Snow at dawn from my home

 

Ruth's beautiful table | Lunch and Lounge

 

Volunteer effort/ EDCJCC and Homes Not Borders

Every 10th birthday year I celebrate by rededicating myself to service. Instead of creating a large group effort like I did when I turned fifty and sixty, Ruth and I chose to work with the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center's Morris Cafritz Center for Social Responsibility to find a project we could help out with. Mira Smith of the EDJCC referred us to Homes Not Borders (HNB), which assists refugee families in our area.

Along with a dedicated volunteer crew from the JCC, we set up an apartment in Landover, Maryland for a newly arrived Afghan refugee family of four. Covid health precautions were observed.

All the furniture, furnishings, kitchenware, home supplies, and food staples were donated in the process by the volunteers and HNB. I was asked to do some photographs (sigh), but spent most of my time moving and organizing stuff. Ruth set up the kitchen; dishes, foodstuffs, utensils, cleaning supplies, microwave, etc.

This work had special meaning as my own father came to America as a refugee from Nazi Germany in 1937.

Thanks to Mira Smith of the JCC and HNB founder/executive Laura Thompson Osuri for this opportunity to help others.

It was a very good day.

Note: These photos are chronological, from the start at HNB's warehouse to the finished apartment, ready for a family to move in.

Ruth

Brood-X Cicada portraits

Four of a very large number of these creatures in my yard.

Every 17 years. 

 

Quarantine Diary 27 part one | a quiet week

Scenes from a quiet week, mostly at home. Ruth is working at our kitchen tables. 

Meals, flowers in our yard. A beautiful and intricate puzzle. A trip to the grocery store.

Staying careful and healthy.

And committed to bettering our world.

Socially-distanced grocery store line, Baileys' Crossroads, VA.

Ruth at work.

Ruth's homemade pizza for lunch

Breakfast, and ready for work.

Artwork around my house

A selection of some artwork that I have displayed in my home (from an idea posed by Karen Mittleman).

Man in a Shoe by Howard Finster

Three Hole Punch (signed Zippy cartoon print) by Bill Griffith

Rent Money and Tears by David Fair

Origins collage by Xang Mimi Ho

Cambodian woman's story embroidery

Dog Nights by Martha Tabor

1529 world map by Hans Luft, illustrating Daniels' Dream (from my father's collection)

Piece by Mose T of Alabama (house paint on wood)

Mixed media drawing by Eve Hennessa

Circus dancer by Marc Chagall 

mixed media drawing by Dana Johnson

Yiddish sheet music cover (Moshiach is Gekumen - the Messiah is Coming) Lyrics by Boris Tomashevsky

Yes No quilt by Michelle Duell

God is Everywhere by Adele Chaya Miller

Painting bought from a street artist i Costa Rica

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma. by Arthur Rothstein

Print by Matthew Langley (from his series "A Year of Painting")

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

Painting By Sherry Malley