Back in Tel Aviv 1/12-13/10

The trip back from Eilat was interesting. Our bus was inhabited by a few colorful characters. The first thing that alerted us to the unusual nature of our passengers was the trip out of the bus station. We had just gotten about a block when a taxi blocked the bus’s route and a heavy-set woman with flaming red hair came dashing out of the vehicle and commenced pounding on the door of our bus to be admitted. The bus driver shouted at her in a frenzy “Ani lo poteah lakh!” (“I am not opening the door for you!” While the woman pounded on the door, the taxi driver (with his cab still blocking us)  sauntered over to the driver’s side of the bus. The bus driver told him, “Take her to the next junction”. It turned out that there was an official bus stop about a mile up the road. So the woman hurled herself back into the cab and we were treated to the spectacle of the cab trying to outrun the bus to the bus stop.

The cab succeeded and the woman clambered up into the bus, shrilly complaining of the driver’s ill behavior (her comments, not mine). He gave as good as he got and we were treated to an old-fashioned shouting match for about five minutes up the road until everyone calmed down.

After a couple of hours the bus made a convenience stop and we used the chance to pick up a bite to eat. As it turned out, someone slipped on through the back door to try to get a free ride to Tel Aviv. But to his chagrin, we also picked up some sort of bus company conductor who proceeded through the bus checking everyone’s tickets. When he got to the extra passenger a debate broke out as the gentleman insisted that he had 1) lost his ticket and 2) had no money. The conductor laughed at these excuses and quizzed him on how much the ticket had cost (he got that wrong) and what seat number had been written on the ticket (buses between Eilat and Tel Aviv actually have assigned seats). He got that wrong too. As it turned out, he also had no identification. So it was pretty obvious what he was dealing with.

The conductor labeled him “shaqran” (liar) and laughed about this all the way to Tel Aviv. But the amazing thing (to me) is that they didn’t throw him off the bus or even do something to record some information or have the bus met by police. He was allowed to continue to Tel Aviv and there he slinked off into the evening.

Anyway, while all this was going on the flaming red-haired woman sat with the conductor and it turned out that she was friends not only with the conductor, but also with the driver. So all that shouting about getting on the bus was actually among friends! We gleaned that she was heading for a wedding in Ashdod.

Several of the other passengers seemed interesting to me. There was a group of young female soldiers chatting like schoolgirls in front of us. To the back there was a woman traveling with a male companion but dressed like a street walker. Normally I wouldn’t comment on this, but at our second convenience stop I was behind her on line to pay for food and when she arrived at the register she gave the cashier a verbal whipping for taking too long to take her money ostensibly because he needed the time to inspect her bodice.

Well, we somehow pulled into Tel Aviv on time and in one piece. Despite luggage encumbrance we elected the regular number 4 city bus since we were already in the central bus station and that got us back home without much ado. After freshening up (and checking email) in our home-away-from-home we ventured out to our own personal hang-out, the Cafe Hurkanos, where our favorite waitress (Maayan) provided us with a delicious dinner. Terri had the Israeli salad with avocado, I the Hungarian goulash.

Tel Aviv University

At last we came to the day that was assigned to Terri’s one official duty here in Tel Aviv, a talk on circadian rhythms at Tel Aviv’s department of Zoology. After a breakfast of coffee (hot cocoa for Terri) and pastries we headed off on the number 25 bus. We thought about taking the bus all the way to the back of the campus where the Zoology department is located (in the middle of a zoo!), but I urged Terri to get off earlier since were were early to stroll through campus. As a result, we received a notice when we entered the security gate that a general strike had been called for noon and a demonstration with some pretty famous people. The list included Professor Yosef Kalter, president of the university (imagine the presidents of American universities participating in student demonstrations!), Dalia Rabin, daughter of Prime Minister Yitzhaq Rabin, and the sister of Nir Katz who was a counselor at a gay youth center and was murdered in an infamous anti-gay shooting rampage. The demonstration was to urge governmental changes with respect to welfare and education.

