Unsubscribing

There was a time when I would send an e-mail note of interest or praise to somebody whose work I admired and more often than not a response would return.  That era of e-mails potential to create new connections has taken the trajectory of the telephone, where most calls are either between people you already know or somebody you don't know trying to sell you something.  We can now put ourselves on Do Not Call lists.  I suspect, but don't really know, that the decline in responses from accomplished individuals reflects the volume of e-mail that appears each time you turn it on.  The electronics do not prioritize so we have to do it ourselves, either by sender or by subject.  My own review starts with a click on delete options, usually unopened.  I'd still like to respond more than I do, but in order to do that I need to unsubscribe, the e-mail version of Do Not Call.

As I approach the New Year, at the first e-mail review, stuff from organizations that found me instead of me finding them get opened, scrolled to unsubscribe, and dispatched.  After about two weeks of this, done leniently for the most repetitive notifications, has started to make my in-box less cluttered.  I know longer receive notices of good deals for airport parking in another city that I drove to last year, Pinterest photos of food, newspapers or journals that wouldn't let me read as a non-subscriber, any political organization where I did not initiate contact, any organization to which I gave a one-time donation for a cause, or invitations to apply for jobs that would disrupt my retirement.  The number of instant deletes has started going way down.  I still have some uncertainty of what to do with notifications from organizations that I like:  my professional society, some Jewish advocates, my alma mater and others that make electronic pests of themselves by the frequency of notification.  I want less though not necessarily zero.  There's still the delete unread option. 

Visit to the Bay Area

When I set up my six month projects about six months ago, the family category went to visits with each of my children who have moved onto their own adulthoods.  We made it to St. Louis to see my son this summer but delayed visiting my daughter in Oakland until just before year's end.  We made it.  While the purpose was family visit, each geographic subset of America has its own uniqueness.  Rather than immerse ourselves with other tourists as we have done with prior San Francisco journeys, we included ourselves among the people for the most part on this trip.

San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley while contiguous each have their own character.  There was something a little foreign to us mid-Atlantic types, not a trip to the zoo but more one of exposure to a different country.  I still noted same sex couples engaged in some type of courtship or public affection, though much more mainstream than my first time there forty years back.  LGBT exists at home but in a smaller subset of the public and less visibly apparent.  The people seemed much younger.  When I go to shul at home, I am among the youngest there even though I have a genuine Medicare card.  On the BART train in San Francisco I am typically the oldest.  This may label living in the Bay Area as a young person's sport, and maybe it is.  Those uphill walks took their toll on my legs and my lungs.  People my age may still be around, having graduated from public transit to personal vehicles, despite a gasoline price more than I dollar a gallon above what I pay.  Or, worst case, the absence of my contemporaries on the BART may reflect negatively on local longevity.

I always like visiting Universities.  UCalBerkely has acquired international renown.  Even in winter intercession, there were still people around, perhaps disproportionately Asians who are common at major American colleges but might have been  majority here.  Buildings were large, as would be expected for a campus that may be double or more the size of my own large alma mater, and far more spread out than I am used to.  It may not be possible to schedule a chemistry class in sequence with a political science class if getting from one location to the next is prohibitive.  Or perhaps they have a shuttle system during the school year that enables that.  We toured their Botanical Gardens, properly labelled, most enjoyable even in winter.

A lot of travel to nearby places took place by Lyft which has a pretty efficient system, though the price of short trips adds up.  Some of the most interesting people were the Lyft drivers which included a retired Hawaiian engineer whose daughter is a pediatrician at Stanford and a fellow from East Africa who was an airline pilot there but now in training to be an American pilot.  No better short cruise than the local ferry from Oakland to Embarcadero.  Saw an old friend's pottery exhibit.  Ate vegan at a farmer's market far larger than anything we have at home.  Not a lot of big chain restaurants.  Not a lot of holiday decorations.

We went to shul on Friday night, New Age experience with songs and conga drums focused on creating mood.  My daughter observed that I was the only straight man in attendance.  I prefer to be the one telling jokes.

Now settled back into the familiar.  Food from megamarts.  Car to get me where I want to be when I want to go there.  Keurig maker with ample assorted pods.  And I am again the one who tells the jokes.

First Half 2020

Sunday preceding New Years starts weekly planning with a transition of goals.  I did very well the last six months but really didn't do anything meaningful for my synagogue, write the book that makes me famous, or develop a web site.  I worked on my health parameters to no avail.  End points need to be very tangible.  Those that were mostly got checked off as done.  I abandoned some, created new ones, and renewed a few.  For next six months:

MENTAL:  Read 3 books.  One e-book, one Audio, one traditional.  One novel, one non-fiction, one Jewish theme.

TRAVEL:  Take two road trips.

FRIENDS:  Acquire 2 new friends

HOME: Hire a cleaning service to come periodically.

FAMILY:  Attend son's wedding.

FRONTIER:  Become the region's most astute expert on Physician Burnout.

