Lifeboats. Summer. Bridges. Helpers.

The rapid succession of a toddler-drunk-on-power messes is overwhelming.

I’m exhausted by the sheer number of (what seem to me) reprehensible acts.

My country is sickening me.

federal agents shooting at (and killing) civilians
actions against immigrants, federal workers, the environment, reproductive rights
invading a sovereign nation and abducting its leader
pardoning people who committed reprehensible acts
terrorizing Brown-skinned people
terrorizing transfolk
Black Lives Matter, but don’t

All of these things.

Hate is spreading.

And hope is faint.

These are gut-punch times.

✧✧✧

Then we all have our personal shit shows.

My heart is breaking as I watch a loved one disappear.

Alzheimer’s is slowly (and quickly) taking her cogency and her memories and unraveling her.

(Fuck.)

✧✧✧

I’m looking for comfort.

Always.
And, in all ways.

The following four quotes might comfort.

(After each quote I present will be my thinking about it)

✧✧✧

Voltaire’s lifeboat voluntary band

Comptez que le monde est un grand naufrage, et que la devise des hommes est, sauve qui peut.

Life is a shipwreck.
Save yourself if you can.
Do not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

✧✧✧

Honestly?
Singing in lifeboats feels too upbeat today.

✧✧✧

Rabbi Brian Doesn’t Understand

August 10, 2026 No Comments

Last Tuesday / This Tuesday

June 30, 2026 No Comments

Rabbi Brian Doesn’t Understand

August 10, 2026

In the 18th century, in Hannipol, a small district of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, in present-day western Ukraine, there was a rabbi known as Reb Zusya. Zusya, a pious man, taught about humility and had a strange habit of referring to himself in the third person. Instead of saying, “I am hungry,” or “I don’t understand,” he would say, “Zusya is hungry,”

Travesty

August 10, 2026

I rewind the etymology podcast 15 seconds because I missed the details about the origin of the word travesty. I want to listen again—more closely—so I learn it, so I can recall it later in conversation… because if I tell you how travesty—from “traverse” and “clothing”—came to mean “shockingly unfair,” you’ll think I’m smart. Lost in that thought, I suddenly

The Soup We Are In

July 30, 2026

Most of the time, even when we don’t really need to be rushing (and sometimes without realizing we are rushing) a really large percentage of us rush anyhow. Seems we are angled forward, always striving to get ahead. I get it. It’s the soup we are in. Our society conflates productivity, hurriedness, and worth. We take on the flavors around