The Decemberists

Brotherly Love : B Line [Manhattan-bound]

sound with-held [Wesley Snipes ]

Jury duty, brought with it a multiple duty : to listen; to inquire; to sound the trumpet of justice.

Wesley Snipes' appearance on Larry King last night, no doubt, depressed a sector of his fan base.

Certainly, an instrument muted is no way to impress upon a civil society the non-negotiable of justice --- fairness.

Snipes' attorney laid out the facts. Snipes laid it @our feet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120707425.html

If the claims and merits of Mr. Snipes' justice league [defense team] are legit [or, as we say in New York City : kosher] then the bars which are meant to punish and imprison him tomorrow [Thursday] will be incontrovertible evidence of our renewed will to imprison a man [father, husband, actor, global brand] undeserved of maximum sentencing @ the expense of fairness and empathy. http://www.ocala.com/article/20080124/BREAKING_NEWS/790471096/1053/BREAKING_NEWS
http://www.federalcriminaldefenseblog.com/2010/07/articles/tax-crimes/wesley-snipes-actor-foreign-diplomat-and-fiduciary-of-god-has-tax-convictions-and-sentence-affirmed-by-eleventh-circuit/

Snipes is scheduled to begin serving time for what amounts to a misdemeanor.

Snipes is only real through HDTV. I hope for a 5th dimension --- where the axes of his life freely emerge; rotating around freedom --- Hollywood star; strikingly handsome reality-enhancer ; seemingly kind, good, Bronx kid.

Let's look for that North Star.

Here, Mr. Snipes, look through my telescope --- can you see the Light? Believe.
Merry Hanukkah.
Happy XBOX. http://blog.besttraveldeals.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/holidayphoto.jpg

Canines Tend Toward Cold Heroism

Book-ish Businessman Submits : Sees Writing on Wall

Spiderman Visitation

Trick or Treat?

Who is the scariest of them all?

Summer protocol @ the deep end

Dogged Anticipation

Can she?

Jennifer thinks she can. She thinks she can. She will.
http://www.thelittleenginethatcouldtour.com/about.htm

Situation Shabbat

Tithing; the practice of giving one tenth of one’s yearly earnings to one’s religious ‘home’ was a Kryptonite-like-principle fastened to my parents’ religious conscience.

To tithe, of course, requires one to cut a check; arrange for payment; head to the ATM or remove the typically black, rubber stop-gap of one’s piggy bank, releasing one’s pent-up currency, coins — baubles of one’s personal banking system.

Within the topographical and strictly [Orthodox] Catholic framework of 1970[s] Woodside, Queens; Saint Mary’s was my family’s spiritual conclave; where Catechism, Confession and choir practice were the real-time measures of devotion and practice. Back then, Saint Mary’s ethnic mosaic amounted to a tetrahedral of believers: German, Irish, Polish, Italian.

My father’s mid-Western morphology; his sensible sense of right and wrong; his insistence on fair follow-through was aided and abetted by his once Protestant-turned-Catholic tautology and was further layered by my mother’s Pennsylvania-plain-spoken-spin on Jesus [and most any other topic falling under the governance of God’s sky].

Never ‘pressured’ to become a Catholic; my father looked to Rome not for relief [from some other ill-fitting faith] but from a sense of what he believed a family should be — a cohesive unit operating from the same play-book.

My father’s November surrender from this life to the next; framed my third year of college — Saint Mary’s was, of course, where his funeral Mass took place. Congregation Beth Elohim [CBE] in Park Slope, Brooklyn [my first ‘affiliated’ synagogue since emerging as a Reform Jew] is the place I have gone since to observe the anniversary of his passing; where I say Kaddish [the mourner’s prayer] while standing in prayerful remembrance.

The Shabbat which underscored my father’s Yahrzeit [http://judaism.about.com/cs/deathandmourning/f/yahrzeit.htm]this past November [2009] showcased another ‘competing’ element of CBE’s communal prayer experience. A woman [not personally known to me] was called before the congregation by Rabbi Andy Bachman together with an unidentified man [also unknown to me]. Rabbi Bachman revealed that the woman had been to the mikvah several days prior; to claim her place; her chosen identity as a Jew. He went further, elaborating at length, in his standard stream-of-consciousness style about her ‘conversion.’

A ‘strict’ understanding of conversion dictates that full immersion in the mikvah under the supervision and authorization of one’s Beit Din [http://www.myjewishlearning.com/life/Life_Events/Conversion/Conversion_Process/Beit_Din.shtml] combined with the requisite Hebrew-laced; affirmatively-Jewish prayers is the kosher [correct] ‘rite-of-passage’ for an individual seeking to ‘become’ a Jew.

