A4 • Friday, January 24, 2020 | Seaside Signal | SeasideSignal.com
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ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT Scouts and volunteers clear brush on the trails.  Picnic tables will allow cyclists to break for lunch on the trails. 
the North Coast Trail Alliance to improve mountain biking trails.
Scout volunteers worked with
Photos courtesy Troop 642
Eagle Scout
leads bike trail
improvements at
Klootchy Creek
Tyler Tackitt of Scout Troop #642 com-
pleted his Eagle Scout project on Sunday,
compiling a total of 159 service hours with
the Scouts. Tackitt led a group of 15 vol-
unteers to complete the project, assisted
by Steven Blakesley from the North Coast
Trail Alliance at the Klootchy Creek Moun-
tain Bike Trails.
The project included making picnic
tables, a bike rack and gravel for a resting
area up top at one of the bike trails.
After completing the project and clear-
ing part of the trail, the last hour, they
enjoyed a great ride.
LEFT Tyler Tackitt at work on the mountain bike path.
of Tyler Tackitt’s Eagle Scout project.
ABOVE Bike rack, part
Troop 642
Troop 642 Assistant scoutmaster David Kautz, scoutmaster Stan Gandy, Tristan Yokohama, (rear) Hunter Kautz, Ryan Smith, Daniel Cowan, Andrew Cowan, Nick Mace, Tyler Tackitt and John Howe.
Why are the eyeglasses in the cereal box?
VIEW FROM
THE PORCH
EVE MARX
W
here’s my golem?
Still reeling after reading, “The
World That We Knew” a new
novel by Alice Hoffman. I picked the book
up on the recommendation of a book group
friend. The book is the third and fi nal book
in her “Practical Magic” trilogy, started in
1995.
“The World We Knew” is an enchantingly
told and chilling tale of Berlin and Paris and
the German and French countryside between
spring 1941 and August 1944. Hoffman’s
story stretches way beyond Holocaust his-
torical fi ction; at heart, the novel is about the
PUBLISHER
EDITOR
Kari Borgen
R.J. Marx
most mystical of Kabbalist mysteries, the
golem, a fi gure made of clay brought to life.
In Hebrew, the word “golem” means some-
thing incomplete and unfi nished. Golems,
for better or worse, get lumped with demons,
dybbuks, and ghosts; in other words, fright-
ening creatures.
Hoffman’s golem, a beautiful near-Ama-
zonian female named Ava, which in Hebrew
means “life,” is only frightening to those
who attempt to harm the purpose of her exis-
tence, Lea, a young Jewish girl in danger of
being swept up by Nazis.
Three females, two of them little more
than children, sculpt and mold Ava from
river clay and bring her to life through magi-
cal incantation; her purpose is protecting Lea
and guarding her until the end of the war,
when she is to be delivered to a safe cross-
ing. And then Ava is meant to die. Lea is
meant to kill her because golems are meant
to live only long enough to serve the purpose
CIRCULATION
MANAGER
Jeremy Feldman
ADVERTISING
SALES MANAGER
Sarah Silver-
Tecza
MULTIMEDIA
ADVERTISING
REPRESENTATIVE
Kim McCaw
PRODUCTION
MANAGER
CONTRIBUTING
WRITERS
John D. Bruijn
Skyler Archibald
Darren Gooch
Joshua Heineman
Rain Jordan
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Esther Moberg
SYSTEMS
MANAGER
Carl Earl
of their making, lest they grow souls, and
become human.
And truthfully, what’s more frightening
than a human?
It should be no surprise the golem became
my favorite character. Our names, after all,
are nearly the same. Ava, Eva, Eve. They are
all derived from the Hebrew word for “life.”
Despite Ava’s strange entry into the world
and said to be soulless, I admit to being a bit
jelly.
For starters, she’s very tall.
(Just for a day, I would love to be tall.)
She’s strong and works for hours without
tiring. She masters any language — French,
German, bear and bird — in the space of
minutes. She’s fi ercely loyal, a trait I admire.
She has an affi nity for animals.
In multiple scenes, she’s described danc-
ing with a heron.
Searching for a pair of misplaced read-
ing glasses, my husband muttered, jokingly,
that a golem took
them. I’d been
talking for days
about Hoff-
man’s novel.
The last time
he misplaced
his glasses, I
found them
two days
later in a
cereal box.
“Maybe
Simon
the golem
& Schu
ster
took them and now will
bring them back,” I said. “Maybe you should
ask nicely.”
The glasses were located a day later on
the pantry fl oor. I swear they had not been
there hours before when I looked. Not every
problem can be solved with magic, but ask-
ing your golem for help might work.
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