I Dieci Comandamenti

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Happy Shavuot today! 
It's the Jewish festival celebrating the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai (and also the grain harvest). 
Just before my recent trip to Italy I bought this little Holy Land olive wood tablets of the Covenant, in a Jerusalem church. 
The Ten Commandments -- in Italian!

Chag sameach, happy holiday! 
And to the Christian friends, happy Pentecost! 
Same day.
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More posts about the Ten Commandments are here:
http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/search/label/Ten%20Commandments

More about Shavuot:
http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/search/label/Shavuot
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STL DPB ON THE ROAD - MAINE

Here we are in the most northeasterly state. Our neice's wedding tonight is at a splendid resort on the shore of Sebago Lake. It's pretty good sized. My whole family is here.

There was a lobster bake last night. I don't do lobster. The taste isn't good enough to me to be worth all the work and mess, but that is a minority opinion. 

American states all have a slogan. Missouri is the Show Me State, a phrase whose origins are a bit murky. Maine's is Vacationland. I've been here a number of times before, mostly to photography school, and I've always thought the motto should be More Than Enough Trees.         

IT'S JUNE

Pride Month in Boston under the Seaport Boulevard bridge. We wore ourselves out at the Children Museum (not any better than the one in St. Louis) and were looking for lunch. The Barking Crab looked a little run down and overpriced for our taste. Emily and Ellie went a bit further down the street and found someplace better.

Crabby footnote: I've been using Google Maps when looking for nearby restaurants and groceries. It has done a pretty poor job, failing to identify good, nearby choices. Online research in the age of monopolies.                   

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

So we come all the way from St. Louis to Boston to see what? Hedgehogs.

We are staying in an AirBnB apartment in the North End. That company will make a buck off you any way it can, including selling tickets for local attractions. (It gets a cut.) It sent us an ad for Jill's New England Hedgehogs that got Mrs. C's eye. Great. We travel 1,200 miles to go see some hedgehogs.

Well, it was a treat. Jill Warnick breeds African pygmy hedgehogs in her apartment in nearby Brookline. She sells them to people as pets but also has meet and greet sessions where you can learn all about the adorable little creatures and how to care for them if would like one at home. (No shipping, in case you were curious.) And you can hold them - their spines relax when they are used to people and handled gently. A whole new dimension of cute.

To top it all off, on our way back to the city center in an Uber car, we were stuck in traffic in Copley Square. Looked to my left and found this. I gather this is normal for Boston.

And by the way, if you want to visit Jill, don't book it through a third party online. Contact her directly through her web site, above.              

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - ENEMY TERRITORY

This is a pretty big, intense city. We are staying in the North End, the traditional Italian quarter. The streets are as irregular as the oldest parts of London, laid out on old cow paths. Pretty quiet. It's too irregular for noise.

We have to be a bit circumspect. The finals of the North American hockey championship between the St. Louis Blues and the Boston Bruins is tied at two games each. It takes four victories to win. The fifth game is tonight here in Boston. No desire to meet these people in the truck.