Just a short secondary Passover dispatch from Texas.. the weirdest moment of this trip wasn't actually Jew-related. I was driving my mom's Volvo today to take the maid home (I know, I come from very bougie Heebies, what can I say?) and marvelling how different the part of town I grew up in is now. I put on KTRU, which is Rice University's college alternative, just as I turned onto the main street that runs past the front of my old high school. I barely recognize it from the front now, as they did some renovations, but as I passed it, I looked back, as saw the renovations were only a veneer to hide the same ugly beige buildings from my days there. Don't worry, I won't wax poetic on the symbolism of that. They could raze the school, and I'd still spit on the pavement of the parking lot they turn it into. But for that brief moment, alone in a car, with KTRU on, and speeding past the high school, I was caught in a short seconds-long stasis of an utter detachment from reality, where time was something to fear, like back then. Okay, shit.. so I waxed a little poetically. But in the end, I swore in Yiddish and turned up TMBG on the radio, and left high school behind again. Least physically.

The KPC return with Hebrew synchronicity, remotely from my parents' home in Texas, for this special Passover dispatch. Seder the second is tonight, and number one reminded me the deeper meaning of Pesach, that Jews celebrate their freedom from Egyptian bondage by chaining their immediate and remote family, and least one Goy (because we love baffling non-Jews with our holidays in return for making us baffled by all those holidays involving some guy, a couple pieces of wood, and a waste of good nails,) to the dining room table for several mindnumbing hours of unsalted mutant saltine crackers, pounded fish, and "You know who is dead now?" But could be much much worse. I could be at my brother-in-law's home with the Chasidic Brady Bunch, where they don't even start praying until sundown, and they do every single word in the Hagadah (the Passover book o' Symbolic Rituals) so they won't eat until probably eleven, and might be lucky to finish by one in the morning. They are so religious that the kids have kosher for Passover clothing, since God forbid they should wear something they ate leavened bread in.
Passover is actually my favorite holiday, for two reasons: One, underneath it all, it really is a holiday all on the freedom train. These days, and always, it is a good idea to remind ourselves that just as Jews were slaves in Egypt, so unless we teach each other about what that was like, that we all could end up enslaved again. Much better than the Christian version of Passover which is all all about some groundhog thing with Jesus and a tomb. Shows how bipolar the two can be, Christians are all about the risen God, and Jews are all on that unrisen bread thing. Two, it is great lesson in how you can smother a relatively important symbol in a crapload of useless overkill rituals. "For now we are free! Moishe, do we have the Kosher for Passover dish soap and sponges?"
I'm not too worried of getting smote for saying this, since I survived having a bacon cheeseburger on Yom Kippur without being struck down by the aweful majesty of His Most Rootitootiness.

On the really good news front, I will get my hands on a refurbished laptop when I return to Washington, so the kosher pork shall spill forth at a truly sickening rate, all goes well. We'll see about another Passover dispatch from Houston before going.