Did Instead

Third full day without signing on to X, FB, or Reddit.  I am accessing my email less, but still more than the three times a day anticipated.  

I did my usual activities, those things I would have done anyway without a social media restriction. Up on time, treadmill on time, on-site OLLI session in the morning, Zoom session in the afternoon.  I had a decent lunch.  Made a trip to Trader Joe's for a minimum of things.  I'd have done all of these and still engaged in my usual allotment of social media.

The purpose, though, was to focus on things that had been neglected.  After my OLLI class, I began to tackle the final section of the main bathroom closet.  I did not time the effort.  Some minor sorting.  Things that go to the basement, things that go first level.  Plastic bags are now inside a single plastic bag.  Very little discarded.  Two large bags of health and grooming supplies that will need sorting.  Finished the book I was reading, the third of three in this semi-annual project, the one on a Jewish theme from a bound book.  I began composing an article on Loneliness.  Target 900 words, edited and submitted for publication.  Sometimes you just have to start.  About 300 words, most not worthy of appearing in print for strangers to read.  Really, not that much progress.

I made a list of the Daily Tasks that I am most likely to make excuses to languish.  Most still languish.  I did a good job reading, though.  Tackling two very long articles in The Atlantic, two difficult ones in The Forward.  I would like to comment on one or two of them as Letters.  And I still have time before I make a semi-special supper.  I also feel pretty decent, which will enable me to work some after supper.  

Focus remains a challenge.  There are some articles on how to improve this.  It will take more than just eliminating a common distraction like social media.

Planning for Guests

Each half year I try to host guests for dinner three times.  Some are easy:  Seder, sukkah, Thanksgiving.  Since Seder and Thanksgiving are for my household, I do not count them, but still work on traditional menus and elegant presentation.  Some occasions are semi-random:  Shabbat Pesach, Shavuot.  Others truly random.  For Festivals, the occasion dictates much of the menu.  Thanksgiving turkey, something with sweet potato, something with cranberries.  Seder has its ritual requirements, shabbos Pesach dietary limitations that invite ingenuity, or at least variations from other shabbos dinners.  Shavuot dairy

Shabbos gives complete flexibility.

I start with a nine square grid:

1. Motzi, generally challah for a Jewish occasion
2. First course: can be either an appetizer or soup.  Both for Thanksgiving and Seder, one on other occasions
3. Salad: avoid bean and potato salads, usually fresh vegetable based
4. Dressing if not integral to the salad recipe
5. Entrée: Meat mostly.  And something I wouldn't ordinarily make for myself
6. Starch:  I happen to have a fondness for kugel
7. Vegetable: what's on sale that week, simply prepared
8. Dessert:  Most often baked
9. Beverage:  wine more often than not

Challah recipes are mostly variants of each other.  They will vary by number of eggs and by sweetness.  The kneading also drives the final product.  I start early in the morning, so the first rise is underway by the time I need to leave the house.

Wine is most often white, purchased from a place with an enormous selection.  I set a price limit, then choose the one with the most intriguing name or label design.  Never, or almost never, buy the same brand more than once.

All else needs exploration.  I've collected cookbooks of various types for decades, creating a large collection.  And I used to browse the public library collection in advance of guests.  The internet has made much of this obsolete.  I can search by course, by ingredient, by individual food mavens.  For dessert I can make something with phyllo, though it has gotten unreasonably expensive.  More often a nut torte or an apple cake or maybe a honey cake.  Lots of variations.  

The entrée is almost always poultry, chicken for its versatility, turkey for its simplicity.  Kosher beef has gotten expensive and choice rarely goes beyond beef cubes or ground beef.  Whole chicken can be roasted.  Chicken parts can be prepared all sorts of ways.  Kugel can have rice, matzoh, noodles, or potatoes as its base.  These are all held together by eggs and liquid.  Some can be made sweet, others better left a bit tangy.  Salads are usually simple:  Cucumbers with onion, tomato based salads, pepper based salads.  I stay away from those potato or bean based.  And dressing is a blend of acid and oil.

Soups have great versatility.  Many are of regional origin with adds to the menu.  They keep for subsequent meals.  I've made fish soups, vegetable soups, cold gazpacho in tomato season, chicken soup with the requisite matzoh balls, grain based soups.  All work well as starters.

Over about two weeks I get the grid filled out.  Then I write all the ingredients on loose-leaf paper one dish at a time.  Then on another piece of loose-leaf paper, I write down all the individual ingredients and amounts as some items appear on more than one recipe.  I print each recipe if not already in one of my books.  Then I go through my pantry, marking what I already have in sufficient amount and what needs a purchase.  Non-perishables are added a few days before, perishables two days before.  The day before, all recipes displayed on dining room table and all non-refrigerated ingredients placed adjacent to their recipe.

The morning of arrival begins at about 7AM with creating and kneading the challah dough.  I find that hand kneading yields a better final texture than a dough hook.  It then goes into an oiled bowl to be placed on the dining room table for its first rise.  Next, treadmill, then OLLI classes or steer clear of kitchen until noon.  Dessert next, as this keeps all day, and there will be competition for the oven later with the kugel, chicken, and challah.  The afternoon anticipates a completion time.  Salads keep, so that gets made while other things cook.  A vegetable, other than roast beets, takes minutes.  When I get home from class, I punch down the dough, take a small ceremonial challah portion, braid two loaves and let them rise for about 45 minutes, then into the oven.  And assemble the kugel, chop what is needed for the soup, cut the salad ingredients, and prepare the chicken for either oven or stovetop.

All made about an hour before invitation time.  Set table to look like shabbos.  Clean table cloth.  Kiddush cups, stemmed wine cups, five piece utensils at each plate, cloth napkins.  Challah board with cover, sterling challah knife obtained years ago from a Hasidic shop on an infrequent visit to my hometown.  Usually four places, occasionally one or two more.  Always ample food.  And all served in dishes intended for serving.  A Challah tray with dedicated cover, soup in a white porcelain tureen, kugel unmolded onto a plate as is cake, entrée and vegetable on a platter.  A hint of elegance that people would not otherwise do for themselves.

