Thrilla From Wasila

I was hoping I was through with Sarah Palin.  Really.  But with the publicity tour for  her book, Going Rogue, she’s everywhere…inhabiting the spaces I like to occupy, TV news shows and newspapers.  There’s no getting away from her. I don’t like the feeling she evokes in me; for some reason I don’t see her as benign or foolish and she brings out a mean-spiritedness in me that is usually confined to a  very few people.  For example, Dick Cheney is way up on that list. (Interesting resume-draft dodger/war mongerer).  A rising star and rapidly gaining is Judas Joe Lieberman.  And oy… that voice.  By the way, am I the only one who thinks he’s Howdy Doody all grown?

I’ve tried to figure out why Ms. Palin gets under my skin.   The most compelling reason I’ve been able to come up with is that it bothers me no end that there are so many people in the country held in thrall by a nincompoop.  And that scares the hell out of me.  That my so-called ‘countrymen’ could be swayed by someone so light is almost a mystery to me.  I heard a conservative commentator say the other day that part of her appeal is that she’s  ” easy on the eyes.”  Quaint expression.   Exactly the quality you’d want from someone holding the most powerful position in the world.  Who knows, maybe if she started to show some cleavage she might attract some Independents.

With this onslaught of “all Palin, all the time”, the networks are rolling out old clips of her from the 2008 campaign.  I particularly like the one where John McCain doesn’t know whether to shake her hand, peck her cheek or give her a full body hug.  He opts for some kind of bizarre amalgam and then, as an afterthought, shakes Todd Palin’s hand without looking at him….as if he were totally dispensable.  I know that Sarah has said that what has gotten her through the “hard times’, were God and Todd. (Convenient name…no?)  I can kind of understand the ‘God’ part, but jeez, how has Todd helped when he apparently can’t speak.  That’s the truth.  I (over)watched the campaign;  he was everywhere.  But I’ve  never heard him utter a word.  Never.  And no one I’ve  asked, has ever heard him speak.  Apparently, the (almost) “first dude” has not much to say.

This is good….writing this is helping me get over my Palin-angst.  Thank you.  One last thing… I thought a fun thing might be to invent a Palin-drome that somehow would be come as famous as “Madam I’m Adam”.  I’ve fooled around with it a bit…it’s way too hard for me.  About the only thing I’ve come up with so far is, “Is Todd dotsi?”  Actually, I think he might be.

If A Tree Falls On An Editor…….

Jeff, from the NY Times called me the other day.  He was calling to confirm some information regarding  a “letter to the editor” I had sent in; also to vet me, as the sender.  I’ve been submitting letters to the Times for years…some of them well written and thoughtful, others less so, almost all responding to articles and op-ed pieces on politics.  As I like to say, the anti-Semites there have chosen to ignore me.

That’s not exactly true. A number of years ago a letter that I sent to the Times Magazine section was, indeed, published.  It was a letter refuting something that Steve Leavitt, the author of Freakonomics, had written about real estate brokers.  There was a hint of an insinuation of a suspicion of a possibility of an implication of a  ’maybe’  that  brokers were less than forthright.  Actually,  way more than a hint.  I made  a well-reasoned argument countering his premise  which more or less brought  smarty pants  Leavitt to his knees. This was very satisfying.  But I know that  the only reason my letter was selected was because, as a broker, I brought some expertise to the subject at hand.  Still, I was  beyond pleased.

There was an article in the “Home” section of the Times  a few weeks ago that again contained some oblique dissing of real estate brokers. A few days after reading it, I dashed off a  quick letter contesting  some of the remarks.  Oddly,as I wrote the letter, I was almost certain  that (again, because of my “expertise”)  it would get published.  Still, I was caught off guard  when “Jeff, from the Times” called. 

