looking2live

The Power of Women

2009-11-08T17:21:00.000-05:00

I was urged by an elderly member of Temple Micah to attend an “afternoon tea and discussion” hosted by Women of Faith, an interfaith group that has been in existence in the DC area for over 30 years. I went somewhat out of a feeling of obligation, but came away with my eyes opened.

I happened to be seated across the table from Maudine Cooper (pictured above), the afternoon’s speaker and also the President of the Greater Washington Urban League. She gave us a historical perspective of her organization and charged us to do something to make a difference in the world. She suggested that it might be something as insignificant as saying hello to people we meet on the street, in the Metro, and in the grocery store.

As we broke into small group discussions, I noted that my table was a mixture of Baptists, Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. It couldn’t get much more diverse.

We focused a lot on the idea that what we teach our children can make all the difference in the world. If they are taught respect and tolerance for everyone around them, if they are taught to love instead of to hate, so much of the divisiveness in the world will simply disappear. One person mentioned that many of us need to teach our parents and our elders the same lessons.

We remarked at how similar we really are, despite our different races and religions. As each table got up to report on their discussion, it was obvious that many of the same discussions had taken place.

To close the afternoon of thoughtful reflection, we stood in a big circle holding hands and offered a communal prayer with various women offering up spontaneous thoughts and the group responding with AMEN in between. I clasped the hand of a soft-spoken African-American in my left hand and an outspoken Jew in my right hand. But as far as the circle went, they were both just women of faith.

As the result of the afternoon’s discussions, I plan to get to know my neighbors better, inviting them over for an afternoon tea. I suddenly realized that some of them have lived in my neighborhood for quite a few years and I still don’t know their names. It was the suggestion of 89-year-old Dorothy that planted the seed for this idea.

I also plan to pursue a joint choir project with the music director of the Shiloh Baptist Church, hoping to blend some Jewish melodies with some Gospel sounds.

Even my shelter kids may benefit from the afternoon. The Urban League speaker offered to donate Scholastic books that have been given to their organization for just such a purpose.

I look forward to the next meeting of this group, which will undoubtedly be in a mosque or church. This obligation turned into a pleasant surprise.

Inspiration

2009-11-07T16:05:00.001-05:00

He (not the boy above) was just a little boy, this 13-year-old who gave us lessons in optimism and activism today. He started off his bar mitzvah weekend by reading a poem about love of family at last night’s service. Today he was called to read the Torah.

Gideon lamented the fact that his birthday falls on September 11, forever a date that will strike fear in our hearts. He has come to peace with this by determining to make the world a better place in his lifetime. He challenged us to not only be optimists, but activists as well.

For his bar mitzvah project, he is collecting bicycles which will be sent overseas as part of the Bikes for the World project. You can read more about how to participate in Gideon’s project here.

What actually brought the most tears to our eyes this morning was Gideon’s 98-year-old grandfather who had traveled from New Rochelle, NY, to be a part of his grandson’s special day. He came up to the bimah using a walker. After doing his aliyah with other family members, he took some mike time to tell Gideon how much he loved him and what a great job he was doing. He said he had prepared all week for this trip and thanked everyone in the audience for coming to celebrate his grandson’s bar mitzvah. This was indeed family at its best.

Gideon had one of the most challenging portions of the Torah – the one where God tells Abraham to take Isaac, his son, up on Mount Moriah and sacrifice him. It’s hard for people of all ages to comprehend. Gideon’s question to our rabbi Danny was just how closely we should follow what God tells us to do. Danny summarized his remarks by saying, “In every act there should rest a grain of doubt.”

So much food for thought. But meanwhile, if you have an old bike lying around, please consider giving it a new life abroad.

Seasonal Soup

2009-11-06T09:00:00.003-05:00

As the weather gets cooler, my thoughts always turn to soup. The week’s CSA offerings were my inspiration for this soup that both looks and tastes good.

Red Lentil-Collard Soup with Lemon

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced
1 leek, chopped (white part only)
1/2 pound collard greens, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth
2 cups water
1 cup red lentils
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
Juice of one lemon

In a large pot, heat the olive oil over high heat until hot and shimmering. Add onion, garlic, jalapeño pepper, and leek and saute about 4 minutes.

Stir in collard greens, tomato paste, cumin, salt, and pepper and saute for another 3 minutes.

Add broth, water, red lentils, and carrot. Bring to a boil, then cover and turn down to low. Simmer 30 minutes or until lentils are soft.

Optionally blend the resulting soup, leaving some chunkiness.

Add lemon juice and serve.

You will LOVE this soup!

Making It Up

2009-11-05T10:08:00.001-05:00

When I was recently complaining about not having any great inspiration for something to write about, Bulletholes suggested that I just make it up. He's a master at blending fact and fiction, making it impossible to tell them apart. But I guess he didn’t realize who he was talking to.

