Tikkun Olam

It's funny. Just before the real New Year starts - the real New Year for me being Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year - we're not in the habit of going around joking with our friends, saying: 'ok, I'll talk to you next year.' We say this just to be 'cute,' as if it's going to be a whole year before we speak to them again, when we know we're going to in two days, or a week.  Just the number of the year will have changed. It's an excuse to party, to go out with friends or family and do something, anything--often something crazy, that we'll regret in the morning, as they say. On New Year's when I was a child, I'd go upstairs to my "best friend's" apartment, directly above ours (my best friend was an Episcopalian girl named Laura. We used to communicate by banging out various codes on the heater pipe in the bathroom). There we'd eat snacks and drink sodas, play games, and wait until the stroke of midnight, when we...

Have you ever seen a video such as this Israeli one: hoping and praying for a good, peaceful year--coming from the Arab sector? If you have, please send me the link.  'Cause I haven't.  Ever. Gmar Chatimah Tovah*. *Gmar Chatimah Tovah: May you be sealed (in the book of life) for a good year.

Towards the New Year, Rosh Hashana 5772, I would like to recap my daughter's situation and extent the hope that she will continue to improve in her efforts to combat this terrible disease of RSD/CRPS with the goal of complete ambulation and personal, pain-free independence. Some time ago she took it upon herself to force herself to walk using a special walker, on which she places about 85% of her body weight by leaning her arms on the armrests, similar to this one: She is still unable to place most of her weight on her legs, as she is doing this through her pain.  Finally, however, the doctors listened to her and took her off most of the medications and narcotics she was on previously, which did nothing to help her, but only drugged her up so much that she would almost literally fall asleep into her soup, so to speak--the list was interminable: Elatrol, Clonazepam, Gabapentin, Oxycontin, Cymbalta, and later Lyrica instead of Gabapentin, and Valium and Percosets. They are go...