Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.
Ted Kooser
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools —
the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans —
and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase,
“You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him,
and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.”
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations,
though friends are, if possible, an event more fair.
Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Simone Weil, Simone Weil: A Life
Michael: My father's no different than any other powerful man –
any man who's responsible for other people, like a senator or a president.
Kay: You know how naïve you sound?
Michael: Why?
Kay: Senators and presidents don't have men killed.
Michael: Oh. Who's being naïve, Kay?
Dialogue from The Godfather movie, Francis Ford Coppola & Mario Puzo
God is Love, let heaven adore him;
God is Love, let earth rejoice;
let creation sing before him
and exalt him with one voice.
God who laid the earth’s foundation,
God who spread the heaven above,
God who breathes through all creation:
God is Love, eternal Love.
God is Love; and Love enfolds us,
all the world in one embrace:
with unfailing grasp God holds us,
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow’s iron rod,
then we find that selfsame aching
deep within the heart of God.
God is Love; and though with blindness
sin afflicts all human life,
God’s eternal loving-kindness
guides us through our earthly strife.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o’er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o’er the universe must reign.
Timothy Rees
The hearts of trees
are serially displaced
pressed annually
outward to a ring.
They aren’t really
what we mean
by hearts, they so
easily acquiesce,
willing to thin and
stretch around some
upstart green. A
real heart does not
give way to spring.
A heart is true.
I say no more springs
without you.
Kay Ryan
Anxiety is the unwillingness to play
even when you know the odds are for you.
Courage is the willingness to play
even when you know the odds are against you.
Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin
Most people can bear adversity;
but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power.
This is the supreme test.
Robert G. Ingersoll, speaking of Abraham Lincoln
There are many who stumble in the noon-day,
not for want of light, but for want of eyes.
John Newton, The Works of the Rev. J. Newton
It’s a moral issue. A moral issue.
And to me that’s always much more interesting than a real issue.
Elaine May in a routine with Mike Nichols
Call me a romantic,
But I believe that there will be a future,
and indeed a long future, beyond 2027.
History will not end.
We need to cultivate the skill
of exact thinking in demented times.
Dan Wang, December 2025 blog post
What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God
T.S. Eliot, from The Rock
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
Margaret Atwood
I avoid looking forward or backward,
and try to keep looking upward.
This is not the time to regret, dread, or weep.
What I have and ought to do
is very distinctly laid out for me;
what I want, and pray for, is strength to perform it.
Charlotte Bronte, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell
When I’m not sure whether something is okay to do,
I find it helps to give it the worst spin
in the bluntest language possible,
then judge it from there.
Carolyn Hax, Washington Post advice column, January 2026
The Story of Tony Cellini
When Kiryas V’Yoel Moshe — Satmar Bungalows — opened in Sullivan County more than 20 years ago, the Thompson town supervisor was an unabashed, raging anti-Semite named Tony Cellini. As chief executive of the municipality, he had full control over most important town functions, and made no secret of his intent to block Jews at every turn. Cellini explicitly declared his contempt of Jews numerous times, and flexed every form of interference he could — preventing applications to open a grocery or even denying permits for minor repairs.
A group of leading askanim gathered to strategize removing Cellini from office. At the meeting, a young Moishe Indig asserted that political opposition was the wrong approach. “It’s impossible to get rid of him, he’s too well-liked in town,” he told the others. “The only solution is to work on winning him over.”
Indig was laughed out of the room — the idea was as farfetched as convincing Yahya Sinwar to open a kollel.
Indig took matters into his own hands.
He went to the municipal building to try to talk to Cellini, and stood in the doorway of his office like Esther Hamalkah waiting to be noticed. When Cellini looked up, he began screaming and cursing at the young chassid, shouting about who let the Jew in. He personally threw the visitor out of the entire complex, shouting obscenities all the way.
Undeterred, a few days later, Indig waited for Cellini in the parking lot and tracked him to Walmart, where he schemed a “chance” encounter in an aisle.
The town supervisor didn’t recognize the Jew he had recently kicked out of his office, and Indig launched into his spiel without hesitation. “Hey, aren’t you Tony Cellini, the Tony Cellini, town supervisor?” he said, with obvious excitement. “So nice to see you here… the Jewish community here owes you such a big thank-you!”
Caught off guard, Cellini asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Indig plowed ahead, “it’s all thanks to you that we can enjoy summers with our families in this beautiful environment. You work so hard to keep the town nice and pleasant. All the surrounding towns are slummy dumps, but this one is gorgeous. Thank you! And you recruited Walmart to come here, which is so helpful….”
Who doesn’t warm up to a little flattery? Cellini sure did. “Yeah, and I got Home Depot to open here as well, and wait till you see what I’m working on next!” he agreed.
Pressing his advantage, Indig moved in for the snare. “You know, I think you should run for governor,” he said. “If you can accomplish so much on the local level, you are the right person the state needs to fix all the problems. Why waste your time in this little town? Our community will get behind you.”
Indig kept this up for a while, buttering up the nonplussed politician, until he was ready for the hook. “We must make an event honoring you for your accomplishments,” he said. “In our community, gratitude is mandatory. Let’s celebrate and break bread together!”
Moments later, Cellini was ushering Indig into his office — the same one he had tossed him out of days before — so that he could check his calendar and plan the party. He gave the askan his personal cell number, and set about inviting the sheriff and other officials to the event.
Indig walked out and called the other askanim. “In two weeks, we’re having a breakfast at my place honoring Tony Cellini.”
“Who?”
“Tony Cellini. You know… the anti-Semite?”
Cellini loved the breakfast gala, and barriers began to come down one after another. Indig took him to the local camp, where carefully prepped kids serenaded the supervisor. Next, they went to the Bobover institutions for similar pomp and circumstance.
One thing led to another, and Cellini became the greatest ally and oheiv Yisrael in town history. For the next twelve years, he eagerly helped wherever he could. After retiring from public office, he became a consultant for the Jewish community. He would freely start sentences with phrases like, “back when I was an anti-Semite…” or “We have to talk to so-and-so, he’s still an anti-Semite….”
Cellini’s close friendship with Indig continued until the former supervisor died several years ago. When Indig’s late wife was hospitalized, he chauffeured Indig’s family to and from the hospital, constantly offering to help in any way possible. During Tony’s own terminal illness and hospitalization at Mount Sinai Hospital (where Indig served as chaplain) for months before he died, the askan visited him daily. Cellini noticed that no one else visited or called — not even the current Thompson town supervisor, whom he had installed in office. “Moishe, I only have three true friends in the world,” he said one day. “You, Rabbi Hager, and David Walter, my three rabbis.”
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Jewish Family Weekly, Issue 1088)