Hey - Where Did October Go?

Man, I know it was just early October a few days ago... how could I have misplaced it? It was September, which fled the scene rather too quickly... and then it was early October... and then... nope. I don't know what happened after that. There was marking, I remember... and conference crap to deal with... and proposals... and TA malarky... Oh, and getting a job to support my sorry ass next term... Well, whatever happened, October is now, for all intents and purposes, gone. For whatever reason, that's just a fact I have to deal with, and things are getting hectic around here.

So, now that October has almost gone, mysteriously, I have extra marking for dollars to do, exam proctoring to get through, and a conference paper to finish, and a review to write, and funding proposals to finalize... all this week... Yup.

Fall has kicked my ass, and I haven't even been able to complete that chapter on the dissertation (you know, the real work) like I had hoped. Let's hope November is a little less harry with gnat-like hoops to jump through, as I am tired of having the actual reason I am in school obscured by the day-to-day grind of merely being in school.

I present at conferences so I can someday get a job. Ditto with the reviews. Also, so I can put them on my crappy funding proposals. Why do I do the funding proposals? Because it is becoming increasingly likely I will have to drop out next year because here at Cheap-Assed-U they only fund you for three years in a PhD. So one course of action would be to finish the dissertation this year so I can not drop out but graduate next Xmas, just as the money ends, right?

That would be ideal, if I didn't have the funding proposals and the conference, you see. And why am I doing the conference again? Oh yes, so I can get a job when I graduate... but that won't happen if I have to drop out... but I need to do them to get a job... but they increase my chances of dropping out... errr... error... cannot compute...

BOOM!

I Was Never One for Convention, Anyhow

What will these two faces, combined, look like?

Back home, they have this tradition in which one waits at least three months before going public with a pregnancy. This waiting period is to make sure the pregnancy is viable, and to ensure privacy for the family in case of tragedy, as well as to allow them time to adjust amongst themselves. However, my life has been spilled out all over this blog, and, frankly, if I (G-d forbid) miscarry I would rather be able to blog it out rather than hide it...

So, without further ado, I am pleased to announce Murph and I are about 5 weeks pregnant, and should expect a little bundle of eating, screaming, and pooping joy around about next February.

Now, let's just hope Canada Immigrations delivers a little package of hubby joy on my doorstop well before then (we are hoping by Christmas).

I am feeling well and chipper, have given up smoking (which I did a month ago due to financial needs) and caffeine, and am eating a well-balanced vegetarian fetus-building diet. I am slightly seasick every once in a while, but nothing serious, and I am really quite pleased (though a bit scared around the edges).

Murph and I are seriously shopping for female baby names (the boy option is covered), so feel free to suggest. The leading contenders are Zophia and Abigail, I believe.

There. Let the comments congrats start pouring in.

A Jew's Journey into Ohio

Often, when I tell people I have connections to Ohio, even that I am merely planning to visit there, people look at me funny. When I even hint at the idea of actually moving there to live, people laugh. Why would a Jew ever move to Ohio of all places? If you threw a dart at anywhere in the continental US, you couldn't possibly hit a more white bread Mainstream-American place, right? Jews belong in NYC... possibly Long Island, or Miami or LA. Not in Ohio.

Folks are almost relieved when they hear my husband lives there, as if they are more secure having an "understandable" reason for my attachment to such a place.

Now, it is true that Ohio is Pure America. Walking around some of the smaller towns, I saw America unfold at a slow and deliberate pace. VFW halls and many churches. Old men in suspenders and tractor company hats. Kids on bikes making paper deliveries on sun-dappled afternoons. Middle-aged ladies in flowered, cotton dresses chatting under shop awnings spotted with hanging baskets of geraniums. Pickup trucks overflowing with red-faced young men with odd, hog-like expressions. American flags everywhere.

You see, I even got to see it in its full Home Front glory - MIA memorials and "Support Your Troops" banners. Bunting, even. Red, white and blue bunting. I didn't know they still made that stuff. I thought that went out with Taft's campaign.

However, it is a mistake to think of Ohio as ignorant, backwards or even non-Jewish. Though one might not suspect it, Ohio has a long and interesting Jewish history.