Our conversation couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or two.  He said the Times was going to print my letter and wanted to verify a few things.  I offered,  ”How was my spelling?”  Jeff  seemed confused and said, “What?”  I now knew that this was no time for fooling around so  I told him that I was kidding.  He moved on saying that  the letter was well written and they would publish it with no changes but he wanted to go over a few things.  He obviously had googled me because he asked if I was “the Neil Stein who is the restaurateur in Philadelphia.”  There is a posting on this very blog (“It Ain’t Me Babe”   http://ironicman.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/me-myself-and-i/) that I wrote a few months ago about my Philadelphia namesake who, not so incidentally, has a bit of a criminal background (white-collar crimes).  I told him I wasn’t that  Neil Stein but was well aware of him.  Jeff, from the Times said that he was glad I wasn’t the guy from Philly since part of my letter talked about “honesty”, and it would be  so IRONIC  if, in fact, I  was the criminal Neil Stein.  I swear, that’s what he said…it would be IRONIC !  In a perfect world and/or if I could think on my feet more quickly, I would have said something like, “it’s funny you mention how IRONIC that might be, because I write a blog which is based, in part, on irony. ” And in that perfect world, Jeff from the Times would have said…”really, why don’t you send that along to me?”  But, it’s not a perfect world and I am not nearly that quick , and we ended our conversation going over some routine matters.  A bummer.

Jeff from the Times told me that my letter  would be in either last week’s or this week’s Home section.  I eagerly checked last week’s paper….no letter.  By some convoluted coincidence,  I happened across the on-line version of the Home section and there it was…. my letter in all its glory!  And do you know how many people have contacted me to say they came across that letter?   None, zero, zilch, nada, gournischt.    I’m certain that  a tree falling in the forest where no one is there to hear it, makes more noise than the “letters” section of the on-line edition of the Home section.  A lot more noise.  

For those of you still reading and who have the time, interest and stomach….here’s a link to the …well, you know what.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/garden/12letters.html?scp=1&sq=letter%20neil%20stein&st=cse

Silk Purse or Sow’s Ear

I  feel really lucky that I have a house in the country. For a few reasons.  Of course, it’s lovely to get away from time to time.  But easily, the best thing about having a country house is  that when I’m asked the question, “So, what did you do this weekend?, I have an answer…”I went to the country.”  There’s never a follow up as in, “and what did you do? It seems that just leaving town is actvity enough.  Being a slug in the country isn’t nearly as pathetic as being one in the City.

A few years back, after I had recently bought my house I was in a bar (shocking!) in a nearby  town.  I got into a conversation with the young woman tending bar and after a while she asked me if  I’d like to meet an (older) friend of hers.  I said that I would and within a few weeks I had drinks with Sally, an artist who lived in the area.  After some introductory banter we began exchanging some of our histories.  When I told her where my house was and described it a bit, she looked at me strangely and said very tentatively, “Does your house have a hot tub in the living room?”  And indeed it did!  Apparently, some time in the past, Sally had been to a party at “my house” and may have actually been in that hot tub.  I thought about the person from whom I had bought the house and in that moment, knew Sally and I were not meant to be.

Since then, I’ve transformed the house.  The hot tub area is now an enclosed porch with a beautiful view.  I love to relax on the porch  listening  to music or reading.  Or just sit and look out.  Straight on is a beautiful, perfectly shaped large pear tree that both I and the deer love.  In the late afternoon, I’ll often have a glass of wine or a martini  and sit and wait for them to show up.  There are usually squirrels and chipmunks scurrying about and when the deer  arrive, I feel like I’ve entered a woodland scene from Bambi.  At worst, even if the deer don’t show I’m still happy with my drink and my thoughts. (I’m not sure how I would feel  if the reverse happened…i.e. the deer showed but the vodka didn’t.  Luckily, I have some control over that.)

Although the oldest parts of my house date to the late 1700’s, much of its architectural style was in the nouveau 1960’s tradition.  The prior owner had added addition upon addition culminating with  a hot tub room adjacent to the living room.  As if, that was the perfect place to put it.  The hot tub itself was party size and the walls of the room were covered with floor to ceiling mirrors.  The only thing missing was a disco ball.

Jonathan Swift wrote, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” He was wrong.  By investing a lot of effort and too much money I was able to change my house into a place I love visiting–a “silk purse.”  And even though, as I said,  ”being away” is an activity in itself, if I’m ambitious, there’s a choice of other things to do.  I have a favorite bike ride that takes me past a beautiful horse farm  Or I may go down the road and play with some friends at their tennis court.  Or do some work on the barn.  But,  most of the time I don’t do much.

A lot of people give their homes names—you usually see it at the driveway entrance.  “Twin Pines”, “Frog Hollow”…..names like that.  I’ve toyed with the idea of placing a wooden sign at the head of my drive.  “Sow’s Ear” or maybe now, “Silk Purse”.  But that sounds like I’d have to do something.  So….maybe not.

