Monday, September 25, 2006

Turning and Returning


Shana Tova.....I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year.

I have more to say about my Rosh Hashanah experience, but need to go to other things at the moment. For now I'd like to give you some things that are good to mull over anytime, but are especially appropriate for these days of Teshuvah, of turning, returning, looking at our lives. So with thanks to my friend Danya Ruttenberg, check out her blog and read her "Learning for the Ten Days" post.

Her commentary on the Unetane Tokef prayer directly under the Ten Days post is more good food for thought.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Best of Today's News

Here are two stories from today's news that put a smile on my face, so I'd thought I'd share......



Fawlty Towers lives again! See this story from the BBC about the reopening of the hotel that inspired John Cleese to create the TV show.





And then there's this news about Willie Nelson and his fellow roadies....
It doesn't say anything about DUI or erratic driving, just that the bus was stopped for "a commercial vehicle inspection." The AP quotes a news release that says ""When the door was opened and the trooper began to speak to the driver, he smelled the strong odor of marijuana . . . A search of the bus produced 11/2 pounds of marijuana and 0.2 pounds of narcotic mushrooms, according to state police."



Was this really necessary? Was it surprising? Is this news??

Whatever, they were issued misdemeanor citations and released.

Friday, September 15, 2006

On the Road with the Pod

I really love my new car but it does have one drawback--there's no input for my iPod on the sound system. I read somewhere that Mazda will be adding that option in the 2007 models, but that doesn't help me now. In my Saab I used the cassette adapter, which worked great. The Mazda doesn't have cassette player, so I use the device that tunes the iPod into a blank FM station. In the Bay Area, with so many FM radio stations, I often have to deal with static. I didn't know how it would do on the road.

I am happy to report that it worked just fine, thank you very much. I first tried it when we hit Highway 5, and the station I found worked all the way up through California and over to the Oregon coast. I had to adjust the station at the coast, and once again as we circled Seattle. But that was about it. One nice added feature is that it charges while it plays, so there's no danger of running down the battery.

We didn't keep it on during the entire trip. We like to check out the radio stations in different regions, both AM and FM. We didn't travel that far, but you still get different perspectives in news and sports. That's especially true if you can find the independent stations. Everywhere you go you get the views of the right, the left, and the Christian evangelists. But it's hard to beat the Pod for music selection. I've downloaded enough of our CD collection to keep both Ken and me happy. Since Ken did most of the driving, I was able to do some discrete editing of the shuffle selections--skipping through some songs that I knew he wouldn't like or I didn't feel like hearing.

My next long road trip will be to LA at the end of October. I'll be by myself, so I'm glad to know that the Pod will be with me.

Friday, September 08, 2006

"All the World is a Narrow Bridge . . .



. . . and the main thing is not to be afraid"

Those are the words of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslov describing the power of hope over fear. Appropriate words for this coming week.

These words have been going through my head lately, albeit in a different context. On our trip to and from Vancouver we went over a lot of bridges--narrow bridges, wide bridges; little bridges, big bridges; steel bridges, concrete bridges; old bridges, new bridges. To see some of these bridges, click here.