Healthy Groceries

Got back from Shop-Rite a short while ago.  Very typical bill of about $94.  I place into bags myself, about half mine as reusables, about half their recyclable plastic.  I try to think in terms of menu:  chicken cacciatore for this shabbos so I needed mushrooms, a pepper, and got some parsley, garlic and a high quality spaghetti on sale.  Lasagna is easy to make and lasts a few meals.  Brick cheese on sale, easy to grate with small appliances, lowest price cottage cheese, frozen spinach on sale and I have noodles and pasta sauce.  Good buy on kosher cubed beef, next shabbos.  Eighteen eggs with coupon.  Sweetened cereal went in donation box on my way out.  Cantaloupe for 99 cents.  I cubed the last one, munched on it most of the week.  Better than potato chips, pretzels and cookies.  Oh?  I got those too and a 48 oz carton of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.  Sometimes shop smart and sometimes shop cheap.  K-cup pods on sale.  Got 24, which is about a week's worth.

What I consciously decided against purchasing sometimes tells a lot.  Great coupon for arborio short grain rice.  No heksher, I've never seen rice without a heksher.  Did not get flavored liquid coffee creamer.  It keeps better than milk, but has a fair amount of sugar.  I have powdered creamer, and usually have milk.  So, despite a decent discount, not into the cart this time.  Space in my freezer is at a premium.  Frozen vegetarian burgers make for a quick meal and frozen vegetarian phony pork and the like offers some creativity.  Quick, easy and different.  When it goes on sale.  No soap, paper, storage bags.  Have enough for a while.  Delegate any cat purchases to my wife.   Low on potatoes but wait for a better price, or even better, not eat them.  Took last quarter of butter from its box.  Got another pound to store in freezer.  And yogurt makes a better snack than potato chips.  And while in the pharmacy department, I got another bottle of flonase and took my blood pressure on their automated cuff.  

For the most part, the purchases were purposeful.  Snacks other than cantaloupe need to be rationed.  Keeping them milchig helps.  I probably did fairly well.  Passover shopping in a few weeks.  I'll try to be more menu focused with that too, but I have a quick hand for those kosher marshmallows that only reach our shelves once a year.  

Discombobulated

Now restored to upright after much of yesterday horizontal.  Had to arise a little early early yesterday to attend an earmarked morning minyan, feeling a little sleep deprived and coffee deprived but not really out of sorts.  Yesterday was also an OLLI day, two classes at 9AM and 10:30AM.  Still no coffee but I had taken a thermos of seltzer which I sipped.  By the middle of the first class I felt squashed, a little jittery, and with less focus than usual, also pretty hungry.  I contemplated heading home before the second class, about which I felt indifferent, maybe even a little disappointed.  So that's what I did.

Some quick gratification of hunger and a cup of coffee did not help.  Maybe I was still feeling the effects of an increase in the intensity of my previous treadmill session two days before.  No treadmill yesterday.  Maybe just sleep deprived.  I set a timer for one hour, napped, then continued after the timer chimed for another hour.  It did not help.  Sitting upright at My Space had little effect.  I forced myself through a couple of projects, a call to Medicare to check on an overdue premium notice, a run to the post office and a session at my bank to enroll in their online service.  Upright still challenged me, and I started feeling a little tremulous.  Definitely no treadmill session yesterday, though I did not experience pain anywhere, or even soreness.  No intellectually challenging projects either.  And too dysfunctional to tidy up around the house.  Just an off-day.

Reset button today.

taking charge of my tzedakah obligation

https://www.yutorah.org/sidebar/lecture.cfm/945434/rabbi-mordechai-torczyner/running-tzedakah-like-a-business/

yutorah.org has a plethora of stimulating lectures that keep my mind sharp past retirement.  There's a category called machshava, or thinking, that I like as well as history.  Over the years of listening to these podcasts, a few teachers stand out.  Talks that approximate one I might have attended in college attract me most, those that recall Hebrew School get turned off quickly.  Rarely do I feel personally involved.  Often I think of some type of question, which suggests I am really listening.

