Category: religion

Duck’s Yizkor Lights

WE always light candles on Yizkor. Depends on how many people we want to remember and how much light we can handle. It’s a Jewish custom to remember the dead. A cemetery visit would not hurt, but its geographical range is limited.

We also make a donation. By being better people, we elevate the memories of the dead, most of whom should not have died in vain.

Here, we honor and remember Sharon’s mother and father and mine. The middle candle is for all the people whom no one remembers, including all the people killed in Israel this year, all the people of Palestine killed this year and all the people killed in the Ukraine.

May there be peace.

Garden of Eden Surveillance

Who could have known that a reporter witnessed the exchange of the apple and the sex? Only the reporter knows the truth. Believe as you will, my source tells me that the serpent remained a bystander. Adam did not create Eve. She knew Adam was knowledge resistant. Wanting a better life for her and their kids, she made him partake of the tree of knowledge and then shared the apple and her womanly body with him. This version is not in Genesis, for good reasons. And God, assuming there is one, didn’t punish anyone for wanting to know more and fear less.

Len Duckman Died 55 Years Ago

My Father died on Father’s day June 16, 1963. I was 7 when we learned he was sick and 15 when he died. Hard to celebrate and difficult to discuss.

He died before he was supposed to, only 54. He wouldn’t talk to me about it, except to say he was dying from Leukemia.  That’s the way it was in 1963.

I lit a yahrzeit candle for him. I know no one else did. The family had long since stopped being a family. So it goes. So it goes.

Never Forget, Don’t Pay To Remember

This statue in Pere Lachaise doesn’t cost a cent to see. It’s haunting memory brings sights and smells of the Holocaust to your senses without charge. To make visits to the shrines of dead jews the equivalent of paying to ride at an amusement park devalues the debt humanity owes the dead.

With all the money in the world spent on campaigns to elect people or to promote international sports or to get people to fritter their money away at gambling casinos, one might think that some things are too deserving of veneration to be commercialized. Not if you are Trumpian.

Charging to see the artifacts of death from Aushwitz and making a profit offends me. No charge to see the memorial in Miami. No charge in Berlin. No charge in Berlin. And, when we went to Stutthoff, a work camp in Poland, we went in free. October, we are going to Terezin. I will let you know.

I don’t do fund raising, but give to the cause of preserving the memories of the dead for all, especially those without the funds. Some of these financially challenged might be dissuaded from turning to killing to earn a living.

ANYBODY HOME

 

 

George Romero died. He taught me to be scared of the dark. Hell, I am old, which means I don’t carry heavy things and I get tired earlier. But age, the early age of television, let me watch Bela Lugosi while my parents were in the other room doing whatever.

Dracula didn’t scare me, because Zacherly was there to intercept them.

But, no one helped me with George. He made me believe in zombies.

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”

Paris Jews on the Mend – #2

Pere La Chaise Statue-3

Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris has several areas honoring Jewish dead. The French didn’t do enough to save Jews when the Nazis invaded. Selfish and self-absorbed, some helped load the trains headed to the death chambers. Somber as it may seem, this sculpture of a death procession reminds us, “never again.”

So, what does this have to do with today, DuckToday? I am sad and depressed about the killings in Charleston. A friend brushed it off saying that had there been a Temple near-by, Jews would have been killed. To me, that avoided the point. Racism and anti-semitism, while rooted in hatred, irrational hatred, aren’t the same things. Hey, we were all slaves! But to hate because of the color of one’s skin, thinking one person is better than another, that their bloods shouldn’t be mixed, that they don’t deserve a place on the planet, in the valley of human kind, that is unfathonable.

I mourn the 6,000,000 as much as I mourn the 9 who died needlessly. Acts of terrorism, both, man’s hatred of his fellow man never abates. Very sad.

Chabad Burlington Celebrates Purim

Rabbi Raskin reads the whole Megilla.

 

A juggler entertained the crowd.

Newlyweds Draizy and Eliahu present to expand the family. They live in Crown Heights. God only knows where they will go.

 

Ruth, a beautiful biblical name and a beautiful woman, attended. She remembered the story. She lives on with the help of her friends. They love her smile. She played the piano during her life, making people hear things they never heard.

Soon to be in Boca. Have roles to play. Know how smart and beautiful they are. Could be Esters, giving of themselves to save the community, but probably will lead in a different way.

 

Eating a humantash. Keeps the tradition alive. Got to eat the food to feel the pride of the story.

Maccabees to the rescue. Not going to let them or anyone interrupt the heritage. You sorta feel the “never again” from these guys.

 

Moms to protect us. Nothing betta than a mom, eh.

 

And Elvis to entertain us.

 

 

 

 

Trinitarian Congregational Church in Northfield MA

So Pastor Lloyd Parrill didn’t enter the Trinitarian Congregational Church in Northfield MA on a donkey. But his message for this Palm Sunday, as he welcomed the beginning of Holy Week, was no different from that delivered by Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, “live in peace and miss no opportunity to help others.” As he left the church, this last time he will celebrate Easter before his retirement, Lloyd gave love to his congregants, and they gave it back to him and his wife, Dottie.

 

 

Columbus Day Flags

At the Lone Sailor
Next To Boathouse
Battery From Boardwalk

How did Columbus Day become a National Holiday? I know how it  became the day for Italian Americans. An Italo/American named Joe Columbo, one who may have had organized crime connections, didn’t like hearing bad things being said about his ancestry, so, in 1970,  he started the Italian American Civil Rights League and held a rally in Columbus Circle.

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