harpojaeger.com

I’ve just returned from a health care reform town hall meeting and rally in West Hartford, CT.  It was quite an experience.  After shouting into a megaphone for hours, holding signs, arguing with all sorts of people, and listening to peoples’ questions, I’ve learned a lot.  First of all, I’ve learned that people will try any tactic to distract you from the issues at hand.  I had people come up to me today, observing my various bits of Jew-apparel, and tell me that I should feel unsafe about the socialist direction the country was headed in, because socialism would lead to Naziism, etc.  And not only that, but that therefore I should be “pro-Israel” (a phrase I DESPISE), as it would be my last refuge when this country went down the tubes.  I say, when your last refuge is an introverted, outwardly violent, and discriminatory establishment, something is seriously wrong somewhere.

But I digress.

Sort of.

Because during that conversation, in which the gentleman I was discussing with said that we need to “break radical Islam”, he said something else that struck me: “You need to know who your enemies are.”  I responded by saying, “Sir, I don’t have enemies.  I have differences”.  But I’m not so sure that’s true.  In a way, my constant obsession with dialogue and discourse has blinded me to some important realities:

• The GOP, as a party, does not support health care reform.

The GOP is not interested in compromise.  They want to kill this bill (as many protesters today chanted) as a political tactic.  Now, I know this is nothing new in terms of political wrangling, but to pose as having legitimate opinions on reform is just deceitful.  Make no mistake: the GOP opposes reform.

• The GOP relies on misinformation and fear to keep its constituents behind it.

Today, I saw a lot of smart, educated people, who were very afraid.  I saw children younger than my youngest sister screaming hateful slogans.  What is it that makes these people want to live like this?  It’s the media’s willingness to pander to make money, and the GOP’s disgusting willingness to capitalize off of that.  Spreading fear of socialism is not constructive.  I had an entire crowd of people chanting “Get-A-Job” at me today, as I yelled through a megaphone about my MassHealth and my experiences with the system.  And when I talked to people afterwards, they said “You’re a Marxist”.  I said, “I’m not a Marxist, I believe in the free-market.  But you can’t turn peoples’ health into a profiteering racket”.  And then they said “What are you doing here?”  I was stunned.  I said “This is a free country.  All ideologies are welcome.”  The GOP should hold itself in higher esteem than to court the values of xenophobes and racists.  Being insular is not a political philosophy, it’s a moral shortcoming, and one that the GOP is exploiting for political gain.  That being true, I will call the GOP what it is: an immoral organization with no regard for real progress of any ideological flavor.  It is a self-serving organization, not one that exists for its constituents.

• There are people who will do anything to make you feel as though your opinions don’t matter.

I was decried as a Marxist, a Communist, and (along with my Jewish friend next to me), an anti-Semite.  These are accusations meant to take away from the substance of the argument.  This is not an ideological issue.  This is not a political issue.  If you believe that everyone has a right to health, there is no more debate except on how.  But that’s not what these people are debating.  When someone stood in front of me and said “I worked for my health insurance, and they should to”, I said, “So you are calling 47 million people slackers?  Are you prepared to stand by that?”.  They said, “Well, not all of them.”  So I said, “Then what about the ones who aren’t slackers?  How many are there?”  He couldn’t answer.  When faced with the reality of the issue, that millions of people who work just as hard, if not harder, than any of us, do not have the insurances we do because of disadvantages and fundamental inequalities that they have no control over, they can say nothing.  He tried to change the topic, he fear-mongered some more about my religion.  I told him I was quite comfortable with my existence as an American Jew.  He said, “Then why do people die trying to come to this country?”  I said, “Because there is a promise.  A promise of opportunity.  And the current health care system is a fundamental betrayal of that promise.”

I don’t mean to just write about my exploits, but I am coming to realize that not being able to negotiate is not a bad thing.  When you’re facing people who don’t want to talk, people who don’t respect progress or change, when people like Senator Enzi walk away, you have to cut your losses sooner or later.  This bill is going to happen.  And if we have to do it without the naysayers, so much the better.  Anyone who has something to contribute is welcome to join.  Welcome to talk to me or any other Democrat in the entire country any time.

But if you don’t have anything constructive to say, your time is over.  Fox News may be filming you, but they’re not making the policy decisions.

I’m extending a hand.  Will you take it?

