Over the holiday my family viewed “The Last Jedi,” a fine movie in that all the usual Star Wars stuff was delivered with a few twists.
Afterwards, as the sharp wits gathered to dissect the finer points, a debate ensued on what was being shown.
When Chewbacca arrived at the dreary island where Luke Skywalker had retired, he roasted a creature and was about to enjoy a big bite of the feast when he noted furry Porgs giving him the big, sad eyes.
My interpretation is that the Porgs were hungry and wanted some of the food, looking cute and cuddly to gain treats.
The daughter insists that Chewbacca had roasted a Porg and the Porg’s comrades were giving Chewbacca the stink eye for being cruel.
I think were Chewbacca eating a Porg then all the other Porgs would be hiding in fear of their lives, not wagering their well-being on the empathetic response of a walking carpet.
Both the daughter and myself are convinced we see the truth.
I await the opinion of the academics and serious amateurs.
Over the winter break, our family went to New York City to visit relatives. Before going, the daughter voiced her interest in visiting Brooklyn to see the bench and tree in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden dedicated to her great-grandparents. She thought it would be a nice outing to go to someplace of historical import.
My grandparents individually came close to living 100 years in Brooklyn, so an outing to the “Old Country” was most appropriate.
In Manhattan, as we organized to go to Brooklyn, it became apparent that there was more going on than a team composed of three generations could accommodate. The youngest insisted on eating lunch at a restaurant called “Kimchi Grill,” while the daughter now prioritized seeing an art exhibit called “The Dinner Party” at the Brooklyn Museum.
Another interest of the daughter was to be more independent in New York, so the Brooklyn outing turned into a kids-doing-it-for-themselves thing. I gave each kid $40 and explained how the subway worked and wished them good luck.
My mother was worried I was too permissive. The daughter is almost 16 and the son 13, old enough to move around NYC without armed escorts.
As the kids navigated subway lines, the upper ages took a Lyft to Brooklyn. We saw the exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum and made it to the Botanic Garden, even finding the bench and tree with the commemorative plaques.
The kids made it to the museum but balked at paying the entry fee to enter the garden, as it is winter and there wasn’t much to see. I didn’t fault them for their thinking, feeling their great-grandparents would have been satisfied that their memory motivated the kids into exploring Brooklyn on their own.
The kids later reflected on the day, realizing the complexity of metro cards and the challenge of grumpy MTA workers.
Fusion Korean food, feminist art, independent offspring, grandparents memorialized – all in all, a good day.
Opening this box was an unmitigated joy for the 13-year-old. Not only was the box full of candy and snacks, but they were from Israel and represented a new group of tastes and flavors.
Adding to the awesomeness of the experience, a uniform for the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball club was also included.
We now have a well-fed superfan in Portland! Thanks to everyone.
Water-damaged snapshot of New Zealand. I use this picture as an illustration of evolving technology and it's a nice memory.
Every five years I replace my PC, even if it is meeting my needs and doesn't show any outward signs of impending catastrophic failure.
I do this because, like it or not, I now run my life, professional, social, recreational, through this computer and I require a robust system.
Each time I do this I worry all my data will be lost, I'll screw up my contacts, calendar, task lists. And these fears are well-founded. This time around I only mildly screwed up my task lists.
No matter how many times I take a new Windows PC out of the box and install Microsoft Office, I will still be baffled, confused, irritated by the difficulty of the process. The only wisdom I have gained is that now I know this frustration is a certainty and budget extra time and mental calories for it.
The main complaint this time around is that default settings for every conceivable thing are skewed toward Microsoft products and solutions, and it takes research to get things set up the way I want.
After a few days, I can start to relax with the notion I don't have to do this again for another five years. When I cool down from the trauma, I expect I will have a new perspective on how I use the computer as having to change so many settings makes me rethink my choices.
Like everything else, every so often it's good to update the system.
Everything is so funny! The kid kept pestering me to look up the US dollar value of 439 Iceland Krona. When I said 420 he couldn't stop laughing -- 420 is code for smoke pot.
For the record, we have a drug-free household but are often amused at stoner culture.
This October the son and I had the chance to sit courtside at a Blazers game against the Pacers in Indianapolis. We were thrilled to see Ed Davis use his 6'10'' and 250 lbs to play a very physical game in the key, with slam dunks, dramatic rebounds, pushing and knock-downs.
In the past, I considered my height advantage over the kid to be Yao Ming-like. The kid turns 13 tomorrow and has grown considerably. So, my height and weight advantage are similar to Ed Davis when compared to Damian Lillard (6'3", 195lbs).
All this is theoretical, as I haven't been able to beat the kid in one-on-one for years.
But what I can do is yell Ed Davis! and then back into him as if I was moving him out of the way before taking a shot. I tell him this is good practice for playing against people much bigger than himself.
Now he is the one yelling Ed Davis! and moving me out of the way.
The son received the above refrigerator magnet from a classmate as a gift. I like to believe this reflects the kid expressing an articulate political philosophy in his 7th-grade class.
I was thinking about Venn diagrams when I came upon arranged the above. The cashew is both part of the provolone-cheese data set as well as the pomegranate-stain-on-the-cutting-board data set.
Conclusions of this exercise could be 1) It's lunchtime; 2) No children are in the house to make me feel self-conscious about doing this; 3) It's Friday and I'm getting loopy.
In my parashah, Jacob journeys to Haran. On his way, he stops for the night and dreams of a stairway going from the ground to the heaven, with angels going up and down on it. In the morning, he creates a monument and names the area Beth El, or House of God. He continues on his journey, eventually he reaches Haran, and meets Laban and his daughters Leah, and Rachel.
