Feeling More Alive

Calamities can be opportunities.  Our odious President and our pandemic confinement have enabled a few beneficial things.  My Inner Compass seems a lot better defined.  And physically I feel more alive than I have in a few years.  Each has forced a level of previously frittered focus but in different ways.  I'm off a couple of my chronic medicines, not the antihypertensives and the lipid agents intended for longevity but the compulsivity suppressor, the nasal steroid, the anti inflammatories, and the alpha blockers designed either for my comfort or the comfort of those around me.   

I've done admirably well with personal scheduling.  There are designated sleep times and exercise times.  Grocery shopping has been more purposeful.  I have assigned days for finances and for car maintenance.  TED talks, which add to my sense of alive via admiration for what others achieved and convey, are accessed in a scheduled way with some design to what I will listen to.  Writing has not done quite as well, though blogging has settled into a morning activity with subjects added and saved as I think of them.  I keep up with reading the subscriptions that I pay for.  A new ritual of sherry or port in late afternoon has been added.  While concerned about both the expense and indulgence, I can afford both.  An attempt to replace with herb tea, which I also like and is more economical, did not generate the same late afternoon inner peace.  Household tasks have become better defined with more tangible end points.  Kitchen floor washed, bedroom floor vacuumed.

Looking at my aspirations from a few months ago, I've done well.  Making friends has lagged, that goes a lot better in person than on a screen.  I've been on my day trips, one more to go with destination affirmed.  Whether I will really get to a National Park seems less assured.  One project was best abandoned.  Better to do that purposefully than to have it linger undone if I am sure I won't do it.  And while the upcoming national election dominates the attention of others, I have made peace with making a statement and voting, which I can do effectively, and influencing outcome, which I cannot.  But it does clarify my Inner Compass.

Philly's Italian Market

 

It's a place I always wanted to visit but never did despite it's proximity.  I've driven across one of its main intersections en route from Mercy Hospital to IKEA, looked down 9th Street from my driver's lane on Washington Street, but never got out of the car to walk around.  The Italian Market pops up on cooking shows, recently a major segment of an Andrew Zimmern feature on Philadelphia.  Yet I had never ventured there.  It made for a good day trip, some experiences expected, some very different than expected.

South Philadelphia has an Italian Heritage, Rizzo Country with stoked animosities of the 1970's repackaged nationally in our own day.  Of all the places in Philadelphia that I have driven through, South Philly between the sports stadiums and Center City captures my attention most.  As I drive along Broad Street, usually to get from my home to the Endocrine Society evening meetings at Jefferson University Medical Center, I glance at the many small shops, small churches, mostly Italian restaurants, unique street parking configurations, and the many other neighborhood retentions that have avoided the endless fast food franchises and chain pharmacies that dominate where I live.  The Italian Market was at the peak of Rizzo, Angelo Bruno who controlled the local Mafia, and Palumbo's that dominated entertainment as a place to be seen, the centerpiece.

Only fragments remain.  Andrew Zimmern skimmed those old elements, mega cheesesteak emporia of Pats and Genos, Ralph's which is one of the oldest continuously operating Italian restaurants in the USA, a nook bakery that served tomato pie from which I bought a delicious square at a nominal price.  Charm for sure, though not really accurate.  What dominated were not the eating places or shops with Italian names and legacies specializing in unique customized selections of meats or cheeses, but the outdoor produce stands.  Cities, including Philly, have their outdoor farmers markets, though these were not farmers.  They reflect the Italian heritage giving space to the Hispanics who have created a presence not only as green grocers but as restauranteurs and specialty baker outlets.  There's an Indochinese community with one shop I visited manned by a fellow whose knowledge of English seemed limited to the practicalities of handling American currency.  They had nearly sold out of $5 Biden caps, but still had an ample supply of Trump caps in a variety of  hues.  There wasn't any litter.  Outdoor seating was carved out into what used to be fought over parking space to enable the restaurants to function in a Covid-19 environment.  

Not many people shared 9th Street with me. I had read that parking lots filled quickly.  Not true when I was there, and fee not excessive.  I wandered into shops and past people waiting to order their hoagies or roast pork sandwiches from the eatery window.  No long lines, few customers in any of the shops.  In order to make the transition from Italian to Hispanic presence, the Italians had to give up their stores or restaurants.  And today, maybe accelerated by Covid, retail space for rent did not seem scarce.  

If I had one destination shop, it was Fante's, an iconic supplier of high end kitchen ware for the discerning chef.  They had been sponsors of The Frugal Gourmet, that iconic cooking series that I watched every week at its peak popularity,  The star, Jeff Smith, who I termed The Cheap Chef to amuse my then preschool son, once stopped at a mall near us as part of a book tour.  I went with my son, a little starstruck when he pointed to the table where the author was personalizing copies of his latest book, and blurted to the crowd "that's the Cheap Chef."  Fantes would be forever linked to that, so it was a personal honor to tour the shop and appreciate what made The Frugal Gourmet such a devotee of what was a large but niche store with online shopping not to appear until long after Jeff Smith's passing.  I could see why aficionado's of their kitchen willing to invest in the best would come there preferentially one or two times to enable their culinary interest.  And not everything was blatantly excessive in price, though the coffee beans were.  Now I've been there.

Spent a little money.  Good value on tomato pie.  Disappointed with espresso.  Found a suitable item for a Hanukkah gift from the Indochinese shop whose Trump caps did not sell, And from the outdoor stand, good prices on oranges, berries, and fresh figs.

