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Where Peace Is a Prayer: A Family’s 12 Days Under Fire

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As I sit comfortably at home in Longview, TX, stressed about bad weather forecasts but otherwise peacefully working, walking the dog, and feeding the cat, my niece and her family in Israel are living through something no one should ever have to experience. Before you judge the choices or emotions of others from the safety of your own home or city, take a moment to read what her past 12 days have been like. Imagine if the most important information in your day was where the nearest shelter is when the sirens go off. Imagine worrying every day about how to keep your children, your family, and yourself safe. War Thoughts  Where Peace Is a Prayer: A Family’s 12 Days Under Fire גאולה אדלשטיין June 26, 2025 It is 3am. An air raid siren rouses us from a deep sleep. We go to stand in our hallway, not having time to go to the shelter at the end of the block. Nothing unusual, probably the Houthis again, or so we think, and we head back to bed.  It is 9am , and I discover that our Sh...
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Tomato Sauce, Turn Signals, and a Few Things in Between

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We live in strange times.   The world is politically odd, work is somewhat scattered due to AI, along with associated changes in the workplace.  It is also challenging to find balance, and as someone who has a blog, it can be challenging to know when to remain silent and when to speak up.  It is possible to have opinions that one can feel confident about, but recognizing that you lack on-the-ground experience, sharing those opinions can feel somewhat careless. In light of the times, I thought a top tenm   eleven, twelve thoughts of the day might be interesting.  Some will be a bit serious, but mostly not “too”  serious and a bit entertaining. Just because people are silent on subjects and issues, don’t assume they don’t care or have an opinion.  To be transparent, I do care very much about what is going on in Israel and Gaza.  Especially, with so much of my family living there, but I also don’t have the experience of living in Israel, and th...
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I Am a DEI: On Privilege, Hate, and Being Seen

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I am a DEI.   Hear me out, I am a white male in the USA.  I don’t dismiss for a moment that there is privilege associated with those two words.  When I am at the store, renewing my driver's license, crossing the street, or waving at the nice policewoman, I don’t have fear.  I don’t have the fear that by my presence, people will be suspect of who I am. But, I am a DEI, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion person as acronyms go.  The conservatives of this country have turned an acronym of love and acceptance into one of fear. I knew this early on in my life, as a Jewish child in a southern city.  I remember marching in 1973 around the Yom Kippur War and having people yell at us.  I remember taking German in high school and being ridiculed.  I remember going to Mercer University and being shuffled through Fraternity Rush around Rosh Hashanah, so they all knew who the Jewish boys were going through rush.  I remember being at the University of ...
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We have been down this road before... McCarthy, Trump and Musk have a lot in common.

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  It keeps striking me how similar what we are going through is to the McCarthy era, except we live in a time of up-to-the-moment news via the web, social media, and around-the-clock news channels. Below is a summary of the comparisons with help from ChatGPT.  I did double-check the quotes.  But, I remind you all, if you think you are safe, don't be so sure .  Notice that it took Senators from both parties to stand up to him and bring this terrible time in our country's history to a close. As a Jewish, Gay American born and raised here, I don't take the rhetoric as lightly as some.  When your approach to governing, to lead, is to create enemies to call out and increase fear in the mass population, they will have to find new enemies. As Trump and his allies go after Trans people, after DEI, what happens when they run out of enemies to call out, they will find new ones hope I and my family are not next.   I even held up publishing this out of fear of wha...
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My Voice in a Divided World: 17 Years of Blogging!

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I have had this blog for almost 17 years. I went back and read one of my first posts . It still rings true to who I am. Some years, I may have shared more than I should, and some years, the posts have been sparse. Sometimes, life gets very busy: work, travel, and even some fun. However, there have also been moments when I didn’t think what I had to say was right, and the importance of my words was not more important than peace in my world and family. On this morning of the inauguration and the cease-fire in Israel, I feel the need to say something. I have opinions about the war in Gaza, Netanyahu, and Israel, but I have family over there who live this day to day.  I have the luxury of sitting in East Texas not worried about an air raid siren and where is the nearest shelter.  With a nephew in the Israeli army, the last thing I would want to do is to upset my family, especially my brother, whose opinions are different from my own. Here I sit on the verge of another four years o...
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