SILK PURSE

 

 

SOW'S EAR

One Obama, Two Obama…

There was an article in the NY Times last week that caught my attention.  It seems that Barack Obama has a half-brother, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo who is currently living in China.  The President and Mr. Ndesandjo have the same father, a Kenyan goat herder who somehow or other wound up getting a graduate degree from Harvard.  They both had  American mothers who were white; in Mr. Ndesandjo’s case, a Jewish woman who is still alive and living in Nairobi.

I was up much of last night trying to figure out what the relationship between the President and this woman might be called.  There is a wonderful Yiddish word, machitanistah (I’ve thoroughly mangled the spelling, I’m sure) that is used to call the family that one inherits when one’s son or daughter gets married.  I was hoping  that there would be a similar Yiddish term that would apply to the connection between President Obama and this woman. But from everything I know, there isn’t one…..either in Yiddish or in English.  So this (Jewish) woman needs to be described simply as, the mother of the half-brother of the “leader of the free world”.  (Catchy acronym–MOHBOLOFW)

There was a  demonstration in Washington last Thursday by the so-called “tea baggers”  protesting the pending health care reform.  Some of the demonstrators were carrying placards that were, as Paul Krugman described them,  ”grotesque”.   Some of the signs displayed  a Holocaust photo of bodies piled on top of one another with a caption drawing a parallel between the Obama Adminstration and the Nazis.  I find this appalling.  Of course, there’s not much that can be done  to control someone who acts in such a hateful, disproportionate way.  But still, I find it very upsetting.   What upsets me even more is the tacit approval of the alleged  responsible leaders of the Republican Party who were at the microphones and speaking to the assembled crowd.  One of those leaders was Eric Cantor, who as the  Minority Whip  is the second highest ranking GOP member in the House.  I’ve cited Mr. Cantor in a previous posting.  Mr. Cantor is Jewish.  I wonder how he feels, as a Jew, about the trivialization of the Holocaust  implicit in those signs.  I have an urge to call his mother and tattle on him.  For Mr. Cantor to be silent in the face of such behavior is a shonda. (Another wonderful Yiddish word.  Meant to convey an “embarrassment” but, and here’s part of the essence of the Jewish psychology, an uber ”embarrassment” because it’s within viewing by gentiles.  For example, playing basketball on Yom Kippur is   frowned on, doing it in front of gentiles is a shonda.)

I don’t like writing about politics.  There are enough people doing that and doing it way better than I can.  But I do like writing about irony and statistical oddities.  Here is an example:  There are 217 Republicans in the House and Senate combined.  Of that group, Mr. Cantor is the only Jew.  In other words, there are as many Jews who are mothers of Barack Obama’s half siblings as there are  Jewish Republican members of the US Congress.

And by the way, of the 217  Republicans in Congress, there are no, that’s right… zero, African-Americans.  Put another way, there are more Kenyan goat herders who have fathered American Presidents than there are black Republicans in the United States of America’s greatest legislative institution.  Now, that’s a shonda.

Note:  Democrats in the House of Representatives include over 40 African-Americans  and over 30 Jews.  In the US Senate, there is only one black Senator, a Democrat.  There are 13  Democrat and Independent Senators who are Jewish.

"The Republican Party is in its root a party of inclusion......" Eric Cantor, Los Angeles Times, 11/6/09

Facebook Failure

It’s true, I’ve failed at Facebook.  As I had threatened , I joined FB about ten days ago.  I’m amazed that I’ve lasted as long as I have.  My sole purpose was to use it to somehow spread the word about my blog.  The problem with that idea is that I’d actually have to friend  people.  (yes, friend…right up there with google as the latest verb.) This has proven to be a lot harder than I thought.  Oh…of course, I’ve friended a few people, namely the people with whom I work.  So, now the yard or two that separates us in the real world has been eliminated.  Somehow, I don’t feel any better.