From my earliest years, I had difficulty with make-believe. I had a hard time pretending. As a result, at the age of 10 a (boy)friend and I built a dollhouse that took up half of my room. We make bunk beds and upholstered living room furniture and even a drop-leaf table. Our dolls had their own car. Granted the dolls weren’t real, but everything else was!

A friend once suggested that I write a novel, but the thought of having to invent an entire story that took up hundreds of pages seemed just too daunting.

But my husband seems to have a different view of writing fiction. Ever since he took a course in “Flash Fiction” at Chautauqua, he’s been anxious to write. So it’s no great surprise that he’s jumped on the bandwagon of National Novel Writing Month, with the intention of writing a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That would be this month.

When asked what he was going to write about, he finally revealed that his novel is based on this escapade we had last year on the Amalfi Coast. As scary as it was, it apparently has provided inspiration for his book.

That’s a lot of words to write in a month. I figure it’s at least 125 pages. I think he’s at about 2,500 words right now, so we’ll see what happens. I never thought about being married to a writer, but he may be on his way to defining a new career!

Five Paces Behind

2009-11-04T16:13:00.001-05:00

My almost-80-year-old friend Betty keeps me supplied with nuggets from the Internet. Many of them are things that make you smile, like cute animals or scenes from around the world. This one is a little more serious:

Barbara Walters, of 20/20, did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before the Afghan conflict.

She noted that women customarily walked five paces behind their husbands.

She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands. Despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women now seem to, and are happy to, maintain the old custom.

Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked, 'Why do you now seem happy with an old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?'

The woman looked Ms. Walters straight in the eyes, and without hesitation said, 'Land Mines.'

It’s somewhat bittersweet that what was once tradition has now taken on a greater significance.

Aging with Dignity

2009-11-03T21:06:00.000-05:00

This past couple of days I’ve thought a lot about aging. I’ve seen the gamut in terms of how people grow older. But most of all I’ve come to realize how important to me it is to grow old with dignity.

My husband has been suffering for some time with a foot ailment that makes it difficult to walk. So in the interest of being there for Zelda’s big day, he swallowed a lot of pride and ordered a wheelchair for transit in the airports because his feet simply wouldn’t have made it otherwise. He asked me if I wanted one too since walking is still not my forte. I initially said yes, but my son convinced me that I didn’t really need one, especially if I took my cool cane, and he was right.

But I must say going through security with a person in a wheelchair is a breeze. He got the chair and I got the benefits as well. But I quickly realized that my cane and his chair put us in a whole different category as far as others in the airport perceived us. It was a little unsettling to come to that realization.

In Chicago I did all the driving and we made sure to minimize the amount of walking he had to do. It turned out just fine and no one there had to even know about his foot ailments. After seeing a slew of specialists it will be nice if someone finally comes up with a good diagnosis and a treatment regimen, but until then he is definitely more disabled than I am.

Those thoughts about dignity hit home with me yesterday when I happened to go up to the 8th floor of the Self-Help Home in search of Zelda. Stepping off the elevator I looked straight ahead into an open bathroom door where a male nurse was assisting an elderly man, who happened to be a rabbi, to clean up after going to the bathroom. I could see the look of shame and discomfort as the rabbi saw me and kept asking the nurse to shut the door. He eventually did, but not before I realized how awful the rabbi must have felt to be showcased to strangers in such a situation. I felt angry at the nurse for stripping the rabbi of his dignity.

There were other situations where I realized the residents had surrendered their dignity and were were just going through the motions of existing. There was Henry, who 2 years ago had seemed so alert and interesting, saying he was just there temporarily until his foot healed and he could go home. Now he wheels himself around in a wheelchair and avoids eye contact, apparently accepting the fact that he will be in assisted living for the rest of his life.

I saw a woman last night who was sitting in a wheelchair at the nurses’ station. She had fallen asleep with her head on the counter. No one seemed to notice or care. She was not demanding any attention.

Last night as I was going to sleep, I had nightmares about what would happen to me at the age of these people. I so want to be like Zelda, feisty until the end, living independently until age 98 when her failing eyesight made it dangerous to do so. I want to think my caregivers will be people who remember my dignity and allow me to retain as much of it as I wish.

We’re home again and life is relatively back to normal. I hope someone else is remembering to cut up Zelda’s food, which she no longer can see, in our absence. I see a gray cloud off in the distance signifying my old age and hope I can hold it at bay for a few more decades.

Playing Tourist in Chitown

2009-11-02T23:00:00.005-05:00

We sat with Zelda and Marge and Estelle at breakfast. Estelle no longer speaks and depends entirely on Zelda to read her mind and tell the staff what she needs. Marge is clearly demented and keeps saying things like “I don’t remember. Do you?” and “Forget the children,” which we interpreted to mean that her children had long ago forgotten her. We watched several angry outbursts on the part of the residents and I marveled at the PATIENCE of the staff to deal with their PATIENTS. I remarked on how COMMITTED they seemed to be to what might be a thankless job and wondered that they didn’t all have to be COMMITTED after doing their jobs for a few years.

