Tag: moments

All that we ever really have.

Sometimes I Hate This Job

I’M PUTTING OFF WRITING A eulogy. Doesn’t everyone?

Linda Tomback is a good friend who used to attend our Saturday morning Torah study. Her death is the eighth in our congregation in the past two years; the first two were also regular members of our study group — a cantankerously proud “old-school Reform Jew” named Larry Giller, and big enthusiastic ba’al teshuvah (returnee to Judaism) Steve Surtshin.

Then Richard Bien, with whom I enjoyed some intense Torah and life discussions but didn’t know as well as I would have liked; Esther Norton, whip-tough and smart and motherly generous; Paul Habas, tall and formal, devastating sense of humor; Margaret Laybourn, cherished by many friends but someone I only saw across the oneg table; and the gentle yet formidable Richard Newman, who taught me why we have principles — and how to live by them.

“Each man’s death diminishes me,” John Donne wrote. True, it’s our common fate — less evitable even than taxes, since we share it with everyone fish or plant or fungus — but when it happens within a small social group within a small historical moment, Donne’s truth rattles rather loudly.

Linda’s funeral is this afternoon. I have not attended any of the above friends’ funerals either due to medical complications (mine), privacy (the family’s), or ignorance (again mine); in fact the last funeral I attended was Jim “Sputnik” Gjerde‘s in 2003. He was about the best friend I had, of 24 years through high school and young manhood and whatever our particular manhood is; as Shakespeare might have said, our lives were seated on the ground telling ribald stories of the lives of kings until we rang the chimes at midnight. His death undid me, and frankly rather soured me on the whole prospect. “Death? Pfffft. What else is on?”

Funnily enough, I said a few words at Sputnik’s funeral too.

Torah study is a lot like golf, in that you can really get to know someone while you’re doing it; it demands openness and honesty and the sort of integrity that’s perhaps better called consistency. I didn’t know Linda long — only two years or somewhat less — but she was a lot like Sputnik: intense, smart, funny, kind, instantly easy to hang out with, generous beyond measure, unselfconscious in her approach to God and Its mysterious ways.

Maybe those ways are less mysterious to her now, and she’s hanging out with Sputnik and Larry and Steve and Richard and Esther and Paul and Margaret and Richard and whoever it is that you miss, when you think of conversations you can’t have. I don’t know; I don’t think I will know until my own death, and perhaps not even then. But I have told you their names because, according to one voice of Jewish tradition, they contain our souls, and thus live on with each mention, and who knows but that might be true, in some sense. May we all partake of this, or similar, immortality, or at least the comfort that pondering it may bring.

… And It’s Still Unbroken

WEDNESDAY NIGHT WAS SAN FRANCISCO and the Jellyfish Gallery, a cozy industrial space where 50 or so practical idealists gathered to talk about saving the world one action at a time.

The event was a local “spore” of the international Evolver.Net launch (which seems to be the latest public project by the millennia-old and occasionally secret Happy Mutant conspiracy, whose unspoken ideals include fierce creativity, kindness, neophilia, competency with tools and a compulsion to answer every “No” with a “Why not?”).

My friends at Conscious Consignment had heard about Evolver.Net at the recent Harmony Festival and were impressed by its founder, Daniel Pinchbeck. (Disclaimer: I haven’t yet read Mr. Pinchbeck’s works in depth, but he seems in the vein of meta-agnostic and polymath Robert Anton Wilson‘s Cosmic Trigger sans Wilson’s humor and “don’t believe everything you think” attitude.) As an old-school Happy Mutant who was 15 when Cosmic Trigger and Star Wars debuted, here’s what I saw:

1. Same energy, different faces.
A dizzying feeling of bilocation: people as young now as I was then, like looking back at the starting line of an endless race — spooky and cool at the same time, with a happy undertone of “And some day, their kids …”

2. Better tools and competency.
Organizing and voice-projecting are cheap-to-free these days, as opposed to the limited resources back when websites were called zines. Evolver.Net is one such: it’s a social network (a la Facebook) specific to organizing projects that may be too big for one person alone. (Tangential thought — the scene feels more … stratified than that o’ me youth; perhaps the difference between discovering potential and implementing it.)

3. Alas, another deadline.
If you also have lived through one Harmonic Convergence, two Grand Planetary Alignments and the turn of one millennium, after each of which historical moments life was expected to be completely groovy forever, you will understand my skepticism (see sense 2a) regarding the whole 2012 thing; saving the world (i.e., restructuring the human experiment to maximize all the good parts) works better as an ongoing process than something with a sell-by date.

Bottom line: Some very good and good-hearted people are doing some amazing and important things, and they’re using Evolver.Net to do it. Come join the fun — and be the world you want to live in..

Minute Mitzvah: Take Saturday Off

Welcome to another Monday Mitzvah! If you’re not hip to things eth(n)ospiritual, feel free to skip this post.

Today: Rest on Shabbat.

For most of the past 166,400-odd weeks, Jews have celebrated Shabbat as part of the fabric of Creation. (After all, if God gets a day off why shouldn’t we?) The essence of Shabbat is rest from and refreshment toward the workaday world of, well, creation: of making and maintaining and manipulating. Those of a hardcore bent enjoy this weekly vacation within a formal Friday-sunset-to-Saturday-nightfall structure; others unplug and recharge in their own way. The idea is to take a break from everything which keeps you from being you during the other six days. (Media critic and minimalist Henry David Thoreau might have been speaking of Shabbat when he said, “Read not the Times for Truth: Read the Eternities.”)

Exercise: This Saturday, just give it a rest.

