cellio | Entries tagged with navel-gazing

A few days ago I was musing elsewhere about some online elections. Specifically, Stack Exchange has been running elections to replace all the moderators who have quit, and it's highlighting some weaknesses in their election scheme. Ranked voting is much better than "first past the post" but you still have to put the right checks in place.

If your election system uses ranked voting, think about how voters can reject candidates. The Hugo awards have "no award" as an automatic candidate in each category and you rank all candidates. My local SCA group lets you mark candidates as not acceptable and any who get 35% NA are removed, which gives the voters a veto when needed. Systems in which you pick N candidates lack this safety check.

"Cast N votes" doesn't let you distinguish between "this candidate is ok but not in my top N" and "I oppose this candidate". And even if you allow "not acceptable" marks on candidates (like my SCA group), you still need to allow ranking those candidates so voters can express "the clueless candidate before the evil one". If I recall correctly, my SCA group gets that part wrong; if you vote "not acceptable" you can't also rank the candidate, so you can't express degrees of unacceptability. If your goal is to deter NA votes that's a positive; if your goal is to elect people who are broadly acceptable then it's a negative.

Stack Exchange uses "cast three ranked votes" and now allows uncontested elections, so the only way for a community to reject a candidate is to round up more candidates. Because Stack Exchange royally screwed some things up with its communities, recently there have been newly-elected moderators who'd only been users for a few months. A candidate in one election is largely inactive (and said so).

The new and mostly-inactive users might be fine people, but in the past the bar was higher -- moderators were expected to have been regular, positive contributors for a while. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess; SE has lost a ton of mods in the last year for good reasons that still apply, but they don't want to admit there's anything wrong. So it's important to them to have bodies in seats.

Every voting system has flaws. When choosing, you need to decide which flaws are ok, which you actually prefer, and which must be prevented. Ranking all candidates, allowing an NA mark or "no award", and applying an threshold is more expressive than "rank N" but also carries more voter burden. Too complex? Depends on the characteristics of the electorate and the importance of the results, I guess.

Codidact isn't going to mandate a particular election scheme for its communities. Nothing is baked into the software, and on the network we host ourselves, our policy is that our communities can choose their moderators in any way they choose so long as the method produces unambiguous results that can be audited. (That's because any disputes are going to be escalated to us, so we'd better know how to fairly adjudicate them.) But even though our communities can choose how to choose, we should probably plan on offering some sort of facilitated options -- we can run election type X or Y for you, or y'all can do something else. Not every community wants to build its own system, after all; we shouldn't make them. I think we're a ways away from moderator elections yet (our communities are in start-up mode), so there's time to talk with our participants about what makes sense.

My synagogue streamed its services, with some parts recorded in advance (like all the student torah readers) and some parts live. They assumed that people would check email and click links on Rosh Hashana (we say we're "inclusive" but we don't really mean it), and after much pushing I was able to get the stream link for Saturday morning mere moments before sundown Friday so I could set it up in advance.

During the service our (interim) rabbi said "this is live" and as proof, held up the day's New York Times. Which is how I found out the sad news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing. (And now I fear even more for our country.)

It did not feel like a service, which didn't surprise me. I mostly prayed on my own instead, sometimes badly (there's a lot of stuff we don't say the rest of the year so I'm not fluent), but I listened to the torah reading and the sermon. The stream froze near the end, during the announcements after the sermon and before Aleinu. All of which strengthened my resolve for today.

Even if the technology were to be reliable, I just plain do not consider this an option for Yom Kippur. My choices are to pray it at home, badly, and hope to somehow connect on the holiest day of the year against those odds, or to join people who are gathering in person. Last month I contacted the Chabad rabbi, explained my situation, and asked if there were any possibility that they would have socially-distant room for anybody beyond their regulars. (I said I was perfectly willing to do the Rabbi Hillel thing and stand outside an open window. Alas, the windows in their sanctuary do not open.) He said yes, so I made reservations for Yom Kippur and also for this morning -- Rosh Hashana is two days, so I figured (in advance) that if the first day bombed, I could at least go the second day, including hearing the shofar.

They set up the space carefully, with single chairs appropriately distanced and some clusters of chairs for family groups. (They required reservations from everyone, including indicating group size, so they could plan for this.) There was a sort of "tent" around the prayer leader -- clear heavy plastic walls but open at the top, well above people's heads. This is also where they read the torah. The people who had aliyot (torah honors) said the blessings from a safe distance. Singing was restrained. The shofar blower was well distanced, and I couldn't tell for sure but there might have been a cover of some sort on the end the air comes out. Everybody wore masks, including while inside that "tent". (I couldn't see what the shofar blower did.)