But friending  people who I don’t regularly see  is something I can’t get myself to do.  It seems like some kind of exercise in….in.., I can’t come up with the word I’m looking for.  (Maybe by the time I finish this, it will come to me.)  It’s not that I’m too busy to be spending time on FB; quite the opposite…it’s  just the kind of thing that might keep me off the streets and out of trouble.   But I seem to have a conviviality block that I can’t get past.   What little experience I have  noodling around on the  FB site  reminds of an aphorism I  sometimes refer to  when one of the people in my office wants to take a listing of a property that’s so outrageously overpriced that it is essentially unsaleable.   I suggest that spending time trying to sell something like that is  ’like eating soup with a fork….it keeps you busy but doesn’t fill you up”.  My strong suspicion is that FB is a lot like that

Apart from my reticence to “reach out and touch someone” on FB,  I also had an unsettling experience within the first few days of joining.  A friend…..a real friend,  wrote something nice to me on my “wall”.   I wrote  back the next day saying, “I knew there was something about you I like.”  That would have been fine….except it went,  in error,  to a woman who had written to me around the same time.  I became aware of this when she wrote back in a way I took as flirtatious, asking what it was specifically  that I liked about her.  For a few minutes I thought that I had somehow walked into a Seinfeld episode.  And I was George!!  I never want to be George.  No one wants to be George.  I freaked and starting begging Luap who had suggested the FB vehicle in the first place , to  somehow make things right.   Finally I calmed down and did the mature thing.  I turned my computer off and hid under my desk.  

There has been one bright spot in all this.  Luap  posted a notice on FB that Nire’s most recent sonogram had revealed that….that…IT’S A BOY!.  Exciting.  Congratulations on Luap’s FB page were pouring in from all over.  (The presumption is that it would have been the same if it was A GIRL!)  One  extraordinarily clever person responded to the news, “I just knew there was a chance  it might be something like that” . (That was me).  It got me thinking of  an  ad I had come across a long time ago when a baby’s sex was a mystery until birth.  The guy whose ad it was,  promised, for a fee,  to predict the gender of the baby  with 100% accuracy.  And to induce people to pay for his service, he offered a money back guarantee if he was wrong.  Very clever guy.   Sounds like someone I might like to be friends with.

P.S.  The word I couldn’t come up with remains elusive.  The blog probably suffers for it.  C’est la guerre.

Luap's and Nire's baby in the fetal postion

Back In Treatment

In the 1970′’s, during Phil Donahue’s heyday, there was another show on in the same time slot, The Stanley Siegel Show which my ex-wife, Aliehs and I would sometimes  watch.  Stanley’s “gimmick” was that he was just himself…no artifice.  One of his segments included a real-time session with his psychotherapist.  He would lie on a couch and have a mini-session with his real life shrink.  What makes me think of this, is that the column I’m writing here may have more than a passing  resemblance to that kind of self-indulgence.

A while back, I wrote that I had quit my therapy around the same time as the main character (Gabriel Byrne)  in HBO’s In Treatment quit his.  My guess is that when the new season starts, he’ll go back into some kind of therapy-he has a lot of unresolved issues. ( Hopefully, it will be  with someone more interesting and a lot hotter than his former therapist, played by Diane Wiest).    I had been  thinking about going to see a new therapist and I thought there would be an interesting symmetry if he and I start anew at the same time.  The new In Treatment season will probably not start until the spring.  Unfortunately,  I couldn’t wait that long.  

I’ve had a number of therapists in my life….all of them men.  I decided I wanted to have the experience of being in therapy with a woman.  With that in mind, I got the names of a few  therapists located in downtown Brooklyn.  I decided to interview two of them.   Both of the women I saw seemed smart and insightful and  I felt that either one would be a good ‘fit’ for me.  Although  I was initially torn in choosing which one I would continue with,   I  rather quickly came to a decision.   There’s a locker room joke I barely remember but the setup has something to do with a man interviewing for a new woman assistant. There are many applicants each of whom seems  more qualified than the last.  He  quickly picks one.  A friend says, “How were you able to make a choice so quickly? They all seem so qualified.”  The man answers, “Easy, I just picked the one with the biggest tits.”    In my case, picking the therapist also turned out to be  easy…I  simply picked the one that took my insurance.   Sadly, a sign of the times.

