Today is Sunday, April 17, 2022, marking Easter for Catholics and Christians around the world. In our country, the holiday didn’t even result in a moratorium on America’s bloody pastime: mass shootings. As I have now read on my CNN smartphone app, there were three mass shootings during this Easter weekend, resulting in 2 persons dead. This should not shock anyone since we are so numb to this by now, so why would a holiday as sacred as Easter mean anything these days – after experiencing this carnage for so long in this country since its infancy. However, there should be some sort of response to this never-ending cycle of shooting and lives and families torn asunder. The article appearing in my online edition of the Associated Press lays out the three shootings and what actually happened when all hell broke loose in various localities over the Easter weekend. The article is entitled “US rocked by 3 mass shootings during Easter weekend; 2 dead.”

The first shooting occurred in South Carolina in Hampton County early Sunday that left at least nine people injured. It was the third mass shooting in the nation over the Easter holiday weekend. Hampton County is roughly 80 miles west of Charlestown.

The second shooting happened in Pittsburgh, where two minors were killed and at least eight people were injured during a shooting at a house party. The incident, which followed an altercation, occurred around 12:30 a.m. during a party at a short-term rental property where hundreds of people had gathered – with the “vast majority” of them being underage, as reported by Chief Scott Schubert of the Pittsburgh police department to journalists.

Sunday’s shootings come just a day after gunfire erupted at a busy mall in the state capital of Columbia. Nine people were shot and five people were injured while trying to flee the scene at Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said Saturday. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 73.

In this incident, a suspect, 22-year-old Jewayne M. Price, was taken into custody as a “person of interest” in the mall shooting. Price is scheduled to have a bond hearing at 2 p.m. Sunday on charges of unlawful carrying of a pistol.

As for the 73-year-old victim of this shooting, she continues to receive medical treatment, but the other victims have been released from local hospitals or will be released shortly. Police Chief Holbrook said, “We don’t believe this was random. We believe they knew each other and something led to the gunfire.”

These incidents occurring as they did, on a holiday weekend, just illustrate that violence never takes a holiday these days. It doesn’t matter where you are or what is being observed, if someone wants to unload a pistol on unsuspecting victims, he or she will – with impunity.

As we near the point of observing public hearings emanating from the January 6 investigation into events from that infamous day, a former federal prosecutor has told reporters from Business Insider that testimonies from Capitol rioters are “certainly incriminating of Donald Trump.” This article was written by Yelena Dzhanova. This prosecutor has indicated that these testimonies incriminate the former president in engaging in criminal activities. Several Capitol rioters have testified that they felt compelled to participate last year because of Dumpf’s direction. The prosecutor, Glenn Kirschner, said, “It is certainly evidence that he incited an insurrection.” Kirschner believes that this “testimony will eventually culminate in a devastating blow to former President Donald Trump.”

We can be rest assured that a jury will hear the testimony and decide that Little Donnie is guilty of inciting the January 6 insurrection last year, according to a video posted to YouTube on Thursday by Kirschner. Kirschner predicts that the Orange Menace will be indicted after witness after witness declare that the reason they marched on the Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win is because of Dumpf’s encouragement.

One of those insurrectionists, Dustin Thompson from Ohio, who was found guilty last week of participating in the siege, said in a court filing that he’d like to subpoena the former president as a witness. Thompson’s attorney indicated that Dumpf and his allies carefully crafted a plot to call into question the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and the validity of President Biden’s victory.

The Capitol riot left five people, including one police officer, dead. Members of the Proud Boys, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, were reportedly present. So is our former president ever going to be indicted, even with all of this evidence out there? Your guess is as good as mine. One theory is that if the Orange Menace were to be indicted, and is somehow acquitted in a trial of his peers or if there is a hung jury, what message will that send? The consequences from this situation could be quite disastrous. Let’s hope he does suffer some blow to his influence, wealth, or even freedom in the next few years.

So I was spending the second night of Passover with my good friend, “Harold,” and his family until today. We left Forest Hills early yesterday afternoon and arrived at our friend’s house in Cherry Hill around 3:35 p.m. We immediately acclimated ourselves to being with Harold, “Rachel,” and their two pets, Teddy the dog and Naomi the cat. We thought that Harold’s son, “Zander,” and his wife, “Nalah, would have been ensconced there by the time we arrived, but they were delayed because of Nalah working late last night in her capacity as a doula, which was working with a young woman during her first pregnancy. The pair came instead around 6.

