Squalls

Had been planning the third of my three day trips for a while, a round trip bus ride to NYC where I would take the subway to the Cloisters, where I had never been.  It was tentatively scheduled for yesterday but snow squalls here and there made a later time more suitable.  I can deal with cold, walking a half mile from the subway stop to the museum and back as well as the Chinatown bus to the subway makes precipitation justification not to travel.  Instead, I got my car serviced, loafed, read, took a hot shower, worked on Thanksgiving menu for fewer people than originally anticipated and made a little pest of myself commenting on www.kevinmd.com  I did not watch television, after scrolling through a hundred channels and finding none worthy of my attention.  One less screen.  Work on less computer screen too.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Since Thanksgiving has been protected for me my entire career, in exchange for taking medical call every Christmas, until recently  as a long weekend, some personal expression has gone into this.  I have always been the food preparer, bringing the rather elaborate meal to my in-laws during my mother-in-law's lifetime, then more recently asking the remaining in-laws and my children to come to our house, as the logistics are much easier for me that way.  Like others we have our political strains, jokes not well received, concessions to people who cannot easily travel to us that we need to pick up and return, and a self-imposed obligation to have our place far neater than its usual appearance.  My mother-in-law served as the family glue that gave us our reason to assemble periodically at her house
but with her passing at age 97, we are left with First Seder and Thanksgiving as the reliable family gatherings.  For Seder, I make the dinner and still transport it.  For Thanksgiving, though, I am the designated balabusta.

Much thought goes into the menu, scans of my cookbooks, surveys of ideas on line.  Looks like:

Motzi-- French Bread
Appetizer--Vegetarian mushroom and barley stuffed cabbage
Soup--Minestrone
Salad--Israeli variant, a salad of many colors which should go well with the Torah reading.
Turkey--Roasted
Stuffing made in crock pot.
Cranberry sauce, homemade
Sweet potatoes with other vegetables

Acorn squash with pomegranate glaze in deference to my son who cannot join us.
Banana-bundt cake
Iced mulled cider with pomegranite.

Mixture of book recipes and online recipes and some taken from this month's magazines reviewed at our local library the last few weeks.

A challenge,. a hobby, an effort, and most of the time an accomplishment.

Check Engine Light

Check engine light came on.  That keeps me mostly immobilized for the day until I can take the car, 189K miles of it to the shop tomorrow for something that in the last year or two has always turned out expensive.

Not that I have a shortage of things to do at home today and tomorrow, I don't, but my car from the time I got one as a third year medical student has been my freedom to roam.  I can go to parks and supermarkets and the library almost at will.  With some planning I can go afar.  And I could take what was a rather good job 45 minutes away. 

We'll see what the computerized diagnostics shows and how much it costs to restore mobility.

Lumbar Pain

My grandfather at about my age used to experience what in those days was called lumbago.  I do not think this is an inherited trait but I've acquired it as well, on and off for a few months, fully disrupting what had been a very successful exercise schedule.  It will endure a while, response to non-prescription anti-inflammatory agents, cause no neurologic disruption, but leave me rather sedentary.  I've tried to tease out the anatomy.  Flexing knees and hips gives relief.  Worst pain occurs at about the halfway point moving from sitting to upright.  It's more noticeable when sitting than standing or walking, which may be a hint for keeping myself upright and moving.  Car seat seems more comfortable than kitchen chair.  I have a Howmedics back massager whose input has been disappointing but worth another try.  It will soon pass.

Shabbos as Spectator

Made it to Beth Tfiloh for shabbos.  Understudy Rabbi this time, with a D'var Torah on the disappearing derech eretz in politics, one that can get quite a few cards & letters, perhaps even mine.  Yet going there, despite the substantial round trip has its allure that I find hard to duplicate.

The drive is quiet time.  No radio.  One stop for either breakfast or coffee, subsidized by the State of Delaware, since the route to the WaWa takes me around the toll.  Once there, I take my seat, having staked out two places, one on each side of an aisle which affords me a few seats of personal space and a good view.  I do not know anyone and nobody knows me, until the end when I typically encounter somebody from my home shul who now lives in Baltimore and attends there.  The Torah reader usually comes over to greet me, but I might as well be a spectator in a theater, which adds to the attraction if once a quarter but would end the attaction if I went every shabbos and remained alone amid a crowd of hundreds.