On that morbid note, we decided to venture out into the world where a greater percentage of people still have their minds to play tourist for the day. We took an hour-long boat tour which focused on the city’s remarkable architecture. It was way too much information to process (even a second time for me since I did it last year), so I spent my time taking pictures of big buildings as we wound through the city on the Chicago River.

After getting off the boat, we strolled around the Navy Pier, where I rediscovered this bronze sculpture and my husband and his cousin visited with Bob Newhart.

We then went to The Spice House, a store that literally takes your breath away upon entry because they grind and package all the spices they sell. I came specifically to buy Silk Road Seasoning, a delightful mix of the spices that would have greeted Marco Polo all those years ago. Unfortunately not everyone had been equally charmed by this mixture and it had been discontinued. But one savvy salesperson found the “recipe” and helped me put together a collection of spices that I could mix together on my own. My suitcase is going to smell so good on the way home tomorrow.

We’ll have a farewell dinner with Zelda tonight at the Self-help home and get ready for a morning flight home tomorrow.

I once again concluded that Chicago is such a great city, serving as a gateway between east and west. I’m just sorry Zelda doesn’t have more family around as she lives out her final years in The Windy City.

101 and Counting

2009-11-01T19:55:00.000-05:00

Here we are in Chicago for yet another birthday of Aunt Zelda, my husband’s feisty aunt who turned 101 today.

She has a reputation for being snarky and opinionated and willing to label fat as FAT, etc. She has offended quite a few people during her lifetime, but today she seemed rather mellow and on good behavior.

Not much has changed in the last year, except the further degeneration of her eyesight. But she still manages to walk around with a walker, somehow making out shapes if not faces. Her hearing may have gone downhill a bit too, but her mind is still quite intact.

As we sat there eating cake, we talked about all the ways we had ever heard of to ward off Alzheimer’s and to thereby preserve our minds in the condition of Zelda’s. Someone said only highly educated people got it, sometimes in their 60’s. I could see my husband visibly grimace. Someone else recommended eating currants. Someone else had heard blueberries. Another person promoted doing puzzles. I said I had recently heard the key was exercise. Whoever knows why some are spared and others lose the function of their minds?

Zelda asked several times during the course of the day why we thought God had let her live so long. She of course was hoping to hear us say that it was so she could continue to dish out her homespun psychology to everyone, even those who hadn’t asked for it.

She has amazing stamina. I was the one taking a mid-afternoon nap, whereas Zelda continued to hold court on the 9th floor of the Self-help Home all afternoon.

Her first reaction to our gift of a mint green soft bathrobe from Costco was “Take it back. I don’t need any more presents.” But then she admitted to no longer having a bathrobe and was willing to keep it if we didn’t call it a gift. Go figure!

I’m glad we came since she has very little family in this world. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were back again next year for the 102nd.

Cutting Up on Halloween

2009-10-31T22:50:00.000-04:00

While others were putting the final touches on their Halloween costumes, I was trying desperately to master Knife Skills 101 at Hill’s Kitchen. I thought I knew how to cut up just about anything with my little Henkel paring knife. Little did I know that a paring knife is used for occasional peeling, and that’s about it.

After a crash course in First Aid, should anyone cut a finger instead of a carrot, we were each handed what seemed like a humongous knife, one of 3 different models. We learned the cutting motion of the knife. We learned how to hold the food to be cut with cat fingers, guiding the knife with the lowest knuckle on our middle finger. We were handed a piece of celery and told to mimic what had looked so easy in the demonstration.

We then moved on to potatoes and were introduced to some fancy names for French cuts:

batonnet (1/4")
alumette (1/8")
julienne (1/16")

We practiced achieving these on our potatoes, not nearly with the ease or speed that they had been demonstrated. Then we turned our various size sticks into diced pieces – little cubes, or supposedly cubes that is.

By this time the knife was starting to feel more like an extension of my hand. It was at that point that we got to switch knives and I fell in love with the above Mac knife. I didn’t dare ask how much it cost.

We moved on to carrots, definitely more challenging to cut than potatoes. I started to fear for my fingers when I forgot to turn them into cat claws. But I did produce some finely diced carrots that would have passed muster with most chefs, albeit at a much slower production rate.

The final lesson was how to cut an onion. It turns out I had already been doing most of the pieces of this correctly. The one thing I learned was to slice the onion in half (root to top) before attempting to peel it. It was incredibly easier to peel that way. We were old pros at chopping by the time we turned out minced onion and wiped the tears from our eyes.

A quick lesson in honing and sharpening knives completed the class. I learned that the electric sharpener we have been using for years has probably ruined all my knives forever. Instead they should be hand sharpened by someone who knows what he is doing once a year and honed with a long rod every time they are used. They should never be allowed to slosh around in a drawer the way my knives do.