It's an effort.  A protracted effort.  A gratifying effort.  It taps my imagination.  It exercises my executive skills:  planning, organizing, following through on individual steps, coordinating competing uses for oven, stovetop, and appliances, acquisition of ingredients, selecting utensils.  It challenges my energy.  In the end, it alleviates some of my post-retirement loneliness.  People come for conversation and enjoyment.  My efforts fulfill that.

Notifications

My typical morning, excluding shabbos, begins with a screen once the preliminaries of dental care, newspaper retrieval, and a k-cup brew have been completed.  Restrict Social Media appears on my Daily Task List essentially automatically.  And I really do limit my access, though from time to time I will concentrate on either FB or r/Judaism as a personal focus.  But once coffee has been placed within reach of my laptop in My Space, I seek my notifications.  There are five:  emails, FB, Reddit, Twitter now Rated X, and my stats on Medium Daily Digest.  There's a habit to this, though an ambivalent one.  As Loneliness becomes rampant, with our devices as prime villains, there is a certain irony to the first connection to other people each morning should come from how people responded to us on our screens. Designers of these platforms, including psychology majors, have as their business models the attention time to their offerings preferentially to competitors' options.  And they helped create Loneliness so they know which crumbs to toss to offer a very transient reprieve.

All five forums for me are a little different.  Email is by far the most important, though very few messages come from people I know or from organizations I asked to contact me.  Still, there is frequently something from my wife or financial advisor that needs action.  Some of the passive notifications I solicited indirectly, whether notifications from the synagogue, receipts for payments that I made electronically, subscriptions of various types.  And then there are the unwelcome, transferred to spam, deleted without opening, unsubscribed after opening, or more often than not, just not opened.  And on occasion I will also find a notification that somebody else on another forum responded to a comment I had made on that other platform.

Next most important, though probably expendable, is Facebook.  It has taken an ugly transformation in the fourteen years since I subscribed.  FB's initial attraction was to reconnect with old friends and relatives.  Being some forty years past HS graduation, there was a not entirely healthy curiosity about where the decades had taken the people I once interacted with daily in the classroom, school bus, or gym class.  Most volunteered what they were up to.  I became closer to some that first year on FB than I was in HS, even got to see a few.  After establishing about a hundred FB style quasi-Friends, the number of contacts atrophied one or two at a time.  The nominal connections are still there if I ask for my Friends List, but the number of people who post in a way that reaches my daily passive screen has dwindled to just a few.  It has been replaced by algorithms, computer matches which my own keyboard use helps generate, or a perhaps degenerate, which then post things people want to sell me, donations I might like to consider for either causes or candidates, or updates on my preferred teams.  The real people no longer offer short posts about their lives or what they do, other than photos of destinations they are visiting as they visit them.  Still, every morning I can count on an icon that appears designed after the Liberty Bell with a red number next to it.  Open the bell, and I will get a summary of who liked something I had posted or commented upon. In a world of mostly Zero Responses, these are rarely zero.  And the Likes or related emotions nearly all originate with somebody I know personally.  Moreover, somebody on occasion exchanges an idea.

My Reddit feed differs a bit.  Anonymity is built into the platform and it is moderated for propriety, usually successfully.  Like FB, it has a Liberty Bell with a number attached to it.  However, it is a more multifunctional bell than FB's.  It does not ding for each like, but instead milestones of likes:  5, 10. 25. 50. That's as high as I've gotten, though I'm confident others have gone viral with the bell reflecting that.  It notifies me in duplicate when anyone has verbally responded to a comment that I have made.  One number appears next to the bell with a link to take me to the faux conversation, another notification is directed to my email Inbox.  And then there are unsolicited rings of the bell, comments that their algorithm personalizes to me, thinking I might want to read them, though I am not a participant in that Subreddit.  The bell gives me two options, other than going to that conversation.  I can delete the comment, my most typical response.  Or I can ask for no more notifications from that entire Subreddit, which I also do less frequently.  And while my preferred destination is r/Judaism, when I log on I get a Home feed with a lot of other topics other than my personal subscriptions.  Depending on interest, I will respond to some, an invitation to more notifications from that group, even though I am not enrolled in it.

While I do not know anyone on Reddit by platform design, I am quite helpful to a lot of other posters seeking knowledge and experience.  People come testing the waters of Judaism.  They are attending synagogue for the first time, maybe have let their connection to Judaism become dormant and would like to revive it.  We have guests from the Christian and Islamic world who wish to pose a polite question.  Being helpful to somebody else is one of the best defenses to established Loneliness, something Reddit enables far more than any other forum to which I subscribe.  And in some ways the comments, which are not length restricted, can be developed into forms of conversation.

The most problematic forum is Twitter, that public cesspool of ideas which unfortunately also had people of real public influence present in some way.  There are not many ways to give feedback to a journalist, elected official, top executive, or major scholar.  All generate hundreds of responses.  I know almost nobody personally, though many by reputation and by their public presence.  Likes are few, maybe one every few days, and rarely from the person of public prominence.  What I find, though, is that somebody of obscurity will read my comment and opt to follow me further.  These people, when their profiles are accessed, will typically be following 4000 people but have under 100 who follow them.  By contrast, I follow 37 and have 34 who have chosen to follow me. I cannot think of a more overt identification of Loneliness than seeking anyone who comes along randomly while attractiven nobody else in return.  I almost never initiate a political post, mostly share something I've written on my feed.  I've also deleted many a public figure, including some who have the most to say.  The reason, they post something every ten minutes through their waking hours.  And it arrives in my feed as clutter, since they say pretty much the same predictable things for every one of those q ten minute posts.  As a result, my time of that forum is severely rationed.  My most common Follow is The Atlantic, to which I have a subscription, and most common comment is a response to an article I have read there.  Responses in return have been minimal.  

