A Few Must-Reads

Tomboy's post about what happened on Lag B'Omer. She is a program director for youth organizations, and... well, you have to read it for yourself. Excerpt:

Earth becomes very quiet, and all I hear is the echo of crackling flames and the slow rise of the moon. A moon so violently golden, so pockmarked, like a burnt skull.
Houston, we have a problem.

Quick head count. And again.
'Ben, come here.'
I hear sirens. I know they are fire trucks, but premonition hits me like broken water.
'Dana, where the hell is she? She has a fear of fires.' As well as impulsive and self-harming.

As Elster said in the comments:

People like you do very important, yet vastly underappreciated, work. Without resorting to hyperbole, one could almost argue heroic.

Amen. Meanwhile, DovBear wrote about the importance of the J-blogosphere, among other issues, in what is possibly one of his best posts ever* (read this first, however). And I don't use the term loosely. Excerpt:

I'm sick because of the larger story, sick about what's happened to Judaism. Sick about how superficial stupidities have become the community's dominant concern. Sick about how the great ethics of our outstanding faith have been hijacked and subverted by fraudulently pious jackasses for their own selfish purposes.

Finally, Judeopundit finds an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has always been notoriously left-wing, which sadly shows just how far to the left the fringe left have gone. This is sick.

* I am slightly confused, however. He originally had the two posts together, and for some reason his split took away from it. He may have added/changed some sentences or something. Nevertheless, it's still a great post.