More different than is absolutely necessary.

Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart - the real wagon itself, and the art on it... 

Making Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart

This lens is the story of three people's project to revive an old form of retail merchandising - the pushcart. I read "The Pushcart Wars" to my kids when they were young, and thought the whole idea was utterly wonderful. So when my frie...

Uncle Shlomos Pushcart at Zazzle

As I described in my lens about building Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart, we've never actually managed to get the real, physical pushcart out on the street - if we do, you'll hear about it! But in the mean time, I've gradually been adding ite...

Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart: the latest images

I needed a place to keep the paintings I feature at my Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart Zazzle site. So this is it - I hope to keep adding new images. You can grab the rss feed and put it in your news reader - that way, you'll know when something new...

Hanukah lenses 

Or Hanukkah. Or Hannukah. Or Chanukah. Or...

The TJC Hanukah Songbook

I was music director for the "Cantor Corps" at Temple Judea Reform in Durham and directed the Triangle Jewish Chorale for fourteen years. Before that, I directed a group called the Solstice Assembly which put on many winter shows incorporat...

When does Hanukkah begin in 2009?

Hannukah is based on the Jewish calendar - it begins at sundown on the 25th day of Kislev and concludes on the 2nd or 3rd day of Tevet (Kislev can have 29 or 30 days). Quick answer: in 2009, Hanukkah begins at sundown on Friday, December 11, 2009. Ha...

How do you spell Hanukkah?

The pie chart here is from the blog Unbecoming Levity - the author researched spellings of this Jewish Holiday in a OneLook.com dictionary search and plotted out which are the most common spellings. His conclusion: Hanukkah 39%, Chanukah 31%, Hanukah...

Skylark Productions: folk and traditional music 

CDs, songbooks, and performers

Skylark Productions: folk and traditional cds and songbooks

Skylark Productions was begun by Pat Sky when he was making field recordings of fiddlers and Irish pipers and whistle players in Ireland. (This was his logo.) He made quite a few well-regarded cassettes (yes, cassettes) but later lost interest and ga...

DIY 

Wedding Ideas: Hand fans for favors | invitations | programs

This page will show you how to design a unique wedding favor for your guests: a hand fan (paddle fan) that's warm and personal, with your picture, or your wedding program, or simply your names and the date of your wedding. My daughter is gettin...

The Peppler Sonnet Service: a history

Or, how I supported myself for three years churning out iambic pentameter at home. You, too, can surely figure out something unconventional that will pay the rent! I graduated from Yale in 1975, completely perplexed about what to do next. To put of...

Crochet a string bag you can stuff in your pocket

I first fell for string bags when I was in Russia in the 1970s. Then, everybody, and I mean everybody, used them. Big ones, small ones, coarse ones, fine ones... they are called "syetki" in Russian. I bought as many as I could find and I still have q...

Baking your own wedding cake

My daughter is getting married next year. I am so astonished at the current cost of wedding cakes ($4-7.50 a slice!) that I went into the basement and found the pans I used when I made my own wedding cake in 1981. I've found a chart telling how much...

How to be creative? Take back your box of crayons!

Hugh MacLeod makes an enjoyable and substantial sum of money scrawling pointed, acerbic cartoons on the backs of business cards. He has a "day job" but blogs about his passion. I'm going to share some of his ideas here, as well as some...

What Stumbleupon.com teaches about building an effective website. 

Lessons on web design learned from StumbleUpon

I've never been a patient user of the internet. I've never been a fan of fancy flash animation and splash screens and drop-down menus which collapse while you're trying to navigate your mouse through them. But stumbling has made me even w...

Building stuff 

Making Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart

This lens is the story of three people's project to revive an old form of retail merchandising - the pushcart. I read "The Pushcart Wars" to my kids when they were young, and thought the whole idea was utterly wonderful. So when my frie...

Build a wattle and daub house.

Wattle and daub (also referred to as 'ruddle and dab' and 'wattle and dab') is sort of like papier mache for living in. It's something strong and serviceable built of something unlikely. In Europe, the framework of wattle and daub begins with a timb...

Essential for free-range chickens: electronic door opener

When I decided to get chickens, it was so they could keep my donkey Jethro company! So they had to be free-range chickens - if they were locked behind chicken wire they wouldn't entertain him very well. I got my chickens in early September and...

Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language"

I started writing a lens about house design and quickly realized the whole thing was turning into a Christopher Alexander love-fest, so I decided I'd better give him his own space. "Pattern Language" is, perhaps, my favorite book in the whole world....

All my Jewish lenses - and you can add yours to the plexo 

The best Jewish lenses at Squidoo

At the top of this lens: my own Jewish lenses. Below: a plexo with great Jewish lenses I've seen at Squidoo. Feel free to add your own!

Kids and Mentoring 

Teach a kid to sew

I am a mentor to a Latina who is just entering ninth grade. Her family generally shops at big box stores, but I thought it would be fun to show her you can be more involved in the look of your clothes and you can make them just the way you like. Sew...

A kid needs you: be a mentor! The Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate Program.

I first heard about the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate program in 2004 in my Spanish class. One of my classmates had been thinking about joining but she was too busy. I was interested in getting more involved with the Hispanic community in my area (Cha...

How to be a mentor (my experience)

I've been a member of the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate Program since my friend Jeimy (left) was in fourth grade. Now, more than five years later, she's about to go into high school - and she has her own lens on Squidoo! I joined the program...

Chai Lifeline: helping sick kids make it through.

It's very hard for me to write about the impact Chai Lifeline, and especially their summer camp for kids with cancer and other dangerous illness, without getting freaked out. That was the worst time of our lives, and Camp Simcha was like a lifeli...

Best children's books: my all-time favorites

Everybody in our family is a reading fanatic, and after my kids were grown I spent several years volunteering in the public schools reading with Spanish-speaking kids, so I've read a lot of picture books. Here are some of my very favorites. The intr...

Four lenses about deer fences and deer repellant 

Deer fence repair and maintenance

Mending your deer fence periodically is like a fisherman mending his nets - it just has to be done. Little critters gnaw holes in the bottom of the fencing and if you don't fix them, bigger and bigger critters will get through until fawns and fin...

Make your own deer fence

I snapped one morning, in a blind choleric rage watching a deer rear up and break one of my favorite dogwoods. That was it. I need the final solution. I didn't want to try the lousy ways, getting madder and madder each time one failed. I went to...

Make your own deer fence gates from pvc plumbing pipes

I hate spending loads of money for anything I could make myself. One of our neighbors had this idea - of making deer fence gates out of pvc plumbing pipes - and I studied his and  made my own. You can, too. When you're planning your deer fen...

Deer repellant: if you aren't ready for a deer fence...

In another lens I describe putting up a deer fence - that was my solution to the deer problem, and it's final. But what if you don't have enough land to make it worthwhile, or you only have a few plants you want to protect, or a deer fence se...

My thanksgiving meditations 

For when I need mantras on happiness...

Thanks to my friends at Squidoo!

Some realy inspiring lenses (see them directly after this intro) made me want to do something nice for the people who've been kind enough to "friend" me here at Squidoo. Kab gave me the url for my friend feed, I massaged it through feed...

Want to be happy? Try being thankful first.

When the days get shorter and the nights get longer it's easy to get blue. I start to feel a little dread around this time of year - I know it's mostly chemical - and by now I know enough to remind myself: I'm extremely lucky to be alive...

Food lenses 

Dining alone, cooking for one, eating over the sink...

I'm an empty nester, divorced, living alone - well, with a donkey, a miniature horse and ten chickens, but they don't come inside and they're no help at dinner time. When I was fresh out of college I lived in a group house and we had big...

Eat more vegetables - cook healthy dinners for one.

After making a lens describing my current deplorable eating habits as a woman living and eating alone, I was so disgusted it seemed like a good time to see if I could reform. It so happens, I received a $800 gift card from Whole Foods last night fo...

Fastest pumpkin pie on the web! With homemade crust.

If you are happy with canned pumpkin, you can make a perfect pumpkin pie in 11 minutes. This lens will show you how I did it this morning. Turn on your oven to 425 degrees to pre-heat. Ready, set, go!

The Best Purple Star Lenses 

Well, my favorites on two particular late night rambles down the list.

More great purple star lenses!

I started from the least-visited end of the purple star list in my previous collection, My favorite purple star lenses. But there were so many wonderful pages to see, I'm starting this new collection.

