part of an all-girls team playing basketball in a small league of private schools. Today, I’d like to share that experience with you.
Hoops of Hope – A social media summit followed by b-ball court time
March 29 at home all morning for a 4-hour Mindvalley social media summit. Gave up at 3.25 hours during the pitch for the 26-week course I knew I would not ‘invest’ in, nor would I complete it. Business topics and new learning still thrilled me even though in my decision to retire from writing for others, it held no future in them for me as an earner in the marketplace.
We MUST keep up with technology. At least to be aware of it. With double verifications required to access our money or check on things we have subscribed to, from insurance claims to lab test results, we must have a cell phone. So, at the very least, we must know some of the programs and platforms that are out there and how they communicate with each other and us.
So, with lunch and the to-do list for when I finally get out of the house in front of me, I tuned into a movie online. It was about a former NBA hopeful who seems to have a shot at ‘getting it all back’ as he shouts at God during a plot twist and in front of a church’s stained glass front. That’s not my story, but I have seen the male lead, David A.R. White, in another film and liked his unpolished and authentic character, usually cast in gentle, Christian-themed movies. What kept me watching was the arena in which his story played out – the basketball court. It took me down memory lane.
Someone, somewhere in time, decided to field a girls’ basketball team. We were to play in the predominantly Catholic private high school league for which our Hebrew day school qualified. Our team was called the Raiders, the same as our boys’ team. For uniforms, we wore the shorts and shoes of our choice topped with the team Ts. Medium blue, thin cotton shirts emblazoned in the upper corner over our heart with a goldenrod yellow Star of David. The design came from our classmate Jeff, who would, in his adult life, be an urban planner. I was both proud of the graphic and uncomfortable as it reminded me of the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in the lead up to the Holocaust to identify them easily on the streets in cities where they might be shamed or brutalized at will. It may only have been me who had that thought.
Our competitors were St. Mary’s Girls Academy and Balmoral Hall. I remember that the former had a kind of blue tartan for their custom team uniforms and the latter wore coordinated green team colours. BH’s team name was The Bulldogs. An odd but appropriate choice for a team of tough girls. The term now so popular in Canada of ‘elbows up’ was a survival pose we learned early from those two teams.
Years later, my daughter attended that school after graduating grade 6 at her Hebrew school and was informed on her first day in the cafeteria that the intials stood for Bitches Haven. It was for me, and it was for her, but it seems she coped and profited better than I did and excelled at academics, although she only played basketball in-house.
Each of those schools had full gyms with proper equipment, training regimens, and a bona fide PT program. Our physical training consisted of Marty Hornstein and Hart Sera, best buddies who agreed to train us as coach and assistant. Stocky and of average height, they both put forth an effort as part of their university degree in fitness.
Our gym was the school auditorium with its paneled walls and murky grey and blue vinyl tiles in a room too narrow to run circles and too short to run laps. That is where I sustained lifelong ankle weakness from injuries due to inappropriate turning and running space for our exercises as well as gear.
As a team, we were slow. It took too long for us to run from one end to the other and to get our arms up ready for defence or offense roles, so the fellas directed us to run with our arms raised. On defense, Claire S. and I generally did that anyway. We were the 2 tallest, so we were automatically positioned as guards at the bottom end of our home court under the basket.
This meant we were always the farthest from the action, no matter who won the jump shot at centre court. Jumping for the game ball was Sharon G., who had 6 years of ballet and so could leap the best, and Bonnie R, the rabbi’s middle child, her co-lead running alongside her. At that stage of life, Bonnie was the shape of a board, from head to toe, and the two of them were fast and slim and so always in position to pass or to score – but mostly to each other.
I guess the rest of us were the support chorus line, not getting too many chances to play in the real action.
So, we weren’t super fast or in great shape. Academically, we were stellar. We completed the entire curriculum set by the city school board in half a day. The other half was spent on studies in Hebrew, with a smattering of Aramaic in places and for the Book of Daniel, as I recall. On any day we might move seamlessly from English, to Latin, French, Aramaic, and a commentary text that ran along the pages of our Torah, or bible studies, that was a fusion of the 2 biblical languages but with the fun twist of another font that seemed familiar and in a kind of tiny italics.
