interviewed by onthechin

[cellio]

I never got the story of how you either converted or became more observant, religiously speaking (I don't recall which is your situation but have surmised that the former applies). Care to share?

I converted. I was raised Roman Catholic and decided as a teenager that I didn't believe that, and was functionally an agnostic for the next couple decades. I just could not accept that RC theology described a just God, and if God wasn't just I didn't see the point.

I gradually became exposed to bits and pieces of Judaism as an adult, but I was always the curious outsider, not the believer. For a while I dated a Jew and I ended up going to Passover seders because of that; this was pretty much the only Jewish stuff his family did, though, so I didn't get answers to most of my questions. (Another good friend tackled my questions when I thought to ask them.)

Eventually that SO and I broke up, and the following spring I found that I missed the chance to go to a seder. At first I thought it was the family, but a nagging feeling told me no. I went web-surfing looking for a community seder, and that led me to one of the campus Hillel groups; the deadline for reservations had passed but I decided to try anyway and was able to buy/schmooze my way in. That seder, where I knew no one, resonated for me; I really felt a connection.

That was pretty darn confusing and surprising, and I decided I needed to learn more. At about this time a chance comment on a mailing list led me into a correspondence with a then-acquaintance (now rather more of a friend) who is Jewish. He suggested some reading material and we had a lot of long theological discussions. (I eventually realized that he, too, was looking for more of a connection to what was, in his case, part of his heritage.)

I did not at this time realize I was headed toward conversion; I thought I was just reading up on an interesting religion. But eventually I had to revisit the question of what I thought about God anyway, and I realized that Judaism seemed to be describing a god who is just in ways that the RC god never was, and if this was true then it bore investigation and not just academic curiosity. But how to proceed? I wasn't even sure I believed in God, after all.

I did what any engineer would do: I decided to experiment. Specifically, I decided that I would hypothesize the existence of God (as described by Judaism), pray as sincerely as I could for guidance, and see what happened. I'm not going to get all mystical and stuff on you here, but let me just say that I saw results. They could be results that are explained away by psychology 101, or they could be something else. I chose to explore the something else. And I found that the more I did in the way of prayer and basic observance (and continuing to explore), the more sure I was that there was something there.

Eventually I ventured into a synagogue (until then this had all been book-learning, email, and private prayer), and before too long I had talked to several different rabbis, and when using the "c-word" ("convert") I was starting to say "when" rather than "if".

So that's the beginning of the story. There's a lot more, of course. :-)

What's your earliest childhood memory?

I am in the house we rented in California, which places this sometime before I turned three. Two or three adults -- I don't know who but I think my godparents are there -- are sitting on a couch in front of a large window in the living room. (I think the couch is kind of an olive green.) I am sitting on someone's lap. It's a bright, sunny day, and the sun is coming through that nice big window and reflecting off of various surfaces in the room. I particularly remember the reflection from the coffee table.

I have no other identifying information.

While the absence of my younger sister from this memory doesn't necessarily place it before her arrival (she could have been elsewhere, after all), I have the strong impression that my first memory involving her is later. (She's two years younger than I am. I have a memory of her crawling in that living room.)

Imagine that you could revisit two days from your past. You can't change them, but you can reexperience them in full. Which days do you choose and why?

One is a day with my maternal grandmother (of blessed memory). I think I was about ten, and I distinctly remember being at her house without my parents or sister. (I no longer remember what led to this happening.) We had a wonderful time together, baking cookies and playing and walking together and just hanging out.

My grandmother was a kind and generous person who always had time for others. She would give you the coat off her back if you were cold. As a child I never felt that I was in her way -- surely I must have been at times, but she never let me see it. She died suddenly when I was a sophomore in college, and I really wish I had had more time with her as an adult.

No candidate as strong is suggesting itself for the second day. I'm strongly tempted to say the day of my beit din (formal conversion to Judaism); the three rabbis who sat on the court were great, and we had pleasant but serious discussion. And I remember that the mikvah (ritual bath) didn't do a lot for me emotionally/spiritually at the time, but I wonder if it would do so more on a repeat visit to that day.

Alternatively, I might choose the day I received my peerage in the SCA. I received the highest service award the organization gives, and many of my friends were there (including the SO who flew in from the other coast), and lots of people said and did nice things for me, and it would be nice to experience it again and recover the details that have faded from memory.

