Cancelled Classes

Each Sunday morning I write my week's fixed appointments on a magnetized whiteboard, as does my wife.  A look at the refrigerator door enables us to coordinate our flexible time activities.  In the right margin, we write upcoming appointments to be transferred to the weekly list when the events arise.  Events are often repetitive.  Choral rehearsals for my wife.  Obligations at the synagogue, from monthly board meetings to tasks on the bimah for shabbos.  Doctors' appointments are few.  We each take full class schedules at the regional Osher Institute, three days each.  And I enrolled in a monthly session from the Rabbi at synagogue.  Few days have no entry on the weekly whiteboard.  Moreover, we have our routines that recur without an entry.  I exercise and stretch on a reasonably fixed schedule, was dishes at predictable times, prepare and eat dinner.  My wife lights shabbos candles and we recite kiddush with shabbos dinner in season or separately when Daylight Savings Time moves the onset of shabbos much past our usual suppertime.  I read my NEJM articles at set times and plan my next day in My Space after supper most nights.  No reason to coordinate these.  Cluttering the whiteboard with too many things reduces its value.

During the school year, our classes dominate the weekly list of places we have to be at specified times.  This week looked especially full.  My monthly expense review got delayed a day by yontif Pesach.  Classes with Osher and the Rabbi.  Interviews of scholarship candidates.  A yahrtzeit for my wife, where I am needed to help make the minyan that enables her to recite Kaddish.  A day trip on Thursday. So it came as a welcome surprise when the Rabbi and an Osher instructor cancelled classes for Tuesday night and Wednesday morning respectively.  Fixed obligations suddenly became flexible time.  Free time and flexible time differ in productivity expectations.  Opening Tuesday night and Wednesday morning creates an unexpected block of opportunity to insert what I ought to do, perhaps more important than scheduled activity.  

I had wanted to try out the new pizza place nearby.  My wife and I registered at the front register twice, leaving when the hostess informed us of an unacceptable one hour wait.  I had anticipated no free suppertimes this week, but cancellation of the class brought opportunity.  Not having supper plans, we headed there early, finding the half hour wait acceptable.  Parking lot still full, most tables already occupied by our 5:30PM check-in.  Eventually seated.  Served a unique pizza not available elsewhere.  I understood its pre-opening hype and large crowds despite its recent opening and early service glitches.

My Wednesday morning class at the OLLI site at 9AM followed by a second class would have forced me into my treadmill session a half hour before my customary time.  When I step on at 8:15AM I achieve a rhythm hard to duplicate at the earlier time.  Because I am likely to find some excuse to skip this exercise session, I have disciplined myself to do it before I leave home in the morning, even when inconvenient.  The cancelled class allows me on the treadmill at my optimal time.  It also enables some quiet time, just me and my keyboard that an early class would have pre-empted.  This newly captured block of time did not go to trivial social media or YouTube.

I might question, if not having the two classes creates opportunity, should I even enroll in those two classes?  While I found the free time an opportunity to do something else of value, the two cancelled classes also enrich me in their own way.  The Rabbi's format allows interaction with other learners.  The OLLI session does not, as the lecturer goes from starting time to closing time without pause, not even for questions.  But having to drive there, I get to wander the lobby for a few minutes, usually encountering an old friend or two.  This cannot be duplicated at my laptop.  So if suspension of the classes infrequently creates personal opportunity, it is only because that time was otherwise dedicated to activities that push me ahead.  It is better to regard the two classes as the places I most want to be at those time, and capitalize on their occasional cancellations.  This time the options of what could I be doing instead came easily.

Classes suspend for the summer, typically in May.  The lesson of cancellation creates new insights into into defining blocks of open time.  Try visiting a new place.  Push my exercise targets.  Match mind and keyboard.  Enroll in another fixed activity that meets during the school and synagogue intercessions.  While I did not expect this absence of classes, I used the new found flexible time in a very satisfying way.

Backing In

My new skill.  Accomplished and repeated.  I've had my current car long enough to pay it off.  It's a 2018 model, my first with a back-up camera, though I've rented a few SUVs with this feature.  My driver's licenses, though, go back to 1967, including a road test failure for backing up over a curb after the inspector instructed me to parallel park.  Since then I have a lot of experience and a lot of habits, with a few insurance claims.  I park my car based on those skills, and much less expertly than the residents of big cities or paid valets park their cars.  When in a parking lot, as my need to parallel park is rare, I drive into my selected space.  Mostly I reverse out, partly using mirrors but partly the camera.  I much prefer to drive out, so until this week I've sought a space with an empty space in front of it. That lets me drive forward coming and going.  

Mostly in lots I select random spaces, those easily entered.  At OLLI these past few semesters, I selected a particular space in the lot that I consider mine.  It's only been occupied twice.  This lot has no spaces where a driver can pull forward into the next one.  All spaces abut an edge.  I see lots of cars, mostly  SUVs but some sedans backed into their spaces, and watched a few senior drivers doing that.  It is certainly safer to drive forward when classes let out and many other drivers want to leave at the same time.  Yet my usual location in the lot had been ideal for me.  It lies at the edge of a section, with the walkway adjacent to my passenger side.  I will never have to worry about avoiding an adjacent car as I exit.

This week, though, a usurper had gotten there first.  There being no other cars entering the lot and ample open spaces to my right, what better time to see what the reverse camera can do.   I positioned my car where I wanted, then placed the transmission in reverse.  The camera image appeared.  Making sure no other cars were entering that portion of the lot, I selected a space with no cars on either side.  The camera had guides to the side and to the rear.  I followed the blue lines until they matched the while lines on the asphalt, then the rear blue guides.  The red line indicates the rear of my car.  I wanted it to appear a little behind the concrete wheel guide, with the trunk at the edge of the grass.  It went smoothly, with a bare repositioning.

The next day my usual space had become available to me, but I opted to practice my new skill.  This time into a space with an adjacent car.  It went well, though I was more skittish and had to reposition twice.  Driving forward out of my space seems a lot more secure than trying to back out while not challenging other traffic.  My windshield gave me an ideal view of the other cars entering and exiting the lot as classes transitioned from early morning to late morning.

The rear camera adds safety beyond what mirrors can offer.  It can be used to parallel park, so maybe I'll look for occasions to get that experience.  And had these cameras been available as a teenager, with their use part of driver's ed instruction, I might have acquired my junior license on the first try.

