Several Losses and Some Unexpected Wins

Last time here, I spoke slightly cryptically about some coworkers getting some bad news earlier in the week. Now that everybody knows that everybody knows, I can be more specific. C, brother to one of the attorneys in my office and father to one of her legal assistants, found out on Monday that he has been diagnosed with lung cancer. He's in his late 40s, his son (same name) is perhaps a year or so older than Emily, and the prognosis is not good.  The son needed to take a couple of days off in reaction, and already there are signs he is a different person as a result of the news.

This word came, about people younger than me, just as I have been renewing contacts with people even older from way back in my life.  One of them, though, passed on news of a different kind of passing- the imminent closing of the reform synagogue in the town I grew up in:

After 68 years of hosting religious services, Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow will merge its synagogue with Temple B’Nai Torah in Wantagh.

The early stages of the merger have already begun, but Rabbi Daniel Bar-Nahum of Temple Emanu-El, and Rabbi Howard Nacht, of Temple B’Nai Torah said that both synagogues will officially merge [in] July.

The shul website is still active and recounts the history of this band of Greatest Generation Jews who bonded over a tragedy:

In 1950 at the house of mourning of Emanuel Frankfort, the victim of a train wreck on the Long Island Railroad, was born the resolution to form a congregation to serve the religious needs of the East Meadow Jewish community.  Friends and neighbors who made up the mourner's minyan became the founders of Temple Emanu-El, the first synagogue in this area.  In the beginning, services and meetings were held in homes, the Fire House, in the old building that once stood on our present site, in a tent on our grounds, and finally in a new building erected in 1956. In 1957,  our beautiful sanctuary was built and dedicated.

Beautiful, indeed. I remember it well, from driving by it a gazillion times-



-but also from the inside. Our church back then did an annual pulpit exchange with them for years; I may have even been up at the bimah myself in that first round of Lay Speaker days.  Here's what the sanctuary in the round looks like:



The sad irony is that the merged congregation is moving from this beauty mainly because the building is too big for even both.  The even sadder reality is that Long Island has no appreciation of its history and culture, and I therefore fully expect this building, once deconsecrated, to be bulldozed and replaced with yet another strip mall or office park.

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Thursday brought word of another loss- of one of the oldest, most eloquent members of the 1969 Miracle Mets (to the left of the hug):



Nickname: "the Glider;" title: "poet laureate." I had the pleasure of meeting him and the honor of hearing him speak at the Mets conference six years ago.  Wot I wrote at the time:

Ed Charles grew up in Florida, in the town where the Brooklyn Dodgers' top farm team trained.  In 1946, a year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the majors, he was assigned to that Montreal farm team, and their training was across the street from the park where he and his friends played. Ed was then 13- always too shy to ask for an autograph, even though they all knew how important his effort was.  Their careers on the field never intersected, and they never met until two years after Ed's retirement from the Mets, in 1971.

Both were trying to start post-career businesses, and both were seeking out government loans for them. Their appointments were back to back one day, and Jackie was coming out as Ed was going in. Before he did, though, he introduced himself, told him about their connection in the early days, and thanked him for his efforts in blazing the trail for the African-American players who came after.

Jackie said, I appreciate you telling me that. You're the first black player to ever say those words.

I let that sink in. This was almost a quarter century after Jackie Robinson began his quest, and over a decade after he ended it. Everybody knew how important it was, but nobody bothered to thank him for it until this gentlest and wisest of Mets did.

Suddenly, that Rotunda in Queens seems more appropriate than ever.

And now another Miracle leaves us- along with Stephen Hawking and Louise Slaughter in just the past few days.

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But these guys are still around:



That's your first sight on entering Rochester's federal building, an improvement over the first efforts which didn't get hanged (sorry- hung- wishful thinking) for months after the start of the Regime:




I was there for two things. The first went beautifully.  Then came the second. A day after my opponent pulled a classic sandbag move on me by refusing to respond to a settlement offer which the judge had encouraged him to work out with us last time, we went before the same judge, who didn't care. He didn't do his worst, but he refused to cut my client any slack, and followed it up with a written decision posting every deficiency in my strategy and arguments, and included in it a citation to a persuasive legal authority:

Ghostbusters. 

____ B.R. at ____ n.1 (Bankr. W.D.N.Y. 2018)

We will fight on for another day, but that day will come more quickly than  we would like.

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In just over an hour, a local sports team will move on to having a new day coming far sooner than it ever expected. The UB men's basketball team pulled a shocking upset late Thursday, not only beating a much higher-seeded team but pretty much bullrushing them.  Their reward is to be assigned a second-round game today against another much higher-seeded team- but. If they can pull off the win, they will then advance to play a lower-seeded opponent in the Sweet Sixteen....

because, last night, for the first time in college basketball tournament history since the brackets went to 16 teams apiece, the lowest-seeded team in a region beat the highest-seeded one.  And, like UB the night before, it did so decisively. If you're near a Little Caesars on April 2nd, you get free Pizza! Pizza! for this.

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I celebrated the wins by the underdogs, and at least the end of the week's losses, by finishing two things today: the last of the family tax returns, and the assembly of the new gas grill.  Here they are, one going into service, the other to the curb:



Eleanor has a Buddhist event tonight (another scary medical situation inspiring it, sadly); my plans involve rooting for an underdog and continuing to watch Chadwick Boseman in Marshall, which is also pretty underdoggy.