NOVEMBER 18TH 1963:

 

ON THIS DATE IN HISTORY, THE FIRST PUSH-BUTTON (TOUCH-TONE) TELEPHONES DEBUTED IN THE UNITED STATES, EVENTUALLY REPLACING MOST ROTARY-DIAL MODELS

 

Well, then. Rotary dials are now “historical.” That’s hysterical.

 

Turns out that of all the “retro” thingies, teens and twenty-somethings do not know how to use a rotary dial. They stare at it, try to press here and there, and when nothing happens, they declare the gizmo to be broken.

 

That’s okay. I don’t drive a stick-shift vehicle, either. But I know the basics of how it works and if my life depended on it, I think (I hope) I could manage somehow. I also think that if I was caught in a time-travel tunnel<, I could manage to make a call with the early phones where you cranked the one lever, and an operator listened to your instructions and connected you.

 

My point of amazement is that having no notion of how to use a rotary dial means young’uns aren’t ever watching older movies. There are plenty of scenes in movies from pre-1963 where dialing a number is visible. Hitchcock alone used these for tension building.

 

Grumpiness spiel done, I am glad for the push-button dialers and today’s the day to celebrate this milestone.

MARCH 11TH IN HISTORY

 

1861 Confederate states adopt new constitution

In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas adopt the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

 

When grumblings about “we need Civil war” enter your sphere, please re-consider. We came too close to duplicate the fractious abyss that is Europe, and because the Union prevailed, we remained a large continent where citizens move freely between territories and states. It seems normal to Americans, but it is not the norm as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

 

The reference link concludes with—

Although Britain and France both briefly considered entering the Civil War on the side of the South, the Confederate States of America, which survived until April 1865, never won foreign recognition as an independent government.

Phew, that was close. Too close. A hundred and sixty-four years of endless “hot” wars between states were averted, but not before a tenth of Americans paid with their lives.

 

Especially because if this, if you’re tempted to go yell at or slap someone for advocating war, consider baking them a pie or inviting them over for tea and cookies. Resolve not to allow conflict into the conversation.

^ Me, wearing a Peace Corps T-shirt, inviting you for coffee^

 

Blessed are the peacemakers.

“IF YOU COULD MEET ANYONE FROM HISTORY…”

 

There’s a well-known trope/parlor game/interview question that asks which long-dead persons you’d like to meet, have dinner with, interview, etc.

 

It’s fun to think about, and the answer supposedly reveals something pertinent about us.

 

About a month ago, someone put this question to me and I realized my older answers didn’t hold for me anymore. My old answers were Shakespeare (did he really author what is attributed to him?), Jesus (what was the historic flesh-and-blood person really like?), and Abraham (Is he in fact one actual person, or a myth?).

 

But I realized that Shakespeare would almost certainly be a disappointment. The works are far greater than the author, as is almost always the case. Jesus of Nazareth is also far greater as spiritual residues present to this day. As to Abraham, I would likely not like him at all and he not like me. Anyone who would sacrifice his beloved son Isaac and lie to his boy while climbing to the place of the intended killing (all to prove his complete obedience to G-d) is the sort of fanatic I avoid like the plague today.

 

Then, they came to me like figures emerging out of a thick fog. The people I would most like to meet and spend a day with, the people I would like to get to know and be known by, are my father’s mother and father. They perished in the Holocaust and the Nazis wouldn’t allow my father, still a boy himself, to keep even the locket he wore with his mother’s photograph.

 

What I know of them are the memories of a boy. When I asked my late father to describe them physically, he gave such a vague description that I couldn’t conjure their faces. Years later, when my father returned for a visit to Poland and found a neighbor he remembered from his childhood still living in the old building, the neighbor angrily snapped at him saying, “What Jews? There were never any Jews here.” He had hoped someone had photos of his family, but instead found complete erasure.  

 

If you believe in the afterlife, you might be telling me that I will meet my grandparents some day. You might be telling me that they are watching over me right now. I won’t argue. It’s a mystery, as far as I’m concerned.

 

But today I would choose to meet them while I’m still part of this world of action, because I sense it would inform the rest of my time here in a meaningful way.

