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another chat-with-your-friends meme
I saw this in several people's journals and was curious, so now it's here, in slightly modified form.
If you comment, and I can...
1. I'll respond with something I like about you.
2. I'll name something we should do together.
3. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
4. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
5. I'll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you.
6. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you, if I have such a thought.
If I do this for you, please post this in your journal so you can do the same for other people.
If you comment, and I can...
1. I'll respond with something I like about you.
2. I'll name something we should do together.
3. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
4. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
5. I'll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you.
6. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you, if I have such a thought.
If I do this for you, please post this in your journal so you can do the same for other people.
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2. Make music. :-) (Well, meet, but as long as we're meeting, bring your instruments.)
3. Sorry, coming up empty here.
4. I don't remember how we ran into each other on LJ, but fairly early we had a discussion about choosing dances to teach at events and weaning people off of the four dances of the apocalypse and onto the ones with scary-sounding (= foreign) names.
5. "To get answers from usenet, don't ask questions: post errors." Some of the mailing-list stuff you've mentioned brought this to mind. (Alas, I have no source.)
6. You're interested in both the SCA and living-history groups. The first gives you flexibility; the second gives you more authenticity. How do you trade off those two factors? If you could have a really authentic experience, but at the cost of things you enjoy doing that a woman in such-and-such time wouldn't have done, is that cool or frustrating?
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2. Sing, particularly something challenging or otherwise interesting.
3. Competent women and organized men... or is it the other way around?
4. I met you at an event, probably in Debatable Lands and I'm pretty sure in the late 80s, when I'd been a local chronicler for a couple years and you'd recently stepped down from the kingdom office, and we talked about what it's like to do the kingdom job.
5. "That's three." :-)
6. You've been doing group music for a long time; I'm curious about what else you've done. Solo? Theatre? Other types of performance?
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6. Nope. None of it. I stink at solo performance; I get stage fright and forget the lyrics. I sang solos in college because they were required for graduation, and the tape of my senior recital is stunningly awful. In high school I did a couple of nervous recitals and had some short solos riffs within choral pieces, but that was it. I used to occasionally do bardic circles but gave them up after it became clean that they didn't work for me. I still have occasional dreams of musical theater, but I doubt it will ever happen.
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5. Oh, that quote is *really* good!
6. Trade-offs: I think first, realize that LH events are only 2 or 3 times a year, and so there aren't that many times (a year) that I end up saying to myself "oh, a woman of my social situation wouldn't do XYZ that I want to do" in the context of a LH event.
Second, the atmospheres are totally different. I don't go to LH events and see people doing inauthentic things, so if I wanted to do them, I'd be doing them by myself. Since most of my interests are *group* things, I don't end up saying to myself many times during an event "oh, a woman of my social situation wouldn't do XYZ that I want to do."
About the authentic experience, I think it's about moderation. A lot of (my experience with) LH *events* is sitting in camp sewing and watching the kids. I find that the monthly meetings are more interesting, since that's when research gets discussed and things get made... the events are about first person interpretation, so you don't DO that.
I think if I did the authentic LH experience once or twice a month, I'd go crazy with boredom! So... I think the only reason I'm not frustrated is because it doesn't happen that often, and I treasure it when it does. When I want to do things that "I" wouldn't have done, I go to an SCA event. :-)
This year has been particularly sparse: between my travel schedule and introducing
Hopefully we'll get to go to the October event this year (it was cancelled last year). Since that one isn't open to the public, it's both more and less authentic - the standards are a little more lenient, but the public and other reenactors from WWII and stuff aren't around. :-)
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There are the Savoyards locally, if you ever wanted to try that out.
In non-musical theatre, it seems like you would be really good at commedia del'arte.
Oh, and a bonus 3 because I lost my mental note about it (and as an apology for being unable to come up with something good for 5):
"empty bunnies"
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Oh, I didn't realize they were that infrequent. Thanks for the response.
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But I would LOVE to do the Commedia stuff, since improv means never having to say you forgot your line. Of course I don't have the time now, with the kids. For years I've been telling I Genisii that if Katerina ever gets tired of the "Merry Widow" role I'd be happy to take it someday, but that might hit a little too close to home now.
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"Merry widow": on the one hand, too close to home -- on the other, so obviously different from reality that it might work well for you. Impossible to say in advance, I suspect.
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2. Study something, if we're ever in the same city at the same time.
3. Lo ali hamlacha ligmor v'lo ani bat chorin lehibatel mimena. Thanks for helping me get started (and then some). :-)
4. Sorry, nothing stands out here.
5. Or here. I didn't expect the quotes to be so hard. :-(
6. Is there anything in your religious community (not in yourself or your life circumstances) that you feel limits your ability to learn and grow? If so, how do you work around it?
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2. We should get together socially more often!
3. Louie, no!
4. Not a specific night, but I remember when you were new to dance practice and were having loads of fun with it -- I could see it in your smile.
5. Regard as trifling the great good you did to others, and as enormous the little good others did to you. (Talmud) This isn't advice; this is my perception of how you already live.
