Friendships are recession-proof. So, my college friends and I have a t-shirt — See below
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Monthly Archives: June 2009
The SC Governor and the Tattooed Girl
Who is more lame, the girl who had 56 stars tattooed on her face and who (out of a little-too-little-a-little-too-late fear of her parents’ hysteria) claimed she fell asleep while someone was drilling ink in her face or the family values governor of South Carolina who flew to Argentina to visit his mistress over Father’s Day weekend and claiming that he took a long hike along the Appalachian trail? I think the governor is more lame because he is older and supposed to know better. And this guy was someone planning to run for President in 2012. Thank G-d we found out now that he has no, or supremely bad, judgment. I would have appreciated a Heavenly heads-up about Bush II.
Desperately seeking meaning
I don’t want to seek meaning in religion. I want to seek meaning in the here and now. In something that contributes to the common weal (to use a pre-1800s word) and pays the insane mortgage — i.e., a conspicuously consumptive do-gooder. Corporate law does satisfy my task-oriented personality and does tap my problem-solving talents, but is that evolution or devolution? Did my grandparents endure what they did so that I should get “soft” doing this? They were as surely frontiers people as those who settled the West, only they didn’t commit genocide on Native Americans. A difference I enjoy pointing out.
Urban life doesn’t need to be anonymous
40 years ago, NY was a small town in many ways. If my mom and I were out doing errands or whatever, and Mrs. Moorestein or Mrs. Freeman or Mrs. Graham were on the street, there was no way that we passed them by without stopping and visiting and I had to show my best five year-old manners. And they scared me because they were ADULTS with booming voices. As of two years ago, Mrs. Moorestein still lived nearby my father and we hugged and kissed when we saw each other. We had been neighbors for decades.
iPods, Grout and Personal Space
iPods are great but you don’t hear NEW music. You form a shell around what you know and once those ear plug are in, no chance encounters with new music or new people can happen.
But I get that people need to set up a controlled environment to maintain sanity. My control cocoon is when I clean my bathroom and kitchen grout. Because I cannot control the markets, the trajectory (down) of my career or the health of people I love, but I can make some square feet of grout look great.
Nowhere to go but down
Push the panic button when financial planning means looking for the Cash Cab from Reality (?) TV.
wondering on a Tuesday in NY
I don’t get the pedestrian mall at Times Square or the tables and chairs on the dividers in the street. Carbon monoxide with your health salad? For that matter, what’s with side walk cafes in NY? This is not some piazza in some beautiful city in Italy where the pollution is so romantic and delicious because it is Italian. Actually most of the pollution and carcinogens come from products partially made in China, so imagine that charming street scene in Beijing. Enjoy your lunch!
More than losing money, I hate the loss of comraderie
I lost a lot of money in this down-turn, both in investments and income. I still love my financial advisor. Why don’t I still love my office? Maybe because everything that was wrong is magnified. Maybe so many are gone that I don’t have many contemporaries. Maybe we are all waiting for the axe. Maybe we are too stressed, and too tired of being stressed, to goof around. Maybe goofing around was ok when we had more work than we could handle but now it seems almost like putting a sign on your back that says “I don’t have enough work, so I am unnecessary overhead.”
Iran
In this country, most quietly watched the post 9/11 erosion of our civil liberties. There weren’t countrywide protests. When we found out our country tortured people — even possibly US citizens — mostly, we did nothing. Maybe we thought that the Bush-Cheney regime could only last for 8 years and then it must come to an end. But we love our voice, we lost our outrage and we retreated into our complacency. In Iran, the protests, mostly led by women, face down weapons and the full force of a repressive regime. But unless we commit to go into Iran, I think the President is right that we need to temper our words. People in this country are quick to talk but not so quick to commit to act (unless it is for senseless wars).
My mother’s wishes and her mother’s honor
This week is my mother’s mother’s Yahrzeit. Yahrzeits always remind me of the Days of Awe (10 days including and between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur).
I am not much into religion since my mom died and given all of the heretical things I say I am waiting for the lightning bolt to strike.
I am not sure why this happened, but about three years after Mom died, I started getting reminders from my parents’ synagogue about the anniversaries of my grandparents’ deaths — their Yahrzeits. Maybe the synagogue staff finally got it together to start sending them to me but the staff wouldn’t have known where to send them unless my mother had put me down as the next recipient of these notices. None of my father, brother and sister receives these notices. I was overwhelmed that my mother trusted me with the responsibility of remembrance. After all of the issues, sturm und drang, etc. about my being gay (which all were resolved 15 years ago, thank G-d), my mother trusted me with this, in the end.
Remembering is very important in Jewish tradition. It is said that people live again when remembered. That does not generally resonate with me. But when I lit the Yahrzeit candles (Jews light them on the anniversary of the death and on Yom Kippur) this last year for Mom and her parents, I understood why. In this world of a 3 billion or so people, a person dies every second. I lit candles to say I remember you and you are not anonymous in this world and your life is not forgotten. I realized that I don’t know my great-grandparents’ names and no one remembers them. And so, maybe my son’s grandchildren (should he be so lucky) will not light a candle for me. Maybe, remembering two generations is more than anyone should have to do, because it dilutes meaning of remembrance if these dead people are strangers. But this Friday I will remember especially my grandmother on her Yahrzeit. She was a life force for my mother, a woman who suffered greatly in Europe and was often a prisoner of those memories. And on Friday, my grandmother will not be an anonymous dead person. Because I will remember. And, now, I get it. Remembrance. A commandment under Jewish law to remember and, by remembering, to honor. And by honoring, to make sure that your loved one isn’t relegated to a statistics of unknown and unnamed lives and deaths year in and year out.