Yom HaShoah

 My little alarm clock worked. I was actually half-awake, and lay in bed a bit, thinking it was 7. But the alarm clock reminded me it was 8. 

I got up, had green tea and packed things in the bike bags, including my tip box and trumpet carried on my back. I rode to Nijiya for a can of black coffee and then realized I really didn't feel like eating anything so early so I could get to the temple better by doubling back to Hedding and then the temple's one street over. 

So I did that, and was very early. I killed some time by sitting in the garden by the etrog tree and worked out the "traditional Ashkenazic" version of L'cha Dodi I'd learned from YouTube. Neat little tune. OK enough blatting, time to get to class. It got confusing because a guy in the room the class is in told me that's not the room the class is in. But it was. Eventually everyone showed up and the late one was the cantor. 

It was kind of interesting, but again it was all about music used in the synagogues, not folk or klezmer music. When class let out and I was bumbling around looking for flyers for various things, a teenager came up and asked me about the class, and I told him what it was about and that it didn't cover klezmer music but I have a feeling there's a good chance the cantor might hold another class later covering klezmer and folk music. The kid was really nice, said he'd had his bar mitzvah there and worked there at the temple too. 

I rode over to Whole Foods and got some chicken and broccoli. There was a guy there huckstering pies. He had these small pecan pies I guess he has to buy, then can resell. Kind of like the Big Issue homeless paper in England. They buy them for a price then sell for 2X the price. I talked with the pie man quite a bit, with all my trips back and forth to the bike where I had it locked. It's some program to help homeless people and the guy was a vet, an air traffic controller so he said, in the Navy. 

He had his hopes up, and had bought 60 pies instead of his usual 40 and he figured it'd be a great day. The only problem I could see was, here's this big ol' black guy whose voice makes Louis Armstrong sound like Nat King Cole. He was using a little amplifier to make his voice a bit more understandable but it was rough. 

I rode the green line to the Campbell Whole Foods and set up to play. I put in an hour, and made $21. People were not feeling it as much as the last time. I walked back to the station and it took a while for the train to come, but at least I saw a strange thing: a PINK Cybertruck. With advertising on its side for mobil homes. Campbell is made for cars, not people, so the light rail station overlooks a few streams of freeway going in different directions. 

I got back to Whole Foods, said hi to my buddy again. He was less optimistic. The thing is, that devil wind had come up. Windyness kills sales. I told him I'd made about half of what I usually do, and am going to try playing at the Old Spaghetti Factory. 

I rode over there and it wasn't too loud, and there were a lot of people. But everyone was walking in a hurry. I had no tips until a couple black guys came by and one of them stopped, and yelled at his buddy, "Hey, this guy is working hard! We gotta tip!" and shamed his buddy into tipping also. That was $12 and I guess they liked the sound of Ave Maria. I got a few more tips and once I'd put in an hour, I had $20. So I was up a total of $41.

I rode back to Whole Foods to use the loo at least, and the pieman was gone. The wind was being a pain in the ass too. I got some string cheese and olive tempanade and a plastic spoon and rode down to Willow Glen. 

Except for one bar Willow Glen seemed pretty dead. It's the one place I've actually seen street musician in the last couple of years and no one was playing. I sat at the mouth of this sort of mini-mall and ate cheese and olive tempanade and thought about things. After eating I chewed gum to clean my mouth and set up to play. I'd put in a half-hour anyway. 

It was a nice place to play, since there was no wind and the acoustics were great. I played about 15-20 minutes then decided I was tired and wrapped it up. I only got 3 tips but in Willow Glen they tip $5's not $1's so I was up by another $15. So a total overall of $56. 

Then I rode according to my little hand-drawn map and finding this other temple, a Conservative one that was founded by members of my home, Reform, temple. It's about as big but more modern and really neat. They had some pretty tough looking security guys and I pulled out the flyer for the Hitkansut event that would start at 7. I was about 45 minutes early. 

They have a traveling exhibition of the history of the Holocaust set up, and to someone who's read and watched as much about it as I have, it's pretty much old hat but even I was taken aback when I thought they had an actual camp uniform - it was a full-size photo of one. 

The Hitkansut is a new word for what is becoming a "Seder" for the Holocaust. Seder simply means "order" and the word is used that way in modern Hebrew. In this case it's not about food and cups of wine, but lighting candles for those who died and talking about family who died, and songs and prayers. I'm glad I went. As normal, the people were wonderful. 

After it was done, I went out and it was cold and windy. I layered up again and got my gloves out, and rode back to Lincoln, thence to Park, to Sunol, and back to Whole Foods where I bought a cucumber and then rode back here by going back past the temple to Hedding to 10th and back here. I felt weird riding where I'd gotten the flat but, no problem. It had been heavenly being back on the bike today and the tires pumped up, chain cleaned and oiled, and so on. 

I knew one Holocaust survivor, old Andy Korshak, who was in the ham radio community, often resented for being "Andy The Radio Cop" because he took it upon himself to report on people behaving badly on the radio. But when I was a young adult, the older people in their 50s and 60s, with few exceptions, would have fought in WWII or, a smaller percentage, been Holocaust survivors. Hawaii's an attractive place to retire for Jewish people because it's even farther from Europe than the mainland US is. I'm going to say the owners of "The Blue And White Shop", a little hot dog shop I worked for a short while in, were almost certainly survivors. The nice old Jewish hematologist who lived next door to us in Hawaii Kai, almost certainly. The owner of the Baskin-Robbins I worked in, very probably. 

It wasn't talked about, in real life. But on TV, and in books, it certainly was. My mother made sure we watched anything that came up on the subject on TV. She even made sure we watched Roots. 

I got back here, put some pallets out so it's easy for pallet-gatherers to pick them up, and got an interesting motor out of the HVAC place's trash. Should be good for a "hundy".