Driving south on I-880 from San Francisco to Alameda, we ran out of gas.  I pulled over to the shoulder, turned on the hazards, and took a breath.  I tried starting the car again, and was surprised to find that it worked.  So I pulled out, and continued on, planning to get gas at the next exit.  About a quarter mile later, it started coughing again, and I figured “Uh oh, this is really it”.  Now, of course, there was no shoulder to speak of, and we were going uphill.  The engine gave out completely, and I got as far to the right as I could, still blocking the lane entirely.  Since we were right in front of an entrance ramp, a large traffic jam ensued.  Most people were polite, pulling around us as I waved them by.  I was considering my options as far as Triple A and the like, when I felt a bump, and then another.  I turned around, and there was a man in a pickup truck repeatedly backing up and bumping into me.  I waved him by, but he wouldn’t stop.  I was getting worried for my safety (my sister was in the car also), so I decided the best thing to do was to call 911.  Of course as soon as I did, he pulled away, and I couldn’t see his license plate.  So much for him.  The dispatcher told me he’d send a tow truck over and an officer in the meantime to check on me.  No sooner had I hung up with him than a man tapped on the window, with a large Mack truck idling behind me.  ”I’m a tow truck on break,” he said.  ”I can give you a push to the nearest exit if you want.”  This was a very generous offer, but I had to turn him down, since I already had an officer and a truck on the way.  So I told him thank you so much for the thought, but I’ll be fine.  No sooner had he pulled away, than a Triple A truck pulled up in front of me.  Now I was confused.  The 911 dispatcher had said the truck would be from Micky’s towing in Oakland.  What was going on?

I was soon to find out.  The Micky’s truck appeared next to me, and honked its horn loudly.  It pulled up closer to the Triple A truck, and honked again.  The Triple A truck skulked away.  I, of course, was ecstatic.  I had just witnessed a tow truck battle!  Over the right to tow me!  What a sight!  Now the whole thing was worth it.  I felt so proud, to be the subject of a confrontation between two grease-covered burly men with chains and pneumatic lifts!

Except that then the tow truck driver told me there was, by virtue of a state contract between the Highway Dept. and any service truck, a $175 fee for being towed off the freeway.  This was an issue.  I dropped a whole lot of money on fixing my dad’s car the other week, after a minor scrape that did some serious damage to the steering (although no one nor any property was hurt at all), so I didn’t really want to pay.  Fortunately, the police officer arrived at the same time, and extremely kindly offered to push me off of the freeway.  So, with my sister hyperventilating in the passenger seat and the Micky’s truck preceding us with flashing lights, the cop bumped and shoved our beat-up Nissan pickup all the way off of the freeway.  From there, the tow truck brought us to a gas station.  And when I asked him what we owed him for the tow (expecting to have to bargain down from $175, since he had essentially towed us), he said “Don’t worry about it”!  I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

And now it gets interesting.  After shelling out $50 for a full tank of $3.15/gallon California gasoline, I got in the car, and was ready to head back to the house to rendezvouz with my aunt and uncle and head out to their purportedly-really-awesome friends’ house for dessert.  ”Don’t worry,” I said jauntily to my sister as we buckled up.  ”We’ll be home in five minutes.”  Everything was just fine.

Just fine, that is, until I turned the key.

The engine sputtered.

It coughed.

But it wouldn’t turn over.

I was flabbergasted.  The other night when I took this ancient jalopy out for the first time, we had had to jump it first, but since then I had been using it to drive back and forth between my aunt and uncle’s place in Alameda and my grandparents in San Francisco with no problems.  I asked the gas station attendant for a jump.  They didn’t have one.  I asked security (we were in inner-city Oakland).  They didn’t have one.  So I called my uncle, who was on his way home from a late day at work, and he said he’d come by.  So we waited.  I tried cleaning the battery terminals with a cardboard coffecup thermal holder, but to no avail.  That Nissan wasn’t budging.

Eventually, of course, he arrived, and we jumped the car with no problems, and drove home.  So ended the saga.

It was a damn long night.  We had to cancel the dinner plans, and were unable to reschedule them for tomorrow as had been hoped.

So it goes.

Hi everyone.  My name is Harpo Jaeger.  I’m a new poster on Jewschool.  I’ve been blogging for a little over a year now at my personal website, harpojaeger.com.  I’m really excited to start blogging here!  Some of the other Jewschoolers I know from the NHC Summer Institute, some I don’t know at all.

At some point in the future I’ll be updating my biographical information, but right now I am here with the intention of posting about something very specific.