Finally, I self-publish fifteen or so articles each year on Medium, which comes across as a daily digest.  While a freeloader, I have a handful of people who subscribe to my feed, and a small handful of people who read what I have written, or at least open the article.  While never a lot, there is always a measure of gratification to contributing to somebody else's mind.  I do not know these people and get close to zero comments in return.  But it takes only moments each morning to check.

So knowing how I relate, or really how my mind relates to people known and unknown, has an allure that seems difficult to set aside, though I do set it aside for Shabbos every Saturday.  I'm part of cyberspace.  The magnates who control cyberspace want me as part of it, which is more than I can say for people I know in person or through organizations who have done their best to exclude me.  It does not take a lot to feel included.  Mostly a bell shape on a screen with a single digit in red next to it.

Mingling

Weekly planning usually occurs on Sunday mornings at my upstairs desk where I keep pens and highlighters of multiple colors.  Yontif postponed this session by until Monday, though I knew I had a special opportunity to assuage senior loneliness by immersing myself in different groups on consecutive days. 

1. Sunday: Simchat Torah Services at my synagogue
2. Monday: Platelet donation at Blood Bank
3. Tuesday:  OLLI Class
4. Wednesday: Philadelphia Endocrine Society
5. Thursday: Morning minyan at my synagogue
6. Friday: Two OLLI Classes
7. Saturday: Services at my synagogue

And toss in a flu shot at my pharmacy.

Mostly mixed result, colored perhaps by strains with people scripted differently than me about atrocities in Israel.  By I did my best to keep cordial and to interact, if not mingle.  Candid, not fully friendly comments are still forms of interaction, which is really the week's agenda.

Scorecard:

Simchat Torah experience somewhat above expectation.  Not a lot of me there, about 18 or so.  Hakafot shared with women, who were much less in number.  Songs selected by Cantor surpassed the Hebrew school ditties that I had come to expect.

Platelet donation proceeded smoothly.  Screening questions changed a bit.  My trip to France within the previous month did not disqualify me.  I watched Netflix home design show, actually four half-hour episodes.  No clogging of line, one minor reposition of needle.  Quick stop at canteen for my usual.  Afterward, stopped at Cabela's.  Saw nothing to buy.  Opted not to go out for lunch.

OLLI Class caused some friction.  I am not overly fond of the way the instructor presents the class.  Teaching us about "good people on both sides " amid asymmetric intentional atrocities while using the Muslim Brotherhood talking points did not reflect well on his intellect.  And his not well received analysis extended the class twenty minutes past closing time.  But I did make a YouTube Video of what I thought and he will not be happy with at least one of his student feedback reports.

Before driving to Philadelphia I had a very stimulating session at OLLI given by an expert.   I tried to extract more of his expertise at the end, creating some discord in the process.  But the Being with People initiative did not come until the end of the day.  I had not been to a Philadelphia Endocrine Society session live since Covid, and not at all in a couple of years.  I even did not pay my annual dues last year, but resumed this summer.  The live sessions had been reassigned to a less accessible location, but are now back to a place to which I am used to driving, as long as it is not very often.  My Waze App meant well, anticipating rush hour bottlenecks.  It tried to bypass one near my home by directing me north for two entrances to access the interstate.  Then manageable traffic.  Ordinarily it would take me to a main road that goes pretty much directly to my destination, though with a lot of traffic lights.  Instead, it exited me just past PHL Airport, directing me through some thoroughfares I do not remember ever driving on before.  I got to see the remotest of the PHL parking options and large swaths of the airport at its farthest reaches where private corporate and other non-airline jets take off and land.  Eventually return to the interstate, this time with a lot of other cars.  It took me to a highway divide where I had to change lanes on short notice, then through Philadelphia's Historical district, a place of very slim one-way streets, but at least in a recognizable grid. Got me to the parking garage where the gate failed.  After a few calls on the intercom, an employee let me in, providing me what would turn out to be a defective ticket trying to leave.

Not many people that I knew at the meeting.  A couple of old friends, friendly greetings to some new introductions.  Beverage server lives near me, taking the same roads and bottlenecks, so we had a short chat about that.  Outstanding lecture on hypoparathyroidism.

Route home by Waze also not what I expected.  Were I to commute by car to Center City, I'd probably get used to it, even in the dark for much of the year.  One time, I had to keep my attention focused on traffic, stopped delivery trucks, and some interstate access points that the civil engineers could have considered better, but once on the highway past a rather long and eerie on-ramp, getting home went smoothly.

Morning minyan takes place every Thursday at 9AM.  I was curious about who would go.  The usual suspects, those inner circle men and one other.  I was seven.  We got nine, but needed ten.  The new Rabbi really wanted to repeat the Amidah and read Torah that morning.  He summoned the lady in the kitchen, declaring it a fast day due to Israel atrocities and obviating her the task of making coffee or setting out donuts.  In its place she was placed in a sanctuary seat.  Then he repeated the Amidah, read Torah, did kaddish, all the parts that our tradition requires us to have ten men.  Nobody said anything.  At the end, the President asked me a few things about my trip to France, with another fellow joining in.  I had scheduled a flu vaccine that morning, so excused myself.

While I got to Walgreens in time for my appointment, the line at the pharmacy counter was long. The pharmacists and technicians seemed overwhelmed by volume, not only at the counter but also the drive-thru, and what was coming their way from online customers.  These folks were not trained by Disney MBAs who understand enough throughput to keep lines flowing.  My turn came, my deltoid got injected, and I roamed the aisles for the next fifteen minutes as the pharmacist had asked me to stay on site for safety.  Then home.  And a Zoom course on thermodynamics followed.

