Shabbat shalom

Blossoms before the last frost

That, of course, assumes we will have more frosts this year. I am playing rather good odds. I have not forgotten my first spring in Albuquerque when I waited until mid-April and planted tomatoes on Maundy Thursday. How was I to know? They were on sale everywhere in the garden centers.

On Good Friday it snowed.

My tomatoes survived, a bit traumatized. One vine made it, one never did much, and my cherry tomatoes bloomed and produced well into the fall.

I now know to wait another month. Mid-May is tomato planting season here.

But these are lovely blossoms. Having worked where I work in three successive autumns, it is nice to see the place during springtime. (Yeah, yeah, late winter, but tell that to the trees on these sunny warm days.) I took this photo during lunch hour today.

"Adult beverage" is a phrase much bandied about among my co-workers these days. It is Friday evening and I have been indulging in an adult beverage. Actually, I am mostly through my very strong second adult beverage. Rather pleasant, I must say.


[Let us note that I am safely home and the car in the garage, so no DUI behavior is involved.]

May you all have a lovely weekend.

Tomorrow I cook an Armenian meal, the way my mother and neighbor Gladys taught me, and then some friends and I will go to see Antigone performed at the Vortex.

This play by Sophocles had a profound impact on me when I was in the tenth grade. I was pondering the words and deeds of Dr. King, who led me in turn to Gandhi and Tolstoy. For very deep theological reasons I was convinced there are higher values than the state or societal norms to which we must answer. A classmate and I performed for our social studies class the scene where Antigone and Creon argue. I very much look forward to tomorrow night's performance. I have read it a few times in between but this may be the first live performance I have ever witnessed.

Shabbat shalom.

CREON:
And yet you dared to overstep these laws?

ANTIGONE:
Because it wasn't Zeus who pronounced these
things to me, nor did Justice, companion
of the gods below, establish such laws
for humanity. I would never think
your pronouncements had such strength that, being
mortal, they could override the unwritten,
ever-lasting prescriptions of the gods,
for those aren't something recently made, but
live forever, and no one knows when they
first appeared. I did not intend to pay
the penalty to the gods for violating
these laws in fear of some man's opinion,
for I know I will die. How could I not,
Even if you had not proclaimed it? But
if I die before my time, I say this
is an advantage. Anyone who lives
a life of sorrow as I do, how could
they not count it a blessing to die?
Therefore, there is no pain for me in meeting
this fate, whereas if I were to endure
that one born from my mother die unburied,
that would cause me pain. As it is, I feel
nothing. If, however, I seem to you
to have acted foolishly, then perhaps
I owe my foolishness to a fool.

Antigone by Sophocles
--the BB