Imagination is Funny

I have always been surrounded by family and friends who are imaginative.  When we sit down to eat dinner in the evening, we are never sure how many people are going to join us.  It makes meal planning a bit difficult, but it leads to excellent conversations.  It is not unusual for someone to come in just bursting to tell us an idea about a business, or a science project or about a new song they heard, etc.  There are ideas bouncing around here all the time.  Ideas for parties, for something to cook, costumes (usually precipitated by some unusual material... like bubble wrap entering the house).  My nephew Joseph is building his kids an actual working roller coaster in their backyard.  You would be amazed what my son is willing to launch from a trebuchet.  (I have no idea how to spell that and neither does my spell check.)  To give you an idea though, when he was a little kid he wanted to get one so we could launch "water filled carp" into Andy's backyard.  It is not unusual for someone around here to ask things like, "If you were a dog, what kind of dog would you be?"  Sometimes we are much more serious and try to come up with things like an elegant solution to desalinating water (my personal favorite).

This morning the cleaning ladies, who were supposed to come at eleven, showed up at eight.  I had gone back to bed in a vain attempt to rid myself of a headache.  So I got up, pulled on some jeans, and walked over to the Starling Diner for some french toast while they got to work.  I got their fancy little tea service, and settled in to contemplate my morning.  Didn't work.  I was drawing a total blank.  My brain was still wondering why I was vertical.  Luckily, the diner has these little notebooks where people can record their thoughts, or sketch or otherwise be imaginative.  A cup of tea and a peek into the private minds of others... doesn't that just sound perfect?

The entries fell into two categories:

• I'm just visiting the area and this is the best french toast I've ever had...
• The waiter is really cute, I wonder if he notices me...

Really????  No pirate maps?  No deep dark secrets?  Absolutely nothing profound?  What has happened to us?  I remember when my auntie was back at university to get her Masters, how excited she'd be to come home to repeat some idea that she had seen scrawled on a wall somewhere.  What has happened to all of our wall scrawlers?  What has happened to our imagination?  The best we can do is, "the waiter's cute," and, "this french toast is really good"?

Things the Annoy Me

Before I compile this list, let me just acknowledge that realize that I am truly blessed and that these are all things that in the larger picture don't matter.

• Trying on bathing suits.  Nothing is so disheartening as going into a bathing suit department and trying to A) find something with enough material to cover breasts that are any larger than walnuts and B) taking off all your clothes to try on said suit in a room the size of a closet with glaring industrial lights.  If you don't believe me, ask any woman in the bathing suit department.  As my friend Diane says, "Women like to buy shoes because we don't have to put them on over our hips."
• People who come into the room ten minutes before the end of the movie and ask what has happened so far.  Really?  Wait for a rerun.
• Those people who grill beggars because they want to know where the money is going.  Yes, I understand that some people take advantage of the generosity of others.  I also understand that many people are in dire circumstances and really need a little help.  If you don't want to help, don't help.  Humiliating them really isn't constructive.  
• When you think there's a piece of Mrs. Fried's cheesecake left and there really isn't. 

Realistically I just made this list so I could complain about shopping for swimsuits.  I really hate shopping for swimsuits.  

Taunting Peter

I'm a little surprised that Pete-o hasn't entered his plan in the comments section of the When the Lights Go Out post.  I know he's thinking about it though, and in all fairness, I did have a couple of days to think about it before I actually wrote out a plan.

Around here people have been reading the National Geographic article and coming out of their bedrooms with additional thoughts.  I will not be updating additional thoughts unless they are particularly entertaining, as I am already in trouble with my son for publishing our plan in the first place.  Since this blog is lucky to get a half a dozen hits a day, I'm not too worried about our strategy going viral.  Even if it did, I have a very highly specialized core team, so it wouldn't be like people could easily enact our plan.  Besides, no one else is going to think about it until about 30 minutes before it happens because they are busy thinking of zombie strategies.

Here... here's a cute trailer for a zombie movie to keep you distracted... for the "Fido" trailer click here.

When the Lights Go Out

Okay, realistically, I didn't have a plan.  [Please read the post below.]  But I have since consulted with the people who were sitting at my dining room table and now the plan goes like this:

First Tier Plan (to be completed as soon as the electrical outage that will end life as we know it begins)

• Consolidate all of our cash.  
• Send three guys to get guns, which they will pay for (the Ninja's truck can be started without the battery working because it is old and don't ask me how that works)
• Get one very large gun to mount on the semi in the third step
• Get a bunch of rifles
• Get a bunch of ammo
• The ninja will retrieve a semi truck from his place of employment.  It will have two 26 foot containers on the back.  The first container will be a diesel container (also from this place)
• The guys with the guns in the truck will now go to distribution center for Costco or WallMart or where ever and load the back container with pallets of water.  
• Find a defensible position to use as a base and park the truck

Second Tier Plan (to be started as soon as the 1st tier is completed)

• Send groups of raiders out for:
• Propane tanks
• Food
• Medications (antibiotics, heart meds, etc.)
• Building supplies
• Add armor to whatever vehicles are in the fleet at this point.

