Season of Our (qualified) Joy

What I Am Reading

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman

I first heard of Burkeman through The Tim Ferris Show, a long form interview podcast hosted by Tim Ferris. Burkeman was discussing his book 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.  I wanted to read it but it wasn’t available at the time so I ordered this book instead. That was 6 months ago and I finally got around to reading it. (You can see why I needed the time management one.)

The Antidote looks at the positive thinking fad which has taken hold of much of the world. According to this philosophy, we can create happiness and success just by banishing thoughts of negativity. Not so fast says Burkeman who looks at research and alternative philosophies and concludes that a more healthy approach to life acknowledges that sometimes things don’t go as planed or as we’d like them to. Turns out that like so many goals in life, happiness may come easier if we are not working too hard at it.  And you don’t have to work too hard to read this either. Burkeman has a straightforward way of talking about complex ideas and he is pretty funny too.

What I’m Watching

Sydney on Apple TV+

Of course, I have seen a few Sydney Poitier movies including To Sir With Love and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner but I didn’t full appreciate the extent to which this man changed Hollywood, the civil rights movement, and the world. This was a man who had the whole package: Handsome, intelligent, talented, and ethical driven by an essential core of morality.

It’s only on Apple TV+ but well worth watching if you have or can get access.

Podcast I’m Listening To

People I Mostly Admire — hosted by Steven Levitt

Interview with Ken Burns on his new documentary about the America and Holocaust and his artistic process.

In this long form interview (yes, I love this format) the man who has taught more Americans history than anyone else, discusses how he became a film maker, how he works, and just why the world needs another documentary about the Holocaust.  I found him to be thoughtful, modest, a decent human being. I think it says much about him that in spite of the fact that he could walk into any motion picture studio in the world and walk out with a contract, he continues to make his work exclusively for public television. One thing seems odd. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would color his hair but he is 69 years old and has not a lock of grey. Someone needs to investigate.

Music I’m Listening To

Swing State by Ben Sidran

I first heard of Ben Sidran around 1993 when he had just released an album of Jewish music for the High Holidays inspired by songs from the liturgy. I fell in love with the soft, slow Jam jazz sounds and have continued to listen to this album every fall since. His other albums although not explicitly Jewish are nonetheless highly enjoyable with great little jazz numbers — many with funny and funky lyrics sung by Sidran.

His latest album is Swing State, soft jazz versions of some of the great big band numbers and classics of an earlier era. Initially, I was disappointed that there are none of Sidran’s witty and soothing vocals on this album but I found that lack makes the instrumentation stand out all the more.  Although I had long ago put “Over the Rainbow” on a list of songs I need never hear again as long as I live, I found something new, something to like in his track. I have listened to the album at least seven times and have yet to tire of it.  Other great Sidran albums are Don’t Cry for No Hipster and Dylan Different. All available on Apple Music and no doubt other music streaming platforms as well.

Cool New Thing I’m Enjoying

Apple M2 MacBook Air

The last time I bought a computer was May 2015. I was about to leave my job at the Apple Store and start my interim gig at Hillel at the University of Rochester. My previous MacBook was slowing and the hard drive was full. With my employee discount, I splurged on the new MacBook Pro model that had just come out and maxed it out with as much RAM and hard disk space that the thing could hold. It turned out to be a smart move. That machine easily sailed through five years of work in Rochester and two more years of post work pandemic.

I kept that computer longer than any previous and, it is still serviceable for most tasks. The only repair it ever required was a battery replacement in 2020.

Sadly, from a software point of view it is at the end of the line. When the new Mac operating system comes out this month the 2015 MacBook will not be able to run it. Some of my applications were getting a little sluggish too.

At first I thought I would get the new MacBook Pro but after a bit of research (i.e. four months of watching YouTube videos about the new machines) I realized that the small, lighter, and cheaper MacBook Air be more than enough computer to serve my modest needs for many years. Even fully loaded with memory and hard disk space, the cost was far less than what I paid in 2015 even without an employee discount and before adjusting for inflation. The Air weighs nearly a pound less than my old computer, has a larger, brighter display, and dramatically better battery life. In short, I love using this thing and even more carrying it around. If you are in the market for a new laptop and don’t need to do high end video rendering, this is likely all the computer you need.

What are you learning? What art, literature, or tools are making your life more interesting or product. Share an item and a link in the comments below!

First Fruits

Many years ago, I forget how many, my wife wanted to do some plantings in the yard and asked me if I had any requests. I replied that I would like a fig tree. I love figs and the smell of their leaves reminds me of Israel, specifically rafting on the Jordan in the north where fig trees line the banks. I envisioned a bounty of ripe, sweet figs each autumn in overflowing bowls.

That same year someone in my town was going to pull up a fig tree and asked if anyone wanted it. So, I ended up with two fig trees planted the same year. For a long time, there was no fruit. Early on, a very cold winter nearly killed both trees and I had to cut the dead wood back almost to a stump.

Somehow, they both survived. After four years or so, I got exactly one fig around this time of year, mid-September. The following year there were five.

This year was finally the bounty I had always dreamed of. Or it would have been if I had been home to harvest it. When we left for our travels back in June both trees were covered in hard, green fruit. By the time we returned home, most of them were gone and the ones that were left were either rotting, half-eaten (deer, squirrels, birds) or both. There were perhaps five ripe, intact ones left and a few more green ones that perhaps I’ll enjoy yet.

Each time I actually get to eat one of the figs, it reminds me of that first fig from the trees. We sat with my daughter and the man who would become her husband and sliced the fig into four slices. Before we ate it, I signed the blessing for doing something for the first time in its season (e.g. eating a seasonal fruit for the first time in a year) known as the “Shehecheyanu Blessing.”