After receiving this information, we walked across campus. I thought it would be easy to get to the Zoology building, but security changes everything. The Zoology building is actually across a street which means that one has to find an exit from campus to the street and then another entrance to the Zoology area. We wound our way through a number of buildings before finding the exit. After crossing the street, we quickly came to a door to the Zoology area, but it was shut. We looked up and down the street and I finally walked over to the security guard at the parking lot and asked an attendant. He said that I would just have to wait until someone either entered or exited the area.

Meanwhile, Terri had gone back to the door and after trying the telephone intercom and telephoning our hosts (no answer), commenced banging on the door. We were saved by a student exiting who held the door open for us. A worker we encountered had no idea who our hosts were, but shooed us in the right direction and we found both Noga and Rotem engaged in conversation with students on the second floor of the Zoology building. It turned out that Noga had just returned from a sabbatical in Australia and had not yet fully restored her phone service and Rotem had left her phone with her belongings. The departmental secretary had wandered off and wasn’t answering the phone either. But all’s well that end’s well and from there the day proceeded perfectly.

The TA University’s Zoology department has a full-fledged zoo which combines animals that are there for research purposes with sick and injured animals that are turned in by anyone who knows they exist. They don’t accept house pets, but any wildlife they can help they do. We saw a wide variety of birds, cats, wolves, snakes, and amphibians. We’ll have to hear from Terri about all these wonderful beasts.

Terri continued on with her group and I slipped away. I took the bus back to central Tel Aviv, found a good showarma stand, then walked up Diezengoff. I was soon inspecting used books and found a couple of interesting volumes that I hope will provide me with some entertaining time in Hebrew. After that, it was a short trip home. Time for this Israeli journey is winding down.

Roughing It In Tel Aviv 12/20/09

Well, our first full day of activity in Israel was pretty much a bust. Interesting, but hard not to say it was all a bit ridiculous.

The initial idea was pretty simple. According to Frommer’s Israel (2008 edition, the most recent we could find), the Tourist Office is located at 7 Mendele Street. I thought that we could get maps, tour info and bus schedules and the like there, so we would make that our first stop of the day. So rather than waste a lot of the day, we took a cab to Mendele Street and arrived in good time. Unfortunately, the Tourist Office was no longer located there.

So we went to the hotel next door figuring that they would know to where the office had moved. Indeed, they not only told us that the office had moved near the Orchid Hotel, they provided us with a map to the location. It was a pretty easy walk, so off we went to find the new place. We got to the Orchid Hotel (and according to our new map, we should have hit the Tourist Office before we got to the Orchid), but no luck–no Tourist office. We entered the hotel and the desk staff looked it up for us and informed us that the office was now located at 69 Diezingoff St–about two miles away.

Terri and I walked the two miles and discovered that the address 69 does not exist on Diezingoff. But that turned out to be right near City Hall, so we did get to see City Hall! We visited the information desk for the city and they cheerfully informed us that the Tourist Bureau is now located at 42 Herbert Samuel Street. Having had enough of a walk, we again took a taxi and arrived promptly at that address where oddly enough we found that the Tourist Bureau actually existed!

The staff in the Tourist Bureau were very friendly. We did get a few helpful maps and brochures and then asked about bus schedules. They threw their hands up in the air and said they couldn’t help us with any of that because the bus companies wouldn’t give them the information. They had no idea about the monthly passes or really anything except how to purchase tours at the hotels.

Our main project for the day was supposed to be a visit to the Eretz Israel museum (one of the best in the country), so we asked how to get there. They told us that we needed the #25 bus (which turned out to be correct), but their advice on where to get the #25 bus turned out to be wrong. The place they sent us to had the #31 bus, the #16 bus and the #17 bus, but no #25. Terri was still interested in seeing if we could get the pass, so instead of searching further for the #25 bus, we took the #17 to the Central Bus Station (Tahanah Merkazit).

