At Atlanta's Inman Park Festival: Vivi marches to the beat of the band

The Inman Park Butterfly led the quirky and irreverent street parade this past weekend at Atlanta's annual Inman Park Spring Festival and Tour of Homes, a two-day celebration of parades, entertainment, dancing, and open houses the last weekend of April.

The city's largest street market featuring a juried arts and crafts show shared the route of knockout gorgeous Victorian mansions (marked by the coveted signature butterfly, a service mark of the Inman Park Neighborhood Assn., Inc. and attesting to restoration or renovation in compliance with historic elements).

Though now an intown Atlanta neighborhood, Inman Park was the first planned residential suburb developed in Atlanta, and it is officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

On the heels of the parade Butterfly, and in its 33rd year, the nation's oldest adult marching band — Abominable followed close behind.

The band, which brought the joy of the unexpected through music and street theater ... [went] marching along little streets for no reason except the loony joy of it. Music, drums, pageantry, unbidden, unbought. A moment of delight and generosity and laughter among humans."















The thousands of spectators lining the route went wild...













... clapping or jeering at signs...















... floats, more bands, police on bicycles, politicians, and a juggler on stilts (who told me, while bending v-e-r-r-r-y low, that he chills in Tel Aviv when traveling in the middle east!).















My friend Vivienne (Vivi), age 9, marched with fellow "Marching Abominables in-training," a group representing four local elementary school bands.















Sporting her mom's large straw hat (with flowers) and clad in a pink sequined (with faux fur) dress, Vivi's Teva sandals and leopard-framed shades served her well along the sunny one-mile route.















Nothing better follows a glorious afternoon running alongside a parade, meeting friends, and gorging on the sights: human, canine, garden, park, and handiwork — than sacking out from fun fatigue. Y'all, be sure to join the Inman Park Festival next last-weekend-of-April.

59 and counting: happy birthday Israel!

And our marching steps will thunder: We are here!. . .

In Israel, the week preceding Independence Day, Israeli flags sprout steadily, large and small — on cars, in windows, on doors, in gardens, on baby carriages, hanging from porches, and dropped from skyscrapers all the way down to first floors. A network of silent choristers chiming in, We are here!

The struggle to maintain independence — a life, a homeland, normalcy — is daily in concrete ways, and, for those for whom it is possible (for example, not serving on the fronts or not in the paralysis of grief or mourning for a loved one hurt, maimed, or killed in battle or an act of terrorism), it’s a joy to forget the existential reality for a few hours.

After yesterday's Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers and victims of terror, the Israeli flag at Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl was raised from its half-mast position after sunset, marking the transition from grief to celebration as the country rang in its 59th Independence Day.

This segue in national message and mood showcases celebrants nationwide flocking to events ranging from dancing and singing to prayer services and barbecues and from teach-ins to Times-Square-like revelries streaked by kids spray-painting shaving lotion (the significance of which totally eludes me).

Whatever. Happy, happy birthday. And endless more. Never ending. Everlasting. For eternity.

On Memorial Day in Israel, I remember Noam Mayerson, of blessed memory

Noam flanked by his younger brothers,

Yoni and Hilly, building a sukkah

In Jewish time, where each day begins with sunset, last night, a one-minute siren sounded at 8 p.m. everywhere in Israel. With this annual call, flags were lowered to half-mast and so began a day of meditation and remembrance of Israel's soldiers who fell in battle and of victims of terror.

Of this year's fallen soldiers, 119 were killed during the Second Lebanon War, among them St. Sgt. Noam Yaakov Mayerson, age 23, third child of five children of my beloved cousins Gila and Chaim. August 7, 2006, Noam was killed when Hezbollah terrorists opened fire on an IDF unit in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.

Noam grew up in Jerusalem, the son of an American-born (Dayton, Ohio) father and an Israeli-born mother. He studied in the yeshiva high school in Mitzpe Ramon and later in the hesder yeshiva in Eilat. Noam and Sara Ra’anan were to have been married September 10, 2006.

Chaim, his father, on learning that his son was killed:

Noam was a G-d-fearing person. The main thing for him was fear of Heaven, love of the Jewish nation and of the Land of Israel. He wanted to work in education or the rabbinate. He was full of energy, and he had a lot of friends.

