Monday - After the big nor'easter of January 2022

 The storm hit places other than Chappaqua with far greater ferocity, dumping less snow on us than along the cost and down east in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, yet it was enough to make the roads very treacherous, to make visibility at the height of the storm very difficult, and staying home an easy decision.

I did go out after it was all done and the driveway and the walk were shoveled, the snow on one of the cars cleared off, to take pictures. Here are a few.

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Saturday - a few (pictures of) things

There is nothing I can say to anyone who is not vaccinated against Covid that will get them to get the shots so I need to stop ranting about it. 

As for wearing a mask indoors in public places, there's no point going on about it here though I will point it out to a person not wearing one in mandated place. 

What's wrong with people? They don't object to wearing pants? They will obey a sign that says, "no shirt, no shoes, no service" but wearing a mask to help prevent the spread of a virus gets them angry. You go figure because I can't.

Here are pictures from two of my ongoing series - "Things," taken wherever I happened to see the thing, and "Minor crimes against humanity," which I think is self explanatory.

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Tuesday - Quiet places

 I have been hibernating. And though it is still early winter I need to rouse myself and do things I like doing that I haven't been - such as writing, taking photos, selecting photos for blog entries and editing them.

I know it's been crazy times - whenever we think we are out of the pandemic something happens and we seem neck deep in it again. I won't blame anyone, that won't do any good, but if all the selfish people who refuse to get vaccinated for either political reasons or anti-science irrationality were to get shots, the chances for new variants of the virus to emerge would be significantly reduce. And if people who think wearing a mask indoors with strangers is a violation of their liberty, then they don't know what citizenship and respect for others' liberty is about, and they should be shunned or only hang out with like minded people so they neither get nor spread the disease, especially the latter, which is where their liberty hits a hard line. You want respect, be respectful of others.

With this thought in mind, some photos of places usually occupied by lots of people, now quiet.

Deserted Mall

Deserted mall

Office Lobby

Office Lobby

Easton PA

Madison Ave.

Diner

Diner

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Wednesday - A Visit to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford - By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800

We drove up to Hartford, CT  to see the exhibit "By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800 before it moves to Detroit in 2022.

Excellent exhibit, worth going to see if you can catch it before it closes on 1/9/2022. The Wadsworth is also always worth a visit.

These photos are not about the exhibit.

One comment: the Christmas decorations, a traditional style, looked rather out of place, perhaps even  ironic in a gallery filled with 20th Century art.

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Saturday - Third and final Yizkor at New Montefiore Cemetery posting

Mourning is both a personal and communal activity. Nobody but the mourner feels the particular loss they are grieving, but many feel or have felt something similar, and can both sympathize and empathize. I cannot get inside the head of someone who has lost a parent recently, but having lost my parents and remembering how I felt, even if the sharp pains of that moment are blunted by the passage of time I can sympathize and offer honest words of condolence. If I can bring those old feelings back and let the grief wash over me for a moment, in silence I can empathize.

When the children and their children and grandchildren of the Radomers gather at the cemetery, we let some of the pain come back but ease it with the companionship of our fellows who are all in the same place. It's not the words of the prayers that make us better, it's saying them together that allows us to put aside differences and share our humanity. 

Beginning in March 2020, many of those whose close relations and friends passed away often had to mourn with their community kept at a distance. Video chats and conferences don't compete with the warmth of a person sitting next to you, perhaps in silence.

The Jewish mourning ritual is a step by step process that begins with the burial. If it is a parent that is being mourned, the stages will take a year to complete, though most of the last 11 months the mourner has returned to their normal routine.

For a person who is Ashkenazi, toward the end of that year or later, the stone on the grave is unveiled in a brief, usually meaningful ceremony. There is a tradition among the Radomers to hold the unveiling at the Yizkor if it is near the anniversary of the person's death.

It was good to get back together. Now we all have to practice good community/public health measures to show that community and communal responsibility is a way to express personal liberty.

Here's the final group of photos I've selected. I take too many and it takes time to select and edit a posting. I am glad I can do it.

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Friday - Second Yizkor at New Montefiore post

Every year now, before the service, I stop at the cemetery office to pay a courtesy call on their grounds manager, Tommy Whelan. We chat for 15 or 20 minutes and catch up on each other's year as well as dealing with any issues that can't be taken care of with a phone call. This year, he told me about how hard it was for him and his crew, as well as everyone working at the cemetery during the first months of the pandemic.

He said that normally that get a handful of funerals every day or during a week, but that every morning when the cemetery gates were opened there'd be a line of hearses waiting, sometimes more than 30 burials in a day, and that number was that low because the cemetery only accepts Jewish deceased. Nearby Pinelawn, a nonsectarian cemetery was getting 2 1/2 times as many. One morning, a panel truck was waiting and inside were stacked a half dozen or more coffins. The funeral director didn't have enough hearses. Coffins were arriving in all sorts of vehicles because people were dying in droves. It must've been horrible.

So as difficult as it was for me and the other members of the Radomer Society's cemetery committee, I think he had it worse.

Here is a few more photos. One more post will follow.

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