I surprised myself by actually recognizing the place (yes, it is huge, but I’ve been gone over 30 years). We entered the bustling place and discovered it was more a marketplace than a bus station. First I went to the Egged information desk. Egged is the bus company that runs most of the intercity lines. “Do you have have monthly passes?” “Yes, but they only work for a calendar month, so not a good deal today.” OK, we struck out there. On to the Dan bus company (Dan runs most of the intracity lines). There we encountered a cheerful desk where they happily had us fill out forms, took our picture for a photo ID card and then informed us that they too ran their passes on a calendar month basis, so no sense putting any money on our brand new photo ID cards.

By this time Terri was famished, so we headed for one of the many food stands. We purchased two pastries stuffed with cheese and a Diet Coke. I wasn’t surprised when the merchant said 30 shekels (about $8) since that was in line with prices in restaurants we have encountered, but when I handed him 30 shekels he was astonished and returned most of the money to me. Turns out he had said 13 shekels not 30, so our lunch actually came to only a little over $3. But what most impressed me was the honesty in this place–no way the merchants in most American bus stations would have so zealously returned my money.

We also saw this in taxis. Twice now I’ve tried to give the taxi driver a tip and both times they returned the money to me saying that I had given them too much.

So honesty is widespread in Tel Aviv, but knowledge, not so much. The “information desk” of the Dan bus station provided us with incorrect information about how to get to the museum. Fortunately I asked the bus driver and he sent us to another bus that would at least get us closer to our destination. Terri and I took that one (the #5). It dropped us off a little short of the museum, but a walk across the Yarkon River took us exactly to the museum–or a corner of it. We had to choose between walking one way or the other and of course we chose wrong.

We backtracked to the corner and made the other choice and soon enough we were at the entrance to the museum. It was 3pm and the museum closed at 4, so that was that. We took the bus (#25!) which let us off right near our apartment building.

The upshot of this is that we could have 1) walked to the museum from our apartment and arrived in about a half hour; or 2) we could have taken the #25 bus from near our apartment and arrived in 15 minutes. Instead, we spent about $12 on cabs, walked a total of 8.5 miles, spent 5 hours traveling and never made it to the actual exhibits of the museum. But we did get to the all-important gift shop where I was able to find a lovely book by Joseph Naveh, one of my favorite scholars, on the topic of ancient writing systems.

OK, we saw many slices of Tel Aviv life. Crazies on buses, bureaucratic inanity, and it was all in good fun. Fortunately we don’t really have much of a plan. Whatever comes our way we’ll enjoy. So it wasn’t a bust after all.

All’s well that ends well!

Mediterranean Sunset over Rooftop

Parasails Above the Mediterranean Viewed over a Roof

Midnight is gone

Midnight went on her last hunt. Our oldest pet, a black cat who reached more than 19 years, Midnight ran the house. When we moved to Michigan, our first cat passed on very quickly, and our first Michigan cat (Hattie) died quickly, probably from the same illness. A black cat named Sarah came into our lives. Terri and Sho allowed her to have one litter (turned out to be 8 kittens), and we kept Midnight after finding homes for the rest. After about three years, Sarah went out to hunt and never came back. Not long after, Midnight did the same.  At that time Terri and Shoshana found our gray tabby twins, Tommy and Rachel. But Midnight was always full of surprises and after an absence of 6 weeks, there she was back again. We’ve theorized that she might have been locked away in someone’s garage but managed to survive–I guess she lost quite a few of those proverbial nine lives in that episode.

But that broke our stream of bad luck–Midnight was here to stay. And she made it pretty clear that she would have nothing to do with the twins. Wouldn’t even share a litterbox with them. Fortunately for us, she preferred the outside life, so for most of our years with her she was our outdoors cat. She liked to come in for the day and stay out at night. And she would deign to keep us company during the coldest nights of Winter. And for all those years there was a steady stream of “gifts” left for us on the front porch.

Old age caught up with Midnight a couple of years ago, so for the past two years she was around the house a lot more. We threw in the towel on the litterbox issue and got her her own private one.

Two months ago, at her annual physical, the vet found a tumor on her paw and the diagnosis was immediate–cancer. She might survive a bit longer, we were told, with an amputation. But why put a 19 year old cat through that misery? So we gave her the most comfortable life we could provide and let her eat the wet food she preferred over kibble. What a pain that was because Nina our dog would do everything she could to get that food with very unpleasant consequences.

