CubeSpace will be CLOSED on Monday, September 1, 2009, for Labor Day. Stay home. Don't Labor.

As perhaps you've gathered, I'm strongly in favor of celebrating. The more holidays the better. So the opportunity to light Chanukkah candles near the Christmas tree is too good to pass up.

I love the way the two co-exist, and have been enjoying sitting and knitting while the candles burn and the Christmas tree doesn't the last few nights.

In a similar spirit, I want to remind everyone of our upcoming Holiday Party, Tues, Dec 18, 4:30 to 8 PM. Come celebrate with us!

Once again, the rabbi put up the Christmas tree. With some help from Schwern the tree was quickly and efficiently erected and decorated. I'm pleased, though I think it will look even better as the Holiday season continues and we add more decorations. It is my hope that many in the community will feel inspired to add their own decorative touches as we continue. People have been commenting on how much they are enjoying the tree today, which makes me really happy, since I like Christmas trees. As last night was the first night of Chanukah, we also lit Chanukah candles.

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. Co-incidentally, Hanukkah, Chanukkah and a host of similar sounding if varying-spelled Jewish holidays also begin this evening. (It may be that one of my least favorite Jewish questions is, "How is Chanukah spelled?" The correct answer is, "in Hebrew." We're just trying to approximate the same sounds with English letters when we write it in English).

In any case, whichever holiday we're celebrating this evening, it will involve the lighting of candles. Because no one creates a winter solstice type holiday without including light. In fact, Chanukah is called the festival of lights. So, tonight at CubeSpace, we will be lighting the first candle of Chanukah (to be followed by more candles on subsequent nights).

Mostly, we regard the end of Daylight Savings Time with a bit of sadness. After all, it means less light at the end of the day, and makes the days feel significantly shorter. However, there is an upside. More light in the mornings.

At CubeSpace, more light in the mornings means that when we come in, the sunrise is just beginning. We can watch the light gradually brighten the eastern sky.  Then note the colors reflecting off the buildings of downtown. Finally, as the sun peaks above the horizon, sunbeams come pouring through the main work area, and the buildings of downtown sparkle in the direct sunlight. 

So, if some morning at around 7AM you're looking for something to do, come watch the sunrise with us.  

Knitting night at CubeSpace is one of the more interesting events we hold. Often, no one shows up except those of us who work here. However, every time we think about eliminating it from the calendar, howls of protest arise from those who don't come.

The time has come to attempt to garner more support for knitting night. I would like to remind everyone that knitting night is not just for those who knit, but also those who crochet, do needlework, spin on something portable, or create fiber art in another manner (which won't result in permanent damage to CubeSpace...no dyeing).

CubeSpace has been open for a year today! We are having celebrations here: a potluck lunch and a champagne/sparkling beverage and cake celebration from 4 - 6. All of which is very exciting, but I also wanted to take a little time to reflect on the past year.

A year ago, we were sitting here, fully staffed, waiting for someone to walk in the door. And waiting. And waiting. There were days when no one came through the front door who wasn't paid to be here. Now, a slow day is one when we only have 10 people working in cubes.

A year ago we were doing everything for the first time: everytime a customer walked in, we had to figure out how to do what they wanted. Now, we know the basics, and only have to carefully think through how to do something occasionally.

One of the things we wanted to achieve with CubeSpace was to provide people who work alone the opportunities that come from working with others...like sports pools. So, it was with some excitement that we decided to do a football pool.

Andy is, of course, the one of us with the most background in this sort of thing, so I eagerly asked him if it would be heated, where we would put it, and whether it was appropriate to do laps in a football pool. Apparently, I misunderstood.

A football pool (or at least the one we're doing) does not involve swimming, or water of any kind. Instead, it involves picking which team you believe will win each football game, and assigning a measure of how confident you are of that prediction. Each week there seem to be around 16 games, and you rank how sure you are in your prediction from 16 (most confident) down to 1 (haven't ever heard of either team before).

You can also do some cool things like create your own logo...mine is mountains with letters below it...WAGs*...tellling you a great deal about how I intend to "predict" the winners.

I do, however, have some methods I intend to employ:

Apparently, CubeSpace wasn't taking up quite all of my time, so I've decided to add in something new: I've accepted a part-time job as interim rabbi at Temple Beth Sholom in Salem.

While I've loved doing freelance rabbinic work, and found both that and CubeSpace tremendously fulfilling (and wouldn't dream of giving up either), the opportunity to work with a congregation for a year was too tempting to pass up.

So every Thursday, rather than being at CubeSpace, I'll be down in Salem, doing rabbi-things. Most of my other Salem duties will be in hours I wasn't at CubeSpace anyway.

So the question of the week this week is "Bagels or Donuts, and Why?" I was going to answer on the board, and suddenly realized the answer was becoming much too long to fit easily. So I thought, what better place to respond than the CubeSpace blog?

I like both. If offered a plain donut versus a plain bagel, I'll definitely go for the bagel (assuming it's good bagel and good donut, of course). The chewiness of a good bagel, the shear breadness of it wins out.

On the other hand, Donuts can carry such things as chocolate frosting, or a vanilla cream center...and those are truly lovely.

On the third hand, Bagels can have chive creamcheese. So in the end, it just depends.