Only once before have I been to a Rosh Hashana service that wasn't Reform, and that one (Conservative) was early on when I didn't know very much yet. So I either forgot or never knew some things: that Unataneh Tokef is during the musaf service not the main one, that apparently there are liturgical differences between the two days (don't know what, but the book had "RH 1" and "RH 2" versions of the Amidah), and that the shofar service doesn't require the calls.

On that last: I'm used to somebody calling each note, so the caller says "tekiah" (for instance) and then the shofar-blower blows a "tekiah". This was different. The prayer book specified what the notes were, as expected, and the blower just blew them. The book also had instructions, one-third and two-thirds of the way through the first set, to silently confess here. It didn't provide words (like Vidui), so I interpreted that as free-form. And without the verbal distraction of somebody saying the names of the shofar calls, I could do that -- I could listen to the shofar, let it inspire me, say words to God against that backdrop, and feel like I was doing something. It was a powerful experience.

If, heaven forbid, we are still streaming services a year from now, I'll ditch my Reform congregation and go to an Orthodox service instead. It's possible that I'll do that anyway. Meanwhile, I can attend services for Yom Kippur in person, and based on what I felt today, it seems likely that I will have a meaningful experience. That's important to me in any year, but especially this year on the heels of events beyond my control ruining the high holy days for me last year.

Question for anybody who's read this far: how do you fill the gap on Yom Kippur afternoon? In the Before Times my synagogue had classes and usually a dramatic presentation of the Yonah story to fill the time, so you could show up in the morning and not leave until it was over. This year I'll need to fill a stretch of several hours in some way appropriate to the day.

The year 5780 began for me, personally, on a terrible note caused by evildoers at Stack Exchange Inc. I won't say more about that here (I wrote plenty at the time). As above so below -- the door to their teshuvah remains open should they choose to correct their transgressions, but I, unlike the Holy One, do not hold out infinite hope for sinners to mend their ways. There are more important things in life to focus on.

5780 was the (sob) first year of the global pandemic crisis. On top of the sickness, the deaths, the changes in daily life that come with any pandemic, we in the US saw reckless endangerment, needless deaths, and political profiteering to levels even those of us already worried about the authoritarian trends of the toddler-in-chief did not imagine. He knew. And he let it run rampant anyway. Because he thought, somehow, that it would hurt his political opponents and not his own supporters. Because that oath he swore on taking the office, those words about serving the people (all of them, not just red states) and upholding the constitution and suchlike, was just fluff to him, not a commitment. Having thrown the people under the bus, he's now in full sabotage-the-election mode, betting that he can get away with it as he's gotten away with so much more. At worst, he figures, someone will manage to sue him years from now and he'll pay someone off. I fear for our country.

I fear for our country in other ways too. The white-supremacist-in-chief emboldened bigots ranging from crowds chanting against Jews to attacks on houses of worship to vigilantes fatally "protecting" the public from unarmed demonstrators to police who kill and recklessly endanger black and brown people who are already restrained and thus not threats. (Whites, on the other hand, generally get the benefit of the doubt.) And it would be easy to say that the bigot-in-chief is responsible for all this and we have only to remove him from office, but that's obviously not true -- the roots run much deeper. Our society has work to do.

And that work involves nuance, discussion, hearing and trying to understand others' perspectives, working together with people who are different, acknowledging the humanity of every person. Too many on the far right and the far left believe that they are keepers of the One Truth and that anybody who doesn't commit 100% to their view of truth is an enemy to be disparaged, cancelled, or killed. People are complicated, and attempts to paint monochrome pictures, while enticing to crusaders seeking us-vs-them litmus tests, are failures if the goal is to solve problems rather than to triumph. Too few people are willing to consider positions that exceed the length of a catchy slogan, but that's where the work has to get done.

But for all the trouble that 5780 brought, both personally and on a larger scale, it also brought some moments of personal light. Despite the pandemic, my family and most of my friends are healthy, Dani and I are still employed, and our companies both made the transition to working from home. Even when (I say "when" but don't attach a timeframe to it) it is practical for us to go back to our offices, I think I will do a mix, working from home several days a week and going to the office for direct coworker contact once or twice a week. (I think it's now clear that this would work and I don't expect much resistance.) I don't want to see people only in two dimensions; digital interactions are not the same. But they often suffice if mixed with other interactions, and working from home affords some flexibility (and saved commuting time) that I wouldn't otherwise have. I can go to the weekly lunch-time torah study at my synagogue now, for example, which was never practical from the office.

