The word muse actually comes from the old French muser, meaning to ‘meditate, waste time’. Thankfully, the latter half of the definition has changed in the centuries since muser was an integral part of the vernacular. Muse, however, remains the perfect word to describe this newsletter. It’s a collection of thoughts, ideas, and ramblings – a sort of framing device to keep this newsletter from going off the rails. Such a collection began taking form in August 2021 on a trip to Atlanta, Georgia for my cousin’s bar mitzvah – a unique trip that included a reckoning with Orthodox Judaism and the chabad, my first COVID plane ride, and preparations for my first year back in the classroom after learning remotely for a year. Since then, I’ve sporadically written additional columns when I had thoughts to share, which run the gamut from infrastructure (as you’ll see shortly), Judaism, and local politics to theatre, history, non-profit management, and cultural development. Pretend that someone made a word cloud of all of my thoughts, and then made a newsletter out of it.

The first few columns will be repeats (ones from several years ago); my goal is to make this a very regular reading, and I want to get ahead with some writing. The exigence of this newsletter’s return, you might ask? I could tell you it’s because I feel so strongly about some particular topics, or because I just want to entertain & inform readers of my own thoughts. I could even tell you that I’ve felt a huge weight hanging over me each day I didn’t muse publicly on Substack! But I’ve always wrote these musings with the governing rule that everything written is 100% forthright, honest, and reliable, so I won’t say any of those three things. The truth? I felt like writing, recently saw that my uncle relaunched his Substack newsletter, and this is a qualitatively better evening activity for me than surfing the web or watching television. I’m happy to be back musing….meditating…wasting time…whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Please share this with your friends, your family, your classmates, and whoever you prefer to associate yourselves with.
Yours,
Laszlo