Next High Holy Days

The Holy Days are my demarcation point, or more accurate part of a larger demarcation point, the transition from summer to fall.  It's a change from a few months with few appointments to the remainder of the calendar year with many.  OLLI, Yom Tovim, doctors appointments, football games I want to watch, all needing me to be in a place at a set time.  This year all begin within proximity of my grand experience in Europe, OLLI and football while away, Holy Days and Doctors on return.

I'm not terribly enthused about what awaits.  I opted to sit out AKSE's High Holiday Honors program for the second consecutive year.  There have been incidents in which I cannot frame the encounters other than having been treated poorly by people of influence.  I never thought I would report one of these encounters to their President in the way I would fill out an incident report for the ADL or my medical center, but I did.  But I also took the view that I will not use hurtful speech in response.  I will withhold money, which is my response for opting out of their High Holy Day honors, with this year's invitation a lot more expensive activity than an Ark Opening.  I am the YK Torah reader again and should be in optimal form.

Ordinarily I focus more on food and on guests.  Daughter coming for YK, though after shabbos dinner.  Very simple prefast dinner.  For YK I like to make my own round challah.  OLLI classes in the morning make this unrealistic but I can make a honey cake.  There are elaborate recipes that challenge me, but with more restricted time, a simple one this year.  Wife does the rice kugel as her annual contribution to our festive table.  I make carrots, though Mesorah Heritage Foundation sent me a card with blessings for other traditions like beets and cabbage.  Carrots are easy.  I found an economical porgy, so this year a whole fish with its head on and eyes inviting us to eat it.  And a simple chicken.  Also found a Tabachnick's chicken soup with noodles that can be warmed in boiling water.  And shabbos style baked chicken breast and purchased round challah.  So it will be a full festive meal, though less my effort than other years.

I've not yet unpacked my main suitcase after two full days home.  Do this while honey cake bakes.  And usually for RH I put some effort into appearance.  Suit first day.  Sports coat second day.  Nice shoes, polished.  White kippot.  Beard trimmed, hair groomed, nails filed.  But still tacky smartwatch not really suitable for shabbos.  Maybe I'll wear one with a dial instead.

The Holy Days, while officially ten, really extend most of the month of Tishrei.  We have a command to be happy on Sukkot, and I try.  The time for guests to come and this year to be somebody else's guest.  Effort into constructing and decorating the Sukkah.  Some pageantry of the Lulav.  The season typically ends on a more satisfying note than it begins.  

And by then I've learned things at OLLI and know how my team's seasons are likely to play out.

Agendas to Pitch

Reviewing next semester's course list for the upcoming Osher Institute.  I typically enroll in four.  By now I have my favorite teachers whose offerings get preference, though the attractiveness of the subject matters.  And I basically excluded all On-Demand offerings which I will likely never watch.  And a class that is live with people in the room has an advantage over those I would have to watch on a screen, though a particularly good subject or revered instruction who has shown his quality consistency would remain among the possibilities.

This semester the Yom Tovim are Sat-Sun so all weekdays are acceptable.  I will be traveling the first week, so classes that only appear for the first half are better excluded.

By now I've almost completed my first class by class assessment of what is offered, writing each one of interest on a grid labelled M-F Across and Early AM/Late AM/Early PM Down.  No late PM this time.

And I've pretty much nixed any course where I think the instructor has a personal or political agenda to pitch.  There are quite a lot of those.  I think of myself as a good person, sensitive to women, people of color, people with special needs.  But I also wonder a bit about instructors who nurse the victimhood of these people and use the OLLI forum to do this.  There is something not quite right about disparaging a slave holding Jefferson when everyone in his position did the same while diminishing the achievements as a creative thinker that nobody else duplicated.  I really do want to use my limited four courses to hear about how fundamentally successful people like myself, obtained partly through fortune and partly through diligence, oppressed everyone else.  I understand why the people seeking my vote score electoral points affirming that the mainstream is male, white, Christian, cis.  There has to be a commitment to moving everyone else upward, and I think there is, but I really don't want my limited class time pitching an agenda of my responsibility for everyone else's circumstances.  And there are a lot of those sessions.  No feminism advocates, woke, CRT, anti-Semitism, or born again advocacy or any other soapboxes for me this semester.  Instead, enjoy some science, become better at expressing myself, learn some history, explore parts of the world that I probably won't get to see personally.

I really only have about four selections from a very long list of possible classes.

Chol HaMoed

Awkward Pesach Schedule this year.  Th-F-Sa yontif-shabbos, then Su-M-T window for some work, then W-Th yontiff.  Within that window I have to write a presentation that sort of depends on maybe a form of activation energy to get started but once in place it moves ahead.  The initial catalyst has been slow in appearing, but that's the focus of this three day stretch.  And once done, it's done.  Gardening is not appropriate to the Intermediate Days, but keeping what is already planted alive probably is.  So is packing things only used the first two days of yontif, like Seder designated items or my oversized soup pot.  In the middle I have my BD, a yontif event with a Torah reading to do and a sort of festive meal to arrange.