The settlement of Jews in America came in layers. Earlier Jewish settlers of colonial times had already established themselves in the major trading colonies of Virginia and Maryland and the Carolinas, as well as colonial New England centers like Albany, Concord and New Rochelle, and moved into the less likely areas of Kentucky and Mississippi. Certainly, in the long history of Jews in America, it is true that New York is a major cultural landmark, along with Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Chicago. In the major waves of Jewish immigration at the turn of the last century, these are the places to which most Jews flocked, only turning to suburbia and the sunbelt in the post-war expansion of the 1950s.

However, Ohio, especially Cincinnati, did have a huge, and often forgotten, role in the development of American Judaism and Jewish culture.

Ohio's Jewish history started in 1817, when the British Orthodox-Jewish pioneer Joseph Jonas settled in Cincinnati. Once a peddler in Philadelphia, Jonas was impressed by what he saw as enormous opportunity in Ohio, and he began a letter writing campaign to convince Jews from England to come join him, starting with his two brothers. Jonas became a successful watchmaker, and managed to establish a thriving Jewish community in downtown Cincinnati, where they started holding regular Jewish services in 1819. Soon, he and the community purchased land for what is now known as The Old Jewish Cometary for $75. In 1824, when the required ten Jewish males could be replied upon, the original Cincinnati Jewish community started the first Jewish congregation beyond the Allegheny Mountains, named the Rockdale Temple (1824 - 1969) of K.K. Bene Israel, which was mostly comprised of British Orthodox Jews.

The second wave of Jewish immigration to Ohio came from Germany, a natural extension to Ohio's already considerable Christian German population. Mostly of the new Reform tradition, these German-speaking Jews settled in both Cincinnati and Cleveland, the latter becoming Ohio's second Jewish congregation, the Israelitish Society, in 1839, under the leadership of Bavarian Jew Simson Thorman and the Jews he managed to lure to Ohio through his own letter writing campaign back home. By 1841, another German Jewish congregation was established, this one in Cincinnati, the Bene Yeshurun congregation. By 1850, Ohio had six Jewish congregations, four in Cincinnati, and two in Cleveland, and these two cities became hubs of Jewish life for the area.

By 1880, Ohio had over 6,500 Jews, and by 1904 there were nearly 50,000, making Ohio one of the largest centers for Jewish life in the United States, after New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Massachusetts.

In the late 1800s, Jews formed over 1% of the total population of Ohio. 1,004 Jews from Ohio fought in the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), the largest Jewish Civil War enrollment after New York state, including one Colonial, who had, at the time of his death, been recommended for the rank of Brigadier-General. Nearly 20 of Ohio's Jews have served in the state legislature, and at least two held high office in the federal government.

By 1902, most of Ohio's major towns and cities had Jewish communities, including 12 in Cincinnati and 14 in Cleveland. In addition, there were by that time several congregations in the cities Dayton, Columbus, Akron and Toledo (site of one of the largest Jewish populations in the state), as well as thriving Jewish societies in smaller settlements such as Hamilton (Congregation B'nai Israel, est. 1866), Piqua (Anshe Emeth, est. 1858), and Youngstown (which had two congregations, as well as a Lady's Aid Society). Also, by the 1902 Jewish census, nine Zionist societies had been established in Ohio, and there were in existence at least 52 Jewish brotherhood lodges in the state.

Throughout the early history of Jewish life in Ohio, however, Cincinnati and Cleveland remained the major centers of culture, education, social safety networks and religion, as they remained the home of over two-thirds of Ohio's Jewish population.

In 1850, the Bohemia-born Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, now often considered a founder of American Judaism, got into a fistfight with the president of his congregation in Albany, NY. Rabbi Wise had been guilty of (or credited with, depending on your perspective) massive and swift reform of Jewish practice, including the introduction of mixed choirs into Jewish services, as well as family pews and the then-outrageous practice of counting women in the traditionally male-only Minyan. He and his supporters founded a rival synagogue in Albany, and in 1854, he was offered leadership of Bene Yeshurun congregation at the Lodge Street Temple in Cincinnati, where he established what could be considered one of the first major modern American Reform Temples in the US.

Wise served in Cincinnati for 46 years, and became a leading figure in Jewish religious and public life, representing Jews to main stream society, including in meetings with President Lincoln surrounding the infamous General Order no. 11 expulsion of Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky in 1862.

In 1866, Wise founded one of the grandest temples in America, the Plum Street Temple (later re-named the Isaac M. Wise Temple) at 8th and Plum, which is often cited for its architecture. The Temple (above) stands as a sort of time-capsule of German Jewish building design, made significant by the widespread destruction of most similar synagogues in Europe during World War II.