Staycation

My last OLLI class before Spring Break.  I came home mid-morning, worked on a monthly financial review, then declared Vacation.  First initiative, treating myself to a donut at a new donut boutique, one for me, one taken home to my wife.  Spring Break in progress.

Being retired, time off gets more difficult to delineate.  My life has minimal fixed appointments.  OLLI comprises the majority of them each week, though now only five distributed over three days.  Periodically I need to visit one of my growing roster of medical providers.  These seem to cluster with long lulls between encounters and the diagnostic procedures they want me to have.  Shabbos is sort of a  fixed obligation.  Dinner preparation Friday, Services Saturday morning.  I don't skip a dinner that demarcates my Shabbos.  Services I give myself periodic mornings at home in place of synagogue.  

For the most part, my Vacations separate themselves from the rest of my time by travel.  This makes both fixed appointments and ongoing chores largely unavailable.  It also forces me to seek new experiences.  Unfortunately, my last two journeys as a couple ended in significant medical problems.  I really don't want to be in my car for hours at a time in both directions, nor do I want to deal with airports or rental cars.  As much as I like wineries, hot tubs, and museums, most of these can be had at much reduced expense and enhanced safety using my house as home base.  A Staycation this time.  The risk, of course, is being sucked into errands that would not crop up while on the road.  Our next scheduled housecleaner service would be one of these.

Still, I think of it as mostly an ME week, a chance to do one to three things that I want to do more than I should. While I could delegate the cleaner to my wife, I really should keep myself on-site that morning. At the end of the week, I have a commitment to the synagogue. There remains my exercise schedule, something I try to maintain at hotels if possible.

Things I like to do.  While I won't have a hotel, I have accumulated two JCC Day Passes.  So the steam room, sauna, pool, and gym of a resort remain available to me one time that week.  I had a grand breakfast a couple of years ago at America's largest buffet.  One morning for that, one of the days that the treadmill has the day off.  As tempting as it is to try an adventure to NYC by some inconvenient but discounted public transit, I need to meet somebody there next month.  I'll travel as a couple by driving.  But I can and should do one day trip to Philadelphia, picking out a special attraction.  Wineries not on my radar this week.  St. Pat's Day come and gone, so no compelling reason to seek beer either.  A new restaurant opened nearby, maybe see if it meets its hype.  I like slices of pizza and tuna hoagies.  Maybe pick one as a treat.

And that OLLI Class time, and the travel time to get there and back, can be designated Writing Time.  Fishing probably ought to happen once.  Putting Green and Driving Range are near the OLLI campus.  Those can wait until classes resume.

But one inescapable reality.  My FB Friends all seem to take themselves to the air.  The algorithms pick out stuff that will keep you fixated on the screen, if not create a feeling of I want that too.  At the moment, I don't.

So my ten days of largely unscheduled time has begun.  It feels a little like Vacation, even in the absence of travel.  

Dropping a Class

In my several years enrolled in the Osher Institute Program, I had never previously withdrawn from a class.  In fact, to the best of my memory, I had never disenrolled in any specific class through kindergarten, though I did offer the Rabbi a Sayonara to the whole program in Hebrew School.

It's not that I've had disappointing course selections or had requirements to take certain classes that left me wishing I were someplace else in that scheduled time.  At OLLI I've given some candid adverse feedback.  In one course review I asked the University to send in a Mystery Shopper to see if the instructor's reasonably blatant negative view of Islamists breached University Standards.  I had an instructor up in years who read us his notes for 20 minutes at the start of each session before turning on the DVD of the Great Courses series with an internationally recognized lecturer.  But until now, I've never filled out a form to enable the University to offer my place in the class to somebody on the waiting list.  In fact, in all my years of schooling, I don't think I've ever expressed my negative opinion of a class by silently discontinuing my attendance, outside of a Rabbi series or two at my own synagogue.   The lady who demeaned Islamists has a good heart.  I know her in another setting.  The man who read his presentation from loose-leaf paper was once an esteemed public school science teacher.  Each class had offsetting merit to justify some irritation.  I've never left a class out of boredom.  I've even tolerated my own inability to keep up with the presentations, toughing it out for a full semester of Thermodynamics that flew over my head by about the fourth session.  Even this time, I considered just not coming anymore.  Instead, tomorrow ends the formal Drop/Add process, so I submitted my Drop on time.

So what makes a course tell me it has no salvageable value after two sessions, or really just the first session with the second as confirmation?  It had a formal title of Prosperity and Panic.  The Catalog provided a description that made me expect a dozen lectures or DVD series on economic cycles through the last hundred years of American History.  I lived through some of that.  I heard of the Depression from my grandparents.  Along the way I read about economic cycles.   We have Biblical stories of famines, but we also have the background of Pharaoh storing grain with insider information on a coming shortage.  He consolidated power this way, guided by his Hebrew Viceroy.  The Egyptians made their Faustian deal, but at least avoided starvation.  The rest of us got Pyramids and modern Egyptologists as the legacy of concentrated wealth.

I learned of Adam  Smith's positions on international trade creating global prosperity, though with an underpinning of self-interest.  He tempered it by assigning certain responsibilities to government to protect the vulnerable.  In high school I had to read and report on Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth.  Only by concentrating wealth can we all benefit from great public works.

I'm the beneficiary of this.  I've had a car for the past fifty years because cars have become plentiful. My TVs get better and more economical with each replacement.  I am connected to the world through cyberspace.  My medicines mostly do what they are supposed to do.  And if somebody else gets rich by making something better for me and for most other Americans, I'm for that.

That's what I expected from the course description.  When you watch Flip Wilson portraying Geraldine, What you see is what you get.  When I attend the two class sessions that's not what I got.  Instead, I sat at a series of long tables with mostly men of my age listening to a retired portfolio manager collecting recent newspaper clippings from the Wall Street Journal and Barron's.  No history.  No assessment of broad policies.  Not even simple things like changes in how investors create wealth and manage risk.  None of that.  At least my own financial advisor has some obligation to me.

The comments of the class shouted pooled ignorance.  As the basis of discussion.  For the first time in my OLLI tenure, I found the exit ramp the best place to be for this class.  Form completed and submitted.

Ice Storm

Cancellations.  My synagogue transferred its morning service to Zoom.  OLLI canceled its early morning sessions, allowing two hours for maintenance staff to prepare the parking areas and building.  When I retrieved the newspaper from the end on the driveway, the surface did not seem overly slippery but a coating of ice covered both cars.  My front and rear windshield heaters will defrost that.  The side windows do not have as secure a way of melting this.