As I mentioned, I thought I would use this column in the way that Stanley used his show.  But as I’m writing, I’ve realized a few things.  Not that I don’t trust and love you all, but I don’t think I want to expose myself in that way.  And, I seem to recall that Mr. Siegel had some kind of breakdown after the demise of his show and fell into some kind of  downward spiral.  So,  he may not be the best  model to emulate.   What’s more, he was getting paid oodles of money for  being so risky with his privacy.   As you may have guessed, the pay  here at the Ironicman blog factory is rather low.  So, I’m taking a step back here from the brink of being overly confessional and revelatory.  Which, as I think about it, is probably the best thing for the blog adventure, as well.    I don’t know about you….but there’s only so much of that kind of stuff I can read.

Buddy, Can You Spare A ….

I had dinner the other night at a local Thai restaurant with my friend, G.  It was rather late when we got there and the place was pretty empty.  Early on in our meal, an African American  couple with an infant in a carrier came in, placed it on a table for four that was right next to ours and sat down.    I’m not sure why, with so many empty tables , that they chose to sit right by our table, but they did.  We (G and I) were involved in a fairly serious conversation so I was less than pleased by what I foresaw as trouble.  And sure enough, within a few minutes the baby was fussing and starting to cry.  G, who tries not to get stressed about these kinds of things , refused to be annoyed and  started cooing and making faces at the baby…almost enjoying him.  He seemingly wasn’t  bothered at all  by the fact that this couple could have sat anywhere but had instead  placed a crying baby within a foot of us.  G’s placid demeanor in the face of this storm made me feel as if  I was having dinner with Ghandi.  So, it was left to me to be the sole repository of any unhappiness with our situation.   And of course, I rose to the occasion. I’ve seen (and been part of) this exact dynamic that often takes place in  couples (for clarity’s sake, G and I are not a romantic couple).  Often, when one of the parties gets upset, it’s not unusual  for the other to stake out the opposite position even if it’s at odds with their inclination.   In this case, either G could see me getting upset or made a very reasonable guess that  I would soon be bothered,  so he easily moved over to a position of insouciance.  (As an aside, very occasionally  the reverse happens…..most likely on the tennis court.  G is more apt to be bothered by some intrusion to our court than I am. I simply adopt a  beatific smile reminiscent of the Dalai Lama and let him take care of the steaming for both of us.)

The baby calmed down, we continued our conversation and the meals we had ordered were served.  Me, Pod Thai…G, a plate of pork chops.  We began eating and soon after, the baby’s father looked at G’s platter and said, “Man, those look good…can I have a bite?”  Yes….a stranger who we don’t know from a hole in the wall says just like that, “CAN I HAVE SOME OF YOUR DINNER?”  These folks were already on my list of people who:  I want to know where they’re  going to be eating next so I can avoid that restaurant.  They now moved easily to the top of that list.  G,  who doesn’t get rattled easily said something like “I like your style”  or  “go for it” and  obliged.  He cut a piece, put it on his fork and extended it to the stranger sitting next to us. 

We ultimately finished eating , paid our bill and left the restaurant.  Once outside, I asked G if he would have reacted differently had it been a white guy asking the same question.  He said, “No, not at all”, and I take him at his word.  The reason that  I asked  is that I sense in myself  the instinct to “bend over backwards”   in a situation like that where I’m dealing with someone who is  a minority.  Almost an overcompensation based on some internalized guilt.  It brings to mind Malcom Gladwell’s premise in Blink.  Even when we make what may look like a quick decision, it is formulated by a lifetime of information that his been processed by our brain.  In the case in point, had I been the one asked to fork over some meat by a white guy, I think I probably would have asked him if he was crazy.  But if it had been a black guy….I think my brain would start firing all its neurons, protons, all kinds of particles….everything, calling up every piece of  the history of the oppression, prejudice and racism that had ever come its way.  And in a moment that looked instantaneous, a “blink”, I think I probably would have offered the guy my pork chop, the  side  dish that came along with it, my beer and possibly a ride home.

The Not So Great, ‘Great Gatsby’

I have some huge gaps in my literary background.  I wouldn’t know where to begin to list them   Let’s just say there are many great works of literature that have somehow eluded me.  These include more than a few  of Shakespeare’s plays.  This lack is  especially apparent in my office where a number of the players are former actors and know  the Bard’s works very well.  Chapter and verse.  I like that Luap, De and Nire are  knowledgeable in this way.  I  also like that my office is high fallutin’ in that way.  What I don’t like is how much of a slug I  feel like when my ignorance of those and other classics is exposed.  

