Tag: 5 Thoughts

Handsful of topical mentations.

5 Thoughts: Why Sonoma?

0. WE SONOMANS LIVE in the greatest semi-isolated piece of spacetime findable on this vast and tiny Earth. Here are five reasons why I believe that.

1. Environmental infrastructure: Green hills in winter, golden in summer, wildflowers in the spring, and – partly due to the ubiquitous vineyards – some of the certifiably best autumn foliage that will ever knock out your eyeballs with giddy wonder. (Not to mention Sonoma Plaza, which San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen once called the most beautiful public square in California.) And all of it available within walking, hiking, or biking distance.

2. Social infrastructure: A friend of mine refers to this place as “the island.” Unlike other Sonoma County population centers, we’re not on any main highways/freeways – so to get here, you have to really want to. And because of that, there’s this fierce community spirit and shared sense that “we’re all we have.” In addition to our many volunteer-built niceties (a feature-rich senior center and independent FM radio station, to name just two), this was most evident during the October 2017 wildfires, where folk used their skills and resources to help their neighbors (and house and feed the many first responders who helped save us from a fiery fate).

3. Quality of life: Taking into account the countless farms, restaurants, museums, music and food venues, newspapers, artists and artisans, festivals, markets, parks, charities and benevolent societies, sister-cities, youth programs, tree-lined streets, classic cars, cottage industries, and 1930s-era moviehouse, there’s a reason we call it “Slownoma.”

4. The people: With Sonoma’s estimated population of less than than 11,000, one person really can still make a difference. And they make for great neighbors! (Mostly.) In any case, there’re a lot of friendly folks round these parts, and due to having lived here since 1998, a lot of familiar ones as well. You can’t buy that kind of connection.

5. Reality check: Oh, we’re not perfect: we have our occasional (and sometimes bad) crimes, a high cost of living and housing, our share of homelessness and hopelessness, and crushing poverty side-by-side with privileged opulence, just like many other American communities. But we also have more nonprofits per capita than many other American communities, meaning an unbelievable proliferation of goodhearted and competent people working to change or at least ameliorate our problems. Sometimes that may seem a Sisyphean task – but then, Sisyphus couldn’t muster so many cheerful and enthusiastic helpers.

5 Thoughts: Extended Identity

0. IT TAKES A PROTRACTED MOVE to realize how much of one’s sense of self is tied up in one’s Stuff.

1. After 26 years within the same walls, circumstances – specifics are unimportant – have forced us to find other lodgings. But the same circumstances have dictated that our upcoming relocation actually necessitated packing our Stuff some months ago. Thus, we have spent a long time in box-cramped quarters with all but a sparse assembly of representative possessions.

We have spent a long time in box-cramped quarters with all but a sparse assembly of representative possessions.

2. This decidedly isn’t a complaint: at least I still have all my Stuff. Some of my friends lost all theirs to different iterations of NorCal’s sporadic and frightening wildfires, including one friend who was iterated twice. (He likes to say that all his Stuff “overheated.”) And there are refugees around the world whose circumstances have included war, flood, famine, earthquake… I won’t belabor that point, because it’s not the one I’m addressing. What I want to say is something quite else: it’s very disorienting to live without what reminds me of who I am – and which embodies my memory and identity.

3. Chiefly: books.

4. As a student and teacher in our local Jewish community, books are essential not only to my work, but also to my sense of self. Although we all live in a digital Golden Age of Jewish study, thanks in part to Sefaria and My Jewish Learning and the Academic Torah Institute, all my sixty-three years of curiosity-reflexes are geared toward finding answers (as well as more interesting questions) by laying hands on and flipping through books.

5. It’s funny how temporary deprivation can heighten one’s experience of reality, much as the Yom Kippur fast can reveal one’s relationship with food. Before we packed my library, I used to think of books as my friends. Now I think of them as part of my soul. What of your Stuff reminds you of who you are? And: why?

5 Thoughts: Lifechangers

0. YOU ARE ON A PATH. Suddenly, something knocks you onto another one. Here are five (of my many) “somethings.”

1. 2001: A space odyssey. At the tender age of six, my mind was blown, by what I could not yet say. But after that, I was crazy for outer space, science fiction, astronomy, and everything those entailed. I still am.

2. Cosmic Trigger. The prolific Robert Anton Wilson’s magickal semi-autobiography, filled with the shared wonders of inner space, made me hungry for some “reality-tunnel” explorations of my own. I was 14, but to this day, the expedition continues.

3. DEVO. At 16, July 1978 found me lost in the sleepy conformity of Northern California’s Diablo Valley. When the phonograph needle hit the vinyl of Q: Are We Not Men? a whole universe of Other Mutants opened up. They were out there somewhere, but at least I knew they existed. And that made this lonely boy a little less so.

4. The Neo-Pagan Society of Diablo Valley College. Found ‘em! March 23, 1981 — the day after my 19th birthday — I entered the company of some amiable and kindhearted misfits filled with the divine spirit of high weirdness, raucous hilarity, bold creativity, mild-mannered mischief, and a lust for life. Best inadvertent post-birthday present ever.

5. Her.

5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.

0. READ CAREFULLY — THERE WILL BE a test later on.

1. In the book of Exodus, Moses tells the Children of Israel that G?d wants to enter into a contract with them. With one voice, and without knowing the details, the people reply, “Na’aseh v’nishma” — literally, “We will do, and we will hear/understand!”

