I went to my annual Seder celebration last night (I know it wasn't the right night exactly, but our hosts are flexible and tolerant.)
Maybe the biggest lesson I have learned is I love matzah ball soup, but to pass on the gefilte fish.
Every year I pick up a little more of the classic story, especially the parts that we read in English. Hebrew is still, shall we say, a stretch for me. One woman last night also did some of the reading in Yiddish, which was fun to listen to, albeit unintelligible.
In my current state I tend to not react well when I have to wait to long to eat, so I had to check out early. But our host sent me home with a piece of banana cream pie, which picked up my spirits and blood sugar.
As advertised, I have a short piece in this week's New York Times Week in Review section. (Link below.) The other six pieces on what is wrong with the state were interesting, although I have to question what Mitchell Moss has been smoking.
He blames the state's woes on decaying upstate communities that are draining the more prosperous downstate region dry. But ask almost anyone from upstate and they will tell you, get us out from under the taxes, labor laws and business regulations that New York City-based politicians impose on all of us, and you will see the region prosper again. (See "The Politics of Decline,'' Whitston Publishing Co., 2005.)
Here is the link: "Can New York Be Saved?"
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Jay: Good comments: you had the Abbott and Costello "whose on first" routine streaming in the Times. Actually, in New York, there's nobody on first and, from the looks of it, no one willing to step up to the plate either. On deck hitters are somewhat unreliable, as a good manager might, just when the hitter is ready to go, pencil in another hitter. But, if no one is pitching, how can the game go on April 1? The Tribune Cup runner-up.
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