Home by late afternoon, whipped the rest of the heavy cream still in the fridge,placed copiously atop a generous mound of blackberries and raspberries for our dessert that evening. 

Washing Kitchen Floor

When I redesigned my kitchen a few years ago to be the destination space I had craved, I looked at the space largely by what I hoped to do there.  Visual attraction had its element and I did not want to pay a lot to remove walls or install gas lines, but accepting the existing structure, I had the cabinets refaced, new quartz countertops, tile backsplash, and a new floor.  I selected a composite, light gray faux stone, largely for ease of maintenance.  It needed sweeping regularly and washing periodically.  Neither became routine.  As things got grungy, I thought it time to give it a comprehensive scrub, maybe finding a few lost objects in the effort.

Square tile has another helpful advantage.  It makes it easy to create regions.  Move a quadrant of furniture or cart or other things occupying floor surface, sweep and wash.  The squares make it easy to define where to expose surface as I work and to keep from repeating what I have already done.  Success.  Maybe a quadrant or a little less at a time, but all is now scrubbed.  

My placement of things around the kitchen has been fundamentally right so things can be returned to their original locations.  I did not find many missing objects, a few things better discarded, but mostly a cleaner look along with the satisfaction of having done something worth doing.  

My Plants

October marks a transition point for the Plant Kingdom.  Leaves scatter over my back yard, less so the front.  I used to devote part of every Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Weekend to raking but in recent years I've been content to let the lawn service's mulching mower shred and scatter the fragments.  Not ideal but good enough.  Annuals have been plucked from my outdoor garden.  Mostly disappointing harvest.  Sage and rosemary are perennials, sage surviving last winter, rosemary not.  I staked the sage upright and come spring will need to add a coating a mulch or topsoil to the garden bed to make the surface above the weed block thicker.  Parsley is apparently a biennial.  I harvested what seems an abundant overgrowth, leaving the roots.  Then in accordance with www advice, which must be true since I read it on the internet, washed and dried what I cut, removed the stems, and created two packages of labelled plastic bags which found a home in my freezer.  Apparently a similar, though more tedious process exists for basil, which grows well indoors, but I can try to salvage the flourishing outdoor container of basil and parsley that way.  I took them inside last year with a very unsatisfactory outcome.  Mint is indestructible so the outdoor container stays outside this winter.  Other planters did not do well, so just stay outside for their reset button or at least reconsideration, next spring.

While my gardening skills never matured, or maybe the talent and dedication to excellence just isn't there, I enjoy having the plants around me.  They come in two forms, a hydroponic aerogarden and three chia pots.  The basil in the chia pot did great until this week when it drooped, probably in parallel to the failure of the fluorescent bulbs on the aerogarden which illuminates the basil as well.  The other two chias have not fared well.  I gave them one last chance, introducing thyme and chives which are now on a windowsill waiting to see if germination happens.  The aerogarden has been a more fickle undertaking.  Basil always does well.  Thyme sprouted in an abundant way also but it wasn't good culinary thyme.  The leaves seemed micro, the stems that held them a stiff tangle.  Used in kitchen once, too hard to separate the leaves.  Probably could have salvaged a bouquet garni.  Other four pods a failure.  To be fair to Aerogarden, using their system seemed too expensive.  They sell their version of soil and nutrients which work better than my home made facsimiles.  To  save money and deal with local availability, I harvest their containers each year, clean them and replace with a mixture of potting soil and topsoil, sometimes vermiculite if I have any.  It will get me a strand or two of whatever herb I plant but not robust enough to take root in the underlying water, except for basil which always dominates.  Instead of their clear plastic shields for germination protection, I convert used Kcups which fit properly, though are white and opaque.  They have fertilizer tablets.  I make my own with liquid plant food proportioned into a wine bottle's worth of water, then added to the water reservoir.  I like my hydroponic garden but not enough to pay authentic aerogarden prices for it.  Where I don't have the option of bypassing the high prices are in the bulbs, which seem to have a more limited activity duration than other fluorescents.  Mine recently failed.  I had a spare, installed it, though it uses two.  I ordered two more.  Then I went to my seed supply, found five things worth a try beyond the basil that I kept, planted them, watered the plastic tubes, put a kcup atop each, and see what happens.  The worst that can happen is another failure.  I can always plant more basil.  

Harvesting My Freezer

 

As I pursue grocery shopping, driven by a mixture of Trader Joe's staples and discounts from the weekly Shop-Rite ad, my purchasing has changed for the better the past few months.  I sometimes follow a list, though usually not.  But to offset that, when I put something in the cart I know what I want to do with it.  Good price on salmon means gravlax.  There are shabbos dinner staples like chicken breasts or sometimes a cut-up chicken, or cubed beef bought for that purpose.  Recently I've been getting fish on sale, nature's fast food that I can freeze thaw a day or two before needed and make a quick dinner.  Some things are made in bulk.  Macaroni & Cheese or spinach lasagna lasts about four meals, two that week, two frozen for later.  Pierogies, ravioli, hot dogs or even Beyond Meat Burgers are also just pop into some cooking method shortly before needed.  Alas, I buy more than I eat.