This one on Tzedakah connected personally, more than most, since I made a transition in fulfilling this mitzvah about 25 years ago.  I had wondered for a long time if I was right, particularly when prompted by a personally adverse Jewish communal experience, yet had never run my decision by any Rabbinic authority just assuming they are more attached to their agenda than to researching the principles of tzedakah to match how my approach conformed with traditional interpretations of our Sages or ran afoul of them.  Rabbi Torczyner, a prolific yutorah.org lecturer with attention to source detail, gave cyberspace with me in it the overview that I lacked the skill to seek on my own and the trust to appoint an agent to research what I had done.

Some background.  I remain observant despite taking a few lumps from leadership, a member of the synagogue, a refugee from a previous synagogue and for the most part a defector from Jewish communal activities.  As Mayor Bloomberg advised the graduates at my son's commencement, I have made my best attempt to promote my own INDEPENDENCE/HONESTY/ACCOUNTABILITY/INNOVATION.  In fact most of these require little special attention on my part, though at the price of kehillah sometimes.  I have lived in my community for about 40 years, not exactly wandering in a Jewish desert or seeking some other setting.  Like most mammals, I seek food, protection from predators, and a commitment to reproducing.  Ordinarily that herd provides protection but for some it is the source of one member imposing dominance on another.  I was not alpha.  I also eventually found myself in the anti-herd situation of having to protect offspring.  Not having too many herds around, I divested myself of the ones with the most predatory machers.  I could be useful at times, an irritant at times, but never unconditionally valuable.  There are other people to whom I could be unconditionally valuable.

Uneasy relations go back a long way.  As a bar mitzvah era camper at an esteemed Jewish summer camp, the head counselor assembled our group the day before departure.  He noted in his remarks that about 10 kids had gotten too homesick to stay.  Among his remarks were that those people were not the caliber of person this camp and the Jewish institution it represents really seek.  There was something inferior about them, some impediment to their being groomed as future leaders of his Movement.  I didn't want to return the next year, not experiencing anything close to an Ace summer,  and told our Rabbi who had a lot of his professional training invested in that camp.  I became inferior too, convenient when Torah needed to be chanted at shabbos mincha but somebody whose loyalty to his Movement was not absolute.  University participation in Jewish life was voluntary.  Since nobody had expectations or an enduring agenda, whatever I opted to do met with Hakras haTov, something not captured since.  It may be the only ongoing stretch that nobody of title berated me for resisting what they thought was their due, my fulfilling my part of their mission.

My medical degree opened many doors.  It also generated some perceptions, not always true.  Being in a new community, Jewish, a skilled bimah participant at my new shul from the outset, and a young person whose income could only rise and whose ability to pay day school tuition for future offspring at their day school would reinforce their agencies brought more invitations than I was used to.  Camp revisited:  we want you here because of what you can bring us.  We just have to show you the Federation Way.  So I started going to meetings which sounded a lot like what the head counselor, who by then had become a Seminary Dean, imparted.  They were the umbrella organization.  No challenge on my part to how that benefits a community.  Every Jewish community of any size since the Middle Ages has had elders dispersing alms or stabilizing institutions.  Help us raise funds at the next phone bank session.  OK.  They gave the two dozen of us best and brightest a script which sounded too much like a shakedown of people I didn't know to actually read, and felt the same way.  I substituted my more dignified approach, that which the person who called me the previous winter had used.  If somebody offers me $100, my inclination is to thank them.  The script said not to, ask for $150 instead.  They called husbands and wives separately.  I got to call the husbands.  I had a joint account, not a very full one, and my wife and I share the big expenses.  I am not about to give a large amount knowing that she might be shamed into giving more than we should.  As I called with no interest other than being a dutiful agent for a worthy project, I got quite an earful for resentment.  And they told us younguns, never offer to send anyone their pledge card.  When they called me the next year, I asked for my pledge card and got a lot of resistance from a very experienced participant.  My lack of specific amount would impair their planning, he told me.  I responded, then put me down for zero.  The Federation will get more than that from me if they send the card so they can do even more than was planned.  He really did not want to write zero on the card, so he sent it and I mailed off a check.  Of our two dozen high prospects, attrition was high.  By the time I waved soyonara fifteen years later, my original cohort depleted to a couple of pushy attorneys who fit in a lot better than the docs and engineers.  I guess they are imprinted to see challenges as opportunities for negotiation.  I saw the experience as one more manipulation in the name of Jewish leadership.

