prince charles talks to a bee

no, the heir to the throne is not following in the footsteps of his ancestor king george (the one who purportedly talked to trees), but rather is seen here at the sandringham flower show with beekeeper barry walker-moore, who told him of the threat that disease is posing to bee populations, and asked him to back a campaign for more research.

separated at birth: alison and jackie

i wish i knew how to post pics side by side, but we shall have to do with up and down. you may have noticed my recent interest in the musician alison kraus:
there was something about her face - a quite lovely face - but something about it that stuck in my mind. then i realised that, to me at least, she could be the twin of bravo workout host jackie warner:
ok, not identical twins perhaps, but separated at birth - what do you think?

kate bush turns 50

some of my favourite female friends are big fans of the music of kate bush. in their honour, i wish her many happy returns of the day today. i may not be into her kind of performance art, but i do still possess a vinyl 45 of 'wuthering heights'!

it is hard to accept that icons of one's youth are reaching ages that sound so old. especially since their earliest appearances are recorded and available for public viewing. the ravaj has a birthday in, gosh, just about 4 weeks, and refuses to accept that the age she will attain is commensurate with her actions, feelings and thoughts. according to the social rules, she is well into middle-age. according to her self, she is well into at least her third childhood - just one where she is able to drive, vote, and have a debit card. does that make her the woman with the child in her eyes?

krauss crush

when i lived in the shenandoah valley, my friend t took me to see alison krauss and union station play. except for a couple of jesus-y songs at the end, i rather enjoyed the concert. i also bought the soundtrack for 'o brother where art thou'. so when i saw she was nominated for a mercury prize with robert plant, i decided to check out some of the music:


this is not a great video (what's with those blow-up doll things?) but i have been watching it quite a lot. am finding ms. krauss quite compelling. i think it is her smile. it is certainly not her dancing. yes, it must be her smile :-)

in praise of the electric car

so there i was reading the ny sunday times online. i clicked on tom friedman's latest article, and he is writing about someone called shai agassi. i am wondering why he is writing about the small child of 2 tennis stars but i always loved steffi graf, especially her forehand, so i read on. you can read it here if you wish. i decide to google shai agassi, and discover his blog. there i find the following video, which makes the case for electric cars far better than i ever could. agassi's son told him he really needed to explain the story so a fifth-grader could understand it. here is that explanation:

the anti vanna white

ravaj tower is silent as the news has just reached its inhabitants that carol vorderman is to step down from our favourite channel 4 show 'countdown' after 26 years. the telegraph reports:

"Kevin Lygo, Channel 4's director of television and content said "We are extremely sorry to see Carol leave. "She has made an enormous contribution to the success of Countdown over the last 25 years. We hope to work with her again on other projects." Countdown viewers have watched Vorderman transform on screen from an awkward 21-year-old to one of the most glamorous faces on television. She owes her success to her mother who noticed a newspaper advertisement asking for a woman with good mathematical skills to appear on a quiz show, and sent in her application form."

the rest of the article is here

during the word part of the programme, carol's job was to pick out the letters and place them on the board. "vowel please, carol." she would say thank you. "consonant, carol." thank you again. the usual pretty and vapid assistant to the main guy who got to make all the jokes. but then, when they got to the math part, as the wiki piece says: "Vorderman was a new type of game show hostess, revealing her intellectual ability by carrying out fast and accurate arithmetical calculations as part of the game". carol was brilliant. and as the show developed, she got to chat a little bit more as well instead of just being a game-piece. i love that show. don't know if i shall be able to watch it when i go home if she is no longer there. meanwhile, goodbye and thank you!

red sox 0-1 yanks

i know not everyone is into sport, especially baseball. have i mentioned that the best thing for me about baseball is that there is no time limit to the game? rather, it takes as long as it takes. that makes it very different to all the other popular american sports, where time boundaries create an extra pressure that can crush talent and pervert skill in order to force a result. ok footie is limited to 90 minutes, but at least there are no time-outs, or breaks between plays, and any time wasted is added on at the end.

