Hello, friends!

How many potato jokes can a rabbi good-naturedly endure before snapping?  I don't know!  I'm still doing a great job responding with grace and a tight-lipped smile.  


A bit more than three weeks in to what I'm still mentally calling "The Maryland Experiment" and my life is all about connecting, meeting, shmoozing.  Woody Allen may have intended his well-known quip to be tongue-in-cheek, but my life right now is, literally, just about showing up:  text classes, services, Jewish community events, mixers.  Lots of smiling, hand-shaking, handing out personal fliers, baby-kissing (okay, not the latter.  Yet.).  Self-promotion is a tiring job, but someone's got to do it.  And, of course, it's not just about finding work.  I'm genuinely thrilled to have so much opportunity - on a daily basis - to access a smorgasbord of quality Jewish learning experiences.  


In terms of work, I'm teaching a 6-week class on Judaism and Healing (I didn't quite hit the 10-person minimum registration mark but they took pity on me.  "She's from Idaho, for God's sake.") and, for the moment, those seven people are the only congregation I've got.  So I'm of course obsessing over every detail of the class, my presentation and their response to it.  I also managed to get on the D'var Torah column rotation in the Washington Jewish Week and my first piece will appear in the April 7th edition. Talk about obsessing -- Most novelists don't write and rewrite as many times as I did that 900 word take on the first day of Pesach's Torah portion.  But I felt so much riding on my first public presentation in this community and - okay - maybe I'm just kind of generally obsessive?


I may have opportunity to provide B'nai Mitzvah tutoring (Clearly not at the top of the desired work list for rabbis, but I'm spending $80/week on gas.  Enough said.) but I have to re-learn haftarah trope which I haven't used in decades.  A local cantor gave me a CD which has been greatly helpful as I review.  Of course the plaintive cries of the haftarah melody are completely stuck in my head; I'm constantly humming the cantillation's minor motif, providing kind of a Debbie Downer musical backdrop to my daily activities.  


The weather's been amazing.  I got a lot of outdoor time last weekend and not having to wear a coat has been among my greatest joys for the past several weeks.  My mom and I went down to the DC tidal basin which is ground zero for cherry blossom viewing.  Unfortunately, last week's wind storm cleared the branches a bit prematurely.  There were clumps of camera-wielding tourists in the Independence Avenue median strip near the memorials as it featured the only blossoming trees in the area around the National Mall.  That part was disappointing but we enjoyed strolling through the FDR and Martin Luther King memorials and touring the Museum of American History (nothing like being able to pass judgment on all the First Ladies' inaugural gowns to bring a bit of cheer).


This is not an emotionally easy process.  The war between my self-doubt and my earnest hopefulness is a tough match, battles won as much on one side as the other.  I'm glad to be surrounded by family and they've all been helpful and supportive as I try to find my way.  I am very thankful for those rabbis and educators who have agreed to meet with me and who have offered suggestions and advice.


Sitting in the Shabbat morning service a week ago a woman came up to me and said, "I noticed your tallis with all the thumbprints.  That's a really nice design."
"It is.  It was given to me by my former congregation."
That tallis - a loving personalized gift from the CABI community - means so much to me.  I may sit in a strange sanctuary (and I've been in one or two different ones every Shabbat) but I still feel the imprint of those who have spiritually nurtured me for the past eighteen years.  Some days that's all that keeps me afloat.

With thanks to V.T.

Doing better than my plant

Rubber Plant: could go either way

Made it!

My lower back and neck need a little work but I at least look better than my rubber plant which apparently enjoyed the week of travel far less than I did.  Maybe I should have been taking it out of the car at night?  Ah, well.


Monday afternoon I was driving through Eastern Kentucky thinking about how I blew out tires several times on my drives to and from Cincinnati in grad school. About 20 minutes later my car suddenly started making a lot of noise and I, in momentary hopeful denial, thought:  "maybe the road is really bumpy here."


Apparently all this driving time put me in some type of telepathic harmony with my front left tire as I had successfully predicted a really impressive blow-out.  After pulling over I took a look and there was just about no rubber left on the wheel.


Waiting for AAA to call me back, I kept myself occupied by listening to Morehead College Public Radio which featured detailed discussion of the tornado clean-up from West Liberty, 30 miles away -- the community hardest hit in the weekend's devastating wind storms.  About 25 minutes later I still hadn't heard from AAA but a car pulled over and then backed up along the shoulder.  A man sprung out of his car, holding a toolbox.  He was extremely nice, jacked up the car, tried to pump the spare with his 12-volt air pump when we discovered that my battery had also died.  He then kickstarted my car which was pretty risky given that we were only feet away from trucks whipping by at 70 mph.