Friday morning I have two OLLI classes, the National Parks first, The Common Man to follow.  I made my own coffee, keeping it hot in a thermal mug given to me by a pharmaceutical company in the days when they gave doctors various reminders of which drug the companies wanted us to prescribe to the max. I got there just as the first presentation was to begin.  There is a half hour break between the two morning sessions.  I sat at a table for a while, sat on the patio for a while.  Did not mingle.

For shabbos morning the two casting directors assigned me two parts.  I would lead shacharit, which I do frequently.  And I would chant the Haftarah, an invitation that is rather infrequent.  I prepared the Prophetic portion to decent fluency.  The morning worship I do not prepare at all.  Instead, since I am already fluent, I select two tunes to insert that differ from what I had done the last time, usually the last two times.  And so I did.  Rabbi read Torah.  And when the Rabbi reads Torah, a congregant gives the sermon about the Torah portion.  Despite being a participant, I did not feel inspired.  A few handshakes along the way, mostly of a protocol variety.  Kiddush banter makes or breaks the morning experience.  I drove home broken.

When corporations and other employers try to boost morale and engagement of their staff, they take a number of approaches.  Look at the good our organization has done in its history would be one direction.  It seems to give a transient boost.  The strongest, though, comes from testimonials people receive as feedback for the benefits their personal efforts provided.  My congregation approaches zero.  There are influencers who matter and consumers who don't.  I'm a consumer.  I could say the same about the Endocrine Society.  As much as I enjoyed the session along with the minor adventure of driving each way, I wasn't a contributor.  But platelets, while often physically uncomfortable in the donation chair squeezing a rubber ball and watching Netflix, the people at the donor center are really appreciative of having donors who come on a regular basis.  I never see the platelet recipients, only sample pictures of kids on chemotherapy, but I know somebody somewhere is better off for the three hours between leaving my house and returning home.

While the intent was to be with people more than in most weeks, and I succeeded, those experiences mostly made me a taker.  The challenge is not only to be a person of genuine value, as platelet donors are, but to matter beyond the protocol handshakes.  I did in small ways.  Leading worship offered some thought and effort that made our synagogue a place where traditional services are executed by men of proficiency.  At the flu shot, I chatted with a lady behind me in line who may have been less lonely from the interaction.  I challenged the teachers at each of the OLLI sections. That might have advanced their perspectives on their subjects beyond what they would figure out for themselves.

So it is not so much inserting oneself into the herd as having that herd take a better form because they let me in it.  I think it did.

Meeting New People

Shabbos brought me to a different environment.  We have a secondary congregation, one which permits my wife and many other very talented women to enhance worship with their skills publicly displayed.  She usually goes alone, at one time leaving early to attend a pre-service class of outstanding quality with their now retired Rabbi.  His successor, a young man of immense potential, does not conduct a class before services so she gets to leave a little later.  I really did not want to be at my home congregation but I had stayed home the shabbos before.  Ordinarily my wife makes the 45-minute round trip alone, but this time I opted to go with her, driving each way, having lunch with her sister.  I even completed my scheduled treadmill session right after coffee, to allow enough travel time.

Sometimes you have to experience upwards.  If I want to enhance my wardrobe, I tour the upscale men's department.  If I want to upgrade my home, I visit a restored mansion.  And if I want to experience what shabbos might be at its best, I sidestep the Chief Influencer at my home congregation to be with different people.  Works every time.

The shabbos morning my wife seeks out is really a parallel service of a large USCJ congregation.  Over the years, the USCJ affiliates have struggled with their top-down leadership models.  They are still highly dependent on clergy for performance, abridgment of liturgy in response to congregational feedback or attendance data, and to some extent a need to have events, including a Bat Mitzvah this shabbos in the main sanctuary.  There is a grassroots, though.  There is also a large building with places other than the main sanctuary that have Torah scrolls and seating.  This congregation had that critical mass of talent intersecting interest, creating their unabridged, really less abridged, option.  And talent was on display.  No Rabbi.  No Cantor.  Each portion prepared and executed by a member of their subset minyan, all done expertly.

Having been there before, though infrequently, there were people I knew, though very few by name without a prompt from their congregational name tag worn by few, and virtually none as people with jobs, families, or avocations.  It is customary to shake hands with those who were honored or performed, which I did.  Roughly the same formality as shaking hands with my Senator, which I've done many times.  And the same formality of handshakes at my home congregation with people I do know.  It's protocol.  Occasionally sincerity, though usually protocol.  The service proceeded through its specified portions.  They gave me Aliyah #6, the longest one of that parsha, followed by the next longest, which kept me at the scroll for a while.  My wife did the Haftarah with great expertise.  The Sermon was by a congregant, some controversial content that a Rabbi would probably not tackle.  And the service ended.  Talesim folded.  Books returned to their shelves.

As we came in round tables with red tablecloths and chairs filled the kiddush area and extended out into the lobby.  A few sky blue tables where people could nibble while standing stood in small nooks at the edges of what the caterer had set up.  The main service had a bat mitzvah, with all in attendance invited for a buffet luncheon.  Making my way to their auditorium, as the main service and mine concluded at about the same time, I placed my maroon velvet tallis bag at one of the many empty spaces, the first at its table.  My wife put hers next to mine.  There were probably a couple of hundred worshipers that shabbos morning, maybe forty at my chapel, the rest in the main sanctuary.  The caterers were pros.  They set up multiple stations, three for serious eating, one for beverages, one for dessert, and one for ritual.  I started with kiddush, selecting about 30ml of grape juice, then washed hands, and took a slice of presliced challah.  The line to the food had begun to accumulate at all stations.  To promote community, the congregation created name tags for their members, kept in an alphabetized rack along the edge of the wall.  People with black lanyards and a tag were members, including the fellow behind me on the food line.  I commented on the elegance of what they had, the building, the volume of members, the diversity of ages of people present.  Very different from my usual surroundings with a forty seat chapel area and everyone on Medicare.  They had increased membership by a hundred or so households, mostly young families, attracted by their new Rabbi.  Kiddush food itself was actually very similar to what we serve on an expanded sponsored kiddush.  Bagels of different types, better than what we have locally. and pre-sliced.  Small portions in plastic of soft cream cheese, though no lox.  Fish bins with tuna and whitefish salads.  Egg salad.  Three salads, lettuce with beets, caprese, Caesar, all pre-dressed.  Roasted vegetables.  A sweet noodle kugel.  Two lines per table, Army style, moved quickly.  By the time I returned, the other seats at my table had occupants, also with full plates.  The two men next to me had suits without name tags.  Nobody with a name tag had a suit.  They were each guests of the Bat Mitzvah.  One lived in a different suburb, the other about a hundred miles to the west.  Both shared my awe with what we experienced before us.  After finishing my plate, which took a while, my wife escorted me to the dessert table where two people from our service were at an adjacent stand-up table.  She introduced me to them.  I had contacted one earlier in the week to offer a name for their misheberach list.  He had a car identical to my wife's, model and color, not sure about year.  He was apparently a journalist, an editor in the regional Jewish media.  Desserts not a lot different than at my home kiddush.  I took a cake and a brownie.  Then onward to my sister-in-law's.