anyway, living in boston as i do, and with the yankees not having much of a year so far, i must celebrate tonight's win. in the bottom of the 8th inning, when farnsworth came on and the commentators noted his unbroken run of scoreless innings, and the r. sox immediately put runners on first and second base, well, i knew i had to make the ultimate sacrifice again and turn off the television. so i did. and now i see we held on. hurrah. it was worth it! so well done joba. a win at fenway!!

gina gershon

lord knows how i ended up with this youtube vid but here it is. i have loved gina gershon. she plumbs and paints, she pole-dances and now ... she sings. i am of the myriad women who own uncut copies of the movie 'bound' with certain scenes more worn by use than others. these days, since hollywood has its quota of parts for middle-aged women, and gina is not part of the upper echelon of actresses that fill those parts, she is exploring other interests.

the thing is, i am still kind of numb from watching this video. is it truly awful? for crying out loud, i can sing better than that when i have a cold. am i missing some incredible socially satirical point that is being made here? this made my head spin, and not in a good way. i think i need to go back to youtube and find that kiss from 'showgirls' to restore my memory bank.

northampton 0-1 qpr

dexter celebrates scoring the only goal of the game as the 'r's play their second pre-season friendly up in northampton. passing through on the bus back from nottingham is the nearest i have ever been to the ground, but over 1k fans made their way up there to have a look at the new players, and maybe chalk up another stadium on their list in the now futile attempt to join the 92 club. ever the optimist, i say again that we did not lose. hurrah.

nb no idea who 11 is. will guess ledesma, but he's too new to recognise him from behind.

a good day for lesbians!

from a bbc online report yesterday:

"Three residents of the Greek island of Lesbos have lost an attempt to ban the use of the word "lesbian" to describe gay women. The residents argued that using the term in reference to gay women insulted their identity. But an Athens court ruled there was no justification for their contention that they felt slighted, saying the word did not define the islanders' identity. Greeks often refer to the island as Mytilene, after its capital. "This is a good decision for lesbians everywhere," Vassilis Chirdaris, lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece, told Reuters news agency. The island's name was applied to gay women in acknowledgement of the female poet Sappho, who wrote love poems about both women and men in about 600 BC. The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, had claimed that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violated the human rights of the islanders - who call themselves Lesbians - and disgraces them around the world. He argued it caused daily problems to the social life of Lesbos's inhabitants. But the court disagreed, ordering the plaintiffs to pay court expenses of 230 euros ($366), although they could appeal against the decision."

i refer you to a letter from the grauniad online, posted 13th of june:

"If the inhabitants of Cyprus are called Cypriots, can the inhabitants of Lesbos not call themselves Lesbiots to avoid confusion?
Francis Jones
London"

nu - problem solved.

estelle getty r.i.p.

do you recognise her? although she acted in many other tv shows and movies, estelle getty, who died today at the age of 84, will always be remembered as sophia, the feisty sicilian mother of dorothy in 'the golden girls'. the associated press obituary notes:

"When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein's play "Torch Song Trilogy." In her early 60s, she flunked her "Golden Girls" test twice because it was believed she didn't look old enough to play 80. "I could understand that," she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. "I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast." She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, "To you this is just a job. To me it's my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80." The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys."

the rest of the article is here.
here is her wiki page
and here is her official website
a 1995 interview with getty
telegraph obit

i loved watching that programme, and i loved watching it with my whole family. we all laughed. it also taught me that older women, women even older than my mother (!), were human and had lives.

although the first reports say that estelle getty died from natural causes, she was also suffering from advanced dementia. may she rest in peace.

stevenage borough 1-3 qpr

matteo alberti celebrates his first goal for the 'r's
yes it is almost that time again - qpr played their first friendly of the new season away to stevenage. they wore this weird new black outfit with yellow wasp pointings. they debuted a number of new players. they did not lose. so i am basically happy. hurrah.

dave mac's report on the bbc site is here

lindsay is a lesbian?