Taxes need signing and delivery of authorization to file returned to our CPA.  And an OLLI schedule selected to be minimally impacted by Pesach, but with superimposed endoscopy, I missed more sessions than anticipated.  But only one scheduled during Chol HaMoed itself, which I should be able to attend.

I've depended on Pesach more than I should to serve as a mood demarcation point.  I have some very tangible things to do like cleaning, changing dishes, challenging meal preparation, some AKSE activities, this year my birthday, sometimes tax filing.  I've not gotten that elevation this year, that inner accomplishment, despite feeling as well physically as I have in a while.  Perhaps I just need a relatively big achievement, starting with my presentation, then expanding to bigger.  

New OLLI Catalog

Within a week of the last semester's conclusion, the course catalog for the spring session has already become available online.  They won't accept registration for a while, though.  First the calendar.  Spring Break the last week of March.  Pesach yom tovim put me out of commission on consecutive Thursdays following the Break.  I also anticipate endoscopic studies the Tuesday before the Break.  So Thursday classes probably best skipped this semester, unless really compelling.

By now I have my favorite teachers, those people who always engage my mind and prompt me to expand with a question.  Sometimes I will opt for those courses even if there are other subjects of more interest.  I've learned to avoid instructors or classes with aggregate lecturers where I think agendas are being pitched.  Surprising number of these.  OLLI does not have a good way of flagging them, and even if they did there are people who want to sit in those echo chambers so they can nod their head with each Power Point.  I had my share of those classes, anticipate what they are likely to be, and register for something else. 

I am willing to take classes early in the morning, before the lunch break, and after the lunch break, though not a late afternoon class or a Friday class after the lunch break.  On Friday's they will often have a noon speaker.  Recently they have been on Zoom.  And late Friday afternoon, also on Zoom, they have some quasi social Zoom events.  I am willing to look at my screen.

For the actual classes, though, I much prefer in person.  People of my age, the post-retirement but not quite End of Life cohort, really do better when we are around people.

So a leisurely review of available in-person classes will get undertaken shortly. 

OLLI Selections

OLLI Course selection week.  The fall semester has its challenges.  Yom Tovim cluster on Monday-Tuesday this semester with Yom Kippur on a Wednesday, so my classes will need to meet W-R-F.  That eliminates a lot.  Instead of a registration fee and a separate fee per class, they consolidated tuition to a single lump payment which allows up to five classes.  I intend either three or four.  

Most importantly, the purpose of OLLI, high priority for most seniors, is to have people interact.  They just got too complacent with Zoom offerings, which dominate.  Those are fine for connecting New Castle County to downstate Delaware, but as I go through the catalog, I am selecting out only those that meet in person.  It is my intent to take at least two of those, maybe three or all four.  I would consider two of these on the same day to encourage me to take an interclass snack to eat there.

I made a grid of class times.  Using only in-person classes, I have enough.  And not to exclude Zoom entirely if there is something I might particularly want, particularly one held downstate.  But after looking over the catalog I designate immersing myself with other people the highest objective.

OLLI Intercession

I hoped it would have been a custom to use about half the week of each OLLI intercession for a small respite someplace else.  Covid undermined that the last two semesters.  I cannot even remember what I did instead during those two breaks from class.  This semester brought more possibilities.  I had cancelled a vacation to the Everglades at the peak of the last infection surge.  Maybe now.  My son and daughter-in-law now live in driving range.  I could visit them while enjoying Pittsburgh, where I've never really been beyond minor transit needs.  So I checked which week.  Alas, it coincides with Pesach.  No travel.

For OLLI it makes very good sense to select that as the transition week, irrespective of what else appears on public calendars.  As the curriculum goes to a Zoom format, there is are five and eleven week sessions. This week falls between the two fives.  As a medical student at the Jesuit SLU, the undergraduate campus had their spring hiatus based on a calendar to have it fall in mid-March, much like other universities in America.  The medical campus, though, followed a different calendar, selecting the Catholic Holy Days as the week off.  As a useful consequence, I don't think I ever attended Seder in St. Louis, though I have made arrangements to eat at WashU Hillel for the later days of Pesach.

Now that I know the OLLI calendar, what might I do instead of travel?  OLLI classes do not really absorb that much time, about four hours a week, roughly what one undergraduate class would comprise.  There is not much effort outside the class times, at least not by full-time university standards.  When classes met on campus, I would take two sessions on a single day, staying on site between classes.  This added time devoted to the OLLI experience, though very worthwhile socialization time.  And I had to travel round trip to do this.  So Zoom OLLI comprises a fraction of the time commitment of campus OLLI.  Even if I could take a trip for OLLI's off week, just getting to any desired destination would exceed the time I actually spend with the Lifelong Learning program.

Instead of a novel experience, this year's OLLI suspension  brings me parts of the familiar, maybe a few parts innovative, just as Pesach should be.