Meeting new people often goes better as a visitor.  At my own place and at Chabad, I recognize everyone there most Shabbatot.  A few I keep my distance, a few I seek out for conversation.  Which depends pretty much on prior experience.  Few approach me.  Visitors are infrequent, and Rabbi has dibs on approaching them.  But as I relearned, different environments assemble different people.  Friday night on a cruise ship will invariably bring worshipers with their stories to tell, whether Messianics or couples from places where we share mutual acquaintances.  Visiting this synagogue brought me into proximity with some very skilled women who could thrive there but would be sent off to prepare kiddush at my place if the Women of Influence would tolerate unfamiliar women in the kitchen.  People had name tags, which could be an icebreaker.  Some people were dressed to the nines.  Those are Bar Mitzvah guests.  Small talk comes easily:  hometown, the food, relation to the hosts for the visitors.  For their regulars where I am the stranger, I become the figure of curiosity.  

Though I know everyone in my sanctuary, I often find it a place that makes the underlying loneliness so common to seniors more apparent.  People have already told their stories, watched the teams during the week, and don't often seem to do interesting things or have thoughts of anything really worth either an amusing or even an inquisitive response.  Not so when I worship among the less familiar.  I'll have to go again, next time as one of their volunteers.  And be more assertive to take better advantage of my own place's experience and people.

Shabbos Gourmet

For a number of reason's, I've included a target of three dinner guests per semi-annual cycle, and have done a good job fulfilling this. I like making dinner.  And it seems a decent way to address post-retirement loneliness.  I've been letting my wife select the guests, but a couple of times I have.  Dinner always becomes my challenge to execute.  It comes in several stages.  Menu first, largely now templated:

1. Kiddush with standard Kiddush wine
2. Motzi with two loaves of Challah that I make myself
3. Either an appetizer or a soup, recently the latter
4. A Salad
5. An Entree, typically poultry
6. A Starch, typically a kugel
7. A vegetable, always a fresh one
8. A dessert, nearly always a pareve cake
9. Beverage wine, in the $10 vicinity

And then I need to assess equipment.  Kiddush cups we use weekly and have extras.  For milchig dinners, rare, we have small stem glasses from previous wine tastings.  I make challah with a stand mixer and a granite pastry board.  The dough hook is a great convenience, but the last two seemed excessively kneaded.  I like the texture better when I knead it by hand.  It requires a large bowl to rise, then the second rise in its baking tray.  For Pesach I make chicken soup with real chicken, usually thighs which are the least expensive of the parts.  The meat can be harvested later for stir-fry.  And matzoh balls are a guest expectation.  However, for other soups I use premade commercial stock, chicken for meat meals, vegetable for dairy meals.  The soup's character comes from what else is added.  I've made fish soup, I've made Moroccan Harira, minestrone is versatile.  It requires a very big stock pot for chicken soup, the next size down for the others.  And except on Pesach, I serve it in a dedicated tureen for fleishig meals, a white porcelain bowl with matching ladle.  

Salad is sometimes highlighted by the vegetables, sometimes by the dressing.  Israeli salad, cucumber salad are staples.  With Asian dressing it is plain greens.  I have big bowls, metal, porcelain, and glass for fleishig, a wooden salad set obtained on a cruise for milchig.  And always with a dedicated salad fork and spoon set, of which I have a few.

The entree poses my greatest challenge.  I like to be adventuresome but not too adventuresome as this can be difficult to salvage once botched.  As much as I enjoyed Iraqi Tabyit made in a crockpot for myself using a whole chicken, the likelihood of error is too high.  For Thanksgiving and for Seder, reliable and easy is a half-turkey breast, coated with olive oil, then seasoned with whatever suits me that afternoon, placed in the oven about two hours before needed, removed at about 90 minutes, then carved with an electric knife, except on Pesach.  A whole chicken made in the manner of NY Times expert recipe always comes out flawlessly, and offers variations.  This requires a cast iron pan to make part of the chicken sizzle and keep the over very hot.  For chicken parts, I prefer cacciatore, easy to make, and allows me to use rice as the starch and presentation.  And something spicy, either Iraqi or Indian, always makes a good entree.  As much as I once like to make pot roast, the price and availability of suitable hunks of beef have prohibited this.

Kugel is mostly noodle.  I like Hasidic noodle kugel.  Rarely potato for guests.  Always matzoh kugel for Seder.  And sometimes barley kugel.  And for soppy poultry entrees, rice is better.

Vegetables vary largely by season, though I have staples.  Carrots are available, easy, and versatile.  They can be boiled, glazed, or seasoned Moroccan style.  Asparagus come on sale in the spring, so a staple of Seder.  Green beans have a season.  These are usually just boiled.  The bar mitzvah caterers add thinly sliced almonds but I don't.  I've made ratatouille, more trouble than it's worth.  And squash always works well, butternut in the fall which has many preparations, and zucchini or yellow squash in the warm months which is usually best sauteed.

