I’m Leanna and I’m taking over Alex’s blog as part of this month’s edition of Bloggerstock!  For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Bloggerstock is a new and innovative type of blog swap.  Instead of two bloggers swapping posts for a day, Bloggerstock forms a chain of blog posts.  Keep clicking through all the posts to read them all!  Head on over to my blog OMG I moved to NYC to read Emily’s thoughts on the topic or to Pearl Tigress to read Alex’s.

This month’s theme is “What Inspires You”.  When I read this topic only one thing came to mind, my college professor Michele Clark.

I’ve always looked up at Michele for her efforts to combat Human Trafficking, her work at the OSCE, and her commitment to her students.  She always encouraged us to explore our academic interests and provided excellent advice for our papers, internships, or our crazy stressful college lives.  Most importantly, she supported whatever we wanted to do.  When Gaby and I took over the leadership of our campus’s anti-human trafficking group she was behind us 100% and connected us with a lot of great anti-trafficking organizations in DC and provided us with guest speakers for our events.  When I had the crazy idea of moving to NYC to work at an international exchange focused non-profit, she told me to go for it.  I only knew 2-3 people in the whole city, didn’t have a place to live, and had never spent longer than 3 days in the NYC before…I was terrified but I wanted to be here.  Michele helped calm my fears and while other people thought I was crazy told me to do what would make me happy.  So thank you Michele for inspiring me to take the leap and move to this amazing city!

I am kind of backlogged with posts.  We overlooked the fact that Bloggerstock fell on Memorial Day for those of us living in the USA.  It isn’t actually Memorial Day anymore as I write this, but I thought that I should get it down while the idea was fresh.  So, it is a belated Memorial Day post, and forgive me if I use the wrong tenses when referring to things in this post as I am probably not really thinking about it in relation to when it will actually be posted.

After catching up with a friend for the better part of the afternoon on Memorial Day I headed home and flipped on the television.  Of the programs that were worth watching, all of them were war related.  It made sense.  Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember those who gave their lives for our country.  Most countries in the world have similar national holidays.  It is probably the most honorable of all the national holidays that we have in the USA, and yet by many it is probably one more that gets overlooked or thought of as just another day off from school.

The men an women that we commemorate on on this day deserve our respect as do all the men and women currently in the service of the nation.  They fought and are fighting to preserve the ideals that make up our way of life.  They are there no matter what the threat, be it war or natural disaster.  They are certainly brave and giving souls.

However, when I sit and really think about it, I always come back to the question of why.  Why do we humans have to wreak such terrible conflicts across the globe?  Why do we, for whatever reason, always think that we are better than the next person?  What makes “us” right and “them” wrong?  I mean, when you really think about it, the people who are “right” are really just the people with the best fighting force, the people who “win.”  How is it that in reality the side with the bigger and better army and weapons is the side that is right?  Obviously in any conflict, both parties THINK they are right, otherwise there wouldn’t be a conflict.  Thus, why?

Then of course you have the people who are anti-war, the pacifists, the people who just generally disagree with the government, the people who seek peaceful solutions, and a whole host of other groups.  They all think they are right.  The “peaceful protester” thinks that his methods are better than the “normal protester” or the riotous crowd.  And of course that there is just the seeds of conflict among people who may actually be “fighting” for ultimately the same cause.

It doesn’t really matter who you are, I think that we are all guilty of thinking that we are in the right and someone else is in the wrong.  Sure, there are probably time when this is true, however, there are most likely times that we have been in arguments or fights with people where both sides could equally justify their position as right.  There are few things outside of math and science that actually have a clear right and wrong answer.  Our day-to-day assessments of right and wrong are based on the moral code that we each live by.  However, my moral code is not exactly the same as anyone else’s yet there are many people who would tell me that my morals are wrong.  What makes your moral code better or more “right” than mine?