Periodically I need to harvest usable leftovers or things I've not eaten.  I was looking for some frozen tilapia, packaged in serving sized portions, to put in a skillet later in the week but couldn't find them on the lower freezer compartment.  What I found instead, long forgotten by me, were some hash browns that make for a quick breakfast, hamburger rolls that when thawed add to the authenticity of the Beyond Meat Burgers.  Two minichallot, that I now do not have to buy for this shabbos, two serving sized mac & cheeses sitting in the freezer for two months, some unopened frozen vegetables, some opened with enough peas or brussels sprouts for one more dinner each.  And I knew about frozen cholent which will get used for a pre-Thanksgiving shabbos.

And I still have the upper compartment.  Tilapia probably there.

Stellar Vacation Day

Each half year, I allot one of my initiatives to visiting places I've not been before, close enough to complete the round trip in a day.  As I plan the subsequent six months every June and December, this particular initiative invariably has that satisfying completion check mark and renewal of something I want to include among my projects for the following half-year.

Covid-19 made this more of a challenge this cycle, limiting the number of places open.  I settled on my three, starting with the Ladew Topiary Gardens about 60 miles into Maryland.  While not designed as micro-vacations, they usually fulfill that purpose, starting with a 20oz container of WaWa coffee, which happened to be only $1 at their promotional price.  I could have gotten a Hoagie for $5 as their periodic Hoagiefest makes this a best buy, but for the purposes of a day trip to a new place, having lunch at a local option adds to the respite.  Often I travel to Baltimore the first Shabbos in November for services at Beth Tfiloh where I can briefly admire multicolored leaves along the banks of the Susquehanna as I cross the Tydings Bridge.  This time I, though traveling two weeks earlier, I would be on less trafficked road so foliage watching became a secondary item of interest.  Turned out the the leaves were first starting to change colors, far from peak season, but some.

Travel, even to places not far but unfamiliar, changes perspective. These were smaller places, not truly rural as the great expanses of the midwest or Rockies but a lot less densely populated than where I usually hang out.  Churchville, Jarrettsville, Forest Hill, the slightly larger Bel Air.  There were a lot of McMansions in a number of pockets along the non-highway roads suggesting that there were places around that either offered entrepreneurial opportunity or places to generate significant salaries.  Towns had small shops as well as consumer locations for top retail corporations.  This being prime election season, the yard signs were predominantly for different national candidates than we find around my neighborhood, yet the reason why seemed far from obvious.  I didn't meet any deplorables.  Even the two Hells Angels types with their Harleys parked in a lot where I checked out the basement restaurant bar and hastened out, gave me a nod, despite my Proud Democrat baseball cap.  

I assume they have some fear of loss, maybe their farm, maybe the dominance of their faith, maybe resentment of the people in those McMansions that did not have similar campaign yard signs. While the travel shows all say you get to meet new people, and that's probably true of cruising or national parks, on my day trip the sensory input is nearly entirely visual, virtually no auditory.  Curious about the places I drove around or parked at?  For sure.  But a curiosity not really satisfied.

The Ladew Topiary defined my trip.  Well worth the $10 senior admission.  I like gardens, from the showcases like Longwood or Missouri Botanical Gardens to the more random like Bartram's.  This fell in-between, far from professionally manicured but maintained with the owner's legacy.  Even amid Covid, which closed all the buildings, there was a mixture of defined horticulture and fields of wildflowers.  Getting a little older, I took my time, sat down as the benches became available, looked at the site map as I started but just wandered paths or deviated from them as the surroundings become more familiar.  Nice place to visit.

It's wine country as well.  Boordy dominates but there are others.  My cell phone enabled me to figure out which if any were open for tastings, settling on Harford Winery not far from the Topiary and in my return direction.  For a nominal tasting fee, I selected six ounce or so portions from a printed menu, ventured to an isolated round table, where they brought me my choices on a tray with six plastic cups.

Usually I like chatting with the staff about their wines, production, the surrounding area.  Wineries are partly about the final product but also about the people who create the product or live in the area.  Wine was good to sip.  Precovid, wineries would serve in logo stem glasses most of the time.  I bought one when I paid for the tasting.  Replaces one from New Jersey that I recently broke.

I didn't want to return on I-95 with a toll so I asked the GPS if there was a free alternative not too far out of the way.  I also wanted some lunch, after checking a couple of places pre-winery.  Settled for WaWa Hoagiefest and a large Blizzard from DQ across the street.

Rather pleasant drive home, one I've done before, following Route 1 over the Conowingo Dam, then into Pennsylvania.  Rather than take Route 1 all the way home, I exited onto one of the roads that usually intersects my path to and from Lancaster, mainly to see where that road followed south of my customary trajectory.  Not a lot to see.  Pennsylvania foliage slightly farther along than Maryland's but not by much.  Yet there emerged a curiosity about where I had been, satisfied with a few searches of Wikipedia, both for the towns I visited and for the routes that I drove along.

Vacations, even day trips, make a statement about me.  I like to be in control of what I do.  Minimum agenda, with some diversions of route, where to eat, an unsuccessful attempt to see if the Harford Community College Bookstore had a coffee mug to add to my collection.  The opposition candidate signs did not phase me.  Just one of the features of being in a foreign country.  The mostly amorphous but pleasurable nature of the day made me more aware of why I probably won't return to cruising and why I enjoyed the three I've taken so much.  With cruises, the appointments are minimal, other than port visits.  Even at a port visit, I can take the cruise tour or see the site on my own, depending on the nature of the stop.  While on the ship, I go to the activities I want, take what strikes me as most desirable from the buffet, and feel a little put off when a staff member does for me what I could capably do myself.  Once the buffet yields to mandatory sit-down service and a line forms or reservations are needed for things that I would previously just get up and do without a lot of prior planning, the autonomy and independence disappear.  That's what makes a vacation, and what made this brief minitour of central Maryland such a stellar experience.