WHO TELLS THE STORY

 

History is written by the victors. So said Winston Churchill. Napoleon called it a fable agreed upon.

 

In my current WIP, a pre-teen learns that what she knows of history, even recent history, is but a version of it and not the most interesting version.

 

Young people learn from books and increasingly from games and other visual media, (such as movies) what passes for the “true” story of humanity’s past.

 

Even scientific truths are augmented by storytelling. Think of the visualization in school textbooks of what the dinosaurs looked like. These are hypothetical guesses, periodically revised. Yet these images are taken as true depictions of a world now gone.

 

The greatest achievement of winning in battle may not be the spoils of war or avoiding the pain of being ravaged. It may be that you and yours get to be the ones telling the story of who did what to whom.

 

Somehow, perhaps because I began my life in an embattled region, I felt the need to tackle this thorny matter.  Even more, it seems all the more important to make younger readers consider it.

 

Storytellers have an outsized responsibility, one few can begin to achieve, to have their audience made aware of what a vantage point does to perception.

 

Because perception is reality is more than a cliché. It is what we carry forward and use to make decisions. “Knowing history as to not repeat it” misses the point. Whose history do we know? Because, Virginia, it seems to me we are repetitiously repeating the repeats.  

The LONE PERSON THEORY of HISTORY

 

We grasp the past in stories. We frame our understanding of history in the stories historians tell.

 

There’s a school of thought that human history is largely shaped by single individuals. Thus, some speak not of the perennial evil current that is antisemitism, or of the German people in the middle of the twentieth century, but of “Hitler.” Hitler did this, and Hitler did that, and it’s all because of Hitler.

 

I remember reading a book (wish I could remember the title) where someone was bent on inventing time travel so he could go back in time and kill baby Hitler in his crib, before this baby would grow up and wreak havoc. I can’t remember if in the story the protagonist succeeds (=alternative history) but another baby grows up to stand in Adolph Hitler’s stead, or if the attempt fails. It was one or the other, because we know what did in fact happen.

 

A similar theme is in a graphic novel, Bodies, by Si Spencer, now made into an eight-part filmed series.  It was interesting to watch, and as wrongheaded as can be.

The lone savior/lone villain who can either save the world or destroy it is the basis not only of every superhero comic, but of all stories going back to the Bible and before.

 

For this reason, the multitude accept politicians who state a variation of “I alone can fix it.” It sounds preposterous to most thinking people, but we have been conditioned to frame our understanding of reality in this way.

 

All this is a reminder to storytellers. Storytellers have a responsibility for the ages. Our protagonists struggle to overcome and do right. But as they do, is humanity saved?

 

Even in kidlit, there is a stream of “kid saves the world.” (Think Harry Potter)

Blimey if I never write such stories, despite publishing professionals constant urging to “up the stakes.” I’m a big proponent of stories where an individual changes their own perspective or helps a person near them.

A Messiah is one because their teaching lights a way of being to individuals.

 

Save me from the save-the-world ones. We keep telling their stories, and the world is clearly not saved.

This Day, DECEMBER 1st, in History

December 1, 1955 - The birth of the modern American civil rights movement occurred as Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back section of a municipal bus. Her arrest resulted in a year-long boycott of the city bus system by African Americans and led to legal actions ending racial segregation on municipal buses throughout the South.

The struggle to confront and make amends to a racist legacy continues to this day. Rosa Parks was one punctuation point on a long, continuous timeline.

To young’uns, born at a time of an African-American president, this seems like ancient history and yet they sense history’s long shadow in various ways even now. It’s impossible to understand today’s grievances without remembering and reminding what is, in historical context, a blatant disregard for the full humanity of others.

A much wiser person than me, who is also a renowned psychologist, put it this way: “Humans are hardwired to think in terms of ‘us’ and ‘not us’, with all the defensiveness this implies.” This served for self-preservation under threat and did, at times of great scarcity, have a function. But, I only hope, we are slowly evolving to override this and to understand that race and religion do not make anyone “not us.”