Why can’t we really just accept that everyone is an individual and that we cannot all fit in the same mold?  I guess really I just find it unfortunate that we have such a need for a holiday like Memorial Day.  While we should always remember and honor those who gave their lives in our defense, I would hope that some day in the future we will be able to stop adding names to the list of people to commemorate.

It isn’t that I was busy yesterday so much that I was sleeping in after partying late after closing the show.  I did have to work for a little bit yesterday, but nothing crazy.  Of course, my phone also crashed yesterday which was a big pain in the ass.  I mean, it isn’t that hard to restore an iPhone, but when you run a jailbroken phone you have to go back and install all the non-Apple stuff.  (It is totally worth it though).

So, late yesterday afternoon I finally got a chance to call my mother to say “Happy Mother’s day.”  While I am sure that it made her happy, she didn’t really care.  She was more interested in the fact that I had called and that we could catch up on  things.  It’s not like I don’t call my parents a couple times a week, I just thought it was interesting.  At the time, they were in the car on the way home from New Hampshire, so later on in the evening I got the following email from my mother:

“I wanted to say something about mother’s day but I forgot when we were talking today and my phone battery was dying.

“For me, every day is mother’s day. I have three amazing kids and I feel honored by you guys every day and by everything you do. (Also, I pat myself on the back, and daddy too, that you are such great kids). I guess many mother’s need a day. Or at least Hallmark and florists/restaurants need a day – but I am so proud of you, Dan, and Leah all the time it makes every day my day.”

This, of course, made me think back to mine and my siblings b’nei mitzvot when my mother told us that if people asked us “Are you proud of your sibling today?”  We should say: “I am proud of my siblings every day!”  I don’t know if I truly felt that way then, but I certainly do now.

I agree with my mother on this one.  While in some respects it is nice to have a day to celebrate mothers, how much do we really need it?  I mean, everyone should be honoring their parents every day!  We should be thankful to our parents for bringing us into the world and giving us a chance at life all the time.  I think if we keep that in mind then everything we do will always honor our parents!

As with so many holidays, Mother’s and Father’s day have gone from having real significance to being complete “Hallmark” holidays.  They are now just excuses for companies to make and market products that are holiday-centric.  You shouldn’t need an excuse to send your mother a card or bring over flowers.  You shouldn’t even need an excuse to call home just to say hi!  It also shouldn’t cost you anything or require any additional work out of your day to make your parent’s proud of you.

There is no greater compliment or pat on the back than a note like the one my mother sent me.  The fact that my siblings and I make her proud and happy every day means that not only did we do something right, but so did she!  So, don’t wait for an excuse, make every day Mother’s and Father’s Days!

Yup, the jew did just say that!

I was invited to sped Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Ruth and her family, that was certainly a first for me. It is definitely a little different and I sorta find it kinda awkward, but it was fun. I was probably the only one thinking it was awkward, and that probably only stems from being Jewish and not believing in what Christmas is all about.

I have to say, I enjoy spending time with Ruth and her family. They do their big dinner on Chrismas Eve, which is ironically a Jewish kinda mentality in starting the holiday the night before. Steve made a great dinner with turkey, ham (which I don’t eat), taters, rolls and more. We forgot to make the salad, so we didn’t end up having one. It happens.

After dinner we all watched Pixar’s “UP” which I hadn’t seen yet, so that was a lot of fun. All five of us “kids” piled into the living room to watch the movie. Midway through the movie we all got to have some of Steve’s cheesecake with caramel sauce, which was great.

Before going back to the movie we started in with the Jones’ traditions which include the opening of a Chrismas Eve gift which is always PJ’s. So we all got awesome hand made fleece PJ pants made by Ruth’s mother, they are pretty comfy. Ruth’s mother also made me the “Jew Stocking” (pictured above) that was hung with the rest of the stockings.

To the sound of Wendy’s most annoying cell phone alarm we were roused out of bed at 5:45AM for the Christmas morning festivities. I managed to score us a few more minutes of sleep by staying down as long as I could. They aren’t allowed to open presents without the entire family and they aren’t allowed to wake their parents without all of them being there.

