Power's Out--life's down

The northwest is blanketed by snow, with several inches falling last night.  Eager to avoid the mess that occurred a couple years ago when, out of environmental extremism, Seattle refused to salt its steep downtown streets, paralyzing the city, snowplowing, sanding and salting commenced immediately.  Our daughter, fearing difficulty getting to work in her teeny car, was set to sleep over at our house, which is much closer than hers to her job.

Needless to say, for a mom still afflicted with the dreaded Empty Nest Syndrome since our son went off to study abroad this September, I was thrilled to have an evening of girlie movies, Bananagrams and face time chat, rather than merely the online kind. 

With the wind whipping outside, my daughter commented as we sorted our Bananagrams tiles, that she was glad we still had electricity.  That's when the lights went off.  My next words: "Thanks, sweetie."

Thanksgiving gains a new item for gratitude when you realize just how dependent we are on electricity. And on a whole lot more.

I got out some candles, and the hand-crank emergency lantern.  My husband relished this opportunity to use his wind-up flashlight.  He brought in an armful of firewood since our furnace could no longer shield us from the 26-degree weather outside.  I was just thinking that this could be a fun adventure, when my daughter's boyfriend called.

He was at his parents' home, a few blocks away from us. "What? You've lost power? We've still got ours; why don't you come over here?" he suggested. His parents, too, were recent empty-nesters, and had plenty of spare bedrooms.

My husband would have none of it.  Give up his own bed? Abandon our home to darkness and snow?  Not under his macho watch.  I was welcome to join our daughter if I liked, but not him, Uh-unh.

The steep driveway at the parents' house precluded Boyfriend's driving to pick up our daughter, so my hunky husband insisted he walk her through the darkness to meet him.  "Stay home," he commanded me. "I don't want you out in this."

What if on his solo return, he slipped, fell and crushed his cell phone, and was left to be frostbitten in the snow?  After the usual male-female debate, the three of us set out in the hazy moonlight through a forest, our boots crunching the virgin snow.  Only meager flashlights lit our footsteps. The eerie stillness was punctuated by gusts whirring through firs.  The cold was invigorating, the snow brightening deep-laden boughs.  I sniffled with the chill; my husband's tree branch walking stick struck the earthen path in rhythmic accompaniment.

Poetic experience, 2010.  Daugher's cell phone nearly out of battery; need to guard the remaining charge in the others. Writing in progress lost to suddenly-dead computer. Cordless phones don't work unless plugged in.  How to arise on time tomorrow, when it's too dark to read a wristwatch, and the clock radio's blank?

Food's colder on the counter than in the fridge. Don't open the freezer, lest everything spoil.  Candle wax drips on floor and counter; can't read by its flickering light.  Sitting in near-dark in a down coat, gloves and high boots, watching breath form steam.

The phone company recording says power should be restored at 3 am.  Nothing to do but go to sleep.

On this Thanksgiving eve, I marvel at how spoiled we are.  It has not been that long since every nighttime brought the end to most productive activities.  It was as different as night and day; now both meld into 24-hour florescent-lit supermarkets where your choice of cereals spans four rows of products, thirty feet long.  Where we are reachable at all times, by phone, text, Skype, IM, and if we choose, our location anywhere on earth can be pinpointed and broadcast, moving here-to-there.

We can find out the value and sales history of any property instantly, and see its street view. We can watch any television program at any time, while in bed, at a coffee house, even while riding a bus.  We can take pictures and video and post them for the world to see, and replay, and distort, and put auto-tune to, each person with potential for fame gone viral.

What has this done?  Unfortunately, it's made us impatient and selfish.  If the internet's down, we get indignant.  If we have to wait in line, we fume and call a manager.

We no longer take responsibility for what befalls us.  Every accident is someone else's fault, and that someone will be sued and have to pay.  Every child deserves a hot lunch and dinner, not as a parent's duty but as an entitlement that taxpayers must provide.

All this causes stress and worry and makes us angry.  Anger is the opposite of happiness.  The antidote to anger is gratitude.

A Wall Street Journal article today explains how saying thank you and counting your blessings is associated with higher achievement, more energy, and greater well-being.  It mentions that researchers believe that half of what determines one's temperament, which translates generally into being a glass-is-half-full person or the glass-is-half-empty sort, is genetic.  The rest comes from learning and experience.  So even if your temperament bends toward the negative, you can practice, i.e. force yourself, to observe and state the positive, and to credit others for their roles in your successes.