Every so often I decide to take steps to remedy this shortcoming.  I usually gird myself and promise that  I’m going to read one of those classic novels that somehow fell through the cracks in my public school education.  And the one that usually heads the pack is, Moby Dick. That’s right….I never read Moby Dick!   Call me pisha!  (For a translation, ask your rabbi.)  It’s not that I know nothing about it…..I know enough that I can usually get the crossword puzzle answer, ”Ahab”.  But, I bet there’s more to the book than that.  I’ve often heard it referred to as THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.  How could  I not have read what is  believed to be  THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL!!   But whenever I’m about to head off to  Barnes and Noble to buy it, I poll whoever is around at the time and  I swear, I’ve never met anyone who has read it that has actually liked it.  And it’s looong,  too ( I think).   I’m all for self-improvement but there has to be some hope of a payoff.  So, Moby Dick remains unread and will probably remain so.

This past Sunday was a miserable weather day.  I was looking forward to staying in, listening to music and catching up on some reading. I started going a little stir crazy so I decided to take a walk  and pick up another IMPORTANT BOOK that had also escaped me…The Great Gatsby.  I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to read this.  I don’t think I ever saw the movie and there are never any crossword puzzle clues referring to it  (it seems as if this is the primary source of everything I know), so although I have a general sense of the book,  I don’t know too many specifics.   I bought the soft cover copy ($15.95) at B&N .  Well….I can’t tell how (pleasantly) surprised I was to discover how short a novel it is!  Not great at all.  Small.  179 pages….that’s it.  I’ve been feeling like such a sap for not having read a book that’s only 179 pages! What an idiot!   All those years that I couldn’t throw around Gatsby references because of a measly 179 pages!  What a travesty.   But ever the one to make grapefruit juice from grapefruits (another expression I’m trying to coin.), I’m going to learn from this experience.  I’m going to list all the GREAT BOOKS missing from my resume and cull the ones that are less than 200 pages.  Jeez,  when you think about it, you could read three, maybe four Gatsby’s instead of one Anna Karenina!

Fifty Blogs to Leave Your Lover

This will be my fiftieth posting of this adventure which has gone on now for about six months.  A little time for reflection.  I have been thinking of sharing more of my private life  in my entries.  That is, being even more self- indulgent than I already am.  But I’m afraid of  losing the small but devoted (my words) readership I have.  And of course, if I wanted to let any portion of the public in on exactly what’s going on in my life, I could always join Facebook and bore my “friends’ with the details.    Speaking of which, Luap has linked this site to his FB page and is now encouraging me to join  as a means of getting my blog “out there”.  There are a couple of reasons I’m reluctant to join;  up until now, I’ve enjoyed a “holier than thou” attitude about the whole Facebook concept…similar to my snobbery around  Reality TV shows (some points here for consistency).  It will be hard to give up this superior air to which so many  people seem  attracted.  Also,  I don’t need more friends,  I need better ones.  (Unless of course ,  the “more” friends happen to have a house somewhere  warm in winter or  a beach house  with a pool.)

At any rate, I was feeling kind of self-satisfied about getting to this fifty mark when I came across an article in the Times  that completely took the wind out of my sails.  Some woman living in Conneticut is about to conclude a year of reading a book a day.  That’s right…365 books in a year.  And not just junk books… good ones.  I read the article pretty carefully;  from what I could gather, it seems that all she has been doing is reading.  I was looking for some hint that this had either affected her marriage or her relationship with her kids or even a suggestion that being so sedentary had contributed to a weight gain of say, 50 , 75 pounds.  Nothing like that.  Not even a mention of some tension because she was  constantly ”shsshhing” everyone around her.  Nope, everything seemed hunky dory.  Good for her.   But almost certainly, she’s not someone you want to run into at a cocktail party.  Can you imagine the conversation…”So, have you read any good books lately?”  There goes the evening….probably the weekend.    

Her accomplishment made me think of a speed reading course (Evelyn Woods) I took about forty years ago. (yes, whilst in utero).  Those were the days when I was unmoored and looking for ways to “improve myself”.  In the final class I remember reading a novel, a classic,  in about twenty minutes.  Then answering some questions relative to the book.  And indeed, I had an adequate comprehension of what I had read.  Very impressive.  But what  I wasn’t told is that those same speed reading techniques also fostered speed forgetting.  So, in just a matter of a few days the whole thing was a fog.