I have a lot of work ahead just to get ready to practice what I learned today in Knife Skills, but I can guarantee the result will be more precise cutting and much improved speed. I really thought I could have passed this course going in, but quickly learned I was by no means the best in the class. What a humbling experience.

Fortunately the dog food class I am teaching on December 5 does not involve hand chopping anything, so if I’m not up to chef speed by then, no one will ever need to know.

Trying to Decide

2009-10-30T10:47:00.000-04:00

I’m vacillating on whether to get flu shots once again. For many people it’s a no-brainer, but I’m never too sure if I really want to be vaccinated against something I never seem to get.

I had the flu once, when I was 10 years old, and it was really terrible. I remember being almost delirious with fever. I remember getting to stay home from school for 2 weeks. But that was the last time my body succumbed to one of the many flu viruses.

My doctor, of course, is urging me to take the shots. My husband gets them religiously. But I think I’ve only take one flu shot in my life.

Maybe it’s because I hated shots so much as a kid. On a day when I had to go to the pediatrician’s office to get a shot of any kind, I remember asking my mother to tell me how much it was going to hurt ahead of time and even sticking my arm with a pin to see how bad the pain would be. Sheesh! What a baby!

Or maybe it’s because I have a jaded view of most medicine, thinking our bodies may just prefer to deal with some things on their own. That’s not to say I fool around with things like polio or typhoid or tetanus. But flu shots -- do we really need them?

I have a little longer to contemplate this decision since my doctor’s office is still just giving the swine flu vaccine to pregnant women and really old people.

What about you? Are you lining up for flu shots?

Centenarians

2009-10-29T09:51:00.000-04:00

As we contemplate a trip to Chicago this weekend to celebrate my husband’s Aunt Zelda’s 101st birthday, I wondered how many people in the US are over 100 years old. I made a guess of 1,000 that turned out to be way off. I was basing this on the fact that I don’t think I have ever even met anyone over 100. I guess all those numbers I once held in my head when I worked at the Census Bureau have slipped away.

This source says there are now over 96,000 centenarians in the US. And the number continues to grow as people live longer.

I’m looking at my own body and thinking I would have to live another 40 years in it to reach that age. I’m afraid I might need a few more bionic parts to make it.

I’m not even sure I would want to live that long. Especially not if the people I care most about don’t make it with me.

So we’ll see how Zelda is faring as she continues to exist in the Self-Help Home in Chicago. As much as she complained about leaving her efficiency apartment a few years ago, being around all those other people has been really good for her. She now has an audience for her home-spun psychology, which she has been dishing out for years.

She is as cantankerous as ever. Her first response when we said we were coming was “Why would you want to spend all that money?” Some things never change, even after 100.

Water, Water Everywhere

2009-10-28T10:25:00.000-04:00

This week’s yoga class focused on water, opening with the following reading:

Tao #78

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says:
     He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people
          is fit to rule them.
     He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves
          to be king of the universe.
The truth often seems paradoxical.

The teacher talked about the power of water to transform the earth by wearing away rock, as mentioned in the first few lines above. She asked us to focus on the water within each of us as we went through our yoga practice.

My body had always seemed so solid to me -- being made up of skin and bones and flesh. But as we did twist after twist, I could almost feel the water coursing through my being.

It’s interesting too that Esther’s class on Sunday focused on a prayer from the morning Shabbat service that is actually meant to be said every time we go to the bathroom. It thanks God for all the “tunnels” of the body, like veins and capillaries and our urinary system, and for the fact that they continue to carry liquid through our bodies, getting rid of what we don’t need.

I was curious just how much of our body is made up of water. I found this on a USGS site:

Water is of major importance to all living things; in some organisms, up to 90 percent of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60 percent of the human body is water, the brain is composed of 70 percent water, and the lungs are nearly 90 percent water. About 83 percent of our blood is water, which helps digest our food, transport waste, and control body temperature. Each day humans must replace 2.4 liters of water, some through drinking and the rest taken by the body from the foods eaten.

Lessons in the importance of water seem to be coming from all directions!

Choosing What to Wear

2009-10-27T09:39:00.003-04:00

I’ve always been under the impression you could do whatever you pleased inside the privacy of your own home. You could wear whatever you wanted to wear or nothing at all -- your choice. But apparently not in Virginia.

A Springfield man was arrested last week for indecent exposure as he made breakfast inside his house. The wife of a policeman and her 7-year-old son who were walking by the man’s house claim to have seen him in the side door and through a window.

So the first question is what should she have done? Nothing? Told her son to look the other way? Written a neighborly note and put it through the mail slot? Or called the cops?

She chose the last option. Within a short time the police had arrived and were standing over the man (who was then napping) with a Taser gun. One cop called him a pervert. Another went through his things. They eventually hauled him off to the office of the magistrate, where he was subsequently charged and released.

It turns out the Virginia law says you can be so charged only if you intend for someone to see you. So it boils down to whether or not he was actually trying to attract the attention of the mother and son or of anyone else. His case will go to trial on November 6.

