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.

Black Friday 2019

My personal challenge, maybe my contribution, has been to make Thanksgiving dinner, followed by shabbos dinner, followed by my wife's birthday, with Hanukkah tossed to the calendar mix some years, though not this year.

Holiday shopping challenged me as well, thinking about the recipient as an individual with , things they like to do, teams they root for, and their elements of heritage, all of which can be translated to small gifts.

Circumstances change over the years, both for me and for the normal function of the world.  The gift list is much smaller, challenge of staying in budget much higher.  Stores are now open Sundays, a novelty in Boston when I first started this.  I no longer have to go to work on usual workdays and I am now rather attentive to not shopping on shabbos, now that there are ample other opportunities, though my regard for other Jewish elements may have waned.  And my dinners have become more grand, served at my house, leaving me with quite a lot of dishes to do. 

While we have on-line access to purchasing, it does not pay for items under $10.  For birthday gifts of larger cost that need transport, it's the way to go, for shipping on my own, I keep the gift selections light. 

Black Friday has itself changed.  Stores now open in the evening on Thanksgiving.  They used to open at 4-5 AM the following day, with steep discounts.   The ads would come in a large newspaper edition, and still do.  I would target one or two items, either for myself or for my wife's birthday gift, set out before dawn for Value City, of blessed memory, make a bee line for what I want to get, pay for it and be on my way before rosy-fingered dawn came over the parking lot.  No reason to do that now.  I don't need anything, don't particularly want anything, and wife's birthday gift is better expressed as an experience over a product.  The retailers have figured this out.  Stores open either at 6 o7 AM, the early bird discounts leave me unimpressed.   I wash dishes instead.

New Mattress

Sleep has not gone well for a few years.  Attempts at sleep hygiene falter.  I have improved the environment, keeping the temperature down in the summer, minimizing  distracting light, and discouraging though not eliminating those blue light emitting screens.  Since getting a big screen TV in My Space, I hardly ever watch TV in the bedroom.  Bedding needed to be changed.  I suspected that for a while, having bought a substantial mattress topper at Costco a number of years ago to salvage a sagging mattress.  It worked well for a long time but in recent  years I would again flop into bed.  My Space acquired a great recliner chair that proved more supportive and comfortable than my mattress with topper, as did every hotel mattress for a few years.

The mattress had to be replaced, so I included this among my semi-annual personal initiatives in the category of Major Purchase.  Now, not too big a purchase.  Since semi-annual goes from July through December, I started poking into furniture stores last summer.  Raymour & Flanigan, a major regional retailer, was rather helpful.  Prices seemed above what I wanted to spend and many options bumped up a box spring, which I didn't need.  At a trip to IKEA for dining chair replacement this summer, I casually looked at their mattresses.  The salespeople told me I could get mattress only, which brought the price to about what I wanted to spend.  Some brief sampling, then some higher end sampling at Boscov's.  IKEA won out.

I cannot just replace my mattress unilaterally.  My wife agreed to try out the IKEA offerings.  We settled on a firm option, a little above average in price, payed extra for delivery which saved us state sales tax and a small sum to review the old one.

It arrived on the specified date, brought in by two burly gentlemen from the Republic of Georgia with minimal English facility.  The men really struggled to get it upstairs, which surprised me since we have had bigger furniture that that placed in the bedrooms.  Eventually mission accomplished.  They took the old saggy mattress, leaving us with quite a lot of plastic and cardboard packing not included in the removal agreement to say nothing of scattered objects of whatever to clear the path that they needed to get the mattress upstairs.  My wife put on a protective pad, then made the bed and I flopped myself horizontal for a few minutes.  Easy to tell before and after.

IKEA allows a 100 night return policy.  At three nights it feels like a keeper.  I fall asleep more readily, feel more rested on awakening but the sleep pattern remains one of overnight awakening at about the same times as previously.  Have no idea where REM and non-REM sleep appear amid the usual three sessions of sleep.  I can now work on staying upright from the time of morning awakening until assigned bedtime, as cat-naps may be the barrier to a full night's sleep.  And I have the energy to do that after quite a long time of what is probably chronic sleep deprivation.  I'll know in a few weeks.

Congregational Senescence

All synagogues have life cycles.  While in Venice last summer, there was a Jewish quarter with vestigial congregations that assembled minyanim but were once more than part of Venice's Jewish History.  My daughter spent the Holy Days in Albania.  She could walk to a 6th century synagogue ruins but would have to take transit to an active congregation on Corfu to experience worship.  Shuls just come and go.  All were once nascent.  Some are now at their peak, others are historical sites that were once thriving.

