Some years back, I wrote a Facebook post with this tl;dr (“too long, didn’t read”) about a professor in the St Olaf College math department. Yesterday I learned that he died a few weeks ago. May his memory be a blessing. tl;dr for Rebecca Boardman: you don’t lose points for what you get wrong—you gain…
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a kaddish for the forestry buff who also played horn pretty well
a kaddish for my teacher, Boris Rybka
in the beginning…
For anyone steeped in Kabbalah, familiar active letters dart into new cosmologies. For anyone steeped in cosmology, the antics of those letters introduce fresh questions about the world. For everyone else, and probably for those mystics and seers too, Malkah’s Notebook will offer nested challenges, like so many matryoshka dolls, ornately painted mysteries lurking inside mysteries lurking inside mysteries. As much is written between the letters and in the spaces inside the letters as in the letters themselves.
kaddish for anke akevit (2015-20)
Rest in peace, sweet Anke Akevit. You were a sweet cat.
a kaddish for too many suicide victims—but it gets better!
This is a kaddish for too many suicide victims. Since suicide is a contagious disease, and it’s in the headlines again, I think it’s urgent for parents, friends, family, teachers, coaches, and vague acquaintances of young gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, and questioning folk to be on the alert in coming weeks. LGBTQQ youth are statistically…
a kaddish for sigrid syltetøy vang, b. 2006, d. 27 February 2018
Sigrid was sweet, fun, goofy, curious; all the usual cat things. Silky and beautiful. By far the most beautiful cat I have ever known.
guest kaddish: velvet marquesa flicka storm, 11 august 2005–9 april 2015
Dad (Paul F. Vang) wrote this remembrance of a darned sweet black lab, whom I named (see below) and will always remember as the best lap-lab ever. There was nothing quite like relaxing in a recliner with Flicka stretched full-length on your lap. We miss you, Flicka.
the stones I cannot place
My mother’s ‘passing’ has crippled my writing. And apparently that’s not all. It would be unfair to blame her, per se, because that would be rude. But I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that she’s had a hand in it. Some lesson left to teach. I thought what would be fitting (I had this brilliant idea…
oh amy, how could you — a kaddish for amy smith
My plan was that nobody else would die. Ever. My plan was to leave the death-and-dying biz to someone else; give someone else a turn. My plan was that enough was enough. At least for this year. My plan was that only the elderly die, and that sometimes it’s a blessing and an end to…