Although I can’t imagine sitting around drinking coffee in the buff, I am sympathetic to the man’s right to individual liberties within his own home. I hope he is acquitted.

What do you think? To what degree (if any) is he guilty? Would this have happened in NYC or some other large metropolitan area?

Thinking About Time

2009-10-26T12:37:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I wonder how was able to juggle so many things when I was working full time, raising children, heading up the neighborhood swim team, dealing with a myriad of pets, and sometimes even taking piano lessons.

Some answers are I was a lot younger, I had a lot more energy, I slept less, and I drank more coffee.

But perhaps another important answer is I wasn’t sitting at my computer other than to do real work I got paid for (and furthermore when I was sitting at my work computer, it was always to do the work I was being paid for.)

It’s not that I sit at my home computer all day long, but I tend to check for e-mail, comments, look at stats, and read Blogs several times a day. And then there is usually a few minutes devoted to posting something.

Many of the people who were Blogging when I first started have quit or are posting very infrequently. And I don’t seem to be looking for people to take their places on my link list. Occasionally when someone finds my Blog and we realize we have common interests, I add that person -- like Terry and Mary Tabor. But I’m no longer out there beating the bushes for new Blogs to read.

I have enough trouble getting around to my old favorites on a regular basis, sometimes arriving to find I have missed 3 posts!

I am beginning to think the majority of my readers are either non-Bloggers or at least non-commenting Bloggers. I’m always a little surprised when someone says “I read about that on your Blog” and I remember this is a sometimes reader.

I start to wonder if what I’m writing is losing its pizazz (if it ever had such a thing) as my comment numbers decline. Maybe that says something about the quality of my current life -- that it is sometimes bordering on BORING.

I will probably continue to write just because it’s a good daily exercise, it puts my favorite recipes in easy reach, and I enjoy the interaction with friends in the Blogosphere. But there are times when I ponder what I would do with my reclaimed hours if I put my home computer in hibernation.

Do such thoughts ever cross your mind?

Road Closures

2009-10-25T14:51:00.002-04:00

If I was currently an avid biker, I would have loved a chance to participate in Bike DC last week, even in the pouring rain. If I were a runner, there would be no greater thrill than running in today’s Marine Marathon. But as a driver, I have been frustrated the past two weekends by both of these events.

Last weekend we thought we had avoided the bike route by taking Rock Creek Parkway to Shabbat services. But at some point we were forced off and found ourselves like rats in a maze of closed roads, where we would repeatedly encounter a police car blocking the road and simply have to turn around. We tried asking one of these police persons how to get out of our bind, but to no avail. She had no knowledge other than the fact that she wasn’t supposed to let anyone through. We finally made it 20 minutes late, as most others from any distance away were also.

Today we remembered our problem last week and because of the Marathon decided to take Chain Bridge, the only bridge open into DC from Virginia. We left extra early. But a whole lot of other people had the same idea, so we were 20 minutes late to Esther’s class today as thousands of people ran through the streets on a most beautiful Fall day.

We were dropping off leftover pea soup and fruit that needed to be eaten right away with our son after class. It turns out many roads, including parts of Rock Creek Parkway, were still closed. The ones that were open were totally clogged, mostly from people with out of state license plates who didn’t seem to know where they were going.

Now that we’re once again home, the frustrations of driving are receding in my memory. But I do hope there are no important walks or runs or bike events that play havoc with the DC streets and bridges next weekend.

Reading to Moms -- part 2

2009-10-24T14:37:00.004-04:00

Today I completed my training on how to motivate parents to read to their children. I ended up learning a lot about how to make reading more exciting and fun.

When I do a workshop with the mothers at the shelter where I read, I’m supposed to pick a topic that is important to them and give them some ideas about books and how to read those books to their kids in a way that makes the whole experience fun. Fun may well be something most of these families are lacking as they ponder homelessness and worries about the future. At the conclusion of the workshop, the mothers will each take home a stack of books to add to their children’s “library.”

I kept getting images of a particular 4-year-old girl as she balled up her fists and held her breath before launching into a fit. She has severe anger management problems.

So with this little girl in mind, I determined that my first workshop would center on “emotions”, something I could use a little work on myself. Among the many books we looked at in my training sessions, I particularly liked “Today I Feel Silly” by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell. It helps the child learn to identify the various moods of the day, including feeling silly, sad, cranky, etc. It includes a “mood wheel” at the end with a spinner that can be used to identify the mood du jour or play a game about all the various moods.

Another book which will work well with this topic is "How Are You Peeling?" It has the most adorable pictures of vegetables with faces that clearly depict the various moods.

Someone raised the question about how to deal with a mother who can’t read. It turns out even those mothers can have a very positive impact on their children. Today I learned about Benjamin Carson, an extremely successful pediatric neurosurgeon in Baltimore. When it looked like he might be going down a slippery slope as a young child, his mother pulled the plug on the TV and gathered an endless supply of library books. She required him to complete his homework, read one of those books, and tell her about it before he could go out and play. She chided him if his homework wasn’t neat and reminded him to check it over. Many years later he discovered she was illiterate.