This year, for basically the first time, I tried growing food and herbs.
I did some things right, some wrong, learned stuff, and have had the benefit of fresh-off-the-plant food when cooking. One of the tomato plants died last month but the other is still producing. I learned that I need to be more aggressive in pruning basil. I learned that I do not have many places that get 6 hours of sunlight a day (what counts as "full sun") and that they move over the course of the season. I planted in pots not the ground so I can move things to chase the sun, but now, as the equinox looms, there is no full sun to be had on my property and I'm not going to move pots over the course of the day. Maybe next year I'll do something on wheels. Maybe I'll just accept a shorter season.

A couple months into the lockdown a friend gave me a sourdough starter. This, too, is something I never would have done in the Before Times. The schedule that sourdough calls for isn't compatible with the daily commute, which leaves weekends, but it's also not compatible with Shabbat. But if I'm home it's easy to tend over the day and a half or so that the process requires.

But my biggest personal silver lining from 5780 is the Codidact project. We -- most of the original people are refugees from Stack Exchange, but we have others now who knew not those evil times -- are building anew, learning from our experiences elsewhere, and doing things we were never able to do on Some Other platform. I'm doing feature design, community management, something like product management, and more. We've launched several communities, including Judaism, to my delight. We have work to do on both the software and community-promotion sides, and we still need to set up a non-profit entity so we can accept donations, but I'm truly excited to be part of this, to be helping to lead this, and with such a great team.

Onward!

It's generally held among professional writers (and presumably some others) that constructs of the form "for more information click here", with "here" being a hyperlink, is not good style. It's far better, in general, to incorporate some clue about the content into the link -- "See the formatting help for more information", with "formatting help" being a link to documentation, provides more information at a glance and just reads less clunkily.

When answering questions on sites like Stack Exchange and Codidact, one sometimes wants to refer to another answer (for example to elaborate on it or disagree with a point made in it). I posted such an answer recently and used link text of "another answer" instead of "Joe's answer". If I had said "Joe's answer", somebody who's just read that answer would have context without having to go look. Someone who knows my general writing style asked me why I used the vaguer formation.

This is my general style on sites like these now, and I do actually have a reason. Two, actually, the more significant of which is caring about people's feelings.

On Stack Exchange, Codidact, TopAnswers, and presumably others with which I'm less familiar, users can change their display names. Using a name as text rather than an '@'-reference in a link can thus decay. I've seen too many posts that mention "Joe's answer" but there's no Joe evident on the page now, years after that text was written. So that's confusing and I try to be careful; some people change names frequently, leaving trails of dead references in their wakes.

But it's not just about avoiding confusion. For me this name-avoidant practice crystalized some years ago when a prominent SE user transitioned gender. I realized that old posts of mine (from before I was careful about this) now dead-named this person. Ouch! Also maybe dead-pronouned, though if you write posts in a gender-neutral way like I try to in such contexts, you can minimize that damage.

We don't know who's going to be someone different later. My desire to attribute properly is at odds with my desire to account for future changes that affect writing I might not actively maintain. For in-page references the post is right there; omitting the name in favor of a generic reference is not harmful and is more future-proof. For regular citations, I attribute by name because giving credit is important, and just do my best.

I know that people who transition -- even just names, let alone gender -- just have to deal with the fact that they had lives before and those references don't vanish. My friend Owen understands that sometimes we need to talk about Zoe. But sometimes we can do a small thing to alleviate a little bit of unnecessary frustration and not make people's lives more difficult. It seems worth doing in these cases where the cost of being mindful of these possibilities is small.

I don't do this everywhere. My blog, being more personal in nature, is more likely to refer to people by name, use gendered pronouns, and otherwise bake in current context. My blog isn't a public knowledge repository like Codidact is. We write differently for Wikipedia, Codidact, blogs, and email, and that's ok.

Last night I watched the recording of a JLI class that had been given for free earlier in the day (but I had a work meeting at the time). The class is Leaving our personal slavery: 10 lessons from Passover for the whole year. taught by Sara Esther Crispe. I don't know anything about the teacher; I went there because I've taken several JLI courses (in the classroom, not online).

What follows are basically my running notes as I listened (and occasionally backed up to hear something again, so I guess it's just as well I missed the livestream). Some of this might sound a little pithy or trite summarized here; I encourage you to listen to the talk (44 minutes) before drawing a negative conclusion just based on my notes.

In English the book is called Exodus, but in Hebrew it's Sh'mot, Names. To leave something which enslaves you, you need to know who you are. Slavery is dehumanizing, taking away your name, reducing people to numbers. When someone tries to strip our identity, that is the foundation of enslaved reality - we have no voice, nobody is going to believe us.

Nobody escapes Mitzrayim (Egypt); we all are there at some point in our lives -- not having freedom of movement, expression, thought. Egypt is something we all go through. It's part of our journey. The same God who put us there takes us out.

It's not "what can I do to escape Egypt", but "what will I learn from the Egypt I'm in?". How do I discover who I am so I can be free?

