As next week approaches and I have yet to create a piece of writing for either anthology, I feel the pressure to work on this digital story I have been playing with this week. Last night, exhausted, I got more serious, especially when I put myself on the line and announced that I would have it ready to be shared with the SI on Thursday, our last day. The RF are charged with sharing sentence descriptions of their writing group members…I should add them, I feelings about them…and for Mary…

So I am in the writing zone. I am now always writing it, in front of this screen, in the shower, riding in the car, in a conversation. I am writing a bit, moving to something else, coming back, looking/thinking about photos and video and recorded voice pieces I have and then back again. THat’s how I’ve become comfortable with this creating. I wanted to use Girl from Ipanema for the music or a piece by my Asad brothers and the crazy violinist they teamed up with a few years ago… Can’t decide yet. I won’t know until I have enough to put this on the computer. And I have a new mic to use for this one…

And I just found out my major computer has arrived. It’s waiting for me in the Dean’s Office. My hands are shaking. Two new computers, am I a tech pig???

Back to writing first hand. What fun!

Tuvia is joining me next Thursday for a sleep over at the Minnewaska Lodge and for the end of the celebratory reading at Rebecca’s.

I am writing my DS piece slowly and steadily. It’s now always with me and I am no longer uptight about not staying with it from start to finish. I take it in the rhythm that seems comfortable.

I have been buidling my piece, and finally as I near the end I read it aloud to Tuvia and to myself.  I like it.  He got it and I could hear where it needs to be tighter and clearer.

I can’t wait to begin the voice-over to see what I need to do with it and I selected lots of photos to choose from after I have the VO moving.  I know the music I want. I hope it works.

Zaddie
B. L. Kaplan
My Zaddie was very religious. I don’t ever remember seeing his head without his hat or a yarmulke or both, which made perfect sense to me, because I often watched him sitting in his lounge chair in the kitchen softly rocking and chanting prayers, as my Bubbie cooked her family-famous chicken fricassee for Rosh Hashonah or Passover, the two holidays we spent with my mom’s family in Toronto. I’m sure the separation from her parents was hard on her, but the trip from Ellenville took eight hours in a car with three kids who could get car sick one after the other,
Conversations were difficult with Zaddie. He prayed in Hebrew, and even though he understood English, at home, with his family, he was most comfortable speaking Yiddish with just a sprinkling of English. My mom could understand him, but my brothers and I were lost in any lengthy conversation or even when he told us a story. My mom would have to translate the climatic moment. Maybe that just added to his appeal, because my strongest memory of my Zaddie was our walks to his neighborhood synagogue, which was just a room in someone’s house where he and a group of men davined together.
They sat around a huge table or moved off by themselves for private communion with G_d. I sat next to Zaddie and was handed a sidur by one of his friends. I was glad that I was attending Hebrew School and Saturday services back home, but these prayer books had no English translation on the left side of the page. Zaddie would every so often gently turn a page if I fell behind and move his index finger right to the spot for me to follow, but it really didn’t matter, I was just there to enjoy his world of social prayer. It wasn’t enough for him to sit in the kitchen and pray alone, he needed his community to raise their voices together in celebration.
Of course, there were only men in his community. My Bubbie was home cooking with the other wives. I knew that I was there because even though I was his granddaughter and he was proud to have me with him, I was not yet a woman and when I would begin to flower I would not be welcome even to tag along as a visitor. But I loved watching my Zaddie with his congregation. Unlike our synagogue at home, this group of 25 men took turns leading the services without an official rabbi. In this room, without any spoken directions, everyone seemed to participate in the act of prayer
Maybe what I loved about this community, was what I strove for in the classrooms I created as a teacher, where my students could feel part of a community that respected their unique voices and even though I was the teacher in charge, we were all in the learning together. Maybe that’s what I took from my Zaddie.

Stan the Man
B.L. Kaplan
As a kid, music was handed to me. My mom set up piano lessons for me with a Kenny Berg, who played piano in the Nevele Hotel band about 5 minutes from our house. He was friendly, but uninspiring. I never moved too far beyond Row, Row, Row Your Boat with him and the piano my parents bought was old and ready to be put out to pasture, way before it was lugged into our den.
In the 4th grade, I was handed a clarinet by my new, cute music teacher, Mr. Stellato, who needed to fill up his woodwind section. I don’t remember being asked what I’d like to play but I did like a jazz tune that Mr. Stellato played for us as he explained that Benny Goodman called his clarinet a licorice stick. It did look like a licorice stick. I tried one out, took it home and learned the basics; I even took private lessons from Mr. Stellato in the summers, but I never practiced. I just whipped off the dust-layered case the morning of a lesson and blew through it to warm up the reed. When I played it, it always sounded muffled, like my notes were encased in cotton. I’m sure that Mr. Stellato knew I wasn’t practicing, but he was fun in the summer. He wore jeans and played tunes on his soprano sax that looked like a clarinet but sounded much better.
Ironically, even though I didn’t practice at home I was moving up in his band: first row, third chair. But I knew that no matter how far I got, I would NEVER enjoy playing the clarinet and even though I loved listening to Benny Goodman play his “licorice stick”, I would never work hard enough to come close to his clear sound.
But one summer at my grandfather’s bungalow colony, Oakwood Cottages, we met the Cherry Hill Hotel Band, at the top of our road, composed of four college guys majoring in music, who were looking for some experience and a vacation. Alan Ginsburg, not be confused with the poet, played clarinet and sax, as most woodwind players did in bands. He played tenor sax and I fell in love with Alan and with his sax. Sax players knew how to make their instruments wake up the sexual yearnings of their fans, but I really fell in love with the tenor and on my birthday, Alan had the best gift, an album featuring Stan Getz, an amazing tenor sax musician who had recently rocked the world with The Girl From Ipanema. I fell in love with Stan the Man and his sax. I still liked Alan.
I needed to get rid of the clarinet and when I got back to school Mr. Stellato was thrilled. He wanted a sax player for the band, but not a tenor sax player. He lugged down from the top shelf in the band room, a baritone sax. I could barely lift the case and when he assembled it for me, I couldn’t even reach all the keys. Thank God! I didn’t want to play the thing and now that I had a lover, I resolved not to rest until I could play like Stan the Man.
I did get a tenor. Its case was a suitcase as well, but a bit lighter and it housed my treasure and learning to play it was the highlight of my adolescence.
One morning my mom was downstairs housewifing as I practiced up in my room. She suddenly interrupted,” Bonnie, who’s up there with you?”
“What?” Oh, you mean Stan? He’s here. I went back to playing the Girl From Ipanema, thrilled.
A soft knock on the door as I continued, and my mom entered watching me play.
“Bonnie, you are playing along with a record and it sounds like you are playing with a person.”
Yeah, Stan Getz.”
“That’s fantastic! I was sure there was someone else up here.” She laughed.
“Really? She was proud.
“Mom,(pause) do you think that we could talk about maybe, one of these days, me getting my own sax and taking private lessons from someone really good?”
She smiled. “We should talk about this with your dad.”