He informed me that there was, thankfully, a Wal-Mart a couple of exits ahead with mechanic services.  $200 and an hour later they had me on my way.  I have to say that everyone I encountered in rural Kentucky was extremely nice and if I didn't mind living somewhere with ubiquitous "Hell is Real" and "Abortion kills a beating heart" billboards as well as radio stations that range from country to deep country to conservative Christian to super right-wing lunatic Christian I would definitely consider a move!


Maryland is a much bigger state than I had envisioned.  My joyful reading of a "Welcome to Maryland" sign was followed by three additional hours of driving before reaching my parents' house in Olney.  And they're only a little more than half-way through the state!  Who knew?  It looks so tiny on a map.


Movers came and took my yellow duct-taped boxes into the house and then we drove to the storage facility where they crammed every square inch of a 10' x 10' locker with my remaining possessions.  I had originally thought that I could perhaps retrieve some items as needed from the locker but after seeing the puzzle piece-tight configuration of furniture and boxes my brother pointed out:  "You won't be getting any of your things out of there before you move into your own place.  If it's in there it's dead to you."  Funny, sad and true.


Purim is tonight -- the holiday observance mid-way through a Jewish month (Adar) that carries the commandment to "be happy."  It's actually a very appropriate night to be going to a silly service to celebrate the absurdities of life.  I think I need to be taking myself a bit less seriously these days.  In the scheme of human circumstances, my life is extremely easy and blessed.  This holiday is a perfect reminder.


Happy Purim to all!

Made it - with requisite snafu

Too tired right now to do anything but lie in bed and watch last night's episode of The Bachelor ("The Women Tell All!" edition) on abc.com.  But for those keeping track, my car, my possessions, my brother and I all made it to Maryland several hours ago.

The U-Haul, surprisingly, had no problems.  But I blew out a tire in Kentucky which I will say more about after a night of sleep.

My rubber plant looks much worse for wear but, according to my dad, rubber plants can survive anything. I will post a picture of the sorry thing tomorrow.

I appreciate any and all emails!  If you're keeping up with my blog, drop me a line!  Thank you everyone!  More to follow . . . .
xo

Home is where the license plate is

The Mammoth Cave ranger began our tour by asking everyone, "Where are you from?"
"Germany," answered a couple with bright red, spiked hair.
"The Philippines," responded a cute young family.
"Idaho!" I called out confidently, despite my awareness that Idaho as home is now more fictional construct than reality.

It's an interesting tension that exists moving from town to town, state to state, possessions in transit to a temporary location while in a vehicle externally marked with signs of rootedness.  On the open road, my Idaho plates and "Boise Braves" and "Buy Local:  Think Boise First" stickers tether me to something physical and real.  My Subaru Wagon, covered in North End-ian identifiers, associates me clearly - to those "in the know" - with a particular demographic.  I hadn't realized, before being yanked out of it, how much that communal identity has given me personal meaning.

Not surprisingly, I'm getting ready for my drive today while listening to Boise State radio streaming from my laptop.  I may possess brave gutsiness but I'm not a free spirit.  I value security, belonging, identity, rootedness. I will have those things again in the future but this in between - "liminal space" as they say in anthropology - wilderness time is a bit of an emotional free fall.

There's a reason why conversations and connections often begin with the query:  "Where are you from?"  It's hard to relate to someone who has no context.  I still have a context as a Jew, a mom and daughter, a friend, a lover of learning and ideas and "This American Life" and pink and purple and "The New Yorker" and Stephen Colbert and "Gossip Girl."  The missing pieces - lack of connection to place and job - will cause me to stretch my own self-definition of who I am and what I'm about.

"The sun rises and the sun sets"

Today was an easier driving day (we only covered a couple of hundred miles) but a little more difficult emotionally.  Lots of days on the road - lots of uncertainty ahead.  I found out today that the one class I had been scheduled to teach through a Bethesda synagogue adult education program - a six week session on Judaism and Healing - might be cancelled due to lack of registration.  I had the feeling that might happen when I saw the stock photo they chose to pair with my class description:  a picture of a woman sitting cross-legged, meditating in an open field.  Jeez.  I don't know if I would have signed up for it myself.


Reality is going to be setting in soon.  I won't be able to hide out in my car forever (Nor would I want to -- another week of this and I'd need a team of chiropractors and massage therapists to un-contort my body.  And I don't even want to think about the amount of partially hydrogenated oil that I've poured into myself in various forms since Tuesday.).  Two days from now I'll be lying in my parents' house, my possessions boxed and tucked into various rooms and locations, and wondering what the hell I'm doing.  And I'll need to remind myself:  one day of creation at a time.  It won't look like much of anything for a while.  And, unlike God's story, it's going to take me a hell of a lot longer than six days.