I’m anxious to meet the mothers at my shelter. It will be so interesting to know more about the families the children come from. If I encounter a mother who has literacy problems, I will find help for her so she can more fully enjoy reading to her children.

A Happy Occasion

2009-10-23T21:34:00.003-04:00

I thought I had nothing to say today, then I went to Shabbat services. It was a packed crowd gathered together to officially recognize Esther as our new rabbi.

The featured speaker was her favorite professor at the Hebrew Union College and one of the foremost rabbis and authors in the Reform movement today, Rabbi Larry Hoffman. He was also our senior rabbi Danny’s professor and mentor and he has been a huge supporter of Temple Micah over the years.

So it’s no surprise that he was the matchmaker between Esther and Temple Micah. He described the choice of Esther as “besheret”, a Hebrew word meaning “meant to be, destiny, soulmate...”

When Esther addressed her new congregation, she actually had everyone stand while she offered a blessing, beautiful English words that formed a heartfelt prayer to God over our recent union.

She also read portions of the following poem, which seemed totally appropriate to the occasion:

To Be of Use by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

As proof of Esther’s point that Temple Micah promotes laughter and levity, the gift from the congregation was a book entitled “Baseball for Dummies”, to try to bring this Canadian up to speed with the passion for baseball that has been a hallmark of the congregation since Danny became our rabbi 25 years ago.

Reading Magic

2009-10-22T09:56:00.003-04:00

This book is my homework for a short course I’m taking to prepare me to teach mothers in the homeless shelter how to read to their children. It’s made me think a lot about my introduction to books as a child.

I grew up in a literate family that didn’t read more than the newspaper, didn’t go to the library, and didn’t talk about books. I remember having some Little Golden Books and a volume called “A Child’s Garden of Verse.” But that’s where the memory of my childhood “library” stops.

I distinctly remember coloring an entire page in one of those books black as I waited (to be read to?) for my mother to get off the phone.

The only story I can remember enjoying was the story of Little Black Sambo. That’s not true. I remember The Little Engine That Could also.

It’s no small wonder that I couldn’t read at all when I went to first grade. I don’t recall any difficulty in learning, but I was certainly not above grade level when I entered school.

By 3rd grade I was reading quite advanced books and soon thereafter demanded to be taken to the public library. Of course my parallel memory of the public library was of the warnings my mother gave me about the adjacent public bathrooms where you could catch almost any disease known to man from the toilet seats.

So back to the book I’m now reading. Mem Fox suggests there are three elements to reading: recognizing the printed letters and the words they form, having language skills to understand the meaning of the words, and having the knowledge to make sense of the ideas the words suggest. Who would have ever thought it was so complicated?

She makes the point that reading to young children should not be equated with teaching. But rather it should be a time to laugh with them, be silly, and have fun. I certainly don’t remember doing any of that with my parents. I read to my children, but was I ever silly? I imagine not.

But somehow my children are serious readers. They might also have trouble being silly with my (some day) grandchildren.

I wish I had read this book along with Dr. Spock and Barry White and the other authors of parenting books. It puts an entirely new spin on something that has been around as long as man has recorded his thoughts.

I hope I will be able to convey these ideas to the mothers at the shelter. I hope I can read a book to them and demonstrate being just a little silly. It gives me new ideas for how to do a better job as I volunteer to read to their children.

A Change of Heart

2009-10-21T09:53:00.002-04:00

The Catholic Church stands to gain some new members from the fallout over the ordination of the Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003, which cut a deep schism in the Anglican Church.

When the Robinson case emerged, I remember being happy not to be part of a group that had to debate who was eligible to hold the highest offices of the church. There was a very vocal element who came out against homosexuals (like Robinson) and women.

Six years later, the Catholic Church has decided to invite those discouraged Anglicans into their fold. The real kicker here is they are grandfathering in the married priests. This ruling has not been tested by Catholic priests wanting to marry or single Anglican priests wanting to do the same. But nonetheless it is significant.

I can only imagine God up there laughing at the lengths his people will go to in order to make a point. I hope the Catholic Church is happy with its new homophobic members!

Up, up, and away!

2009-10-20T18:09:00.002-04:00

I have learned quite a lot about getting around Costa Rica this past week as I figure out how to get from one place to the next on our January trip. The pieces are gradually falling into place.

I originally was insisting on taking public buses everywhere so as to both save money and see more of the country. But I’ve come to see the wisdom of the person who said crossing the country would take 2 days by bus. So we will be doing the first leg of that trip on a tiny Nature Air plane like the colorful one in the picture above. From Nosara to San Jose takes 45 minutes by plane and 5-1/2 hours by bus. It will be the best spent $89 (each) of the trip.

