a new year
Sep. 27th, 2014 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacAt Rosh Hashanah, we pray for a good year to come. Last year we - my mother and I, who always attended services together - didn't get one. That was just about the time she began getting ill, though she wasn't to be diagnosed for some months to come. Now was the first time I've gone to High Holy Days at our home congregation without her. It felt very different, only in part because I sat in a different place. I went with friends whose daughter is in the chorus, so we sat up front on the left to be near them, whereas my mother preferred to be in back on the right, to be near the ladies' room, always her favorite vicinity in any venue. In place of the usual young male assistant rabbi who begins his sermons by talking about sports, this year we had a young male assistant rabbi who began his sermon by talking about Apple - it takes all kinds - before executing this vertiginous, but typically clerical, segue, from personally faunching after the latest iphone to saying how wonderful it would be if we'd faunch after nurturing our souls instead.
I also decided to attend this year Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as that is when the plaques on our memorial wall are annually dedicated. My mother's plaque is already there, as is that of her (and my) friend who died not long afterwards. Their names were read, and they came adjacent alphabetically. They were read by the rabbi whom we'd made the funeral arrangements with, and I spoke with her briefly afterwards.
In secular matters - we're watching season 2 of Orphan Black on DVD. You know, having a character left for dead suddenly turn out not only to be alive, but stalking for vengeance, is not a trick you should pull twice in the same episode.
And I've been reading through the memoirs of J.C.C. Davidson, an obscure but entertaining politician who really gives the underside view of British politics in the 1910s-30s. For instance, do you know how the British government officially informed its colonies that they were at war in 1914? A rather important message, you'd think. The ultimatum to Germany expired at 11 p.m. The Colonial Secretary had gone home to bed, leaving Davidson, then the chief clerk, in charge with instructions not to do anything without checking with the Foreign Office first. So at 11, Davidson walked over to the Foreign Office and confirmed with their chief clerk that nothing had been heard from the Germans, so he then proceeded down Whitehall, threading through the crowds gathered for news, to the post office, where he handed over a sheaf of telegrams to the clerk, who took them without a word. Then he headed back to the Colonial Office to wait for the replies to come in. It wouldn't make much of a dramatic scene in a movie.
I also decided to attend this year Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as that is when the plaques on our memorial wall are annually dedicated. My mother's plaque is already there, as is that of her (and my) friend who died not long afterwards. Their names were read, and they came adjacent alphabetically. They were read by the rabbi whom we'd made the funeral arrangements with, and I spoke with her briefly afterwards.
In secular matters - we're watching season 2 of Orphan Black on DVD. You know, having a character left for dead suddenly turn out not only to be alive, but stalking for vengeance, is not a trick you should pull twice in the same episode.
And I've been reading through the memoirs of J.C.C. Davidson, an obscure but entertaining politician who really gives the underside view of British politics in the 1910s-30s. For instance, do you know how the British government officially informed its colonies that they were at war in 1914? A rather important message, you'd think. The ultimatum to Germany expired at 11 p.m. The Colonial Secretary had gone home to bed, leaving Davidson, then the chief clerk, in charge with instructions not to do anything without checking with the Foreign Office first. So at 11, Davidson walked over to the Foreign Office and confirmed with their chief clerk that nothing had been heard from the Germans, so he then proceeded down Whitehall, threading through the crowds gathered for news, to the post office, where he handed over a sheaf of telegrams to the clerk, who took them without a word. Then he headed back to the Colonial Office to wait for the replies to come in. It wouldn't make much of a dramatic scene in a movie.