Our shul has gone through its life cycle, senescent but not ended.  We started more than 100 years ago, had a merger, had a move to a building designed for its needs, engaged a transforming Rabbi who shaped its identity, had a school that molded a fine legacy for us in many places, and for a variety of reasons has swooned in a way that will resist reversal.  Our white elephant of a building has been converted to cash to offset declining membership  revenue.  Participatory invitations are currently largely limited to a small subset of people.  I think our current state would be one of assisted living, tenants of a more active congregation that has a better result of absorbing its members into ongoing activities and creating new ones.  We are approaching what for people would be called end of life planning.

In many ways I have been the observer and historian.  Invitations to be a participant are few and largely based on technical skill rather than my inquisitive mind, which has been helpful there in other ways but not very contributory now, or at least not very desired now.  When I started there, defecting from elsewhere, I found myself attracted to the Rabbi's knowledge and intellect.  We had many great discussions about Judaism and beyond.  A Cantor arrived, partly with my committee assistance, who also impressed me with his breadth of skill and not quite polymath mind.  I could overlook the flaws, maybe even resist the attempt to rationalize them.  A certain amount of discord developed that would create factions and competition, though never vindictive.

A change in leadership, both officer and religious, made a good demarcation point.  Talent moved on, but it also became less a source of our identity.  Hopes for a new young Rabbi making an impact on young membership never materialized.  We retain pockets of excellence but that has long since become subordinate to more perfunctory things.  Could the Rabbi have written his vision for the progress of his congregation on a yellow pad within a year of his arrival?  I don't know if he ever tried. Can he do it now?  Doubt it, but maybe.   Did he ever nurture talent or chat with defectors?  Maybe, though my best guess would be no.

We find ourselves now at a branch point.  The congregation in its current trajectory cannot sustain the career of our Rabbi to normal retirement age.  It is time to bail out.  And provisions to do that have begun.  Unfortunately, the provisions to reverse this seem a committee of the same people who misjudged the situation ten years back.  What was once a grass roots community has increasingly resembled that USY clique of remote memory.  You now have a few people invited to do a lot of things and a fair number of people with dormant talent that is not valued enough to seek out.  Reversal or renewal cannot happen with that mode of thinking.  I don't think it will.

Out for Coffee

Coffee and me go back to college.  The school cafeteria offered breakfast coffee for 10 cents with unlimited refills.  Most mornings I would get a bow tie pastry with it, streusel + confectioners sugar coated for 25 cents, leaving me with energy for AM classes.  Within a year, I found an orange percolator that served me well studying for exams at night through medical school.  Can't remember where I lost it.  My father drank instant.  Phooey.

Living in Harvard housing, the Square had a shop called Coffee Connection, introduced to me by my wife.  They may have been the precursor to Starbucks, which eventually absorbed them.  Early on a weekend morning I could head over there and purchase a brew in an individual French press.  They had multiple types and you could buy beans, thus my first home coffee grinder, a blade type.  As I ventured to Fanueil Hall Marketplace, there were other places to sample different coffees,  12 oz for about 75 cents.  My home still had canned coffee, whatever was discounted at the supermarket, though by then I had developed a preference for Folgers over the other large commercial brands.  Only one blend per manufacturer at the time.

Fondness for coffee has continued to this day.  I have a bunch of French Presses, a keurig maker, three coffee cones, two drip machines, a stovetop percolator and and electric percolator, not to mention a party sized urn that rarely gets used and both manual and electric espresso makers.  My staple, though has been the keurig cups, enabling variety and ease of use with small sacrifice to taste.  Why ever go out?

Despite my gadgetry, I cannot duplicate what Starbucks and the like do.  WaWa has some varieties of good consistency at a lower price which I get when I am in transit.  When coffee houses were a novelty to me, the coffee in its variety, made with expertise, was my destination.  More recently, though, the destination has been less beverage and more transient space rental while I plan my week on Sunday mornings at the Brew HaHa or take my laptop to Starbucks to rent space at their counter while I type an essay.  Artists and Bohemians have been meeting at European coffee houses for centuries, less to drink coffee and more to expand their minds with each other.  I do it alone, but same basic principle.  Since the purpose is to minimize distraction and promote focus, I stopped going to the nearest Starbucks with loud music and traffic in favor of a newer one, more thoughtfully laid out to enable productive efforts.  The Brew HaHa is also quiet with the tables placed away from customer traffic.  And my car, with it's paper 20 oz cup of Ethiopian or Peruvian special, affords me the ultimate in solitude as I pay attention to the road.  Usually I have a destination, sometimes important, sometimes not.  So while coffee has remained a cheap hobby for me from my earliest adult years, sometimes the taste is supportive of something else that often has greater importance.  But we don't engage in great thought sipping Maxwell House.