6. Y'know, I can't think of anything right now. I suspect I haven't been shy about asking questions about things that come up in conversation. :-)
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I look forward to your thoughtful, informative posts/comments, and I enjoy the discussions we have too, although I sometimes think I'd get more sleep if I didn't stay up "just to finish this one comment". *g*
2. Study something, if we're ever in the same city at the same time.
If we weren't both working I'd say long-distance works too, at least with some things. I had a by-phone chevruta for gemera for a while, back when she & I were both working only part-time, but since I started working full-time I've had to admit that 2 weekly sessions is about my limit time-wise.
3. Lo ali hamlacha ligmor v'lo ani bat chorin lehibatel mimena. Thanks for helping me get started (and then some). :-)
You're quite welcome. Thanks for giving me a place to talk techy about Hebrew grammar & Judaism.
4. Sorry, nothing stands out here.
No worries. I know we met through mutual friends' comments but I can't really remember when/how either.
5. Or here. I didn't expect the quotes to be so hard. :-(
Again, no worries, although looking back at the questions I'm wondering if you switched #3 and #5.
6. Is there anything in your religious community (not in yourself or your life circumstances) that you feel limits your ability to learn and grow? If so, how do you work around it?
Sometimes the fact that I'm female means that I'm not welcome at various local classes/lectures/etc, while the ones aimed at women often look disappointingly fluffy/frilly/boring.
How do I work around this? I don't think I've ever put it in writing before but here goes:
(Step 1) Declare it to be something I don't have to admire or agree with. The mindset that says women can't learn with men is foreign to me: I went to co-ed yeshivot, mostly with co-ed classes, and the first synagogue that really felt "mine" as an adult has almost no one-gender-only classes (the only ones I can think of are the chatan/calah ones, and those are a paired set). Throw in my math major mom and my dad's mother who earned a PhD in the 1930s (and started a new subfield), and the old reason of "women aren't mentally up to it" just doesn't make sense to me.
The other reasons I've heard are "women don't have the skills/background" and "a man in the room would intimidate the women so let's make it women-only" (that one was given as the reason for asking a male friend of mine to leave before a shiur started - said shiur had not been explicitly labeled as women only - and I walked out with him and so did another female friend). Both of these seem to be self-perpetuating unless a decision is made to stop them, and I can chose to make that decision.
(Step 2) Find something else to go to (or, these days, simply be too busy to care - see #2) and/or learn the topic on my own/with other people. I've been amazed in recent years how things that I would have found hard or intimidating when I was in school are now in the "of course I can do that" category. So I'm currently learning my 3rd seder of mishna b'chevruta, and when we don't understand something we look it up or my partner (who happens to be male) asks his rabbi*. And I co-founded a study group where I'm learning parts of tanach that we never got to in school or that I don't remember, and we haul out the miforshim and sometimes forward a question to a rabbi there too.
*This particular rabbi has no problem with women learning - his mother went to one of his gemara classes every week - but he's not my rabbi and I don't see him that often. And in another part of that community, my chevruta gets to leave work about an hour early on the days we learn together because the men-only yeshiva he works at approves of his learning mishna and he's been careful not to make it obvious that his learning partner is a girl. *snerk*
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Be daring. Sleep is for the weak and unworthy. :-) (Yeah, I do the same thing.)
Study: yes, time is always a factor. Maybe things will work out in the future. I've never tried study by phone with a partner, but it could be nifty!
Again, no worries, although looking back at the questions I'm wondering if you switched #3 and #5.
What I wrote was a corruption/adaptation (and I can't swear I got the grammar right), so I figured it worked better as cryptic comment than quote.
Sometimes the fact that I'm female means that I'm not welcome at various local classes/lectures/etc, while the ones aimed at women often look disappointingly fluffy/frilly/boring.
This is exactly the feeling I've gotten when I've tried to do things in the Orthodox community. Thanks for your comments about how you deal with it!
And in another part of that community, my chevruta gets to leave work about an hour early on the days we learn together because the men-only yeshiva he works at approves of his learning mishna and he's been careful not to make it obvious that his learning partner is a girl. *snerk*
:-)
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*goes back & re-reads* Oops. The original is so familiar that I "read" that instead of what you actually wrote (it probably "helps" that I'm dyslexic so I don't always read what's actually written even with unfamiliar stuff).
I think you've got the main grammar right, although my memory & a quick poke at a couple of dictionaries suggest that "lehibatel" should be "lehitbatel" - the sense is reflexive (self-nullification) rather than causative (nullifying something else).
This is exactly the feeling I've gotten when I've tried to do things in the Orthodox community. Thanks for your comments about how you deal with it!
I don't know if it's an Orthodox/women thing or what - a lot of the things I see aimed at non-Orthodox and/or non-observant Jews have the same problem, and I think it may be a general sense of "these people aren't/can't be educated so we have to simplify things for them and add pretty colors and..." sort of like you might do for children. Things seem to be improving (or have improved), at least in some communities, in terms of what's available for both women and non-Orthodox/non-observant, but this is in New York where there are however many overlapping Jewish sub-communities and there's a large feminist population and a large BT/convert population, etc. I've been told the latter is one of the main reasons commercially prepared kosher food and kosher-for-pesach food has improved over the past couple of decades - people who know how food "ought" to taste help start demand for it - and at least some feminists/BTs/converts bring a similar attitude to learning.