Fluid Day

One of those fluid days, literally and figuratively.  Sipping my second cup of herb tea, one of the varietals that has a more inviting picture on the box than taste.  Spiced cider earlier today.  Reached my daily three cup ration of coffee long before it could affect my sleep.  Maybe some sherry before dinner.  And a beverage of some type with shabbos dinner, at least kiddush wine.

As of this morning I had no appointments other than having dinner ready before candle lighting, an easy task with all dinner defrosted and microwave suitable, except the broccoli crown.

An enticing AJC seminar came my way, following a similar themed The Forward seminar last night on addressing the robust presence of antisemitism on the internet.  My professional writing has to go through an editor.  I cannot just submit something to a print or broadcast publication and demand its appearance, though forums like my blog do not have a barrier to deter their appearance in cyberspace.  Eventually the online platforms will either need better accountability for what appears there, much like broadcast media's enforceable standards or they will need to be broken up by anti-trust law, which may have an undesired consequence of their competing with each other to see who is most accepting of submissions they receive.  At the very least, a regulatory agency and regulatory laws have to emerge.  Nobody addressed the elephant in the room, the use of these platforms by sovereign foreign governments to disrupt America.  You can negotiate a solution, but ultimately a credible threat of the military protecting American interests affirms that we mean business on this.

I had intended to do my writing and thinking today.  Medscape topic selected a month ago, a difficult one.  Did some of the background reading and pretty much decided how to package and present my essay.  KevinMD was a little harder.  Three false starts on Consult Maven. 

My medical subjects could include my alma mater's establishment of a business ethics program with a Sugar Daddy to support it.  This would mandate its inclusion in the curriculum starting with the first year.  We had such a project called Community Medicine which, while well intentioned, diverted us from the hard science that dominates early medical school.  It was obvious to us that the requirement was imposed by somebody who had the means to impose it, not because it was essential to study at that stage of training in the format offered.  I suspect the same now with the Business Ethics initiative, more predicated on its availability and authority of its funding source than its essential nature.  It is a very important issue, though, one that impacts every physician from medical school through retirement. My entries into the blog rambled in thought.  I could restrict the focus better, finish the blog entry, and repackage the thoughts for KevinMD.  Aborted effort on how Covid-19 effectively diverted endless essays about how badly our employers treat their physicians or autonomy lost to more noble subjects that make our obligations to our patients worth the travails of our EHRs, intrusive administrators, and burnout.  I scrolled back to pre-Covid KevinMD publications.  To my surprise, the focus on our professional troubles had seemed to be on the wane before Covid-19 captured the American medical conversation.  Finally, I settled on something separate from Covid, but an unsaid part of medicine, the lack of pricing transparency.  We all know the stories of insane itemized markups and providers and payers who concur that it is too disruptive to fix.  A TED talk from a journalist who compiles real pricing information from real patients documents the lunacy.  Whether the cure is worse than the condition makes for a good discussion.  Put in Consult Maven first, then repackage.  This one seems to be going well.

Was hoping to do more around the house but haven't.  And I still want to get my monthly Jewish donation to its destination before shabbos.

Recapturing Bedroom Space

One of the tenets of favorable sleep hygiene is to restrict what you do in the bedroom and when you do it.  I have been working on this for a few months with gratifying outcome, though incomplete outcome.  There are now set get up times, which I follow and lights out times which I follow too.  Sleep cycles come in predictable periodicity, though mine conclude with a period of wakefulness before transitioning to the next cycle.  The experts say that when that happens, I should set a deadline for falling back asleep into the next cycle but go to a different place if still awake by that deadline.  I've not been doing that, but eventually the next cycle takes over.  And I feel better.

Master suites that realtors show customers or appear in those dream house photos offer a lot more to a bedroom than a place to sleep.  For many it emerges as their sanctuary, with electronics, sitting areas, usually with a bathroom alcove offering sensory luxury, storage space which offers access to the things you want and hiding to the things you don't.  My own bedroom has never developed its potential, and the sleep hygiene experts seem to be hinting that maybe it shouldn't.  Yet I set myself a mission of at least making that space more visually attractive and conducive to other activities.  Clutter has to go.  I've worked on it with some success.  Several years ago I bought a leather recliner, inexpensive but comfortable that too often becomes one more flat surface to put things.  Yesterday, I set a very tangible goal of removing those things, putting myself in the chair, allowing it to swivel, and ultimately reclining.  It felt good.  I could have read but didn't, though the intent was to not read in bed, which I did, but at least the book was worth reading.  I recaptured some floor.  Not all of it but some.  Vacuuming by end of week.

The daunting project may be the windows.  One has been stuck for years, should be repaired but maybe not worth the effort.  Temperature control has been solved with a window air conditioner that not only offers a refreshing breeze in cool months but white noise suitable for sleep, which is the purpose of that room.  For some reason, the duct work of the house does not bring central climate control to the master suite very well, so I purchased an attractive space heater which needs to be moved from its storage corner to its prominent and functional fall and winter location.  That corner can be occupied by an attractive storage bin, currently used for extra hangers, suitable for now but not the best option.  I am also committed to replacing the curtains.  Joann Fabrics not very helpful as what I need is the tailoring more than the choice of materials.  Lined curtains, hemmed all around, matching valance, suitable for the adequate rods already present.  Choice of fabric is almost an afterthought.  I could see what might be available online if I don't make reasonable progress locally.