10 lessons:

1 - Knowing your name is essential.

2 - What doesn't kill you makes you stronger -- we can allow what beats us down to paralyze us, or we can let it push us to grow. We're so constricted that we're forced to break out because there's nowhere else to go.

3 - Passion can overcome fear; if we believe strongly enough we won't even see the potential barriers. (Miriam confronting her parents in their separation -- uncomfortable, but she was right, she was passionate, she spoke up and got them back together and they had Moshe.)

4 - Learn to be flexible and switch roles. Miriam parenting her parents; Yochevet as nursemaid to her son; Miriam as negotiator w/Paro's daughter to save Moshe's life. Story of her friend pumping milk to save another child after hers died -- of all the things she could have done, who would have thought that would be her biggest impact?

5 - We are never stuck; we can reinvent ourselves when truly committed. The rabbis say Bat Paro (daughter of Paro) intended to convert to Judaism; Bat Paro became Bat Ya. Paro = peh ra, evil mouth. She comes from that and transforms her life to become metaphorical daughter of God (and raises Moshe who will redeem Yisrael).

6 - Nothing is out of reach if we want it desperately enough, but we'll never know until we try. Batya saw the child's life needed to be saved and she reached out even though he was too far away and miraculously succeeded. People lift cars off of victims. If you think about it, it won't happen. When we see something needs to be done, we believe limitations won't get in the way and miracles can happen. (Nachon ben Aminadav -- innovator, persistent believer.)

7 - True acts of kindness we do are never forgotten, even if we're not aware of their impact. Moshe got his name from Batya, not his mother -- it's the name that sticks, the name God uses. Act of kindness from Batya has lasting effect. We don't know the impact when we smile at a stranger, speak to someone, offer a kind word...

8 - Only when we see the possibility of what can be do we recognize how badly our situation needs to change. We had to hit rock bottom in Mitzrayim before we realized how difficult it was. Nowhere to go but up. Everything's been stripped away; what can we leave behind, where should we focus, where can we make an impact? Time to refocus and rethink. What matters?

9 - When presented w/opportunity to do the right thing, don't let insecurity stand in your way. If opportunity came your way, you're meant to step up. Be humble but don't let it prevent you from acting. Moshe's humility at bush: "why me?". Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. If you can do something, doesn't matter if someone else could do it better -- you're here; do it.

10 - We can say we're not strong/good enough, but we can't say God isn't; we're never alone. Moshe - I'm slow of speech, and everything's going to depend on speech (negotiation) -- but God says "who makes a man's mouth? isn't it me? I will teach you what you should say".

If we're put in a situation, if we have the ability to influence, there's a reason. We have to be willing to switch roles, do what's needed, know our deeds are lasting and impactful, remember where abilities and opportunities come from.

"Do not tell God how big your problems are; tell your problems how big your God is" -- we might not be able to deal with our problems, but God can. We are never alone. "When I sit in darkness, God is my light."

Today is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust remembrance day). I don't know what is done elsewhere, but my Conservative morning minyan adds a short service after the torah service. It consists of some psalms and some modern writings, and ends with an unusual Kaddish. The Kaddish text is the usual text, but it's interspersed with the names of camps -- Aushwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and so on through the entire list. The reader reads the Kaddish; the congregation reads the names.

I led the service today, but someone else, someone who is old enough to remember first-hand, always leads this special service. So after he finished he turned to me to continue and it was time for...Aleinu. Aleinu is the prayer where we look forward to the day when the whole world will follow God.

I stumbled, tripped up by the cognitive dissonance.

I know that, even in the light of outrageous suffering at the hands of monsters, individuals can retain faith in God. People did, then and in earlier times (the Nazis were far from the first). People do today when murderous Nazis have been replaced with murderous Arabs. People will in the future too. Not all people, but some. This I believe.

This morning I found it a little harder to believe that at some time in the future the whole world will come around. I realize that Aleinu is looking ahead to messianic times, but the messiah will come only after we have done the groundwork. God won't send the messiah when we've sunk into the depths and all hope is lost; rather, God will send the messiah when we collectively deserve it. I hope that day will come. This morning I found it a bit harder to know that it will.

I recently traveled for business, and the hotel where I stayed -- as is becoming the norm in my limited experience -- asked clients to consider not having linen service every day to avoid waste. I don't replace my towels and sheets at home every day and I really don't need somebody else to make the bed (in the room I have to myself), so I've been on board with that for a while.

One morning as I was leaving my room, with the "do not disturb" sign on the door, I ran into one of the housekeepers. The conversation went something like this:

Her: You don't want me to clean your room?
Me: No it's ok; I've only used these towels once.
Her: Are you sure? It wouldn't be any trouble!