The first priority in a major disaster is to survive.  We'd have to see how it played out.  Would the government be able to survive if a solar flare took out power to half the continent?  I don't know.  I think the keys to any good survival plan are organization and flexibility.  

Solar Flares vs. Zombies

This month's National Geographic has an interesting story about solar flares.  If we got a really big solar flare it could knock out the electrical grid to half the continent.  The author points out that it would take weeks or months to get the power back up.  We would just have to cope with having no electricity for however long it took.

People lived for eons without electricity and really didn't have a problem with it.  I'm sure that a fair number of people even today live without.  That would not be the case for us.  It would be like Y2K but without a date for us to think of work arounds.  Life as we know it could change in a few minutes.  How many people do you know who are currently working a job that could be done without electricity?  How many young people do you know who can read a paper map?  How many people own a paper map?  How many people actually have cash on hand?  Or for that matter, have anything of value to barter that doesn't get plugged in?

Okay... here's the exercise for the day: Put aside your planning for the Zombie Apocalypse and come up with a strategy for survival in the event that the lights go out for three months.  I will be back here after Shabbat (I don't blog from sunset on Friday until after sunset on Saturday) with my plan, which of course will be the best plan.

To Catch a Theif

On Monday afternoon I was sitting at the table reading when I noticed a teenage boy come up on to the side porch.  People come up on our porches all the time to leave fliers for pizza and Thai food delivery.  At first glance that's what I thought he was doing.  But a glance was all that it took for me to know that this was not the case.  This kid was being sneaky.  He had obviously learned how to be sneaky by watching cartoons.  He was hunched over and creeping up the steps in a way that begged a silly sound track.  When he looked at the table where the boys leave their cigarettes and lighters it was obvious what he was doing.  Any doubt was erased as he leaned over to look behind the sculpture that sits on the table, and finding nothing, made a mad dash away.

I found this to be almost hysterically funny and not just because of his cartoonish behavior.  For months I've been hearing, "Damn it!  I can't believe Zach took my cigarettes again!" and, "I only smoked two from that pack, he couldn't have left me at least one?!"  Sometimes there is a lot more swearing involved and the guilty party is whoever isn't here at the time.  Even people who are only here occasionally have lost packs and lighters.  So after our thief darted away, I started laughing out loud.  Hamad happened to be home because he'd had to take Papa to the doctor that afternoon and he heard me laughing so he came to investigate.  I told him about the sneaky kid.

For some reason, Hamad didn't think this was funny at all.  He wanted to know what the kid looked like and, of course, being the terrible eye witness that I am, I could only give him a vague general idea.  Now Hamad dashed out the front door and went running down the street looking for a not too skinny kid, who maybe was kind of brown, and was wearing a Wilson High uniform.  In a few minutes he was back and more upset than ever.  He hadn't found the kid and his cigarettes from the front porch were missing.

This whole episode just keeps getting more amusing for me.  Now our evenings are full of the boys sitting at the table brainstorming how to A) kill this kid ("But Helen... he took my Zippo"), B) enslave this kid, C) rat this kid out to his mom, D) booby trap a pack of cigarettes, or E) what messages to write on the cigarettes that he takes.  I have done my motherly duty by pointing out that stealing cigarettes should not be a capital offense, and  that they don't know that the same kid has been doing it for the whole time.  It may be well known that the first guy to walk by our house gets free cigarettes.

Yesterday Zachary lurked around for about two hours trying to catch the kid.  Part of his "stake out" was sitting in the back seat of the van peering out at the porch that had the "unguarded" pack of cigarettes on it.  Luckily nobody from Wilson High walked by.  I say luckily, because I'm not sure Zach really knew what he was going to do if he caught the kid.  Zach really wants his Zippo back.

Finally Hamad has a nemesis with a brain larger than a squirrel's.  (Although watching him match wits with the squirrel is pretty funny too.)

He's Sexy and He Knows It

A six year old made the front page of the LA Times this morning.  Apparently he's a habitual sexual offender because twice now he's been expelled from school for singing the song "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  For the G Rated version you can click here to see Elmo's parody.  It's a catchy little song.

Around here Zach and I sing it all the time.  Well, okay... I only actually sing the "sexy and I know it" part and the "wiggle, wiggle, wiggle" part.  During the wiggle part I waggle my finger at Zach in a very mom-ish kind of way.

Have you ever met a computer geek?  Their concept of what is sexy can seem very odd to a normal person.  Any just released tech gadget that they just got a hold of is deemed "sexy".  A particularly elegant piece of code?  Sexy.  And it's not just geeks... once I saw a demolition team get almost teary eyed when they unpacked a new  "sexy" torch cutter.  (Girl look at that body/girl look at that body/girl look at that body/It works out!)

If nobody has noticed, living in America today is a kind of sexual harassment.  Kids are constantly exposed to hyper-sexualized everything.  Are those little beauty pageant girls expelled for harassment?  Because that's just overt sexuality they are pushing there.  Kids are like little sponges (click here to see the Sponge Bob version, but be careful, I don't think it's rated G) and they learn what we teach them.  I'm not talking about their moms, I'm talking about what society as a whole teaches them.  Don't think of them as kids... think of them as small people.  Putting our culture off limits just to them doesn't really work.