 That moment inspired this poem, which is an homage to another famous poem involving a fruit. See if you know which one. If you are stumped, you can click here. Wishing you a sweet, new year whenever that occurs for you.

Shehecheyanu

Here is one fig

purple as a bruise

plucked from a tree

planted long ago

I no longer hoped

would bear fruit

and which you sliced

rolling your eyes

when I said shehecheyanu

telling your boyfriend

forgive him

we bless everything

Clattering Home

We’re on our last legs.

After visiting our children once again in Denver (and doing several weeks worth laundry in my daughter’s washing machine, no coins required), we turned toward home returning to the modern interstate highway that has replaced Route 66 as the ‘mother road’ — I-70. The already full van was now stuffed to the vents with the modest gifts we’d purchased and souvenirs like coffee mugs and pint glasses whose use we hoped would bring back nice memories in the months and years ahead. With various parts of the van rattling, it having been shaken like James Bond’s martini on potholes and gravel roads for months, we were quite literally, clattering east.

We’ve made the trip to Colorado and back home several times since our kids moved out there but each time we seemed to be in a hurry — covering the near 2,500 km drive in three days and blowing by the attractions touted on the highway signs. This time with neither of us having jobs or other obligations demanding our return; we decided to take our time.

Harry is still giving ‘em hell!

Aforementioned attractions included:

• The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and boyhood home in Abilene, Kansas.

• The National Historic Site of Nicodemus, founded by emancipated slaves in 1877 and still a functioning (albeit tiny) community today.

• The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.

• Hannibal, Missouri and Mark Twain’s childhood home on the banks of the Mississippi.

• Mackinaw, Illinois where we saw fields of corn as far as the eye could see and an old friend.

We enjoyed all the sites and visits but everything was imbued with a strange feeling. Looming over everything was ambivalence that we would soon be home.

Three months is a long time to be away. It is long enough that the rhythms of life on the road have long felt completely normal and natural. Long days of driving, buying just enough fresh food for a day or two at a time, living outdoors with whatever weather conditions are presented on a given day, always worrying about where our next bag of ice is coming from, become simply the way one lives. The thought of returning to four walls and the confines of living within just a few square kilometers seems terrifyingly bland.

The name of my website and blog, Clattering East, comes, of course, from the title of my poetry chapbook published in 2013. The chapbook title in turn comes from the last line of one of the included poems, Yizkor.

Yizkor is an homage to my maternal grandfather, Alfred, who left Germany in 1927 as the Nazis were moving towards power. His own parents didn’t escape until 1939 departing on literally ‘the last boat.’ Sadly, many family members including my grandfather’s two uncles did not get out in time and were murdered in concentrations camps. The poem is an attempt to frame Alfred’s life in the context of his ‘survivor’s guilt’ as I imagine his reflections on the very different train journey of his family’s members. Although my grandfather’s journey took him ‘clattering west’ toward a ship and freedom in American, his uncles and cousins went ‘clattering east’ toward the camps and death.

However, for most of its time in the human imagination, the direction east has been associated with the rising sun and with adventure, spiritually, and the gods. Both Jews and Muslims pray toward the east (at least in the Western Hemisphere) facing toward Jerusalem and Mecca respectively.

By calling the book and the blog Clattering East I was trying to capture that dual sense of a life’s journey, simultaneously moving toward both a higher plane of spiritually and at the same time the doom of ones own death, which none of us escape no matter which train one rides.

I am cognizant of both these realities as we finish this get close to home. The odometer says we have traveled 12,736 miles but a journey is so much more than the distance traveled just as a life is more than the number of years lived. Homecoming is always both and end and a beginning.

Standing guard at the Palace of Gold

On very final stretch, we stopped at the New Virndaban Hare Krishna Temple near Wheeling, West Virginia. Established and lovingly build by spiritual seekers in the 1970, the temple today houses a small community and attracts both believers and the curious from all over the world. Our timing was in the words of one resident “auspicious” as we happened to arrive just as a free vegetarian lunch was being served. Well, not exactly free since we made a donation for the food and then paid an additional $12 per person to tour the incredible, hand crafted Palace of Gold originally built as a residence for the founder of the Krishna Consciousness Movement. He never resided there, having died before it was completed.

The temple and palace campus deep in the hills of West Virginia was peaceful, quiet, and filled with lush natural beauty. It offered a glimpse of a way of living with nature and ones fellow humans in respect and harmony. Whether the reality of life there matches the vision or falls short as most human endeavors seem to, I was not there long enough to say. But the vision was moving and inspiring nonetheless.

Home now for five days, it feels in many ways as if we were never away. The tasks of everyday life return with vengeance as if resentful of our neglect. The Honda needs new spark plugs. The bathroom sink is leaking and the toilet is running. The van needs a solid cleaning and windshield repair. I still haven’t gotten all the camping equipment put away. Quarterly taxes are due. The yard…. I don’t even want to think about it.

But journeys change one. Living outside, sleeping in a minivan, cooking our simple meals on a camp stove for  three months and experiencing the vast open spaces of this continent, must change the way one regards luxury and necessity. The people we met, the wildlife we saw, and the in-our-face miracles of daily life on earth can’t help but cause one to reevaluate destinations and priorities.

What’s next, I am not sure but I know it is vital not to get too comfortable.  To paraphrase Twain’s eponymous adventurer in his final words in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead before I get too sivilized, I been there before. I can't stand it.”