Dessert nearly always requires an oven and some time to cool, so it is typically prepared while the challah is on its first rise.  Pareve can be a challenge.  Honey cake, apple cake, nut tortes, all classics.  While cheesecake and rugelach are also recognizably Jewish, they are dairy.  I've made baklava and strudel, each impressive, though each far more labor intensive due to the filo dough.

So that's what our shabbos guests can anticipate.

I can anticipate two days of washing fleishig dishes.  A stand mixer and two attachments.  Large pots, large bowls, oven worthy pans, a pastry board, a wooden cutting board, and utensils of all types.  Dinner plates, wine glasses, serving plates, kiddush cups.  Two days worth.  And satisfaction for an effort that always has something to show for it.

Worth the Fee

When I opted to let my medical licenses lapse, that rather large sum of $885 spread over two years would be allocated to immersing myself with other people, as post-retirement senior loneliness has taken hold.  I have forums for engagement, the synagogue where I have been more assertive about bantering at kiddush and OLLI where I randomly pick conversation partners, probably with less success.  None of this comes out of those savings, but are ordinary allocated expenses.  I might rejoin the regional Endocrine Society after a year's absence, if only to sit at a table with other doctors and exchange greetings with pharmaceutical representatives once a month. 

Next week I have the fiftieth anniversary of my college graduation.  Festivities for my landmark class have been arranged.  I knew very few people who RSVPd their intent to be there, yet there are a lot of people.  Cost $50 + parking and missing shabbos, though technically I could go to their Hillel that morning.  Maybe I will.  There are tours.  There is a luncheon, including a Kosher option.  And everyone there has at least one thing in common with me.  And it's immersion in a throng of the unfamiliar, something currently lacking.  Worth the effort.  Worth the fee.

Disposition Upturn

As I begin my endoscopy prep and anticipate Pesach, I've also noted a small upturn in my disposition, perhaps my demeanor as well.  I feel more connected, loneliness periodically interrupted with decent conversation.  Upcoming medical care guarantees some interaction, competing I think with the few minutes of anesthesia for the highlight of that day.  A few days after, I have my first annual meeting with the Delaware Community Foundation to review scholarships that they manage.  Synagogue, my common irritant, can go on hiatus.

As much as I like OLLI, I also take advantage of each semester's intercession, usually travelling somewhere.  I think I'll go fishing on the Cape Henlopen Pier unless the weather makes that ill-advised.  Beyond that, I have some 50th Anniversary college activities, then a few days on the West Coast.

My physical health seems on the upswing as well.  Arthritic symptoms not burdensome.  I miss very few treadmill sessions, with the duration and intensity mostly advancing with a few health related retreats.  I've incorporated an 8-minute daily stretching routine, following on my big screen in My Space at a reasonably set time every afternoon.  I don't feel more flexible, but keeping up with the schedule makes me feel a tad more accomplished.

Self-expression has not gone as well, at least in the public sphere, but I am starting to get more specific about dedicated sessions to pursue fragments of those Semiannual Goals that I set at the close of the last calendar year. 

So feeling more the way I'd like to feel.  7 Habits Physical, Emotional, Social spheres all better, Mental lagging behind slightly but remediable.

Boldness

It's the middle third of my semi-annual initiatives, that time when it is unclear whether to look at what was accomplished, what still needs to be accomplished, what can be accomplished, and what might be better abandoned.  I'm not ready to abandon any.  Some needs focus.  But some needs boldness.  I can make My Space what I envision it, but I need the boldness to articulate and exercise that vision.  There is a meeting time in my Urgent/Unimportant box that will get redirected to sitting in My Space with a clipboard as I swivel around the room and make a read plan for what the end point should be and how to best pursue it.  Europe will not happen this semi-annual cycle but I could access a travel agent.  Attention to wife has been less than projected.  That I can correct but need to be bold in defining and doing this.  Now have dates to visit daughter.  Can make airline reservations which affords commitment. Visiting son done by car, so more flexible.  Money, or my money is now part of a revocable trust.  House needs to be put in trust.  Not sure about wife's money.  And I have to pay the attorneys.  Some emails to financial advisor to complete this.

My respect for synagogue baalebatim has not been restored for good reason.  Approached the President on this.  Set up meeting.  Books should be completed this week.  I still expected to have guests for dinner but need to be bold about inviting them.  Pesach is good opportunity.  

I have been assertive about my health.  Taking medicine.  Exercising on schedule and starting to increase intensity.  Sleep tracker has helped with insomnia.  Lingering endoscopic studies on calendar.  Loneliness correction needs some boldness on my part to engage.  Give it a go with strangers when I visit another congregation for Megillah reading and with OLLI during the week.  Maybe go fishing if weather permits, though not yet important enough to declare a time to do this.

If I learned anything from the two audiobooks in progress, Get It Done and One Bold Move a Day, it's that my real goal of expressing myself, mostly in writing, is to attain a measure of recognition for doing it.  One of the authors struggled with this, declaring this her Unicorn Projects, the high end that could not happen without audacity.  Audacity added to my Daily Tasks, shoot for one a day.

While I want to get proficient in my kitchen, I need to make it physically functional.  Some of that is forced on my by Pesach, as is creation of menus and executing them amid a number of restraints.  Enhancing kitchen skills is a vague initiative, not fully a SMART goal.  Pesach gives it better definition.  Spare no effort on this.

Some has gone well.  Some really needs some assertiveness.  I think this week I'm ready.

