Thursday, September 17, 2020

HAPPY BIRTHDAY + HAPPY NEW YEAR

I am still rock and rolling my way through my birthday and onward to Rosh Hashanah which starts tomorrow night at sundown. My friend Laurie will come over. I am making chicken soup now. Laurie will bring the matzoh balls. I have the round challah and gefilte fish for Laurie. I never liked gefilte fish, even in Bubbe's house. 

 "How terribly strange to be 70." Ken once called me and sang those lines to me, maybe on his 70th birthday.  


I just heard Eddie Vedder's version of Masters of War for the first time. Powerful. Anger. Dylan wrote that in 1963. Then Eddie Vedder sang it at the 30 Year Anniversary show with the appropriate anger the song needed.

The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, 1993 is new to me this week. Ok, I'm behind. What a line up ! Music royalty, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, The Band, Stevie Wonder, Tracy Chapman, Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders, Tom Petty with some Heartbreakers, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and more. Read more about it here. Read the liner notes. I'm still processing it. All to celebrate Bob Dylan's 30 years in the music business ! And he looks non-plussed throughout while all the other musicians look at him with reverence. It must have been very intense for him. 

I signed up for the Bob Dylan Newsletter on my 70th birthday. :-) They asked for your age range. I just made the cut...lol.

Per usual my thoughts go backwards on these holidays. Memories from being at Bubbe's house. My chicken soup is on the stove and is just like hers except I add fresh ginger along with the carrots and onions and garlic. More on that later.

Bubbe, 1962 (?) photo in the Sandler apartment on Stratton St. in Dorchester. The table is set, white tablecloth, in the living room. I think this was Passover. She died not too long after this picture was taken. 

FIRST DAY OF ROSH HASHANAH 9.19.20

TISHREI 5781

I just finished Rosh Hashanah services, via Zoom with the synagogue next door, TBZ, Temple Beth Zion. As a child I remember going to the Woodward Avenue shul with Shirley and sitting next to Bubbe, first row of the balcony where all the women sat. I loved it, I thought we had the best seat in the house :-) After services, we walked over to Bubbe's house for another delicious Rosh Hashanah lunch eating the food from the night before. The table groaned it was so full. Tzimmes, gefilte fish, chicken soup, brisket, chicken - I do not recall a green vegetable :-) For dessert, we had a choice of sponge cake or honey cake and rugulach. I still love rugulach. The cast of characters around the table: Bubbe, Zaidy, Shirley, me, Aunt Ruth and Ken. After eating, Ken and I played endless games of fish and war and ken always won. Somehow he always had the aces ! :-) And then we got sent home with lots of leftovers. Bubbe cooked enough for an army. Shirley once told me "there had to be enough food for leftovers because if all the food was eaten, Bubbe thought she didn't cook enough !"

1962-63

"Masters of War" is a song by Bob Dylan, written over the winter of 1962-63 and released on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the spring of 1963. The song's melody was adapted from the traditional "Nottamun Town". Dylan's lyrics are a protest against the Cold War nuclear arms build-up of the early 1960s


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