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Presents for the weekend and the New Year — Rosh Hashanah starts Monday evening. Enjoy!

I didn’t expect to write a blog today. I couldn’t resist… Enjoy ….

The  best performing stocks 2021 – YTD

This list comes from a site called NerdWallet. Click here.

I’m glad we have many of these stocks in our portfolio. (See the right hand column on the blog.)

Good news: We picked two top performers long while ago — Moderna and Generac. But we also own Nvidia, Charles River Labs and Google. They’re on the list.


How to help women in Texas

Texas has just passed a law effectively outlawing abortion in the state.

I am sending money to an organization called Fund Texas Choice . This is what it does:

Their web site is www.FundTexasChoice.org. 

How not to make a Bucket List

Your weekend reading is a wonderful article called “One Thing I Don’t Plan to Do Before I Die Is Make a Bucket List.

The author is 35. Her doctors have told her she has Stage IV colon cancer and a slim chance of survival.

So clearly the first thing to do is a make a bucket list.

NO!

Please read the article. It’s beautifully written. Here are three paragraphs I especially love:

   With the ascendance of Christianity under Emperor Constantine in the fourth century came a different form of bucket list: the pilgrimage to places made sacred by Jesus and the saints. Churches and shrines were built over those spots and so began a holy travel circuit that believers have been making ever since. (Be sure to stop by the shrine in Rome displaying the gridiron which roasted St. Lawrence alive, making him the patron saint of short-order cooks.)

   Throughout the medieval era, those roads were teeming with pilgrims setting out and returning from epic journeys to see burial sites and relics scattered across Christendom from Canterbury to Jerusalem. This kind of bucket list captures the stirrings of our curiosity and wanderlust, devotion and enterprise, all of which pull us toward unknown adventure. It calls us on a hero’s journey.

   The modern bucket list is something else entirely. With a hundred or so books with titles like “1,000 Places to See Before You Die,” there are enough activities in the modern bucket list industry to keep people industriously morbid. It is a form of experiential capitalism. Hang gliding. Snorkeling. Times Square on New Year’s Eve and Paris in the spring.

For the full, wonderful, (non-political) article, click here.

Favorite New Yorker cartoons this week

Monday evening is Rosh Hashanah

Her are two bad (i.e. good) Jewish jokes to enjoy for Monday.

A Jewish Divorce

A New York City judge is presiding over the divorce proceedings of a Jewish couple.

When the final papers have been signed and the divorce is completed, the woman thanks the judge and says, “OK. Now I have to arrange for a Ghet.”

The judge inquires what she means by a ‘Ghet’.

The woman explains that a Ghet is a religious ceremony which is required under the Jewish religion in order to receive a divorce that is recognized by the Jewish faith.

The Judge says, “You mean it’s a religious ceremony like a Bris?”

“Well,” she replies, “Yes, it’s sort of similar to a Bris, only in this case you get rid of the entire prick.”

The Talking Parrot

Meyer, a lonely widower, was walking home along Delancy Street one day wishing something wonderful would happen in his life, when he passed a pet store and heard a squawking voice shouting out in Yiddish, “Quawwwwk…vus machts du?”

Meyer rubbed his eyes and ears. Couldn’t believe it. Perfect Yiddish.

The proprietor urged him, “Come in here, fella, and check out this parrot…”

Meyer did. An African Grey cocked his little head and said: “Vus? Kenst sprechen Yiddish?”

Meyer had placed five hundred dollars on the counter and carried the parrot in his cage away with him. All night he talked Yiddish with the parrot. He told the parrot about his father’s adventures coming to America. About how beautiful his late wife, Sarah, was when she was a young bride. About his family. About his years of working in th e garment district. About Florida .

The parrot listened and commented.

They shared some walnuts.

The parrot told him of living in the pet store, how lonely he would get on the weekends. They both went to sleep.

Next morning, Meyer began to put on his Tfillin, all the while saying his prayers. The parrot demanded to k now what he was doing and when Meyer explained, the parrot wanted to do the same. Meyer went out and had a miniature set of tfillin hand made for the parrot.

The parrot wanted to learn to daven (to pray) and learned every prayer. He even wanted to learn to read Hebrew.

So Meyer spent weeks and months, sitting and teaching the parrot, teaching him Torah In time, Meyer came to love and count on the parrot as a friend and fellow Jew.

One morning, on Rosh Hashanah, Meyer rose and got dressed and was about to leave when the parrot demanded to go with him. Meyer explained that Shul (synagogue) was not a place for a bird, but the parrot made a terrific argument, so Meyer relented and carried the bird to Shul on his shoulder.

Needless to say, they made quite a spectacle. Meyer was questioned by everyone, including the Rabbi and the Cantor. They refused to allow a bird into the building on the High Holy Days, but Meyer persuaded them to let him in this one time, swearing that the parrot could daven. Wagers were made with Meyer.

Thousands of dollars were bet that the parrot could NOT daven, could not speak Yiddish or Hebrew, etc.

All eyes were on the African Grey during services. The parrot perched on Meyer’s shoulder as one prayer and song passed – Meyer heard not a peep from the bird. He began to become annoyed, slapping at his shoulder and mumbling under his breath, “Daven!”

Nothing.

“Daven..parrot, you can daven, so daven…come on, everyone is looking at you!”

Nothing.

After Rosh Hashanah services were concluded, Meyer found that he owed his Shul buddies and the Rabbi over four thousand dollars..

He marched home, so upset he said nothing to the parrot.

Finally several blocks from the Temple the Parrot began to sing an old Yiddish song, as happy as a lark.

Meyer stopped and looked at him.

“Why? After I had tfillin made for you and taught you the morning prayers, and taught you to read Hebrew and the Torah. And after you begged me to bring you to Shul on Rosh Hashana, why? WHY?!? Why did you do this to me?”

“Meyer, don’t be a schmuck,” the parrot replied.

“Think of the odds we’ll get on Yom Kippur!”

The stock market

The ancient rule is “Sell on Rosh Hashanah (i.e. Tuesday). Buy back on Yom Kippur (the morning of Tursday, September 16).

I wouldn’t do it. The one thing we’ve learned in the past two years — You can’t time the stockmarket.

Are tennis players stupid, or what?

To get into the U.S. Tennis Open you have to be vaccinated.

To play in it, you don’t. And apparently only 50% of the players are vaccinated.

It gets better.

Reader Mike Nash emailed me, “Hope you enjoy being tracked by the federal government. My wife and I know better than to get the vax.”

And on that note, I’ll wish you the best for great long weekend. Spend the time with the kids and grandkids. I am. And please wear your mask whether you’re vaccinated or not. The kids can catch what you might have.

Stay healthy. See you next week. — Harry Newton