CU Later, Better

Cataract Surgery: This year, Abq Jew will be celebrating Passover, the Festival of Freedom, by freeing (during Chol HaMoed, of course) his good right eye (his left eye

is not, has vishalom, bad; it is merely differently abled) from the cataract that prevents him from seeing the score - or even which teams are playing - when he watches ball games from his not-really-that-distant couch.

Abq Jew is making this announcement in the hope that you, his loyal readers, will not mind if there is a lacuna (gap) in blog posts for a few days.

And speaking of lehavdil minds and gaps, Abq Jew (and The Guardian, The New York Times, and many other news outlets) notes with sorrow the recent and most untimely passing of Phil Sayer. (No, there is no overt Jewish connection here.)

Phil Sayer, famous for his ‘mind the gap’ message on London’s tube stations, has died aged 62. Sayer worked for the BBC in Manchester for 10 years before starting Sayer Hamilton Studios with his wife, fellow voice artist, Elinor Hamilton in 2003.

If we're going to talk about minds and gaps, Abq Jew thinks, why not talk about Bette Midler and Oklahoma? Wikipedia tells us that

Midler was born [December 1, 1945] in Honolulu, Hawaii, where hers was one of the few Jewish families in a mostly Asian neighborhood. 

Her mother, Ruth (née Schindel; b. 1916, New Jersey), was a seamstress and housewife, and her father, Fred Midler (b. 1912, New Jersey), worked at a Navy base in Hawaii as a painter, and was also a housepainter.

She was raised in Aiea and attended Radford High School, in Honolulu. She was voted "Most Talkative" in the 1961 school Hoss Election, and "Most Dramatic" in her senior year (class of 1963).