Music Monday - My Favorite Latke Music

Okay, so I know that Hanukkah is already past. But it's typical of my very mixed upbringing that at the height of my connection to Judaism, my favorite Hanukkah holiday music was Christmas music.

I was completely enamored of all things Judaica at the time: I happily poured through Jewish cookbooks of all types, searching for the heritage recipes that my Christian mother had not been able to pass on. I was at Temple most days, (in fact, for a while I even worked at Temple). I learned Hebrew. I had an adult Bat Mitzvah. I was determined that my son would have the clear identity that I never had as a child.

But, darn it, Hanukkah music sucked.

Now, to be fair, there is one wonderful CD called Festival of Light, by such diverse artists as Marc Cohn, Rebbe Soul, and The Klezmatics. And what's not to like about Adam Sandler's The Chanukah Song,(as Flower Child shared with us).

But, you know, that lovely experience of the snow falling all around you, and wonderful cooking smells, and writing cards or wrapping presents - that belongs to Christmas music.

And I have always, always loved Christmas music. So even while I was in this, my most Jewish of phases, I continued to add to my massive Christmas music collection. And listened to it whenever I had the chance. And since I had grown up listening to Christmas music while doing holiday cooking (which had been Christmas cooking for the most part, for our Jewish holidays, we usually went to our neighbors' or to other friends' houses), I listened to Christmas music during the eight days each year that we made pancakes of one type or another (which was our Hanukkah tradition, because you're supposed to have something with oil each night of Hanukkah). So I give you, my all-time Favorite Latke Music:



The Roches have put together a sublime Christmas collection, called We Three Kings , that contains beautiful harmonies, wit and both traditional and unusual arrangements. And now that we're back to Christmas traditions again in our household, it's my favorite Christmas music, too. The clips below really don't do them justice, but enjoy!

SMID, over at Soccer Mom in Denial started Music Monday in this post, reflecting on her sons' learning history lessons from "Prof." Cash. Please join her, and others, for Music Monday

Roaring at Writing Game Buddies

Lovely Carol, of Northwest Ladybug, gave me this wonderful award, for which I'm very grateful! It comes at a particularly good time for a whole variety of reasons. Thank you, Carol!


So here are the rules:

List three things you believe are necessary for good, powerful writing and then pass the award on to the five bloggers you want to honor, who in turn should pass it on to five others, etc. Let's send a roar through the blogosphere! (The image above can be copied and pasted onto other blogs.)

Three qualities I believe are important for good, powerful writing:

1. Discipline. What I mean here is that you need the discipline to sit down with that manuscript over and over again until you get it just right. (This is the part I hate the most, and therefore I most admire writers who do this beautifully, like Charity of Writing Wrongs).

2. Honesty. Write what you know or research what you want to write. Be clear and honest with your characters, your voices and your settings. Don't be afraid to make your characters do something awful, if the story warrants it.

3. Write your passion. Write what gives you passion in life. When I say "passion" it might even be something you hate, but then know absolutely why you hate it. Passionate writing will trump anything that's anemic. Always. I don't care how much beautiful imagery you use, if you don't have passion you ain't got nuttin'.

Here are some bloggers I think deserve the "Roar for Powerful Words" award. It's actually a group, and it's actually a group of more than five. These are the brave souls who took me up on my Writing Game challenge at the end of October/beginning of November, along with their posts:

1. Anno of Anno's place. Anno was given ideas by Leslie of My Mommy's Place and she turned it into a wonderful story of love and betrayal, called "Storm".

2. Gunfighter of The View from Here. Gunfighter gave us a slamming start of a suspense series (while fighting off the flu no less!) with ideas generated by yours truly. His wonderful piece is called Gunfighter of "A Murder in Washington, DC".

3. Leslie of My Mommy's Place. Leslie took the ideas of SMID of Soccer Mom in Denial and turned them into an untitled Leslie of story of bittersweet internet intrigue.

4. SMID from Soccer Mom in Denial. SMID took Anno's ideas and turned them into a lovely story about an artist breaking away from a difficult mother in SMID from "Be True".

5. Veriano of Haikuku. I really want to encourage everyone to read this one for two reasons - 1. This entry came a little late and was missed on the Writing Game day itself (November 12th) and 2. This is the debut offering of my very own DH's blog! Veriano took Wholly Burble's rollicking ideas (I've had the pleasure of working with Wholly Burble in my online writers group for over five years now, and her ideas are always rollicking!) and turned them into a suburban mother's escape into her rock star wannabe past in "Strut at 40".

6. And finally, Ms. Wholly Burble herself, of Rocking Chair Ruminations. Gunfighter, who never does things halfway, gave WB a very specific group of historic characters to work with, and she did them proud with a Revolutionary War story that she now plans to lengthen into a novel: "The Road Home".