To survive the Bulldogs and the other team of a certain rough n’ tough reputation, we had to call out to our girls in Hebrew. They both caught onto our weaknesses, and soon our coach-crafted plays were transparent to their coaches. Our body language, slow formations, and eventually using our names telegraphed the plays we intended. Latin might be caught by any St. Mary’s girls who might have paid attention during class or prayers and picked up a few words.
So Hebrew on the b-ball court it was.
The matches always took place as away games because home for us was that all-purpose narrow and dark auditorium sandwiched by the high school and the elementary school buildings.
We always met at our school, which I could at least walk to in high school. and our coaches might drive a few, and the rest of us were put into cabs. One or both of the fellas ‘drove hack’ so they knew the costs of the cabrides and arranged them for us.
For us, the games were still epic. Only once did our boy classmates come to see a game. Just a few of them.
Just the surroundings were epic and our coaches got us to the games early so we could adjust our eyes and bodies to the size and bright lights and bleachers, and change rooms of a real gym and facilities dedicated to the girls.
Years later, I was the only female in our group of couples who related to the movie Hoosiers with Gene Hackman. As their coach, he brought his earnest but awkward gaggle of basketball players early to practice at the championship venue to reduce the overwhelm of crowds, cameras, and a properly painted and equipped court.
The film’s moments brought a tear to my eye and a twinge to my adult ankles.
RIP Coach Sera.
Lighting Shabbat Candles
My SHABBAT SHALOM begins with a blessing on candles. I hope they will light any darkness around me and will radiate out to the ones I pray for in this Friday night tradition (Shabbat) where we hope for peace (Shalom) that connects me across time and geographies to my roots and to my loved ones.
Tonight’s official candle lighting at 7:20 pm, according to the Chabad handy dandy and reliable calendar site, was a bit earlier than the actual deed at my house. On this March 28th, 2025, I found myself with a lot to say. I lit the 2nd last set in the box of candles that would last for a minimum of 45 minutes, although one seemed to race to its end significantly faster.
Girls traditionally light one candle. Married women light two, but many observe the custom of one additional candle for each of their children.
Two suits me fine. I use an ivory coloured porcelain holder with gold forms to receive the candles we affix into place by dripping in a bit of wax from their bottoms. Over the years, I’ve had candlesticks in silver or glass, but love the little one I have from my mother ever since I remembered Shabbat candles in our home. This one, for sure, since 1961.
So, two for my parents, who have now passed. Two for my children living far away from me and each other. The same two represent my siblings who live far from me but in the same city. Our sister is 15 years older than me, 10 years older than our brother, who is 5 years older than me, so we refer to her as our big little sister. She was also a kind of mother to us, but she is the shortest of the three of us.
I sang the prayer. It conforms to the standard of one-line blessings that begin the same and have the appropriate completion. Although I handled the words and the tune pristinely, my voice warbled a little more weakly than on other occasions, impacted by the emotion of the moment. We recite the blessing AFTER striking a match and lighting the candles so as not to break the sabbath rules. I made a larger circular motion in the air in front with my hands and then two smaller ones, bringing the wider world closer with my arms before I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands.
The pause before opening to the newly lit candles and the official start of the Sabbath lasting till sunset the next night is for my prayers for all who are near and far. At this moment, I send silent wishes I hope the universe will make true for the health of my siblings and my children and other private things. I thank my parents for all they gave me known and delivered through our inheritance of DNA.
It feels different. The world within me and beyond my body feels different for those moments as the candles flicker, now much longer than I had expected. Enough for me to record their service to me and all Jews connected by their light around the world.
My mother lit these candles when I was young. There were nights when I stood only with my father reading the Friday night prayer, lighting the candles, reciting the blessing for the wine and then the bread and the meal. Sometimes, we had that meal that my mother had prepared but was somehow sitting out this family inning in another room (I didn’t know why she sometimes took this rebellious action), but my dad and I carried on. I was grateful for his time and private attention as to participate in this ritual during winter months when the sun set so early, it meant he had to close the grocery store we lived behind to have this time and meal and then go reopen.
It was the practical reality of hand-to-mouth living to look after a family in a new country, without mastery of English, which was functionally for both my parents their 7th or so language.
Two candles for the Sabbath.
Seven days till the next one.
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