It Started With Fingerprinting

Actually, it started two weeks ago, when I was interviewed by two Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplains who asked me why I wanted to become one of them.

"To tell you the truth," I said, "the whole idea terrifies me. But it's the sort of terror which compels further exploration."

They laughed. "You couldn't do this if you didn't feel that way," one replied.

Or maybe it started in 2000, when I interviewed a Sonoma Valley man who had just graduated from the 85-hour program in order to be able to sit with victims of crimes and accidents and help them cope when they'd otherwise be alone; or in 2001, when first responders in New York walked into two burning buildings, perhaps knowing they weren't coming out. I'd been writing about police and firefighters then for long enough to think I knew why they did that — and right then, I wanted to help those who help. But it wasn't until earlier this month that the opportunity arrived in the form of a newspaper blurb looking for chaplaincy candidates and urging the interested to fill out the form on http://www.sonomalawchaplains.org.

Anyway, whenever it started, this grey cool morning found me in Santa Rosa, at the county sheriff's headquarters, being fingerprinted with three other chaplain candidates.

The woman who runs the fingerprinting machine said she didn't like it at first. She was of the ink-and-roller school, and said she only adjusted to the new technology when they took her roller away. Now, she said, she couldn't imagine taking fingerprints any other way. The LiveScan fingerprinting machine is a digital camera, which takes a group shot apiece of the four fingers on each hand, and then one of each finger and thumb which the technician rolled gently across the cleanest glass plate I've ever seen.

"Just relax," she said.

There's a lesson in that, and one which I'll be thinking about next Tuesday evening the training begins in earnest with a weekly three-hour class until April. More about that subsequently, God willing.

There’s WATER on ‘ing MARS.

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080731.html

(Is it just me, or did the Universe suddenly get a little more friendly?)

And so, to work.

It was four-and-a-half months since I was laid off from the sasonal office-manager position at a local nursery, and longer still since I worked in my official profession, when I picked up the phone to call Sonoma Valley’s newest newspaper. The conversation went something like this:

“Hi, I’ve been out of work for five years but I think I can help. Do you need any reporters?”

“Sure!”

Well, not exactly like that. But pretty close. Anyway, I started yesterday at the Sonoma Valley Sun, and will be covering fires, cops/courts, and breaking news. (In addition to whatever else is needful, like features and (I hope!) columns.) Also, I’ve reclaimed the byline “Neal Ross” (which I adopted for radio back in 1995 since nobody can seem to spell or pronounce “Attinson,” and kept for newspapering since that’s how all my contacts knew me. They still do).

There’s a saying that the One rewards men only for the merit of their wives. I don’t generally hold with Deuteronomic reward/punishment theology, but seeing the relief on Ann‘s face makes me agree with at least a small part of it … Blessed is the One who makes our wives happy.

As for me, I feel as though I’m walking in a dream. But I’d better wake up before the deadline. 😉

Thump, Flutter, Gak

I looked up from the computer, wondering about the “thump.” Then I saw the robin on the patio — fluttering wings outspread, struggling to get up.

Outside, through the gate, into the side-yard. “Are you okay?” I asked reflexively.

She wasn’t, at least at first. Her beak and eyes were wide open, and she was panting — or do robins always breathe that way? She seemed dazed but unhurt (no broken legs or anything), so I sat down next to her and babbled softly: “You poor thing. We’ll get you fixed up, give you some nice worm broth and pyracantha cobbler,” etc.
Continue reading “Thump, Flutter, Gak”

Focus: Israel

As the situation in Israel continues to develop, many are turning to the “local papers” for better coverage than that offered by CNN or (grf) the BBC. The following offer in-depth reportage and up-to-the-minute English-language breaking news:
– Haaretz (left-leaning)
– Arutz Sheva (right-leaning)
– Jerusalem Post (centrist)
– Yediot Ahronot (centristy)

Other sites of note:
– Debka – Military/intelligence analysis, often scooping the American press by a week or more.
– Middle East Media Research Institute – Translations from the Arab press
– Honest Reporting – Countering media bias
– Israeli blogs
– Interactive map of bloggers from Israel, Lebanon and the Territories.

And:
Put A Note in the Western Wall

Be well, all of us.

Omer’s Where The Art Is

“Meanwhile, we dig.”
— Big X (Richard Attenborough), The Great Escape

Pesach is over, the last of the matza crumbs have been vacuumed up, and our stomachs have finally returned to normal (or soon will).

Now what?

When we were kids, we thought (well, I thought) that freedom was a “done deal.” Freedom was the be-all and end-all of existence. If I could only be 18, thought I, I would be free to do whatever I wanted: bounce on the bed, eat cookies for dinner, shout fire in a crowded theater.

Of course, the realities of post-adolescent life soon disabused me of those notions. Bouncing on the bed meant I had to buy a new one when it broke. Eating cookies for dinner made me sicker than the smiling faces on the box had led me to believe. And shouting fire in a crowded theater, even metaphorically, meant hurting innocent people.

Hence, a lesson: Freedom implies responsibility. The ability to act implies — rather, demands — that we act with an eye toward consequences.

By the Jewish calendar, we’re now in the Omer period, the 49 days between Pesach and Shavuot. The first festival celebrates the going-out from Egypt, from the narrow confines and blind thralldom which keeps us from living to our full measure. The second celebrates the Sinai Event and the acceptance that endless and unforseeable permutations arise from even the simplest of our actions: whether thought, or speech, or deed.

The Omer period teaches us that freedom and responsibility are not binary exclusives, but endpoints on the scale by which we weigh our lives. May we all find — or help each other acquire — the perfect balance for every challenge.

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