24-Mar-99 Ashes

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Although there are several entries before today’s, this is when I let more than one person know about my journal. I fixed the last glaring error in the entry page before going to work, and uploaded. Of course that took longer than it should have. The weather forecast was for rain, so the bike stayed home and I went to swim a fast 16 lengths.

When you walk towards the gym, pool, and locker room you’re on ground level, and come out to a control desk and a big window overlooking the pool. Looking out to see how the traffic is, you have a good view of what’s written in English and Hebrew on the walls above the pool: “Parents have the obligation to teach their children the Torah, a trade, and how to swim.” That quote goes back at least 1500 years, and I think it’s pretty deeply ingrained in Jewish culture.

I got a haircut this morning. When I go this long between them, my hair curls up on the sides into wings until I look like Dilbert’s boss. Not acceptable.

I walked into Nonantum to get a Franco’s Special for lunch. It’s a tomato and fresh mozzarella sandwich with oil, vinegar, basil, and rice-grain sized chunks of garlic. Franco is about my height (which is to say not at all tall) but a good deal heavier, and says to everyone, “Hi, boss, what can I get you?”. There is usually at least one other person from where I work in there any time between noon and one. One of the good things about the job is that it’s in a real neighborhood, not a route 128 industrial park, and you can walk to the post office or bank or to any of a half-dozen places to get lunch. At lunch time there are always people from work walking either way. I went around the corner from Franco’s to the Magni Bakery, in a brick building set back behind a garage -- it’s amazing how many people from work don’t seem to know about it -- and got a fig square for dessert. On the way back, Puming was waiting to cross the street. He said,“ I saw you were eating Chinese food for lunch yesterday.” I'm just as likely to see him eating a bagel in our caf.

At choir we finally got to work on Gennady’s composition, “Ashes,” for the holocaust memorial concert. I remembered why I liked it so much once we got it working last year -- it starts off with the basses, loud and resolute. I can get into that.

“As I lift up my eyes and I look at the heavens,
And my gaze I cannot take away from the sky
With my body and soul I appeal to mankind
In my grasp I hold ashes so tight at my heart”

You know, though, I’m not going to ask, “How could the world have let it happen?” You can see how the world let similar enough things happen in Bosnia and Kosovo, and I wasn’t writing to Congress to ask them to send my kid there.