Opting out of this aspect of communal Judaism does not negate my obligation to help the poor and sustain institutions.  I replaced this with a more business-like approach to tzedakah, one with more purpose than being amid the herd.  I took the sum that I had donated to the umbrella, added 50% and divided six ways.  On the 20th of every even numbered month, I would send a check along with a card or note expressing thanks to the special mission of each agency, sometimes with a Hebrew citation of why their work sustains Judaism.  My first check went to a Camp for special needs Jewish children who, like my own son, found themselves outliers.  That first year, I got four phone calls from agency heads thanking me for my good wishes and usually a hand written note added to the acknowledgement letter.   As the years went on, my prosperity advanced so the frequency of checks rose to every month and the amount increased, so that the annual donation became several times what I would have considered giving to a communal umbrella that made me uneasy.  Donating became a form of kevah, setting a time.  It also became a time of exploration.  No agency's fortunes depend on whether I give that year so from the outset I began exploring what is out there to support.  Some agencies are large and impact on how we all live as Jews.  The local Family Service gets the January donation each year, since rescuing the needing of our county has tzedakah priority over everything else.  Children of Entitlement at our day school, a place that gave me more tzuris than any other affiliate agency when my outlier son came knocking, have other means of support.  I like universities and museums, some relatively obscure.  Friends of the IDF shows appreciation to young people on a difficult and dangerous mission, not always voluntarily.  It is my obligation to offer them some assistance.

As time went on, checks and notes became less efficient ways of collecting, perhaps adding to overhead that detracts from what can go to beneficiaries.  The notes from the directors to my note all but stopped as money collection became more mechanized.  This year for the first time I yielded and went electronic.  The agency heads will no longer have their Hakaras HaTov  from me, only their funds.  They will just have to assume my personal esteem for the good they do continues tacitly.

So how did I do?  Not bad according to the principles sourced in Rabbi Torczyner's presentation.  Better to give a lot of small disbursements rather than one big one.  There are coins for the pushkas at minyan, emptying loose change from my pocket into my home tzedakah box, various fundraisers that crop up.  It's better than a big pledge on Super Sunday and the Yom Kippur Appeal at shul.  Every month has a 20th day.  I have to think about what must be the best destination for that month's donation and what about that recipient adds to the mosaic of Judaism that we need to sustain.  Bypassing the umbrella has its own merit, though in retrospect it might have been preferable to depart for opportunity rather than resentment.  On the other hand, we have contemporary Judaism because participation has to be repackaged periodically, whether replacing a central Temple with scattered synagogues, allowing the Hasidic tzadikim to supply a spirit that was previously inadequate, and rethinking the roles of women.  These days we have our Jewish None's, including a fair amount of leadership generated attrition.  Our head counselor could not have been more in error.  Those who were disappointed by his camp were not inferior, nor are the millenials defecting now.

Finally, the sources presented hinted that tzedakah needs to be businesslike in its efficiency and predictability but not at the expense of personal attachment.  That matters a lot more than the size of the checks.  Not at all the message I got from my high potential Young Leadership invitation nearly forty years back.  The decades seem to have confirmed the error of that message and what might have generated more committed enthusiasm among some really talented people.

Upping the Treadmill

Each week I weigh myself first thing Monday morning.  My weight has not changed in three years.  While discarding some old papers I noted a previous weekly tracking from ten years earlier when it registered three pounds less.  My target weight would be nine pounds under current.  I came close a few years ago with severe pastry restriction.  I don't recall if I felt better or worse, but at the time I was a bit overworked professionally.  Each half year when I set my six month goals, I have included a weight target which never happens.  Short of some involuntary weight loss from illness, it probably won't, so I redirected my health goal at exercise.

For years, I have avoided having my treadmill, a significant investment at the time, from becoming one more flat surface to plant things indefinitely.  In recent years, with particular attention since retirement, I set a schedule which I have done mostly a decent job maintaining, with a few lapses for lower back pain.  When I am consistent with walking, I seem to get through the preset program each session fairly easily, legs more bothersome than breathing or anginal symptoms.  I have increased the intensity randomly over the years, only to scale back following a layoff.  This time I set a six month intensity and duration goal, which I have worked toward with very few missed days.  It came time to increase the time a bit, which I did without much difficulty.  Then increase the speed by 0.1 mph yesterday, which took its toll, more on my breathing than my legs, though I can tell the difference today.  It's a scheduled day off today.  I am still three minutes short of ultimate time goal, which I expect to be able to meet and 0.2 mph short of the speed goal which seems less certain.  However, these are each significantly above the starting levels three months ago.