2. Many people may argue that the formulation is backwards. How can you do something unless you first hear and/or understand it? But the Torah is imparting a great truth: that one can understand certain things only by doing them. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Make. BELIEVE.”

Five More Thoughts

1. ANOTHER SERVICE, ANOTHER ARMED GUARD. After making cordial introductions — as one of the service leaders, I was the first to arrive this morning — he informed me that an access-grate was askew below the sanctuary. One of our congregants (chair of our newly formed Security Committee, in fact) checked it out with him and pronounced the situation completely and unmistakably benign. But I’m glad someone noticed.

2. As a friend put it so well on our congregational Facebook page: “Our Shabbat service today was truly blessed. Neighbors Yolanda and Silvana joined us to pray for peace and share their pain over the war and anti-Semitism. Yolanda told her story of her Jewish family’s religious persecution from Spain and other family members’ persecution as Lebanese Christians. Her daughter brought roses, candles and a cactus to share with us. The notes were written to express their wishes for peace. Our hearts are full.”

3. I’ve never seen so many haunted faces. We did manage to manifest some light — quite a bit, actually — during and after the service. But still.

4. At the post-service kiddush (“coffee and fellowship time,” for those unfamiliar with that Hebrew term), every conversation involved what, as another friend put it, “is the first thing I think about in the morning and the last I think of at night.”

5. Where do we go from here?

Five Thoughts

1. WE HAD A WELL-ARMED GUARD at our synagogue service this morning. (In the United States. IN SONOMA. Which, as you may imagine, made/makes me feel both glad and sad.)

2. When our rabbi asked those visiting for the first time to rise, nearly two dozen people stood up from within the packed sanctuary. The rabbi then gave them the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26), with great feeling from him and a rousing “AMEN!” from us.

3. Prior to reciting the Kaddish, a prayer for the dead, it’s our synagogue’s custom to ask those assembled to offer names for whom they’re mourning. When it was my turn, I said, “the innocents.” (Or I might have said “the innocence.” I’m still not sure.)

4. Two things I hated, because we are generally otherwise a very welcoming community: 1.) The unfamiliar guy on the cellphone in the parking lot who asked our rabbi if this was a church (we share a campus). “Yes,” the rabbi told him. “A church.” 2.) We have been Zooming our 23-year-strong Saturday morning Torah study since COVID began, and this morning, an unfamiliar name popped into the waiting room. “Anybody here know a [Jane Doe]?” I asked. No one did. So I blocked her.

5. We also made space/time for each of us, as the spirit so moved, to share/vent/cry with each other. When it was my turn, I said that words were insufficient for the current situation. But I then related that, at Hebrew school this past week, our youngest student (and unofficial mascot) asked the rabbi, “Who do you hope wins this war?” “In war,” the rabbi told him, “nobody wins.” I hope his words entered the students’ tender hearts — and long memories.

5 Thoughts: Toward a Relational Taxonomy

0. THAT’S MY $5-WORDS WAY TO describe a long-held observation regarding how and why people get along together — and sometimes don’t.

1. Here it is: I believe we can interact with each other in one of three ways: Click, Anti-Click, and Clickless. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: Toward a Relational Taxonomy”

5 (Well, 6) Thoughts: How I Write

(THE FOLLOWING IS A BRIEF account of how the Prosatio Silban tales are conceived and written. It’s mostly meant for fans of those works, but if you’re interested in the writing process in general, read on — if not, I won’t be offended.)

0. Before anything happens on the screen, the idea is generated. I can’t quite tell you how that manifests, since I don’t understand it myself; sometimes a premise bursts into my consciousness, sometimes I will think of a theme (or scan my “50+ ideas” file) and let my mind wander.

1. Next, I open a fresh new Word document and type in the title (or at least the “working title”), my byline, that day’s date, a space for the approximate word count, and a reminder: “Bold means change it.” Continue reading “5 (Well, 6) Thoughts: How I Write”

5 Thoughts: 32x

1. IT’S THE MAGNIFICATION THAT CHANGED history.

2. When Galileo Galilei first-lighted* his telescope more than four hundred years ago, he didn’t know that simple act would begin a new era for humanity. He certainly didn’t know that by deducing that Earth was not the center of the Universe, and daring to proclaim the evidence of his senses and reasoning, he would be convicted by the Inquisition. So it goes, and sometimes tragically. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: 32x”

5 Thoughts: How I Spent My College Intuition

1. THEY SAY THAT IF YOU can remember certain events or associated places, it means you were never there; space-time knots whose experience is colored by the hazy circumstances of the experiencer. Case in point: the Neo-Pagan Society of Diablo Valley College, c. 1980-83ish.

2. NPS-DVC was the singular creation of “Chief Druid Zoro X.R. Troll” (who knows who he is but may not want you to): a seriously amiable poet attending Pleasant Hill’s then tuition-free community college with an eye toward finding kindred spirits. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: How I Spent My College Intuition”

5 Thoughts: A Celebration of Bags

0. WHO AMONG US HAS NOT searched for the perfect shouldered carryall? Here are five of my favorites:

1. In high school, I owned a black, one-pocket, snap-closure American naval officer’s bag suitable for a notebook, pens, paperbacks and other adolescent contraband. I carried that thing around town, in caves and forests, and up hilltops and tall buildings. It finally developed more holes than I could repair, and made way for… Continue reading “5 Thoughts: A Celebration of Bags”

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