When Hamad was five and starting school I was told that I needed to take him home and read the school's zero tolerance pamphlet about drugs and sexual harassment.  I was further instructed to explain any bits that he didn't understand.  I had to sign and return it stating that I'd gone over it with him and he had to sign it saying that he understood.  I carefully read the many pages but the whole time I was thinking, "He's five.  He doesn't know anything about drugs or sex." Why fill his head with that stuff when he was already trying to figure out if a shark could beat a tiger in a fight?  So I gave him the condensed version:

"When you go to school you aren't allowed to smoke cigars or run around naked."

We both signed the document, feeling that we could live under those terms.  But I do need to say... he's sexy and he knows it.

Best Exotic Long Beach

A couple of days ago I went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Click here to see the trailer.  I think I can safely say that I have never been to a movie with so many old people in the audience.  At the end, the woman sitting next to me said, "It makes you think of old age in a whole new way."  She obviously had never met my parents.  Some of their best, most exciting and sometimes dangerous adventures happened in their old age.

My mother's final adventure happened when we packed up and moved back to the old country.  We ended up in the same city that she had run away to (well... okay, her sister and her mother ran with her) when she was a young woman.  We had come back to the best exotic Long Beach.  We really couldn't have made a better move for my mother.  She was absolutely delighted to be here.

Here are some photos from my walk this morning to illustrate why we're so fond of this place.  All of the photos were taken within very easy walking distance of our house.

There are actually three Buddhist monasteries within walking distance of our house.  It is not unusual for us to see monks out for a stroll.  This is the closest monastery to us.

This is the front door and the photo below is one of the paintings on the sidewalk out front.

Check it out... it's an artichoke.  I understand that they are a member of the thistle family.

This is the only one that wasn't taken this morning but it's a very good example of why you really shouldn't listen to Auntie Helen.  This photo is a result of me telling our good friend David that it was okay to get closer to a pelican so I could get a good shot.  I actually have no idea what happens when you invade a pelican's personal space.  Luckily it turned out okay.  It does put a different spin on all the advice my Aunt Denese used to give me.  Now I realize that she was just chuckling inside the whole time.

There are always lots of flowers in bloom in our neighborhood.  Right now the scent of jasmine is so strong that it almost makes you lightheaded.  (Neither of these are photos of jasmine.)

And of course, one of the most important people in our neighborhood is Lee...

Lee is the proprietress of Henry's Market on the corner of Loma and 3rd.  She sells lottery tickets and I'm pretty sure that she is going to sell the next big one.  It's very lucky to buy tickets there.  It's lucky to just know Lee.  She's a very nice lady from Cambodia and she keeps track of all of our families and how we are doing.  So the next time you are in the best exotic Long Beach, you should drop by and try your luck.

Sudoku at Midnight

During periods when I'm having particular trouble with pain, I tend to wander around the house in the middle of the night.  The boys have long since gotten used to coming home in the wee hours of the morning to find me sitting at the table reading a magazine or wandering kind of aimlessly or working a crossword puzzle.

One thing that has always escaped me is how to do a Sudoku.  I have always understood the theory of it, and I could usually figure out the first couple of moves on an easy one.  What really puzzled me, was that anyone could do them at all.  Even my ancient father is able to work them, although he stays away from the diabolical ones.

Recently I have discovered that I can complete the easy ones and even the medium ones in the middle of the night.  For some reason I can see the larger patterns that escape me during the day.  In the daytime I try to think them out verbally... okay there is a six in this row and a six in this other column etc.  At night I am more apt to see things out of the corner of my eye as it were.  I see columns and rows and blocks as more of a whole.  Why does this kind of enlarged capacity to take things in evade me in the day?

It's almost Shavot, the Jewish holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah.  One of the traditions is to study all night.  It's a very fun time to study.  People get a little punchy and they say things that normally they wouldn't say.  I think it's fair to say that they may make connections that they wouldn't otherwise.

So the Kabbalists, who thought that G-d was closest to earth in the middle of the night, and therefore thought it the best time to study may have been on to something.  To be able to connect somehow to the universe may happen when our minds are less bound by the rules of thought that we impose on ourselves in the daytime.

Slavery

Like everyone else I was raised thinking that slavery was an absolute evil.  Let me tell you a story that made my world more gray than black and white.

Nasser (the man formerly known as my husband) is from a long line of falconers.  One winter when he went to Somalia to hunt with his falcons he hired a guide who brought along his ten year old son.  The boy worked every bit as hard as his father.  He prepared meals for the group and Nasser was gracious with his praise of the boy's culinary talents.  Nasser thought that the little boy was charming and they laughed and told each other stories.