What brings you joy?

In no particular order: Intellectual challenge, including the times when it's all hypothetical and frivilous (what-ifs etc). Music (particularly singing). Certain kinds of worship services. Talmud study. Really good TV/movies (where the definition of "good" is of course personal and subjective). Snuggle time. Long rambling deep conversations with close friends.

You've been elected governor of a state with a troubled economy, high unemployment, and serious budget problems. You were elected by a wide popular margin on your claims that you were going to fix the situation. Popular wisdom claimed that your predecessor had contributed to the situation by serious mismanagement. You go to your first budget meeting and are surprised to find that everything that you perceive as fat has already been cut from the budget by your predecessor (this is fantasy, after all). All infrastructure including public schools, state colleges/universities, police, emergency services, roads, libraries, parks, any health care that the state might provide has been funded to the barest minimum and there is still not enough in the coffers. How do you proceed?

(Aside: did you know when you posed the question that I live in a city that's basically bankrupt? :-) )

Ok, I'll do my best to work within the conceit of the question, no matter how fantastic. The first thing we need to do is to get real-world experts on board, not just an over-confident candidate without advanced economics training. (I would have hoped I did that during the campaign, but oh well.) I want direct, honest, input from non-partisan experts. What do they advise?

I'll assume they don't find any (or enough) fat either -- this really is cut as far as it can go.

Next, come clean. It may be politically inexpedient to admit that there's a problem you can't solve, but the public has a right to know. It's the public's money, after all. Lay it all out for interested parties -- budgets, actual spending, cuts that have been made (and their effects financial and otherwise), the whole ball of wax. Open the floodgates (err, channels of communication). Set some of those experts to work sifting the wheat from the chaff in the incoming correspondence. Hear everyone out, even the apparent crackpots.

This might not produce any useful ideas at all, but it still serves an important purpose: it involves everyone in what is a joint problem. They may conclude that I'm an idiot, but at least they won't conclude that I'm hiding anything. It can lead to buy-in and cooperation, rather than sniping.

Then it's time to start proposing innovative partial solutions. What paid jobs could be done -- not necessarily as well -- by volunteers? A few volunteers may step forward when they see a real effort to fix, not bury, the problem; others might be enticed with, e.g., future tuition credits payable if and only if we reach a certain state of solvency (a cushion to be specified). (Um, yeah, we're going to have to kick out the labor unions, which specialize in creating strangle-holds on employers and protecting jobs long past the point where there is economic benefit. We can do this the polite way or we can do it by default in bankruptcy court; their choice.)

Are there state-owned assets that should be privatized? (If this were Pennyslvania, for example, it'd be long past time to close the state-controlled liquor stores and license private vendors instead.) Stadia? Convention centers? Especially high on this list is any asset this is actually costing, as opposed to making, money. (Like the sports stadia in Pittsburgh.)

I would be reluctant to include parks in this sell-off, because once some developer paves them over they're gone forever. I'd sell to conservatory groups if the conditions (price and future-use commitments) were right, though.

If the only way to stay solvent after all that was to raise taxes, I would look for those that minimize damage to the state's economic interests, i.e. the ability to get income in the future. (For a local example, massively increasing the downtown parking tax when you're trying to keep retail stores open downtown is kind of dumb.) I would legalize, and tax, gambling; I would use "sin taxes", "luxury taxes", and certain taxes on tax-exempt organizations long before I touched sales tax, individual real-estate tax, or income tax. Any new tax would have an automatic time-out of just a year or two, renewable if needed -- I want nothing that can quietly stick around forever because "now they're used to it so we can make some money". And these new taxes would get cut back before any new services got added, once the recovery is in progress.

This might still fail, of course, but I'd give it my best shot. And I really do believe that if you are open and honest with people and treat them as partners rather than peons, they'll at least try to meet you part-way.

Comments

Re:

[cellio]

After all, they're not selling at cost -- somebody in the system is getting all the profit, instead of just taxes on the profit.

But, as an offset, remember the cost of the bureaucracy to administer it. I don't know how it all balances out.

(And Pittsburgh's not the only PA city in dire trouble, just the most visible.)

Well yeah. And we have front-row seats to this one, unlike the others.