Remembering Rosa Parks today.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Hebrew: Yom Hasho’ah- יוֹם הַשׁוֹאָה

Challenging times, such as we're enduring now,  befall humankind periodically. Unlike our current global trial, some are utterly of our own making.

Israel observes Holocaust Memorial Day on the anniversary of the brave and doomed Jewish uprising of those who remained in the Warsaw ghetto. The dates were April 19-May 23, 1943. It is an attempt to paint the catastrophe not only in terms of annihilation, but recognize the enormous heroism of the perished and the survivors. Thus, the day’s full name is Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.

All over Israel, this commemoration happened today. Every year on this date, at eight in the morning and eight in the evening, the sirens blare and the country comes to a standstill. People bow their heads in silence.
My memory of this day when I grew up in Israel was that the air was unbearably heavy and even lifting my head was an effort. It was a very recent event then, even if to a child it already felt like history. It was also personal, as I’m the child of a sole survivor who had no living relatives on her father’s side.

Israel chose to put equal emphasis on the heroism of those dreadful years. Internationally, the day is commemorated on January 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by the allied forces. Obviously, the international community puts emphasis on their act of triumph over this evil.

Personally, I never bought the heroism angle, nor the emphasis on the allies’ role. Most Jews didn’t rebel or survive, and the allies didn’t enlist to save Jews, but responded to a military aggression by the Germans and their alliance. Both choices of how to commemorate this chapter are attempts to re-paint this horrendous time with emphasis that serves the purpose of seeing ourselves as we wish to be seen.

For me, this day is a reminder of the ever-present human capacity for evil. Most days most folks don’t want to recognize it. I understand, because I am no different. I push away the notes of the darkest shadows of our species almost every day, choosing to not fully see it. But one day a year, there is no escape for me.

The Talmud says, “The greater a man is, the greater his capacity for evil.” So on this sad Remembrance Day I know the depth of darkness has a symmetry in how much we can also rise. But I will contemplate the side of light tomorrow. 

Today I reserve for unmitigated sadness.

Historical (not Hysterical) Perspective Needed

Though the global response and economic shut-down feels unprecedented for any who haven’t lived through the great depression or the last world war, (not many of them left) it is not the world’s end nor the end of history, and more than ever we need to know humanity’s past to regain perspective.

I’ve always loved historical fiction. My published novel is one such, about a traumatic episode when at one time and place a feeling that annihilation could be immanent saturated the air. I lived that one, and lived to write about it some years later.

My father had survived a far greater trauma. My mother remembered the Great Depression as something from her childhood that left her frugal for the rest of her life. We have many in our midst who lived through historic shifts in their countries of origin, some still ongoing.

From where I stand right now, I don’t feel the current crisis is in the magnitude of any of the above. But, of course, it’s the unknown-unknown while it’s ongoing. So my ‘”hunch” or feeling only matter to the way I conduct myself, while G-d knows what G-d knows.

Here’s my bit of perspective: As storytellers, we who write will have even more to mine. Stories are an integral part of humanity and always needed. I feel a responsibility not to contribute to fear, and while doing the right common sense things also keep notes and document this event for the future. This doesn’t mean specifically “COVID-19 Tales,” but observations of human behaviors, the good and noble and the less good, for future literary exploration.

The one sure thing is that it will pass. It will be history. Then, we’ll say (as the French do) “Quelle histoire!” (=”What a story!”)

In the meantime, I strive to stay well and most of all to stay generous. Same to you, everyone.

A Facebook Group for EVERYTHING

In an ever-changing world, living half a world away from where I grew up, I found myself thinking about one particular restaurant my parents took me to with some regularity. It disappeared long ago, and we stopped going there long before it vaporized.

It was such an oddity that there were times I wondered if I had really been there, or it was something I dreamt.
The name my parents used was “The Cooperative Restaurant.” It had only two entrees to choose from— meatballs or boiled chicken. If you didn't want either, then no food for you. The servers were burly grumpy folks, who hurled the plates on the tables with such force that the meaty juices sometimes sprayed the customers. The servers either yelled at you or yelled at each other. The sounds of crashing dishes and blood-curdling cursing that echoed from the kitchen behind the swinging doors, were part of the ambience.
It was cheap, and the food was rib-sticking good, in a homey sort of way.