This morning we woke up in Jackson, TN, home of one of Dan's student pulpits (see posting below).  I drove over to the synagogue to snap a photo.  It was in a cute neighborhood of older, well-kept homes.  Each one had a sign in front listing the family name and the year of the home's construction.

Congregation B'nai Israel

Marc and I planned on doing a tour of Mammoth Caves north of Bowling Green, KY, which was the reason for the abbreviated driving day.  On the way, there was time for catching sights of great import, namely several of Tennessee's leading pink elephants.

Pink Elephant of Madison, TN

Spotted out of the car window in Madison.
I could hear the service going from the road.

Sweet, Sassy 'n out of business

Drive Thru:  that's really quick cash!

Pink (-ish) Elephant of Cross Plains, TN

Tonight we are in Bowling Green, KY, a town that was clearly home to money over the decades.  But there's a sadness to the stately homes and grand downtown:  the beauty is giving way to shabbiness.  You can see a shifting economy chipping away at the town's wealthy facade.

The theme of the sights along this drive seems to be the inevitability of decay.  A very "Ecclesiastian" message:


"Before the silver cord snaps, and the golden fountain is shattered, and the pitcher breaks at the fountain, and the wheel falls shattered into the pit.
And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God, Who gave it.
'Vanity of vanities,' said Koheleth; 'all is vanity.'"

The middle section

Student pulpit territory.  That's what this swath of the country represents for those of us who went through Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.   Jewish communities in smaller towns throughout the south and midwest have been served for decades by rabbinical students from Cincinnati's Reform seminary.  

By the mid-80's, when I did my tenure at the College, assimilation and economic migration already were taking their toll:  pulpits that had been bi-weekly's had reduced to monthly's and monthly's were, in some cases, only able to bring in a student for the High Holy Days and Pesach.  

When I see a map of this part of the country, the town names that stand out to me are the ones that either I or classmates served as student rabbis.  Friday mornings at the college were when many of us were on planes or in rental cars heading off to places like Jasper, Alabama or Columbus, Mississippi with our handwritten sermons and one-room schoolhouse lesson plans.  

Some of these communities are no longer with us (the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life is basically the hospice program for those communities who can no longer even get a Rosh HaShana and Kol Nidre service together), but when I knew we were passing through Fort Smith, Arkansas, I was curious to see if the synagogue -- served for several years by one of my classmates -- was still around. 

Fort Smith is  a historic town with a number of pre-20th century buildings and homes. At the visitor desk of the historical Fort site I asked, "Do you know where the synagogue is?"

The older woman behind the desk looked at me quietly for a moment and then said seriously, "There's only one."

I laughed.  "Yes, I figured that."

She then said, "I've been there with my friend but it's really hard to find."

"I'm guessing from your accent you're not originally from here."  I observed after hearing a very familiar (and familial) accent.

"No - I'm from New York."

We talked about the Bronx for a few minutes and then the young man helping out behind the desk handed me a mapquest sheet with the directions.  Photo is below:

United Hebrew Congregation of Fort Smith

Not surprisingly to me, there was no signage anywhere in the neighborhood concerning a synagogue although there were many signs pointing to Christian churches of various denominations.  One universal among these Jewish communities in small southern towns is a strong desire to stay well under the radar.  

I, myself, served in Arkansas (Jonesboro) as a tri-weekly during my final year of school.  It was too far off our itinerary for me to make a stop.  I remember them very fondly as an interesting group of characters -- as are most small southern congregations!

Here's a few photos from around Fort Smith:

Fort Smith Public Library

Downtown building

America's Heartland: Southern Edition

In 1850, some 55,000 pioneers, motivated by the promise of greater opportunities,  rolled westward by wagon train.  Their journeys were endlessly long and almost intolerably uncomfortable.  They faced risks, dangers and threats by disease, lawlessness, Indian attacks, harsh weather conditions and insufficient nutrition.  

Things have barely changed as I, in 2012, face cross-country horrors of an aching lower back, bad gas station coffee, limited radio options, and occasional drop-offs in cell phone coverage. It took an extra minute and a half this morning to get the free hotel wi-fi in gear for my laptop.  It's like the pioneer experience all over again!  Life is hell.

