Bad Graffiti In Colchester

Just very upsetting. You take a nice ride to a beautiful spot and some asshole has written stupid stuff on the message board. Bad enough that we have to deal with the annoying and invasive Eurasian Milfoil, but that someone felt compelled to diss the cops at this location has to give you pause. Probably some libertarian who didn’t have a fishing license. But when virulent wall writing makes it to a little boat drop in Colchester, something be truly amiss,

Lena Levine

Lena took gas, according to George. She discovered her husband played around and took her own life. She lies in OZ’s hallowed cemetery.

Very hard explaining to UVM students studying death and dying the Jewish way that the religion prevents suicide victims from burial in consecrated ground without knowing how or why she got there. Someone wanted her beauty to live on, putting her image on the stone.

Lizz Winstead

Not funny enough. Dated. Lazy. Feminist slant without explaining where it was coming from or why. She had some ready to do local humor from the stupid runoff elections that were recently voted down to the farmers market, which she says she is a fan of, which was packed with girls covered with ink on Saturday morning, and didn’t touch it. Just the same bull about how cool Burlington purports to be which it isn’t, though it isn’t bad, so long as you don’t really ask what is going on.

Continue reading “Lizz Winstead”

Images of Ben Stein

Ben Stein, architect and artist died in January 2010. I didn’t know him. OZ, my Shul, will feature some of his drawings and water colors in a show this summer. The art will be offered for sale, prices to be determined by the buyer. Today, I took some pictures of his work for the press release. They are on my photosite, www.duckshots.smugmug.com in the Art section. The proceeds will go to some youth activity, probably the religious school.

I may get to do more, like the brochure or poster, but who knows with that place. Someone probably has it covered. They live deeply in the past with their media, among other things. David brown and the other photographers must have turned the assignment down. They have a web based newsletter and a hard copy, but neither has images or graphics of note. There will be something like a cost factor which no one will have actually costed out except for the actual cost or a boundary between committees or the hired help or the ones who volunteer for discounts or some other category I haven’t become privvy to that will reassign the tasks. But who knows.

Everything is so mysterious at that place, a condition not unlike the entire religion. Hard to tell what the deal is there. It could be a modern congregation with a social conscience or just a vestige of the past, another fading Jewish institution burying the old, marrying the daughters, and bar/bat mitzvahing the young. Lashon hora is all too omnipresent. And before you hear the answer to a question or understand a facial expression or seating arrangement, its a long story.

I do have a place to pray and am part of the community, but I pay for it.