Month

I received an email today from someone I don’t know named Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. Here is the opening text. It’s Thanksgiving Eve! I’m making pies — apple, pumpkin, AND another pumpkin, and wondering if I should make a fourth. There’s a lot to celebrate, and a lot of work ahead, but this Thanksgiving, I’m feeling profoundly grateful — for YOU, and this whole community. Thank you. Well, for today, that kind of sums t

reprinted with minor edits from Mandala, Vol. 11; St. Louis Park High School; May, 1979 I. “Thumbs, Thumbs, Thumbs?” That’s all I hear. The monotonous, repetitive wailing cry of an armada of rancid soldiers. Three men in Salvation Army uniforms hold me at gunpoint, commanding: “GIVE US THE SECRET TO THE AARDVARK DANCE.” “Will the boxstep do?” I quip. They, with quiet, ruthless efficiency promptly blow my head off. II

What have I been up to? Well, I was pawing through boxes of old stuff and came across a Mandala from my senior year of high school. Mandala was (and possibly remains) the school’s literary magazine, written and edited by the student body. The contributors were the usual suspects: the future math professor, the future best-selling journalist and author, the future Improbable Research Limerick Laureate, the future frie

Last Monday evening, my wife dropped off our son, age 13, for his weekly class with the rabbi and youth director and the other teenagers of our congregation. I came by at 8 o’clock or so, about a half hour before dismissal, to hang out with the parents. Apart from the receptionist buzzing everyone into the building, the evening proceeded and felt like any other. Of course the rabbi discussed the recent shooting