I go mostly to honor my father's memory and because it is a very nice family, but I do enjoy it and it is an opportunity for my daughter to connect with a large part of her heritage. Evie is also a wonderful cook and makes a great lamb roast, even now past 90. Nowadays there are also Kosher wines a good bit more palatable than Manischewitz, which is good because you are to drink 4 glasses.

  I brush up before I go because I don't understand Hebrew, even though part of the tradition is to explain the significance of everything to the children (in English here).This link is a good summary:

Seder

And just two months later Bobby Kennedy was gunned down.

Fight. The. Power.

Indiana, like many other Republican States, has been ramping up its misogynist campaign against women. Along with Texas, and several dozen other Red States, their assault against women, and their Constitutional Rights of privacy, and reproductive choice, has been alarmingly successful. Due to their politically driven, obsessive funding cuts many, many clinics serving women have been forced to close. Among those, Planned Parenthood, who were leaders in HIV screening, were especially hard hit. In Indiana, where P.P. had their funding cut in half, it should have come as no surprise that a massive HIV outbreak had occurred, forcing Gov. Pence to declare a public health emergency....LINK

And, as if the assault against women and the LBGT community weren't enough, the removal of health services for women has led to so many more tragedies. Here's an example of one woman's plight:

NYT, April 6, 2015

"A Granger woman was sentenced to 46 years in prison on Monday, March 30. Purvi Patel, 33, was found guilty in February of feticide and neglect of a dependent causing death. She will spend 20 years in prison and an additional 10 years will be suspended. When she is released from prison, she will spend five years on probation. She was also sentenced to six years in prison on the feticide charge, but that will be served concurrently with the 20 year sentence."

It would be helpful if Congress would pass a law that says gays can marry but that no minister/preacher/priest or any other religious official is required to perform the marriage ceremony.

But that would be a too simple and commonsense thing to do and would probably not satisfy the extremists on either side.

Yet Mondriggian wants to argue about lawsuits and laws that we don't have information on.

I tried to explain the position and thinking of many Christians. You seem to ignore that.

The author apologized to her readers, her colleagues and to real victims of sexual assault but I don't see where she apologized to the fraternity who was accused of the gang rape?

Apparently Rolling Stone won't discipline anyone involved with the story.

What made me pessimistic is reading that both Jerrold Nadler and Charles "Chuck" Schumer are spouting off about their doubts...

And those are the "liberal" democrats.
How the party has sunk.

The possibility of this agreement between Iran and the US filled me with optimism. Naively, perhaps. But there it is.

And if it is sunk by a cabal of rabid furious mad Republicans - with the support of tepid "liberal" democrats, it will fill me with much pessimism.

And I can't tell how this is going.

Obama - who was touted for his rhetorical prowess combined with a star-quality - has seemed to me to be a most unpersuasive spokesperson for anything since he took office.

  Beyond that, he's really been more of a pragmatic moderate than a doctrinaire liberal.

  Beyond that still, he is a Senator with no realistic aspiration to the Presidency, and it is not surprising he would be, at the least, cautious about any action which would serve to enhance the power of the executive branch vis à vis the legislative branch.

  Finally, is there any reason, other than blind loyalty to a President who has not exactly distinguished himself in foreign policy, not to have "doubts?"

There are two important and illustrative quotes in the opening half of HBO's documentary miniseries Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All. The first is a statement of purpose, an explanation for the deep, documentary dive that director Alex Gibney (fresh off the scathing Scientology exposé Going Clear) takes into the life and work of Francis Albert Sinatra: "We don't know what he thought about his own life, because he never wrote it down in a book." All Or Nothing At All is here in place of that autobiography, posthumously piecing together the story of a pop-culture legend through newspaper clippings and still photography, moving pictures and interview audio.

The other quote addresses the myth of Sinatra, the outsized public persona that similarly accounts for the weight of All Or Nothing At All. Addressing the rumor that Sinatra booked his comeback role in From Here To Eternity through mob intimidation--a rumor later fictionalized in the opening sequence of The Godfather--the film bristles: "The Godfather thing is a wonderful story, but it doesn't have to be true as documentary." Plenty of similar stories piled up around the entertainer in the period depicted in the film--from Sinatra's birth in Hoboken to his first "retirement" concert in Los Angeles--and Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All seemingly addresses every last one of them. Its eyes are trained on the truth, but its ears are open for a good story.

The New York Times | April 5, 2015
California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth - "For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life -- 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, agriculture and vineyards. But now a punishing drought -- and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption -- is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state's driving engine has run against the limits of nature."

Enjoy the day, everyone. We're flying out tonight to our soon-to-be new hometown of Hilo, and will actually be staying in our house for the very first time. I'm working on the Big Island over the next week, both in Hilo and upcountry in Waimea, and we've also got to oversee our continued renovations and buy some FF&E (furnishings, fixtures and equipment). We'll be returning to Honolulu next Sunday.

This week, Hilo is also hosting its annual Merrie Monarch Festival, a gathering of hula halau and native social organizations from across the islands and the west coast. It's grown over the decades to become the most culturally significant event in the Native Hawaiian community. Not only is the festival a good time, I've also found it to be a pretty good place to meet potential clients.