My weight has not changed.

Library Stabbing

A security guard was fatally stabbed at the Finkelstein Memorial Library, a frequent destination of my youth.  My friend's mother was one of the librarians, and my friend also became a professional educational librarian.  It was a small library as libraries go, though I did not realize that until I started accessing the NYC Public Library System in late high school, then University and large city facilities thereafter.  Now we have networks.  My own local library branch seems about like Finkelstein in capacity but it links to a statewide system that I can access from My Space. 

Wherever I lived or worked, the local library or the University Library has been a refuge.  It provides resources but takes me from the distractions of home to the distractions of magazines that I might not otherwise access or reference books that have entries for people or places that I knew personally.

I never questioned the safety of being there.  Most had door attendants to limit theft of materials and sometimes to make sure that only University affiliates entered.  But mostly they functioned on an honor system.  Look at what you want.  Try to maintain decorum.  Sign out what you want to borrow.  Return things on time.  I doubt if any of the front door attendants was armed.  Nor was the guard, now of blessed memory, at Finkelstein.

Following the Day's Plan

Up on time.  At My Space on time.  Each night, except Friday, at about 7PM I create an outline for the following day.  It is taken indirection from my semi-annual goals with tasks to make them happen.  Then I sleep on it.  The following day, they usually seem reasonable, though I rarely find myself as motivated as I was the evening before when I create the list.

I categorize tasks into Self-Family/Financial/Home Maintenance/Professional, which for me is still things I would do as a doctor.  What I do not do is prioritize within categories.   I look instead, at what can I do quickly now, what can I get rid of so it does not appear on tomorrow's list or even next week's list.  Some things I do not like doing, particularly exercise, but since it is in my enlightened self-interest, that usually gets done.  Tasks that bring me to my semi-annual goals get noted by a highlighter.  It hasn't helped much.  Yet the overriding question always remains, what cna I do right now.  I usually do something.

Library in Suspension

Now that I no longer head off to work each morning, some form of diversion from my house, even from My Space, requires some thought about alternate destinations.  I used to go to stores, not so much because I needed anything as much as they accepted my presence with no obligation on my part.  And there were a lot of them.  Weather permitting, I could go to a park, maybe fish unsuccessfully for a while.  And there is always the library.  It came to my attention recently that libraries are more popular destinations than I would have imagined, even in these days when access to cyberspace offers more to read or listen to than anybody realistically can.  There is something to be said among being amid people, even strangers who keep to themselves.

I've been a library enthusiast since childhood.  I might even still have one of those cards with a metallic insert to run under some carbon paper at checkout.  Card catalogs in big drawers are long gone.  I can access our library's holdings, including branches other than my local one, from my desk but it's not the same as choosing a subject like cooking and looking at the cookbooks on the shelves.

It came as a disappointment that my branch will effectively close for three weeks for carpet replacement.  Big project, since they have to relocate all the materials to do this.  As I walked on the floors today, peering downward, I did not see any ripped carpet that would risk a fractured hip nor any major soiling.  The commercial carpet seemed to have a reasonable amount of low pile.  The neutral color scheme seemed conducive to reading or typing away on their computers.  Maybe a generous donor offered new carpeting at a great price that couldn't be refused.  Or while the need was not obvious to me but may be apparent to the director.  In any case, functionally off limits for a few  weeks starting in just a few days.

Resuming OLLI

It's been a great respite, roughly two months long.  Osher Institute follows a University schedule that affords its students a long winter break intended to pursue independent study or work related to study that really cannot be done in the more typical two week winter hiatuses that most university calendars follow.  As post-career students at Osher Institute we generally do not have that future focus, though I'm sure lots of people headed to the warm or traveled to the exotic or made the grandkids rounds across America, something that requires more than two weeks for optimal benefit.   OLLI is unstructured and so am I.  A lot can be done in two months but my own effort was not sustained.  I submitted a few articles, emptied my storage rental unit, visited my daughter, and made some effort to organize my house which could have happened were my effort sustained.