Getting Out

Where might I go, or even want to go?  I've probably entered into that growing cohort of lonely people, seniors whose personal isolation jeopardizes their longevity.  It's been a slow slide with a few demarcation points.  Retirement, while planned, took its interpersonal toll.  At work I greeted many others every single day.  There was work, which itself was interactive, but there was also banter, along with ample solicited and unsolicited opportunities to make a statement directed to a recipient.  I didn't make the kind of friends I could really count on in a pinch, but many reliable acquaintances to exchange professional ideas and personal amusements.  Not that I avoided solitude.  My office had a door which I sometimes closed.  So did my car, which I always closed during the hour and a half each day it took to drive alone round trip between my home and the medical center.  I never felt abandoned, nor did I ever feel the need to seek out new people who came my way passively in significant numbers.  Yet there is a distinction between work colleagues and friends.  When I retired, as fond as I was of the people I got to know, I did not sense deprivation from their absences nor an insatiable need to replace the lost crowd.

After leaving the daily pageant of work, I did not have any fraternal organizations to continue social engagement, other than my synagogue which by then had designated me a talented outlier, more useful than important.  Participatory invitations reflected that, though it long predated my retirement.  Instead, I booked a cruise, my first trip to Europe.  This is also not where one nurtures friends though for one glorious week and a few adjacent days, I had people all around.  Dinner had a fixed group of diners from places that I would never expect to visit.  Tours had buses and guides and lines.  Pools had people of interest in the water and on the chaises.  Glorious but short-lived.  And preceding and following, I would not have described myself as socially deprived, let alone clinically lonely.  

More enduring was the state University's Senior Division.  I enrolled my second semester of eligibility.  In selecting classes, I intentionally spanned the midday break, responding by taking my lunch and a large insulated mug of coffee to sip periodically.  Classrooms were full.  Some of my selections involved writing and critiquing which assured interaction.  But the real benefit to seniors took place outside the classroom.  People populated the lounges between classes, sitting wherever an open chair became available.  We all wore name tags, which enabled conversation, typically about our classes, but sometimes about our avocations.  People ate in the cafeteria, sitting at round tables, sometimes with friends, but sometimes with unknown people who needed an empty space.  And my classes were never cavernous lectures, though special guest lectures could be, so the instructor could be interrupted for a question or comment with some frequency as the class proceeded.

Covid completely undermined the many opportunities for me to wedge myself amid other people.  Those classes just stopped, cancelled by the university.  In person synagogue activities abruptly disappeared.  Those still employed at my medical center had ample numbers of people, many quite ill, but with physical barriers between people not at all conducive to chat, were that even possible amid the volume of sick patients.  My senior medical group, a rewarding source of monthly camaraderie, cancelled its live sessions in favor of Zoom classes.  Probably for the first time, I felt alone.  My car took a daily directed journey once or twice a day circling a few different routes, typically past shopping centers which were open.  I would stop at a WaWa for coffee or occasional soda, only available To Go,  even when the desire to exit my car exceeded any need for something liquid.  The supermarket got visited more frequently for a quick tour, beyond the periodic shopping that I actually needed.  Trader Joe's, my secondary grocer, established limited access which would invariably generate a significant queue.  Sometimes I would put myself on that line mainly to be amid others for twenty minutes followed by a few purchases inside. While those exits from the house became my most sought after daily activities, screens dominated by far, whether social media or my TV or even learning something new on my own.  A sense of loneliness did not happen right away, though.  There were major organizations now sponsoring national and international interviews with public figures or other experts whose stature would previously have made them unavailable to me.  So I took advantage, taking a measure of delight, even, when my name was mentioned by the moderator as the person who submitted a chosen question to the person being interviewed.  I didn't perceive these as loneliness, perhaps, because as a nobody the CEO of an international organization would never invite me to be personally present for a fee I would be willing to pay.

Zoom for things that I would have preferred personal presence greatly changed my perception of where I really desired to be.  Synagogue activities where spontaneity previously enhanced the event, whether committee meeting or class, became more programmed.  And the university senior division's Zoom compensation largely failed its intended purpose of keeping retirees at the top potential.  We had classes, many executed quite well, but once attendance exceeded 20, protocol took over.  No longer could a listener question a teacher's comment in real time, but had to submit the question in a chat box to be conveyed by a class monitor later.  PowerPoint edged out discussion.  Most importantly, there were no chairs in a lounge or round tables in a cafeteria, walks from the parking lot, or even interactive time of any format between classes.  It became very much like watching TV, largely talking heads without any of the sophisticated video documentary re-enactment of modern streaming TV.  Zoom was efficient but not at all equivalent.

Vaccines came, mortality dropped, face mask barriers became largely optional and discarded.  Classrooms sort of reopened, though my medical group of late career physicians did not return.  Worship resumed.  Yet restoration of what was never came.  My classes sometimes had a lot of people, mostly few in person.  Zoom allowed me to take classes from very good teachers who lived 100 miles away, but not to drink coffee with them.  Gathering places, from coffee shops to regional malls gave way to making coffee in the Keurig machine and purchasing worldly goods on Amazon.  And those grand lectures and interviews with movers and shakers, the centerpiece of early covid, have largely served their purpose while the sponsoring organizations harvested my email address acquired in signing on with repurposing for soliciting funds.

That leaves me, and no doubt many others, with fewer hands to shake, fewer people to react to dumb quips, and if longevity research is accurate, few additional years than we might have otherwise had.

Immersed with Others

My personal interactions have seriously atrophied, maybe even dangerously atrophied.  Partly retirement which took me out of circulation, but not exclusively.  Covid isolation made a significant contribution.  While OLLI and much of the rest of the world compensated with Zoom offerings, introducing some outstanding exposure to people of professional prominence not previously available to me, they could not duplicate those personal interactions that occur in the lounge sipping coffee.  As our masks got set aside, other people became better able to venture in public places, though not yet returning to baseline.  

