The Proudest Day

Those who know me -- especially my friends and colleagues overseas -- know that I do not always speak highly of America. The direction this country has taken over past several years has left me disillusioned and deeply concerned about its future. The country seemed increasingly cold. The rhetoric seemed increasingly harsh. Minds were increasingly closed.

That all changed last night.

I am not so naive to believe that it'll be sunshine and rainbows for Obama. I know he doesn't have all the answers. I know there are going to be many cases where I don't agree with him. And I am also more aware than most (the "PhD" part of my username) that he will not be nearly as impactful as left-leaning partisans hope -- or as right-leaning partisans fear.

But for the first time in a long time last night hope beat fear. Generosity overcame suspicion. This country showed its very best qualities and, in doing so, also - finally - elevated a man representing an entire people who have existed on the fringes of our democracy for nearly our entire history.

Today I am VERY proud to be an American.

The never-ending search for "balance"

For many a decade, those of us who find work intruding on our personal lives (or vice versa) have been told to seek "BALANCE." You've got to find the right balance, they say, as if -- like tapping the beam weights on the scale at the doctor's office -- one could locate the precise equilibrium point between work and life by shifting a little something from one side to the other.

Well that's a load of crap if you ask me.

Life is busy. We have work. We have families and friends. We have hobbies. We have stuff we want to do. When you're challenging yourself and are engaged on multiple fronts, balance is an illusion. There simply aren't enough hours in the day for balance if one takes balance to mean "doing all the stuff you want to do."

Fundamentally you have to make a choice:

Do I want to continue doing all this stuff? Is there something I can/want to stop doing?

Hm... let's see. I have a family, a job, and one "hobby."

I like my family. Can't scratch them out of the picture.

I like my job. It pays me money. Money is useful. Not really prepared to quit.

My hobby's not bad either :-) Besides, all work and no play makes JD a dull boy.

So. Now what? All I need to do is divide up my time, right? Just figure out the right proportions and that's it -- eternal bliss through "balance." I mean, it's not like work will ever get busy or something won't come up out of the blue or my son won't get sick or I'll never just want to say "the hell with this" and take the afternoon off.

Real balance is hard work. Real balance means you have to plan and prepare and sometimes just react to whatever work and life throw at you content in the knowledge that you'll do your best and that sometimes, despite your best efforts, shit just isn't going to get done. It's about making short-term and long-term decisions, about doing what's right and occasionally what's necessary, about accountability and responsibility and integrity and about making choices that don't always have clearcut answers.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you mediocrity.

A matter of when, not if.

There was an accident on the George Washington Parkway, a road we travel quite often, yesterday. A motorcycle went off one of the steep hills that leads down to the Potomac River. The Parkway is a beautiful drive pretty much from start to finish and was one of my favorite rides when I had my motorcycle.

The last ride I took on my motorcycle was with my friend David out by Skyline Drive. He had pulled me over before we got there (an action for which I will be forever grateful) to advise me about the risks of the ride and that I needed to be absolutely prepared -- and that, if I wasn't, it would be no big deal and we could turn back. I said I was ready and we went on.

A couple miles down the road we came upon the accident. A motorcyclist had taken a sharp turn a bit wide at the same time a minivan had shaded the turn close to the lane divide. It was no contest. The biker lay on his back, wracked in pain, desperately and loudly gasping for breath.

I thought to myself that I was about to see a man die.

I don't know how I overcame the fear that gripped me, but I parked my bike and ran over to him. He was wearing virtually the same high visibility 'Stich that I was, though his reflected far more many miles on two wheels. He was on his back. The suit hid the most severe of his injuries -- a broken back or broken ribs I suspected. His left wrist was visibly and badly broken.

All I could do was tell him that he was going to be ok and to try to calm down. His name was Willie and we waited for the paramedics to arrive. I held his helmet and head still as two teams of EMTs cut him out of his suit, strapped him to a backboard and airlifted him to the nearest hospital. I gave my information to the officers on the scene and David and I decided to go home. The only thing I remembered about the ride back was the smell. Ever since that day any time I smell the close fumes of motorcycle exhaust it is accompanied by the melted plastic of the fallen BMW sport-tourer -- and Willie's aftershave.

I tried to find a mention of the accident in the papers over the following days but I couldn't, although motorcycle accidents are so commonplace out there that it might not have been all that newsworthy. I believe he made it though. In fact I think he's probably ok.

