Author Archives: 40andover

Fairy godmother angel of love

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So, I am in a mood most foul after a typical day on my own personal road to Utopia when I descend into the malodorous 42nd Street subway station.

There, to my surprise is . . .IMG00052 the Angel of Love.

And, she is handing out . . .

IMG00053

messages of love.

And, I am charmed. She seems so guileless and weird.  She is probably an out-of-work actress rather than an out-of-her-mind NYer.

And then I think, does she make a living this way?  Can I do this AND support my family?

One moment’s flight of fantasy is followed by the cold-hearted calculations, all in the City where there is a broken heart for every light on Broadway.

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Karma is a boomerang

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When all financial hell started breaking loose last year, fear was the prevalent mood.  Then, fear turned to despair, turned to anger, turned to dog-eat-dog mentality.  It seems to me, unencumbered by knowledge, information or expertise, that instead of working together toward the common good, we are scrambling to get ahead of the pack. 

Now, it is acceptable to demand unconscionable discounts on things because vendors and service providers are struggling financiallyand will make the deal even at a loss because they are cash-strapped.  There is a word for this behavior: stealing.  Shame on those who do this. 

And for those of you who do this, be forewarned, Karma is a . . . .

boooomeraaaaaaang! 

 

 

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Good things on the subway

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This morning on the subway, a man was laughing out loud as he read an article in the newspaper.  It was a happy laugh as if someone were enjoying a good story. 

This being New York, I immediately looked over to make sure he was not chuckling over the daily carnage reported in the national and international sections of newpapers. 

To my relief, he was reading an article in the Arts Section of the New York Times.  I relaxed and enjoyed listening to his delight while reading the article.

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Conundrums for the High Holy Days

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Each year I am faced with the same conundrums:

Issue 1:  If the days of repentance and reflection start with Rosh HaShanah, what happens to the bad things you do between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur? 

Example:Let’s say I see someone in a horrible outfit at synagogue and, over Rosh HaShanah lunch with the family, I discuss the sartorial transgression in all its gory details  This is technically a sin (because it is gossip, aka loshen hora).  

Quandary:  Do I need the chuvah (repentance/atonement) ambulance or am I in a chuvah-free zone?

Issue 2:  Why shouldn’t we shower and brush our teeth on Yom Kippur?

Example:  If you have one date with G-d each year and you are begging for another year of life, shouldn’t you look and smell good?  My mother would not let us out of the house without lipstick on a regular date.  And this one is with the Almighty. 

Quandry:  With everyone getting back to basics, do you think bringing a burnt offering is a good idea?

Issue 3: Based on my observations, is the rule on Yom Kippur no animal skin on your shoes but not your purse or belt?

Example:  Let’s say you see someone wearing canvas shoes (because no animal skin on YK), and you notice that the person is carrying a leather bag and wearing a leather belt.

Quandary:  Do you say, “from one animal killer to another, nice belt and shoes”?

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Well, Kanye West acted like a jackass

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It is ok to poke fun at No Drama Obama for getting caught on an open mike.  Always a problem for politicians.  But fall-out and outrage at his comment?  Outrage is an outrageous response. 

And, “jackass” is better than George Bush’s reference to a reporter as an “asshole” or Reagan’s joke about bombing the USSR.

And, the truth is an absolute defense.  Kanye West deserves to be called an arrogant, impolite, egotistical jackass. So, Obama was tame.

Still it is fun to rib the President about the gaffe, but let’s not create a “Curser Movement”.

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I am worried about our nation’s appetite for change

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Franklin Roosevelt was vilified by the right for his policies.  Many didn’t work; some were even declared unconstitutional.  But what made him an effective president and leader is that he kept trying and tinkering with programs and policies until they had the intended effect.  You cannot be right always and certainly not in the first instance when you are in crisis management mode.  So, the trick is to retool, regroup and get the job done. 

What sounds good in Congress might not work in the real world.  So, we can’t be solely ideological; we need to be pragmatic.  Our systems are so large that a fix for one aspect of a problem has an unintended adverse consequence on another aspect of the same problem.

Let’s have a national dialogue on what can achieve together and not how the Democrats or the Republicans have failed.  The future of our prosperity depends on this.

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107 year old woman is looking for husband no. 23!!!!

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107 year old woman is looking for husband no. 23!!!! (Even Liz Taylor can’t beat that.) 

It is so odd on so many levels.  The math suggests an analogy to buying a new car every few years (a new riff on the cash for clunkers campaign) or changing husbands every time your car gets an oil change (no lubes, please).  Her current husband is 70 YEARS younger.  No visual, please.  AND, he is a drug addict.  But that only adds a seamy aspect to this otherwise perfectly rational story. She thinks he is going to leave her for someone he met in rehab.  Isn’t that always the way it is, huh, Britney and Lindsay?  (I am guessing here, because I don’t keep up with either of these “stars”.)

What happened to the other husbands?  Hmmmm. Would she be eligible for health care coverage under the Obama plan if she didn’t live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia?

The truth is the best fiction.

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KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – A 107-year-old Malaysian woman says she is ready to marry for the 23rd time because she fears her current drug addict husband might leave her for a younger woman, a report said Monday.

Wook Kundormade headlines four years ago when she married Muhammad Noor Che Musa, a man 70 years her junior in northern Terengganu state, with pictures of the couple’s wedding splashed across regional newspapers.