Apart from being envious of this woman’s accomplishment, I’m even more jealous of  the notoriety she gained by having that article  in the Times.   I know there’s nothing I can do anywhere nearly like  what she did.  (Self discipline is not my long suit…the only thing I can get myself to do on a daily basis is breathing in and out….and sometimes, I  forget  the “out” part).   So it seems like I’m destined to  continue to write these columns in relative anonymity.  Of course, there’s always the possibility that I could do something really unique to gain attention.  Maybe writing the blog from a hot air balloon that comes untethered……or something like that.

Are You Juish?

This past week marked the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. (When I was growing up, this was called Succos. Somewhere between the years 5720 and 5770 there was a name change.  If a Jmail with notification of the change was sent out, I didn’t get it.)  From what I know, this holiday commemorates the  marking  of the harvest.  It is one of those rare Jewish holidays that is not mournful and sober…more a celebration.   In other words,  the usual, ” they tried to kill us, they failed, now let’s eat”,  is not the  theme  at play here.   During this week, orthodox Jews will ordinarily take their meals in a representation of a  hut called a Sukkah. Other symbols of the harvest that  make their appearance during this week are the esrog, a lemon-like fruit, and the lulav, a palm-like  frond.  Despite years of attending Hebrew school, sadly, this more or less exhausts my knowledge on the subject.

This week also brought to my neighborhood a horde of orthodox young men and boys, (‘black hats’, as Michael Chabon calls them) who felt compelled to stop every person who came their way with the query, “Are you Jewish?” (see note below) Except, for some reason that’s unclear to me, the question always comes out, ”Are you Juish”?  There may be some hidden meaning to that slight slurring .  It may be some kind of shibboleth…almost like a secret handshake.   At any rate, these guys were both everywhere and relentless.  When  someone did answer that they were indeed Jewish,  that person was then asked to hold the esrog and shake the lulav while some kind of prayer was recited.  Apparently,   it’s considered a mitzvah, a good deed, to get them to perform this ritual.   I never know for sure whether it’s a mitzvah for the person doing the coercing or  for the potential convert. 

Ordinarily, one can expect to be accosted while walking outside on the streets but an office or a store is usually a safe haven.  However, early in the week when Zil was alone in the office some of the ‘black hats’ came INTO the office asking her if she was ‘juish’.  This seemed to me to be a violation of some unwritten law…a breach of protocol.  Not to offend anyone, but it reminded me of the stories of bears now making their way into suburban back yards because there are too many bears or too little food in the wild.  Evidently, my office was no longer sacrosanct.  This development raised the threat level, in my mind,  to amber.

The next day I saw a young man  pedaling his bike down Seventh Avenue with a small  Sukkah in tow.  A Sukkahmobile.  He and several of his comrades set up shop by the curb just outside my office.  They were now persuading people to go into the  mobile Sukkah , to perform the mitzvah.  Now I was really in trouble.  There would be no leaving the office without having to either lie about my heritage or be paraded onto the float.  Neither option was appealing.  At one point in the day  I needed to leave the office and take my motor scooter  on an errand.  I donned my helmet and steeled myself as I set out towards my scooter which was parked just beyond the Sukkahmobile.   An amazing thing happened.  No one stopped me or  more than glanced in my direction.   It’s as if the helmet was semitic  kryptonite.  Evidently, the helmet gave me enough of a ‘bad boy’ look that there was no point in stopping me. (‘Bad boy’ Jews are rare).I was home free!  So, for the remainder of the week, whenever I needed to go anywhere , I would just grab my helmet and walk around the neighborhood like that.  Looking more than a bit like a doofus and certainly suffering from acute helmet hair….. but with absolute impunity.

NOTE:  My friend Evets has a unique way of dealing with this.  He claims (and I have no reason to doubt him other than he makes things up from time to time) that what follows is his standard conversation:

Black Hat: “Excuse me, are you Juish?”  

Evets  “Are you?”

B H (non-plussed while regarding himself):  “Of course I am.!”

Evets: “That’s funny, you don’t look Jewish”. 

                                                                                                                                                                 

 

My holiday outfit