Tomorrow my classes resume, four + Wednesday afternoon Mah Jongg.  None are really participatory classes this time.  Learn about the eye, perhaps understand why I think contemporary Republicanism is an ethical blight, analyze some historical disasters, and go on a weekly scavenger tour of the University of Delaware.  It gives needed structure to the week, which helps when I try to focus better on the twelve semi-annual objectives that I assemble December and June.  Those things need focus.  OLLI helps me get that.

Nominating Myself

America can live through most any kind of public blight.  We have historically survived our share of crises, some leadership corrected, some leadership generated as we seem to have now.  I never expected the people themselves to reject openness and honesty, though historically that's what it took to have Jim Crow and dysfunctional courts as a lingering Confederate legacy once slavery got out of reach. The writer George Packer of The Atlantic recently offered an address on receiving the prestigious Hitchens Prize for editorial writing.  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/packer-hitchens/605365/

He notes that writers, and many others, have become fearful.  We saw that with the attempt to remove a public blight of a President from Office.  People supported him out of fear of reprisal.  Avoiding reprisal was to them more valuable than Keter Shem Tov, the lofty Crown of a Good Name, which most have already tossed aside.  George spoke about fear:  The fear is more subtle and, in a way, more crippling. It’s the fear of moral judgment, public shaming, social ridicule, and ostracism. It’s the fear of landing on the wrong side of whatever group matters to you. An orthodoxy enforced by social pressure can be more powerful than official ideology, because popular outrage has more weight than the party line.

Ironically this all comes the week of Parsha B'Shalach when the escaping Jewish slaves feel trapped, forcing a decision to forge ahead, fight back, or give up.  It was the one Prince who did not have a reference to God in his name, Nachshon, who stepped into the sea first.  Sometimes you just have to say that honesty and character are gifts from God to be protected.

Delaware allows party members to nominate themselves as convention delegates.  I never expected to ever take a public political stand, but I filled out the forms to become a Bloomberg delegate.  Unlikely that he will get the state party's support over our former VP who lives here, but just once I need to pretend I am on a hiring committee and pick the right one, even at the risk of being voted out.  I emailed my self-nomination.

Push Reset Button

As I did last year, I afforded myself a solo few days away, withing a few hours, for some visiting to an unfamiliar place.  Last year I went to Penn State University during a deep freeze that kept school activities largely cancelled.  It was a pleasant town, though.

This winter I stayed in the Poconos for some snow tubing and some Aquatopia indoor water park, both affiliated with the Camelback Ski Resort.  To my surprise, both attracted a large contingent of the Orthodox community, about 2-3 hours away.  All had velvet kippot.  Most men had visible tzitzit peering over their belts.  Few full beards however.  They had large families but fewer visibly pregnant women than at most similar gatherings.  Learned a little about tzniyut at the waterpark.  Barefoot was fine.  Boys wore t-shirts.  Girls wore either knee length leggings and long t-shirt or shirtdresses, though they had usual teenage swimwear beneath.  And when I tried to introduce myself as a Monsey native, lantzman with a crotcheted kippah, they were not particularly friendly. 

Snow tubing did not result in safety problems but it took just under a half-hour on the conveyor belt and waiting on the lane queue for a one minute thrill downwards.  At Aquatopia, I was by far the oldest patron.  Lovely hot tub that had an indoor and outdoor component where steam rose at the outdoor water-air interface.  I capsized my Lazy River tube repeatedly but once stable I let the current take me around a few times.  Wave pool disappointing.  Did not measure up to the one at Dorney Park let alone the waves at Fenwick Island State Park.  And one run down the smallest of the circular indoor thrill rides which left me just thrilled enough.





Supper at decent brew pubs each evening.

Did not sleep well.  Sacked out as soon as I got back to the hotel, only to wake at midnight and keep myself up inappropriately by the great transgression of looking at my cell phone's blue emitting hue.

Drove home uneventfully but clearly out of sorts.  Try some formal set sleep times the rest of the week.  Hit Reset Button tomorrow.