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.

My Personal Museum

Mice have taken up refuge in our basement.  Each time we have the heater serviced, the technician finds about have a dozen carcasses behind one of the pipes, which we send to a mass grave at the public landfill.  We do not know how they get there.  The annual visit from the termite preventer includes some guidance at control as well.  We place a few spring traps that never get activated, some warfarin that may or not provide lethal intervention when they return outside, but the population seems constant.  A tour of the basement indicates that the rodents like to stay warm near the heater as their terminal event, but they have a more free range into the nooks and crannies where I have not been, and onto some of the benches and shelves where I have been.  The exterminator's suggestion, which makes sense for a lot of reasons:  rid the house of cardboard boxes where things are stored. 

When I moved from St. Louis for the final time, I boxed all my possessions, shipped them by UPS which had limits on how much I could ship to one address so I used three, then gathered them all into my father's basement in Monsey.  They eventually found their way into my basement, unopened since 1977.  They have occupied a far wall in the basement, the best starting point for the decluttering project.

There is a grander purpose, of course.  We tend to be hoarders, a notch or two below the pathological ones of reality TV but enough so that none of our living spaces have an open look.  Many a semi-annual plan has called for decluttering but never materializes.  This time it might but we need to start with by tossing stuff that has no justification for retaining.  Rodent habitats seem like a good way to begin.  And so I schlepped about eight boxes from the far wall of the basement to the two bins sitting in front of the garage door, one dedicated to recycling, the other for the landfill.  Most of the boxes contained my school notes and term papers, largely from high school a few from medical school.  There were favorable comments and critical comments, some in red ink, some in black ink with grades ranging from A- to C.  The high school stuff had report covers so that went into the trash, the notes did not, so those went into recycling.  As my prime productive years have come and gone without accumulating the fame that would give these auction value, none were saved for Christies.  One exception, though.  Part of a single box contained my Bar Mitzvah mementos, unfortunately including a few Thank You notes that never found their way to the mailbox.  Postage was apparently 5 cents in those days.  There was a check with my mother's signature to the synagogue that never went out and three kippot with my name stamped in gold.   A few photos were retained, all in good condition except for one nibbled around the edges.  There were thank you notes and photos from friends' Bnai Mitzvah and an invitation to an aunt's 50th anniversary celebration.  Those do not need auction value.  All fit into a very small box which I tucked away next to my desk in a living room nook.  At my father's shiva, my stepmother handed me some photos, mostly from the World War II era.  The contents of that Bar Mitzvah era box should get similarly distributed at my shiva.

Everyone has to deal with a past, present and future.  High school certainly has some lasting fondness.  Rediscovering some of those people on Facebook and seeing others at periodic reunions should suffice, or at least turn past into present.  I do not need to keep the old term papers in my possession, particularly hidden possession.  The present and hopefully near future will include less cluttered living space with some selectivity over what is left on display.  Even the Smithsonian is selective.

High Holy Day Prep

Yesterday I started learning the first three Aliyot of the Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashana.  I've done it before, though not in many years so I am rusty at it.  Then again, it is only half a column so I should be able to learn it my next week which gives me two additional weeks to polish it.  The three days plus YK mincha readings have been divided and for the most part the haftarot are recycled from year to year.  Nobody has to work especially hard and nobody has to challenge their capacity.  I've always been uneasy with that approach but it gets the slots of the schedule filled.  It does not create a setting where high level of skill is pursued or even valued, as it wouldn't get utilized even if available.  All the readers are my contemporaries or their teenage children, with a new slot opening up every couple of years when somebody goes off to college or a senior person decides to spend the Holy Days on a cruise ship.

People get their impression of the synagogue from those few days.  Beth Shalom, the United Synagogue affiliate, puts a lot of capital into showing patrons a good experience.  People come in their best suits, machers get aliyot and pat each other on the back on the Bimah, kids are showcased and clergy contract terms reviewed relative to congregational feedback.  At AKSE we are a little more laid back as a larger fraction of our membership shows up at other times during the year.  Still, we offered free entrance for our Rabbi's first year in the  hope that the experience would increase traffic, which it did, and paid membership, which it did not.

As a youngster attending the Community Synagogue of Monsey, Mr. Zeisel, my friend Howie's dad, took me aside and invited me to return for shabbos.  He predicted that I would find the Saturday morning experience of more spontaneity and less showmanship more to my liking and give me a better introduction to what living in a Jewish manner was really about.  He was right, of course, though the message has been difficult to convey.