Rabbi Hillel Rotkoff, one of Noam’s teachers at the hesder yeshiva:

He was a fantastic boy – a tour guide who loved the land. He loved the history of the Jewish nation, the nation that came back to its land, and the Torah he learned here. He had great faith and internal strength. [Of Noam’s commitment to protect his homeland:] He didn’t shy away from anything. Giving his life for the land was not just a slogan for him, but a way of life. And unfortunately, he did it.

See my previous post on how we all loved Noam.

Noam Mayerson is buried in Jerusalem in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl. Besides his parents, Noam is survived by his sister, Shira, and three brothers: Yehoshua, Hillel, and Yonatan. He also leaves a large and loving family and community, including nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, and students.

To honor Noam's life and to carry forward the work he barely started and did not merit completing, his parents, teachers, rabbis, and educators have joined in an exciting project. They intend to develop his educational vision and the experiential activities he created into a comprehensive guide to the land of Israel. A unique feature of the guide is its invitation to learners to study Torah with a hands-on or direct exploration of the physical, spiritual, and historical aspects of the land of Israel.

נעם בן גילה וחיים. יהי זכרו לברכה
Noam ben Gila vChaim. Yehi zichro l’vracha.
Noam, son of Gila and Chaim. May his memory be a blessing.

In Atlanta: Remembering Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes

Sunday, April 15, in some parts of the world, memorial services marked Holocaust Martyrs' and Heros' Remembrance Day. Israel fell silent as a two-minute siren sounded across the country at 10 a.m. Each year on this day, the nation is called to remember, to stop activity, and to stand to honor the 6 million slaughtered souls, among them 1.5 million children. The siren follows memorials at the Knesset (parliament) and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.

What is the sound of a siren? The media describe the siren sound as wailing. I disagree. A siren is a thing, not a human. And on this day especially, we need to be very clear about the difference between them. Today, we're addressing evil and responsibility, and, per Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, "Some are guilty; all are responsible."

When I am in Israel this day, listening to the siren — its sound strong, steady, and clear, I stand mute, wet-eyed, immersed in reflection, memory, resolve. If I am on the street and notice, I observe traffic stops, drivers and passengers step outside, and pedestrians freeze in place. Some people, usually foreign workers, continue their work. And I think, they probably have no idea why this siren is sounding, and that it calls us to respond in a special way.

Sometimes the street scene turns weird! From the blog, Karen Alkalay-Gut Diary:

The remembrance siren caught me driving [in Tel Aviv] on Gordon just before Dizengoff. My watch was wrong and I didn't know it was 10 a.m. I was taking Shusha to the kennel [to board during...] the conference, so when I opened the door to stand at attention she thought we had arrived somewhere and popped out. I didn't respond. She looked at me thinking I would direct her, warn her, but I was involved in tragedies, in thoughts. So she crossed the street and tried to look the lady standing at the gate in the eye. But the lady didn't look back. She crossed over again closer to Dizengoff, peering at first one and then another person standing at attention, clearly confused. A man at the door of his Mazda didn't notice that she jumped into his car and jumped out. It was a minute where she was the only thing moving on that busy street, and she bothered no one. But because I couldn't give my total attention to the awful history, and she was so curious and funny, it was the first time I didn't cry on Holocaust Day.

This year, with my friend Sherry, I observed the day in Atlanta, where more than 100,000 Jews call the metro area home. We headed for the Breman Jewish Heritage Museum to visit the exhibit, “Creating Community: The Jews of Atlanta from 1845 to the Present,” and then to listen to a concert dedicated 
to the memory of the victims of the Shoah.

Fascinated, we inched our way along the exhibit displays and video booth depicting Atlanta Jewish residents at prayer, at home, at work, and at play, and at building their own community and the community at large.

As with the region's many ethnic, religious, and racial minorities, Atlanta's Jews have experienced acceptance — and rejection and discrimination, and the exhibit artifacts and messages we saw and heard sparked memories of our experiences: mine, the Jewish experience and Sherry's the African-American experience.

Facing down terrorism at the front door long before 9/11. Sherry, a child growing up in rural Atlanta during the 1950s and 1960s, knows a thing or two of rejection and discrimination. The great-granddaughter of a slave, Sherry began her public school education in a segregated classroom, and with the advent of court-mandated integration, she was among the first students to integrate the local high school. The night before her first day in high school, her father — in response to a cross-burning on their yard and bomb threats by the Ku Klux Klan, stayed up the whole night with a shotgun on his lap. The next morning, as she and her sister — well-scrubbed and neatly dressed stood waiting for the school bus, the driver passed them, the white kids inside leaning out the window, screamed Nigger! Sherry's mother piled the children into the car and drove them to school where this gentle, soft-spoken woman told the principal, “I’ll take you to the US Supreme Court if the driver doesn't stop for my children.” He did.