And there is the closet.  Any realtor showing our house would point to the master bedroom walk-in closet.  Unfortunately walk-in implies open floor space which has been co-opted by a where it fits at the moment ethos.  To be recaptured.  I started decluttering the closet in the Marie Kondo mode, doing great on suits and sportscoats.  A lot of dress shirts don't really fit if I have to button the collar for a tie, will get me by sans tie.  They now cost a lot of money to launder, so I should dispose of some.  The Kondo Method requires all to come out at once, select for discard at once, before moving on.  Not worth it for what I need to do with the closet to bring my bedroom to fully functional and mostly restful.  

While it is my bedroom, it is really only half my bedroom.  Not being disruptive remains a priority, though one often in conflict with acting with the end in mind.  But there's still plenty I can do without generating anyone else's wrath.  Those are the things to pursue.

Congregational Board Meeting

It was my intent to appear in name but not photo and not say a word at the recent Board of Governors Meeting, to which all congregants are nominally invited.  And that's exactly what I did.  No agenda on my part but a lot of observations on the Board's agenda, what went well, what did not, the missing parts, and the significance of what was discussed and how it was discussed in relation to trend toward congregational denouement.  There have been no personal invitations from anyone to me for any meaningful participatory role that requires any discernment on my part. Bimah skills are really a form of my possessions, which seems to be what they want.  Yet I might be the congregations most astute observer, so if that's the role it needs to be pursued in a meaningful capacity to the best of my INTJ gift to me from God, perhaps.  

Grand Rounds begins with a patient, followed by a discussion of what the patient has.  Board Meetings begin with a Rabbi statement.  He spoke about the role of diversity of expression and tolerance for it.  Much better discussion topic than presentation topic.  Actually pretty easy to skewer or in the spirit of the presentation challenge in a polite way using Torah sources from the weekly Parsha of Bereshit.  As the congregation rides to its destiny, so did creation.  The congregation has loose ends.  So did Creation.  As twilight moved toward shabbos but not quite arrived, ten final creations came in to being just in the nick of time for the first shabbat.  The first of the divine afterthoughts?  פִּי הָאָרֶץ  Korach's dissent was a necessary part of our history and later heritage.  It was planned for from the time of creation with a means of dispatching unwelcome or hazardous dissents.  וּפִי הָאָתוֹן also appears.  They knew Bilaam would one day arrive and a means of suppression dates back to creation.  Derech Eretz doesn't really arrive until Talmudic times, once the experience and downside of withholding civility becomes more tangible.  I would not expect the Board members to appreciate that.  I would expect the Rabbinical comments to be more profound than they seemed to me.  But it's the failure to challenge what the titled propose, be that the Rabbi or the Officers, which more than anything has harmed our congregation one cumulative whack at a time.  And the Board discussion played out in that pattern from there, one of immense Group Think, with reasonable challenges, nods to the head, but not a whole lot of why or alternatives.  Definitely not one those stimulating discussions I viewed as the norm in my university or professional years or see routinely a few times a week on Zoom as agencies of all types previously inaccessible to my peasant class assemble people who have large funds of knowledge and experience to joust with each other verbally and invite questions from listeners which invariable expand the expert discussion.

Our Congregation has two very big challenges that don't do well with Group Think.  First we are homeless, cashing out for expediency with desperation on the horizon though not yet arrived but now with the reality of having a large amount of cash that will be spent down in a predictable way without a means of replenishing either the funds or the people who generated it over a protracted time.  That situation is largely unique to us, a direct result of decisions that went through our governance one drip at a time for a long time, much like creating that stalactite that you knew would eventually appear but not be appreciated until it does.  

We share the second challenge, coronavirus limitations with everyone else.  This has been a very mixed experience for most individuals.  Some institutions were able to draw on their creativity, others more content to adapt business as usual to the altered circumstances.  I used to attend shabbat services with reasonable regularity.  I understood why better in my college years than my maturity years but had enough of an aspiration for a satisfying Jewish experience to change congregations when Beth Sodom transitioned from a fast quip to more of a situational imprint.  Has covid given me a better experience or a worse experience?  Depends.  I don't miss shabbos services nearly as much as I thought I would, stopped driving until being at home devoid of electronics and mobility became a form of sensory deprivation.  I wasn't an individual participant in the congregation as it became more virtual.  We can argue whether I was blackballed from intent or insensitivity but with Covid it didn't really matter.  