Nasser came back from that trip feeling just heartsick.  At the end of their stay, his guide had offered his son up as a slave for Nasser.  Nasser told the father that while his son was certainly a wonderful worker, that in the modern world that slavery is illegal.  The father begged him to take the boy.  He explained that Somalia was in the midst of a famine and that if his son stayed there, he would surely die.  He promised that his son would be a good and loyal servant all of his life, but please take him so he could live.  He told Nasser that he had been looking for a long time for a man who would be fair and kind to his son, and he believed that Nasser would be that kind of a master.  All three of them were heartbroken when they parted.  Nasser paid them both for their services and added huge tips in the hopes that they could both live through the famine.  Realistically it is unlikely that they did.

They All Look Alike

My son is a teaching assistant at an Orthodox Jewish school.  When there is an event and he is unable to take me because he is working, our friend Zachary will usually step up and take me.  One evening when there was a dinner and the kids were preforming, Zach and I attended.  The kids are adorable and the food is great so it isn't too hard to talk him into going.

Because this is an Orthodox school, the men who are there are mostly dressed in suits and wearing black hats. The women wear long skirts and modestly keep their hair covered.  (Don't tell the French.)  The men mostly sport beards.  As the evening progressed, every time we passed a youngish man (meaning a man whose beard was still brown) Zach would lean over and say one of the following things:

"I think that's Dov."

"Is that Dov?"

"That guy looks just like Dov."

Dov wasn't actually there.  Despite being friends, Zach has no idea what Dov looks like.  Do NOT let Zach ever try to pick someone out of a police line up.  I don't know if it would translate to other people, but he obviously thinks all Black Hats look alike.  

You Say You Want a Revolution

Has anyone noticed how easy it is to start a revolution these days?  With the advent of social media and flash mobs a bright 15 year old can start one from his basement between rounds of World of Warcraft.  A really bright 15 year old might stop to think about what comes next.  Apparently thinking about what comes next falls into a category of prolonged thought that seems not to be the forte of social media and flash mobs.

Here are a couple of examples:

• The Occupy Movement in the United States.  Let's start a people's movement but not have any leaders or proclaimed goals.  Yes... democracy is supposed to be directed by the people but traditionally we do that by electing leaders who share our common goals. Get it?  Three hundred and eleven million people repeating what anyone says gets to be a bit unwieldy.  We understand that you are upset that three million of those people control most of the money (yes... the 1% is made up of over 3,000,000 people). Before you have any more extended camp outs, you should probably think about what you want to happen next.  Also you should probably try to agree on a leader or some leaders.  
• The Arab Spring in Bahrain.  Let's see... no one disputes that the rate of educated people is high and that unemployment is low.  It looks like the same argument from the U.S. Occupy movement.  Some people have most of the money and the best jobs.  There have to be some perks to being in the monarchy.  People who are trying to overthrow the government are violently put down.  Hmm... are there any countries out there who realistically don't react violently to people trying to overthrow the government?  I used to think that the U.S. didn't do that kind of stuff, but we certainly have learned that that's not true anymore.  Okay... so let's look at the end game.... if the revolution goes through, what is to stop Iran from taking Bahrain as a province?  (That has been their declared goal for hundreds of years.)  Oh right... nothing.  It is quite a small country, so it wouldn't really be that great for Iran except for it's strategic location and willingness to host the U.S.'s Fifth Fleet.  

I totally understand the natural human tendency to revolt.  It's very exciting and often you get to actually burn things.  Sometimes revolutions turn out well.  So far it doesn't look like the results have been so great for Egypt, Libya or Syria this time, but who knows?  Maybe they can still pull something good out of it.  

My advice is not that we should stop having revolutions, but rather that you look around at what you've already got and then weigh the possible outcomes before you write the tweet heard round the world.  

Wizards

A couple of evenings ago, my son and I walked down to the pier.  As we were walking we came across a somber looking young man.  After getting a good look at him,  my son greeted him in Arabic.  The guy looked totally stunned.  It was his first day in America and someone greets him in Arabic.  We chatted with him for a few minutes and found out that he was from Oman.  So, of course I had to ask him the obvious question, "Are you a wizard?"

Now he looked really surprised and asked me why I would ask him something like that.  I told him that I had heard that every seventh Omani is a wizard.  He laughed and shook his head, like he couldn't believe that anyone would fall for that.  So, for a moment, I thought that this new generation of Omanis must not believe in that kind of stuff.  I thought that until he added, "Wizards are everywhere."  Take that Harry Potter.

I should have asked him how he got to Long Beach.  After all, the Omani specialty is astral projection.  For all I know, after we parted ways, he may have projected back to Oman right then to tell them that we're on to them.

No Form for Old Men

My father has a bad case of Bell's Palsy.  He's currently on a couple of kinds of meds that I've already been told work "sometimes".  So I took him in to see the acupuncturist who works with Bell's Palsy patients all the time and has a good rate of success.

So Nate (the acupuncturist) starts asking dad questions...  How do you sleep?  How's your appetite? etc.  Of course dad tells him that he's fine and that everything is fine.  I contradict (which annoys the hell out of dad) so Nate starts refining his questions.

"Jack, how many hours did you sleep last night?"  Two.

"What do you usually eat during the day?"  I drink two Ensures.