With the right equipment, my wife and I made our vehicles safely mobile within a few minutes.  When she lowered her passenger window, the glass descended while the sheet of ice remained stationary.  Then he tapped out the ice, leaving her with a visible surface.  I tried that too, successful on one of four side windows.  The electric defroster of the rear windshield melts ice a lot faster than the warm air blown over the front windshield.  While waiting for that, I took the scraper to the other three side windows.  All had a thin sheet of water separating the glass from the ice.  I only need to make a few cracks, then scrape and brush.  By then, the rear window had a similar melting at the interface of glass and ice.  It scraped right off.  

My front windshield required more patience.  The warm air begins at the base, by the dashboard.  Then it ascends.  Usually I wait for the melting to allow the windshield wipers to perform the removal.  This time, I tried the scraper.  If created rectangles and other polygons of ice, partially thawed.  By pushing upwards towards the car's roof, I could get these to shatter at the top of the windshield, then drift downward.  The wipers handled the shattered segments but did poorly with the remaining polygons.  It did not take more than a few minutes for those to melt, so I will soon be on my way to today's remaining class, though the roads remain a question mark.  The car's thermometer registered a temperature slightly above freezing as does my home computer report of regional weather.  Except for a bridge en route, I anticipate the road surface will not create major skidding.  I have my choice of bridge.  The one more traveled, which is not the one I usually take to get to OLLI, may be the safer option.c

The delayed opening created some ambivalence.  Of my courses, the one canceled seemed my most expendable.  The class, live and remote, watches a video, and then discusses the topic.  That's a good way to pool everyone's ignorance, as the three moderators have expertise with very few subjects that the expert on the screen outlines.  Usually, though, there is somebody in the class, more often a person in live attendance, who has professional experience with the day's topic.

And what might I have been doing instead?  This being a treadmill respite morning, I hoped to allocate this unexpected block of time for creative activity.  The motivation was not there.  I am taking this week off from FB, Reddit, and Twitter so that time sink did not impede working on my twelve semi-annual projects.  The need to make the car mobile did.  Had the class been operational, I still would not have accomplished much at home leaving at the earlier time.  So I did what I do with treadmill time, not quite a half hour, that does not have me exercising?  Washed dishes, had a more substantial breakfast.  It's not my semi-annual projects, but it requires little concentration.  

Despite the delayed schedule for the morning, my daily pursuits will simply reset.  A new class in OLLI's late morning slot.  Focused projects when I get home.

Ice just becomes a minor snafu with little real consequence.

Course Selections

OLLI issued its Spring 2025 Catalog.  From it I expect to commit to five courses.  Having done this a few times, I've generated an experience related system, though not a perfect one.  First some rules.  No classes after 2PM.  No classes that exceed the 75 minutes allotted for most lecture format options.  Many performance, art, and movie sessions are longer.  Passover needs only one Monday absent.  Classes end before Shavuot.  That means no accommodation for Yom Tovim, which greatly impacted my selections for last semester.

Next create a 5 x 3 grid.  M-F horizontally, early AM, late AM, Early PM vertically.  Then just go through the catalog page Iby page, filling the grid possibilities as I go.  Now some criteria.  I prefer live courses to Zoom sessions, so first only classes held near my home.  There are some excellent classes downstate where many talented retirees have relocated.  Reconsider those as a parallel zoom option later along with other online only classes. First I need to be with other people.  The pandemic took its toll on social interaction.  At one time people would gather in the lounge, have lunch in the cafeteria.  All imploded.  Even the live classes, people come for their session and go home.

Then page by page, subject by subject, I jot anything of interest onto my time grid.  By now I have favorite instructors.  I've also had teachers not up to the task, over even offensive.  Those don't go onto the grid.  The course selection exposes something about me.  I like information.  I dislike people subjecting me to their agendas and buzzwords.  I am not an  oppressor.  I resent any hints that my personal success and background detracts from my decency.  There are courses like that in the catalog.  I don't register for those.  I can only realistically take five.

As my grid fills, I will have some choices.  It takes about twenty minutes each way to drive to campus.  I have taken classes that fill all three slots on a given day.  On those days, I pack lunch, put my computer and charging cord in a backpack, and plan to spend the day on-site.  It's been burdensome, so more likely I will limit a single day to two classes, and not an early and late one with a big time gap between.  Zoom courses from the campus do not always access well.  If I have Zoom and site courses the same day, I will need to be able to travel between them.

It is also possible that I will be closed out of a limited enrollment selection.  Take my time.  Visit the January Open House.  Complete the grid. Pare to five.

Preparing a Seminar

My turn arrives in one month.  This OLLI class runs about twelve sessions, with a different person presenting each time.  I gave my brief overview in the first class.  The instructor schedule assigned my class as the midpoint.

By now, I should be pretty proficient at this.  My mental, medical, and Jewish journeys have taken me to the podium many times.  Some informal, like medical residents presenting a case.  Others quite formal, like Medical Grand Rounds or presentations at my synagogue's AKSE Academy.  Progress has moved ahead from Kodachromes created by medical illustrators to PowerPoints made by me.  Sometimes I create a written script.  As proficiency accumulated, I've let the PowerPoint written slides serve as my prompts.

Rarely do I start with full familiarity.  I have a grasp of the medical topic or the background for a Jewish topic.  This time I have the basic concepts of what I want to convey about NYC, the OLLI Course topic. Fifteen minutes each about city workers, vagrants, vendors, and diplomats, though the vagrants merit more time with a reduction in the time allotment to the others.  I like history, and often sort my remarks in their historical contexts.  But I chose my current topic, a deviation from the other eleven this cycle, because everyone in the class has a bimodal connection.  As Seniors with some childhood connection to Metro NY, we all had reason to putter around The City in our youth.  We all have events that periodically bring us back, whether tourism, Broadway, or relatives.  Then differs from now. Who comprises the audience matters considerably.

I am making slow but steady progress, not far behind my completion timeline.  Keep it interesting, keep it relevant.  Work on fluency.

I've done this many times before.  Struggle a while.  Then it gels.