lindsay lohan and sam ronson step out
ok, maybe the title is kind of screaming for attention. after all, just because a woman is in a romantic relationship with another woman does not make her a lesbian ... she is just exhibiting some lesbian behaviour. she's young, she's just experimenting. in any case, celebrities do not live in the same world that we do or by the same rules, do they? OUCH! it is utterly fascinating to me that photos and discussions of these issues are now so popular in the press. almost presented the same way het relationships are. except of course in real life things are just not that simple. if you don't have the money or the status so you can tell people to eff off and just live your life, then you have still to put up with harassment and shame and secrets and lies. it's not as if you can say to your parents, 'well, lindsay is doing it' and they will say, 'well ok then sweetie.' or am i so out of touch with this generation that i really don't get that it is absolutely no big deal?

under the hammer ...

which would you prefer to own? for an estimated UKP25k, you could buy this:

or for about half that price, you could buy this:


although i think i really ought to go for the ten commandments that charlton heston, sorry, moses presented to the people ... i'm afraid that i'm much more drawn to the fake holy grail from 'indiana jones and the last crusade'. i mean, harrison ford *and* sean connery - not much of a contest, is it?

the telegraph has pictures of other hollywood memorabilia up for auction later this month.

the last goodbye

for my birthday last year, i treated myself to a baseball game at yankee stadium. i decided to pay the same for a seat that i would for a broadway show, and thus for the first time i did not have to climb any stairs to find my place. i may have blogged about this then, so enough already. the point tonight is that they are playing the all-star game at yankee stadium in honour of its upcoming demise. i still do not understand why they had to build another one right across the road, i mean twenty yards or so away. anyway, my contribution to this season of eulogising is the picture above. it is my favourite view of the stadium - between the concrete stands as seen from the elevated subway train as it passes by. the photo was taken after the game, so it is my last view of the house that ruth built. go american league!

when is satire not funny?

another magazine cover featuring barack obama engenders an hysterical response. inside the magazine is a major article about the democratic candidate. meanwhile the new yorker asserts its right to freedom of the press and a whole bunch of people get their knickers in a twist. i don't think it's a very good cartoon, and the corner where an american flag is burning in the fireplace certainly pokes people with a stick (i am a bad american because i just don't get all stoked up when someone burns a piece of material with a pattern on it). the sad truth is that when one is a candidate, one is also a target. they all know that. this incident will probably be seen as great publicity. i am much more upset by the fuss about this publication filling up air-time and pages that might otherwise look more carefully at bush lifting the offshore drilling ban or the nine u.s. soldiers killed in afghanistan yesterday.

telegraph perspective
not on the times page yet, nor the indy
grauniad

angelina and doctor seuss

we may all now relax, for angelina jolie has given birth to her twins. one is a boy and one is a girl. the boy has been named knox, which means that all of her boys have names that end in 'x'. i wonder if this may cause some confusion when calling for one or the other ... maddoX, paX, knoX? reminds me of my second favourite doctor seuss (the first being 'what was i scared of?'):

Too Many Daves

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons, and she named them all Dave?
Well, she did. And that wasn't a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one, and calls out "Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!" she doesn't get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!

This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves'
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn.
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
And one of them Shadrack. And one of them Blinkey.
And one of them Stuffy. And one of them Stinkey.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt.
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt.
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate . . . .
But she didn't do it. And now it's too late.

ps my favourite name is marvin o'gravel balloon face. luckily i have never had any pets.

a very bad song i cannot get out of my head (earworm)

you know when a song gets stuck in your head, and the only way to remove it is with an even worse song? yesterday i got the song "samovar the lawyer" from 'a day in hollywood, a night in the ukraine' stuck. "halle-lawyer!" but it has now been replaced by this:

Oh, what did
Tenna-see,
boys, what did Tenna-see?
Oh, what did Tenna-see, boys, what did Tenna-see?
Oh, what did Tenna-see, boys, what did Tenna-see?
I ask you men, as a personal friend,
What did Tenna-see?