Yesterday's photos (you can click on each one to enlarge):

Cadillac Ranch -- along I-40 in Amarillo, TX:

The famed "Leaning Water Tower of Groom" (Texas):

Hotbed of journalistic activity:

Downtown Groom

I got a little lost but finally found the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial - America's Ground Zero before later events usurped the title.  Even if you didn't remember the bombing or the details, it's an immensely powerful site.  On the far side of the reflecting pool are 168 sculptural chairs - one for each person killed in the bombing. Nineteen smaller chairs are for the children.  In my personal experience with memorials to tragic events, I'd rate it number two after Pearl Harbor.

Carved at top of sculpture:  9:01
Note chairs on far side of pool

Downtown Okemah, Oklahoma:

Okemah, OK -- outside the current or former (?) county jail

Speaking of penal matters, I stopped at Walgreens in Muskogee last night for some benedryl.  At the check-out counter I was tempted to buy a periodical called, "Just Busted."  For a buck you can buy a paper filled with recent local mug shots.  Wow!  That's one way to become an Eastern Oklahoma celebrity.


And not that we had the energy or time, but I was interested in whether or not Shabbat services were happening somewhere in Muskogee and found the following article:

Temple Beth Ahaba

Apparently we were just six months too late.  So I said "boreh p'ree ha-gafen" over a glass of white zinfandel at Okie's Steakhouse and had to call it good.

Global warming been berry berry good to me

While filling up the gas tank at one of a string of Reservations through Northern New Mexico, the man on the other side of the pump started up a conversation.
"Do you live around here?"
"No - I'm actually moving from Boise, Idaho to Maryland."
"To Maryland?  What are you doing here?"


Yes, Marc and I decided to spend the first couple of days investing in a trip southward to avoid what might have been dangerous driving conditions through the Colorado Rockies.  We rode through southern Idaho and Utah without encountering one bit of precipitation, making global climate devastation a very convenient truth for the purposes of my travels.


It turns out that we were actually saving ourselves from the mid-west.  According to CNN, it is currently a hotbed of wind storms causing flashing and swirling red graphics to be projected onto a map of the central U.S.  First rule of long-distance driving:  Avoid routes which CNN has projected swirling red graphics onto.


Well -- Marc's already left so I guess I'd better get in the shower and head out on the open road.


See ya.

I wish I could dictate these entries from behind the wheel

The days are long and tiring and it's hard to muster the energy to write once we arrive at our nightly destination.    Marc has us staying at Marriotts (Fairfield Inn/Courtyard) throughout the trip which are very nice, clean and corporate.  They're blending together in my mind so I'm now confused on where I am (wait -- Amarillo, Texas.  I had a burger for dinner.).

I start each day with breakfast and a trip to the fitness room which is followed by hours of driving while munching on leftover odds and ends from my pantry as well as sucking down diet dr. pepper and coffee drinks from various Phillips 66's throughout the Western states.  We actually had a sit-down lunch today in Rio Rancho, NM (A town we selected because of the decade of commercials for the community that flooded the NYC television market during our formative years, causing us both adolescent moments of wanting to move there.).

Thoughts and emotions flow erratically as I drive.  Bruneau Dunes -- why didn't I go back there before I left?  It's been 15 years . . . .  What should I include in my upcoming Judaism and Healing class I'm teaching in Bethesda? . . . . How could I have forgotten to get the cruise control fixed before driving 3000 miles?  Am I a complete idiot or what? . . . . . Hey - on Talk of the Nation he's saying, "Here in D.C. . . . "  That will be me soon! . . . . How could they have stopped teaching cursive in schools?  Kids don't know how to sign their own names?  We're going down the tubes . . . . Kashi's Dark Mocha Almond bars are not as good as they sound. . . . . What am I doing?  What if I never find rabbinic work?  What if my life turns out to be a disaster? . . . . I wish they didn't change the name of the Gear Jammer (Mountain Home) to Pilot Travel Center after it burnt to the ground.  I like saying "Gear Jammer."  . . . . Can I really do this drive without cruise control?  What an idiot. . . . .  and so on. . .  . 

Sudden flashes of grief:

"I'll never use these car radio presets again.  This car will never return to Boise."

"Which podcasts will I listen to on my drive back?  Oh, wait.  I'm not driving back."

PHOTOS:

Farmington, New Mexico

The following were taken in Tucumcari, New Mexico along the old Chicago to Los Angeles Route 66 corridor.  Once a proud 20th century by-way nicknamed "America's Main Street," Rt. 66 now amounts to a very long ghost town.  Officially closed in 1985, it is now a string of decimated gas stations, restaurants and shops.

Our dinner plans foiled by an out-of-business cafe

Adrian, TX

Adrian, TX

Our journey continues tomorrow:  on to Muskogee, Oklahoma!