Being a pluralistic community, the Summer Institute (which I’m currently at) has some interesting halakhic quirks.  For the members who don’t carry items on Shabbes, we create an eruv, a quasi-physical boundary around the campus that halakically turns the campus into one building, thus allowing those people to carry siddurim, a talit, and so on, between buildings.  For several years, I’ve been a coordinator of this construction process, and I’ve learned a lot from it.  BZ suggested I write a post about this, as a sort of “DIY eruv”, which is a very good way of putting it, so here it is.

The essential idea of an eruv is a series of simulated doors.  To do this, we use a series of lecha’in (singular lechi, which translates as “doorpost”), with string run over the tops, representing the header of the door frame.  There are various other components of the eruv in addition to sticks and string.  For instance, a hill can act as a natural boundary around an area if it is steep enough.  Part of the campus here is on a steep hill, so we can place a lechi at either end and use the hill as a go-between.  Additionally, an existing cable such as a telephone wire can be used if alechi is placed below it and the cable sags less than about eleven inches (inaccuracy due to conversion from biblical units of measure).

What’s interesting about the process we’ve gone through is that neither myself or my friend with whom I coordinate have a great deal of experience with this halakha.  We’ve learned it from those who do, we’ve internalized it, and at this point it’s become a DIY ritual more than anything else.  Without having a pre-existing complete grasp of the spiritual and traditional elements of the eruv, we are able to create one that is completely in line with all of the requirements.  Also, it’s pretty fun.  We stay up late drinking tons of caffeinated beverages, drive around in a golf cart with lumber and power tools, drive around the perimeter with one of the halakhic experts to verify the whole thing, and then sanctify it by saying a blessing (al mitzvat eruv) over a “communal meal” (in today’s case, half a bagel left over from yesterday’s sunrise hike up Mt. Monadnock).  That meal is then eaten after the eruv no longer needs to be sanctified (although I anticipate the bagel being rather stale by then).

So, starting from a mere interest in construction, and with the counseling of some persons with more halakhic knowledge, we’ve learned a lot about the practice, had a bunch of fun, and helped some of our co-Institute-goers observe Shabbes more easily.

If you have the opportunity, I’d highly recommend getting involved in the construction of a local eruv.  It’s a fabulous way to learn about some very interesting halakha and its modern implementations, as well as explore a host of pluralistic issues.  Great all around.

That’s all for now.  It is time to light candles here, and I must away.  I hope this first post is food for thought, and I’m really looking forward to writing here.  Shabbat shalom!

This post originally appeared on Jewschool.

The saga of my purchasing of the new iPhone 3G S began yesterday, when my mom asked why I hadn’t camped out for the new iPhone.  I explained to her the upgrade eligibility requirements, which resulted in my being unable to buy an iPhone at the unsubsidized price until December 12th.  She tried to find a way around it, and we spent a while on the phone, somewhat unsuccessfully.  The result was that I went to the Apple Store in Holyoke today to try to badger them into giving me a phone for the cheap price.  They couldn’t for any of the reasons we had thought of, but it turned out my father’s line (on the family plan) was eligible for an upgrade, so we bought the phone through that line, and then went to the AT&T store and had them switch it.  This took two full trips back and forth, but it got done, and the result is that I have the new iPhone, which is awesome.  I’m still working on a case for it, but the new features seem to be pretty great.

This evening I was in Natick seeing Cadence with two other members of 5-Alone.  The show was excellent.  They did a lot more jazz standard and barbershop type stuff than I was expecting.  It was all good, but some of it felt a little recursive after a while.  Except for the Cole Porter.  Cole Porter is really the best.  You just can’t beat him in terms of standards.  Fabulous.

It has been an extremely successful day.

I have registered for the NHC Summer Institute!  I am taking Jonathan Rubenstein’s baking class and Ben Dreyfus’ shemitah class.  This is going to be a fabulous Institute.

I didn’t get home until about three in the morning, so I took the day off from school today to sleep and catch up on work.

The concert was amazing.  The orchestra itself was really cool; a blend of people from all different countries.  The conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, was incredibly fun to watch.  He had more expression than almost anyone I’ve ever seen before.

Four ten-thousand-watt (I think) projectors covered the entire ceiling and back wall of the stage of Carnegie Hall.  Before each piece, they would show maps of where the composer lived, as well as periodically showing videos about select performers from the orchestra, compilations of audition videos during intermission, and some really cool multimedia stuff during a few pieces.  During John Cage’s Renga and Aria, for instance, they projected the shapes and syllables he used to notate the piece, which is pretty cool sounding.  Will and I got a look at the control room for all of the video, and it was intense.  There were racks and racks of complicated audio-video and computer equipment, and all sorts of things we didn’t understand at all.