You may think that's being dishonest with your feelings. No, it's a strategy, a purposeful means you choose to employ to replace negativity with optimism, blame with gratitude.  It takes self control: "gratitude is actually a demanding, complex emotion that requires 'self-reflection, the ability to admit that one is dependent upon the help of others, and the humility to realize one's own limitations,'" says UC Davis psych profesor Robert Emmonds in the WSJ story.

But it's not just a personal battle.  I do believe our culture pushes us toward arrogance, narcissism, instant gratification and materialism, as opposed to the abstracts of kindness and appreciation.  With an iPhone in your hand, you control the world; you're powerful.

That is, until the electricity goes out.  Without your charger, without battery, without light or heat, you realize your true size and true dependence. Not just on the electric company, but on the Power who determines your continued existence, and the people who make it worthwhile.

I was so thankful at 3 am, awakened by lights blazing in the house, clock numbers by my bed flashing, and the furnace whooshing on.

The thermometer outside reads 16 degrees at the moment, but I don't take for granted being warm. It's the perfect time to remember we're all vulnerable, interconnected, and small, with so many wonders and miracles to enjoy. And for which to give thanks.

Protesters, a Pivotal Person...and Privilege

It was a sunny autumnal Sunday, with exhilarating clear yellow light, the Cascade and Olympic Mountains both visible with their dusting of snow, and Mt. Rainier casting a dark silhouette, crisp and looming.

A day for two memorable experiences.

With my husband spending the day on an airplane, good friends offered to take me with them to a concert of an ensemble of musicians from the Israel Defense Forces, given at a local Reform Temple. An annual event, it raises awareness of Friends of the IDF, a volunteer group that provides non-combat-related support for the men and women protecting Israel.

I wasn't prepared for the reception we received. Lining the street in front of the Temple were several clusters of protesters, wielding signs denouncing the "occupation" of Palestinian lands. One held a sign reading "Stop Israeli State Terrorism." A fifty-foot-long banner blared "Stop the Siege on Gaza." Perhaps 35 people hovered near the entrance to the program, menacingly glaring at all who walked toward the door. Each one, without exception, hoisting some placard or sash. Some announced their bearers as Jews. Several police cars were parked nearby.

Sponsors of the event stood on the Temple front patio welcoming concert-goers. "Thank you for coming," they smiled. "Come right in." They were well aware that the protesters' aim was to intimidate. One man entering the venue spit on the ground in front of one of the picketers, and called another who advertised he was Jewish "anti-Semitic." He received no response.

Inside, six musicians and three talented singers in khaki uniforms accented in red performed modern standards and Jewish favorites, encouraging the audience to clap the rhythm and sing familiar lyrics. The second woman fighter pilot, diminutive 24-year-old Lieut. Naami, described her path to the cockpit. The local volunteers who raise money to help families of fallen soldiers, provide recreational and supplementary support in the field, contribute college scholarships to veterans and purchase mobile clubs, gyms and synagogues spoke of their work. Finally, the ensemble's lively harmonies roused many in the audience to traditional dance.

Not a very threatening gathering. But very ominous if you believe Israel should not exist. Israel is the only democracy in its region, where Arab citizens, who make up about 20% of the electorate, have a say in the government. I found it ironic that those who would remove such liberty from the mid-east's one free enclave would use that very freedom to heckle people walking to a charity concert.

Later, we attended a screening of the film "Lonely Man of Faith," a biography of Rav Joseph B. Soloveichik, considered the founder of Jewish "Modern Orthodoxy" in America. The film, a first effort by Ethan Isenberg, a 31-year-old former computer programmer who, after absorbing much of the Rabbi's approach at Yeshiva University and in Israel, spent years "on spec" gathering the biographical information and interviews that are movingly combined in this film.

What we see is the melding of old and new worlds--how a genius from a distinguished rabbinical family from White Russia who fled to Poland and finally the United States, evolved an outlook that could combine a rigorous, academic approach to scriptures with the challenges of a fast-paced, assimilationist culture. In the film, he is presented as an enigma, one who tried to lift standards of his community in Boston while at the same time overlaying a flexibility and plasticity demanded by American life.

