Has Not Gone Well

My first disappointing semester at OLLI. Course selection started in a constrained circumstance. Yom Tovim constituted most of the Tuesdays and Wednesday's for the semester's first half.  Still, acceptance in two attendance restricted classes was greeting with a satisfying nod.  I'd only taken one class in the past to learn a new skill, watercolor.  This had been presented online, which limited personal attention.  At least everyone else sharing the screen also had not done this before, or at least since Art Class as youngsters. Ir lacked the coaching that I would have expected in a live low enrollment class.  This time around, I enrolled in live sessions.  Cartooning and Crocheting/Knitting.

My course selections included a science class, or so I thought.  The world of physical science, my college major, had long since passed me by.  An online course on Thermodynamics entertained me when the DVD professor did his experiments, left me befuddled when the two retired, highly accomplished DuPont scientists did their own explanations.  A live course on The Universe engaged me more, though I could tell that if I had taken this in college, I would be doing a lot of studying in my dorm most evenings.  No exams, the standard for the University's Seniors Program, made this unnecessary but also limited the mental yield to a small fraction of what our expert professor had presented.  Biology seemed more my rightful place, having made a career from what is largely medical applications of biological science.  Evolutionary expressions of modern biology seemed worth a weekly session each Monday afternoon.  Moreover, this would allow me a break between morning and afternoon classes to do other activities on-site, from lunch from my kitchen toted in an insulated bag to a portable office in the form of a cross chest carrier purchased for a previous European vacation.  My fourth live course taught me about National Parks.  The professor prepares the presentations well, has previous series on this very favorably received by me, and engages my mind enough at each session to provoke a question to him.

I selected two online courses as well, each on a Thursday, each running a different half-semester. These reflect a fundamental shift in my state's OLLI program.  Pre-pandemic, the available courses nearly always took place near my home, on the state's northern campus.  The building would crowd with seniors who would stayed for lunch and enrichment lectures.  Quarantine by Covid brought Zoom into the program.  My state's experts on assorted topics had either retired from one of the international conglomerates or from the medical center.  As this was happening, a demographic shift also took place.  People of great accomplishment began retiring in big numbers to the beach towns of my state.  Once sleepy places where I took my kids for four days some summers became the home of retired lawyers, broadcasters, diplomats, some medical experts.  Expertise and willingness to share it relocated a hundred miles from my home.  All available on Zoom.  Much of it in past semesters outstanding.  Thursdays would go to a series of five weeks on my state's contribution to the American Revolution the first half and to an analysis of Justice System snafus the second half.

My initial enthusiasm got mugged by reality quickly.  By the end of Rosh Hashana, just a few sessions into the semester, I wondered what great learning I had sacrificed to attend shul on each Yontif.  My selections left a lot hanging.  Sure, I could count on the National Parks series on Friday mornings. Absolutely worth doing my scheduled treadmill sections a half hour earlier than other days, even at the price of some soreness to follow, not to mention a feeling that I had put myself off schedule.  Biology instructor more than qualified, a retired professor from the State University.  He assigned us a book, which I purchased as a Kindle.   No electronics for me on shabbos or yontif, so I quickly got behind.  Not that it mattered.  He envisioned this class as the free-form senior seminar he used to offer his PhD students.  For a class of senior citizens of diverse backgrounds, many with little science education or experience, the discussions became quickly unstructured.  The sessions lacked a beginning, middle, and end.  My attendance became optional.  The cartooning class has the opportunity to excel.  I have no art background.  As much as I like visiting the grand museums, and I've taken an OLLI art appreciation course, I still depend on my left cerebral hemisphere.  Art classes ended in 8th grade for lack of talent that screamed public disclosure.  I could never draw a cat or a realistic person.  That should have made cartooning attractive, as there are no artistic musts.  In class I like taking my pencils to a sketch book that I purchased for the course.  But people do cartooning professionally.  We delight in the funnies, the wit of what The New Yorker selects for publication, political cartoons that meet or repel our personal notions.  Lecture segments include this history.  They also touch the different landmarks that students must master to get proficient.  Faces, bodies, animals, motion representations, anthropomorphism.  All pertinent, all contributing to the delight that readers feels.  But none of these elements acquire mastery from one week to the next.  I am still toying with faces when the class slides and exercises have moved along to depictions of characters in different types of weather or getting electrocuted, or falling off a cliff. The published cartoonists we seek out spent years honing their craft, mostly with professional instruction and feedback of their work from other masters or editors who decide publication.  I will do what I can from week to week.  Maybe I would find the class sessions more gratifying if I practiced one or two nights at home.