This morning the tumor opened up and Midnight bled profusely. I got a call from our cleaning crew (it was our biweekly cleaning day) telling us that the cat was clearly ailing. So after work Terri and I headed once again for the vet. One shot and a few minutes later, Midnight was sedated. Terri pet her and she purred until she was out. A second shot and her strong little heart was stilled.

Terri buried her under the tree which was a favorite napping spot of hers for so many years.

It seems like these days half my activity in this blog is writing obits for my pets. Midnight was 19, Tommy 14 and Roxanne 9. So in the last few months, we’ve lost pets who occupied 42 collective years of our pets’ lives. I miss them all.

David Farragut Junior High School (JHS 44) Bronx, New York

Note: A few extra notes and corrections as a result of correspondence with several alumni of JHS 44: Mitch Turbin, Rob Slayton and Larry Pryluck.

Due to a family move between the 8th and 9th grades, I attended two Junior High Schools. My 7th and 8th grades were located within the ancient (19th century) halls of Junior High School 44 which had taken the name of David Farragut, America’s first Rear Admiral and a hero of both the War of 1812 (having enlisted at the age of 12!) and the Civil War. Those of us in the Bronx didn’t know much about New Orleans, so the tales of David Farragut were my first introduction to that exotic place.

jhs-44-bronx

Much to the chagrin of the school, its most famous graduate was Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President of John F. Kennedy. Most of us who lived through that event recall exactly where we were at the moment we heard the news. I was in JHS 44’s Wood Shop when the announcement came over the school speaker. I think we went home early that day, although I don’t recall that clearly. Some time later I noticed that one of the names carved into a desk where I sat was Lee Oswald. It may have been the prank of one of my contemporaries, who knows.

If I remember correctly, the school had two graduates more worthy of recall. Dr. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the Polio vaccine, and Hank Greenberg, a rare example of a Jewish major league baseball player.

On a visit to New York City a few years ago, I found myself close enough to 44 to take a walk over and see how the old building was faring. I was surprised (actually) to see that it was still in operation, but it is now an elementary school, grades K-6. It was a little sad. Not exactly my fondest memories to begin with, no one seemed to have the remotest interest in talking about the school’s former glories. So I left without much to show for my interest other than the dying embers of a few more synapses. It turns out that JHS 44 was at least in part an elementary (K-6) school even in my day. Larry Pryluck actually attended K-1 there. I don’t know how many other schools were like this in New York City, combining the youngest school children with middle schoolers, but it would be interesting to discover. Larry then joined me in Mrs. Mitchell’s 2nd grade class at PS 92.

Larry reminded me of another of JHS 44’s distinctions, although it was hardly a credit to the school so much as the neighborhood. Strange as it may seem now, that crumbling part of the Bronx was home to a televsion studio-Biograph Studios. Biograph was the home of Naked City and Car 54 Where Are You? Naked City was a bit before my time, but I remember Car 54 very well. The cast included Joe E. Ross, Fred Gwynn, Al Lewis and Nipsey Russell (!). I don’t know how often these guys were seen around the neighborhood, but a few of my family were in the background of scenes shot on Southern Boulevard. Naked City is easily available at this time, but unfortunately Car 54 is out of print as I write this. There is a movie by the same name, but it has the distinction of being rated the worst film since Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space so I wouldn’t recommend it.

David Farragut JHS had a somewhat well-known school song which celebrated its namesake. Although just about every High School has a school song, Junior High songs are not common, and good ones are rare. JHS 44 had had a good music teacher who came up with a song I’d bet would be a candidate for “best in show”. The one time that Google has failed me in recent years is the time that I put in some of the words expecting to find that one of my classmates or teachers had uploaded the words to the song, but nothing turned up. There are gaps in what I recall, so here’s my first attempt. If others can help me fill in the gaps, I’d post a music file to preserve this little memory of a Bronx backwater.