If I'd been caffeinated I might have picked up on the subtext, but it wasn't until later that I found myself wondering: is this policy costing people jobs? I'm guessing that very few people become hotel housekeepers if they have other options; is my desire to go gently on the planet at odds with my desire not to make it harder on people in low-end jobs who want to work?

This is far from the first time I've faced the "but the candle-makers will go out of business if we adopt lightbulbs!" idea, but this may be the first time that the "other side" of the issue isn't either convenience or economics but, rather, a liberal value. I mean, I pump my own gas even though there used to be people who do that, and I'm fine with that. I'd use the grocery self-checkout if it worked better, but I find the human cashiers to be faster and more accurate. I do stuff online that used to require dealing with a (paid) human being. Somehow this feels different. I'm not sure if I should care, but I did take notice of it.

I left a decent tip on check-out day.

Fascinating. According to this article (tweeted by R' Gil Student), Neshama Carlebach, daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and a singer of whom I'm fond, went to the URJ biennial last week and decided (on the spot?) to join the Reform movement. Given her Orthodox background that's a bit of a surprise, though I always did wonder how she reconciled Orthodoxy's prohibitions on women singing in front of men with her career.

Perhaps ironically, while she feels drawn in by the Reform movement, I've been feeling pushed away from it in recent years. I could imagine the possibility of ending up Orthodox someday. I know of two factors at play right now, one in each direction, that prevent my serious consideration of the idea. And neither of them is theology.

What keeps me in the Reform movement and, specifically, my congregation, is my absolutely wonderful rabbi (and by the way our Shabbat morning minyan, which he leads, but not just that). Despite all the other problems that sometimes come up -- "entitlement" services that are more about performance than about worship, the disregard by many congregants for those of us who actually are observant, lowest-common-denominator practice, and others -- I, have a spiritual and learning home there, at least so long as my rabbi is leading things.

And what keeps me out of the Orthodox movements (there's more than one) is not theology but the limitations I would experience as a woman. Being told that I can never represent the community, never lead prayers nor read from the torah, never fully engage spiritually except in women-only groups -- I can't go there. So the article about Neshama Carlebach and the challenges she faced in that community struck rather close to home for me.

Yom Kippur was really good for me this year. I haven't had time to assemble a more-organized post (and lookie, Sukkot starts tomorrow night!), but I want to record a few disconnected thoughts.

We had the minyan-style (Ruach) service for the morning service again, this time using the draft of the new Reform machzor (which is in beta test and is, I believe, scheduled for publication in 2015). We also, for the first time, had a minyan-style service for Rosh Hashana and used that draft too. Overall I am pleased with what I saw of the new machzor; there are certainly decisions I would make differently (including a major formatting one), it's still way, way better than Gates of Repentance, the current book. Ok, granted, that's a low bar, but still...

At that service on Rosh Hashana at one point my rabbi stood up and said "tag, you're it" (not in those words), leaving me to proceed from an unfamiliar book. (He had to go downstairs to the other service.) I stumbled some but got kudos from congregants for my attempt. So on Yom Kippur I got there early so I could review the new book, and he was able to stay. But hey, I would have been prepared to lead the vidui and s'lichot if I'd've had to. (The minyan-style service goes until the torah service, at which point we all adjourn to the sanctuary for the rest.)

I chanted torah for the afternoon service again, same part as last year. They gave me the same part for Rosh Hashana morning as last year, too. I detect a pattern. :-) I'm hoping that next year will be the year I actually learn high-holy-day trope.

On Yom Kippur afternoon, to fill time between services so people don't have to leave if they don't want to, we have a beit midrash, classes. To my surprise there was nothing I wanted to go to during the first hour, so I found a quiet corner and read more of the new machzor. (And just sat and thought for a while.) During the second hour I went to a class that was really more of a discussion about forgiveness, more focused on the human element than halacha. More questions than answers here -- do you have to forgive someone who intentionally hurt you, does "forgive" imply "forget", can you put a situation behind you without actually resolving it (psychologically, I mean) and just not let that guy live rent-free in your brain any more or do people need closure, stuff like that. Lots to think about; little to report.

I found many of my thoughts over the day drifting to someone in authority over a community I dedicated a lot of energy to, who repeatedly and unapologetically misused that authority in ways that damaged me, and the other people who stood by and let it happen. I am trying really hard to just ignore the whole thing, while at the same time wishing that maybe somebody would learn something from it.

At the ne'ilah service (the last one of the day, near sunset), the associate rabbi spontaneously invited anybody who wanted to to come up onto the bimah in front of the open ark for the service. Nobody stood immediately, but a moment later I did -- not sure what was driving me, but I'm glad I did (and a dozen or so people joined me). It was a different experience, and even though God isn't physical so proximity doesn't mean anything, being right there in front of the open ark did...something. It definitely enhanced my prayer.