Knitting/crocheting went less well.  Nearly everyone who occupies the assigned room at the assigned a time already has a personal portfolio.  I purchased some yarn and a crochet needle set.  With the help of YouTube, I got the hang of a slip knot to start and a basic crochet loop stitch.  This creates a linear length of loops.  To go from one dimension to two, I needed help.  A substitute instructor got me on track, at least transiently.  The regular instructor seemed too occupied tending to the experience knitters who use this assigned time and place as protected time to allot to their work. Not a place for novices.  Enough of a disappointment to stop attending.  YouTube will get me started when I am ready.

The online sessions served their purpose.  The Revolutionary War class invited guests, who I found mediocre.  In fairness, Yom Kippur fell on Thursday and I drove to a destination three hundred miles west on another Thursday.  So I only signed on to half the classes.  Justice gone wrong just had its first session.  I left after 15 minutes, judging it a woke echo chamber.  I try again in fairness to the instructor who seems to have worked hard assembling a complex subject, though probably missing some key points, which I could question if the second session resembles the first.

So, halfway through, the enthusiasm for acceptance into courses of limited attendance soon gave way to the disappointment of being there.  As a real University student, I would have taken my obligation for studying content and practicing skills more seriously.  I still can with half the semester remaining.  But impressions of content and experience come quickly.  It seems hard to reverse initial impressions.  And my own receptiveness to what comes my way needs a tweak, perhaps.  Other than knitting, which I'm convinced is a lost cause, I'll do my best to get more out of the semester's second half.

Formats

Mixed review from last fall's Jewish education series sponsored by the local JCC but really the creation of my congregational Rabbi.  They offered a few short series, usually conducted by a Rabbi of each congregation.  Typically, a student could choose one of two sessions occurring simultaneously.  I enrolled in three classes, each Rabbi giving two sessions on his topic.  I knew all, but only two as lecturers.  They did not disappoint.  The third reminded me more like sitting through Hebrew School.  I attended the first class but not the second.  To the community's credit, people chose their classes based on the topic.  The attendance did not seem top-heavy with each Rabbi's own congregants.  The alternative classes taught by non-rabbis each came from my own congregation.  Decent topics. 

The fall roster just appeared. I will pass on this session.  They offer two sessions each night, one early, one late.  Each person gives only one session.  The student has virtually no choice of what to attend in any session.  There are no serial classes where a topic is broken down over several weeks.  Again, the three lay presenters, one with cooking, one with dance, the third with Yiddish, all come from my shul.  All present one session.  The format reminds me of a medical grand rounds series with a different speaker and topic each week, largely chosen by the availability of a speaker.  Some things are better taught as a series.

As much as I might enjoy watching two dear ladies make strudel, I can and have followed a recipe for this, doing reasonably well.  It would be better to have five consecutive cooking sessions with a different theme each week.  In single class the capable Yiddish instructor could teach me what a Shmuck is.  I think I can identify them. Language needs more repetition.  And Dance as a single class does not do well if attended by people of different skill levels.  More importantly, my community has the good fortune to possess knowledgeable, capable people who have allegiance to each of our local congregations.  My own congregation seems very inbred.  This is one more example.  It would have been better for our rabbi to ask each of his colleagues to nominate a congregant to give 3-5 sessions.

For the rabbis, each doing a stand-alone hour, the curriculum has no identifiable theme.  A variety of topics to be heard one time.  Seven of them spread over five weeks.  I'm sure each will give his or her full preparation to the assigned topic.   But as a project, it has no unity, nor does it offer alternatives that students can select for their session.

It was not always that way.  Many years ago, the JCC sponsored an extraordinary weekly or biweekly educational night.  Each speaker prepared four or five classes on a variety of topics.  I developed a fondness for Jewish demography taught by a state university professor.  I learned about the Apocrypha from the Rabbi of a different congregation, attended a fascinating course by an assistant rabbi on how various authors or public officials related to Jews in their official capacity.  A lawyer gave a class comparing Jewish and American law.  The talent floats around.  It has to be captured.