Quasi Work

My personal calendar gave me a challenge.  Returned to OLLI, the senior division of our State University for the first time.  By the vagaries of submitting course preferences, my schedule played out to three courses on Monday's, first, second, and third sessions.  On Tuesdays I only have two classes, first and third sesssions.  On Wednesday, only two, first and second sessions.  Due to Holy Days falling Thursday-Fridays this season, I opted not to enroll in any courses those days.  The class schedule has its quirks.  My middle class on Mondays, the one I desire most, only runs the second half of the semester, and is on Zoom.  My first class on Wednesdays only meets the first half of the semester.  And the final course on Tuesday, for which I am presenting one class, only appears via Zoom.

Tuesday and Wednesday drive-in for the in person classes, then drive home seems straightforward.  Monday proves more challenging, with a Zoom course sandwiched between two traditional classes.  I opted to create a faux work day on Mondays, at least until the final class adjourns.

I got up at my usual time.  Instead of dental hygiene, then coffee, I inserted dressing.  The day before I made a checklist, what to wear, what to take in a small backpack.  Laptop, charger, leather writing pad, the secure chest travel pouch I bought last year, a radio, a thermos of coffee, a lunch that I would make at home, the Torah portion I am preparing.  Since this would be my first day on-site, I needed extra time to pick up my ID badge, so off to the car a bit early.

I arrived well in advance of my first class.  While there I filled out some forms for access to the University's computer services and parking at the main campus.  Sipped coffee.  Then class.  An excellent lecture on the history of airline safety.

Downstairs to the lobby after class to being a 2.5 hour unstructured block.  Started with a stroll outside to the patio to work on the Torah reading.  Minor imperfections.  When I do this, I wear a kippah that I keep in my pants pocket, this time a blue suede one from a Bar Mitzvah.  I opted to leave it on the rest of the day.  America in general, and campuses in particular, have accumulated people who think it OK to verbally accost anyone they can identify as Jewish.  We are oppressors of everyone who has not thrived in America in their minds.  

But I really intended to work on some other projects.  I extracted my laptop, its charger, and my good leather portfolio from my backpack.  In order to have an outlet for the charger, I had to settle for a high table with high chair along one of the walls.  Plugged in.  Refill my insulated mug.  Ready to work.  The University has its own Wi-Fi.  I saved it with my ID and password onto this laptop last year.  Despite having forgotten both prompts, it connected me.  To connect with the University library system, I will need a more sophisticated entry point which requires renewal.  But once online, I could surf.  Not productive surfing at all.  E-mail, social media.  I thought a little about things I might like to write, but didn't write them.  Read a presentation from a Substack to which I have a subscription, but did not respond.  Returned to my backpack to retrieve my sandwich.  Too soon to proceed to the cafeteria.

Eventually I packed my electronics, took my lunch back to the patio, where I ate it.  An old friend of 40+ years happened by.  We each had covid in the last year, so exchanged notes. Not a lot of work got done, creating some minor guilt.

Early afternoon class, an excellent intro to the Big Bang.  Kippah still on.  No apparent reaction from anyone else.

Home right after class.  I had two top notch sessions, OK lunch, satisfaction of planning what I wanted to do, no serious focus on doing it.  A lost opportunity.

There will be a Monday of this type each week until my half-semester course begins.  The 2.5 hour chunk of time needs to be allocated in a more specific, accountable way.

Rating My Courses

OLLI has concluded for the semester.  An entirely satisfying selection of seven subjects.  There are many ways to sort my seven.  Six in person, one online.  Five morning, two afternoon.  One lecture, six with DVD or other video format.  Six with a single speaker, all men, one with rotating presenters.  Two dependent on discussion, all with question options. Two held downstairs in a large room, four upstairs in smaller rooms.  Only one in a room with windows.

So that's my composite.  Instead, the courses are assessed individually, what went well, what needs review.  I did mostly well.  By now I have experience attending and only sign up for teachers who I know can present capably.  And this semester they all could, though sometimes they lack expertise with content of the individual DVDs that centerpiece the courses.

It is a lot easier to show a video for a third of a weekly session, then use that as a basis for expansion than to write a dozen lectures with power point for each class, though the people who go that route invariably do it well.

What I find missing is that multidirectional discussion that has made my medical immersion sparkle.  Sometimes the patient's situation is pretty mundane and encountered most days.  But one unique aspect stands out, one twist in presentation around which a whole new discussion takes form.  Common in medical rounds.  Very rare at OLLI.  Even if the question is more intriguing than the video everyone just watched, it gets answered rather tersely, usually by the class instructor.  It very rarely becomes a new path of inquiry in its own right.

We now have hybrid courses, where some participants attend in person while others watch the proceedings remotely.  Anybody can watch a PowerPoint or view a DVD from anywhere.  It's the same Great Courses disc whether you purchase it for your PC or watch it communally.  What you cannot readily duplicate is interaction.  Q&A with the instructor goes mostly OK.  Reframing that interaction to students with each other mostly goes poorly in that format.  Still, the remote option enables people who live far away, or maybe live nearby but could not realistically enroll if they had to drive another half hour each way to get the campus, or have frailties.  Zoom has enabled many beneficial upgrades, but at a price of interaction.

Over two days I filled out the evaluation forms for all seven of my classes.  Different formats, though many recurrent themes in the assessment.  There is a committee that tabulates the feedback.  It is less clear what they are able to convey to the individual instructors.  Comments that take diametrically opposing or irreconcilable views would also be expected.  But they have a chance to look at all seven on mine.

Preparing a Class

It's been a while since I conducted a class for anything.  At one time I did this professionally, some semi-formal like topic reviews for residents, other times highly structured like Medical Grand Rounds.  For a few years I ran weekly sessions on Jewish topics for teens.  But once retired, these largely evaporated, except for two sessions over a few years for my congregation's dedicated adult learning day. And I've given two sessions for a group of senior physicians.  A small cluster returns.

My congregation has a movie series where people watch a designated film, then a few days later people discuss what they saw.  My turn to lead the discussion, which I see more as what I might do on resident work rounds.  Question and response format, with me generating the questions and maybe prodding responses.  A few short PowerPoint items, perhaps.  Maybe half a dozen slides to give some background to the film.  All done the day before.  Goal:  interactive, perhaps even Socratic.   And on Zoom.

