The Joy of Books

this is such a cool video. i like all forms of books as in e-books and physical books. this video is such a great homage to physical books. enjoy!

married bloggers

a lot of people blog when they are single and cease blogging when they marry. its just the way it is. perhaps they had more time when they were single so they were able to blog then. married people who blog seem to  be those who started blogging when they were already married. i think that if i were married i would still blog because i have been blogging for four years . but who knows. only time will  tell. hopefully.

rockets into roses

i just received this pendant from israel. it was created by an israeli blacksmith who transformed the remains of a kassam rocket that landed in israel into a beautiful pendant. when i was about to put it on i hesitated. at that point it hit me that the pendant i was about to adorn was once part of a weapon of destruction. i realized this when i ordered it, but i didn't think i would have these thoughts when i was about to put it on.
after a moment i realized that this pendant has been transformed and is now a pendant meant for adornment and that part of  the proceeds from this pendant will be helping  build shelters to keep israelis safe.  not too shabby.

i am hoping that this pendant will be of the very limited edition kind.

cultural jews

there are religious jews and there are secular jews. let us not forget that there are also cultural jews.
there is more to a cultural jew than just bagels and lox. scoff as you may , cultural jews are important , mainly because so long as they remain cultural jews they are still identifying as jews.
new york city has a lot of cultural jews because so many jews live here. many new york jews don't even realize this until they go to other cities and then they realize how much they miss the jewish culture of new york city.
the cool thing about jewish culture is that it would not exist all all if not for the jewish religion. this is why the jcc , the 92st y , the jewish film festival, and the israeli film festival are so important. they are ways jews can connect to judaism in a non-threatening way. and from there who knows what can happen. the sky's the limit.

when it comes down to it

when life get stressful  i make a point not to deal with stupid or annoying people because i am just too bogged down. often i wish that i was able to ignore these annoyances when i am not as stressed . perhaps avoiding these annoyances would prevent me from becoming too stressed in the first place. food for action.

extremely loud and incredibly close

i saw the movie extremely loud and incredibly close  on thursday. it was very good. at first i didn't want to see it because it is based on a book by the same name by jonathan safran foer that i found incredibly boring and extremely difficult to read. i'm glad that i saw the movie in the end. the movie is about a little boy whose father dies in the world trade center . the little boy struggles to make sense of things and also to to find the owner of a key his father had.
the little boy refers to 9/11 as the "worst day" which i find interesting. of course it was the worst day. the hardest thing at the time of 9/11 is that they just called it 9/11 instead of giving it an adjective.this movie is somewhat whimsical because it is being told from the eyes of a child.
the film brought back memories of 9/11 and how the world changed . i  remember waking up 9/12/01 and thinking 'i'm still here, now what?'. just as there are children who are now nine years old who have never met their fathers there are also those who were  children  then who are now in their early twenties. these are children who grew up in a post 9/11 world. it is sad, but this is reality. unfortunately you can never go back.

happy blogoversary

its now been exactly 4 years that i have been writing this blog. i'm just as amazed as you are that i haven't run out of  things to write. thanks for reading. i am looking forward to more years of writing.