Lets give a cheer for dear old 44

For all the boys and girls who’ve gone before

Lets cheer the green and white

And shout with all our might

For David Farragut!

[gap]

He sailed the Union fleet right up the bay

He won the battle at Mobile that day

[gap]

Dear Old Salamander

We praise thy name

Our hearts with love aflame [maybe]

Honor thy great name

Though soon we will graduate

[more gap]

JHS44 in 2010

PS 44 (No longer JHS!) in 2010

A Brief Bx Science Oriented AutoBio

It’s that time–high school reunion. This year its my (shudder) 40th. I’ve heard from a number of old friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in perhaps more than those 40 years, so I think it a good occasion to give some account of myself with as much of a tip of the hat to my alma mater as I can muster.

Undergrad Years, 1969-1972

After graduating from Bx Science in the rather turbulent year of 1969 I headed for an even more turbulent place, the University of Wisconsin at Madison. A few other Science grads accompanied me–off the top of my head Rena Robbins and Shelley Falik. The VietNam War was heavy upon us, at some point I hope to share some of my experiences through those events and years. For now, I’ll say that although I started off as a science major, social pressures and imminent military service kept my thoughts elsewhere. Through clouds of tear gas and watching armored personnel carriers trundle through downtown streets, I experienced as much educationally outside the classroom as in.

Another Science grad, David Fine, became infamous as a member of the gang that brought urban terrorism to Madison. In late 1970, he and his partners detonated a bomb which destroyed the Army Math Research Center and in the process killed a promising young post-doc named Robert Fassnacht. If you’re interested, here’s one link to what happened:

Madison, Army Math Research Center

The following year, I joined a group of UW students in trying to make sense of all this by inviting a stellar cast of dozens of the most famous people in the world to participate in a Wisconsin Student Association  Symposium. Much to my surprise, most of the invitees accepted and I found myself in the company of George McGovern, Nathan Glazer, Paul Samuelson, Jimmy Breslin, Anthony Lewis, James Farmer, George Wald and Pete Seeger (!).

Shelley (Science 69) was one of the organizers and gets the credit for convincing Pete Seeger to come. Shelley invited Pete to attend a pot luck dinner at his house, and after eating a humble meal (beans of various kinds is about all I recall of the menu), Pete picked up his banjo and led us in a sing-along. The following day, Pete held his “talk” which unsurprisingly turned into a concert. But towards the end, Pete thrust his microphone in front of Shelley’s mouth and said (paraphrasing after these several decades), “Why did you invite so few women to speak at this event?” Shelley looked mortified, that deer-in-the-headlights stare for a few moments. Then he said quite simply, “We were wrong”. Pete Seeger smiled and said, “There is the beginning of wisdom” and went on with the concert.

I hope I’ll have more to say on the topic of this symposium elsewhere in my blog.

Grad School

Life went on and I graduated from the UW in December 1972 with a few accomplishments. Earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and an award for best undergraduate thesis. In my senior year, I had developed an affection for ancient Jewish history. So I ignored my admissions letter to the UW Law School and headed for Israel with hardly a penny to my name. I attended the Ulpan (Hebrew Academy) affiliated with the World Union of Jewish Students in Arad. While there, at synagogue on the Day of Atonement, our rabbi faced us and said, “I regret to inform you that Israel has been attacked on all sides by the armed forces of Syria, Jordan and Egypt. I volunteered for service and they immediately found a suitable job for me: picking weeds out of pepper fields. After two weeks of this, the war over, I returned to Ulpan.

From there I enrolled in the Master’s program in Classical History at Tel Aviv University. I didn’t have the mandatory Latin facility, so they insisted that I take their first-year Latin class. My grad advisor informed me, with more than a twinkle in his eye, that I was very “fortunate” because for the first time elementary Latin was being taught to Hebrew-speaking students using a Hebrew textbook. I’m not sure how much Latin I learned in that class, but I can say without fear of exaggeration that that was where I learned Hebrew.