We are here! The concert featured the prayer-poem Eli, Eli by Hannah Senesh that has become a folk song, in part, because of her courage and dignity in the face of torture and killing by a firing squad. Also featured were the Kaddish (mourner's prayer), the Hatikvah (Israeli national anthem), and the powerful Yiddish Partisans Hymn. Written in 1943, it became the unofficial song of Jewish partisans across occupied Europe.

Never say this is the final road for you.
Though leaden clouds may cover over skies of blue.
As the hour we have longed for is so near;
And our marching steps will thunder: We are here!
As the hour we have longed for is so near;
And our marching steps will thunder: We are here!. . .

Donovan meets US Senator Barack Obama in Atlanta

My friend Carolyn and I joined a crowd of 20,000 people at the Georgia Tech campus today. We came to listen to Barack Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate for the election 18 months away.

A marching band, singing, and the National Anthem preceded long-time Civil Rights activist and Southern Christian Leadership Conference co-founder, Reverend Joseph Lowery, who asked everyone to hold hands and bow their heads, and then gave the invocation.

Obama regaled the multiracial, multigenerational crowd by saying that before declaring his candidacy he checked with his two higher powers: God and his wife.

National challenges and proposed solutions. Among challenges facing the country, the candidate cited the lack of universal health care, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, and the petty politics in Washington. Also, a failing educational system, pollution, energy dependency, a sluggish economy, and the struggles of the middle class.

Obama outlined highlights of his political agenda: universal health care and more money for preventive medicine, raising the minimum wage and allowing more unions to organize, paying teachers more, and helping the U.S. automotive industry to increase fuel efficiency. The crowd cheered loudest when he condemned the war in Iraq. "But we're not going to be able to even get started on some of these problems unless we bring an end to this senseless war in Iraq," Obama said.

Remembering earlier struggles and campaigns. The rally evoked for Carolyn and me memories of our student years. I remembered hearing John F. Kennedy give a campaign stump speech in my girlhood neighborhood, New York City's Upper West Side. We both felt nostalgia for the wondrously heart-lifting and faintly dispiriting rallies and protest marches we participated in during the 1960s Civil Rights and Vietnam War era — I in Boston and she in South Carolina, Atlanta, and Washington, DC (in the 1969 March on Washington).

Reunion with Donovan! One of my sweet chance encounters today was bumping into Donovan (posing with me on the left). I met him, his mom, and younger brother, Davis, last summer at an interview with John Lewis, my Georgia US Congressman. (I took a photo of Davis at the interview, and added it to my previous blog entry on Incident, a powerful poem I was thinking about a lot during that dreadful summer when my cousin was killed.)

Donovan has big plans — attend law school, become mayor of Atlanta, then run for the US presidency. On hearing such an itinerary, Carolyn, an attorney, offered to visit his class (she does this often to encourage young people to explore law as a career) and gave the aspiring candidate her number. This evening, his mother emailed me this: "... Donovan did get a chance to meet Obama." Then she sent me the photo at the top of this post!

When the rally ended, Carolyn and I returned to the parking lot, where we ran into her son Daniel and girlfriend, Hila, on their way to study for exams. It was our second chance encounter; together, the encounters formed lovely bookends to a memorable early afternoon.

Feeling good inside about being an American. I don’t yet know who I’m supporting for the nomination. Yet so far, Obama is one of the candidates I’m following so I came to the rally for the chance to get a good look at him — what he says (and doesn’t say), the substance versus slogans that form his messages, and how he relates with people — his language, tone, attitude, sense of humor, and body language, which tell me what he thinks of himself and the rest of us.

At the rally, I was feeling good inside about being an American. I had a renewed sense and hope — the kind I had in the sixties, that seemingly intractable systems and priorities can change, and that we might embrace the prophet Mica's vision, as Reverend Lowery evoked in his prayer, that we "beat our swords into plowshares.” And I sensed and hoped that our government would increasingly model and reward equal respect and tangible encouragement to any Donovan — no matter the age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and faith tradition or none.