They say (these people) that it's a matter of when, not if. Risk is part and parcel of riding a motorcycle. The risks can be mitigated through preparation, caution, and training. But you will never be able to control the weather, or the inattentive driver on a cell phone, or distracted parent with kids in the car, or the inexperienced teenager, or the fella who reckoned he was ok to drive after beer number 12, or the ordinarily careful driver who just glimpses away for a half second. You cannot but fully accept these risks. The day you can't -- the day the costs become to high and the equation can't be balanced -- you need to put the kickstand down.

That day - my birthday 2004 - was my day.

Judaism: The Official Religion of the World's Pedants

Two days ago I realized I had a serious problem.

We're throwing a party for Alex's 2nd birthday on Saturday. We've got family and friends coming over, which is all (fortunately) happening after United play Chelsea in the morning in what could be the match that decides the Premiership title.

Except it's Passover.

That means, dear Reader, that all the yummy adult beverages of which I would ordinarily partake the entire day are trayfe. Verboten. No dice.

There has to be a way around this, says I. One that doesn't involve drinking multiple bottles of Manischewitz.

So I did what any determined, technologically-inclined beer-loving Jew would do. I started Googling for kosher for Passover alcoholic beverages. Now to be fair this isn't the first time I've contemplated this issue. I've been aware for some time of vodka made not from forbidden grains, but from potatoes. This seemed like the right place to start. I first found this extremely handy list of generally kosher booze on the Chicago Rabbinical Council's website. It didn't speak to specifics about Passover though. After some more digging I found this kosher blog (meaning "a blog about keeping kosher", as opposed to "a blog that had been certified by a Rabbi as being ok to read") that was right on target: potato vodka was going to be my salvation, even if it did have something-something-amylase-something-whatever (see comment 37). Fortunately for me, the recent craze for super-premium vodkas means that one of these lovely nectars, the smooth and sumptuous Polish creation, Chopin, was available at my local state store. Admittedly it doesn't have a hechsher on it, but the people who make it felt it was important enough to note plainly on the label that it's made exclusively from potatoes, and that's good enough for me.

That got me thinking. I mean, if I weren't merely looking for any port in this week-long grain-free storm to drink, and I were a bit more vigilant, I would have really had my hands full. There is a lot to keep track of. The Laws of Kashrut in ancient times were probably pretty easy to follow. You pretty much ate what was in your backyard or your neighbor's backyard. You didn't have to worry about genetic modification, or sorbitol, or high fructose corn syrup or any of the thousands of things that are now readily available in our global society. This single page is a veritable rabbit hole to stacks upon stacks of information. For instance, did you know that Play-Doh might contain chametz and therefore it is not kosher for Passover? (Presumably it's ok to eat for the rest of the year!)

Then I came across the controversy over kitniyos. Kitniyos are, in broad terms, legumes, which still doesn't help because I have no idea what a legume is. The whole issue turns around whether things like rice, beans, lentils, corn, and even certain seeds like fennel and cumin are kosher. While these foods are definitely not prohibited grains, they've come to be proscribed during Passover because they used to be grown near grains or perhaps used with grains and the Rabbis thought that people would get confused. So they banned the whole lot. Ashkenazic Jews (from Eastern Europe and Russia) say no. Sephardic Jews (those from the Middle East and Orient) say they're ok. (I decided I was on the Separdic side of this equation about 6 years ago when I found myself in a sushi restaurant during Passover.) At any rate, this is no small quibble . There are hard-core factions in this dispute. On one hand you have those who believe the proscription is now basically moot in modern times. On the other, you have the (I shit you not) Kitniyos Defense League who are adamantly defending the custom. It's gripping reading.

I probably spent two hours looking through these lists and reading about the Laws of Kashrut. Then it hit me.

NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY JEWS ALWAYS ARGUE!

It's because we're all a bunch of PEDANTS! In fact, we're encouraged to be this way!

Where else could you study dietary laws for years and still not fully grasp them? We have a mere Five Books in our primary sacred text that was written thousands of years ago, yet people are STILL interpreting them! There are 613 mitzvot, or "good deeds." This is the mother lode! Imagine the following conversation at your next party:

Tevye: No, I'm telling you. The requirement for the Koheyn to brush his hair before entering the Sanctuary is number 445.

Yossi: Dude. You're wrong. Hair brushing is number 444. Torn clothing is 445.

Tevye: NO! I'M CERTAIN OF IT! Hair brushing is 445!

Yossi: Listen, it's been a long night and you've had two bottles of Slivovitz already. We'll check in the morning. Let's get going.

Tevye: You're just trying to change the subject. You know I'm right.