Later I anticipate a more formal presentation to the congregation, a return to the day of adult learning.  Based on my professional background, the committee that arranges this asked me to pursue a topic.  This one will be powerpoint.  This one live.  The topic itself did not strike me as particularly exciting.  A list of diseases that people of my ethnicity might inherit.  Monogenic, a small straightforward list with a little science.  I've seen some, but most never will.  But it is the offshoots that generate interest.  What about common polygenic disorders and how prejudices among the medical community distort what we really encounter?  What about our sister community, geographically and genetically a little different but from a medical genetic outcome more diverse?  And how we address the problem.  In America a few advocacy groups handle a limited number of conditions.  In the other place, a concerted and systematic approach by a national health service.

Then many months from now, I move past the synagogue to conduct a session at OLLI.  My synagogue has largely excluded me from its creative process.  OLLI values this much more.  A Zoom course I have taken prepared its approach to the coming semester.  I thought a different set of lectures would be better so I sent a proposal.  Everyone else in the class will discuss a famous person who happens to be from and shaped by NYC.  My presentation will be the outlier.  No famous people.  Just the unique people who have historic legacies.  The Bowery Bums, the city workers, the chefs, the nobodies who thought they could make it there, pushcarts and newsstands now found nowhere else, the Chefs, the diplomats. Few famous, all recognizable.  But importantly, unique.

While I prefer to be reflective rather than having the limelight shine on me, I do tend to think in an analytical way that should be offered to others.  I kinda look forward to each of the upcoming efforts.

Separated Classes

One day each week, my first class begins at 9AM but the second not until 12:45PM.  That creates a two-and-a-half-hour unscheduled block of time which I have used in different ways.  It does not pay to return home and then return to OLLI, so I pack a few things to bring with me.  The site provides coffee.  There is also a catering service that offers lunch for purchase.  One of my favorite pizza/hoagie places is a short drive away, though parking not always at hand.  Thus far I have made my own lunch.  Usually a sandwich, either PBJ or cheese, a snack, a fruit, and a bag of herb tea, for which OLLI provides hot water and a clean recyclable cup.  I eat in the cafeteria, usually by myself at a round table just before the midday classes let out.  I pack my laptop and a cheap plastic portfolio.  I also take a microcassette recorder.  While my smartphone has a recorder, flashlight, and electronic level, none of these surrogates are really as good as a real tape recorder, flashlight on keychain, or for serious carpentry, a level made by Stanley.  Don't do any carpentry at OLLI.  

Some weeks I work on projects from my Semi-annual list.  I've practiced a long Torah reading obligation.  That day of the week, I always read weekly Parsha commentaries and tackle a New England Journal article, each available to me during those 2.5 hours.  I can plan my upcoming vacation or ponder a more remote one that I aspire to.  

Other weeks, I leave my things in the backpack.  I sit at a table and create a conversation with one or more people at the table.  It helps that the early morning class is devoted to a video and discussion on contemporary controversies.

I try not to surf the web, whether my email or social media.  I've been mostly successful at avoiding that time sink in favor of things I cannot get elsewhere, primarily proximity to other people, or dedicating myself to things that require my mind to focus in a place that has few distractions.  

The challenge of keeping this segment of unstructured time fulfilling, if not actually productive, has been a gratifying one.  Sometimes Me at my best, or at least a Decent Me, one very respectful of this Me Time.  

This part of my weekly schedule lasts less than two months and will be hard to duplicate without the separated classes bookending the pluripotent 2.5 hours.  I have found it a weekly focus, at least while it lasts.

Caught Up With Me

Good habits to create, then nurture.  For me, getting up when I tell myself I should irrespective of how I feel, then going on the treadmill for the pre-determined session before my first activity.  I've done well since New Year's.  Up at 7AM with few exceptions such as illness following my Covid vaccine, which traded one healthy effort for another.  Then treadmill.  Lapse for an illness like cytokine surge from the covid vaccine or an injury to a part of my lower extremity.  But lapses are few.  To do this successfully, I set a fixed time:  8:15AM, enough time for two 8 oz cups of coffee made in a Keurig K-Express and to review my plan of attack that keeps the rest of the day productive plus at least one crossword puzzle.  And maybe a blog entry, and certainly check overnight messages.

Resumption of OLLI classes interfered with what had been going so well.  To get to my 9AM classes, treadmill sessions were shifted to 7:35AM.  One cup of coffee, retrieve newspaper for my wife, attention to my indoor plants on scheduled days, then about a half hour to get dressed, prepare lunch on Thursdays, review my day if outlined the night before, make an insulated mug of coffee before heading to the driveway at 8:25AM, which would give me enough time to sip from the mug and greet an old friend or two in the auditorium, then settling down for my morning class.

It has a beneficial purpose, but a few weeks into the adapted schedule, I feel its effects.  Legs sore, slightly tired, not always able to squeeze a breakfast together before leaving the house, something I had been doing as an initiative with reasonable success while still on OLLI intercession.  I do not feel particularly tired before my computer or desk clock reaches treadmill time.  And I don't struggle with the session.  But I also have not noticed the traditional benefits of regular exercise at appropriate capacity.  My ability to increase the treadmill rate and duration has not happened.  My muscles sometimes ache.  Knees feel like they have been stressed.  Stretching, which I schedule twice a week, has found my capacity deteriorating.

I sleep better.  I've been perhaps a tad more energetic in the late morning, though hurting by midday.  And being among people, even interacting with a mixture of strangers and friends, has improved my lingering feeling of loneliness.  So I'm not feeling badly with the new schedule, just with some musculoskeletal sequelae of my effort.  

Vacation, with its respite from the schedule, is not for another four weeks, though close enough to anticipate a need for some new scenery and new people.  And at the end of each month I afford myself three consecutive days off the treadmill for my legs to recover.  It has been gratifying to display what some might call grit, doing what I set out to do despite its discomfort.  Though the health benefits and social benefits come at the neglect of some of my mental activity, as my commitment to the things I create has fallen behind.  Now that sleep and exercise are reasonably committed and executed, I can make a similar commitment to perhaps some fixed writing and expression times.

New Schedule

First week of this semester's Osher Institute.  Have been off about 7 weeks. Previous semester only one in-person 9AM class.  I requested seven classes this semester, all 7 first half, 5 second half. Despite overwhelming registration, the computer algorithm found a place for me in all seven.  And six meet in person.  Every day except Wednesday, I have a 9AM on-site starting time.  On Thursday afternoon I have a gap followed by a second class from 12:45 to 2PM the first five weeks.  That makes for some adaptations on my part.  Allowing for traffic, the drive in each direction plus parking and walking to the entrance comes to about 25 minutes, so it does not pay to add another full round trip between classes on Thursdays.  And my scheduled exercise times run 8:15-8:45 two days of three.

