The GREAT Spring Cleaning & Clearing on my FACEBOOK

 

This last week I began tackling something I have been meaning to do for a couple of years.

 

My Facebook account told me I had over fifteen hundred friends, or, to be accurate, Facebook Friends, which includes friends and also “friends.”

 

Eons ago, when I first joined Facebook, I saw it as an ad for professional connectivity, with some personal connections as a side bonus. Over the years, it became clear to me this was reversed.  Facebook turned out to be a powerful tool to find old friends, while it was a weak way to professional discourse or exposure.

 

Outside of some excellent Facebook groups, other social sites do a better job on the professional front. It was time to trim, slim, and prim my Facebook presence and have it make sense to me.

 

It’s spring, and the scent of spring cleaning took on a digital aspect.

 

In one day, I trimmed more than five hundred Facebook friendships, ones that frankly have had zero interaction with me or I with them— over many years. I never saw their posts in my feed, and they probably never saw mine.

 

It was an interesting experience. Many of these ghost "friends” have become ghosts on my friends' list: no photo (I never would have accepted a friend request in the first place without a photo) or their accounts went through a name change and would no longer have passed muster with even my previous promiscuous friending practices.

 

After I-don’t-know-how many, my bleary eyes began glazing over as I clicked the two buttons to finalize each unfriending. The echo of the Queen of Hearts of Alice in Wonderland saying, “off with their heads!” chimed as I clicked. I was almost in a trance when…

 

Facebook stopped me.

 

A box appeared telling me I am “going too fast” and this function will be temporarily blocked. My first ever Facebook blockage had made its debut appearance, no doubt due to their algorithm detecting what could be a hack or some malicious interference. Because, honestly, who unfriends hundreds in a row?

 

No point in assuring the Facebook that it was me and I intended this massacre. Facebook is, ironically, faceless. There is no one behind the curtain but mechanical algorithms.

 

What the blockage didn’t say was what the word “temporarily” meant. Turned out that for me and my great spring clearing it was twenty-four hours. My project resumed a day later, and I now think I’m done. Phew.

 

A curious aspect for me was to find that I was not willing to unfriend the handful of friends who have died in real life. I would remain friends with them on Facebook just as they remain in my heart. Don’t ask why, it’s just the way it works for me. This was the point all along: to make Facebook work for me.

 

You know what? It feels better, lighter and more meaningful. I’ve put it off, and now it’s done.

 

If I know you in real life and have accidentally unfriended you, blame the sheer size of the project. I’m still a friendly person, only more discerning when it comes to digital hygiene.

REFLECTIONS ON THE UMPTEENTH DRAFT

 

There is a truth universally proclaimed, that artists are never happy with their own work.

For writers, this means feelings of loathsomeness when reading their own writing.

So, what is one supposed to think if when revising draft number (take your pick: three, thirteen, thirty-three) you find yourself liking your own writing?

There is no place to put such a feeling. You feel like a freak. But there it is.

Me likey!

Wishes of joy to all who make things. It’s allowed. Even the greatest creator of all gave themselves this permission:

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Genesis 1:31

*For more on how not to buy into the myth of the self-immolating creative and how to enjoy the writing journey, I wholeheartedly recommend Jane Yolen’s TAKE JOY

APRIL 11th IN HISTORY

 

April 11^th 1961 - Israel began the trial of Adolf Eichmann, accused of World War II war crimes.

I could claim to remember it well, because the whole country (then a very young one thirteen years old) listened to nothing else every weekday on the Voice of Israel, the national radio channel.

 

But I was even younger, and although the child of a Holocaust survivor who always knew something terrible had left my father without a single birth family member, I knew little of the details and don’t recall hearing the revelations of the trial.

 

To this day, Adolph Eichmann is the only person ever executed in the state of Israel. The death penalty is still legal there, but only for Crimes Against Humanity. The state used the gallows left from British Mandate years (1918-1948) and had to have a mock-execution to make sure the hanging apparatus still functioned.

 

One of my first memories was related to this. I was standing by the yard of our apartment building when two girls (they seemed like young women to little me then, but they were likely highschoolers) were discussing whether Eichmann should be put to death. I didn’t absorb the details of their positions, only that they differed on the matter.

 

I was too young to know any of the details of survivors’ testimony, or Eichmann’s retort that he was “just following orders.” Oddly, my only memory was of a civil and cogent discussion between two young people about the rightness or wrongness of the death penalty.

 

It’s a good memory, which serves me to this day. It’s the only way to address matters of importance— soberly, respectfully, and with a sense that another person who understands things differently is also trying their best, and that we might be wrong.

PASS-OVER the FLOUR

GO STRAIGHT to the CHOCOLATE

Put another way, as Passover begins tomorrow evening, it’s time for another of Passover’s glories, the kind shared with all the world’s people.

No, it’s not the notions of becoming a free people, though that’s a grand thing.

No, it isn’t even the act of gathering for a great long meal, though no one should sniff at that.

No, it isn’t the celebration of Spring, which deserves a whole other blog post.

What is this universal glory that had attached itself to Passover? It’s baking without flour. Cakes that don’t cheat (by using matzo meal) and make no pretense to have your ground wheat and be kosher for Passover too, are the crown jewels of Passover cuisine.

Let’s go straight to the chocolate, then.

Ingredients

Cake

• 1 cup (170g) semisweet chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate chips
• 8 tablespoons (113g) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup (149g) granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 to 2 teaspoons espresso powder, optional
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract, optional
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup (43g) Dutch-process cocoa

Glaze

• 1 cup (170g) semisweet chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup (113g) heavy cream

1.      Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a metal 8" round cake pan; cut a piece of parchment to fit, grease it, and lay it in the bottom of the pan. 

        2.      To make the cake: Put the chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl, and heat until the butter is melted and the chips are soft. Stir until the chips melt, reheating briefly if necessary. You can also do this over a burner set at very low heat. Transfer the melted chocolate/butter to a mixing bowl.

   3.      Stir in the sugar, salt, espresso powder, and vanilla. Espresso enhances chocolate's flavor much as vanilla does; using 1 teaspoon will simply enhance the flavor, while 2 teaspoons will lend a hint of mocha to the cake.

        4.      Add the eggs, beating briefly until smooth. Add the cocoa powder, and mix just to combine.

    5.      Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.

        6.      Bake the cake for 25 minutes; the top will have formed a thin crust, and it should register at least 200°F on an instant-read thermometer inserted into its center.

        7.      Remove it from the oven, and cool it in the pan for 5 minutes.

        8.      Loosen the edges of the pan with a table knife or nylon spreader, and turn it out onto a serving plate. The top will now be on the bottom; that's fine. Also, the edges will crumble a bit, which is also fine. Allow the cake to cool completely before glazing.

        9.      To make the glaze: Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until it's not quite at a simmer, but showing fine bubbles around the edge. Pour the cream over the chocolate, stir very briefly to combine, and let rest for 5 minutes. Stir again — at first slowly, then more vigorously — until the chocolate is completely melted and the glaze is smooth. If any bits of chocolate remain, reheat briefly in the microwave or over a burner, then stir until smooth.

        10.  Spoon the glaze over the cake, spreading it to drip over the sides a bit. Allow the glaze to set for several hours before serving the cake.

 

Joyous Passover