The last time I posted here, it was in the middle of counting the Omer, and here we are again, with Shavuot just a couple of days away. I’m contemplating making a cheesecake, or blintz’s, but I’m likely to just buy treats instead of making them from scratch – I just don’t have the energy, and there are a lot of things going on.

One big thing that is looming a bit is that I signed up a while ago to run the Baltimore 10-miler, an annual run in the middle of Baltimore, starting in Druid Hill Park, which is an area that I love. I signed up for the run in December, with the hope that signing up would kick me into resuming a regular running habit that I’ve lost in this pandemic time, and struggled to resume. I also signed up for MCRRC’s Speed Development Program, which I’ve participated in twice before, once without getting to more than a couple of the training runs, the second times getting to almost all the training runs, and connecting with some really great people. Well, this past winter was a replay of the first time I did SDP – I’m not sure I got to even one of the training runs! Ugh!

On Sunday, I’ll be chanting a chapter from the Book of Ruth, as part of the celebration of Shavuot. I love the Book of Ruth, from the standpoint of a convert to Judaism. Ruth is the original convert, and Shavuot has a lot of reverberations for we who chose Judaism. There’s a lovely idea that all Jews from all time were present at Sinai for the giving of the Torah, which is the central focus of Shavuot – all Jews, even Jews of choice. What a notion.

And the trope, or musical motif, of the festival trope, the melody used to chant Ruth, is my favorite. This melody is also used to chant Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), read on Sukkot, and the Song of Songs, read on the Shabbat during Passover.

I guess I ought to go practice it a bit (I did practice last Shabbat). Want to be fluent by Sunday, and have ironed out the melodic connections.

And, maybe by Sunday, I’ll have run 10 miles on Saturday (which, of course, also means that I’ll miss Shabbat services…choices, choices). We’ll see…