Wise would go on to establish one of the other major landmarks in Jewish American life, the oldest Jewish seminary in North America, Cincinnati's Reform-affiliated Hebrew Union College, in 1875. Before this time, congregations relied upon European-trained cantors, rabbis and teachers. The establishment of a legitimate seminary in America was one of the major benchmarks in the Jewish rootedness in the United States, and the college still trains rabbis, as well as maintains a graduate school in Jewish Studies and other disciplines, and has connections to three spin-off campuses, one in New York (1950), LA (1954) and even Jerusalem (1963).

The further establishment of such organizations as an early association for Hebrew primary education, as well as the major Reform social action league, the National Jewish Charities, solidified the importance of Cincinnati for American Jewish life. Cincinnati thus became the de facto home of Reform Judaism in America, also seeing the creation, again under Wise, of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873 (later becoming the still-important Union for Reform Judaism, now based out of New York), which acted as an association of liberal congregations in the United States and later spreading across North America. Cincinnati also became home to the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1889, which was a professional association for ordained Reform rabbis who established informal policy on matters of religion and practice for North American Jews, as well as several European seminaries, establishing a world-wide reputation for Cincinnati's vibrant Jewish community.

Today, Cincinnati has a sizable Jewish population, which continues to change and expand as its organizations still lure Jews in to its society. Although largely considered a WASP land, Ohio has both influenced, and been influenced by, the Jews in its history. As to why people remain largely unaware of Ohio's Jewish history, I cannot say for sure. It is likely another off-shoot of the generalized "New York" assumption, a burden carried by all Jews in North America, especially those of us born in such an unlikely place as Canada.

As for me, something draws me to the place, far and beyond the need to visit there to see my husband. I chuckle at the thought, but could there possibly be a new wave of Jewish settlement in Ohio about to occur, as a Canadian Jew establishes a life and starts her own letter writing campaign to lure new Jewish life to the place?

In any case, even if I never live there in any permanent sense, I am proud to call Ohio my second home, and will continue to patiently explain to people what it is that could make a Jew feel at ease in a land such as this.

Ohio is Pure America, and some of the best America to be found. Ohio is also a part of the Jewish heritage in the New World. I don't know why the two should be mutually exclusive - is it so un-American to be Jewish? One could argue that the continued survival of an immigrant minority community is exactly what America is supposed to be about, right?

And I would be proud to be a part of that. Even if only by spreading the word about such an interesting and neglected history.

The First Year

Taking a noodle break and cruising the net before getting back to work, I hit upon some random "healthy marriage" self-help spots. Now, most of the stuff I found was pretty self-explanatory, such as "Don't show contempt for you mate." (I could add to that, "Don't FEEL contempt for your mate, since you married the guy," but I'm just going to hope they meant that folded in with the performance aspects.) But I figured it wouldn't hurt to get a bit of "expert" advice, or at least to see somethings we all know set down in writing, as reminders.

There was a lot of advice for those of us in "The First Year," (example) which, according to the experts, is supposed to be the most hellish, as it is a period of adjustment. Personally, I wonder if that first year of retirement might not be worse, since it will involve looking at your changed partner in a brand new way, all day, while dealing with your own changing self-image. But that we shall see.

I don't talk a lot about my marriage on this blog in any direct or theoretical way. I suppose this is partly because Murph and I express our marriage's state of the union to each other enough that I don't really feel the need to talk about it here, which I think is a good thing. However, sometimes it is wise to contemplate the theory of marriage. (And I really hope he doesn't mind me talking about it here...)

Murph and I have, I believe, the makings of a truly classic marriage. If I didn't believe this, I likely would not have married him. There are many elements to our union that really strike me as "signs," though I hesitate to use that language. We were attracted to each right from the first, and knew we were ear-marked for each other really early on in our friendship. I feel positive and optimistic about our life together.

That having been said, however, we do have some pretty titanic fights. Well, not fights so much as dramatic disagreements. We always seem to end up pushing the same buttons on each other in the same way. I suppose we will continue doing that until either the buttons get desensitized or we actually learn to avoid them. This makes sense to me, though, because, even though we are as joined at the hip as we are at the heart, we are also very unique individuals with our own very distinct minds on things. We are also both fiercely stubborn people, with our own intellects and modes of expression. However, sometimes I think our main problems come as much from being too alike in essentials as they do from being too different in content, if that makes sense.