Late Life College Mindset

While driving to a doctor's appointment, a top tier cardiologist who I had not seen in a year, I wondered how she would approach me in conversation.  Coronavirus had kept her and her group underworked for months but retirement has kept me underworked for just shy of two years.  How do I cope with not having to show up for work or not having the income that I once did?  As I pondered this while driving safely on the day that coronavirus restrictions were first lifted in a serious way, I saw stores that looked open, though not the ones I typically entered.  The medical building also appeared largely empty.  Yet other than missing my anticipated spring break trip and postponement of my son's wedding, I did not live very differently during the restrictions.  I dined out barely at all, gave up coffee other than made at home, minimized shopping, kept shabbos and yontiff someplace other than shul and really missed none of this.

In effect I had become almost a facsimile of the college student I never really had the chance to be, one with some discretionary money, not burdened by exams or lab courses or grades that will direct my future.  As soon as I retired I created My Space with nice desk, a big screen TV, and a stereo, though with CD player replacing the turntable.  I read books, take courses at OLLI, have a paper due each month for Medscape.  I could eat out when I wanted, had a car to take me where I wanted, spend a little extra on coffee or beer.  I exercised more, took a break when I wanted, read more, expressed an ambivalence for shul by sometimes going voluntarily, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes not at all, rarely enthusiastically.  My Space not only exists and functions, but it is largely personalized with some mementos in my line of sight, good lighting directed where I want it, a white board to my left with multicolored writing to inspire me.  In effect a freedom that arrives late in adulthood, sacrificed for other things more out of fear than greed early in adulthood.

I had to declare a major then, some area of expertise to master.  Now I don't.  I've already mastered a few things, probably more than most college students will in their declared major.  Eventually my classes will resume.  For now it's the eclectic upgrading my mind, socializing more in cyberspace than in person, and with the resources of time and funds to use late adulthood to my best gratification.

New Treadmill Landmark

In the past, when I set up my semi-annual projects each June and December, I include a Health category.  As Covid-19 spreads globally, as physicians ramp into dedicated fireman mode and regain some of the public respect that had atrophied, maintaining health has come into better focus amid the threat.  Traditionally I have included a weight target, typically 155 lb or just under a 10 lb reduction.  While this would categorize as a SMART goal, it has failed to materialize over enough half-years that I changed the metric this cycle in the hope of making it more Attainable.  Instead of the end point being weight, it has become treadmill setting:  duration 25 minutes, speed 3.5 mph, incline 3%.  Except for speed, I made it with months to spare.  And I feel generally good having done this, despite an ingrained yetzer haRa that creates a variety of excuses for skipping a session.  With Covid-19 restrictions which have eliminated OLLI attendance, my main competitor for treadmill time and energy, I'm walking on pace as scheduled.  There are other impediments, mainly recurrent lumbar pain which has prevented being on the treadmill first thing in the morning but by mid-morning that excuse has evaporated.  My legs seem to tolerate the time extension.  My breathing has not been a barrier at all and there has been no hint of angina.  And with the progress has been the psyche boost of measurable accomplishment.  I could use that psyche boost.

Fishing Season Initiatives

Thus far my cumulative catch totals zero.  Not that I plan to dine on anything I extract from the local waterways if my skill improves, but I have enjoyed the quiet time outdoors, advice from other fisherman nearby, and advancing skill for which there is little doubt.

While between classes at OLLI, I tied my first successful nail knot, using a straw from WaWa snipped into a small segment.  My dexterity and close vision leave a lot to be desired so I connected two shoelaces, though if I can keep track of which nylon monofilament connects to the reel and which connects to the hook, I can probably do this with real line in the very near future.

My equipment does not need replenishing.  I have an ultralight rod and standard rod, each with spinning reel, though the ultralight green one could use some minor duct tape to hold a slipping line guide.  My lines coil when casted, likely a consequence of never replacing them and storing on the reels for extended times.  I have a fly kit, even have waders, thus the desire to master the nail knot and the blood knot.  I have a standard rod with casting reel, one that backlashes with each attempted cast.  A skill worth improving.  I do not have salt water gear.  A macho looking rod and reel for this would run about $100.  And I like driving downstate to the Indian River Inlet which attracts many anglers, but some of them have mid-sized pond rods.  Ample variety of hooks, lures, weights, bobbers.  My State Park card is permanent and my age no longer requires a state license.  Ready to resume once the days warm up a bit to where I am comfortable and the fish become less selective about what looks like food.  Very soon.

Back to School

Across the USA there are branches of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, acronym OLLI.  University of Delaware has one, which my wife has attended since her retirement.  I've been there for some of their concerts, enthusiastic people, age distribution about what my shul has on shabbos morning.  While my mind was not exactly fallow early into my retirement, having read some books and written some essays, I should challenge it in a more formal way, so I will register for OLLI's coming semester.

The catalog appeared online this week.  I jotted down what interested me, then since each course meets only weekly, I made a time grid and transferred my selections to that.  It was my intent to enroll in three, spread over two days, though I might do four as there are two at different times that stand above the others and I do not want to make a special trip for one.  Applications next.  Some courses are limited in capacity, one requires pre-existing expertise for which I think I qualify, though the instructor may not.  Fill out the applications next week.