to a seder

A huge editorial burden has been lifted: six contributors, 35,000 words (7,000 of them by me), the last piece came in Thursday morning, and I finished the initial stage of editing and sent it off to the next step at noon on Saturday. And the larger project of which it's a part continues apace. I could go off, over the mountains and through the weekend beach traffic, to a family-and-friends Pesach seder in the last minutes of the holiday in good conscience.

I'm one of the friends, having known both the hostess and her mother for as long as the Israelites spent wandering in the desert, and that's since the hostess was herself but a little thing. We dined on lamb, matzo ball soup, and several types of veggie. Our one gentile attendee pronounced herself a particular fan of the matzo ball soup: I said next year we should try her on gefilte fish.