Education has been central to Jewish culture.  I follow three weekly Parsha series each cycle.  The Torah goes in sequence.  That's the right format.  There is a place for a series of stand-alone presentations, much like Grand Rounds or Case of the Week had established a revered place in my medical world.  But over the course of a year or two, all major topics have their assigned time.  This Jewish series seems more random, based on showcasing people more than upgrading students.

It's only $18 to enroll, a bargain even if only one or two sessions get attended.  But even at that nominal sum, the deficiencies of format capture more of my attention than any of its content.  While I'll pass on this program this fall, I can and should and likely will allocate every Thursday evening for which sessions are scheduled, to upgrade my Jewish mind in my own way.

Failed Reunion

Cancelled.  Not enough subscribers.

A few folks thought 55 years from high school graduation would make a good occasion to assemble once more.  An event, which I did not attend, took place in Florida five years earlier.  Fifty years often reflects a milestone for many things.  I attended my fiftieth college reunion with my wife, a member of the same class.  I hardly knew anyone in attendance, though a class of 1800 students studying programs that often did not intersect leaves friendships a mere fraction of the total.  Lecture classes of 150, a dorm of five dozen that changes each fall, and shared renewable activities with twenty not all graduating the same year leaves little enduring friendships.

High school created a much different exposure.  Our school buses ran the same neighborhood route for twelve years, mostly with the same neighbors.  The New York State Regents set class requirements that would keep us in the same English, Math, Shop, and Art classes for consecutive years.  Homerooms reflected the surname alphabet.  That remained constant.  Eventually, we would disperse by more stratified AP courses, math levels, and renewable extracurriculars, only to reassemble as a cohesive group on the school bus and homeroom each morning.  When reunions came, 15, 25, 30, 40, 50, you recognized everyone by name irrespective of the career paths and geographic destinies that we each had.  While I could drive to each, I attended with an overnight stay, others would fly significant distances and reserve hotel space at considerable expense.

#50 which materialized and #55 which did not required travel to Florida, home of the principal organizers and many others, perhaps outnumbering those who still lived in proximity to the school building we attended.  If a crossover point occurred, I think it #40.  That year, indeed a few months preceding our gathering, the Sunday NY Times, then more widely respected than it has since become, ran a feature on the growing popularity of Facebook.  Within weeks, many of us acquired accounts, invited classmates to become Facebook Friends, and updated with each other where our adult lives had taken us.  Familiarity generated curiosity.  I'd like to see my reacquainted Friends in person one more time.  The event, held a short drive from where we all once lived, attracted considerable attendance.  Nostalgia Meter measurements varied.  Curiosity about what became of the people I once knew seemed more pervasive.  In fact, at the event, I sat at a table with people I only knew tangentially as a teen, much like I gravitate to tables of strangers when I attend banquets professionally or for my Jewish community.  Mingling, though, at buffet or bar or hallway, directed my curiosity to the new FB Friends.  The organizers had engaged a professional firm to seek out our whereabouts, something done halfway well, and arrange the buffet, music, and event space.  

I had a decent time meeting people, but recognized myself as the outlier I was then.   It served me adequately my mostly productive adult years.  I drove to the area early to attend Sabbath services at a Conservative synagogue in the area the enduring successor to my Bar Mitzvah congregation.  That one, where many classmates also had Bnai Mitzvah, had closed due to membership attrition a few years earlier.  I was never into popular music or disco dance.  A hora or other Bar Mitzvah music with a dance circle would have added to my experience.  I was too timid to request this of the DJ.  My kosher diet, affirmed my last two years of high school, had me nibbling very selectively from the buffet.  But I had pleasant updates with many people.  It's the last I attended.

Fifty years arrived.  A usual landmark.  Many of us had retired.  A fair number had passed away before their three score and ten, which remained two years off.  Instead of hiring a consulting firm, the organizers, those people more memorable as cheerleaders than as analytical scholars, thought they could identify enough people through Facebook contacts.  They thought they could get better attendance in Florida than where we had attended school.  I asked a FB friend, an organizer of this, about his committee's budget.  They had no budget.  I took out my old graduation program and did an individual search for one column of names.  Google retrieved most of them.  When I suggested to an organizer that they divide the list and do this to identify whereabouts, I got a snarky reply that they didn't want my input.  And my intellect which very likely exceeds hers was not valued by that crowd then either.  They had an event, attendance list posted, far from representative of our 431 grads than it could have been.  Feedback from a real friend from Florida who attended.  She thought the In Memoriam list was the highlight.  I did not ask if they supplemented Rolling Stones and Beach Boys of our era with Bar Mitzvah music, also of that era if we had younger brothers.

