Orel Family

Bruce Springsteen opened a 2-night stand at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park last evening with a 32-song 3 hour, 43-minute set.  Again, this is the opening night of a two-night stand.  Tonight he comes back to try and top it. Bruce goes back a long way in Philadelphia, and yesterday he made sure to remind the crowd of his long roots here, going back to when he played the Main Point 40 years ago.  This was evident not only during between-song chatter during the show, but also in references to Philly inserted in to song performances:  During "Sherry Darling" early on, he was stuck in traffic in Philadelphia, and later on he referenced -- with plenty of f-bombs for all the kids down front -- the experience of coming down the New Jersey Turnpike to get to Philly. In a sense, the show really started with an are you fucking kidding me???  sound check that included the very rarely played "None But the Brave," the once-ever played "County Fair," and fi...

I imagine a future conversation between myself and Elianna: Me: "Bruce Springsteen once signed a used ticket stub I handed him, and gave it back!" Elianna: "Bruce played his harmonica in concert and then gave it to me!" Me: "I talked to Bruce once." Elianna: "I sang with Bruce.  He told me I was awesome!" Me: "I shook Bruce's hand.  Firm handshake, and he looked me right in the eye." Elianna: "Bruce took me by the hand and danced with me, then he picked me up and I waved to the whole stadium full of cheering people!" In this episode of Close Encounters of the Bruce Kind,  I'm going to lose.  But I don't mind. Not even 30 hours before show time, we weren't even going to go to Toronto for Bruce Springsteen's show there.  I didn't have General Admission tickets, and after the kids were hooked on the GA experience in  Auburn Hills  and  Buffalo  in April, I didn't want to go to a big stadiu...

On January 24, 2010, I watched on TV as the New Orleans Saints hosted the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship Game.  I was mildly rooting for the Vikings, just so that old man Brett Favre could get one last shot at a Super Bowl.  The Vikings dominated the game, but turnovers and penalties doomed them.  Favre was injured due to a questionable hit, so much so that he couldn't hobble for a fist down to set up a last minute winning field goal.  Instead, he threw an ill-considered pass that was intercepted, and the Saints eventually won the game in overtime. Cut forward to 2012.  On March 2, the NFL announced that the Saints may have been intentionally trying to injure Vikings players, including Fare, during that 2010 matchup, including paying bonuses for causing injury.  Of course, I was appalled.  Had the result of that game been unfairly influenced by a bunch of bounty-hunting thugs? It only got worse:  On April 5, filmmaker Sean Pamphilon...

Aaron at the airport, on the way to Ramah Outdoor Adventure When I was 10, I went away to summer camp for the first time.  It was a 7-week boys camp near New London, New Hampshire, called Camp Sunapee.  I didn't really want  to go to sleepaway camp.  In A Christmas Story  the younger brother Randy is introduced with, "Every family has a kid who won't eat."  In my family, that was me.  I think I survived that summer mostly on bread sandwiches and Hershey's Almond Chocolate bars.  We also had a counselor from Switzerland who taught soccer and took me sailing on a butterfly, and who introduced me to this amazing thing called Lindt Milk Chocolate that was even better than Hershey's.  I shot a rifle, went to a dance at a girls camp, occasionally saw my older brother who was a 2nd year Sunapee camper, and... well, I didn't really like  that summer's camp experience all that much, in the end, but from that year on I was away at camp every s...

When I was in my final year of high school, I witnessed a sexual assault.  At a trip to a model UN, in a hotel room.  The perpetrator, like me, was a high school senior; I had known him since we were 4.  The victim was 15; I'd known her for several years, as well.  The party was an excuse for us seniors to drink legally a lot in a famous New York City hotel (the drinking age in New York was just 17 at the time).  The girl shouldn't have been there... but she was, and had had too much.  He took advantage, forcing her hands to place where they shouldn't have been.  I could process what was happening, but not what to do about it.  I froze.  Pretended I didn't see.  When he got up to get more drinks, I collected myself... and her.  "You need to get out of here.  I'm escorting you to your room now."  I wasn't exactly proud of myself, just a bit relieved that it was over.  None of us ever spoke about it again. I have spen...

The 4 of us, before the start of the 2012 Tour de Cure For the eighth time this year, the Orel men rode in the annual Tour de Cure  ride to help support the American Diabetes Association (ADA).  For the 4th time, we were joined by the Orel women, and for the first time, our team included someone not named Orel. First things first:  We are still accepting donations.  The link is:   http://main.diabetes.org/goto/teamorel In flipping through the blog, I found that I used it to put out pre-tour fundraising messages in 2006  and  2007 .  The 2006 blog post revealed that my sneakers, water bottle, gloves, bicycle and biking shorts were the same this morning as 6 years ago... and this is not  an advertisement for the condition of the sneakers!  Aaron used a bike that year that can best be described as a large toy (and which nearly ended up in a neighbor's scrap heap earlier this year, but there's another story there), but he managed 15 ...

Today was the spring concert at Hillel Day School.  The "World Drumming Club" performed Adenkum,  a Ghanan song with gourds for rhythm (which is where the song's title comes from).  The Adenkum is an elongated gourd with a hole at one end, that is played by the Ashanti women of Ghana.  I don't know what the words mean; one youtube link says it is a song telling children to "listen more than they speak, especially so that they can learn from and respect their elders." You can find other versions of the song, including with the song's composer Sowah Menah, on youtube.  Here's the version performed this afternoon at Hillel, with Elianna in the second solo.  Thanks to Robin Lash and Andrea Trivax at Hillel Day School, for forming the World Drumming Club.