BlogHer Business 07 — I was there

The boats carry war-, world-, and sea-weary, freedom-craving, hope-filled immigrants. Among the millions that poet Emma Lazarus tagged “tired, poor and yearning to breathe free,” I picture my maternal grandparents and their two daughters — the sweet sixteen elder, my mother, arriving in New York City. To greet them, Lady Liberty, the "mighty woman with a torch... mother of exiles," was standing in the port harbor. Here, on Ellis Island, the great registry hall opened as an immigration station in 1892, and in the next 68 years it was in operation, agents processed 12 million immigrants.

Even today, arriving in the Big Apple by airplane, I think about my mother’s maiden journey here — what it might have been like; and then, her arrival and early years on its strange shores.

I got the word in Tel Aviv
So when I opened Elisa Camahort’s email invitation to volunteer at the BlogHer Business 07 conference March 22-23 in New York City, I pounded my fists into the Tel Aviv air, shouting “yes!” (I had been wrapping up my part-time life there — the balance I live in Atlanta; it’s a bihemispheral thing...) I thought, soon I will be returning to the city where I grew up… to participate in a conference that focuses on a medium… that helps me integrate my life in two hemispheres! And (surprise!) I blogged about the conference where more than 200 women (and about a dozen guys) would explore "How to Succeed in a Social Media World."

Brain overload: a good thing
Bright, savvy, engaging, sympathetic, experienced, and resourceful peers, mentors, and talented presenters addressed the evolving communications paradigms and technologies. From the opening keynote session on the State of the Social Media World, and throughout the case studies and breakout tracks on topics such as Should You Blog? the players identified and grappled with the key issues, questions, and solutions.

Petite Atlantans (l. to r.) Toby Bloomberg, me, and
Stephanie Roberts frame BlogHer panelist
and fellow blogger Penelope Trunk

Close ups
Among social media veterans and newbies, media and tech giants, mommy bloggers, professors, and students —

The traveling team: unflappable Kristin and Nathan, age 6 weeks, cuddled in mommy’s sling.

Ewan Spence, attired in a kilt, represented Scotland and The Podcast Network.

Vlogger Bill Cammack, whose BlogHerBiz conference views are among his site Categories.

Fellow volunteer — gentle, funny, soulful artist, and inspiration Jen Lemen.

Angela LoSasso, Home and Home Office Web Content Manager, Hewlett-Packard Company, who financed her college education by playing professional women's softball in Italy! [NOTE: For Angela's reply to my request for her review of this description of her athletic accomplishments, please see my comment at the end of this post.]

Roxanne Darling (coach, communicator, and systems analyst specializing in health and technology), who listed on one side of a business card, the essential tools for podcasting and sharing files on my blog.

Diversity
The mix of race and age (and species!) of participants — moderators, panelists, and discussion leaders was incredible, and I noted and thoroughly appreciated that many women (and men) were of color. Absolutely magnificent.

Yahoo! Corporate blog editor, Nicki Dugan; FastCompany.com senior editor, Lynne D. Johnson; and Weblogs, Inc. editor, Karen Walrond (all shown above) discussed How to Embrace the Social Media Culture.

Carmen VanKerckhove of New/Demographic and co-host of "Addicted to Race," a podcast series, shared how she is tackling "America's obsession with race."

Ja-Tun — singer, performer, and hip-hop artist took notes the first day until her multi-tasking mother, Professor Kim Pearson, arrived. This witty, fun, and hip writer and educator is "... interested in the use of interactive storytelling as a means of encouraging more informed and engaged civic participation."

To visit or revisit conference proceedings, click these transcriptions (blogged "live") and audio podcasts.

• State of the Social Media World

• Case Studies Lab: Four Successful Business Blog Case Studies — Why They Win and What You Can Take Away

• Track: How Do I Measure? How To Build Your Audience, How To Measure Social Media ROI, and An RFP for the Measurement Industry

• Track: How Do I Get It Right the First Time? Should You Blog? How to Embrace the Social Media Culture, and How to Keep Out of Real Trouble

• Track: How Do I Reach Out? The Press Release Must Die, Forget the A-List — Find Your Blogging A-List: Effective Blogger Relations, and I Have Enough Trouble With My First Life!
  

• Audio Podcasts for 4 General Sessions State of the Social Media World, Case Study Interviews, Making the Case to Engage, and Is the Ethos of the Social Media World Changing How We Conduct Business Online and Offline?
  