Year 55 proposal came as a grassroots effort from a couple of women, now grandmothers, who thought we should relive old times once more.  Again Florida, as that's where the organizers live.  I briefly considered going.  The best flight would come from Avelo Airlines, the only commercial carrier from my nearest regional airport.  Good fare.  To keep it a good fare, they engaged in a more lucrative contract with ICE to deport captives to wherever the administration thinks they should be transported to.  Needless to say, I have misgivings about funding this, even if indirectly.  My personal deal breaker came later.  I asked an organizer about options for observing shabbos and kosher.  I got the platform version of shoulder shrug.  When I host guests, which I have, I default to inconveniencing myself to being helpful to them.  My guess is that Boca Raton has shuls and kosher sources of food for a weekend.  Others in my loop, which is not the organizer's loop then or now, opted out for a variety of reasons.  Insufficient down payments ended the project.

Might it have succeeded?  A FB Friend, one I was close to since Cub Scouts who succeeded grandly in several phases of his adult life, offered a FB suggestion that got traction from others.  He noted that while many if not most of us have migrated from our Rockland County origins, the incentive to return includes the environment along with the people of decades past.  I would also challenge the grassroots nature of the event.  High School divided us in a serious way.  We rode school buses with the same neighbors long before that.  Those on the bus route began to find our way, the paths to our adulthoods.  Some prioritized their grades and which college would accept them.  Others liked sports or music.  The two who joined the circus had their origins there.  Most were Jewish, at least on my bus route and classes, but we expressed this identity very differently.  A choral group had appeared on national TV.  Those members became another cohort.  Our class had ethnic minority representation and a geographic catchment that was less prosperous.  I did not see those kids at any of the reunions that I attended, though as I looked up people in my random list, at least one had achieved an honorable military career that took him around the world.  Every successful project needs a champion or two.  People imaging what they might like to pursue is an honorable undertaking.  They also need a committee that is representative of our class' composition.  An event created in an Echo Chamber, whether a reunion or too many of my synagogue happenings, performs less well than they could have, even if the organizers congratulate each other the day after.  We should know that by our senior years.  We've all had to make decisions on children's weddings, Christmas gatherings at work, whose input is needed to make a  committee sparkle.  Our disagreeable Uncle Loouie still gets invited.  The nebish at work gets escorted to the bar by the CEO at the holiday party.  That annoying INTJ who we can count on thinking of something nobody else can has a place on the committee.  Fifty years into our adult lives, that is how the most successful of us lived.  The classmate who cannot afford the reunion hotel at $160 a night can be found a guest room with a local empty nester for a night or two. I viewed the promotions on FB more as an event to be implemented than one of scattered relations or memories to be reassembled.

While this event did not materialize, we still have the people.  Facebook, which reconnected us in 2009, no longer serves that purpose effectively.  In its place, now as 70-somethings, we have fewer attachments despite the emergence of technology that once promised to expand that.  We no longer host bar mitzvahs and weddings to invite those friends from the past.  We do have more unassigned time and efficient transportation that has taken many, if not most of us, across the USA and beyond.  The organizers were too selective in who they tried to capture for what should have been a less selective net.  But our lifelong friends are not like that.  They are particular for a reason.  And we have the ability to keep those personal attachments afloat.

Electronics Off

For Yom Kippur, I kept the electronics off, as I usually do.  No cell phone.  No laptop.  Not even big screen TV where by now I watch mostly YouTube with a small diversion for selected football, college and Eagles.  YK came out Wednesday to Thursday nights this year.  I had made a commitment to myself to leave the social media off through Sukkot, beginning a few days before.  Due to a glitch I had to return to FB momentarily, only to learn of the passing of friend's mother, a former neighbor and good friend of my mother, who had lived to advanced years.  I made a comment, sent a donation, then turned it off.  Rarely, postings from FB have significance.  They come randomly enough to make me reconsider my absolute hiatus.  Shofar blown, quick snack at synagogue to break the fast, then a more substantial feeding at home.  I opted not to check the electronics other than TV until the next morning.  After more consideration, FB, Reddit, and Twitter to stay fallow.