It was so peculiar, and didn’t fit the rest of my memories. Did we really go there? Was there ever such a place?

Turns out there are others who remember, and I found them in a closed Facebook group for folks who grew up in west Jerusalem. More than a hundred commentators in the group waxed nostalgic over the place, first called “The Workers Restaurant,” then “The Cooperative,” and finally “Sovah,” before it met its inevitable demise. I, who was four and five years old when I ate there, knew little of its history, and the older commentators input surpassed the riches of my memory.

Which takes me to this final thought for today's post. Anything and everything that interests you is likely to have a group of others who share your interest. I already belong to a few writerly groups. There really is a Facebook group for everything.

Galileo and the Scientific Truth

On this date, February 26, in the year of our Lord 1616, Galileo Galilei was formerly banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

Now, I am not anti-Catholic (emphatically not) or anti-religious. The church had its reasons, with worry that challenging this dogma would lead to questioning all dogmas, an unstoppable process. Indeed, history showed this fear to be justified, and the loss of dogmatic faith that had already begun then, continues to this day. The church had reasons to fear that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater, an expression so vivid I’m using it despite it being a cliché.

The thing is, four centuries later and a formal reversal of this ban by the church itself, we still ban thinking that we fear will lead to abuses of the social fabric and result in hurtful conduct. Only now, it is happening in the name of freethinking.

We haven’t changed. We’re still terrified of our own species propensity to abuse one another, and in the name of protecting us from ourselves we fire/take-down/ban/shun uncomfortable ideas.

I know real tolerance and considered debate when I see it. We’re not there yet.

Saluting the brave Galileos out there. You give humanity some hope.

NINE / ELEVEN

This Day in History

Any day before a reader was born is history.

If you write stories for children, (which, to me, means young readers/listeners up to the age of fourteen) September the eleventh two-thousand and one is history.

There are already some good Kidlit books that either tell of that day, or have it in the background of a story. I wrote one such, and my agent wondered if it was too soon. Less than six months later, a whole slew of children’s books came out telling of that day. It was not too soon.

It was a seismic shock for the United States, one whose reverberations are operational today. We fear depicting the religion in whose name the perverted individuals chose to act, because many innocent adherents should not be implicated. But if we tippy-toe around that, we can’t tell the story of that day honestly.

And if we tell it honestly, how do we tell it to a child?

For my grandparents’ generation, there was another day that lived in infamy. It was the day where Pearl Harbor, where most of the United States navy was docked, another nation whom we did not provoke chose to decimate the American fleet in a few hours.  Listen to the then president of the United States speaking to the nation here. Franklin Roosevelt said it clearly: December seventh nineteen-forty-one, a date that shall live in infamy.

The country of Japan is an ally now, after we defeated it. Few kids know that date. But it would not be farfetched to say that the events of that day are still reverberating in all we think, feel and do today.

I don’t know what we should do about nine-eleven, except that I am sure we should write about it, and tell young readers what happened. Best to do it with riveting stories, preferably engrossing fiction where imagined characters live through real events, because these are the stories kids read out of school.

Someday, through the haze of the passing time, we will not fear naming the perpetrators. We’ll be breaking bread with their grandchildren, and together we’ll confront new challenges.

But for now, today, nine eleven is still a date that lives in infamy.

Gift from a Beggar

We’d arrived in Berkeley in the late fall of 1978. Little did we know this would be a historically significant time in the San Francisco Bay area. In only a week, the mass murder-suicide in Jonestown (of a cult whose roots were in the East Bay) would permeate the air. That foreshock lasted but nine days, when a supervisor in San Francisco’s city hall would shoot the mayor and the first openly gay supervisor, and the bay area ground would be rattled not by a physical, but an emotional quake.

My then boyfriend and I knew about the danger of earthquakes, and chose to move to the area anyway. We knew about San Francisco and Berkeley’s reputation as a social vanguard. If that included the sort of madness that engulfed and thickened the air everyone breathed, we had to take the good with the bad. We were new, and chucked it to The California Experience.

