Oh, hello! You’re still here?

As you can see, I’m posting more frequently again following an extended absence off enjoying family events and travelling and the planning of both. Being away for mostly that entire period, I rediscovered how much I prefer off-line pursuits. Yes, the Internet is a wonderful, sometimes magical place, but learning how to balance online and offline activities has always been a challenge for me. I tend to dive into things and it takes me a while to come back to center; sometimes this process can take a long time and this latest and much-needed away time has been a terrific “reset” button. This isn’t to say that I ditched the Internet, just that outside of my working life  I have greatly reduced my online activity.

In preparation for my vacation I turned down all the digital background noise to a minimum as much as possible. I unsubscribed or dropped to weekly digests a number of online newsletters I regularly follow (only two have made it back so far), stopped forwarding nonessential emails from my other email accounts to my phone and uninstalled phone apps that were diverting my attention. And that’s still pretty much the situation today. Less distraction and more focus.

But seriously, Facebook, you are teh devil.

(If you need a “reset” button, feel free to grab mine.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

Google Maps Street View comes to…

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem!

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(I am so not going to get a thing done this weekend.)

via Lior Haner via Miriam Schwab on Facebook

And in Today’s Weather…

May 14th and we’ve had rain all morning after a thunderstorm last night . If you’re local, you know just how unusual this is.

Not wet paint, but wet!

Happy as a …

Regardless:

1. Flipflops were out in full force
2. The Tropical Garden at Ganei Yehoshua was oddly closed due to the rain. What’s the point of that? Rain is what tropical gardens do best!

Better shared!

Grindel, Hamburg, Germany

Names of the Deported

An Apartment Building In Hamburg

During our visit to Hamburg over Passover last year we walked many times from our hotel in Rotherbaum to various parts of nearby Grindel, the old Jewish area of the city. Along our route we saw brass plaques embedded in the sidewalk noting the names of Jews who lived in these houses and whom the Nazis deported to Riga and elsewhere. Deported, it states on these plaques, nothing more. These plaques also raise questions. Who were the other people who lived in these houses? Were they non-Jews who heard their neighbors being taken away, never to return? Did they help their Jewish neighbors in some way? Did they turn them over for transportation? Questions, questions.

In certain parts of the city, other reminders of World War II literally loom overhead and stand witness to the horrific suffering inflicted on the German population. Looking back through the comfortable distance of nearly 70 years in time, it’s easy to forget that had these terrible acts of war not taken place, our world today would be a very different place.

There’s no denying that throughout our pleasant stay in the city, for me there was also an undercurrent of unease. Even watching the countryside pass by during our 5-hour train ride to Frankfurt raised uncomfortable feelings. As a second-generation American Jew and one generation removed from the Holocaust, I believed I would be less affected by this trip. I was wrong.

Honey? Have You Seen My Sunglasses?

Now with Google Map!

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Better shared!