The following morning, I caught up on email.  Zero messages that needed attention.  Some notices from entities that I subscribe to, a single non-urgent message directed at me personally.  A lot of deletes from places trying to sell me something.  A few from places wanting donations.  Those organizations all had merit.  Some will get a share of my mandatory IRA withdrawal when I do it next month.  A few that should have been forwarded to phishing or spam, but not knowing for sure, they just got deleted.

Not looking at my email for Shabbos and yontif should resume as usual practice, as it once was.  By the afternoon past Yom Kippur, FB was already sending me notices of why I ought to sign back on.  All of it A Friend Posted.  Nada notification of a response to something I posted.  I understand that their financial fortunes depend on subscribers or other forms of suckers reading their personal feeds.  Almost none have the importance of a death notice.  People who really need to reach me have email.  Some think they have texting, though not true.  My text feeds are cluttered with Friends of Obama needing another $50.  Bringing their party, my party in a much more selected form, to even more profound ignominy does not benefit from my financial support.  I have doctors' offices texting me even though I asked on their intake forms not to be notified that way.  The only legitimate purpose for texting me seems to be to my confirm identity when dealing with one of my financial or government institutions, those where I have initiated the contact.

A number of prominent people have given themselves a weekly Sabbath from their smartphones.  Catherine Price wrote about this in her book on controlling omnivailability.  The late Charlie Kirk, for all the divergence of world view that I have with him, though I had not heard of him prior to his assassination, understood the value of a weekly cell phone break.  He chose the Jewish Sabbath.  I don't know why.  I do know why I would choose my Shabbos to set the electronics aside.  And our Festivals last two days.  When they span Thursday-Friday or Sunday-Monday, those electronics-free days extend to three days.  I've done this before.  FOMO never a social media concern.  When I turn email back on, I can expect enticements from FB in my messages.  Three day suspension is not long enough.  Better to commit to weeks.  At least on Reddit r/judaism I am helpful to people and on r/Jewish Cooking I learn things.  FB still has friends that I value sharing some element of their lives.  Twitter in its current form only has destructive value.

Now Jewish year 5786.  I do not do resolutions, either Jewish or secular calendar transitions.  Never more cheerful or tolerant, despite my best intent.  Some things I can do, including control of the electronics.  As yom tovim cluster, keeping the cell phone and email dormant seems part of the observance, along with shabbos.  Social media needs a broader assessment of control, probably in the form of rationing.  Leaving these platforms without access to respect the Jewish Holy Days seems easy.  Fitting them in appropriate places in a setting of limited but not zero merit takes a little more thought.

My YK experience, though, affirms the benefits of defined shut-downs.

Driving Through Neighborhoods

My town doesn't really have neighborhoods.  There are areas with expensive homes, others with marginal housing and crime.  We have a shell of a downtown.  But homogeneity rules.  At one time Jews lived in one place, Italians in another, African Americans of all incomes largely together.  We have largely dispersed, with enclaves notable primarily for housing prices.  Our major employers have succeeded in creating ethnically diverse payrolls.  We do not even have a dominant university where young adults cluster.

Visiting family in Pittsburgh a few times, taking a tour by bus, and now driving around to get to different places around town, my impression is very different.  My family lives in a once run down area being revitalized, but still with a ways to go. The main street, where I have walked and driven, contains small businesses.  After a meal out, I counted places to eat over each of three blocks we walked returning to the house.  The tally:  5-8-4.  All these places are small, no chain franchises.  Each restaurateur must have a dream of creating something from scratch.  None seemed to be magnet eateries attracting guests citywide.

Pittsburgh has lots of schools.  The closest to where I stay is Duquesne, a Jesuit university which I visited by walking tour.  Not an enormous number of kids out.  I went to the bookstore where I purchased a souvenir mug.  Then I walked past classrooms, their relatively new Osteopathic Medical School and affiliated hospitals, probably some dorms and an athletic complex.  Squeezed in were a city fire station and an aging red brick church of uncertain denomination.

After returning to my hosts, I had an event to attend in Squirrel Hill.  This section remains predominantly Jewish, both by residents and by institutions.  My route took me past three large synagogues, including the Tree of Life Building, where a massacre during worship occurred in 2018.  It had construction fencing around it.  The other two congregations have massive buildings, cramped grounds.  In Squirrel Hill, I drove past two Jewish Day Schools, a Mikvah, two start-up Orthodox synagogues, but no hangouts.  Housing appeared mostly single-family with two-story masonry, many fewer driveways than I would have expected, and some light shopping at its perimeter.  I encountered almost no pedestrians.