The eerie, plaintive voice of the shofar is a wake-up call, one that for me is muddled when in my congregation we have groups of people (mostly children) blow in what turns into a competition for who can hold t'kiah g'dolah the longest. People smile and chuckle and lose the meaning in it. This year, by some quirk of fate, every service I attended in Elul and for Rosh Hashana had but one shofar blower.

On Rosh Hashana morning I closed my eyes during t'kiah g'dolah, listening to the faint cry grow louder, stronger, more earnest with each passing moment. I imagined myself at the foot of Har Sinai, hearing but not seeing the divine shofar blast, taking in but not understanding the thunder and smoke as God prepared to speak. At Har Sinai and in services in my congregation both, I was in the presence of the awesome, fearsome God who could, in an instant, judge me for death or for life. Reflecting on my failings of the last year (and longer), I knew I had not truly earned the outcome I prayed for, but that somehow God might accept my teshuva anyway if I do it and mean it.

"Arise, you slumberers, from your slumber", the Rambam proclaims, "you are wasting your years in vain pursuits that neither profit nor save". I've read those words in our machzor every year, but this year they jumped out at me and then followed me home for more examination. The Rambam isn't talking about the relaxation and fun we all need in our lives, I don't think; he's talking about the pursuits that we put real effort into without gain.

Like a certain online community I've helped build over the last two years, only to see it go in a damaging direction while its custodians look on and do nothing. Perhaps I should have known that any "neutral" religion-related community would eventually be dominated by evangelical Christians who do not see their own bias. I've been trying to set the community back on its original course of respectful dialogue, but now I realize my efforts are ineffective. I could keep trying, but this year's lone shofar called me to re-evaluate this vain pursuit that neither profits nor saves. There are others who need my attention more, chief among them my own neshama, my own soul/spirit.

The Unetaneh Tokef prayer tells us that on Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die, ...who shall be troubled and who shall be tranquil. Last year it seems I was decreed to be among the troubled; this year may I merit to be among the tranquil.

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Related thoughts, and a discussion of site direction. And yes, this was the subject of my "sunk costs" post back in March; obviously I didn't manage to stay gone after I left.

Friday I closed a (previously-)permanent browser tab. A web site that I've been quite active in helping to build over the last year has gone in an unpleasant direction in recent months with no sign of improvement, and recently the badness has accelerated. Badly-behaved people do not have my permission to live rent-free in my brain, so it was time to sadly say "enough" and move on. (No, I won't be naming the site here. It's nothing I've ever promoted in this journal, to be clear.)

This was hard because I struggle with sunk costs. In principle I know that once you've spent money or time or effort on something it's gone and you can't get it back -- so if it's not paying dividends, hanging on "to preserve your investment" does not help. There's no such thing. If it's a faulty product and you can possibly get some of your money back that's one thing, but otherwise, sunk costs are gone and should not affect current decisions. This idea usually applies to investments (if the stock is tanking and you don't think it'll change, get rid of it), but sunk costs aren't just about money.

Yeah, intellectually I know all that, but it was still hard to close that browser tab. I want the time I spent on that site to matter; I want to feel good about what we built. It was hard to start to walk away from the SCA years ago too -- same principle, though measured in years rather than months. (I'm still minimally active, but I choose carefully what I want to do.) And historically I have had a great deal of trouble leaving jobs that are no longer fulfilling because I've invested in them. In all of these cases the answer is to be happy for the good times and recognize that things change and that can mean that things you invested in are no longer worth sticking around for. My intellect knows this; could it please arrange to convince my heart of it too?

This morning I dropped Orlando off at the vet for a test. While I was waiting for paperwork, I noticed the only other client there, an elderly woman who was dropping off a dog. I watched her pay a $300+ deposit in cash (all in tens), and then heard her ask if there was a nearby coffee shop where she could wait -- one within walking distance, as she can't drive any more and had taken the bus there. The person who was helping her indicated a plaza about half a mile down the road, and the woman asked if there was a bus stop there. (There is one in front of the vet's office.)

I told her I was going that way and would be happy to drop her off if she wanted. (She'd have to find her own way back later.) She accepted. This was no imposition on me; I was driving right past there. But she made a big fuss, and as she got out of the car she pushed a $10 bill on the dash and refused my rather insistent pleas to keep it. I was somewhat horrified. Appearances can be deceiving, but I judged that she needed it way more than I do. And anyway, $10 for a half-mile ride and a little conversation? I considered it likely that she didn't have a $1 or $5 bill and so reached for what she had.