She saw what Arkin-saw, boys, she saw what Arkin-saw.
She saw what Arkin-saw, boys, she saw what Arkin-saw
She saw what Arkin-saw, boys, she saw what Arkin-saw
I'll tell you then, as a personal friend,
She saw what Arkin-saw.
Where has Ora-gone, boys?
She's taking Okla-home, boys.
How did Wiscon-sin, boys?
She stole a New-brass-key, boys.
What did Della-ware, boys?
She wore a New Jersey, boys.
What did Io-weigh, boys?
She weighed a Washing-ton, boys.
Where did Ida-hoe, boys?
She hoed in Merry-land, boys.
What did Missy-sip, boys?
She sipped her Mini-soda, boys.
What did Connie-cut, boys?
She cut her shaggy Mane, boys.
What did Ohi-owe, boys?
She owed her Taxes, boys,
How did Flora-die, boys?
She died of Misery, boys.

ok, ok, that is one big OUCH. have pity on me, i have been unwell ... :-)

y viva espana

although bullfighting continues to be an acceptable 'sport' in spain - viz the current plethora of photos of gored participants in pamplona - news has reached ravaj towers of the granting of legal rights in spain to the ape community.

the times reports:

"In what is thought to be the first time a national legislature has granted such rights to animals, the Spanish parliament’s environmental committee voted to approve resolutions committing the country to the Great Apes Project, designed by scientists and philosophers who say that humans’ closest biological relatives also deserve rights.

The resolution, adopted with crossparty support, calls on the Government to promote the Great Apes Project internationally and ensure the protection of apes from “abuse, torture and death”. “This is a historic moment in the struggle for animal rights,” Pedro Pozas, the Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, told The Times. “It will doubtless be remembered as a key moment in the defence of our evolutionary comrades.”"

the rest of the article is here.

i am quite glad that spanish apes will now have some protection against those humans who mistreat them. cannot help but wish that the same kind of concern be applied to other humans being mistreated by humans. poverty, disease, injustice, prejudice, etc. *sigh*

panda lows and highs

jane macartney reported in the times a couple of weeks ago that 90% of pandas are in jeopardy after the earthquake in china:

"Nearly all of China’s endangered pandas are in jeopardy after the earthquake last month devastated the remote mountain corner that is their last remaining habitat. Already boxed into these steep and thickly forested hillsides by the advance of Man, its numbers limited by a slow rate of reproduction and with its food supply threatened by the scarcity of its favourite arrow bamboo, the panda is now facing its most severe crisis in decades. Chinese officials, usually reluctant to reveal the real extent of a crisis, have announced that the last 1,590 pandas living in the wild face a very uncertain future after the earthquake. Yan Xun, an official at the State Forestry Administration, said: “Their living environment is completely destroyed. Massive landslides and large-scale damage to forests triggered by last month’s earthquake are threatening the existence of wild pandas.”

The fate of the pandas has been a cause of concern since the May 12 earthquake, which cut off access to large swaths of mountainous areas, including China’s largest panda breeding centre in Wolong. One giant panda from the reserve was buried this week after its body was found crushed under the walls of its pen. Another is missing. The other 51 are safe, including 14 cubs that were carried out of the reserve by keepers. The fate of the 1,400 pandas living in the quake-hit regions – about 88 per cent of the total – remains unknown and a source of growing anxiety. The tremor damaged 1.9 million hectares (4.7 million acres), 83 per cent of China’s total panda habitat. The real extent of the damage could be even worse because landslides have blocked roads, preventing officials from assessing some areas. Mr Yan said: “Caves and tree hollows where giant pandas live may be damaged, water in the habitat is polluted, and some of the bamboo is buried or smashed.” He said it was almost certain that the earthquake had claimed more pandas among its victims. “There must have been wild pandas crushed to death during the quake and in the aftershocks. But we do not have the number.” It was still far too dangerous for researchers to venture into these remote mountain areas to try to assess the ravages on a population that had grown in recent years.