You get the picture.  But then he starts asking about pain.  I have to remind Nate that when dad broke his hip, he let us walk him up the driveway to a chair in the breezeway.

The good doctor is from Idaho.  I remind him that he knows plenty of old guys like my dad.  He's tough as nails and he's not a whiner.  Nate chuckles and I can see him fondly remembering those tough old geezers with whom he worked side by side.

The nurse comes in and hands me a form to fill out for dad.  I'm asking dad questions while the doctor is working on him.  Yes, dad's had Scarlet Fever, Mumps, Measles, Whooping Cough, Chicken Pox and anything else they can think of.

The best question on the form was, "Have you ever had any trauma?"  I laughed out loud.  I asked Dr. Nate, "Does World War II count?"  At which point Nate told me to quit filling out the form, "It's not for men like him."

Zombies

A generation may be mentally training for war in our midst.  A very favorite pastime these days is to decide what you would do in a Zombie Apocalypse.  How will you defend yourself?  Whom are you willing to defend?  Where will you get a food supply?  What are your favorite weapons for killing?   It's a very exciting game and carries absolutely no moral responsibility.  There aren't really zombies and even if there were... they aren't human... they were once human but they've become something evil.

In the next big war I think that all sides involved will call their enemies "Zombies".

Cougars

Over the last few days a couple of women have asked me if I've read 50 Shades of Gray yet.  For those of you  who may have missed the reviews, this is an erotic book (or books... it's a trilogy) that is insanely popular among women right now.  No.  I haven't read it.  I'm not planning on reading it.

It might not be wise for a woman who seems to constantly treads water in a sea of testosterone to try to have some kind of sexual awakening.  Isn't there enough tumult of hormones around here without me also adding my longings to the mix?   Which is not to say that I fear becoming a cougar.  And that is not because it breaks my rule of 30* which I came up with at least 15 years ago.

My house is almost always filled to the brim with men.  Of course the place of honor is reserved for my ancient father.  Then we have my beloved son Momo (aka Hamad) and Benjamin the ninja who lives here.  Zachary theoretically does not live here.  He actually has his own apartment where he goes to sleep.  I think this is primarily because we don't have any more bedrooms.  Then we have a steady flow of young men from AEPi, which is the fraternity to which the boys belong.  Occasionally a Cambodian or two comes through.  These men range in age from 20 to 27.  Occasionally there may be someone older or younger.

These studly young men hold no attraction for me.  Don't get me wrong, a couple of them are absolutely gorgeous.  And most of them are perfectly charming.  But there's no spark.  I feel very maternally toward them.  They are simply my boys.

Every time I hear of some cougar who is my age (late forties... very late forties) dating someone their age, I just think "eewww".  I can't imagine being in a relationship like that and not constantly feeling like the responsible adult.  Frankly I'm weary to my bones of being the responsible adult.

Even though this may seem odd to younger people, our tastes change as we age.  Well, at least mine have.  Now what appeals to me are things like those little crinkles by a man's eyes when he laughs.  Gray hair now often seems like it would be very touchable.

In the defense of cougars, I do have to say that men our age still are captivated by youth.  If the only men who are going to pursue you are younger than you (and sometimes much younger) your choices sometimes diminish until you can choose to be alone, or to be a cougar.

The important thing in any intimate relationship is that both parties are stronger together than if they were alone.

For me, at this point in my life, I am happy baking cookies and listening to the wild adventures of my boys.


*Rule of Thirty: Do not date men under the age of 30 and do not bid higher than 30 while playing Pinochle.

Guns and Kids

Last night one of the women at book club told us, in a horrified tone of voice, that in Israel, kids play with toy guns.  I wasn't the least bit surprised that kids in Israel play with toy guns.  I was a little surprised that A) she was horrified by this and B) that she thought this was somehow an Israeli thing.  When I mentioned that my brothers and I had spent many long hours playing army, I was told rather pointedly that Jewish kids don't do that.  Really.

Later in the evening I happened across a group of Jewish men.  (It wasn't so hard to happen on them as they were in my dining room playing cards.)  So I took a poll: Did you play army as a kid?  Of course we had to refine the question.  We established that actual military service did not count as "playing" or as part of childhood.  Of eight men at the table, seven were Jews.  (The one Goy did play army as a kid.)  Here are the results of the poll:

Black Hat Orthodox - Yes
Modern Orthodox - Yes
Assorted Reform and Conservative - Yes, Yes, Yes, No- because I was more of a cowboy, Yes and (drum roll please...) Absolutely Not.

Turns out that the "absolutely not" guy was in a house with too many real guns and therefore not allowed to "play" at guns.  When pressed by the other guys, he did admit to playing paintball.

We did not go into other weapons, explosives or a propensity to burn things.

When I explained why I was conducting this poll there was a great amount of confusion about why anyone would think that little boys don't play with toy guns.  I agreed that it was confusing and told them that when Hamad was little I had decided not to give him gender biased toys.  That was a joke.  The wooden arch from his block set became a gun and anything with wheels became a bulldozer.  When push comes to shove, kids can always fall back on the old pistol made of nothing but fingers.  As soon as I realized that that was just the way he was wired, I let him have "boy" toys.

