Spring and the Corona Luna
Wednesday gratefuls: The garbage collectors. Zaidy’s Deli for Seder fixings. Jewcy for the Haggadah. Kate’s no leak bandage routine. Seoah’s potato and sausage soup. New kabbalah class starting today. Learning and the ability to learn. Books. Printing presses. Newspapers. The much maligned, but oh so important news media. Diane’s willingness to get up early to talk. Mark and Mary in month long lock downs (of varying strictures). Gov. Polis and Mayor Hancock (Denver) for stepping up. Jeffco, too.
What’s the idiot up to now? That’s how I think of my first look at the news when I get up. These days though I find the question moot. He already did it by screwing up the testing, playing keep away with the national stockpile of medical equipment, and blaming, blaming, blaming rather than acting.
John Prine died. One of my favorite musicians. Hello in There. Angel from Montgomery. Ballad of Sam Stone. An American original like Bob Dylan, who was a fan of John’s. Covid-19.
Passover starts tonight. Easter is on Sunday. Zaidy’s Deli in Denver, performing a mitzvah, offered takeaway Seder boxes with matzo, Manischewitz blackberry wine, brisket, haroset and other sides, items for the seder plate. Rigel and I drove over to CBE yesterday to pick up our order. Eve, the executive director at CBE, had put haggadahs in there.
Like many synagogues, most, I imagine, CBE will hold a virtual Passover meal on Thursday night. We’ll use the Jewcy Haggadah, the ritual for the service. It has the famous four questions including how is this night different from all other nights?
The primary purpose of Passover is to recount to children the foundational story of the Hebrew slaves and their liberation from Egypt. Kids hunt for the hidden afikoman, a piece of matzah, and get a reward if they find it. They also hear about all the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, sing songs, and generally have a good time.
Passover brings many friends and family, including a Gentile or two or more, into a bubbe’s home. Not this year. The story with the plagues has been changed by a plague. The irony has not been missed. Many of our friends are sad because this is a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate, and not having folks in the house will seem very strange.
At passover we move from a narrow place, a narrow pharoah mind, to an expansive place, the Promised Land. Rabbi Jamie in last week’s morning prayers, Maladies and Melodies.
Picked up sister-in-law BJ at DIA yesterday. She’s an experienced traveler with a single roll-on bag and bright blue, hard-shelled case which carries her violin. It goes everywhere with her, including in to Sushi Win for lunch. “Cold is not good for it. Changes in humidity.” She’s the concert master for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, so the blue, hard-shelled case carries her means of earning a living.
Shecky and a pianist with whom he often works, Hiroko Sasaki, have a performance scheduled at the 
All three dogs love the snow. Rigel and Gertie both go into the drifts nose first, come up shaking their heads, then do it again. Rigel hunts the rabbits that live under the deck and the shed, but she’s never caught one here, as far as I know. Back in Andover, every once in a while. Kep likes to wander in the snow, his black and white body moving in and out of the drifts as he investigates. He’s usually the last one back inside. His genes, after all, hail from the Akita prefecture in Japan, famous for its mountains and snow.
I can still hear the others singing, feel the resonance of my voice joining theirs, marching, marching, marching. So many times. The song was the old spiritual, 
I’m continuing my experiments with oil painting, getting more experience, wondering about all the tricks and tools of the trade. Making it up as I go along right now. Playing. Yes, I’m playing with two shiny new disciplines right now, oil painting and astrology. When I use that word, playing, and it is accurate, what always comes to mind is 
The oil painting. So far I’m imitating, at least in a way, Rothko. Although. I did see some cloud formations that I tried to recreate, or at least evoke. Not in my power yet. Though what I produced I liked for what it was.
Jon, Ruth, and Gabe came up Saturday evening. The Instapot proved capable of turning a rump roast into a more tender cut of meat. Using a pressure cooker at elevation makes a lot of sense. Almost of all the roast plus potatoes, carrots and parsnip disappeared down mostly functional gastro-intestinal tracts. The gi tract with difficulty got help from Maryjane. (Grandma took 3 hits on a prerolled joint.) That went well.
We knew people in the cast, saw folks we knew in the lobby, and were greeted by the costumer as we left. He remembered us from our visit to the tech rehearsal. In other words this was also a moment of immersion in community, our community. That’s not the same as a visit to the Guthrie or to Broadway, but has lots of other, ancillary benefits.
Listening to some music on youtube while cleaning/rearranging. One clip leads to another. I’d started out on the Band’s “Long Black Veil” and youtube ratcheted me along to a guy named Blake Shelton. He’s a country guy, well known in areas where he’s well known, I gather. The song was, “Kiss My Country Ass.”
Then it hit me. Much of country music is protest music. It’s the protest music of the blue collar worker, the southern working class, and the white supremacist (these are not conflatable categories though they may cross over.) You may have noticed this a long time ago, but I hadn’t.