There are places that used their resources or created new resources.  My acquaintance Ron Wolfson had an op-ed in The Forward summarizing how different congregations invested in making their Holy Days ones to remember. https://forward.com/news/national/456279/theres-no-going-back-what-rabbis-learned-from-the-extraordinary-high/  Admittedly, his professional circles are the uber machers who work out of Jewish Cathedrals, with resources to hire professionals and special talent, but all successful projects begin with somebody's imagination.  They also require an element of what have others put on their menu that will enrich our plates, and once imagined, then the internal why not? And while anyone could pop into these worship pageants, most people defaulted to their own congregation for this year's Yomim Nora-im experience.  As I skip services that I don't really miss, not exactly picking Hallel as a central necessity around which my Jewish spirit revolves, I also get an awareness of what was already there that I underutilized, things like yutorah.org or the commentators of outorah.org, and what has come on the scene that would not have existed without the necessity of Zoom.  I have access to great minds in the form of AJC or Moment Magazine seminars.  I must say, one of my most heady experiences has been having my question with my name attached announced and submitted to a worldwide audience to be answered by an expert previously inaccessible to a guy off the street like myself.  Now that I can differentiate expert from title, I read and respond to tweets more, though very selectively.  The Jewish world is global and you need not be a Macher or an inveterate schmoozer to partake of it.  If my own congregation assigns me observer status, I can be an equally good observer immersed in the most vibrant of Jewish institutions as well.  The need for my own congregation seems much better defined post covid, and I find myself a little more intolerant of not being a desirable participant there when my mind is valued at some of the most elegant Jewish institutions in the world who are content with my inquisitiveness and not in quest of my possessions.

The meeting itself had a single agenda item, a new building to upgrade our congregation to an address rather than a postal box. Ironically, as we transitioned from our longstanding building to the CBS Homeless Shelter, the Rabbi opened many a congregational meeting with the concept that the congregation was the people, the building assembled the people.  Not at all the view of this BOG meeting.  In fact there was a secondary item on reaching out to congregants alloted ten minutes at the end, whizzed through with the illusion of self-congratulation by what seems the Jewish Covid-19 version of the USY Clique, though far more important to the congregation's destiny looking forward than whether the building under scrutiny has suitable architectural features and unmolested parking.  Everyone at the virtual BOG meeting had their say, something offered to me as well but declined, though it was more a series of brief monologues than a series of exchanges.  A long way from the Talmudic tradition of Chavrusa or even my usual doctor-patient exchanges in the exam rooms or bedsides.  A vote was taken, accepted by all present.  I suspect it won't matter if Congregational Development in a precarious time is subordinate to anything else on a governance agenda.

So we really didn't have those final ten minutes.  I can say my household got a call from the individual who I would have assigned to himself.  He spoke to my wife, didn't have the saichel or the script to ask if I were home and invite my opinion.  But in AKSE fashion, memberships are counted by checks received and not by the totality of who resides in the household.  BOG can either create the culture or reinforce what is already there.  I would have expected the Rabbi of stable tenure to challenge some of this more than he has.  I do get a birthday call, "how ya doin', nice to talk to you." Never what do you think.  There was a landmark book written about thirty years ago by a linguist Deborah Tannen called You Just Don't Understand.  While the theme of the book was imprinted gender variations in speech, she also identified to broad patterns.  The male pattern was to convey information, the female pattern to use speech to generate connectedness. Since the BOG phone call I was not important enough to receive eluded me, I do not know if the content was one of telling people what the BOG put into their AKSE Trough for congregants to have their fill or whether it had more of a conversational, exchange agenda that creates connectedness as Prof. Tannen described it.  There is data, a quest that only comes naturally to a few of us.  Zoom gives clues.  I know how many people sign in to yizkor or attend a Rabbi class, as Zoom takes attendance.  It's not many, never as many as who populated that BOG session that I observed.  Harder to say if its a few people latching onto all offerings or different people having expressing different preferences.  Exploiting this information offers a lot more benefit to the congregation than  making projections of when the proceeds of the building sale fully deplete.  Might we need a Cruise Director to toss everyone into the pool and make sure they are all having a good time dancing to rhythm?  It is necessary to evaluate major initiatives with big financial implications.  But as many Rabbinical and a few Presidential messages made very clear, our future depends on the identification of people with the congregation, a bond that invited participants retain but observers or correspondents, no matter how skilled or experienced usually don't. No Board Meeting, and few committee meeting, should have anything other than enhancing connectedness as its central agenda item.

Talk about the building.  But conversation to create connectedness has long been neglected, more so as our Nominating Committees make the governance more inbred.  I saw quite a lot of recessive genes expressed amid the Board's proceedings.

Missing Mail

There was a time in my earlier years when I was a mail junkie.  College applications and responses of the Admissions Committees, repeated four years later for medical school.  Weekly letter from my girlfriend.  That waned considerably, though some mail achieved predictability, largely monthly bills or subscriptions that would come at a fairly predictable time though never had urgency.  There were New Years cards with inserts from friends.

More recently mail has been devalued.  Email has been a faster, more reliable source of personal and professional correspondence.  Many of my bills have gone to autopay along with computer notification of payment and financial statements.  Daily mail has devolved into solicitations from Rebbes that go into the recycling box unopened, solicitations from organizations that I should support, magazines are still better in print for initial reading, online for storage and retrieval.  My prescriptions have been better maintained by my picking them up at the local pharmacy.  Some things like credit cards, membership cards, or other tangibles still need to come by mail. So do those bills not on autopay.  

As mail of significance becomes less, there until recently has been some predictability.  My New England Journal of Medicine has a weekly Thursday publication date but arrived Monday or Tuesday for many decades with a few lapses, corrected by a survey from their subscription division.  On Thursday, I receive the weekly grocery store ads. With this, some senders note the day of mailing.  

