Friday, November 13, 2009

For Uncle Jake

I spoke with my uncle last weekend and he chastised me for not blogging more. No one else has wondered what happened, and if they had, maybe their name would be in the subject line here.


The problem, is that nothing happened. I mean, interesting things happen all the time, but if I'm not updating my Facebook status about them, I'm sure not going to blog about them. And, for those of you who are my friends on Facebook, you know I never update my status.


So what are the things I haven't written about?


I was at the General Assembly last week. No, not of the United Nations, but of the Jewish Federations of North America. That used to be called the United Jewish Communities, but sometime in the last weeks they changed their name. Again. A few years back they were the United Jewish Appeal. Evidently they didn't think that name was appealing enough.


The GA (pronounced 'ga', probably only by me) is an annual conference of 3000+ Federation professionals, lay leaders, other Jewish organizational representatives. All told, it's a lot of Jews in one place and fairly overwhelming. That said, you can see everyone you know all in once place over the course of three days. It saves a lot on your phone bill.

It's also a magnet for heads of State(s). Netanyahu spoke on Monday and Obama was supposed to speak on Tuesday. He cancelled, which was a relief to me, mainly because the 8:00am session I was part of was then moved to the much more civilized time of 9:30am. Had my session been at 8:00am, I would have had no notes and extemporaneous speaking is not my forte.

The organizational shuk is always a good place to see people I know from other organizations. It's also a great place to pick up new pens. This year, I think there were only three places giving out pens - a sure sign the economy has effected non-profits. There was one group giving out back-scratchers, which was just weird.

On a completely different note, I still have Mimi's straw in my Nalgene and haven't been struck down by lightening or the flu yet, so I guess it wasn't a horrible idea after all.