This led to a dilemma and an interesting discussion in the Mi Yodeya chat room. I was certainly not going to keep the money. The default answer is to give it to charity, but I wondered if there were some way I could return it to her without causing problems. I considered asking the vet to "discover" an "error" in her bill for me, but it was pointed out that I'd essentially be stealing her mitzvah (she presumably thought she was doing one), a position I hadn't considered. I also wondered whether she would put two and two (or ten and ten) together, figure out what had happened, and be offended (causing offense would be bad). I would make the connection, I'm pretty sure, but apparently I am not normal. :-) (I don't think I'd be offended, though.)

I considered asking the vet to find a larger "error" in her bill so I could help her anonymously. But in the end I decided that this kind of sneakiness isn't appropriate. So when I picked Orlando up after work, I dropped the $10 bill into the donation jar for an animal-welfare organization. It seemed fitting.

( comic )

The trick, of course, is figuring out how you get to be the guy with the lizard, without all the rest of it, while, y'know, keeping a roof over one's head, food on the table, and so on.

More from that parlor game: Comment to this post and say you want a set, and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

jducoeur gave me: Faith. Family. Communication. Study. Music. Language. Service.

( Read more... )

alaricmacconnal gave me: Pittsburgh, writing, your favorite song, chicken, D&D, knowledge, and al-Andaluz.

( Read more... )

Teshuvah was easier when my sins were harder by

530nm330hz nicely captures how I've been feeling during the high holy days this year. I have plenty of big flaws to work on, of course, some pretty basic, but as we attack the more-accessible ones it can feel like an uphill climb to tackle the others. Food for thought.

It's like clearing a rockslide. It's easy to find the large rocks, and though they may be heavy, you get a sense of accomplishment with each one you get out of the way --- by rolling, by lifting, it doesn't matter. Then you get to the pebbles and it gets starts to get tedious, but you know it needs to be done. And then you get to the sand and no matter how hard or often you sweep, there's still some left behind --- so you get discouraged and wonder what's the point; maybe you've done enough, so you stop for a while.

It's summer. High heat and humidity are normal for summer. I get that. But I still hold that, for Pittsburgh, temperatures in the 90s and heat indices in the 100s until 10PM and by 10AM are abnormal. Just sayin'. I sure hope I can catch a ride to Shabbat services tonight; there's nothing to do about the walk home, but it'd be nice to not arrive soaked in sweat. Especially since I'm leading.

Buying subcutaneous fluids from the vet is expensive, except that they had a price-match policy so it wasn't. But they restricted that policy, so I asked for a prescription. I was going to fill it online but it'd be easier not to, so today I talked with someone at CVS who determined that yes in fact they could order these (by the case -- which is fine). So today I dropped off the prescription and met the full force of the paperwork engine. After supplying the cat's birth date, drug allergies, insurance information, primary care physician, and a few other things, we were ready to go. I wonder if Giant Eagle, where I had the Prednizone filled (but they don't do fluids), just punted on this info, filled in N/A, or what.

I got a postcard notice of a class-action suit this week. They know their typical audience: "how much can I get?" and "how do I get my money?" were in bold; "what is the suit about?" took rather more digging. I've gotten money from a few class-action suits over the years (and I'll send this one in too), but I always do so with some degree of ambivalence, not knowing which ones are real (and people should be compensated) and which are "it's easier to settle than prove plaintiffs are on crack" -- and in the latter case, how I feel about benefiting from ill-gotten gains given that the defendants are going to pay the money out anyway. But I also admit that thus far I haven't been motivated enough to actually research any of these cases... the moral high ground is way over there, not here where I'm standing, it would appear.

Links:

The comic on this Language Log post made me laugh. Three negatives in six words indeed!

In the spirit of the song, kinda: Weird Al, Stop forwarding that crap to me (video).

Google+ circles you can use. Social networking: new media, same old problems.

Within the first couple days of the Indonesian quake/tsunami six(ish) years ago, death tolls over 100,000 were being reported (final count was over 200,000).

Within the first couple days of the Japanese quake/tsunami, death tolls in the hundreds were being reported. (Of course, we're not done yet.)

The difference in ability to predict and effectively react between wealthy and poor nations is striking. Three orders of magnitude? Yikes. We in the better-off nations usually send aid after the fact, but it really makes me wonder what we could do before the fact to help less-developed nations build better defenses.

For the expanding grandeur of Creation, worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations, modim anachnu lach. - (Mishkan T'filah, adapted from Eugene Pickett, approximate complete text)

( writing inspired by this )

My congregation recently started a writers' circle. This isn't the type where everyone submits stuff for critique in advance; rather, the group gets together, the leader assigns writing prompts, we write for (usually) 15 minutes or so, and then those who want to share what they wrote. It's an exercise in introspection as much as, if not more than, an exercise in writing.

