Double Chocolate Milano: Thanks for the feedback on asking for help. Anyone who's done it, is there a difference between sites that let you do it? Is there a Dummies Guide to Begging Online out there somewhere that I should consult?

Nice day, Amy!

Theo: rule #1 is don't think of it as begging. Think of it as giving people the opportunity to help.

This is why you're a professional fund-raiser et cetera and I'm a semi-employed Uber driver.

I am pretty sure that I've never lived further than ten miles from a synagogue in my entire life... and I'm not Jewish. How weird to be reminded what an actually small demographic "Jewish" is, when it is such a essential feature among my family, friends, and acquaintances.

There actually used to be a bigger Jewish community around here. During the wave of Jewish immigration from Germany from about 1840 to 1870, a lot of those German-Jewish immigrants moved "out west" (which, back then, included Appalachia) and often owned stores in the small towns that supported larger farming areas. There are tons of small towns all over the midwest and west and south that have old synagogue buildings -- there was enough of a Jewish community to support a synagogue during that time, and for a few more generations, but most of them closed as the Baby Boomers went off to college (which had been relatively rare in earlier generations) and then stayed in the cities.

This is why you're a professional fund-raiser et cetera and I'm a semi-employed Uber driver.

True! On the first part, at least. But it is a really good way to think about it. People want to help!

That's also why so many of the old department stores have Jewish names -- a whole lot of them (plus Levis jeans, and a bunch of other brands) were started by those German-Jewish merchants and peddlers who gradually built up their small stores into a few other stores, and then lots of big stores. (I've got some distant cousins who did this. Started with one store in Appleton, Wisconsin, then expanded to a couple more stores, and then, after the Chicago fire, they realized that Chicago now had a ton of people and not many stores left, so they quickly started a branch there, which was really successful, and built up a chain of department stores all over the midwest. Then the whole thing collapsed in the Depression. One of them married someone from the Florsheim Shoes family, who had a similar story.)

I got the frozen dinner at a local kosher supermarket. The regular supermarkets are ok for snacky things, kosher for passover Coke and maybe individual boxes of regular matzah. (Harris Teeter is a little better than Safeway in that regard.)

I have no idea what the supermarket in Pasadena in 1999 was thinking when they displayed the Passover ham I saw. But it was countered by the big display of Passover In A Bag!

What fundraising site was gross about raising money for Darren Wilson? From a quick google, looks like that was gofundme.

That's kind of funny, Hil, that they send the same Passover stuff no matter how it sells??

I'm not surprised at kosher for passover frozen meals, but then I also assume that if she really wanted Sheryl probably doesn't live far from KosherMart. And if anyone is going to have them they would!