We had our seder around 6:30 and benefitted from Harold’s leadership during the traditional service and retelling of the Israelites’ bondage in Egypt and their subsequent release from slavery. We all had a part to read in the traditional Haggadah, which is the text all Jewish participants read on these two seder nights. While we read, the two dogs romped under the table and stayed relatively out of trouble, except for Zander and Nalah’s dog, Cupcake, who caused a cherished vase of Harold’s – it belonged to his late mother – to fall and shatter, as his tail unwittingly brushed the object off a shelf. Harold immediately swept the glass off the floor and the seder resumed.

The seder meal was very good: we had gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, and salmon that Harold prepared. There were baked potatoes and green beans as well. We also had kugel which is a sweet, egg noodle casserole. As with all seders, the celebrants sitting around the dinner table generally yearn for the holiday meal to begin, which characterized our impatience as well, as we egged on Harold to declare the reading of the traditional text to be finished. Eventually, we did start consuming the meal when the sun went down.

One time, I attended a community seder with my father way back in the 80s, after my mother had died, in a Co-op City Jewish center where the holiday meal was begun sometime after 10 or 11, I don’t recall exactly. I will always remember how the adults there couldn’t wait until the meal was served. I had to go to work the next day, so I was not happy with waiting so long either.

For dessert, we had coffee and chocolate cake for Nalah, who had just celebrated her birthday recently. I bought the cake last week at 108th Street, in Forest Hills. After this, the young couple, in their 30s, had to leave for home, which is Jersey City these days, so we all bid them adieu after Zander loaded up their new white SUV with boxes from the house.

With everyone excusing themselves to go upstairs to bed, I sat in the living room alone and watched Dana Bash’s interview with musical legend Barry Manilow on CNN. It was on from 11 until 12 midnight.

After the program, I went upstairs to call it a night- but not after I read a little of American Ghost, by Hannah Nordhaus. This is the book that the award-winning journalist has written about the supposed haunting of a hotel in Santa Fe by the ghost of her great-great-grandmother, Julia Schuster Staab. Julia Staab died in 1886, but as they say, her ghost lives on. Nordhaus’s book is a moving chronicle of three hundred years of German history and the American immigrant experience as she traces her ancestor’s migration from a small town in Germany in the midnineteenth century to the American Southwest where she settled with her new husband, Abraham, and forged a new life in the primitive precincts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Nordhaus consults many experts in trying to unravel the truth behind her ancestor’s history as a dissatisfied wife in the 1890s and apparent reincarnation as a ghostly figure in the 1970s. I’m halfway through the book and I’m intrigued with learning if she ever confronts the ghost of her great-great-grandmother at some point in her inquiry.

After being treated to breakfast by Harold, who made matzah brei for everyone, we showered and packed. We lingered through the morning since we always remark how the time goes so quickly when we get together, so we didn’t leave until around 12:30 or so. I said I would text Harold when we got home. The ride home was uneventful except for some traffic leading toward the Holland Tunnel, which was to be expected. We made very good time in that we “landed” a little after 3:15 or so. We had made no stops. Even though I would have longed for a cup of coffee at a service stop on the Jersey Turnpike.

Jocelyn greeted us at the door when we scooted in. It looked as if she ate everything Elliot left her for the weekend. I remembered to call Harold when I got into the bedroom and I spoke very briefly, telling him how good of a time we had with everyone.

Since we had no lunch, we got into the car yet again to drive to the Blue Bay Diner for an early dinner/late lunch. The diner was crowded with people having Easter meals with their mothers and grandmothers. We were ushered to a booth and decided on having two separate entrees, since Elliot was hungry. The size of the portions should have convinced us to share an entree, but we didn’t. The next time we will.

All in all, we had a delightful weekend with two very close friends. We didn’t overstay our welcome either. If I were not going away on Wednesday, I would have stayed an extra night – until Monday. We did think that driving on Easter Sunday would have been nettlesome, but it wasn’t.

So have a nice week.

Stay safe and be well.