There were lots of fun gifts, lots of things that people were excited to get, and then there were the projectile weapons. Yup, all the boys (Steve, Rob, and me) got marshmallow shooters. A bow and arrow one and a pump action one that shoot the mini mallows and a crazy single shot bolt action one that shoots big mallows. As can probably be imagined, hyjinx ensued. There were flying marshmallows all morning and mallows smushed into the carpet and into new PJs.

On top of all that, there was even a “Legendary Original, Red Rider 200 Shot carbine action, range-model air rifle…” Well it was actually a 600 shot and it didn’t have a compass and this thing which tells time built right into the stock. It was for Wendy, and she was pretty excited. She even managed to almost pull off an “A Christmas Story” moment when she took it out in the back yard, missed the target and had a BB ricochet around the yard off the fence. Pretty exciting, it even made the classic ricochet sound.

I very much appreciate the hospitality of the Jones’ and the gifts that I was given. It was a lot of fun, though I have to say, I am pretty darn tired now. The funny thing is that, according to Ruth, her mother wants to celebrate Hanukkah next year. I find that interesting because Hanukkah isn’t really a big deal holiday, but it is nice that they think of me like that.

The big holiday party was lat night and it was a lot of fun.  Getting to see people who i don’t get to see very often is a treat.  It is an awful lot of work to pull off a party like that though.  We had twenty-some odd people at the house.  My mother and I made almost 20lbs of potatoes into latkes, we made 16-ish pounds of corned beef, a turkey and more.  I don’t remember what my father said was the count on number of bottles of wine drunk.

Seeing family and friends is fun, but it is mighty tiring.  People started to show up at 5 and the last guest left between 9 and 10, plus we did all the prep beforehand.  I think I got to tell the same stories over and over to different people, and it is hard to keep up with all of that.  Seeing my cousins Greg Weisman, and Sarah and Brian Swett was nice.  I have not seen them in a long time.  I don’t know if I can convince greg to come out to Utah this year, he has all kinds of other adventures planned.  Maybe SCUBA diving in Israel this spring, he sounded interested in that.

Then of course there are the gifts.  As much as I like getting money as a gift, sometimes I feel like it is a cop-out.  I do kinda need money to pay off all my bills, what with buying a washer and dryer and such, but then I feel like I didn’t really use the gifts that I was given.  There are things that I want to get, but then i feel like I could have used the money to be practical and pay the bills.  Worst of all, is that most of the gifts were in cash, and when i have cash I tend to spend it on things that really are not gifty, like dinner.  It is kind of a dilemma.

Over the course of this trip I did get to visit some friends of mine.  Best of all was getting to see Jesi, who, unfortunately is not working currently, thought that allowed her the time to visit.  We went out to see “Radium Girls” produced by the BU Theatre Department.  It was a great show and I got to finally tweetup with a couple more friends: @gizm770o, @jamisonkissh, and @lightingguru44.  The production was really great, a very interesting show.  I would recommend it to anyone who likes going to the theatre.  One of the other great things about the performance was the fact that they has a talkback after with the playwright, which was very interesting.  I enjoy hearing how good plays came to be.

What really bummed me out was not getting to see my good friend Molly who is currently working at Shakespeare and Company in Lennox, MA.  She had performances most of the days that I was home and then it started to snow on the night that she hoped to come visit.  To tell the truth, out of all the people that were at our party, if i had been able to see Molly, it would have made me a lot happier.  Another time I guess.

So, now thanks to Delta for free wifi on the airplane, I can post this entry.  Go figure that they would actually give something away.  I mean the fact that you have to pay to check bags now is totally ridiculous.  It is even more ridiculous that its costs you MORE to check your bags in the airport rather than online at home even though you still have to go see a real live person at the airport to actually check the bag!  It makes no sense.  More people would fly if it cost less to fly!

I think that is all I have, time to sit back and watch a movie to kill the time before we get in to Salt Lake City.  Then i have to go to work, huzzah for photo call!