But that was not what we noticed most. From the very first day, what struck us  was how many people lived on the streets and how many were begging for spare change. We had lived in Ithaca, New York, for four years. We never saw street people there. The climate and the town’s people were inhospitable to such. I had seen beggars before, not only in movies but also in Jerusalem, where I grew up. These were blind, old, broken bodied people. They had their corner in downtown Jerusalem, and anyone could see they could not support themselves any other way. We never passed them without putting change into their tins. 

But Berkeley was full of young seemingly healthy and energetic beggars. This, more than the maddening news, struck us as peculiar. We assumed every one of them was in real need, for who in their right mind would spend their days asking for money if they could work?

And so we gave. And gave. And whenever asked, which was often, we gave again. If we didn’t have spare pocket change, we gave bills from our wallets.

A couple of months later, we had become jaded. New acquaintances informed us that most of the local beggars were drug addicts, and that our giving only perpetuated their habit. We stopped giving. In addition, our own funds were running low. It would be a few more months before we found jobs, and we had rent to pay.

Until one day, when a young beggar approached us on Telegraph Avenue, right by the intersection of Dwight Way, asking for spare change.

“Sorry, Man. We’re broke,” my boyfriend said. That was not literally true, but felt like it was in our near future.

The beggar stuck his hand into his deep pants’ pocket and doled a fistful of change. “Please take that,” he said. “You’re more broke. I had a good day.”

We tried to refuse, but he tried harder. He would not let us leave without taking some of his “spare.”

I don’t know what the answer is. But, forty years later, even as I continue to mostly pass local beggars by without giving, once in a while I see that beggar’s face and pull my pocket change out.

Johnny Tremain

As a way to celebrate the miracle that is our country, one encompassing much of the continent from sea to shining sea where, let’s face it, many wish to come to and few wish to flee from, may I recommend a classic book?

Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes, was the first historical novel written for young readers, and a Newbery medal winner. My kid-lit reading group read it some months ago, and saved me with this assignment from missing one of the best ways to appreciate the effort and enterprise that was the founding of the union of states.

I felt I was there, with Johnny, as his focus shifted from his personal struggles to be somebody in a world that did not bless him with privilege to the honor and privilege of fighting for something greater.

And the next time anyone says something about how divided our country is, let them situate themselves in colonial times, where many of the English king’s subjects in the Americas were not the least bit supportive of the colonial rebels.

Because what we have now is a vibrant, imperfect, but astonishingly successful nation, where disagreements are settled by a system of state-by-state voting.

That is something great, and worth celebrating.

Happy July Fourth and happy reading.

May 22nd in History

I stay away from politics on the Internet, because I have found that is makes good people behave and talk like bad people. Sometimes very bad people.

If you have followed any of my posts for any length of time, you know my fascination with “this day in history.” Lots of things happened on May 22^nd, this date in history. But the most interesting will bring out the venom of the politicos.

May 22^nd 1799, Napoleon declared Jerusalem for the Jews. Anyone who knows anything knows that it is central to the Jewish ancestral tradition in a way it is to no other tradition. But, whoa, don’t start me on that one.

May 22^nd 1942 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee disbands, and a new trade union, the United Steelworkers, is formed. Looky here; unions were both the best thing and what built the American middle class, or a cancer on our country— depending how your politics navigates your mind. Please don’t start.

May 22^nd 2015, Ireland declared Gay Marriage legal by popular vote. I like that this was done by popular vote and not by judicial decree, because legal marriage is a “communal acknowledgement” of status rather than a personal feeling. But, please, don’t start me on that one. (Well, I was the one who started— so woe on me.)

So here are some I hope we can celebrate together without bringing out the trolls and poisons that hatch in the mud:

760 14th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet

1819 1st steam propelled vessel to cross Atlantic (Savannah leaves Ga)

1842 Farmers Lester Howe and Henry Wetsel discover Howe Caverns in New York State when they stumble upon a large gaping hole in the ground

^All on May 22^nd.

But I saved my favorite for last:

                 May 22^nd, 1849 Abraham Lincoln receives a patent (only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions..

Oh, I forgot. There are some who are still mad about Lincoln. I’ll celebrate anyway.