My favorite purple star lenses on squidoo

When I realized for the first time (this November afternoon in 2009) that I could access the list of all the lenses that have received purple stars - that's 633 as of today - it seemed quite exciting. I've decided to start at the end of the...

Geeky lenses about making your own website and getting good traffic to it 

Add a contact form to your lens

This was a tough one. But it worked! Now visitors to my wedding-music sites can send me their names and email addresses and the information will go directly to my email account, and I can send them to any "thank you" page I want - in my cas...

Feedburner and Squidoo

Under construction! Greekgeek is one of the great css wranglers at Squidoo. I saw she had a nice feedburner rss code inside a widget in her introduction - looked through all her lenses to find instructions - and finally decided to try and figure it...

Building a simple easy website using Wordpress

So the repair guy comes to fix my refrigerator. And I ask him, "Do you do dishwashers too?" And he says, "Yes," We're starting to make an appointment when Jethro the donkey starts braying. "Do you have a donkey?" he...

How to widgetize an rss feed on squidoo

On the trail of the feedburner rss widget I saw in one of Greekgeek's lenses, I naturally started at feedburner.com, which is now owned by Google. It does a fine job of turning a blog into a feed, that's what it's for. But I couldn't...

Top SEO tips I've learned at Meetup

I started going to web development meetups and SEO meetups about a year ago because I am a lousy marketer, and I'm quite shy, and a phone phobe, so if my bands were going to get work or people were going to buy my cds and songbooks, I was going t...

Geeky lenses with squidoo and publishing tips 

I love Irfanview!

I've used Irfanview for years and love it so much I have it in quicklaunch - and when I'm working on squidoo lenses it's usually open. I can't understand how something so wonderful can be free. Irfanview calls itself an "image vi...

Publish your own book using CreateSpace or Lulu.com

If you are handy with a computer and willing to invest in a publishing program, you can prepare your own book to be published, upload it to a "print on demand" printer, and have copies of it back in your hands in just a couple of weeks. I've done it...

Using the Wimpy MP3 Player on websites and Squidoo

I first saw a Wimpy Player on the local Magnolia Klezmer Band's page A Trip to Amerika. I was intrigued by its plain look and looked in "view page source" to see what they were using. Wimpy Player? Never heard of it. But I bought it after I saw how w...

Formatting an rss feed using Yahoo Pipes on Squidoo

I have a lens called Weddings in North Carolina and it contains, among other things, (1) an rss feed from my blog of me singing love songs, and 2) another rss feed from my blog listing and reviewing local wedding vendors. For a few weeks I've been a...

How to put your OWN songs on your squidoo lens.

This lens is for musicians who want to get their own mp3 songs on Squidoo lenses. I would never, never have figured out how to do it without the lens called Add Music to Your Squidoo Lens. I needed to see the instructions written out (although Bonnie...

Lenses about animals 

The Conservators' Center: helping endangered animals in North Carolina

My friend Mark suggested that the Conservators' Center really deserved to have a lens. It is run by two people, and their mission is "to preserve threatened species through rescuing wildlife in need, to engage in responsible captive breeding, and to...

What is a miniature horse?

In this picture, Superman the miniature horse has climbed up on my porch, having escaped from the enclosure (see the envious donkey behind him, to his right) during the night. Superman was hoovering up chicken food when he was apprehended and returne...

My donkey Jethro

Nobody believes it when I say I have a pet donkey. Donkeys are rare and unpopular pets, at least where I live (Chapel Hill, North Carolina). I haven't seen another donkey closer than 45 minutes away. Jethro has not seen another donkey since he ca...

Essential for free-range chickens: electronic door opener

When I decided to get chickens, it was so they could keep my donkey Jethro company! So they had to be free-range chickens - if they were locked behind chicken wire they wouldn't entertain him very well. I got my chickens in early September and...

What to feed a donkey in suburbia? I'll show you how to keep him fed!

The donkey in this picture lives in Bulgaria. As far as I can tell, his owner takes him around to various weedy places during the day and he crunches away as fast as possible while his owner cuts more weeds with a scythe and puts them in the cart to...