It all makes sense. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go fix myself a drink.

Paris by picture

I just walked out of my hotel to see this.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Vindication, irony, and a little bit of payback...

Paid for by
Friends of Mike Huckabee

A little over a month ago, I pondered the far-too-possible and disconcerting prospect that, in its ineffable wisdom, the American Bible-banging right-wing might actually nominate a candidate for the post of Godbotherer-in-Chief. On the eve of the Potomac Primaries (as only those who seem to live outside Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia are calling them), that likelihood is -- thankfully -- virtually gone. But not quite.

At 8:30 with about 50% of the votes counted, they're neck and neck in Virginia. The good news is that, if the Washington Post's fancy maps are to be believed, the major portions remaining to be counted include Northern Virginia counties which are decidedly more moderate and some of the military-laden areas along the Chesapeake Bay. Virginia's a winner-take-all state too. I'm beginning to regret my anti-Hillary vote for Obama, who has quite literally whooped Hill-dog's ass. I should have stuck with my "cancel-out-a-conservative" strategy and voted for McCain. If he loses by one vote, I'll be feeling terribly guilty.

Not a conservative.

In the bigger picture, however, things are looking up. Having realized it's his own money he's pissing away on a longshot (viz., his own candidacy), Mitt's seen the light and called it a day. The GOP is slowing coming to grips with John McCain as the presumptive nominee, yet Mike Huckabee is still lurking. The most gratifying aspect of all of this is that the evangelical conservatives are getting their comeuppance. Blind, knee-jerk, it's everyone else's fault give me everything I want and reduce mah taxes 'cause I'm gonna git to heaven without dyin' conservatism has run out of gas. What emanated from guys like Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek has been bastardized to the point of unprincipled unrecognizability. Hell, the only Hayek these people know has big tetas and an accent. In fact, I'm relishing Pat Buchanan's desperate hand-wringing as he contemplates a little political hari-kari. Assholes.

In a pleasant turn of irony, I just spent the last hour watching Tony Bourdain's No Reservations, an hour-long feature on the Travel Channel where the iconoclastic executive chef of New York's Brasserie Les Halles visits some fantastic places and enjoys culture and cuisine that is well off the beaten path. This week's episode finds him on the Texas-Mexico border. The message is clear: everyone he speaks to -- from politicians to tour guides to the cooks he meets on both sides of the border are against The Great Big Wall and see the issue of immigration as being far more nuanced than the inane amnesty versus punishment rhetoric spouted principally by people who've never met a Mexican and aren't the least bit affected by the issue at all. Gee. What a surprise.

News flash: 9:20pm ET - The Washington Post is calling it for McCain in Virginia. There's are times when, in moments of extreme vitriol, I launch into an obscenity-laden tirade that ends in "and I hope they nominate Huckabee so they get fucked in the general election," but even I have to find cause for optimism. Because maybe -- just maybe -- the vast majority of the American voting public will have an election that's not about voting against someone, but voting for someone instead.

I will not be holding my breath though.

The Flowers of Manchester

Recorded by the Spinners
Lyric by Eric Winter (1958)

[mp3 download]

One cold and bitter Thursday in Munich, Germany,
Eight great football stalwarts conceded victory,
Eight men will never play again who met destruction there,
The Flowers of English football, the Flowers of Manchester.

Matt Busby's boys were flying home, returning from Belgrade,
This great United family, all masters of their trade,
The pilot of the aircraft, the skipper Captain Thain,
Three times they tried to take off and twice turned back again.

The third time down the runway disaster followed close,
There was slush upon that runaway and the aircraft never rose,
It ploughed into the marshy ground, it broke, it overturned,
And eight of the team were killed as the blazing wreckage burned.

Roger Byrne and Tommy Taylor who were capped for England's side.
And Ireland's Billy Whelan and England's Geoff Bent died,
Mark Jones and Eddie Colman, and David Pegg also
They all lost their lives as it ploughed on through the snow.

Big Duncan he went too, with an injury to his brain.
And Ireland's brave Jack Blanchflower will never play again,
The great Matt Busby lay there, the father of his team,
Three long months passed by before he saw his team again.

The trainer, coach and secretary, and a member of the crew,
Also eight sporting journalists who with United flew,
and one of them Big Swifty, who we will ne'er forget,
the finest English 'keeper that ever graced the net.

Oh, England's finest football team its record truly great,
its proud successes mocked by a cruel turn of fate.
Eight men will never play again, who met destruction there,
the Flowers of English football, the Flowers of Manchester.