Thanksgiving

Chesed Shel Emet is the ultimate type of chesed which we can do, epitomized by helping bury someone who has no one else to take care of it. The deceased, we understand, has no wayo to say "thank you" so our action is pure altruism. But why is thanks so important?

The mishna (Avot, 6:6) teaches that one who says something giving credit to its original source brings deliverance to the world. So acknowledging that our words are actually someone else's (intellectual honesty) is vital. Admitting that something was due to someone else is a statement of humility and honesty, and thanking someone is conceding that another person or force is the source of things, that alone we could not have achieved what we can by using the contributions of another.

In fact, the Hebrew word for thanks is related to the word for "admit". Thanking isn't just about showing appreciation, it is about reducing the importance of the self and elevating another. If we do a service for someone and that person cannot acknowledge our role, then it takes more effort for us to put ourselves out there with no promise of ever being raised up by someone else's admission of our utility.

We all want to be validated and we all need to validate. We all want to be acknowledged as useful and we all have to acknowledge. We are limited when on our own, and we have to realize that we are therefore, never really alone. Constant blessings which acknowledge that Hashem is actually the source of what we have acts as a constant reminder of our place in the grand scheme of things.

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side note -- maybe one sits shiva to give OTHERS an opportunity to teach about the deceased, not to tell others about the deceased.

Why we care

Sports commentators try to make us feel invested in the overall sports event which they cover. They do that by telling us stories of sympathetic contestants, bios, backstories and tales of struggles and sacrifices that the athlete, the family and the entire town had to make. We feel what it is like to be in a family in which X sport is a birthright or a completely alien avenue. Our hero is either the stand-out who is doing the impossible or the next part of a dynasty with the weight of history on his or her shoulders.

But what about all the others? A little digging would reveal that every one at the Olympics has a story to tell. Every competitor had it tough, spent the time, lost the childhood. You will never see a thirty-second highlight reel that starts, "Meet Adolph. He grew up a child of privilege and never had to work hard to be better at most everything than everyone else. He qualified for 3 events at this Olympics but chose the High Dive, for which he earned Gold, because, as he said 'it gave me the most time to work on my novel between the times that I had to do that jumpy thing into the pool.' "

Adam-12

This has been the summer of Adam-12. If you don't know, Adam-12 was a wonderful 1/2 hour TV drama about the day-to-day exploits of Officers Malloy and Reed. It ran for somewhere about 7 seasons in the late 60's and early 70's and is fun to watch. The dialogue is minimal and the stories are very parochial, but the window into life when LA wasn't so built up, and seeing what cops are like beyond the bluster is a rare treat. Later shows like Chips and Barney Miller took the private lives of cops and increased those stories' presence in the overall narrative. Adam-12 always fell on the side of minimalist, not swamping us with too much beyond the "see the man" calls and the continuing call that anchored the episode. There were different writers and directors but the show always kept its central focus (by the end of season 6 and into season 7 there were some more socially conscious episodes and a few that strayed from the formula of Malloy and Reed's cruiser).

Then there is the double whammy of season 4, episodes 3 and 4. Let's start with episode 3:

This has to be the best and funniest episode of any show and is really the mark of the heyday of Adam-12. It was directed by Ozzie Nelson. The first scene with Mrs. Pine and the other woman whose name I don't have is perfect. The writing is so quick, while still being deadpan slow. The mix between the drama of the moment and the weirdness of the dialogue is delicious. The episode included madcap comedy and a sped up chase and fight scene. In fact, you could probably create a class on the foundational elements of comedy just using this episode as a primer. I highly recommend it.

Episode 4 is excellent for a completely different reason. There are pursuits, dry remarks and a car's needing to make a K turn in the middle of a chase. The cliches are at once familiar and inverted. It is almost as if the episode is establishing the template for all similar scenarious but at the same time, being self aware and self parody. The events develop in a way so predictable as to be unpredictable. This is no episode for the jaded and cynical TV watcher but for someone who wants to see something go by the numbers and do nothing more even as you sit on the edge of your seat and expect different. It is jarringly unjarring. Also strongly recommend.

Being a Fan

The thing about being a fan of a team is that you make friends and enemies quickly and automatically. I watched a free game of the day on MLB network, it was Milwaukee at St. Louis. I could not have less interest in a game but I watched it because baseball so shush. The Cards were up 3 to 0 and I still couldn't work up the interest to care. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw a score for a game which has only the tiniest impact on the Mets, the collection of amateurs and ne'er-do-wells which I live and die by. Washington was beating Colorado, 8-3. I knew nothing about the game or the teams except that Washington is in the NL East so I want them to lose.

I saw the score and as knee jerk reaction I yelled, "F-- you, Colorado."

Vatican Mark II

A very long time ago (look at the first blog on this platform which has all the old blogs, and scroll down it looking for the word "Vatican"), I wrote a short piece about my plans to move to Vatican city and start a kosher Chinese place, and an Olympic team. 

I have been working on the idea and have some ideas:

I will also start Kosher bakery in the vatican and call it Holy C is for Cookie. 

I will open a Kosher Rita's selling Ice Popes. 

And in case you were wondering, he hashgacha will be the Cross Country K

Revisiting the past

There are some people in our lives whom we only really know in association with their advanced age. Either we first met them or were first noticed or were influenced by them when the person was already older. Because of time and circumstance, we never knew the person or people in their youth, never in their glory, but only in their advanced years. Think of Ray Kinsella's description of his interaction with his father: "I only saw him later, when he was worn down by life."

What technology has done is an amazing miracle. It has allowed us a window into the past, letting us see the images, the sites and even the sounds of those heroes. Stumbling on a recorded voice or a moving image of them in their prime (as the miracle in Iowa isn't something on which any of us can rely) is a refreshing vision -- to be able to gaze into the past. And through this technology, I was privileged to share in my own mini-miracle, and see and hear those whom I only knew in their dotage when they were youthful and vibrant, their lives still ahead of them. I could better understand how they became the people whose tutelage turned out to be so formative to me in my life.

So thank you, MeTV, for showing me Lorne Greene on Wagon Train.

My dinner with God

Yes, I talk to God. No, I don't mean in prayer (though, yes, in prayer, but also). I mean, I have a voice in my head and we chat and that voice represents the moral and good (call it the positive inclination) and that voice calls me out when I deserve it and explains things to me so I can understand why the world is what it is. I will recount the gist of my conversation from last evening and I apologize that the language descends into the archaic but at the time, it seemed like a fun exercise.

Biting yourself in the exact same spot (which had not quite healed from repeated earlier bites) on the inside of your lip not twice but three times during one meal is so excruciatingly painful that I finally and desperately turned to my Tormentor and asked "why": "Oh Why?" I asked, "Not why did I deserve this punishment, for I know those simple answers, but why of all the pains You could have chosen, did you select this particular, precise pan (and oh yea, persistently). Replied He, "What wouldst thou have fates select in its place? What torment could you equate with what I would lose in effect were I to abandon the hole in the lip? What would replace it so that I might leave our transaction, my message intact -- you improved by pain and I, content that I have taught the lesson in which we were engaged?"

So arrested I by this that there I sat and after time, I said, "Dunno man, like maybe a drunken broken left wrist?"