Some decisions needed to be made.  I moved exercise to 7:35 on the scheduled mornings of 9AM classes.  Did that on Monday and Thursday, cutting speed and duration a little on Monday, keeping speed but cutting three minutes of duration on Thursday.  I performed adequately, but definitely not my customary rhythm.  It made my legs sore.  It made me eager for an afternoon snooze that morning coffee could not offset.  And it put me to bed earlier than Sleep Hygiene standards would recommend.

And there are nutritional concerns.  While off, I made myself coffee in the Keurig machine each morning, took my morning pills, typed on the computer, made some more coffee, made a calorie decision on the second trip downstairs.  With 9AM classes, the second trip downstairs is out the door.  Some quick first downstairs initiatives still squeeze in easily.  Water plants on Tuesdays and Fridays, retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway, finish as many dishes as will fit in the rack.  Then bring coffee upstairs.  The treadmill days impose an uncomfortable deadline.  If I start the session at 7:35 or so, I can go back upstairs in time to get dressed for class, then make a second cup of coffee in a travel mug to sip during my first class.

On Thursdays, I also need to make lunch, as I am on site from arrival a little before 9 until just after 2PM.  Sandwich, some vegetables, a dessert of some type, an herb tea bag. The University contracted with a caterer to sell lunch. While I think it is important that those in attendance support the project, my kosher limitations and the prices of what I am willing to eat are sufficient deterrents.  I found a backpack from a previous Endocrine Society Annual Meeting that accommodates my plastic writing portfolio, laptop, earphones, a pocket for a tape recorder, and an insulated lunch kit, while I carry the insulated mug separately to sip coffee in the morning.  

A week's experience with this has created a needed learning curve.  Morning adaptations seem about right, but I pay a price in fatigue and productivity by late afternoon.  I am optimistic that this is ordinary adaptation, much like would happen at the end of intercession or on returning from a two-week work vacation in the past.  I need to be a more rigid at not taking advantage of the proximity of my bed when I am tired.  I have a recliner in My Space.  And I need to use a timer to keep me on focus for projects that I undertake despite fatigue.  Things seem to fall into place when I do.

There is a one week spring intercession after six weeks of classes.  I have some travel plans that also entail some morning attention to exercise and nutrition, with some recreation thrown in.  It would help to have this guided by a successfully implemented class schedule that can continue during vacation and resume seamlessly when classes resume the following week.

Choosing My Courses

OLLI Catalog print version came in the mail.  Electronic version arrived in my Inbox some time ago, presence acknowledged but e-booklet not opened.  There is an approaching window of time for submitting course preferences.  If submitted in that time frame, all submissions have equal chances of acceptance into those classes that are oversubscribed, so there is an incentive to complete the selection process on time.  Going about it takes some effort, but it pays to be methodical.  It also pays to have rules.  Start days are fixed.  There is a University intercession the final week of March, which I have designated for personal travel.  Fall semester Yom Tovim all fall on the same days of the week except Yom Kippur which occurs one day after the others.  Spring Yontif is usually limited to Pesach, as the semester ends before Shavuot.  This year Pesach yontif has one Monday, two Tuesdays, and one Wednesday.  That means Tuesday would not be suitable for courses that meet only the second half of the semester, and MW courses in the second half may be at a disadvantage.  There is not much I can do for full semester courses, but it would mean missing consecutive Tuesdays during the semester.

I start by making a grid, fifteen squares, one for each day of the work week, then early morning, late morning, and early afternoon starting times.  I do not like going to late afternoon courses, so stopped considering them a few semesters ago.  When I first began OLLI pre-pandemic, all courses were live.  The center was packed with seniors, filling up chairs in the lounge, chatting with strangers whose names you could read on their ID tags.  And courses were interactive, mostly lecture or discussion format, that one would expect from a college course, though some with an DVD or Great Courses format followed by discussion.  The pandemic altered that dramatically.  The center is never crowded, tables have replaced many of the cushioned chairs, as the cafeteria where people would congregate with either a purchased or brought lunch closed and never re-opened.  Classes became available on Zoom.  For a while only on Zoom but then a more eclectic mix.  Some are only offered electronically, some only in person, others give the student a choice.  There is one very big positive in that classes held in person at either the main center or the satellites a hundred miles away can now be accessed by people who live at the other end of the state.  And some of the best teachers have retired to the beach communities far away from my home.  Yet given the option, I prefer a live class.  And now nearly all have a format where people watch a video.  The professor's PowerPoint presentations and classes where individual participants are assigned a week to present have become infrequent.

With some experience, I've accumulated a list of preferred teachers and those I never want to sit through, and a few who I think the University should simply disallow but don't.  And then there is content.  There's a fair amount of woke.  Those people who think everyone who is of European or male background in the gene pool has harmed them and they need to shout that out.  And there are agendas, whether cleaning the environment, keeping undesirables from replacing us, redistributing other people's wealth.  Those soapbox courses don't get a place on my preliminary grid either.  There is more than enough good history, some science, exposure to travel and culture to saturate my preliminary maybe courses to move onto Round 2 of selection.

I then take a separate page for each day, divide into thirds, early AM, late AM, early PM.  Then going through the preliminary grid, live goes on the left, Zoom goes in the center, half semester courses go on the right.  A few musts stand out, usually live from a professor I've attended before.  I only want to make one trip, so I will not accept a day that has an early morning course and an afternoon course with a big gap in the middle of the day.  And the subject begins to matter more.  I like history and travel, but I also like to get a new skill, whether learning Excel or basic watercolor painting techniques.  Eventually I will have about five courses, usually spread over four days, submitted in time, and mostly accepted by the OLLI computer for registration.  The University offers a Drop and Add time after the classes begin their sessions, but I've never taken advantage of this.  They also offer, for a nominal fee, the option of taking a regular university course at the main campus.  As tempting as this is, I really don't want to drive there two or three days a week, pay for parking, and have homework or papers to write.  Though I probably wouldn't mind, likely even enjoy, sitting in a lecture room with kids who could be my grandkids and having them stare at me.

But ultimately I am an adult lifelong learner.  Osher offers in excess of what I need, from which I must select but a few.