For his efforts, he was baselessly accused of sinister motives and theft, completely cleared only after stressful years of conflict. His insistence that women receive top-flight education, and his creation of Orthodox day schools where boys and girls learned together, was controversial among the traditional, and subversive among the assimilationists who were the vast majority of Jews in America.

Finally, he gained not only respect but reverence. Considered among the most eminent Torah scholars and teachers in America, he led Yeshiva University in New York, as well as its women's branch, Stern College, to prominence as the premier centers of Jewish philosophical and halachic (law) study. Yet after four decades of teaching, which included his significant The Lonely Man of Faith essay, Rav Soloveichik (1903-1993) is still unknown by almost all Jews in America and elsewhere.

The film does not really explain The Rav's philosophies, which, given their complexity and depth, would be impossible. But it hints at his torment and difficulty carrying Torah through the pivot of revolutionary world events--escape from persecution, pre-war Poland, struggles in America, the scourge of the holocaust, the birth of Israel, and the advent of the technological age intersecting with the Age of Aquarius.

Witnessing today the anger of the protesters at the FIDF concert, and the challenges of Rav Soloveichik, I feel very small. I look at the insignificant decisions of our privileged lives--even as we watch our savings shrivel in the current financial squeeze--and see both how much more I could learn and how blessed we all are to have so many paths already forged for us.

This is the week of Thanksgiving. I'm planning to cook the traditional turkey (the only time of the year my oven contains real meat) but today's events remind me that the holiday is not about the food in our stomachs, but about the intellectual and spiritual sustenance of the friends and teachers we are so fortunate to know, and the environment in which we are free to enjoy them.

We are Thankful, not Mourning, on this Uniquely American Day

The Seattle Board of Education sent a memo to its staff last week urging they not treat Thanksgiving as a happy holiday, because some students consider it "a day of mourning." This is true. Native American students, the note cautioned, are reminded that day how their ancestors' generosity was "betrayed."

The memo was signed by Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D., Director of Equity, Race & Learning Support, plus two members of Huchoosedah Indian Education, a federally-funded American Indian support arm of the School District. Huchoosedah Indian Education has six full-time staff to promote the well-being of 800 native American and Islander students (2% of 45,300 total). The staff clearly has too much federally-funded time on its twelve hands.

What is this deconstructing of Thanksgiving????

Thanksgiving is Jewish. I want to set that straight. We call it the mitzvah of "ha karat ha tov," recognizing the good that is done for you. An illustration of it is that Moses did not personally start the plague that turned the Nile to blood, due to his gratitude that the river kept him alive when he was set adrift as an infant in a floating raft. The example may seem a bit extreme, but the fact we even tell that story shows how much gratitude is part of Jewish tradition.

I wanted to clarify the Jewishness of Thansgiving because I was told about an incident last Shabbat where a rabbi, when making his announcements in morning services, said something like, "There will be no class on Thursday. Some people are taking the day off, though I frankly don't understand why."

If he was making a joke, he said it in such a way that listeners believed he was serious. The person who told me about this was a bit upset, because a local pastor had chosen that day to visit the synagogue for the first time, just to be neighborly. The pastor, who lives nearby, is a friend,and honors and reaches out to community Jews. He heard the rabbi's remark about Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is important not only for ha karat ha tov, but because it is a uniquely American holiday that expresses the essence of our culture as God-fearing. We are thankful to God, not to the Indians. We remember that the first white settlers were able to join with the inhabitants of the land in humble gratitude. A nation that pauses to gather family to thank God and celebrate our bounty and blessings is one set on a straightened path every year. (Jews enjoy this kind of re-focusing every Sabbath as well.)

Thanksgiving is a national group-hug. It joins Americans across religions, across thousands of miles, and across generations. Unlike Halloween with its pagan origins, deathly symbols and crass commercialism, little about Thanksgiving itself is negative, unless you consider its potential for gluttony. The Seattle School District is rightly the subject of snickering derision. In contrast to every other public holiday, on Thanksgiving, as we watch parades and make stuffing and set the table and hear the doorbell and the laughter of those we love-- we look inward, and upward, to realize the parts of life that truly matter, and contemplate their very generous source. Happy Thanksgiving...from one very grateful lady.