People with disabilities face many personal mountains to climb every day, some visible, but many hidden.Together, 27 people used both their collective physical and mental strength, diverse abilities, musical/dancing skills, and senses of humor to make each inch of Kilimanjaro Accessible Together!
What a great day! We are almost 2 hours in to 12 hours of free video coverage of Fare Thee Well!
This weekend marks the 5th anniversary of the famous Fare Thee Well Grateful Dead reunion in Chicago. As Relix associate editor, Raffaela Kenny-Cincotta noted in her recent “3 from the 7” podcast, “the videos of the shows have been living in Peter Shapiro’s vault.” Today, the videos of the 3 shows are being livestreamed for all to enjoy, free of charge, from noon til midnight today. There is full concert footage as well as parking lot, Shakedown Street and more.
I was lucky enough to be there—to see the historic shows, and to write an article for JTA and other publications about Jam Shalom and their crew who love traditional Jewish observance as much as they enjoy music festivals. The editor chose the clever title, “Touch of Pray: Celebrating Shabbat and the Grateful Dead.
My biggest challenge for today? How to get in as much concert watching as possible during a day of tutoring and other meetings.
Enjoy!
I come from a family where birthdays are nice but they aren’t the absolute biggest deal in the world. A meaningful birthday would be receiving some nice handmade birthday cards, perhaps a nice sweet treat, and most importantly, secretly telling the family chef what we’d like for our “special Shabbat dinner” on the upcoming Friday. In contrast, there are people and families where each and every birthday is HUGE! Everyone for miles knows about it, brings gifts, calls and emails, decorates doors or even puts up lawn signs.
Some people also enjoy people acknowledging their birthdays on Facebook. For years, I smiled happily when people wished Happy Birthday on Facebook. I was happy when I got over 100 birthday wishes on an average year. But I didn’t personally write back to each person, and I didn’t check daily to see who was celebrating a birthday that day.
This year, I vowed to do better. Every day for the past three months—since my last birthday—I have made my first appointment “FB Bdays.” As soon as I turn on my computer early each morning, I go to Facebook, check birthdays, and wish each friend a happy birthday.
I assume it makes them happy. I have found it a wonderful way to check in with each and every Facebook friend throughout the year—1 or 2 or 6 at a time—nearly every day of the year. It is heartwarming to connect with very old friends, and sometimes just a drop embarrassing when we can’t exactly remember who a certain person is. While making it through an entire year of wishing friends Happy Birthday may not be as big of an accomplishment as making it through the entire Talmud in 7 years, it sure is a good feeling.
So friends, if I haven’t wished you happy birthday yet, chances are I will—in the next 9 months.
Happy Birthday!
At 7:30 pm tonight, I expect to see 40 plus excited Tikvah participants from across the US and Canada on Zoom, ready to participate in our 2nd of 12 virtual vocational training sessions. The National Ramah Tikvah Network is pioneering a program for participants and alum of our job training programs, known in various camps as Ezra, Atzmayim and Voc Ed. We will be meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 pm to learn job skills, soft skills of a job, to do hands-on projects, and to hear from alum of our programs who describe their current jobs, living situations, Jewish involvement and social lives. The participants will also have time at the end to socialize—and sing the “wind down the day song” of each camp, Rad Hayom.
In our first session, participants and staff introduced themselves, learned about Zoom, and learned about goals and goal-setting. Tonight, we will experiment with breakout room so we can have smaller group discussions and more individualized instruction as we make cards for front line workers.
From our discussions with colleagues at the Foundation for Jewish camp, at other camps and at Task Force on Disabilities for the UJA-New York, it seems we are perhaps the first to move our robust in-person summer training programs online. We are taking careful notes and look forward to sharing “lessons learned.” For now, off to prepare for an animated, action-packed hour with awesome young adults from Toronto, Chicago, Boston, New York, Los Angeles and lots of other cities and towns!