Ineffective Message

Two years ago I enrolled in a course at the Osher Institute which highlighted contemporary issues.  Each week the course committee of four which organized the presentations invited an expert, about half from my state university faculty, the others from non-profit agencies that promote the communal good.  I sort of panned the class in the semester evaluation and never enrolled in subsequent semesters, in large part because of a message theme, that idea version of the Greek Chorus, which for many classes registered as I'm not buying that.  Most of my other course selections get rave feedback for content, effort, and teacher.  As a university graduate, medical graduate, and physician, credibility has always been the coin of the realm.  I have no reason to dismiss Thermodynamics even if my understanding is now paltry, or to tune out a survey of American education where disagreements with the presentation are integral to the discussion and welcome.  For the contemporary issues, there was a committee agenda and challenge was sidestepped.  The price of not confronting legitimate challenges to the party line is usually some version of disrespect.  The legitimate points unify with the dubious, or even manipulated ones. They go into the mental wastebasket without separation.

There's a disturbing poll making the news.  Without getting into the science of polling, just accepting the results at face value, it seems young people ages 18-24 expressed a majority view that the world would be better without Israel.  https://nypost.com/2023/12/16/news/majority-of-americans-18-24-think-israel-should-be-ended-and-given-to-hamas/

As an older fellow, I fall into the senior citizen majority, an overwhelming majority.  Indeed, from the mid-30s, that age when Americans can be elected President, there is no element of Gee Whiz.  It is as much a poll on responsibility as it is on political views.  Indeed, my first Presidential vote went for McGovern at age 21.  He wouldn't appear in my political universe at age 40, if only because I had become partly responsible for an America of respectability.  That is probably the best interpretation of the results.  Though not the only one.

Following the poll's release, Jewish advocacy agencies came out in force to belittle the young adults, their secular educators, the news media, cyberspace.  But sometimes Pogo is right, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Back to the OLLI Course.  An esteemed guest, the regional associate director of the Anti-Defamation League, took her turn on the weekly Zoom presentation.  I absolutely support the aims of the ADL, reporting my own anti-Semitic encounters to their ongoing database, and putting their retired Executive Director Abe Foxman as the most esteemed Jewish advocate I have ever personally met.  And she dutifully told the OLLI group the activities and initiatives of her agency.  She put public education of anti-Semitism at the top of her list.  The ADL has been doing this for a hundred years, prompted by the lynching of Leo Frank in a very racist Georgia prior to World War I.  The obvious question at the presentation, at a time when the anti-Semites were becoming more public in their American presence, would have run along the lines, "if the ADL is so good at this and has so much experience, why is anti-Semitism ever on the rise in America as it is now?"

There are a lot of answers to this.  They probably have an element of Dunning-Kruger, where people and agencies overestimate their ability.  A more valid assessment would be that education makes the advocate feel accomplished but really does not impact behavior nearly as effectively as enforceable laws.  We see that in many settings.  Public Service Announcements on seat belt use and smoking cessation appeared regularly on TV for decades.  People drove unharnessed and smoked until fines for not buckling up and eliminating smoking from public buildings and the workplace became the enforceable behavioral expectations.  Of course the insight of the legislators who enacted these came in part from the understanding of the problem that the advocates promoted, but the solution came not from education but a vision of how to achieve a desired outcome.

So with the poll, AJC, ADL, every Jewish advocacy organizations have their pet excuses, though never an internal one, never the realization that educational initiatives do not bring desired results.  Yet they lack any enforceability.  They may not even have the ability to create negative consequences for deviance.  And our universities don't help.  Some of those elite institution Admission Offices laid an egg.  These kids already demonstrated the ability to learn, which is why they have acceptance letters from the places that sent me thin rejection letters in my era.  The goal is not to change attitude but to change behavior.  And that means creating consequences that favor one behavior over another, something our advocacy groups don't seem to understand.  The alumni of those elite schools are not in that 18-24 cohort.  They understand propriety.  They understand what type of person makes a good protégé.  So the solution would be to create a disadvantage to sloganeering for the odious, either by fist in the air or online trail.  When the med/law interviews don't come, when the lucrative hiring goes someplace else, behavior would change.

Does forced, or coerced behavioral change reverse fundamental thinking or reasoning processes?  It probably does, though not for certain.  People did not really reject American slavery as an institution until abolition was mandated.  Once they couldn't own slaves, it was short shift to shouldn't even if allowed.  Same with seatbelts.  Behavior forced, but soon accepted as the proper thing to do.  Or integrated restaurants or not smoking.  I can't eventually becomes I won't even if I could.  It is a difficult transition, one requiring examination of what our esteemed agencies really want to achieve, and abandoning what has not worked well, especially when it can never work well.

Alas, I think many of my Jewish advocacy agencies, whose goals align with mine, have just gotten too inbred to schect their sacred cows to breed a sturdier cow.

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.

Logistics

My brother-in-law passed away two days ago.  He had a variety of chronic illnesses, some major surgery which, while successful, had difficult convalescence.  Yet he rallied with some permanent limitations.  His limited longevity was expected but the time and circumstances of his passing could not be anticipated.

Thus, we enter a difficult YK weekend.  He lived about 130 miles away but he and his widow opted for funeral arrangements near the rest of their families.  His widow and the funeral director decided on a place and time, erev YK, which is a Sunday.  The yontif precludes Shiva and the shloshim gets halted by Sukkot a few days following.

As the person with the car and the mobility and some activities arranged previously, that leaves me with my share of tasks as well.  I have my big OLLI morning on Fridays.  For Saturday, I had agreed to lead Shacharit, one with a few Shabbos Shuvah insertions that I had not done publicly before but have familiarity with them.  My daughter arrives from the west coast sometime Saturday, arranged long in advance to be with us for YK but she will be able to attend her uncle's funeral.  I will retrieve her from the airport's arrival curb.  My son and daughter-in-law arrive from Pittsburgh on Saturday night.  They will have a car and can get themselves to the funeral.

I do not know where my sister-in-law and nephew will be staying, but a limo from the Funeral Director will transport them to the graveside service.  A kosher caterer will provide a meal of condolence platter which I need to retrieve before the funeral, deliver to my other sister-in-law, then transport some people to the cemetery.  And the weatherman predicts rain.

Some eating and memories at my sister-in-law's house, leaving early enough to assure that I can assemble a suitable meal before YK.  Then Kol Nidre Sunday night, with its various speeches.  I am Torah reader YK morning, something I've done proficiently before and have adequately rehearsed for this year.  Eventually shofar blowing.

