Jacob goes his way.

IT was one of the best Succoth I've ever had. Despite my grief over losing my CHITAS, RaMBAM, Teffilllin etc. - WELL that's being found!
The only thing is, it took me a lot of mashke to keep me through Tishrei.

Interesting lesson for me from this month...
You see wrote before about my massive grief over my most dear subjects in this world, add to this mix that I forgot mine and my wife's passports in this bag. So most of this happy month is nothing but a grief over something that I THOUGHT WAS LOST FOR GOOD AND NEVER WOULD RETURN FOR GOOD! NOW I WISH THAT I WOULD ENJOY IT MORE IF I ONLY KNEW THAT IT WOULD MAKE MIRACULOUS COMEBACK!

This is all source of our worries - negative imagination.
This is what this month was for a battle between extreme hope and extreme pessimism. I would never imagine to see all our documents and the dearest things be brought back in one piece. We don't have to go through major pains this year to actually restore it!

So This year, I thing will be good, because I think good!

Guess what? miracles do happen I found it on Isru CHag. YEAAH!!!

Now back to business again.

Now, for the first time in weeks - I can start writing my kvetch again! My kids disable my computer once in a while, so its' just one of those things.
Anyways, After slichos on Erev Rosh Hashona in 770, I turned around ... and looked for my blue bag (it was right behind me), only to find out and come to accept after three hours of searching, that my bag was gone, and with it my dear things - Teffillin two pairs, Talis, Gartl, Chitas, RaMBaM, pomegranat and honey cookies, first aid kit, pencils and some paper, also daily halacha sefer and Hamodia papers, etc..., above all in a side pocket my pay check for two weeks. Still no sign of it. I put up sign and its not there after less than a day. boy what a trouble, but I was able to recover my check from my job. The rest is gone, I bought my self a teffillin, but I must tell you it was a chill. I never knew I would be grieving about it so much as if someone died in my family.
I could not begin to recover until Yom Kippur. I had chest pains twice and slight headaches, even smaalest things made me extremely nervous, sometimes I would even experience a shortness of breath.
I never knew that it would hurt me so much to lose it. The way I began to recover was that I began to muse at how much I'm grieving about it.
Its not the end of the life, I can buy another one. But if anyone saw a big blue back pack and tells me, God bless him, I'll even give a reward, Thank you!

Learning machines, do they work?

One more thing: state-of-the-art mania, that somehow was instilled in our brains. Yeah, like fancy computerized slide show is better than non-computerized. OK lets examine it - students looking at slides generated out of computer and it is somehow better than looking at the same slides generated manually by teachers - get it?
If your brain still says that state of the art equipment will improve student performance, please examine it. The only thing it will improve is - an extra figure in your school costs that parents (WHO ARE DEMANDING THIS NONSENSE!!!) will have to suffer through.

Please tell me if it was too harsh.

Labor day - does anyone know?