With this paucity of personal contacts, made worse by not only excessive screen time but by the moguls of cyberspace interactions and idea exchange who devalued our need to connect in a meaningful way to sell us things instead, I am very much among the many who recognize isolation, loneliness, and languishing.  While FB brings me to Friends, some real, some an illusion, I signed myself off for the month of July to escape much of its toxicity.  As I return in a more cautious way a month later, the distribution and frequency of who posts what, or at least what their algorithm approves for my passive feed, has not changed in a noticeable way.  I had one real meeting with one real friend in NYC that month after paying long overdue respect for people to whom I was once close at a cemetery just outside the city.  Visited my son and daughter-in-law.  A few real chats competing with screens, along with a shabbos morning at Tree of Life Synagogue's current reality.  Shared remembrance of one of the victims with the congregational president was my only meaningful personal interaction that morning.  And my synagogue, which should be my principle weekly outlet of personal contact, has largely trivialized it with its perfunctory "good shabbos, nice tie" as the surrogate for floating ideas about Judaism or about events of the days that preceded shabbos.  

This past week I selected my OLLI courses using their new flat fee, unlimited course registration format.  I targeted only classes that meet in person without a Zoom alternative, making an exception for one half-term course given from downstate by an instructor who did an ace job last time.  Talking heads gone.  What has not returned post-pandemic, though, seems to be those small in-person discussion based sessions, limited to an enrollment of under twenty.  

Could I even retain the skill now to immerse myself with others, particularly strangers?  That got tested yesterday, demonstrating that not only I could but that it restored a personal feeling of having meaning.  I volunteered to check people into on-site OLLI registration, even though I really didn't know how.  This being the final day, nobody showed up, which left me with two other volunteers.  We talked about OLLI, food, inflation, doctors.  All the things that would have made chat in the OLLI lounge between classes, and hopefully still can as on-site enrollment ticks upwards.

Then I went to Sprouts, not my usual store but the best option for premium produce.  For practical reasons I checked out in the line with a cashier.  It had been my custom when shopping in large places to opt for self-checkout where there is usually no wait and I sense control that I don't have to defer to a cashier.  But this time, having somebody else do this, even if the only interaction was to tell me the total, seemed preferable to being totally on my own.

After a couple of months away from the Blood Donor center due to a setback in eligibility, I self-treated the problem while I await formal medical care for it and wanted to see how successfully I did this. Over the years, few things have given me more satisfaction than my periodic platelet donations.  In addition to benefiting somebody I will never meet, since retirement this has become among my most reliable social interactions, even if limited to 6-8 week intervals.  Each time I am greeted, then interviewed, and if my Hb> 13g/dl I am taken to a reclining chair where ladies, or rarely a gentleman, insert two IVs, takes samples to assure safety and future eligibility, then leaves me alone to watch Netflix with occasional returns to check my progress or reset their collection device when an alert appears.  I've done this frequently enough that some of the veteran RN's know me by name and face.

I passed screening this time.  IV's inserted, Queer Eye video started, but afferent IV failed.  Donation aborted, as they are only permitted to reposition an aberrant IV line, not repuncture the skin.  Still I had a pleasant few minutes in the post-donation canteen with some diet Sierra Mist and two chocolate chip cookies served by that room's volunteer.  I could have gone to Costco's or Cabela's instead but decided to just go home.  Having left my cell phone in the car for the donation, which also serves me as an escape from being reached or being lured to cyberspace, I returned to my car to find a message from the last remaining first cousin with whom I maintain contact.

We mostly share my late father as our common bond.  He lives in Florida now, not far from Dad's resting place which I'd like to visit not too many months in the future.  Modern cars now allow me to talk safely with the cell phone via audio boost from the car, so once in the optimal lane on the highway, I returned his call, really needing only a finger or two to do this.  We spoke about platelets, our doctors, his intraocular injections, retirement activities, general chat that too often eludes me.  We agreed to do our best to get together when I travel there, which gives me a significant incentive to complete my airline and hotel reservations, starting with specific dates.

Our Torah text begins with a lot of It Was Goods.  There aren't too many It Was Not Goods, being alone perhaps the most famous of the few.  While I cannot realistically return myself to a daily pageant of circulating among throngs, I can reduce screen time, be more personally assertive when OLLI resumes next month, target a new place to be with people I've not met before each week, or make an effort to invite myself onto the blood donor schedule as my eligibility allows.  As my home reaches its suitability to entertain guests, I can be more consistent with invitations.  Being back in circulation in a serious way yesterday, after a substantial absence, reinforced the benefits of this, and its personal importance.

On a Down Cycle

As much as I like driving to no particular place by myself or typing on the keyboard in My Space, these are fundamentally isolating activities.  It's now been a month since interacting on FB, which added to the isolation despite many benefits of not being there.  In Pittsburgh the morning at Tree of Life followed by a stroll inside the Pitt main campus brought me in contact with others for a short time.  Despite family gathering as the purpose for traveling there, I spent most of the time horizontal in their guest room.  

Since returning home, I've not felt badly, though not particularly well.  A heat wave has minimized time outside my house.  

Some reversal of this down cycle seems imminent.  Out for breakfast, not that I'm hungry, just want to go out.  Need some medical care which should prod me out of the house in the coming week.  Want to take next beach trip, which doesn't generate a lot of interaction but puts me in a small crowd.  Mostly leave house to appear in public.

Exploring Loneliness

As Me Cheshvan's inward focus continues to go well, a serious accomplishment of something I might have otherwise piddled every day, it's only partially satisfying.  An element of loneliness has crept in, brought into awareness by its exceptions.  I had a great time at Chabad for Simchat Torah, had meals with old friends three times.  All were real connections.  Far more are the illusion of connection, which may explain at least in part my inner hostility to my own synagogue, though they mean me no harm.  I think they betray their logo: Embracing-Engaging-Enriching.  Yes that's what I seek, probably a lot of people seek, but a logo doesn't deliver.  As I score poorly on the UCLA Loneliness scale in its original and revised versions, and as those times of real conversation with old friends begin to stand out, I need to look beyond a Jewish month devoted to myself, for good reason, and decide where my authentic social connections will be.