Of the 55 protected reserves where wild pandas roam, 49 have been affected by the earthquake. Landslides have toppled whole mountainsides, possibly burying many of the animals. Zhang Zhihe, head of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the headquarters of China’s hugely successful campaign to save the panda through artificial insemination, said that he was also anxious that the devastation of the mountain terrain could deprive the wild panda of access to bamboo. He told The Times: “The pandas now cannot make their way between different mountains because of the landslides and so they may not be able to find food.” It has taken China years to create these reserves, linked by corridors along which the pandas can move with the minimum of encroachment by man. Now these corridors will almost certainly have to be recreated. Mr Zhang said: “As a wild animal, the panda has the capacity to survive in the short term. But the danger lies in its longer-term survival with the damage to the ecology.”"

on a positive note, tai shan just turned 3 years old at the national zoo in washington d.c.

bee news

busy bee at wimbledon
what with this bee that was bugging venus, the bee theme in the most recent series of doctor who that was finally revealed to be (sorry) that some of the bees were aliens and their disappearance left a trail that helped the doctor figure out some important plot point, and this reuters report:

"A truck containing 330 crates of bees, about 12 million of them altogether, overturned on a major highway near the town of St Leonard, New Brunswick, in Eastern Canada on Monday, setting free thousands of irritated stinging insects. Police sealed off the vehicle and called for expert help with the millions that were left inside. "Trying to unload 12 million agitated bees out of the back of a truck would not be a good situation," said Derek Strong, a local spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A team of beekeepers arrived and poured smoke into the truck to calm down the bees, which will be moved later in the day. Police said there was no general danger to the public. "If there's anyone in St Leonard who is allergic to bees, we're recommending they leave town for a couple of hours," Strong told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp."

at least now we know where some of the bees are.

rabbi a. stanley dreyfus z"l

3 generations of rabbis in brooklyn
this picture shows me with my two greatest mentors after my late father. to my left is r. stephen arnold, and in front is r. a. stanley dreyfus. today we are mourning stanley's death. i am finding it hard to accept that i am not fit enough to get to the funeral in brooklyn tomorrow. am finding it hard to accept that i will no longer hear stanley's gentle voice telling me to "be good" at the end of a phonecall. meanwhile, here is a brief overview of his life taken from the union temple website. baruch dayan ha-emet.

"Our esteemed Rabbi Emeritus, Dr. A. Stanley Dreyfus, is one of the luminaries of the American Reform Rabbinate. He hails from Youngstown, OH and received his early Jewish education at Rodef Sholom Temple there. He attended a joint course of study through the University of Cincinnati and the Hebrew Union College, which led to a BA in Classics with High Honors and a Bachelor of Hebrew Letters. He also was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1946 he earned a Master of Hebrew Letters degree along with his ordination from Hebrew Union College. Awarded the Heinsheimer Fellowship for graduate sutdy at the College, Rabbi Dreyfus taught Liturgy and served as Director of the Reference Department. Serving as Counsellor to the College’s Interfaith Program, he worked with graduate Christian clergy who were preparing themselves to teach Hebrew, Bible, and Jewish thought in their own seminaries. Rabbi Dreyfus earned a Ph.D. degree from Hebrew Union College in 1951, and twenty years later, the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinty.

Dr. Dreyfus served Congregation Beth El in Beaver Falls, PA from 1946-50, and during the summer of 1949, as visiting minister at West London Synagogue in London, England. Subsequently he served as Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in East Liverpool, OH, United Hebrew Congregation in Terre Haute, IN, and Congregation B’nai Israel in Galveston, TX. In 1965 he was called to the pulpit of Union Temple of Brooklyn, where he served with great distinction until his retirement in 1979, when he became Rabbi Emeritus of the congregation. From 1979-1991, he served as Director of the Rabbinic Placement Commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, becoming Emeritus upon his retirement.

From 1975-1979, Dr. Dreyfus chaired the Liturgy Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, helping to compile Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook; Gates of the House; Gates of Understanding; and Gates of Repentance.