While you cannot really assess the operations of an agency from your own experience which never overrides aggregate data, as a consumer of what the USPS provides, I have reason to question whether service to citizens remains their reason for existence or is subject to manipulation.  My credit card company sent me a new card and told me so electronically.  A few days later they indicated that I should have received it and need to activate it.  I hadn't received it in a time frame that would be expected.  About three days after that I did.  My shopping ads came on Friday instead of Thursday.  My New England Journal has now been arriving after publication date.  And my electoral ballot has not been received at all, even though the web site of the Board of Elections indicates mailing it more than a week before.  

Inept or nefarious?  There are certain things we expect from our government and support financially.  Citizens get to vote and if the USPS is the forum for maintaining that the people who direct it require some accountability.  One need not be a citizen or even be here legally.  We may have deputized ICE agents to round up undocumented immigrants, but those same immigrants still use the postal service, travel on public roads, visit public parks, and have their safety assured nationally by our military and locally by law enforcement.  Some things are just absolute, part of the sanctity of what the American government provides, and should provide flawlessly to everyone.  Tampering with this for any reason, particularly for a political purpose that undermines the will of the public and the security of the public seems about as compelling a reason to vote these rascals out.  If my ballot never comes, I will show up in person to keep myself part of the voting community.  Make a statement for sure.  Make a difference if enough people share my irritation and tenacity.

Al Tiphrosh Min HaTzibur

"don't separate yourself from the community" Pirke Avot 2:4 הִלֵּל אוֹמֵר: אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר.

This season we find ourselves part of a lot of communities.  I am not particularly happy with my synagogue but I am part of it. Even if blackballed from its decision tree, which seems to be the case, and a bit resentful of this impression, which also seems to be the case, I am their most astute observer and therefore assume a useful role of chronicaller or challenger, whether valued or not.

We have a political season.  A lot of people wanted my vote in the primaries, where I felt free to select my best option.  But when we select office holders, I find myself part of the Democratic community, though I was once more inclined to look at the candidates independently, even when the Republican candidate seems more capable.  And we learned when the Republicans took Hillel's guidance and refused to remove a President who shouldn't be there or approved judges who fall well short of the

Torah's description of what we should aspire to in appointing judges.  Hillel's wisdom has its dark side, as much as Federations promote it when they want donations.

I root for the Iggles and for Mizzou.  When I turn on a game, I sort of want to watch the talent.  As an easterner sitting in the low rent district at Busch Stadium, I always cheered for the late Lou Brock and Bob Gibson whose talent excelled, even though I was usually partial to the Mets or Phils when they came to town.  I like talent.  I go to the football games at West Chester University where watching the progress of the game overrides any partiality to one team or another.  But not the Iggles or Mizzou.  I am partial irrespective of performance, in large part because I see myself as belonging to the region or to imprinted affiliation. The stadium stands have enabled community.  People of all ethnicities, backgrounds, aspirations, and creeds assemble without antagonism for the unified purpose of watching our city prevail over the other city or university.

We have the right kind of communities and some deficient communities.  We also have the option of defecting, which may be best option with more frequency than Hillel would have liked.  But defections bring us to a new community with a new place to worship, a new city with new neighbors, or a new ideology with a different set of partners.  Shuffle yes, sever sometimes, go it alone rarely.

Too Much for Shirts

Our Sages advised us to live in the type of house we can afford, skimp on food but overspend a little on clothing.  I never really heeded that wisdom, eating a little too much, buying too many goodies at the expense of my health but shopping for discount clothing that would get me by.  One luxury I afforded myself, after years of drudgery with my steam iron in the basement trying to make my shirts wearable, was to take them to the cleaners.  Over the years I've sampled a few, but always gravitated back to the one around the corner.  On occasion I would get my suits and jackets cleaned, and recently got gouged restoring a down comforter.  My new pants always needed the hem placed in the optimal place so I let them do it. Always did a good job.  But by far, my most important business were dress shirts.  While working I would stop off on my drive to work when I accumulated 20 or so shirts, which did not take that long, drop them off and on my way home a few days later, divert myself slightly to the parking lot to pick them up.

Retiring and now Covid-19 has changed that dramatically.  The dress shirts rarely get worn.  I used to take one out for shul, but even there I've often substituted a knit or mock turtle under my jacket or sweater.  No shul, no office, no dress shirts, or hardly.  Somehow I still accumulated about 25 over a very long time, maybe a year.  I took the stash to the dry cleaner only to find the price has zoomed to about $3 a shirt, which is way too much.  They served me well over the years so I politely accepted the new reality, particularly since this Ace cleaner is probably also hurting with people either working from home without the dress clothing they depend upon, or not working at all.  But that's the last trip there.  Too much.

I have a number of options going forward.  The easiest is to not wear shirts that need professional laundering.  I have ample knits and flannels.  I could find a less expensive laundry.  Not working anymore means fewer shirts but also no incentive to stay on my daily travel route to incorporate drop-off and pick-up.  I could restore my iron.  It won't take long to learn how.  I know where the iron and ironing board are.  But I gave up this task for a couple of reasons, partly it was tedious and partly I did it a lot less well than the pros.  But for now dress shirts needing professional attention are no longer my wardrobe staples.

Making Shop-Rite Purposeful

An expedition to Shop-Rite.  $176, the most I have spent at a single outing other than Pesach acquisitions.  To be fair, 10% of that went to a 42-count box of omeprazole and the cart overflowed primarily due to deluxe packages of paper towels and toilet paper.  Most everything else was on sale, with my only real splurge a container of kosher-certified good parmesan, something useful and hard to find sometimes.  And there is also what I did not get.  No yogurt. Other than Shop-Rite brand, which they did not have, yogurts have all gone Greek style.  Not that I object to Greek style, but I think $1 a container exceeds what I am willing to pay.  No squishy bread.  Pay a little more for the good stuff at Trader Joes and eat less.  No soda.  Gallon apple juice on sale, goes great heated and spiced. And ration on snack food.

