THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you mount a high-definition camera on a spaceship and send it to Saturn:
(More information at http://www.outsideinthemovie.com/. For maximum fun, expand the view by clicking on the arrow-square in the bottom right corner.)
Poker Face
WE WERE FIVE MEN PLAYING draw poker.
“Ante up, gentlemen,” said R. “Nickel apiece.”
The cards went round once, twice, thrice.
B coughed. T took a sip of his Cuba Libre.
R sent the cards round again. And again.
When Tefilin Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Lay Tefilin
Fig. 1.
March 14, 2011 (JTA) — An Alaska Airlines flight crew issued a security alert after three Mexican Orthodox Jews began praying with tefillin.
The flight attendants, who were concerned by the prayers being said aloud in Hebrew and the unfamiliar boxes with leather straps hanging from them, locked down the cockpit and radioed a security alert ahead to Los Angeles International Airport. (See: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/03/14/3086391/alaska-airlines-detains-passengers-over-tefillin.)
(This sort of thing Nearly Happened To Me, in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in early 2002: the onlookers were a couple of antsy early-morning passengers watching me “wrap up” in a terminal alcove. “It’s a Jewish prayer thing,” I said, and left it at that. They were mollified, I met my obligations, and the world survived another day.)
Looking Back on Apocalypse
HOW STRANGE TO SIT IN 2011, and wax wistfully nostalgic over the heady nihilism of Repo Man. Had we but known …
All-Natural Selection
ONE REASON WHY CALIFORNIA HAS so many smart people is that, periodically, the lesser-reasoned go down to the seashore to watch the tsunami come in.
Unplug: Can You Do It?
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was drunk, belligerent and enjoying myself — not a good combination, nor one which I experience (or wish to experience) in real life. The subject of my tirade seems to have been the apologetic and paralyzing self-consciousness of the modern Jewish stereotype, and while I don’t remember exactly what I said I was truly “all het up” about it. (Which I occasionally am in real life, and maybe why it felt so good to express it.)
But that sense of muddy frustration evaporated when I discovered http://www.sabbathmanifesto.org/ and their call for a National Day of Unplugging from sundown March 4 to sundown March 5. Wondering what to do with your time? Ten suggestions are right here (from “Avoid technology” and “Get outside” to “Find silence” and “Give back”), but participants are also encouraged to create their own.
The basic idea is this: No one can run 24/7 without burning out, even someone as necessary and busy as you. So take a regular day off. See what’s within arm’s reach, and maybe rediscover who you are and what you’re doing here — or at the very least, take a well-earned nap. (Remember naps?)
(And if you found this via Facebook during one of many five-minute “just checking” sessions, you might just want to unplug right now.)
Compassionings
IT IS PRECISELY AT THAT moment when compassion seems most remote that it is most greatly needed. This principle is easier spoken than implemented — what isn’t? — but holds true not only for the individual, who is buffeted by a daily stream of bad news, but his or her logical and multiplex counterparts, arrayed in a social complex which seems to crumble by the day despite sincere effort. Some of us feel like we’re propping up a collapsing tent — but prop we must, because it’s what we do. If we are fools, as we even sometimes seem to ourselves, at least we’re getting some exercise. Maybe we’ll even glimpse Someone Else through the enshrouding folds.
Everyone you see is broken. Everyone needs at least a smile; some also need a job, or food, or shelter, or a reason to live. We are seeing heartbreak and pain on a massive and seemingly accelerating scale. We all need acknowledgment that we’re not alone — that our cry in the dark is at least heard, even if we are powerless to do more than cry, or listen.
We need each other, because we are all we have. So be kind to someone today. It may be their last, or yours.