Kudos to co-founders and uber organizers Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, and Jory Des Jardins. Bouquets to event planning goddess Kristy Sammis. Bows to programming advisory committee members Maria Niles, Toby Bloomberg, Elana Centor, Susan Getgood, Marianne Richmond and Lena West.

Maria Niles reports that animal companion, Zoe,
much preferred the conference to a kennel.

"And you shall tell your son on that day וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ, בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר ..."

I woke up too late this morning to call all my wonderful family in Israel before the sun would set there, ushering in the weeklong Passover holiday. (Israel is seven hours ahead of Atlanta, where I am, and, in Jewish time, each day begins with sunset.)

Passover, which commemorates the flight of the ancient Israelites from bondage in Egypt "encodes the very matrix and rationale of Israelite national existence, and it becomes a sustained exercise in collective remembering," explains scholar Robert Alter in The Five Books of Moses.

I managed to speak with Chaim and then with Daniel, Channan, and Ditza who, with their families, will eat matzah, unleavened bread, to illustrate how our ancestors had no time to let their bread rise as they fled.

Exodus 13:8 commands us to retell the liberation story to our children each year. We tell the story at the ritual Seder meal, drawing the curriculum from the Haggadah.

וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ, בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר: בַּעֲבוּר זֶה, עָשָׂה יְהוָה לִי בְּצֵאתִי, מִמִּצְרָיִם, And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, For the sake of what the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt.

A few years ago, in Jerusalem, I listened to the brilliant biblical exegete and teacher Aviva Zornberg (see The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, among her other books) lecture on the holiday. She made a lot of its Hebrew name פֶּסַח, Pesach, which means "pass over or skip" (God "passed over" Israelites' homes on slaying Egypt's firstborn sons — the Tenth Plague) and "lamb" (the sacrificial offering made in the Temple on the holiday). Deconstructing פֶּסַח, Pesach, she suggested that the injunction to tell the story is encoded in its two syllables: פֶּ, Pe, which means mouth, and סַח, sach, which means say, relate, or tell. And so, the mouth says and tells and relates, eventually revealing the whole story.

This year, I'll be at Beit Soloway, the ever welcoming home of dearest friends Carolyn and David. Carolyn tells me she will know how many of her college freshman son's friends will join the Seder only when they arrive. ("Typical kids," explains my Job-like patient friend. "Waiting till the last minute for the best offer!") Meanwhile, she and David are heeding the call at the top of the Seder ceremony that we read in the Aramaic language of everyday life spoken when the Haggadah was compiled (between 280 CE and 360 CE):

כָּל דִּכְפִין, יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכוּל; וְכָל דִּצְרִיךְ לְפַסַּח, יֵיתֵי וִיפַסַּח, Let all who are hungry, come and eat! Let all who are needy come and celebrate the Passover with us.

Part of our Seder curriculum includes a Jewish martyrology, a recounting of resistance to persecution and conversionary pressures to "Pharaohs" over time and space.

Accordingly, some family members forwarded to me emails requesting Seder participants to add a prayer for the safe return of three Israeli soldiers abducted last summer by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and by Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen. The words of the prayer are aligned with a key holiday theme: the springing free of captives.

Imshin, a favorite Israeli blogger, posted a link to her Seder experience in 2002, when the suicide attack on Passover diners at a hotel in the Israeli city of Netanya killed 30 Israelis. Her post reveals Passover memories, histories, traditions, innovations, lessons, and symbols that mirror many of my own.

כָּל דִּכְפִין, יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכוּל; וְכָל דִּצְרִיךְ לְפַסַּח, יֵיתֵי וִיפַסַּח, Let all who are hungry, come and eat! Let all who are needy come and celebrate the Passover with us.

Warmest holiday greetings

To all who celebrate Passover, Easter, and the Prophet Muhammad's birthday,

During this season of the blessings of birth, rebirth, freedom, and hope, may we and all peoples dig deep within ourselves and our communities to learn our histories, teachings, customs, and traditions.

And in so doing, may we find understanding, compassion, and empathy — for ourselves and every "other." And in this process, may we pursue peace with our neighbors and justice for all, vigorously and relentlessly.

(Photo of Niki de Phalle's sculpture of Louis Armstrong in the exhibit
"Niki in the Garden" at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, 2006)