I suppose the only way to get kids not to play war anymore would be to stop modeling it for them.  Maybe not even then.  Playing "farmer" just doesn't have the same zing.

Book Club

Tonight I'm going to my temple's ladies book club.  I had been hearing all month what a beast this book was to read, so of course I didn't really start it until a couple of days ago.  Despite having not read it, I volunteered to "facilitate" the discussion when the original facilitator had some health issues that prevented her from doing it.  

Usually when someone facilitates they have done research about the book on the internet and have printed out questions for book clubs that they have found somewhere or other.  These days books often even have a book club guide in the back.  Yikes.  It reminds me of high school when you would read some great piece of literature and then be expected to answer a list of questions about it.  Why do you think the main character kills his arch enemy?  Mmmm.... because that's what you do with arch enemies?  Lax gun control laws?  I always felt like those questions took you out of the magic of what you had just read and crushed you by turning the experience into some kind of pseudo psychological test.  Needless to say, I never read the book club guides at the end of books.  No more magic sucking for me.

My friend Laura and I went to see an art exhibit in Las Vegas once.  (That isn't why we went to Vegas, there just happened to be an exhibit.)  When we walked in a man handed us ear phones.  You were supposed to put them on and get a guided tour of the exhibit.  Music was playing while some narrator told you how you were supposed to feel while you looked at each painting.  I turned right around and gave my ear phones back.  There is a lot that I don't know about art, but I know that it's between me and the artist and that I don't need mood music to help me come to the "right" answer.  I have been profoundly impacted by paintings that I knew nothing at all about.  Sometimes you come around a corner and a piece of art hits you like a ton of bricks.  Once I even burst into tears when I saw a landscape by Van Gogh.  It was not the famous Starry Night.  It was one I'd never seen before.  Picasso said, "Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?  Can one really explain this?  no.  Just as one can never learn how to paint." 

So tonight I will go to book club still filled with powerful images of this book (To The End of The Land by David Grossman) and see where the discussion goes.  It's a great book, so I have no doubt that it will be a great discussion.  

La Bella Luna

On Saturday night a friend and I were driving back from LA when we suddenly saw the biggest moon I remember seeing.  Enormous and orange, my friend's first question was, "Are you sure it's the moon?"  Yes, I'd recognize it anywhere.

On Sunday I read that it was a "Super Moon", meaning that it was as close to the earth as it ever gets.  On Saturday night I didn't really think about distance.  I was too busy being amazed.  When I got home I told the boys about it.  Even though they had seen it, none of them seemed particularly impressed.  Well, Benjamin the ninja who lives here did mention that it was making scuba diving more challenging by messing with the tides.

In times of heartache I have taken great comfort in looking up at the night sky and knowing that I saw the same moon that my beloved, where ever he was roaming, could look up and see.  Having a common focal point provided a sort of connection.

I have a cousin who was in the Peace Corps in Tanzania in the '80's. One evening she was sitting out, enjoying the moon with some of her neighbors from the village.  As they sat talking drinking banana beer and talking, she mentioned that her country had sent a man to walk on the moon.  There was a lull as everyone pondered this and finally someone asked, "These friends of yours... were they witches?"

Physicality of G-d

At shul yesterday my old buddy Marv asked me the following question:   In Torah we are told that G-d appears in a burning bush, that he's in the cloud over the mishkan, there's the finger of G-d, and that Moses sees his back.  What are we to make of this physicality of G-d?

Well, it's a good question.  There are a couple of things that we need to keep in mind when we approach this kind of a discussion.  The first is that every person perceives things differently.  When the children of Israel heard the voice of G-d, each person heard the voice as the voice of his own father.  So one encounter with G-d filtered out through human minds into 600,000 unique experiences.

The second thing to understand is that words limit our ability to understand mystical ideas.  The purpose of a word is to define something.  An infinite G-d cannot be describe in finite terms.

When I was a kid we lived in Hawaii.  If a kid ever came from the mainland, we would surround them and ask them questions about snow.  We had learned to make paper snowflakes in school, but we didn't really have a good idea about the whole snow experience.  Frankly, we were often more confused after grilling the main-lander than we had been at the start.  Snow is more of a puzzle than you might first think.  It's wet or dry, big or little, soft or sharp, fun or miserable, crunchy or slippery, etc.  Now that I have more snow experience under my belt, I understand that they were all correct in their descriptions.

The challenge of describing an encounter with G-d is three-fold.  The person who has had the encounter has to figure out how to define it enough to be understood, understand his audience well enough to know what kind of concepts they would actually get their heads around.  So imagine someone saying, "I didn't see all of G-d, I just saw a finger of G-d," as perhaps being a way to convey the limits of a holy experience.  [DISCLAIMER:  I'm not saying that's what Moses was thinking.  I don't know what Moses was thinking.  I'm just using this example to try to further my argument.]  So now the third part of the equation comes in.  That's the part where other people try to understand what exactly happened in this mystical encounter.  That's the part that gets us every time.  We can't possibly understand "exactly" what happened.  The person who is trying to tell us is going out on a limb in the first place to try to describe it.  What we end up with is, "That person saw the finger of G-d."  Yes.  That is correct.  But it probably doesn't mean what we think it means.