In any case, these self-help things are rather off for us, as our first year is a pretty abnormal one, since we don't have the chance to live in the same place. Of course people get into fights over chat and phone! It is easy to fight when you can't see the other person's eyes or body posture, just as it is hard to end a fight without just being able to offer a hug. When Murph and I are together, fights are easy to deal with - touching goes a long way to foster forgiveness.

As it is, though, in this time of distance, I have one major technique for dealing with my marriage woes. When we are fighting, I remove my wedding ring. Now, this might sound pretty horrendous, but hear me out.

Some say that the primary affirmation for Muslims, the Shahadah ("There is no G-d but Allah, and Mohammad is His Prophet") has a higher purpose than just saying the words. What it does is, before you embrace Allah, you have to first contemplate, even for a second, "There is no G-d." This is supposed to foster a sense of relief and joy when you get to follow through with "... but Allah." I get this, though clearly I don't get the same sense from that line as do Muslims. But the practice makes sense to me. This is the principle I work by.

So, when things are rough between Murph and I, I remove my wedding ring and look at my hand without it. It always looks so sad and forlorn, that I have to put it back on. This always brings a feeling of relief and joy. It is a reminder: No matter how uncomfortable, annoying or crummy this fight may be, think of life without this marriage... without even these fights. That usually gives me all the strength I need to carry on.

These self-help sites... I guess they are ok, especially if one just uses them for casual browsing and reminders, and doesn't take them too seriously. Often, they are better as "What we are doing right" pats on the back then for "How to fix what is wrong" prescriptions.

I guess the main thing I need to remember and concentrate on is, "Murph is my husband; I am his wife. I love him, and I am grateful for our marriage. No matter what the circumstances of the day are, I am lucky to have what I have, because I could be without him entirely."

That can be my daily affirmation.

I Have a Photgraph

Spent some time today scanning old pictures to share with old friends on facebook. Some of them are too funny to really be believed any more. Did any of us ever look like that?

However, those little captions only whetted my appetite to tell the full stories wrapped around some of the old photos I have in my giant shoe box of lost years, and my facebook is getting rather filled with freeze frames of good times. And it isn't really the right place for the bad times.

So I have decided to start a photo-blog. I refuse to call it digi-scrapping, mostly because I refuse to be both old and young enough to know that term. Instead, I have called it FotoBlog.

Mainly, it will be for me, and occasionally for the people I feature in it, but really it is to record memories. It is my penceive, I would say if I were a Potter nerd. Sometimes memories aren't much use unless you can write them out.

Rejuvination

Spring is here, and the Passover season is upon us, and it is time for renovating one's life.

Tonight is my last Tuesday date night with Murph before he heads to West Virginia for a couple of weeks away with an old friend. We will enjoy tonight as much as possible given the frustrations of life we both carry with us. Then, in a few days when he is off, I will spend my time quietly -- much too quiet, I assume, but I can deal with it. I will clean this rat's nest and get it ready for the warm season. I will hit the books hard and start making final preparations for that last comp exam in May. I will look ahead to summer, and do what I can to assure a smooth transition from my seasonal work to my seasonal unemployment.

In short, I will take care of a few things that tend to get side tracked when love is in the air... or at least when it is online or on the phone.

It is true that I had been depressed of late, but I am starting to regain my strength and vigour. Saturday night, I went to synagogue for the first time in years and years. It was a Reform seder, and some of the procedures and songs were new to me, but it was uplifting, just the same. Sharing fellowship with a community is something that I had been so long removed from, I was nervous about returning, but it didn't hurt a bit. In fact, I feel a sense of rightfulness just having gone.

I had not been looking forward to it, really. My own ritual inclinations lean a bit more towards the Orthodox, I guess, but my politics lean far more to the Reform, so I had always felt like I was one who would slip between the cracks. No longer, however, will I accept that. Sometimes fellowship is as much about making a place for yourself as it is respecting those around you. I can handle that.

And, aside from all that, it is Tuesday. So that is where I am right now, and that is always cause for happiness, no?

Be well, everybody.


PS: The original title of this post had been "Re-JEW-vination," but the tone of the post came out so much more saccharin and maudlin than I intended it to be, and it no longer fit. However, it still makes me chuckle, so I have tacked it on to cut through the treacle.