Hanukkah Gifts

As newlyweds, or perhaps even before, we established a gift protocol along the lines of my in-laws family.  Parents, grandparents, and siblings would get one not too expensive gift from each other.  Spouses and children would arrange for one small gift each day.  Over time, we have become the senior generation.  Once we had kids, our siblings fell off the gift list.  Now we have our first new addition in a while, a fiancee, leaving me with 20 trinkets to acquire this year, eight for my wife and four each per child while my wife assumes a similar number.

Geographic realities made us experienced at shipping them on time.  Inflation, though, has only taken a minor toll.  We get less for our spending limit but there is no barrier to shopping at Goodwill where discounts override newness.  My son once got a skateboard within budget that way.

Add to that a December and a January birthday, with higher spending limits, and the amount of creativity needed to fulfill expectations can be challenging, though in a gratifying way.  It may be the only time when I must consider the uniqueness of each individual on the list. 

Needed to get away, I ventured out but came home mostly with ideas.  I had purchased two items previously at a crafts display.  If I see something that shouts Hanukkah, any time of the year, I acquire it and store it in a place easy to remember.  By far the most difficult purchase was always for my father who needed nothing, wanted nothing, and kept his interests obscure.  My nuclear family has many interests.  Some like a fondness for spirits maybe need acknowledgement in only the smallest way.  We have cats, we have Jewish, we have, sports teams.  There is always an edible, always one with kosher certifications.  Even when giving gifts to office staff, none of whom were Jewish, I would never give anyone food I would not eat myself, making an exception of a turkey drive for the needy if I qualified for a free bird from the supermarket.   Food in various forms remains readily available though seasonal specialties from gingerbread houses to hot sauces to drink enhancers no longer carry that desired OU.  Since the ladies can never have too many earrings, those work well.  Sized clothing doesn't work as well but it is generally light and unbreakable when shipped.  Eventually mugs and kitchen doodads create clutter.  Cosmetics have a way of accumulating too but are technically consumable.   Glass does not ship well, particularly when filled with liquid.

Give a few other stores a shot tomorrow.  Since the gifts are small, on-line shopping tends not to be cost effective for Hanukkah, probably the way to go for birthdays.

Prepping Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner has been my challenge for a long time.  I would make it, planning the menu weeks in advance, then transport the whole thing to my in-laws.  Since my mother-in-law's passing, it made more sense for the people to come to us, which is how it has been.

The day and the meal have their traditions, American ones and personal ones.  Like many families, the gathering has become less populated for a host of reasons ranging from kids who have moved away to Trumpanzee relatives who avoid hostility or hard feelings by not coming.  I will cook for whoever comes.

My menu has its fixed and variable points.  Turkey remains a centerpiece, though no longer the big glorious bird which has gotten rather expensive with not enough people to eat it.  Empire makes a half-breast which I will make for shabbos sometimes and in recent years for Thanksgiving as well.  Appetizers vary.  I made something with Tofu last year.  Soup varies, typically mushroom and barley.  This year tomato with Israeli couscous seem the top choice.  Salad varies less.  Greens now come already cut and triple washed so I have made garden salads.  Israeli salads are easy to make.  I think I'll make a cabbage slaw this year.  Cranberry sauce come from the berries that I boil myself.  There are variants of this but mostly sugar, water, and cranberries.  Sweet potatoes come in a variety of preparations but there is always something with sweet potato.  I've been making stuffing in the crock pot because it is easy and keeps the oven clear for other things.  For a vegetable I get what is on sale that week.  I do not know why brussels sprouts dominate on line searches of Thanksgiving menus.  I like them but not everyone does.  And I've never made a green bean casserole.  Green beans on sale can be made plain or dressed with nuts or sauces.  For dessert, I usually make something with apples.  Strudel or apple cake this year.  The apple cake is a lot easier.  And beverage is usually soda or sparkling cider.  Last year I got wine and might again this year.

It challenges me.