As a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis since 1946, Dr. Dreyfus has served on the Admissions Committee, the Committee on Patrilinear Descent, the Committee on Homosexuality and the Rabbinate, the Reform Jewish Practice Committee, and the Rabbinic Population Committee. He was a member of the Governing Body of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, the Board of Governors of the New York Board of Rabbis, the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy of the National Jewish Welfare Board, Chairman of Home Service for the Galveston Red Cross, and Honorary Chairman of the Brooklyn United Hospital Campaign. He was an active member of the Galveston County Biracial Committee and the Human Relations Committee and a number of other organizations devoted to community welfare.

Dr. Dreyfus has served on the faculty of the New York School of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion since 1967. He also served as Chaplain, U.S. Army, from 1953-1955, and as an instructor in the Active Reserve for twenty-one years on the faculty of the Army Chaplain school, attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was President of the Zacharias Frankel Lodge of B’nai B’rith of Galveston, the Association of Texas Rabbis, the Association of Reform Rabbis of New York, the Brooklyn Board of Rabbis, the Association of Jewish Chaplains of the U.S. Armed Forces, and the National Association of Retired Reform Rabbis. He was co-Chairman of thne Catholic-Jewish Relations Committee of Brooklyn and Queens.

In 1950 Rabbi Dreyfus married Marianne C. Dreyfus, daughter of Ruth and Dr. Hermann L. Berlak of London, and Granddaughter of Rabbi Dr. Leo Baeck. Marianne holds a Master of Science degree in organic chemistry from London University. Their sons are James Nathaniel, M.D., who is married to Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus; their children are Benjamin William, Lina Ruth, and David Marcel. Their younger son is Richard Baeck, J.D., married to Helen Bagot Dreyfus. They are the parents of Daniel Bagot and Adam Berlak. Richard died after a long illness on March 12, 2005."

huc press release

the ravaj may be back. a bit.

have been off sick. lots of things i wanted to blog, but did not have enough oxygen to the brain to get it done :-) here are links to some obits that caught my eye:

alexander courage - a composer who was responsible for the theme tune of the original star trek tv series

"“I have to confess to the world that I am not a science-fiction fan,” Courage admitted in an interview eight years ago. “Never have been. I think it’s just marvellous malarkey.” That malarkey, in turn, found something defining in an A-flat for flute that led into a piece born out of optimism and a belief in the progress of mankind. Courage’s Star Trek theme achieved its effects with endearing simplicity and ease. The celebrated “whoosh”, for instance, accompanying the first appearance of the swooping USS Enterprise is a sound that was, in fact, voiced by the composer himself."

will elder - a cartoonist and colleague of jules feiffer and rene goscinny

"Born the youngest of five children to Polish Jews in the Bronx, New York, the slight Wolfgang Eisenberg fended off bullies and garnered popularity by honing his caricaturing skills and playing pranks. Once, when he failed to turn up at school, his teacher found him in the cloakroom, seemingly hanged by the neck, his face pale with chalk dust. At home, he put the blackened soles of his father's shoes on the end of a broomstick to capture footsteps walking across the ceiling. His relatives called him Meshuggah Villy, Yiddish for Crazy Willy."

kermit love - costume designer, and creator of big bird

"Love, who also appeared from time to time on Sesame Street as “Willy the hotdog man”, was not the inspiration for Kermit the Frog — Henson said that he did not adopt Love’s first name for his frog, which had already been so named before Love and Henson began to collaborate."

elizabeth spriggs - actress (and my favourite from the children's programme 'simon and the witch' )

"But the performance which stuck longest in most playgoers' memories came with the whip and riding breeches she sported opposite Donald Sinden in London Assurance. As Lady Gay Spanker in Dion Boucicault's 19th-century comedy in the Restoration style, she addressed her friends and relations as if they were quadrupeds; her acting was a triumph of high comedy."

rest in peace one and all.

rabbi albert h friedlander z"l

today, the 8th of july, is the fourth yahrzeit of my father. there are still so many of us who love him and miss him. while we feel the holes in our lives that once he filled, i am glad that he did not have to suffer the indignities of old age, or endure a slow and painful death. i only have one true regret: it is a shame that he never got to meet his darling grand-daughter, or she him. baruch dayan ha-emet.