Um, Sorry.
A Message From Simon

Could we really call this a Jewish blog if we didn't periodically get too busy and then neglect to update it for long periods of time, feeling horrendously guilty all the while? Even if our neglect can't always be chalked up to a hectic schedule, and is sometimes a byproduct of many hours spent browsing hotties on MySpace? And even if feeling the guilt required more psychic energy than banging out a few amusing paragraphs? Genug!

We're sorry, is my point.

We're sorry because we know you've taken the time and effort to steer the majestic craft that is your browser over to our Jewy little marina more than once and found the same old stale posting there. Perhaps you've huffed off, vowing never to darken our splash page again. Or maybe you were wracked with concern — are Sera and Simon OK? Has something happened to them?

That said: Sera has been busily crafting killer-chiller scripts for a TV show and tending to the myriad needs of her burgeoning canine, Mojo. I, meanwhile, high-tailed it out of town (accompanied by the lovely Julia) for a largely DSL-free vacation in the glorious state of Washington.

During that time, I spent many blissful hours with my nose in Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, a cracking good novel set in an alternate reality where the Jewish state, Sitka, is in Alaska. It's a noir thriller mixed with Pynchonian magical realism and a ton of Yiddishkeit. Nu, read it. One of the book's most vivid characters is a half-Jewish, half-Tlingit detective; he was much on my mind as I surveyed the Jewish guests of a wedding party at a lodge on an Indian reservation abutting a rainforest. Colliding worlds make great fiction and fascinating reality, no?

We spent a few days in Seattle, but the revelation was staying on the Washington coast (thanks to the offices of our beloved pal Mollie and her generous family), where the weather was largely sublime and where we saw quite a few of these:

That's right, people: bald eagles.

Making their way over a vast, flat stretch of surf between the ocean and a prototypically Northwestern stand of Conifers, rousted by crows, they flaunted their magnificent wings as their white keppes glinted in the sun. It was if they were saying, "I am this close to being removed from the Endangered Species list."

And they were finally delisted mere hours after we returned home, thanks in part to the offices of meshuggeneh nature people who took bald eagle eggs from nests in order to fertilize them in labs (they left fake eggs in their wake, which must've been awkward for the eagle parents).

We spent a lot of time spying on the eagles — sometimes squinting through binoculars, sometimes just gawking right underneath whatever tree one happened to be perched in. I learned a lot, especially about the gap between an eagle's patience for sitting and my own.

If I'd had DSL, I could've given him a run for his money.

I promise a more substantive post soon. It will confront big issues like art and the soul. And Jewish identity. Or something.

Oh, and don't worry. We're fine.

Thanks to Mollie for taking this pic.