Basically, as I pushed my cart through each aisle I thought partly what's a good buy and partly what might I do with it.  Big sale on poultry.  An Empire chicken cut up would supply the Doro Wat I've been meaning to make.  Turkey half-breast might last until Thanksgiving, but it makes an easy shabbos dinner.  Chicken leg quarters make great soup followed by stir fry.  I got a lot of fish.  Great salmon steaks reduced by half, repackaged to single pieces for easy dinner.  Gorton's fillets on sale, easy dinner.  Frozen tilapia perfect portions, easy dinner.  Tabachnick soups, easy accompaniment.  Pierogies, easy dinner.  Lasagna on sale, though the spinach and cottage cheese I need for it was not.  Macadam's chunk cheese which I need on sale, got two.  Frozen phony meat, easy dinner.  Frozen vegetables on sale.  Might live out of the freezer for the next two weeks.

As I used to beat on patients for dietary discretion, my own downtick in weight with little effort started with how I approach the supermarket.  Ban potato chips and commercial cookies.  Restrict bread.  Do my own baking.  It starts with the supermarket.  Now I seem to be moving past weight control to enjoying my kitchen and what I can do in it.  Everything I bought I can turn into a meal, mostly good meals, with reasonable attention to the time needed and the post meal cleanups.  This also starts with the supermarket.  Won't have to go back for a while, except for perishables, whose purchase I minimized.  The merger of better nutrition, more enjoyable meals, and a little extra time to do other things not related to food.

The Concluding Quarter

The midpoint of my semi-annual initiatives has arrived, looking a little different from the day they were written on an 8.5 x 11 inch card and placed with my weekly planning supplies.  I completed the family and purchase categories though nothing else, not for lack of effort.  

Sunday weekly planning postponed until after sundown by yontiff, I devoted the morning to assessing progress and either buckling down or pivoting to a different direction.  Instead of filing financial statements, which are now largely electronic, I will set time aside to look at spending via credit card and bank records.  I've committed to one of two organizations but need to become more assertive about a second.  Day trips have languished due to Covid-19.  They don't have to.  Visiting a National Park remains possible, though my wife seems skittish.  Writing needs specific time set aside to do it.  Pouncing on wrongdoers probably isn't a great initiative, though I'm not ready to abandon this.  I've read an ebook classic and listened to a Jewish themed audiobook.  Working on two non-fiction works.  Not enthused about either but with the aid of a timer to pace myself, I should finish each in a few weeks.  My bedroom upgrade looks like it will be a bedroom half-upgrade.  Again, the timer paces me and assures I devote adequate time to working on this.  My weight and waist have come down measurably, not to goal though.  I've done the things that add to health, even if the anthropomorphic data disappoints.  We can argue whether I've really made two new friends.  My circle of acquaintances has expanded.  But they are really more business than personal additions.

So that's the progress report.  Three months is enough to do all but two.  Allot time and set timer to assure that I am working on these.  Stay focused.  Very doable, and gratifying when done.

Reading Schedule

If anything Covid-19 has left me reading time, screen, paper.  It doesn't matter.  Words strung together into ideas.  A lot of them.

Each six months I set a minimum: one fiction, one non-fiction, one Jewish.  These in turn are distributed among an ebook, an audio book and a traditional book.  Audio literature has been difficult, the structure of sentences by a master is better visualized than heard.  I prefer my ebooks that way.  And classic ebooks beyond copywrite are usually free, so I've gotten to reading stuff my teachers would have wanted me to read to expand my mind.  And for the most part they did.  I just finished Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Despite it being on the 100 top novels in the English language, I found it ponderous, with about the same lack of fondness I had for his Heart of Darkness which was required college English course reading.  Still, completing something I really don't want to do has emerged for me in my later years an element of character, so I timed 18 minute blocks on my smart phone and did one or two a day.  Typical chapters took less time than that, but there were 45 chapters.  Stuff like this, or Bible reading for that matter, is generally enhanced with a teacher, much like writing is much improved with an editor, but some things you just have to do the best you can alone.  Got to the end, read a wiki summary on the book, which exposed quite a lot I did not grasp on my own, which it is a long way short of my own 100 top reading preferences, but there was a sense of having accomplished something worth the effort that illustrated my tenacity more than it advanced my intellect.

My schedule still allows three months to read two traditional non-fiction works.  I've selected two best sellers of yore, Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand and I'm OK-You're OK, a description of the psychiatry of transactional analysis on the not really missed heap of medical history by Thomas Harris.  Chosen more by their place in my bookcase on browsing than any real interest in either the explanation of gender linguistics or psychotherapy of old.  Best sellers tend to be easy to read, though rarely as elegant as the classics of literature.  Should be able to read these two alternating between them from session to session, much like I would have read one book on linguistics and one on psychology taking them as separate courses in the same semester.  And their presence in print means shabbos is not a delay in reading either.  Started each, written probably at early college level, simple prose, less engaging than I had hoped.  But the reading commitment is as much about tenacity as it is about intellect.  I will finish each within a month.