FINANCIAL: Full review of my actual 2019 expenditures recorded onto an Excel spreadsheet.

SELF:  Plant and maintain my optimal home garden.

LONG TERM:  Create a unified home storage process.

COMMUNITY: Work on a political campaign.

HEALTH:  Achieve a treadmill performance of 25 minutes at 3.5 mph.

PURCHASE:  Arrange a major trip.

All meet SMART Criteria:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time Bound

See how it all goes.

Legacy.com Disclosures

With so many destinations in cyberspace, I often feel that my inquisitiveness starves amid overabundance.  Some time ago, Legacy.com found its way to my shortcuts, though I think the more remote obits from wikipedia's daily dates reveals a lot more about how the people of achievement lived and made their marks.  Legacy usually has one distinguished life summary a day or a memorial to multiples who experienced misfortune. 

As it got to my favorite shortcuts many years ago, the intent was to learn what I could about classmates or their parents who I heard had passed away.  As a physician, I have been an obit reader since my residency years.  Those people assigned to me as they were preparing to move on to the afterlife often had abundant achievements in years before I knew them.  Terminally ill people dependent on others were not always that way, though their doctors would have to wait until their life's summary appeared in the newspaper to realize this.

That site has not been a prized destination in a while, though when I tap into it, my destination is usually for the main funeral home or newspaper of my childhood town.

This year two people of personal prominence appeared, accessed unexpectedly, just a few months apart via funeral notices.  They were husband and wife, about ten years younger than my parents, each with a life span of about 85 years.  Neither had an obit in the local paper, only a notice from the funeral home.  The wife passed away earlier this year, the husband very recently.  I am a little surprised the gentleman did not get more notice.  Al and Bea lived catty-corner from us, in the corner house.  They had two daughters and a dog.  The daughters were about the age of my younger siblings where the school bus stopped.  Al was a gracious and captivating fellow.  When we met, he owned a gas station across from the local high school, the place of our tennis lessons.  He sold the gas station to open a restaurant, which grew in popularity, then another that became a landmark where Lions Clubs or Kiwanis and the like would gather.  They moved to a fancier neighborhood and I never saw them again, but my father and Al would keep in touch through a bowling league.  As Al's prosperity and tolerance for risk grew, he took up flying his own plane.  Our town had a non-commercial airport.  A Cessna could be had for the price of 2 Cadillacs or so plus maintenance.  Al's picture would appear in the news periodically, and withing the last couple of years somebody referenced him on Facebook which got me briefly in touch with his older daughter.  He was referenced as a restaurant guru, easily recognizable from the FB picture, even past 80.

While my calling up the funeral home comes randomly, Al and Bea were each on the list.  They had moved about 15 miles away for their senior years.  Since neither had a formal newspaper obituary, I don't really know how his life progressed.  But unlike my terminal patients who I only knew in decline, I had the pleasure and a measure of inspiration, to know and admire Bea and Al as young adults whose potential lay ahead of them.  Al pursued his successfully.

Languishing Kehillah

Sid Schwarz in his Jewish Megatrends included a tetrad of aspirations for sustaining communal Judaism.  He highlighted Chochma or Wisdom, Tzedek or Righteousness, Kehillah or Community, and Kedusha or Holiness as the guide to success.  We've not done very well these past ten years.  As we share space with another congregation, a quick walk-around in the shared space shows that we've neglected kehillah more than the other elements.  It's not that we don't have it.  At a sponsored talk by the other congregation, one by a senior member of the national Jewish intelligensia, it was our members who were over-represented in attendance.  With the right occasion, we can fill a chapel on shabbos.  With no occasion other than shabbos we falter from where we once were. You can learn a lot from wandering around.  In our new digs, we are greeted by a screen that announces events.  For good or maybe not, their members wear name tags.  Identifying every single member as a unique individual with his own identity and talents enables Kehillah.  We make a big mistake by tracking the number of individual membership dues units as a surrogate for the real people. 

They now have informal groups, guys who go out for a beer on a specified day or discussions of a book or ongoing communal mitzvah projects.  I do not know the last time we have served a local soup kitchen or partnered with a church.   We have events, which is OK but they have a formality to them when what might be better is sponteneity.

I think we developed A-lists and B-lists, something that has evolved since my initial arrival.  We do not seem to develop expertise or anything approaching mentorship.  People come to learn Hebrew but they never graduate into our mainstream worship as its end point.  The Pareto Principle where 20% of the people accomplish 80% of the output is probably pretty universal.  20% of the people getting 80% of the participatory invitations is probably not what Vilfredo Pareto actually observed.   We have half-couples, one member of prominence, another identifiable but more of an appendage to the participatory partner.  Very little seems to be done to reach out to the person in the shadows.

As our landlord's kehillah prospers, ours falls further behind.  One of the roles of Rabbi is probably to be a talent scout.  One of the roles of President is probably to appoint a cruise director to dunk everyone into the pool and make sure that they have a good time.

I don't think I'm really having a good time.