County Fair!

At some point, I'm going to catch you all up on the various stuff I've been doing in my life over the past, oh, month or so, but I'll just tell you this for now:

After going to second-day Rosh Hashana services today, Lis and I went out to the Topsfield Fair, which is, very simply, a good old fashioned county fair -- I believe it's the oldest annually-running county fair in the country.

Rides, carny games, really bad-for-you food, maple sugar cotton candy (which was just as much fun as regular cotton candy, but actually had FLAVOR, too, making it even better), apple cider donuts, racing pigs, bull riding demonstrations, raptors, an agricultural-product-detecting beagle who works for Customs at Logan airport, llamas, sheep, cattle, flowers, a 1314.8 pound pumpkin (the largest in New England -- it was seriously a pumpkin the size of a Volkswagen -- Cinderella could easily have ridden inside), Clydesdales, a rabbit and guinea pig barn, a poultry barn.

I like the Topsfield fair.

Anyway, the poultry barn was awesome. Tons of prizewinning chickens (of several breeds), ducks (of several breeds), geese, turkeys, pigeons, a few brightly-colored pheasants.

On the way out, I was looking at the "best of show" goose. First off, I was rather disturbed to notice that the sucker had fricken' TEETH. I mean, its beak was serrated -- it had TEETH. Looked scary. I mean, it looks exactly like a feathered dinosaur, but meaner. Lis keeps yelling at me when I say, "You remember -- that goose had TEETH!" because she's trying to block out the traumatic memory.

Anyway, as we were walking out past the "best of show" birds, I heard a small boy walk up behind me.

He said: "Wooah! That's a big chicken!"

So, a couple things about Hebrew School

Hebrew school has been going on for three weeks, now. I have been INTENDING to tell y'all about stuff, since, well, a lot of you mainly read this lj for my cute stories about teaching Hebrew school, and my fun bartending stories, and I haven't tended bar regularly for over a year now.

Some basic stuff. Rafi, my former boss, is now teaching at Kesher full-time, and isn't at our Hebrew school any more. I miss him, because he's cool and all (and he's now married, as of the middle of August, and they look all newleywedy together, and they seem like the sort of people who will continue to look newleywedy together long after they have great-grandchildren), but the school's doing okay without him. We're also working without Mark, who was my boss TWO years ago, and was very happy to turn the educational director job over to Rafi, and just become a regular teacher. But he gave up teaching here in order to focus on politics in Somerville. Still, they're both around, and are going to be available for substitute teaching and stuff, which is good, because the kids miss them. And, y'know, so do I. Of course, we all got to at least exchange hugs and catch up outside of Rosh Hashana services today and yesterday.

Isaac also retired, in order to spend more time with his great-grandchildren, and to focus more on running community outreach stuff to the Russian immigrant community at Temple B'nai Moshe. And to do lots of other stuff there -- I think he's helping run THEIR Hebrew school.

Y'know that whole joke about how Jewish communities just don't interact with each other and are mutually hostile? Not so much true in Boston. People don't so much choose one and diss all the others, so much as over-commit to multiple shuls and have to pull back and spend their time with just two or three of 'em. I mean, me, personally -- I've got connections with B'nai Moshe, Temple B'nai Brith, Tremont Street Shul, Chavaurat Shalom, Congregation Eitz Chayyim, B'nai Or, and Cherie Koller-Fox, who is her own community just by herself. Among others. That's a pretty typical list.

Anyway, this looks like it's getting long enough to deserve a ( cut tag )