Make your own giant puppets, masks, and Punch and Judy dolls 

How to make puppets large and small, and masks

This space alien soft ventriloquists dummy puppet welcomes you to my collection of information about making creepy puppets - big ones, small ones (particularly from the Punch and Judy show) - and masks. I love paper mache and that's the common el...

Art 

The paintings of Jane Filer

This is a the first real painting I ever bought. I was walking by the gallery in University Mall in Chapel Hill, NC when the pictures in the window drew me into the place. It was the first time I'd ever gone into an art gallery of my own free will!...

My favorite tshirts

What a dumb problem, eh? I have a drawer stuffed with t-shirts that, for one reason or another, I think are too good to wear. What am I going to do about this? In the mean time, I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you. The picture: As the...

The paintings of Mark Chandler

My friend Jane helped me set up this lens and has encouraged a painting sanctuary every weekend. We work on the prompt given out by the "Illustration Friday" project. Sometimes some other idea needs work on canvas. Occasionally Jane slacks off and d...

Hamsas - good luck charms from the Middle East

I first got interested in the hamsa symbol when a friend brought me one from Israel This lens will show you some of my favorite hamsas and places to find more. I got more interested when my daughter was writing a paper on folk religion and the diffe...

Russian woodcuts of Star Wars and Harry Potter in Old Church Slavonic? Lubki!

This is my second lens based on a Slavic mystery. A couple years ago I stumbled upon these modern parodies of the Russian folk woodprints called lubki (singular, lubok). The artist is Andrei Kuznetsov. I wrote to the artist and got no response. There...

Lenses about Paris 

A frugal traveler in Paris, part two

I just got back from my second three-week stay in Paris. (This is a picture my future son-in-law took of me amidst my classmates as we were assembling for the group picture.) I was taking an advanced Yiddish course at the Medem Bibliotheque, which m...

Mystery Ukrainian band of Paris: "Les Musiciens de Lviv" (Cabaret Slave)

During my daily excursions in Paris this summer, I came across this Ukrainian band from Lvov. They were wonderful! They sing in full-throated harmony and sound like a real orchestra. I watched them with complete satisfaction for half an hour until t...

The "other" Paris flea markets...

Everybody knows about "Les Puces" at Clignancourt, but there are other open-air markets with bargain used - retro - or just plain cheap wares for sale. This picture is from the flea market at Montreuil. I don't really go to flea markets to buy stuff...

A frugal traveler gets ready for Paris

Although the dollar isn't currently doing very well against the euro, there are more tools available now than ever before for finding bargains abroad and planning your trip before you leave. I'm big on planning and want to share some of the things I...

I love telenovelas! 

More telenovela fun!

I asked our readers at Caray, Caray! (the blog written in English for fans of novelas) to share what they love about the novelas and I got so many fabulous responses they overflowed my first lens. So here is another! I hope this gets you in the mood...

Telenovelas: a fun, painless way to learn Spanish

I started wanting to learn Spanish about six years ago when I realized a lot of my new neighbors here in North Carolina didn't speak English! One evening a friend and I were in El Cuscatleco (a local Salvadoran restaurant) and there was a very stran...

William Levy, star of Sortilegio

I run Caray, Caray!, a blog which translates and discusses the Univision telenevelas for English-speaking fans, and I don't allow celebrity gossip on that site. But I find myself intrigued by the amazing improvement in the acting of star William...

"Other" 

Good rules for life

I saw this list mentioned in the New York Times today and I had to go find it. George Washington supposedly copied it out by hand, when he was sixteen years old; it was a list compiled by Jesuit priests in the 16th century. Even though some of the...

My Peppler family - an exploration

In 1998, when my father was dying, I thought I might entertain him a little by investigating his roots. I developed a genealogy obsession and spent a few years traveling and reading microfilms. I could never interest either of my brothers, but sudde...

Amazing things I've seen only once in my life.

I thought it would be fun to tell you about some of the amazing moments of my life. Like the day, for instance, when my son, the toddler you see part of in this picture, found a very strange mushroom. It's called, we found in our Fielding's Guide, an...

Can we have a good divorce?

Back in the days when the pictures on this lens were taken, few people divorced, although perhaps many wanted to. Now divorce enters into most people's lives: if you're lucky enough to avoid it yourself, I'm sure somebody you love is divorced or is g...