Lately I've been arriving a little earlier, typically at the Amidah repetition.  Their sequence of prayers is a little variation of AKSE's.  The Torah processional is limited to the return.  Women do the Government and Soldier's prayers in English.  Prayer for Israel is part of the Torah processional.  Torah reading is expert in accuracy and fluency.  There are no Aliyah Sound Bites, which is worth the drive in itself.  I've been there enough now and read additional sermons online to suspect they are written de novo without recycling AIPAC or other organizational FAX broadcasts to American rabbis to adapt to their weekly shabbos message.  Those messages are OK, but I think I can tell that the rabbis function as an organizational conduit and not people of personal insight when they do that.

No Bar Mitzvah this shabbos.  Musaf zips along, services conclude and we go to kiddush, not very different in content than ours but on a larger scale.

Looking around, they probably can assemble a minyan of men under age 50, but it won't be a very large minyan.  To be fair, they have parallel services elsewhere in the building and the people at kiddush seem younger than the men in the main sanctuary so that may be where the younger men worship.  The women on their side of the mechitza seemed younger than the men in the main  sanctuary.  Children come up to the bimah for kiddush.  There were about 30 of them, so generational attrition will likely happen though at a much smaller pace than at AKSE. 

So if I want to watch something done well, I go there.  If I want to be more of a participant, even a sometimes irritated one, my home base supplies that need.

Due Dates

Shabbos approaches.  I've scheduled my roughly quarterly shabbos morning at Beth Tfiloh tomorrow.  Easy dinner to make today, defrost the previously made chicken and make Hasidic Noodle Kugel.  Will try to use a water bath this time to promote more even cooking in the loaf pan. 

I don't have a sense of urgency to get everything done in time that I once had, even with the return to Standard Time this week bringing sunset much earlier on the clock.  Dinner will get done.  Everything else on  a long daily task list really has no deadline other than paying my Medicare premium and renewing my state medical license where the deadlines are not imminent.  Our motivation and ultimately our success, though, depends on how we handle the things we want to do without the external impositions, whether the natural sunset or the legal due dates.

Voted Out

My home state has voters that run mostly blue.  Being a small state geographically, access by voters to those the majority has elected comes much more easily than in places with millions of people but the same number of senators that we have.  Little nobody me has seen virtually all my elected representatives from county coucil to US Senator.  I've spoken to most, written to some, worship with one, and heard all live.  Like everyplace else in America we had our 2018 mass political participation in the form of voting.  I voted a straight ticket, only the second time I have ever done that, knowing that I will be voting against the more personally capable incumbent candidate and knowing that I would be casting my preference against the one candidate that I know best.  By late night, the results were known, Democrats swept statewide and in pretty much in my county, unseating my friend who had been in place for twenty years and a very professional state official who is a pro at the role the previous voters had elected him to do.  Had they worked for me in a company or in a non-profit, their jobs would have been in no danger.  No boss would accuse them of underperformance or undermining company goals or bringing discredit to the firm in any way.  More likely they would have gotten performance bonuses.  But they are not employees of my company.  They are more like contractors sent to fill a position by the Republican Party.  If I do not wish to maintain relations with their sponsor, their fortunes follow.  So two very good public officials of significant tenure and achievement fell victim to their standard bearer in the White House who does his best to create victims, most intended, a few like these men and two people in other districts of long tenure become his victims unwittingly and probably undeserved, though the intentional victims are also mostly undeserved.

This has come up in a different form.  I do not buy Papa John's Pizza, haven't for a while.   I found their pizza inferior the two times I bought some.  The standard bearer's presence favorable or not would not make me a customer and the amount of pizza that I buy would not move the fortunes of any company in any direction.  But I did find some of his public positions offensive and superimposed that on his company.  I do like Barilla pasta.  It always comes out better than Ronzoni or Shop-Rite brand but costs more, so when it went on sale for a comparable price I would get a box or two.  No more.  The spokesman takes a public stance that I find offensive, the gradient between his brand and the other brands is small, and my life and those who eat at my table will be no different whichever brand of pasta goes into the meal.  Barilla is gone.  I do not clip the coupons for it from the weekly circular.  There is never an incentive to divert my money to his pocket to demean groups of people he doesn't like.  I won't knowingly be an accomplice in that.  But my purchases do not change a stock price so if my mutual funds want to own some of the stock, they can buy it for my portfolio.

Who represents you matters.  It is not just a matter of personal competence, which is widely distributed among both parties and among companies with stellar reputations and among companies you choose to shun.  As a physician, my reputation depended on my employers and on the other people within the upper tiers of the organization who create policy.  The political parties are no different, even at the sacrifice of at least two men of real talent and professionalism.