Small planes like these often have serious weight restrictions. It turns out we can check one 30-pound bag and bring aboard a 10-pound carryon. Given my Samsonite that has wheels which move in all directions is also quite heavy, we went luggage shopping online and found this Delsey duffel which weights just a little over 8 pounds.

We still must hook up with a bus to the Caribbean coast in San Jose. And the word is that buses sell out, especially on the weekend (when we will be traveling). So through a friend, I managed to find a guy in San Jose who (for a reasonable fee) will purchase our bus tickets in advance, meet us at the airport, and deliver us to the Gran Caribe bus terminal to catch the Mepe bus to Puerto Viejo, only a 4-1/2 hour ride. But at least that way we get there in one day if all goes well.

I’ve been having a lot of fun reading travel forums and just learning from the experience of others. It’s sort of nice to go to places off the beaten path where you have to work a little to make it happen.

Shoes, Glorious Shoes

2009-10-19T15:57:00.004-04:00

The blankness of my calendar for today initiated a cleaning frenzy. Every time I do this I realize just how much is left. It’s something of a curse having a lot of storage space.

This round started with my bathroom. I filled a huge bag with shampoos and other beauty products that had been languishing on the shelves and in the drawers. The homeless shelter near our house is always receptive to things like these.

Then I moved on to the linen closet. I got rid of wash cloths that looked more like rags, towels that hadn’t been used for ages, and orphaned pillow cases. It looked so refurbished with all the remaining linens neatly folded and not crammed in.

The real objective of today’s cleaning was the closets in my room. I put together a bag of sweaters that were not worn out in the least but not being worn.

I never had thought of myself as a shoe horse, but my closet might have said otherwise. It was past time to get rid of the shoes that won’t work with my orthotics, the ones that don’t offer enough support, and the ones that are just decades out of style.

I had 6 pairs of Life Stride “Shelas”. You know they are old when the price was 25% off $38 at Woodward & Lothrop. My favorite was the bright red pair that always made me feel like something out of the Wizard of Oz.

The Purple Heart truck is visiting our neighborhood next week. They will think they have hit the mother lode when they get to our house.

I have been unable to elicit any enthusiasm from my husband in cleaning out. It doesn’t concern him in the least that his closets are filled with comparable clothes and shoes that are no longer worn. His comment, “I guess if we moved to a 2-bedroom place we would have to get serious about purging.”

Although someone walking in my front door wouldn’t have a clue as to my day’s work, I feel better that at least 3 areas have been tackled.

Talking to God

2009-10-18T13:00:00.004-04:00

There’s an old adage “Get two Jews in a room and you have three opinions.” That certainly seems to be true of the class we are currently attending with our new rabbi Esther. She’s leading a 4-part series in understanding prayer, including the morning and evening Shabbat services. That’s a lot of ground to cover in just 4 weeks.

Whereas in the Christian church there are not so many prescribed prayers, in Judaism what once might have been spontaneous has been written down and serves as the words we say for just about any occasion, but specifically each week during the Shabbat services. In fact, most Jews would feel quite put on the spot if asked to offer a spoken prayer outside the context of a prescribed service.

The majority of prayers that we say or sing in services are in Hebrew, throwing up all sorts of issues for discussion. Like whether the prayer has meaning if you don’t know the meaning of the Hebrew words. I now know how to sing/say most of the prayers, even reading the Hebrew. I occasionally catch a word like “shalom” and know what it means. But it turns out each of those prayer pieces has come to represent sort of a feeling for me as it marks a particular part of the service. I’m sometimes shocked when I read the English translation and realize it has nothing to do with the feeling I have created around the prayer.

As for the challenges of offering personal prayer, my husband suggested that perhaps someone should give a class in how to pray. That idea struck me as totally wrong. I think personal prayer should be individualistic with no need to conform to any format or style or length. I cringed at the thought of someone defining how I should speak to my God, who may be quite different from the next person’s God.

I do offer my own prayers to God, but mostly outside the context of a religious service. I have come to see they are often more like prayer “tweets”, less than 140 characters, in which I comment on a gorgeous day (not today), ask for understanding to deal with a personal crisis, or express thanks for the good food I am fortunate to eat.

Do you have anything to say about personal prayer or is it just too personal to talk about in a public forum?

Wake-up Call

2009-10-17T09:00:00.002-04:00

All day long yesterday I had felt agitated, probably a state brought on by a hefty dose of morning caffeine. I’m starting to think coffee is not a good thing for my system.

Then as we were getting ready to go to services, I couldn’t find my favorite sweater anywhere. I checked to see if it had fallen off a hanger. I couldn’t remember having seen it since my trip to SF. I had a mini-meltdown over a sweater for God’s sake.

The Friday night music at TM sort of nudged me back into a state of contentment and pushed my unhappiness over the lost sweater to the background.