My hosts recommended lunch in a section known as Shadyside.  Restaurants and specialty shops without national franchises re-emerged.  Few driveways but a city parking facility nearby, as street parking took me a few blocks to find.  The place we visited for lunch has a specialty cuisine.  At noontime most tables were filled by young adults.  I found the housing more mixed.  Apartment buildings and houses subdivided for tenants seemed to dominate.  The buildings seemed worn but rehabbed.  Few yards.  Essentially no litter.  And no pedestrians until arriving near the two business streets.

Driving to my host's house took us through a few more places.  Carlow University I'd not heard of before but we drove past an impressive campus center.  The University of Pittsburgh is well-known.  They have a spiring tower at its center but hoards of young people in hurried transit at noontime on a Friday.  Big football game there the next day.  A little farther took us past the synagogue we would attend on Sabbath, the current home of Tree of Life.  It had a cathedral appearance.  As a Reform Temple, its members had no reason to walk from home on the Sabbath but those living within easily walking distance occupied mansions.

For Sunday, my hosts wanted to shop for baby clothes at a thrift store.  Getting there from their South Side neighborhood brought us through two tunnels and up hills with tricky driving curves.  The housing seems more spread out, likely a place where members of the United Steelworkers lived.

Downtown I saw only from the car, but tall buildings marked its place.

No doubt, places I did not drive past would house people like my wife and me.  House with two-car garage and driveway.  They must be there, maybe outside the city limits.

Pittsburgh's leaders seem to have thought their future through a little better than most city officials.  I don't even know where the steelworks once stood.  Perhaps even a few still do.  Yet in the absence of a primary industry, I saw elements of commerce, hi-tech, a food industry, medical centers to match others across America.  Places seemed crowded, some quite worn, but with little neglect.  A Jewish enclave remains recognizably Jewish.  A major and secondary universities teem with students.  Big Box stores did not clutter the city landscape.  A city of character attracting people of character.

Sending Gifts

Periodically, over many decades, I've sent gifts by the US Postal Service.  I've had the good fortune of living my adult life primarily with my wife, mostly in proximity to her relatives.  My kinfolk had just the right distance.  Easier for me to get to them when I wanted to than for them to travel to me.  Birthdays and Hanukkah generated gifts.  My wife and I would wrap them, put them in cartons by destinations, and ship them to the recipients by parcel post.  E-commerce existed, but not in its current form.  I could order from Sears or JC Penny's catalog, but never did.  On occasion, I would receive an edible package as a gift, maybe fruit basket or an array of nuts in packages.  I never sent them.  To a large extent, I still shop as I always had.  With the emergence of Amazon and onIine divisions of most retailers, sometimes I will select a birthday gift, filling a form to have the company ship it to the recipient instead of to me.  More often than not, the seller would add a nominal shipping fee.  They usually had another section of their order form where I could slip a brief note to accompany the gift.  When I incurred a shipping surcharge, it seemed nominal.  Not much different than me putting the items into a carton then taking it to the post office, or more recently, independent mailing services.

A much different experience came my way recently.  Visiting family on the other coast, one with cramped housing, I anticipated needing a hotel.  That city's hotels were notoriously expensive.  None stood in reasonable walking distance of where she lived.  With some effort, she found a friend who would be vacationing the week of my visit.  I could stay there all but the final night.  

The owners kept a spotless place.  Its floor space paled next to my spacious suburban home.  While my house has been a depository for enough stuff to one day burden my survivors at the Estate Sale, this lady added only tasteful, selective things to her interior.  Each room had a function with just the things needed to enable that function.  Sparse decorative elements appeared, a few wall hangings, glass items arranged in an orderly way on a few shelves, a few hooks and towels in the sole bathroom.

By allowing me to stay there, I saved a thousand or so dollars that would have otherwise gone to a hotel and transportation daily to the people I was visiting.  On returning home, I knew that I needed to send them a gift.  I also knew that my choice had to be something consumable, probably edible.  I doubt if she wants anyone other than herself choosing anything decorative.