The orchestra also played Ride of the Valkyries, which is pretty much the most epic piece of music ever.

For me, the two highlights of the performance were the Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica, composed and guest-conducted by Tan Dun in its world premier, and a piece they did with Mason Bates, a really awesome electronic DJ.  He played with the full orchestra.  Dun’s piece had a part for car rims which were played with ball-peen hammers.

The irony of wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt in a concert hall named after Andrew Carnegie did not escape me, and I think it was responsible for my being rejected by an interviewer from the BBC, who I guess was looking for people more well-dressed than us.  We were a rather odd-looking group.

We hung out in Times Square for a while beforehand, got some excellent food from a street vendor, bought some hip-hop (which we listened to on the way home), and almost purchased some Obama condoms (“Michelle approved, ladies and gentlemen”, and “Create your very own stimulus package”), but they were $5, which was not practical.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra is a historic event, but not for the reasons I had originally been thinking of.  In terms of the formation of musical groups, the real democratizer was the recording process.  In that respect, this is really no different.  But it does really represent the way that classical music, and, indeed, the idea of collaborative music in general, is changing in response to this type of technology.  It opens up new ground for the way music can be composed, put together, and performed.  I am excited to see where it goes from here, and I am proud to have witnessed this event.

Also, this post has more categories than any I have ever written before, I think.  It is just that awesome.

Tomorrow I am heading to Carnegie Hall to see the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.  It is a half-day at school, and since I normally have no classes in the morning on Wednesday, I am not going in to school at all.  Will will be picking me up at home, we will grab another friend a couple blocks away, and then head to New Haven.  From there, we will take the train into the city.

The show is at seven-thirty, so we are going to be back pretty late.

We got home earlier than expected, at about four or so.  I have been doing some yardwork, and am heading up to see Will at the farm.  I will stay there tonight, and we will catch up on our math and physics work, on which we are extremely behind.  I may also bring the LC(A) to show off.  Will has told people about it, but I don’t think they’ve ever actually seen it in the flesh (plastic?).

Our first Frisbee game is on Thursday.

Shawarma is probably one of the best foods there is.  I had a fabulous chickens shawarma sandwich.  We are staying at my aunt and uncle’s apartment now.  We walked around for a bit before coming here, as we had been in the car for about an hour from New Jersey.

This morning, before we left, we visited my great-grandmother at the nursing home she is in.  It was very nice in some ways, and not nice at all in some other ways.  It made me think a lot about how I want to be treated and live when I am that age, and how I want to cope as my parents get towards that age.  I think that it is weird that in America we pay people to live with and take care of our old people, rather than just doing it ourselves.  If everyone was in a better position to take care of their relatives as they aged, we wouldn’t need to spend so much money on those institutions.  Ideally, the government would provide money to anyone who is taking care of relatives to help them cope, but until we are in a position to have that sort of health care infrastructure, we will have to deal with these not-so-friendly institutions.  This particular one is rather nice, but it is still an institution, with all of the benefits and pitfalls that implies.  It is a tricky situation.

I am glad that my relatives are being well taken care of, but I wish it was a little more personal, and I wish I saw them more often.

I am in New Jersey right now at my grandmother’s house, having just come from Long Island from another family member’s house following the graveside service, which we were unable to get to, as it was at ten-thirty this morning.  We didn’t want to catch all of the rush hour traffic, so we left at about ten and got in at one-thirty.  We were there until about eight.  There was a very nice evening service at about seven.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, I spent a lot of time with a lot of different people.  Some of them I knew and had seen recently (in exemplum my grandfather [most recently sighted at my aunt's wedding in L.A.]).  Some of them I knew and had not seen for a long time (in exemplum my grandfather’s cousin, the widow of the deceased [most recently sighted at her apartment several years ago]).  Some of them I had never met before in my life (in exemplum her sister).  Anyway, I had a really good time, or as much of a good time as one should have at a post-funeral Shiva session.

Everyone has their own way of mourning.  Some people cry a lot, some people are solid and stoic and then cry a lot in private, some are solid and stoic and never cry.  Some are somewhere in between, defying categorization.  It is weird.  It is hard to predict how people will act.  I try not to stop trying though, because I think that if you just sit back and accept the way people feel, it can be easy to get caught up in emotions and not understand what’s actually happening around you.  It is important to be sympathetic and comforting while still trying to understand your feelings.