After a grueling but fabulous year at Tel Aviv, I realized that I had to return to the States to have any hope of an academic career. Much to my surprise, UC-Berkeley not only accepted me, but offered me a full-ride fellowship, so I landed in Berkeley in 1974. In another weird coincidence, David Fine (our Science-grad bomber) was also living in Berkeley at the time. The authorities finally caught up with him, so there I was in San Francisco reading about his arrest and trial.

I received my MA in Near Eastern Languages and Lit in December, 1976 and began my doctoral studies in Berkeley’s Group for Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology. My studies were going well, and I spent another year traveling. I received a year’s doctoral fellowship from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 77/78 and the following year was admitted to the graduate and rabbinic programs of the Hebrew Union College (Cincinnati).

But in 1979 I had some personal problems related to my mother’s medical condition and the simple reality that these were not good times for students of the Humanities, and I took leave of UC-Berkeley. It was supposed to be temporary, but as has happened to so many back then, it has stretched to decades.

Early Career

During my last grad years at UC, I had begun to teach Hebrew and Jewish Studies at a new school for adult Jewish students called Lehrhaus Judaica. When I left UC, the Hillel Foundation and Lehrhaus offered to hire me full time. By day, I managed the business activities of the Foundation, and at night I taught. Lehrhaus spread over the entire San Francisco Bay Area and for my last several years there I rode circuit teaching at Stanford, San Francisco State and Berkeley. Although these were adult classes, we were reviewed by the University of Judaism and my Hebrew classes along with several other courses taught by Fred Rosenbaum and Marty Ballonoff were awarded credit-worth status. So those few of my students who wanted it could earn academic credit.

Marriage

In late 1982, I met the love of my life, Theresa (Terri) Lee. Our first encounter was in one of my Hebrew classes, and yes, I did occasionally date my students. Never the ones taking the class for a grade, of course. Terri was a post-doc in UC-Berkeley’s Psychology Department and had come to study with Irv Zucker. But she somehow found some time to take my Hebrew class and stuck with it, she said, because I was one of the best stand-up comedians she had ever heard. We married a year later. The rabbi made a mistake in the community newspaper and invited everyone to our wedding, so instead of the 100 we thought would attend, there were about 350!

First Child

On September 16, 1985, my first-born entered the world. Reluctantly. Shoshana was a breach baby, and Terri had to be carried kicking and screaming into surgery for the C-section. Terri, who operated on animals on a daily basis, knew what surgery was like and she was having none of it. But we chanted Hebrew verb tables together and she came through it as did my beautiful daughter whom we named Shoshana Frances. That day, by the way, was Rosh HaShanah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. I had been scheduled to read from the Torah to an audience of more than 600, but some lucky person had to fill in for me. I think that must have been Rabbi Ballonoff, but if he was upset, he never let on.

Moving to Michigan

After 14 glorious years in Berkeley, there was a serious decision to be made. I had this wonderful but quite wacky career as a Jewish educator, but Terri was invited to join the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor. In my mind there was no comparison, and off to Michigan we went. Terri, Shoshana, my dog Lucy, our cat Teddy and our three rabbits, Pesah, Bilhah and Zilpah. We found that we couldn’t afford a house in Ann Arbor, so we bought a small house on 11 acres just outside town. We’re still in it 18 years later, and I’m typing this into my computer in my office in that house. We finally were able to get DSL about two years ago, so I’m not using dial-up!

Terri rose from Assistant Prof to Associate. Then she was promoted to Professor. They made her the Chair of the Biopsychology group and then the Chair of the Undergrad program. Now she is Department Chair. Psychology is the largest department in the University and the numbers are mind-boggling. 8000 enrolled students ( 25% of incoming first year students in the college get at least one of their undegraduate degrees in Psych). She’s also been co-director of the University’s Sheep Farm and published an armload of papers. Her own lab has something like 40 post-docs, grad students and undergrads toiling away on her sheep and rodent projects.

OK, this is supposed to be autobiographical, so what happened to me?

