This is my favorite time of the year, Gail-Friends. I love Sukkot and I love preparing and decorating our sukkah. We are doing it on our backyard patio again this year. It's a lot easier on us this way.
I love having our meals and quiet times there in the mornings and the evenings. We've been having cooler days this week. Morning lows in the seventies and days in the mid-eighties are a welcome respite from the scorching nineties. We hope it continues in the week ahead.
Since closing the synagogue, we've been attending a synagogue online. We went there in person during Sukkot and had a wonderful celebration with our mishpocha. Here's a photo of us in their sukkah:
Something happened during Sukkot that made me so sad. In the past years, our golden rain trees have thousands of tiny blossoms on them and the flowers always fall during Sukkot. I've always loved having the golden rain falling on me in the sukkah. But, due to the rain and wind of the hurricanes, we didn't have the golden rain. Oh, how I missed it. You can see it in this post: Reflections on Sukkot
After Sukkot, we celebrated Simchat Torah. We joined the synagogue's online observance and really enjoyed it. We even paraded the Torah in our living room. We danced, sang, waved flags, and rejoiced in the amazing gift of Adonai's Word.
I haven't posted much lately due to the hurricanes Helene and Milton. We didn't have any flooding for bad damage, but we did have tree limbs and debris to deal with. We lost power in both storms, but only for short periods. (Only fourteen hours with Milton.) Our daughter who lives nearby lost power and internet for four days.
We feel blessed, especially as we see the devastation on the west coast of Florida and the horrible damage and deaths in Florida, North Carolina, and other states. Unlike us, the Appalachians were not prepared for a hurricane. We are always prepared, having been through at least a dozen hurricanes here in my home state. (Four of them were back to back in 2004, and I've done blog posts on five of them since 2009.) Please pray for all who are going through such horrible devastation.
What's amazing is that these good people are helping each other through the pain and distress. They're not waiting on the government to come and help. They're clearing roads and bridges and beginning to rebuild. That's the American way.
The mainstream media has already moved on, but just go on YouTube and you'll see many videos of people and communities that have lost everything. It's heart breaking. We hope you will join us in supporting these groups that are providing help to the victims:
https://reverencefarms.com/
https://cajunnavyrelief.com/
https://www.samaritanspurse.org/disaster/hurricane-helene/
For a long time, we've been following a vlog on YouTube by Justin Rhodes who lives near Ashville, North Carolina. The videos he posted will give you an eye-opening view of what people are going through. Many people and businesses have been without power and/or internet for weeks. Hats off to Elon Musk who is giving people free Starlink service in those affected areas. Here's another vlog we follow that is documenting what's going on there: The Appalachian Channel
I've been busy working on Jem's next book. It's called Shenanigans and is a hilarious memoir of his Navy days. we hope to have it published very soon. Pray that we don't have any more hurricanes to set us back.
We've been doing volunteer work related to the election, and I will be posting some things about praying for America in my next post. Please stop back by and join in the prayers.
I'm thankful to be back online. I was unable to get into my blog for weeks due to some kind of browser glitch with Google. Hopefully, I'll be posting regularly again now that the wrinkle is ironed out.
Blessings to you all, dear Gail-Friends.
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