LET THE CLASSICS BE

At the SCBWI meeting I wrote about in the last post, I had an interesting discussion with the younger writers near me. It was about current social sensitivities and the classics of kid-lit and general literature. Do we read/teach/recommend books written only decades ago that convey notions about gender/race/faith no longer deemed acceptable to us?

Think of the N-word used liberally in Huckleberry Finn, one of the great American novels for any age. Think of the misuse of Native American terms in The Sign of the Beaver, another great book. For that matter, think of any of Jane Austen’s main characters whose sole goal in life was to marry, (preferably well$$) or Shakespeare’ Merchant of Venice whose Jewish character is villainously greedy in the classic anti-Semitic tradition.

And so on, and on, and on.

Some parents opt to keep the classics out of their kids’ library. Many school districts have similar policies. They mean well, I’ll give them that. They want their young’uns to feel safe at all times. They feel these currents can wait until the kids are grown and able to understand the context.

I’m on the other side of this debate. I think the classics should be taught, albeit with a contemporary forward by a knowledgeable historian. Because, if we wait until kids are “old enough,” they will be suspicious. If people are exposed to mindsets of another time only when they are adults, presuming they were carefully shielded until then, they are likely to feel incredulous.

“How come I never heard of it?”

“If this were so, I’m sure I would have seen/read about it before.”

“Yeah, they teach it in history class. But I never saw it in anything that was written in those days.”

And, finally— “This is fake news. Fake information from evil interests looking to take over our minds.”

Sounds familiar?

Great books should be taught, and taught unaltered, and to any age. With it, the historical context should also be explained.

Only those who know where we came from can be truly educated and prepared to make thoughtful judgements, which, I presume, is the purpose of education.

I made this pitch to the poor souls who happened to be sitting by me, and I am not sure I convinced anyone. They listened politely. But I got the feeling that reading The Classics was not a priority, and no one wants to stick his or her neck out where the politically sensitive might bite.

But I said my peace, just as I do here, uncensored. Teach the classics and don’t change a single period.

Seems to me particularly poignant at this time of Passover, when my people remember and remind and teach our young that were were once slaves in Egypt. Because not knowing, not remembering, and not teaching-- is a recipe for future disasters. 

All the Reasons to Like PURIM

The Jewish holiday Purim, celebrating the Jewish people’s (once again) salvation from mortal threat, starts tomorrow evening.

How do I like thee, Purim? Let me count the ways~~~ (Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

            *The chance to wear a goofy costume

            *The scroll of Esther is a hoot. J   Look it up and re-read if you don’t believe me

            *Hamantaschen, when made right, are delicious

            *Getting baskets of goodies (MISHLO’ACH MANOT) is fun, and giving such is even more fun

*It’s religious-observant “light,” perfect for the family I grew up in

*Jews are commanded to get seriously tipsy, which makes everyone daffier

*It falls right around my birthday

*And just for good measure, again— COSTUMES!

So even if you’re not Jewish, it’s a good time to join us.

{Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York—

Only the children are in costumes there^}

CELEBRATE!

January 30, This Day in HISTORY

There is something ominously grim when I look at January 30^th’s notable marks. On this calendar day in 1933, Hitler was sworn as chancellor of Germany. On this calendar day in 1948, Gandhi was assassinated. On this calendar date in 1956, African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

That’s just for starters. On this date, also---

·         1925 – The Government of Turkey expels Patriarch Constantine VI from Istanbul.

·         1930 – The Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the extermination of the Kulaks.

·         1969 – The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The police break up the impromptu concert.

·         1972 – The Troubles: Bloody Sunday: British paratroopers open fire on anti-internment marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing 13 people; another person later dies of injuries sustained.

·         1979 – A Varig Boeing 707-323C freighter disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.

And so much more.

If this is your birthday, I apologize. I hope you celebrate with gusto and do something wonderful so the cloud hovering over this date lightens a little. Many small and a few great actions can make the kettle less black. Let’s polish it into a beautiful reflective silver shine.

I don’t know what is set in stone, predestined, or guided by unseen patterns. What I am sure of is that what we do matters.

History was. Now let’s make some.

