found out last night that it was rosh hashanah, the jewish new year, and quick texted some of my relatives who are jewish to wish them l'shana tovah. Of my ten kids, two are jewish, and one is half jewish, but of my nine grandchildren three are jewish and two are quarter-jewish, if that makes any sense.

i remember my days of involvement with judaism well, and i remember that on rosh hashanah one blows the shofar, wishes everyone a l'shana tovah (said in many different ways and spellings), and in general enjoys the feeling of a new year. from there it gets more serious until by yom kippur, it's a very solemn time and one can't really say, "happy yom kippur," because there's nothing happy about it. it's so solemn and serious that the best you can do is wish someone "gut yomtov" which is more like have a good holiday. anyway the time to express good wishes is now with the blowing of the shofar, and lots of other religions are in with the idea of having a holiday right as the weather changes and becomes beautiful for a short window.

today though it's raining, and it turns out that two of the step-grandchildren were in a track meet in galesburg, so i went over there, and saw them. i wished them both a l'shana tovah as they are two of the three that are fully jewish. but they had no clue what i was talking about so i gave them a mini-lecture kind of like what you see above, telling what little i actually know (and the year? what year is it, 5736?) and pretty soon their eyes were rolling in a very subtle way though they politely listened to everything i said. on some level they have to hear a little bit of the jewish culture though i'm not blaming their parents who are overworked and stressed, and probably just can't take them down to the temple every week like one might expect. my stepdaughter i think agreed to convert and bring them up jewish but wasn't totally prepared for all that entailed and that might become evident if and when they start thinking about bat mitzvahs. Nevertheless it's their business not mine and i'm not one to tell them what their priorities should be.

really i'm in it more for myself, because in my own mind, it's a good time of year to reflect on the summer that's passed, and the year that's passed, and reach out and connect to people, especially jewish people who are in whatever way trying to be jewish in an overwhelmingly non-jewish world. i refrain from wishing them a l'shana tovah on facebook because i have a number of arabic and palestinian friends who are suffering from the knowledge that it's basically war in israel, much like i wouldn't wish a ukrainian a happy russian armed forces day. it's better to stay out of stuff like that, and of course i have strong feelings both ways so no sense in even dredging it up.

only to say, as the leaves change color and begin to fall, it's nice to know that the world is giving up and going to winter up here, in all hopes and expectation that it will all come back in the spring, and as the shofar sounds we can enjoy the fact that we made it to another one, as i do every birthday, i'm still around, alive to see another turn of the earth. to good health in the new year to all!

a crippling heat has settled over the area; it's only 90 (feels-like of 103) but it's too much for me and i'm trying to stay indoors and avoid it. i have a lot of outdoor work to do but just don't really feel like going out in it.

worst of all, it's so dry that the corn i can see is drying and browning out in the fields. i don't know if this makes it inedible or what. it just seems terrible. with florida getting all this water, and burning man flooding, here the corn is shriveling up and cooking out in the fields.

but it will only last a day or two, then back to cooler fall temps, and a steady moderation that fortunately we can count on at least up to now. a friend asks why we are not the world leader in oil production anymore and i feel like saying, 'don't look at it as the hottest year in the last hundred, look at it as the coolest year in the next hundred.' but i don't argue politics with people. being an oil producer is important to him, and he probably gets support from his friends for his complaint. such people are steadily aggrieved at the nature of the modern world, and not ready to go electric.

we're going to get solar panels on our roof; soon we will be buying solar power from the people who put them there. i'm a little apprehensive about how this is all going to come about but apparently it's free; the installation is covered by a state program and the power, once generated, is cheaper than that provided by the local utility. my brother, something of a solar, clean-energy expert, is a little dubious. You're going to buy power from these people who you've let occupy your roof? he thinks we should own them outright. but we have no patience for taking care of them, and don't know how to install them, and therefore are grateful that someone is just going to take care of it and lower our bills. it will all be done as a general process of going solar and going clean, that needs to be taking over the land.

if solar panels will keep even a little bit of that sun off our roof, and give us energy to cool or heat the place, i'll consider us lucky.