That's It - Back to the Abacus!

I may as well remove this comp, and chuck it into the deepest pit of the farthest reaches of the planet, and place the empty boxes it came in on my desk, and I would have greater satisfaction. At least boxes can be counted on to be what they are: boxes. They would box to their utmost design capabilities. They would be as boxie as I wanted them to be. Their boxiosity would be to their full extent, and their boxing speeds would be exactly as they were meant to be.

As it is, this hunk of steaming annoyance does nothing but make me want to stick a ciggarette in every single hole in my head and smoke until the frustrations go away and stop wanting me to use my left boot to forcibly violate every port and passage on the hedgehog-biting-SOB that passes itself off as a comp.

Labour saving device, my arse!

Whatever you believe purgatory to be, I am in it, and this comp is with me... So, whatever I have done wrong, I am working it off, I assure you.

Rat bastard comp. Burn and rot. May you never reach the Acer land of the honorable dead, and may your motherboard fall out with a thousand syphilitic lesions and ten thousand violent convulsions of electronic pain, you worthless (yet oddly expensive) pain in the sinus.

Oh, and one more thing: 1010101110101010100101110100011010101 - I hope that means something awful to you about your mother, you piece of plastic monstrosity.

I'm not too bitter, am I?
*

Dark Magic

Tonight, I went to see The Illusionist (2006). I had to get out of the apartment, and some friends were kind enough to take me for an airing.

I can’t really describe my personal feelings at seeing this movie, but I am sure you all have had the experience of seeing a film, at a certain point in your life, and having the sudden impression that it was made for you to see just then. This film was that for me – if you have seen it, you may be puzzled over the How and Why of that.

Only a few of you – perhaps only one of you, actually – can really understand that, I think. Just trust me when I say that, right now, it is indescribable for me.

So after being dropped back at the apartment, I decided to take a walk and enjoy the light rain – maybe the last warm rain of the season – and headed towards the reservoir. Dealing with current stress, and processing my life thus far, had left me feeling lonely and sad, and a bit angry in a non-specific sort of way.

However, the film left me feeling powerful and exhilarated despite all that.

I walked, watching my shadow on the slick pavement leading towards the nature trail. I do that when I am feeling low, you see – a childlike flight of whimsy, as I enjoy watching the shadow of my long trench coat turn me from vulnerable student to evil master in the vein of Darth Vader.

(I am certain you all do such strange things in secret, only I am in the mood tonight to actually confess my silly crutch.)

Suddenly, when I had reached the mouth of the trail, very near to where I had found my American two dollar bill a week ago, I heard the sound, coming from behind me, of a car gunning its engines, despite the slick pavement and the hairy sharp curve where the Boulevard veers off to the right from the reservoir area. I watched it pass me, too quickly, and I thought only one word: “Crash.”

Was this a destructive wish, a command, or just a certainty? What ever it was, the car spun, squealed, and did, indeed, crash. Luckily, everyone got out ok, but I was shaken. In truth, I still am shaken.

Was it just the movie that gave me the odd feeling that I somehow caused that car to crash? Or maybe I just knew it would happen, giving the illusion of causation. Was it a guess, a premonition, or just the simple logic of “speed + conditions + geography = accident” that made it so I didn’t even flinch when the car left the road? Why had I been so sure it would happen? Had I already seen it, or did I make it happen in the first place?

Or am I just losing my mind?

Well… no, I think not.

Somewhere, tonight, an answer teases me…

I knew the major principle of life years ago: He who has a Why to live can live with any How.

A person with a developed and recognized Logos can live through anything.

But, tonight, still shaken and still mulling over the meaning of everything of the past few months and years, I have another principle that flirts with me in the mist.

She who has a Reason to Live, has an equal Will to Live; She who has both a Why and a Will to Live, has all the Power in the Universe.

So tell me: Can Logos bend time, space, matter, and energy to the Will? Can all things be submitted to the Will of one who has dared to focus his or her Being on a goal?

Can one even change the weather, and then go so far as to rule over Fate itself?

Perhaps.

But, then, now I really have gone into the realm that only one person out there can understand fully… but one is enough for me right now.

The moral of this tale: Go see The Illusionist, because it is so good it screws with your sense of reality. And do slow down on sharp turns in the rain.