I was reminded of Rona's blog of a few weeks ago about armrests when I went to an off-Broadway last week. (Rona's armrest incident was on an airplane.) As I found my seat in the small theatre, I could have been mistaken for taking the seat already occupied by the woman in the next seat. When she re-arranged herself, her coat and her pocketbook, I was able to sit -- only to encounter the challenge of the armrest between our seats. As I tried to get comfortable, my arm settled on the armrest only to be bumped by hers. And then came the unexpected.

This is a re-working of my blog from November 2015. Still true. I needed the reminder.

  I am in charge of laundry.    

 Growing up, my parents spoke Yiddish to one another when they did not want my brother, sister, or I to know what they were discussing. My parents didn’t know, however, that I slowly began to understand Yiddish and, ultimately, could understand what they were saying to one another. I would, secretly,  then tell  my brother and sister what was being said. I didn’t tell my parents  about my secret ability to understand their Yiddish conversations until I was married with my own family.  

I was at the pool when I peaked at my emails. My good friend Paul (the one married to Victoria) posted an alert from FOX News to Gotham RockRap listerve:  

This is an official warning for all users of canned hair spray.   A Washington state woman returned to her car after work to discover a can of hairspray had exploded and embedded itself in her windshield. Temperatures in the area were only in the low 90s.  

As our communication systems evolve and become ever more sophisticated I believe actual communication suffers.  When I was young we had telephone operators who said "Number please?" and shared our telephone service on a "Party Line".  In those days talking (or just listening) was a treat and a long distance call was cause for excitement and shouting.  Now, alas, things are far different.  When the phone rings now I am told people (you know who you are)

I have been privileged to have been to the Western Wall in Jerusalem several times. There is an awesome and unavoidable sense of history and, for me, a holiness that encompasses the historical and more. There is a custom of inserting little slips of paper inscribed with personal notes, perhaps prayers, in the crevices of the Wall. It was reported that when Donald Trump visited the Wall earlier this week, he followed the custom of leaving a little piece of paper in a crack in the Wall.