But Wook is now looking for new love as she fears that Muhammad, 37, who is undergoing voluntary drug rehabilitation treatmentin the capital Kuala Lumpur, will leave her once the programme ends, she told the Star newspaper.

“Lately, there is this kind of insecurity in me,” the paper quoted her as saying, showing a photograph of the smiling, wrinkled-faced centenarian wearing a Muslim headscarf.

“I realise that I am an aged woman. I don’t have the body nor am I a young woman who can attract anyone.”

“My intention to remarry is to fill my forlornness and nothing more than that,” she said, adding that she felt lonely without her husband by her side to celebrate the coming Muslim festival of Eidal-Fitr next week.

Wook said she planned to visit Muhammad on the second day of Eid if her neighbours were willing to drive her to the capital.

Muhammad, who was a lodger in Wook’s house, had previously said it was “God’s will” that the couple fell in love.

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We don’t learn from history

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We don’t learn from history.  We don’t even recognize when it is repeating.  And history DOES repeat.  Fights over resources, power, pride and riches with leaders sacrificing innocents and non-innocents alike in their quests. Sound familiar?  Day in, day out.  Year in, year out.  Generations on end.  Millennia.

But for me today is an especially sad day in this scary, violent world. 

Israel has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Israel’s rise to nationhood came out of the Shoah, the most infamous atrocity in modern history.  (The Shoah is more infamous but no more tragic than the slaughter of Armenians, Bosnians and Croats, Rwandans, Sudanese in Darfur, to name a few.) 

In my lifetime, the grandchildren of oppressed stand accused of being oppressors.  Three generations sandwiched by two atrocities, one documented and the other alleged.  That is also a lesson from history — that the oppressed can easily become oppressors when given the opportunity.

Some of my relatives (all of whom have died) were survivors of the Shoah and the atrocities of Eastern Europe in the early 1900s.   For them, Israel was a realization of dreams and hopes.  

But evil knows no boundaries and respects no borders.  And there have been generations within which to forget the lessons of history.

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By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer John Heilprin, Associated Press Writer – Tue Sep 15, 12:18 pm ET

UNITED NATIONS – A U.N. investigation concluded Tuesday that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, raising the prospect that officials may seek prosecution in the International Criminal Court.

[rest deleted]

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Social Contagion Theory

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This Sunday, the New York Times magazine section had a big article on the theory of social contagion to explain obesity, happiness, smoking, non-smoking, etc. 

Like every theory, causality cannot be fully determined.  For example, there is a direct correlation between when asphalt melts and babies die.  Melting asphalt doesn’t kill babies.  The heat makes asphalt melt and over-exposure to the heat can kill babies.  So, here, too, social contagion theory can show correlation but not causality. 

If the theory has some merit, we can influence, and be influenced by, others. Maybe that is why one person can spark a movement. And why acting responsibly and teaching by example can change the world.

I want desperately to believe in this theory for the good that it represents (and I am a little scared of its power to spread evil).  Then Gandhi, Mandela, Moses, Jesus, the Islamic prophet (whose name is not to be uttered) are not flukes. 

Why did the Berlin Wall come down? Maybe social contagion.  How do people rise up against despots?  Maybe social contagion.

Unfortunately, by the same token, social contagion can explain atrocities across the globe.

As with most things, the trick is to harness the power, dedication and focus for good.  These days, that seems like a daily challenge.

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An Outsider’s Perspective of US (and Us)

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Yesterday, I spent almost two hours talking with a friend who is a businessman from the Cayman Islands.  He is in New York on business.  Since his business is somewhat US-dependent, he makes it his business to keep up with the news in the States.  He is a Libertarian and a pragmatist.  I am Democrat and (I like to think) a pragmatist.  We agreed on many things, such as the need to compromise and get incremental reform because it is a matter of conscience that people have affordable access to health care.  And I agreed with him that the public option will not pay for itself and should be phased in later if other measures don’t rein in the insurance companies.  We simply cannot afford to institute this option at this point, given the deficit.

We disagreed on two points.  The points of disagreement fascinate me. 

First, he thought that death panels could be read into the legislation because it was not expressly disclaimed.  My friend is an intelligent, well-read man; he is not Todd Palin.  So I had to think about this more.  Here is what I have deduced:

  • if a person distrusts “government” enough to believe that it would kill its own citizens, well, then you can make that argument. 
  • if a person doesn’t believe that our government would kill its own citizens, you might argue that the panel of experts represented a disguised government take-over of health care. 
  • if a person believes that our government is not trying to kill us and trying to cut down on defensive medicine by setting forth safe harbor protocols, then you think the concern is ill-conceived and politically motivated. 

I guess what I am learning is while I am firmly in the third camp, not all of the concern may be politically motivated.  Sarah Palin must have hit a chord with many, many people who have a deep, abiding distrust of government.  Hey, I was scared of government under Bush/Cheney, so I guess I have to be more open to the fear that this legislation unleashed.  Interestingly, it took my Cayman Islands friend — an outsider —  to help me start to understand the perspective of  blog commenter “Jordana”.  We still disagree, but now I understand that we may not be starting from the same point of trust.  That changes the dynamics of the conversation considerably. 

The other point was related to torture.  Some torture is understandable under some circumstances.  I have never met someone who held that view.  While I can see not prosecuting the CIA, I believe that torture is not understandable under any circumstances.  I don’t want to be tortured and I would probably make stuff up just to make it stop. So, I don’t see how it helps get to the truth.

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