Distance and appreciation have created a brisk market for gifts needing delivery.  I had received a few from a company called Edibles, so I looked there first.  They are known for carved fruits, the perfect short shelf life, tasty edible, marred only by what to do with the vase that contains the arranged fruits.  I thought the price seemed high, but the assortment of gifts allowed me to pick something for about $50.  While the company depends on long-distance delivery, I found it difficult to arrange shipping to the people on the other coast when I ordered it from home.  I reviewed My Cart.  That $50 item had a shipping charge of $20.  I understand that it is perishable, but that still seemed extreme.  Let me look some more.  Harry & David, perhaps the prototype of high mark-up, high quality edibles.  You get a few pears for $50 but they also offered less perishable edibles.  And everything comes elegantly packaged to impress a recipient.  $50 items were few but available.  Shipping $18.  Similar findings at Gift Baskets.  Apparently, as an industry, their standard seems to be to maximize revenues by shipping fees well in excess of ordinary employee handling and global delivery services.  A little like what we now see at restaurants and hotels.  Reservation Fee, Resort Fee.  It used to be the car dealers that would sneak stuff into the car you ordered in the 1970s era, when Americans specified the options they wanted. The Japanese companies understood how The Bump, as it was called, irritated drivers.  They just built the popular options as standard features and included them in the price of the car.  The new standard of selling cars based on respect for purchasers.

Still, I do my share of online purchasing.   I will even buy a little extra sometimes to reach the free shipping price threshold.  I know what Amazon charges to send orders from warehouse to destination.  Maybe Amazon sells chocolates or cheesecakes.  They do.  I picked one.  Same exorbitant delivery fee appeared in My Cart.  And when I tried to divert it to my hosts, Amazon took my card number and sent me an automated message that it would come to me instead of as a gift to them.  I was able to cancel it in less than two minutes. I know that Katz Delicatessen, that Manhattan classic, ships worldwide.  As a native of the Indian subcontinent, pastrami, however classic, may not be suitable for the lady who shared her home.  And they have a cheesecake, but some people are vegan.  Same limitation of chocolate, perhaps, but hardly anyone other than LDS spurns that.  Shipping fee $15.

Walmart better appreciates people like me.  They have edible gifts, though not the perishables or elegant gift packaging of the companies focused on shipping gourmet gifts.  I was able to find something there for what I intended to spend.  Shipping fee, pretty much what I would pay for Amazon or other mainstream e-tailer to send an item that does not reach their free shipping minimum.  It let me send the item to the address where I stayed.  It did not let me include a note of thanks.  A few clicks, and my new friend from India, who I did not meet during my visit, will soon have a token of my gratitude to nosh on, something vegan.

The note of appreciation is important, though.  As soon as I authorized shipping, I asked my wife to harvest one of those blank note cards with envelope that we often receive from non-profits wanting a donation. She found a few.  It's been a while since I've written an old-fashioned, once mandatory, thank you note on a handsome, sturdy card with an artistic picture on the front.  A few sentences of thanks jotted down, and signed.  Into envelope.  Stamp and return address.  Mail carrier picked it up the next day.  I'm not sure if my note or the gift basket will arrive at her home first.  She will be appropriately thanked.

Finishing It

Slow but steady usually prevails.  My Space approaches its finishing touches.  I hauled the vacuum cleaner upstairs, then ran it over the green shag rug that covered the room's hardwood floor since we move in more than forty years ago.  I do not know the last time it had been vacuumed, or was even able to be vacuumed.  I have an area rug, a round one that once occupied my office, a treat to myself for passing Endocrinology Boards.  It had been vacuumed a few months back, the first time since retiring, then again.  I have a placed what I want around the entire perimeter, leaving the entire central floor clear.  With some minor arrangement, I could probably make this into a Man Cave.  Maybe beer dispenser.  Maybe pool table.  Maybe round bistro table with two chairs, but I really want to discourage eating here.  My many diplomas stay packaged.  I want a place to be me, not to display me.  I've made my briefcases all functional.  A few final decorative, really functional decisions remain.  Should I replace the lounge chair?  Maybe move it a little forward.  Replace desk chair?  I have a special place for my swivel of another era, purchased at a DuPont Company Surplus Assets Sale for a few dollars.  It leans back too much.  It's tilt adjustments seem stuck.  I could replace it, but I really like sitting in it at my desk.  Might I be more productive at that desk with a fully functional chair?  The rear windows have curtains also left by our home's previous owner.  I don't dislike them.  They are lined and fit the window well, maybe even custom made.  Those windows need blinds.  When I go on Zoom, the light from the windows distorts the Zoom video of me.  That's the last definite purchase/istallation of My Space.  Then I can declare it done.