It was back then when Democrats stood for racism and ideals of KKK, Republicans were liberal party, workers' favorite and business friendly, Republicans were trying to push human rights bill, abolishing segregation, which was just filibustered by the Democratic Senate, all in all not like our times. It was at the turn of 19th century, the conservative agenda of the Northern Democrats held to the fact there is a good reason why some people become rich - they better than the rest.
The government under Grover Cleveland: And since business decisions of the biggest companies are the best for American economy, so a big government should be used to keep worker disruptions of big businesses for the sake of progress.
Opposition, the Republicans: Progress is progress, but didn't Lincoln just abolish slavery? (Don't get me wrong Republicans, just like Democrats were for regulations - free business) Just like boss has an absolute freedom to do in his company as he pleases, so too workers are free to strike or work if they like it. You can still fire them, but if they don't want to show up on the job, using government to force them work would be like slavery, whereas the master used the police to force slaves stay at the place of their work. Two Similar parties with only one disagreement about the treatment of workers.
The Labor: one - the Knights of Labor, also early Labor Unions how do they work? If a worker sees an unfair treatment he may choose to quit, but with big monopolies around, one case of worker quitting is not going to improve the situation. And the alternative job was usually worst than first. If you decide to organize workers into a secret organization, that could give workers simultaneous orders not to show up. So what does that do? To replace a worker it costs company time and money little, but it does, so when a single monopoly having 300,000 employees not showing up for work as much as almost entire company profit this year will go for retraining. Plus one other inconvenience - when replacing entire staff, company is not making profit at all, you can talk about few years of financial difficulties for that company because of massive replacement. So that is how you can force major company into negotiations with workers.
Radical Labor: Communists and Anarchists, action for the sake of action, irritate workers against bosses, hey they even practiced assassinations and terrorist activities against bosses and their wives and children to make the boss listen to even unrealistic demands of that Labor, almost as if you pay pure gold to your employee and you're still not paying enough. Worry about company overpaying workers and goes bankrupt? That's the point. They are not to advance their rights, they there to create as much of crisis in hostile capitalist system as it is enough for people to believe we need radical revolution (an interesting story in an of itself how do radicals and tyrants work), but that is why they radical, right?
I hate to spill this, but although most of the hit men terrorists were German or Slavic, the organizers and masterminds were secular Jews, more than 90% or something. There was even a profile against organizers along those lines - secular (fray) Jew from Eastern Europe etc. Is that antisemitic? you decide. The highest official to be assassinated by such cells was president McKinley, 9/14/01, the plot was in tact - 9/11/01, president died of wounds 9/17/01 yes Arab religious terrorism and Jewish secular is separated by only 100 years.
What follows next are the series of showdowns between all these forces - When republicans were in the white house, they utterly refused to send troops to put the strike down, unless the radicals will start bombing schools where rich children learned or shops or malls where innocent civilians might be killed, or just simply rioting instead of peacefully demonstrating. Even then our president R. Hayes felt guilty about putting Pennsylvania strike down by just parading the federal troops in front of workers, well no shuts were fired but as soon as crowd saw a military "parade" near it, it dispersed. From 1856 until 1894, there was only one Democrat finally elected into office, Grover Cleveland. His views and agenda I described early in his post.
GC reacted the way he knew the best, he sent troops down and ordered to fire the crowds eventually. Pullman strike becomes a massacre for the fist time in history of federal (not local) government.
The reaction was an outrage, so much so that only during his first nonconsecutive term he was going to be one of the best presidents ever elected into office, his second term after 4 year interruption, had him struggling for popularity, and Pullman massacre killed his chances to run for the third term. Radicals and socialists gained the ground with creation of the first registered Socialist Party under E. Debs of Vermont and anarchist under E. Goldman, Communists with multiple people claiming leadership.
As he tried to repent for his mishandling of the strike, he at least gave workers one holiday to commemorate and remember what happened during Pullman and also give hardworking people a day in their honor. But original date for Labor day was supposed to be on May 1st, problem was is that it was international Socialist & radical holiday as well, so to separate American non-socialist labor from socialist, it was agreed upon 1st Monday of September, for actually many reasons - you can guess some of them.
The reason why many of us forgot the real reason for Labor Day, is because as the time went by we usually emphasize on it being back to school, to work from summer hide out day, so the convenient day of this holiday actually gives us what it has to give - forget the "Pullman", enjoy last day of summer, how professionally our governments make us forget what they did to us before!
Have a sweet working year everybody!!!

What should I write about?

There are few topics to write bout: what makes me think I am happy with my family despite financial blunders i.e. what makes a good wife, also what men want, women looking forward to in marriage, yes I've learned thing or two about marriage, situations about state of marriage in general, raising kids and what to really expect, also since I look at some "married" websites, never follow them, but occasionally read them with all sorts of stories from wierd to normal and why some marriages with messy looking husbands and houses last forever and some perfect homes are shatered in divorce and many more that I can write about.
Now why would I be interested in that? One of my main fields of interest is human psychology and I"ve been examining it for quite some time, also since I can better communicate my feelings with my DW in writing better than in word, so why not have her and anybody else who can trigger a new topic to do some sharing of my tjhoughts on the matter?
Also is any one interested in some laws and perception of our Holidays?

Let me know, since only have exactly four followers, so your first request, first served basis almost guaranteed.
Please tell me you will disagree with me and add something to our discussion.

Just rant about life.

OK, so here is something to write about - our school problem, by the way it looks like its about to become worse. They say now that our scholarship of $1,000 is not doing to work, since we can't sell 10 raffle tickets worth $100 each (I wonder, who's going to buy that), so we'll probably have to pay all 8,500 for the school year. Now I've been thinking about home schooling him, the only problem is I can not teach my son how to read or how to put two sounds together to make to one word, so here is our disagreement with Z, my wife: I am perfectly satisfied if he learns how to read by the end of four month of yeshiva, then what we paid for it is enough lets say for eight out of ten month of school year, so by the end of eight month I can start teach him Chumash, davening etc. She is a little hysterical about such fantasy and wants him to finish school year even if it means that we will probably not have Succah, or Esrog etc. So wht should we do?