Laban promises Jacob he can marry Rachel if he works for him for seven years. When those seven years are up, Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah. Laban tells Jacob that if he works for him for another seven years, he can have Rachel. Jacob agrees, and when the seven years are up Laban gives Jacob Rachel. Jacob fathers twelve children and continues to work for Laban for years.
Eventually, Jacob decides to return home. Laban agrees to split their herd, with Jacob taking the spotted and striped sheep and goats. But when Jacob’s herd starts to multiply rapidly, Laban’s sons suspect that Jacob cheated them. In fear, Jacob and his family flee, but Laban eventually catches up with them. They reconcile, and Jacob’s family continues to go their way.
One verse caught my eye in particular. When Jacob woke up from his dream, he said “God was in this place, and I did not know.”.
What does that mean? I grappled with this for a while, trying to extract wisdom, when it came to me.
I realized that what Jacob was trying to say was “I was surrounded by holiness, and I didn’t even know it”.
I think that he was in awe, because, he, like many others had the idea that God could only exist in the holiest of places, and when he opened his eyes, he was also opening his eyes to the Nsim Bchol Yom, Everyday Miracles.
He realized that holiness, or God, for that matter, is everywhere, even in the places we don’t expect. He said “How awe inspiring is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”.
Now, on the surface, that can appear that Beth El was a sacred place, which might be true, but when I dug deeper, I saw it as proof that Jacob realized there was holiness in everything. He was able to see a newfound beauty by noticing that it was the work of God.
I have enough food, clean water, and other resources that make my life comfortable. An abundance of those things can make me take them for granted, and not realize how blessed I am to receive those things.
So many people have those things, but so many more people don’t. Estimates suggest that almost 800 million people globally are food insecure, 780 million without clean water, and some estimates show that there are over a billion humans living without adequate shelter.
This is such an overwhelming number, and it leaves many asking the same question “What can I do?”.
Last summer, I volunteered at an organization called Urban Gleaners. They take leftover food from restaurants, industrial kitchens, and caterers, and repackage and redistribute it to the hungry. All of the food they receive would’ve gone to waste, if they hadn’t stepped in and fed the hungry with it.
This relates to my Torah Portion, because, the food for the hungry is there, and we didn’t know. Hunger is an issue of distribution, not amount. According to the United Nations, every year ⅓ of food produced for human consumption is wasted. That’s why we need organizations like Urban Gleaners.
Imagine if we drastically reduced that number, and the food was able to go to the mouths of the hungry, instead of the trash.
My Torah portion has taught me to be more resourceful and seek change. It taught me that I can use the resources provided to me to a further extent then I thought was possible.
It also taught me that I have the ability and potential to make change in the world, even if I don’t know it.
Now that I am a Bar Mitzvah, I will try to carry that mindset with me. I will try fixing my broken stuff with homemade solutions, and try using everything that I already have, before buying more. But also, I will actively seek change, and stand up against injustice, because the ability to make change is with us,
When all is tallied, with columns for positive and negative, my kids will list foremost the complaint that I never allowed furry friends to populate our home. Guilty as charged.
If this is my main crime against humanity I get off easy.
Lucky for me others can provide the needed cat therapy, without me having to sneeze and cry habitually.
Above, the kid is holding Dr. Blum, a cat named for the doctor in Amsterdam who gave quality medical care to a nephew.
The above is the oferenda the 12-year-old's class created in Spanish to commemorate the dead.
The kid was particularly proud to have found the picture of Harambe, the gorilla, to put on it.
Harambe was shot to death in 2016 by Cincinnatti Zoo employees when a three-year-old fell into his enclosure. A public debate ensued around the human-zoo issues, if Harambe needed to be shot, childcare in public places, and so on.
The kid even followed a human's Twitter feed for a time called Harambe Depot (@HarambeDepot). The tagline on the account: "I don't know why they shot me, I was doing a better job watching the ladies kid than she was."
The kid is media savvy, latching on to Harambe because the dead gorilla's fame has become so widespread. Or maybe not. The kid feels deeply the suffering of animals and the unfairness of the world. Hard to know.
Until clarification, I'll just be glad Harambe is commemorated alongside Curt Cobain, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Princess Diana.
A few nights ago at dinner with the family, I got to tell how much fun it was to have friends from all over the world. Specifically, when I first moved to Taiwan after college I shared an apartment with two Chinese sisters and Richard from Surrey, UK.
Richard and I became friends and I enjoyed imitating his accent, as well as asking him everything I ever wanted to know about fish and chips, soccer hooliganism, the queen, Christmas pudding. He shared the satirical magazine Private Eye with me.
The kids were shocked I was so culturally inappropriate, being so obvious with my crass stereotypes and misconceptions.
I told them that once a level of trust has been established, curiosity and interest (as well as mockery) where a person comes from can be appreciated. They didn't buy it. True, I might have been overbearing more than a few times. Still, Richard was my friend and I recall many good times together.
Stephano from Italy, who called me Gigi because it sounded similar to saying "reporter" in Mandarin.
Mr. Kumada from Japan who read Vonnegut and wanted to know about the civil war. Yes, he is wearing my cowboy hat.
I lived in Taiwan for five years and so had the more profound cultural exchanges with my Chinese friends and the local people I worked with. I spoke Mandarin to some degree and invested myself to learning about the culture and history.
My sense of humor didn't translate all that easily into Chinese, so when I think of international high jinx, I am reminded of these characters above.
