Tikkun Olam

As I mentioned in my last post, Not one single entry did I publish during the month of December, although the previous post was started on December 24th, the day we returned from our Florida trip (I guess that counts for something, right?).  I am changing this laziness on my part, at least, for the month of January, in the year 2013.  2013 .  It's so strange to type this number; it took me many months to finally realize it was 2012, and to write down the correct year when I wrote the date.  Now, all of a sudden, it seems--I have to get used to a different number!  Wasn't it just yesterday...? (Actually, it was!). "New Year's" is a secular event, for me--although I did go to a friend's New Year's Eve party.  I use the term "party" loosely, because it was a non-raucous get-together of old friends and acquaintances, at the home of a dear friend.  There was some music (I don't even remember what genre ) playing in the background, and delici...

In light of the great snow storms which descended upon New York and the entire East Coast of the United States, here is a great snow sculpture, lending new meaning to the expression "Two Feet of Snow." Hat tip, my friend Miriam Leibe.

The title expression is that of a book by Thomas Wolfe , and is commonly used to mean that a person cannot go back to his childhood home and expect it to be the same, expect himself to relive his (or her) experiences and feelings; that time passes, and our childhood is gone forever . I had just read an article in the Wall Street Journal about returning to one's childhood home, and I had never even thought to Google - sorry - to search for the apartment building where I grew up by using Google Maps until I read the article. So I did. Parts of the neighborhood are the same, but I didn't recognize the shops, nor the playground where I used to play as a little girl. When I was little, all playground equipment was made of metal: the swings, see-saws, monkey bars--which I loved to climb to the top, scaring my mother half to death--and the slides, which I used to call "sliding ponds." To this day, I don't know why (but then again, I also called pony-tails 'horse...