At a meeting this week we read Psalm 23 in traditional and contemporary translations. (The latter was from Mishkan T'filah and I didn't find it online.) The leader asked us to react to it in any way we chose. After a little bit of clean-up, here is what I wrote:

( Read more... )

The interview parlor game is back. ( Read more... )

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur bracket the Yamim Noraim, the ten days of awe, but the season really begins before Rosh Hashana. During the whole month of Elul we're supposed to be preparing; we hear the shofar every morning to remind us. (Except today, actually -- we don't sound it right before the holiday.) While we have until Yom Kippur (or, according to some, even later) to seek forgiveness and make amends for the wrongs we've done, we can and should start well before Rosh Hashana, the day of judgement. Someone on my reading list (I forget who; please identify yourself if you see this) charactized this as saving God some writing and erasing -- if we clear up the problem before God records the deed on Rosh Hashana, God doesn't then have to erase it on Yom Kippur after we fix it. I like that bit of motivation. It's not that it never happened; we're still accountable. But by being proactive we can lessen the burden a bit, a good general lesson for any time of year.

But as a consequence of all of this, I don't connect as much as I should with Rosh Hashana as the (big, singular) day of judgement. It's more like the day of the preliminary hearing. It's important, but it's not the final word. I'm more afraid of Yom Kippur than of Rosh Hashana. I'm not trying to make light of it; I'm just trying to see it in context. I know that others, while beginning their preparations earlier, can appreciate the gravity of the day better than I can now, so maybe I'll get there.

We celebrate Rosh Hashana as the birthday of the world and acknowledge it as the day of judgement. Two themes, seemingly very different but maybe not so different after all. We're all used to the annual performance review and the annual reconciling of financial accounts (and payment of taxes). These are tied to points in time. So, too, the birthday of the world seems a good day for the divine evaluation of the world's residents. (And as my associate rabbi pointed out last night, while this is a Jewish holiday, there's nothing specifically Jewish about its themes -- it's not like, say, Pesach, that commemorates an event specifically in Jewish history. We all have a share in the world and all who believe in God have to settle our accounts.)

I was thinking, last night at ma'ariv, that the day and the year have something in common. We begin the day not at the artifical hour of midnight or at the seemingly-natural time of sunrise, but rather at sunset, as twilight comes to be followed by night. At the beginning of the day things start to darken, with the most challenging or dangerous times to come in a few hours, but by the mid-point (mid-day, so to speak) things are brightening up and the day reaches a climax in light and warmth. So too with the year -- we begin it now, as autumn comes to be followed by the cold, dark winter, but we know that spring and summer are coming. (What's the mid-point of the year? Roughly Pesach.) There's even a rabbinic tradition that the first Rosh Hashana was not on the first day of creation but on the sixth, the day man was created, after which things went downhill rather quickly but will ultimately end in redemption.

Maybe that's the connection -- things seem darker now, as we are being judged and found wanting, but the coming year will grow warm again and we will too, God willing, if we take action. Either that, or I'm reading way too much into this.

It's been a few weeks since the kallah ended and there are things I'd meant to have written about by now. Well, better late than never.

( Read more... )

( fish-fest, Mac software, marketing, assorted links )

I'm thankful for many things:

My husband, who is kind and caring and a true partner in our marriage.

My family, who are all basically healthy (albeit seeing the effects of age in some cases).

My cats, and having the housing and financial support to be able to have them. They've brought a remarkable amount of joy into my life, even despite the 3AM meow-fests, the hairballs and other exports, and the mysterious ailments (for which I'm also thankful for an excellent vet). I don't know what wiring casues me to have such affection for cats (and even dogs) but none whatsoever for small children, but I'm glad to have it.

My rabbi, who teaches and encourages me and lets me do things that most congregants don't get to do. He has been (and is) a real mentor for me.

My friends, both those I know in person and those I know only online. You have enriched me.

The grace that brings me health, intelligence, happiness, and the ability to pursue the things I find fulfilling, largely free of interference. May it continue to be so.

The coming changes in our national leadership. While I don't think the new administration has all the answers, I do hope that much of the damage and ill will of the last several years will start to diminish. I also hope that the minority keeps the majority honest; we need multiple views, not just one, at the helm.

Monica

election mechanics (not about the US)

Rosh Hashana 5781

Goodbye 5780

"click here" is usually weak, but not always

leaving personal slavery: lessons from Pesach (class notes)

a little cognitive dissonance

conflict of values

Neshama Carlebach

some rambling notes from Yom Kippur

the shofar call

sunk costs

probably over-thinking it

so true!

"7 things" again

"7 things" #3

the challenge of self-improvement

random bits

tsunamis

the night sky

writing circle: Psalm 23

interviwed by devreux

musings on erev Rosh Hashana

kallah notes

random bits

thanks-giving

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