Cecil Baldwin

The one we will all someday enter.

They left me this beautiful brass menorah, and I think of Bubby and Zadie every time I light the candles.

I hope their torments in the dark places of the earth are as pleasant as they can be.

Meanwhile, Carlos has built his own menorah out of beakers.

It's really cool.

Although we do all need to wear welding goggles the entire Hanukkah dinner or at least until the radioactive green glow goes away.

But that only takes five to eight hours.

And Esteban has a cute truck-themed one from a couple years ago when he was obsessed with trucks.

He's kind of outgrown it, but that's the one he has for now.

Ever since he got into studying witchcraft, he has really enjoyed conjuring fire onto the shamash and then floating it one by one to each of the other candles.

Sometimes he catches a curtain or two on fire, but that's what an extinguisher is for.

Anyway, given that it is Hanukkah, I thought we all might enjoy me telling the story of Hanukkah.

Sure, we all know it, but what is more comforting to a human being than a story they already know?

So, Hanukkah goes all the way back to the year 1981.

named Ruth Kander, moved to a town called Los Angeles.

She moved there because she had vague ideas of being in show business, even though her ideas of what that entailed were vaguer still.

Only the image of herself, smiling in a light so bright, it drowned out every disappointing thing she had ever done up to this point in her unremarkable life.

She got an apartment that's rent she could barely cover, and a job at a local florist whose owner hired her out of pity.

But that was fine.

Her talents lay elsewhere.