A Happy Announcement!

The beloved and I got married on Friday! We went to the County Clerk's office with friends of ours as witnesses, and did it all in a small and pleasant way, and had a very good time of it. Our witnesses are married to eachother and know everything about wine, and they took us out for a really splendid lunch afterward. So in the happy glow of food and wine and friendship and legal marriage, the beloved husband and I arrived home to take a long comfortable nap together, then scamper off to Erev Rosh Hashanah services. The Jewish New Year starting the evening of 9-18-09, fortunate numbers referring to "Life" made the day irresistible to us as a time to get married. (The Hebrew letter "chai" is the 18th letter in the alphabet, and used in the word for life. A good letter, a good number. I'm not explaining this as well as it could be explained....)

So we are starting a new year well! I am an Orthodox Christian, but I do enjoy the Jewish High Holy Days. They make a great deal of sense I think, as a friendly gentile observer. A big happy party to usher in the new year, then the first ten days of the year are spent pondering the previous year and what you want to do differently this year, then Yom Kippur, a twenty-four hour repentancefest. Now I like Great Lent in my own tradition, but it is forty days in early spring which is just a rough time of year already, and the Menaion (sorta a day-by-day liturgical guide) can get just nutsy about what is to be done when and how to observe what minor feast day. And this is all before you get to Holy Week..... The excitement drama and irritation can be good fun and spiritually beneficial, but some years it just spins up into a vast unclear penitential circus. I really like one solid twenty four hours where the focus is very clear, and the liturgy clearly leads you through it all. Over forty-plus days of Great Lent, my attention can and does wander. Accompanying my beloved through the twenty four hours of Yom Kippur, even as I discreetly don't fast, is strengthening. And then a few days after Yom Kippur Sukkot starts, and goes for some days. How cool is that? A holiday where you build a pleasant little outdoor pavilion in which you hang out with friends and family and be happy about life and eat good food.

That is the way to start a new year! And, I think, a new marriage.

More Fine Austen Pastiche!

Well! Those charmers at Quirk Classics, the people who brought the world *Pride and Prejudice and Zombies*, have just brought out *Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters*! And a merry read it is! More liberties were taken with the setting, steampunkly so, and as always, Austen's greatness shines through. Really, I like these pastiches far better than the usual ones, that usually demonstrate by their drabness the excellences of what they try to imitate. I usually toss that sort aside and think--well that's time I won't get back. Not so with Quirk Classics' efforts. By their very ridiculousness of setting, they show a much greater affection and understanding of Austen's work. I can't help but imagine Austen herself would like them.

Now if only someone would do Agatha Christie pastiches where Jane Marple is a biker in a post-apocalyptic world....

Vengeance

I certainly enjoyed Tarantino's *Inglourious Basterds*. A slaughter fest of Nazis is a fun fantasy revenge. A better one, a far better one, I will see soon.

At the Hillel where the beloved worships, there is a Holocaust scroll--a Torah scroll that survived the destruction of its community, found its way to Westminster, and was subsequently sent out to another congregation. The last Torah reading of Yom Kippur will be read out of just that scroll. All the children, as well as anyone else who wishes to look at it, will be invited up to gather around during the reading. Seeing that scroll, that had been meant for a display in a Nazi "Museum of An Extinct People," surrounded by happy healthy wise young Jews, is the best vengeance possible.

Living well *is* the best revenge.

Just Thinking....

Part of what I like about magic is how very human it is. There are no drugs I know of to take to make one a better magician, no one is trying to invent ways for computers to perform magic independently of a human operator, no one "samples" videos of other magicians' performances and expects that to be treated as an original creation. An actual person does it in front of other actual people, and maybe a camera. I really like that.

Well! More Official By The Day

Well! The beloved and I now have a marriage license and a date upon which we shall make our relationship a legally recognized entity by the government. Gracious....

I'm not one of those women who has thought long and hard about what they wanted their "special day" to be like. The beloved and I are planning to hold the big family-and-friends party thing in about two years, so that will give us a chance to think about it.

We have been together for years now, and for years have been planning on looking after eachother until one of us dies, so I'm not expecting that a change in the legal status of our union will make *that* much difference, but longterm gay couples of our acquaintance who married during the brief period they were able to do so say it does. Well, we will see....