Of course I would have liked to have taken up where I left off in Berkeley, but it was abundantly clear to me on my arrival that Michigan’s chapter of the Hillel Foundation was doing just fine without me. I probably could have tried making something happen at one of the smaller schools, but after 14 years I thought it was time for something different. I did manage to keep a foot in the teaching of Judaica. Soon after our arrival, someone who knew of me from Berkeley–a Science grad for that matter, Barry Gross–invited me to teach at Congregation Kehillat Israel in Lansing, Michigan and I’ve taught there ever since. But unlike Berkeley, I wasn’t going to be making a living here that way.

One of my students at our Stanford campus was a highly placed executive in the Oracle Corporation. Someone who had been there from the beginning and was a personal friend of Larry Ellison. He was contemplating early retirement and doing graduate work in Judaica and we became good friends. One day he asked me whether I’d like to learn about Oracle and that started me on a path of study to become a database administrator.

On my arrival in Michigan, I discovered that the school had just signed a license for Oracle but had no one who actually knew how to use it. (There were a few departments who had used it prior to the campus-wide agreement, but no one in the primary IT department was familiar with it.) So I was hired to bring up the first Oracle database in the University’s administrative area.

A few years later, in April of 1991, our second child, Ephraim Robert joined the family.

I moved from database administrator to departmental manager at the College of Engineering and eventually was appointed Director of Operations in 2006. After a few health problems and administrative headaches beyond the call of duty, I decided on early retirement in 2007. After about 6 weeks of retirement I went back to work. Nothing to do with the current financial mess, I just didn’t take to an unstructured life very well. My current job is far cry from my former position. I help University faculty and staff acquire the software they need to get their jobs or research done. For the first time ever I have a cube instead of an office and no one to supervise. But I work on a team with some very fine people and the work is far less stressful than my former position.

As it turned out, this was a good place to be now that we are in the grips of some pretty terrifying financial times. If the financial climate improves I think I’ll get back to some good retirement planning. I want to spend more time working on Web sites for organizations I support like the National Alliance on Mental Illness and our small Ann Arbor Model Railroad Club. I’m doing a re-write of the book on Classical Hebrew I wrote for my class at Berkeley’s Lehrhaus Judaica. So there’s no lack of things to occupy me, just a lack of things that pay.

The family continues to grow. Karl Malcolm proposed to and subsequently wed Shoshana in August of 2008 (photo elsewhere in this blog). Shoshana became a registered nurse and is now doing the sacred work of healing at the VA hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Ephraim will soon be graduating from Dexter High School and is planning to spend his first college year in Israel.

I’m in regular contact with at least one other Science grad–Rabbi Jay Lapidus, who runs a small but vibrant discussion group on Yahoo called “OCR Jewish”.

So that’s my news thus far. I’ve had a marvelous life so far, and I’m looking forward to many more happy times. As I write this, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get to our 40th reunion or not, but I hope to hear from some of my old friends any time!

First blood

Ephy bagged his first deer last night. A doe, looks big but haven’t seen the weight yet. He sat in a tree in our backyard, all by himself since mentor Karl had decided to join Terri and me for a visit to Sabta Stella and dinner out. He used a one shot muzzle loader, because that is all that is allowed in this season. As I write this, Karl and Ephy are dressing and butchering the meat.

First Blood: Ephys 1st Deear

First Blood: Ephy's 1st Deer

Mixed emotions. Not very much a part of Yiddishkeit–you might say more Esau than Yaaqov. Soon Ephy will be going to Israel for a year and he’ll have a chance to absorb more of that culture. It is good to see the world from many viewpoints, and (after all) Jews have been hunters too.

Mixed emotions part 2. How will I appreciate the meat which is a gift in and of itself? We try to keep a kosher home, so most likely the meals will be served cooked in utensils reserved for the odd occasion, served in paper bowls with plastic utensils. But I write this in the aftermath of the Rubashkin scandal which perhaps I will discuss in a different entry. My interest in kashruth in the wake of this episode is at a nadir. Is the meat harvested by my son in an honest hunting expedition inferior to what we have been eating from the Rubashkin’s plant?

In possibly related news, I ate a garden burger for dinner.