Islam is Not Our Enemy

It puzzles me that so many people who are proud that we live in a Judeo-Christian society somehow have decided that Islam is a dangerous religion.  It's same tradition guys.  We all pray to the same G-d.  It all comes from Abraham, the patriarch of Jews and Muslims.  You can look this up in the Christian Old Testament.  Ishmael and Isaac are both there at the end to bury their father together.

Here are a couple of points that the Muslims win in the bonus round:

• G-d didn't just make promise's to Ishmael's father Abraham, He also makes promises to his mother Hagar.  G-d promises to make Ishmael's descendants a "great nation".  (And face it, America never would've been a great nation state if it hadn't been for the Arab contributions in the maths and sciences.Their poetry and art would've been helpful too, if we'd ever paid attention to it.)
• Jesus is revered in the Koran.  Yep, it says right there that he was born of a virgin.  Something to think about next time someone wants to use the Koran for target practice.  

It seems like the inclusion of these people in the original Abrahamic religion would be enough to make Christians and Jews fill a kinship with this group.  If it wasn't enough, I think that the points that they get in the bonus round definitely should make us sympathetic.

Yes, yes.  I remember 9/11.  I remember what a handful of people did on that day.  I think that we should've learned by now not to condemn a people based on the actions of a few.  If we want to play tit for tat we can always mention the Crusades.  Or the Spanish Inquisition.  Or... I think you get the idea.  We kind of lose when we play that game.  

Just remember, no matter what language we say it in, G-d is great.

Babies and Torah

This is how the story goes: before we are born we know the whole Torah.  Not just the bits that were written down, but even the oral Torah.  When we are born, an angel reaches down and pinches our upper lip to make us forget.  That's why you have that little "Cupid's bow" on your upper lip.  So when we are teaching our children, we are really just helping them to remember.  When we study, we need to reach inside ourselves for the clues that can float up from the time when we knew the whole blue print for the universe.  Each person we encounter possibly holds an important clue for us even if they don't realize it.

My nephew's wife Yuki is in the last stages of a pregnancy.  She became very worried when she found out that the baby was breech.  The doctor thought that they might have to help him come out with a C-section.  I told her what my mother would've: tell the baby that it's time to turn around.  Explain to him that it will make the birth go much more smoothly.  That is what my mother did with my brother John and he listened.  So Yuki went into the hospital expecting to have a C-section but they sent her home.  The baby had turned around, so he can come out when he wants to.  Good boy.  Way to listen to your mama.

Do not  underestimate the phenomenal potential of little kids to learn.  They are paying attention even before they learn the standard modes of communication.  Don't dismiss them and shoo them away to go watch TV, take this chance while you have the time to try to figure out which of their clues you need and vice-versa.  They don't have jobs, they have plenty of time to figure stuff out with you.  Not only that, they are infinitely entertaining.  We need to remember to be good mamas and listen to our babies.

Today's Potatoes are from: Blackfoot, Idaho

I was out shopping today and I stopped by Five Guys on PCH for a burger.  The potato board said that today's potatoes are from Blackfoot.  I wonder how many customers at that store sit there reminiscing about good old Blackfoot.  I wonder how many even realize that Blackfoot is the home of the World Potato Expo.  Somewhere around here is a photo of me posing before the giant baked potato that is in front of that building.  There is something truly wonderful about a giant sculptural ode to a potato.

Back in the day they had "free taters for out of staters".  All you had to do was pull up in a car with something other than Idaho plates and you could either get raw potatoes to go, or you could go in and enjoy a baked spud with the toppings of your choice.  They were beauties too.  You could make a whole meal out of them.  I understand that they don't do that anymore, although they still have the best darn potato museum I've ever seen.  They even have a potato cellar area where you can go and inside and smell what they smell like.  You see these cellars all over Idaho.  They look like big grass covered burial mounds, except that they have doors.  They are really quite amazing.  I used to work with a guy from Blackfoot and he had all sorts of crazy stories about working with potatoes.

I also understand that Beader's Paradise is closed.  That was a great place.  They had millions of beads.  The store was so large and so packed with stuff that when you came in they handed you a little stack of leather pieces to drop on the floor so you could find your way back to whatever you were looking at.  It was also housed in an old honky tonk with a giant metal cowgirl out front.  She was getting a little rusty the last time I saw her, but hey... it's a giant metal cowgirl.  Technically Beader's Paradise was on the outskirts of Blackfoot.  If you wanted to shop there you had to plan carefully.  Their hours of operation were something like: Mondays from 3pm to 7pm, the second and third Wednesdays from 10am to 1pm, etc.  Some of it had to do with when beaders from the Indian reservation would be in town to shop.  Some of it was just weird.  It's a shame it closed down.  It was a great place to wander around.

