Last week Tamara and I found ourselves taking a last-minute trip up to Washington State. We had to take care of some family business so I wouldn’t call it a real vacation but we did manage to squeeze in an extremely fun day trip to Seattle. I’m not going to go into great detail with this post because Tamara’s already beaten me to the punch and I might add done a great job. However I will say that being in Washington felt a lot like home and made me realize a couple of things. One is that what passes for green here in Southern California really is brown and it would seem, that the further north one goes, the deeper blue the sky becomes. Secondly, I truly miss clouds and the rain and I mean truly miss clouds and rain!

But seriously all things considered I think we had an excellent trip especially our time in Seattle, which was fun and surprisingly inexpensive. I think that keeping kosher actually really helped keep the cost down because we avoided restaurants opting instead to pack and carry our own kosher food. I suppose that what we did might be called urban picnicking and it was a blast. By the way Pepper Tofurky is freaking awesome!

Anyhow we were staying a little over an hour outside of Seattle and instead of driving into Seattle we decided to park the car and take a ferry. I think it was a smart move because both of us to really enjoyed the ride and we managed to snap some excellent pictures. There were a flock of seagulls that followed us all the way to Seattle. On the way back they were with us again and this time people were feeding them, which was a pretty amazing thing to watch. The birds spent more time gliding than flying and literally seemed to float over to people’s hands, where they elegantly plucked food from fingers and then just floated away.

If you’re interested in seeing more pictures from this trip you can do so by clicking here.

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Last Shabbos, after services Tamara and I invited our friend Jonathan over for a late afternoon lunch. I’m not sure exactly when but at some point either before or after the food, Tamara pulled out this book about the Holocaust by Michael Berenbaum entitled “A Promise to Remember: The Holocaust in the Words and Voices of its Survivors “. It’s a brilliantly put together book that is highly interactive. The book is filled with a variety of things that can be pulled out and looked at, like photographs, letters and other documents from the era. It’s an interesting, albeit disturbing read which I highly recommend checking it out if you get the chance, because it does do an incredible job of connecting the reader to the subject matter.

The photograph above is one I took of a handout from the book. I came across it looking through a section discussing the Einsatzgruppen. I found this photo extremely disturbing actually the translation (which you can read by clicking on the image), is what kicked me in the balls. I’m fairly secure in my sense of Jewishness these days but still not when it comes to the Shoah because I can’t even begin to imagine what living through something like that would be like. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, if there’s one thing that makes me question my worthiness as a convert its the Holocaust. I guess that somewhere in the back of my mind I’m always wondering, if I ever come, anywhere close to living up to what it is these people died for.

Anyhow, this post really isn’t about me. I just found the subject matter extremely penetrating and thought that maybe some of the other Jews by Choice (or anyone I guess) who read my blog, might as well.

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I stumbled across this site this morning and thought it was worthy of preservation as a photo. I actually first noticed this phenomenon of light and shadow about two weeks ago while Tamara was here but had forgotten about it until this morning.

Anyhow it’s an interesting enough composition although I’m not 100% satisfied with the pictures I managed to snap. I just didn’t seem to quite capture the light however it’s not a bad shot, at least not in my opinion anyhow. Also this image has been cropped and cleaned up a little bit in Photoshop Elements 2.0

Technorati tags: Photo Post, Photography, Menorah, Sunlight, Shadow, Silhouette, Judaica

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Here’s another shot from our trip last week to the Museum of Civilization. The sculpture is entitled The Spirit of Haida Gwaii and you can read more about it by clicking on the link.

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I think that Tamara thinks I’m in love with Jesus but I swear I’m not.

At best maybe it’s a tiny, tiny, little, tiny crush.

Besides the guy was a Jew!

Oh and BTW this picture was taken earlier today at the Canadian Museum of Civilization which is an absolutely great place to visit if you’re ever in Ottawa.

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