REGRET is a Useless Emotion Unless...

It Prompts to Do Better Going Forward

I’ve heard actors and musicians say they don’t care to look at their own performances because they cringe at how they did something they should have done differently. For writers, the printed first edition can yield a similar emotion. There is much we’d change, rephrase, or cut. Now it’s set, and we can’t.

Life is like that. Once something has passed, regret can take over about the many things that we could’ve and maybe should’ve, and now we can’t do over.

I know people who are raked with regrets. It’s a useless loop that serves to paralyze. The functional among us “let it go,” which usually means we try to forget and move on.

But forgetting, while serving the purpose of getting the wheels to move, isn’t the best way. For my own process, there were times I wished I could be as good at forgetting as many people I have known. There’s at least one typo in each of my published books that gnaws on me, and I can’t do a thing about it. There are chapters in my life I would never “do” the same way.

I found a way to mentally handle these sorts of cant’-fix ‘em. I am not a Catholic, but I borrowed it from the Catholic confession, when at the end the priest says, “Now go and sin no more.” This echoes Jesus’ saying. (John 8, 11) The brilliance of confession is not the telling, or the penance. It’s an awareness combined with learning from mistakes and resolving to not repeat.

Nothing wasted— if we learn from it.

I will look at my performance. I will stare at these typos and awkward phrasings. I will remember where I dropped the ball. Then I will resolve to pay attention and to try not to repeat. Of course, I will repeat. But maybe not the same mistakes or sins, and maybe I will catch them earlier when I can fix something. It’s a process, and a mighty beneficial one.

In this way, regret becomes useful.

Ye Shall Dwell in Booths...*

*Leviticus 23:42

The seven-day festival of Sukkot is an odd one if viewed without context. Jews are commanded to make insecure structures with porous roofs that allow us to see the stars and let precipitation seep in. We are to eat meals and spend nights in those “booths” (some translate it as “huts”) for seven days.

All this— to remember our ancestral forty-year journey to the Promised Land, dwelling in tents for two generations.

All over the observant Jewish world, these structures are erected according to specification, and then decorated to the hilt. I have warm memories of this from my childhood in Israel, where even the marginally observant just had to have a Sukkah, (=Booth) even if we mostly decorated and rarely dwelled.

In my current home, I tried to give my kids a taste of it. Our non-Kosher hut (because it was a section of our entry-porch, and the only solid part was, alas, the roof) was not a place to sleep. But we had a couple of lunches in it, and like in my secular upbringing in Israel, we spent more time on decorating than being in there. The neighbor’s cat, though, adopted it immediately and did the Mitzvah for us.

{{{I highly recommend the movie USHPIZIN, one of very few made by ultra-orthodox Jews, and telling a beautiful tale that stars the holiday of Sukkot.}}}

The point was to remember. To recall where you came from and pay homage to the struggles of those who went before.

I no longer attempt a sukkah, even for our cats. But, you see, the holiday starts tomorrow, and I remember.

Try to Remember that Time in September...

My memory isn’t what it used to be, and never was.

But then, I remember the odd things.

Sitting with old friends, I remind them of the time some years back when they were renovating their bathroom and found their contractor sleeping off a hangover in the (dry and empty) bathtub.

“It’s amazing that you remember that,” they say.

Would anyone forget such a sight, even if relayed second hand?

Walking with a friend, I remind her how ten years ago she enlisted a city cop to drive us to her car, parked a few blocks away on an empty side street. We got out of a play and it was dark, and she decided it was unsafe. A policeman reluctantly gave us a ride in his marked-fully-lit-“cage,” And I told her that if any of my acquaintances would see us going by I would never forgive her.

“I forgot all about this,” she said. “You have an amazing memory.

Dah-ling, it was my one and only ride in a police car (so far.) Would you have forgotten that?

I remind my husband of the first time we met, when he walked into the textile gallery where I worked . It was September. He remembers it not at all.

Now, really!

I probably won’t remember your name unless you repeat it a few times, and then some. I often forget where I parked my car. I consistently manage to forget at least one essential item from my grocery-shopping list (and forget the list on the refrigerator.) 

But some things, dear September, I remember.