In Othodox circles [communities] once a visit to the mikvah is made [and its associated usage levy is paid] that woman; that man is undeniably, Jewish. So Jewish, in fact, that making public reference to the convert; the conversion, is viewed not only as impolitic but improper.

But CBE is a Reform congregation, where many things [especially as compared to an Orthodox synagogue] are much more relaxed; or, as my father would say — much more “loosey-goosey.”

Jeffrey Toobin’s profile of Senator Charles Schumer in the August 2, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, quotes Rabbi Bachman as bequeathing “spontaneous blessings to the Schumers” during last year’s CBE Yom Kippur services where Senator Schumer and his wife Iris Weinshall have been long-time members.

After thanking Senator Schumer’s wife for her lengthy service to local government, Toobin quotes Rabbi Bachman’s ‘spontaneous’ blessing as follows: “and then what popped out of my mouth when I started talking about Chuck was that I wished him greater strength as he was working on health-care legislation. Suddenly, when I said that, fourteen hundred people got up and started cheering. It was hilarious, a classic Park Slope liberal moment.”

Reflecting on Toobin’s piece begs the following question: Was it also a “classic Park Slope liberal moment” when I began receiving emails [beginning in August 2009] from then Democratic City Council candidate [now Councilman] Brad Lander?

The emails are, unequivocally, electronic evidence illustrative of a violation of the ‘separation of church [synagogue] and state’ [http://www.au.org/about/history.html]. Further, they represent an outright disregard of my privacy rights. I fail to recognize the “hilarity” here; even [especially] as I am neither a resident of Mr. Lander’s Council district or a registered Democrat. Neither, for the record, do I identify as a “Liberal.”

I know that hyperbolic assertions [as can be found in Toobin’s piece] regarding last year’s Yom Kippur experience can [and no doubt will] be perceived as a ‘no-biggie’ type occurrence; especially originating from such a widely respected, influential, personable and popular [1,967 Facebook friends and counting] person such as Rabbi Bachman. But what is quite un-hyperbolic is this: Councilman Lander’s Park Slope campaign headquarters confirmed my suspicions — CBE gave Councilman Lander my email address.

I am, with great regret, at a breaking point. CBE has transformed itself before my very eyes. It has become less like a community of faith and more like a business; a social scene with inter-locking ripples of success, achievement, ambition, ego, patronage, money and privilege; while simultaneously — soulfully anemic.

There are those who will say Kaddish this November at CBE and those who like me are no longer capable of doing so [as was the case last November when the full-frontal attention toward a “convert” amounted to my unanticipated, unexpected and complete religious discomfort].

May the mourners of Zion [and Park Slope] be comforted; for truly, to have lost what was once such a profound zone of holiness and peace has pained me — as if a spear has wedged itself between my rib cage and the many treasured friends I have been blessed to know and retain at CBE.

I am grateful to Jeffrey Toobin for snapping into place that missing Park Slope puzzle piece. It is if as I have been to a chiropractor; brought about by a simple turn of a magazine page. Print is not dead after all.

Poolside

Brooklyn lifeguard anoints boy of Summer.

Ready to Polka

Back straight

good posture

evident

the camera doesn’t lie.

Tripod: sisters each; all.

Caroline calls out

“Be your best self.”

Backs to the sun,

We know our mother’s teaching,

her gentlest urging

her kindest word

her most honest truth

her pushing hips

receiving seed

The farmer deep

in the fertile grasses

where Jesus walked

12 brothers bound

to the wisdom of their days;

the curled truths

of Jerusalem’s children.

Take off your shoes.

“Watch, the rocks can be slippery”

they caution

I walk

trout-rich stream

close to our harvest

water cress @

the mountain’s base.

Keystone state. [http://www.netstate.com/states/intro/pa_intro.htm]

Secure

In the bosom

Of their embrace

Every sister, woman, broad, floozy.

Among the posers.

the false positives

We do not know

the shame of privilege

power

presumption

We are

Mayfield’s daughters

Know our coal-mined

Truths.

©2010 right_hook/julie holley

Lincoln's Luck

Find a penny. Pick it up. All the day you'll have good luck.
What happens when you find 2?

Allende’s Voice: Pablo’s Posture

Santiago’s sun
was just beginning
to reveal itself

I scanned the heavens
surveying a city
first served up
in the context of
Allende http://www.ted.com/talks/isabel_allende_tells_tales_of_passion.html
Neruda http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-bio.html

Chile’s beauty;
her honesty
his delight

Rooted in my mind
as certain as
The Andes

Today, I stand
amongst my kin, friend-folk
The People
of Concepción
God’s wrath
cast upon
the coast
Port Au Prince
Our collective memory.

Secretary Clinton
President Bachelet

Slip
into something comfortable
work out
the details

with a prayerful hope

Of re-Dedicating
The temple


©2010 julie holley/right_hook