Points to mention in case you are having trouble convincing your family that they want to go there:

• You will be able to see the world's largest potato chip
• You can learn about Dan Quayle and why he had to apologize to Idaho (you can see the actual apology letter)

Yes, my mind was filled with thoughts of potato grandeur as I sat waiting for my burger.  So much so that the girl had to call my number three times before I heard her.  I apologized and told her that I was off in my own little world.  I didn't mention that it was a world of giant baked potatoes and cowgirls. 

Survival and how not to do it

This is the movie that I happened on during my channel flopping last night.  I love movies like this.  I can't remember what I was doing in 2004 that I didn't go to see it.  Anyway, I caught this one about half way through.  An ice age eh?  Hadn't really thought that one through.  And this from a girl whose mother made sure that she knew how to build a house out of sod and prepare the dirt floor so that can be kept as clean as tile.  She was only a generation away from people who needed to know stuff like that, so who's to say that we won't need to again?

I really didn't mind missing the first half with all the character and plot development details.  It was actually probably better for me just to get straight to the surviving part.  Let the fun begin!  The hero and his nerdy group of friends, takes refuge in the New York Public Library.  It's on high ground and near by and letting people in, so I think this is probably a fairly decent choice.  The streets begin to flood as our hero's party approaches, so there is a mad dash to get inside.  (Remarkably, everyone seems to be in dry clothes once inside, but if I can let this slide for James Bond, I can let it slide for this guy.)  People are milling about in this massive library hall.  At this point I start yelling to Zach, who happened to wander in while I was watching, "Organize!!  What are those fools doing?!"  Zach, who has already seen this film points out that they will organize in awhile.  Not good enough.  Get these cold (and realistically wet) people higher (because we know the street is flooding and that heat rises), and into small rooms.  I'm guessing that the NY library has offices somewhere on the upper floors.  Stay away from offices with windows, put as many as can comfortably fit in a room so they can share body heat.  Try to fill rooms that share walls.  Little kids get priority as far as dry clothes are concerned.  Infants go inside the dry clothes with an adult.  Nobody takes off their hats.

Back to the movie.  The hero hears from his father who is a scientist and who tells him that a freakishly cold storm is coming and if they go outside they will die.  So a policeman helpfully tells everyone that since the flooded water is now frozen enough to walk on that they should leave and try to evacuate on foot.  Hello?  I think it's very unlikely that you would be able to talk many people into evacuating on foot under those conditions.  However, perhaps because he's an authority figure, and perhaps because he's the only person with a plan, the people decide that this is a good idea.  Remember that they have not taken my advice and are still milling about aimlessly in a cavernous freezing cold room.  The hero jumps up and begs them not to go outside. He convinces a couple of people in addition to his group of friends.  At least one of the people who stays is a librarian and she now reveals that the library has a room with a fireplace.  Unfortunately this is another cavernous room and in addition has walls of windows.  I'm okay with this.  We know what we're working with, because dad has told us that a storm is coming that will freeze everything to death instantly.  We aren't in the best room to deal with this, however we have abundant materials to work with and most of the other people are gone so we don't have to worry about saving them too.  So our heroic cast starts burning books and spreads out to make themselves comfortable.  What ?!!!! No no no no no!

I can see that I'm going to have to continue organizing for them.  Yes, rip up some books for kindling and while you are making sure that you can get the fireplace flue to draw up the smoke and starting your fire, have some of those young testosterone filled geeks that you brought with you bust up some furniture.  They get to fulfill an important function that they will think is pretty fun and wood burns better than books.  Send two people to empty the vending machines and bring back the food.  While they are there, tell them to look around for a coffee pot, or something that they can use to melt water by the fire.  Probably vases or urns would do the trick.  While these two are out of the room scavenging, get the burly lads, or whatever kind of muscle you have, to start bringing in some of those big wooden tables.  Use tables, rip up carpet, whatever you have to do to block off those huge windows.  (Remember, you have a fire for light.)  Now comes the fun part.  Remember the forts you used to build out of couch cushions when you were a kid?  We're going to build a fort around the fireplace.  We can use any of the furniture we want.  We need to make sure we have a roof so all of our heat doesn't escape to the high ceiling.  I would suggest ripped up carpet for that.  Use stacks of books on the outside for insulation.  Ration food, sleep close together in shifts and make sure that someone is always feeding the fire.

Do not leave this room to go looking for antibiotics!  The girl with blood poisoning can most likely make it through the storm if you keep her wound lower than the rest of her body and use a hot compress to draw out the poison.  If that doesn't work, you will only lose one person from the party instead of the three that they send out in the movie.  In the movie the boys find the antibiotics, fight some wolves and make it back inside before the deep freeze hits.  I wouldn't have risked any of the heat from the boys going out and coming back in cold.  I would say this even if I was the one with blood poisoning.

If I was the protagonist in an ice age, my dream team of nerds would include: my son Hamad, Benjamin the ninja who lives here, Walker Stern and my niece Kate.  Anyone of us could've come up with a better plan than the group in the movie.

Let me know who would make up your dream team.