My daughter will then need to be transported to the airport, not sure when.  But I'm the one with the car.

If I like anything about retirement, it has been my control over my time.  I have imposed a few timed tasks, when to get up, when it's lights out, my OLLI course selection with meeting times a huge influence on what I take, my morning routine, when and where I want to travel.  Occasionally I will get an invitation for synagogue, which I usually but not always accept.  And shabbos arrives at its determined time.  My life has enough structure with a few things to do each day, mostly in the mornings. Consecutive days of being at this place at this time to do this, once my daily expectation, has become infrequent.  Even traveling in Paris this month, the tour had its schedule, dividing each day into three parts, but I had enough opt in or out choices to remain in control.  For the next few days, I will need to conform to a series of externally created tasks with specified times.  I'm no longer used to this, but up to the challenge.

OLLI Resumes

It's been a good summer off.  Made it to downstate destinations, made it across to the America's opposite coast, welcomed a new Rabbi who has made Saturday morning a more desirable destination for me.  Some of my anticipated mental activity did not fare as well, and the lazy hazy days of summer did not generate a very good work ethic.  But the fall transition begins soon, delayed a week by my long anticipated trip to Europe. 

Fall has always been my favorite season, a transition from amusement to achievement, though not to the total obliteration of amusement.  We have the Holy Days.  College Football begins this weekend.  School now resumes before Labor Day in many places, with the Back to School ads largely gone as retailers look ahead to Halloween.  And travel gets a little less spontaneous.  It's hard to be my Best Me in the hot summer.  Fall seems more conducive to effort.  And a week or so in France may be just the right inflection point.

While I am overseas, the Osher Institute's Fall semester resumes.  Three of the teachers have sent me their syllabus or introduction for four of the five classes in which I have enrolled.  Three of the four will follow a video series, either a Great Courses program with discussion or independent weekly DVDs related to the topic.  The other seems more a lecture format.  The fifth, a lecture series on the New Testament will remain a surprise until my first class.  Four of the five are on site at the OLLI Campus which immerses me with people after something of a summer lapse, only partially compensated by my renewed and honestly unanticipated affinity for my weekly synagogue attendance.

School restores a focus on work as a primary activity.  My mind engages during the class presentations, but it also engages in conversation, looking at the artwork that they hang on the walls, walking on the campus grounds wondering about the plants.  I will sometimes bring my laptop, particularly if I have two classes separated by a lunch break, or my writing portfolio if I don't.  Leaving the house to get there, about a twenty-minute drive each way, reinforces that this is a destination, one not easily duplicated at home.

So some time in France to conclude the summer, then the sometimes serious business of being an active senior.

Mind Prods

Senior and retired.  Every day a stream of challenges, mostly imposed upon me.  In grade school somebody else set the curriculum and I complied.  Once college arrived I had some discretion of what I wanted to study.  There were classes, there were social encounters.  Come medical school the curriculum was again mostly imposed but rigorous, challenging me most waking hours.  Then residency and career, some forty years of this, with patients in a continuous stream needing guidance, often me needing to learn more from either consultants or study.  Retirement resets that.  There are no mental imperatives other than what I create.  So what have I created?

Not a trivial undertaking.  I still keep a subscription to my favorite medical journal and read two articles from it each week.  I subscribe to The Atlantic and The Forward, reading one article a day from the former, two from the latter, and making an effort to comment to the author.  As much as I generally detest Twitter, this seems the most expeditious platform for feedback, though private emails to authors often get a response.  For a long time I had to produce a column for Medscape each month.  Not being personally within the medical loop, the quality of my submissions waned so I gave it up.  I do not have a substitute.  Still, I have maintained furrydoc.com, striving for a submission each day, irrespective of whether anyone reads my comments.  They are still personal expressions.  

I make an effort to watch a TED talk each day, and do pretty well with this.  A reading quota used to appear on my semi-annual projects list.  I dropped this initiative, as I was already doing it without having to target it for special attention.  Three books every half-year, one audio, one e-book, one traditional with subjects distributed over fiction, non-fiction, and Jewish.  Two months into this cycle, I've done two e-books, fiction and Jewish.  

My day starts with crosswords.  I enjoy doing them, though I'm not particularly adept.  I could try to get more proficient by either looking up clues, which I regard as cheating though it's probably really educational, or looking up and studying the final answer to the clues I missed.  But right now, I think just the recreational element of thinking what the letters should be will suffice.

Each school term, I take courses at the Osher Institute, usually four, usually lecture format.  I used to like to take discussion style classes but those have become less available since the pandemic.

And each Monday evening I make a YouTube video where my talking head discusses a topic for about seven minutes.

While I've done well with petty expression, what I've not done well, indeed underperformed, has been replacing that monthly Medscape column with presentations of comparable length requiring comparable effort that others may want to read.  I try, but have been inconsistent with output.  It's one thing to sit through lectures or read articles of other people's minds, quite another to create my own.  As valuable as being part of the audience has been, I need to focus more effectively as a content creator.  That's where this set of semi-annual projects directs me.  Good attempts.  Not good consistency.  Focus on this.  My senior mind depends on it.

Tour of Ecosystem

Some special events really are special.  My Water Management class at OLLI has been outstanding.  But to make it more outstanding, one morning class was replaced by an afternoon on-site presentation by a professional landscape architect who showed us the environmental considerations he addressed in designing a local private school, one near my home.  The 50 acre property, with the school grounds occupying about a third of that, sits at a geological interface, an eastern area of Blue Rock gneiss to the east where I live and a section of a larger Wissahickon Formation to the west.  The western drainage of water has greater capacity, so the property design needed to move rainwater preferentially in that direction.  There are also two creeks, Rocky Run now behind some shopping centers, and a western creek.  By modifying the land with drainage channels directed toward the creeks, for the most part the water could be directed to where it needed to be with little underground pipe construction.

And there were a lot of rocks, some quite large.  Since the property was being designed for young children with remediable learning disabilities, the needs of the children who would be attending and the parents paying tuition rates not much different than an Ivy League university took priority.  Fencing provided safety, but those Blue Rocks, often boulders, could be repurposed as walking bridges across the channels, lookouts strategically placed to give a few teachers a comprehensive view of long swaths of play area.  Placement of classrooms allowed children to see selected parts of the grounds as their teachers taught the basics of geology or plants.

One of the more intriguing afternoons, though a rather long one on a day I felt a little less than my best.