Last night we celebrated 20 years of Micah House, a home for 4 women recovering from addiction at a time. Over 30 women had called it their home during those years. Last night one of them spoke about how that house had been all that had kept her from homelessness, how she had emerged to then buy a home of her own, where she has lived for the past 14 years.

Our rabbi Danny reminded us how fortunate we are to be able to share what we have with those who don’t have as much. Our cantor Meryl sang this song, which pretty well summed up the feelings of the evening:

Grateful by John Bucchino

I've got a roof over my head
I've got a warm place to sleep
Some nights I lie awake counting gifts
Instead of counting sheep

I've got a heart that can hold love
I've got a mind that can think
There may be times when I lose the light
And let my spirits sink
But I can't stay depressed
When I remeber how I'm blessed

Grateful, grateful
Truly grateful I am
Grateful, grateful
Truly blessed
And duly grateful

In a city of strangers
I've got a family of friends
No matter what rocks and brambles fill the way
I know that they will stay in the end

I feel a hand holding my hand
It's not a hand you can see
But on the road to the promised land
This hand will shepherd me
Through delight and despair
Holding tight and always there

Grateful, grateful
Truly grateful I am
Grateful, grateful
Truly blessed
And duly grateful

It's not that I don't want a lot
Or hope for more, or dream of more
But giving thanks for what I've got
Makes me so much happier than keeping score

In a world that can bring pain
I will still take each chance
For I believe that whatever the terrain
Our feet can learn to dance
Whatever stone life may sling
We can moan or we can sing

Grateful, grateful
Truly grateful I am
Grateful, grateful
Truly blessed
And duly grateful

My husband got up and gave a wonderful tribute to his father, a practice extended to any member celebrating the yahrzeit of a loved one. It brought tears to my eyes as I remembered a man I had grown to love over the years.

I went home and found my sweater hiding in my closet. The evening had reminded me of so many things so much more important than misplacing my favorite sweater, my several-years-old Calvin Klein from Filenes. It really didn’t matter so much in the scheme of things.

Elusive Notes

2009-10-16T15:59:00.002-04:00

I have always been terrified at the thought of having to play a piece of music from memory. Obviously I don’t play by ear, but rather I rely on looking at the music for everything I play. I never get to the point where I could just sit down and play something I’ve been working on, possibly for months.

At last Sunday’s piano group, an older guy named Hal attempted to play a Chopin waltz from memory. It was just a short one and he started over many times trying valiantly to coax his brain to cooperate. But ultimately he gave up and hauled out the music.

I would never even be brave enough to try to play something from memory. But when I woke up last night, I remembered that I had seen the music for the Chopin ballade I’m currently playing in a dream and it was the real thing. It was so easy to pull up a measure, play it, and then put it aside to move on to the next measure.

So the music must be up there somewhere in my brain, just not accessible to me when I am awake. I’m wondering if there is some sort of brain therapy I could do to let me see what’s up there.

The brain is such a complex thing, sometimes throwing up barriers to things it holds. Does anyone out there understands how this works?

Third World Travel

2009-10-15T17:25:00.005-04:00

I’m being reminded that going from Point A to Point B in a third world country is not always a straight shot. We’re finding out just how difficult it is as we attempt to arrange transportation for our January trip to Costa Rica.

It turns out that if you are in any hurry, you are better off flying. And you can fly in a tiny plane to just about any place you might want to go. But the cost is prohibitive.

If you don’t fly, the choices include driving a rental car, taxi, shuttle, and bus. We’re not even considering renting a car or hiring a driver. So we are left to try to find a group of people to share a shuttle with or use the public buses, by far the cheapest solution.

It sounds like one of the big problems is the quality of the roads. Interbus, the pre-eminent shuttle company, doesn’t even drive to Nosara, where the Omega Institute’s one-week program will be held. One Blogger says “Nosara, for better or for worse, is off the beaten path. This is a big part of what makes it special. It takes some effort to get both there and away, but there are options depending on your time and economic situation.” It must be way off the path if a shuttle company won’t even go there!

I have an e-mail message in to Vino Transportation, which claims to provide service between the Liberia airport (where we arrive) and Nosara. You would think Omega Institute might provide FREE transportation to and from the airport if they want many people to show up.

We have decided to go all the way to the Caribbean coast after our week at Omega. It’s only 275 km. from Nosara to Puerto Viejo. That’s less than 180 miles. One person said it might take 2 days to go by land and therefore recommended that we fly. But I want to see what lies between and not just from the air.

I have another inquiry in to a travel agent a friend used to try to unlock the secrets of getting around the country affordably.

From Puerto Viejo, we’re planning to go to Bocas del Toro, which is just over the border into Panama. It looks so close on a map, but apparently takes 4 hours, including walking across a railroad bridge crossing a ravine at the border.

After we spend a few days relaxing at Casa Cayuco, on a small island off of Bocas, we will then need to figure out how to get back to San Jose for our return trip home the next day.

I’m sure we will know so much more about travel around Costa Rica by the time we get home. But now there’s still a lot to learn.