The Real Charlie

The Death Cat

I don't even know what category to put this into.

The New England Journal of Medicine has an article (summarized in the Boston Globe here, though I urge you to get your hands on the NEJM article if you can swing it) about a cat who lives on the advanced dementia unit of a nursing home and who uncannily gravitates to residents in their last hours of life, snuggling and purring. It is so uncanny that if the staff see the cat on someone's bed they call their family. Very weird, but very cool.

And, if you know and love cats as I do, totally unsurprising. They are smart little creatures. Sensitive, too, in their strange way.

A Member of Something, But Not A Tribe

I have read this article (free registration or a trip to the library required) twice and I am not quite sure what to make of it. Clearly Professor Feldman wants to belong and be loved by his alma mater (an institution that I know well, warts and all, from my years in Boston and my work in the Jewish world around here). He wants its endorsement of him and his choices. He is also very mad, and feels the need to air some dirty laundry. I can assure Professor Feldman that my own very secular private high school had similarly forced discussions of teen sexuality, similar interventions on the part of administration into the outside lives of students, similar suggestions that particular female students dress or act differently. There is something very Freudian about his whole essay -  he wants daddy to love him unconditionally , but he hates daddy and has to hurl insults at him because daddy doesn't love him unconditionally.

But he does strike a nerve with me on a certain element in Jewish life and thought, that being particularism - the idea that Jews are different and special, as our prayers say "chosen from amongst all people," given " a fate very different from their's," and this eventually and sadly turns, for so many Jews, into a "we are better and they are worse" concept that is often expressed in the form of "member of the tribe" silliness and sometimes takes on the far more ugly tones of Baruch Goldstein and others. Not long ago I actually dropped out of a Jewish adult ed class because I was hearing so much of this petty particularism, shielded behind layers of faux anxiety about an inflated sense of vulnerability to anti-semitism, that I wanted to throttle someone or vomit.

Now I understand and believe that we Jews are different, chosen and special. If I thought that other faiths were better, I guess I'd be looking into converting. But I don't believe that each individual Jews is better than each individual gentile. To believe that, and to say it, is to be clannish, tribal and primitive in an ugly and crude way, a way I associate with, well, anti-semites. I am a member of my temple, and I am a proud member of the Jewish people, but I am a member of no tribe.

Professor Feldman's article was published, not coincidentally I suspect, two days before Tisha B'Av, the day of mourning in Jewish life for the destruction of the temple and for so many other tragedies. It is taught that one of the causes of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, and the years of exile that followed, was baseless hatred, especially of fellow Jews. Many observant Jews spend the afternoon of Tisha B'Av studying texts about gossip, snooping and degrading other people. This Tisha B'Av I'll be thinking about Professor Feldman's essay.

Delayed Blogging = Death

My apologies for my silence the past few days. My mother-in-law was in town (no comment), camped out in the office room, which put the computering machine off limits in the evening. Also, Roxanne has quit her afternoon nap thus requiring full time daddy or mommy attention during a previously productive time for both of us (crafting, reading, blogging, napping). Not that parenting isn't productive and all.

Anyway,  I've broken my silence to bring you death. On Friday morning I learned that Mr. Butch, a famous neighborhood character and vagrant in Boston for over twenty years, had died in a Vespa accident. I met this character a few times early in my Boston days, and I have to join in the general consensus that he was a good guy, definitely a cut above some of the street people I knew in Harvard Square (his hangout was in Allston). He was a Boston institution, and it is sad to think that he is gone.

Later that day I visited A., someone I've worked with a little bit since I came to my current job. I knew he was ill, but I had been waved away by nurses or his family during my previous visits. This time I was ushered in, to my dismay. A. was yellow with jaundice, all skin and bones, breathing labored, rattling breaths. He didn't see me or respond to my brief and useless wish that he "hang in there." When I saw him last he was a skinny, chipper old guy, chatting about golf and hitting on one of my colleagues who is about forty years his junior. If he survives long I'll be shocked.

It really rattled me. I go to a lot of funerals, and I am fairly snarky about it (I rate the eulogies, kvetch about the weather and the rabbis, and critique the coffins). The artifice of modern American Jewish funerary custom and commerce as well as the "laws of Moses and Israel" give me a certain distance from the dead, from the death, broken only by the occasional truly distraught mourner (most of my funerals are for very, very old people, whose families said goodbye a long time ago, or who left few if any survivors at all). Seeing a man I know actually dying was a whole different thing.

I got home in the evening and I was grousing to Abby about Mr. Butch and A., and the feeling of mortality that this sort of stuff brings on, and blah blah blah. Her response was, "yeah, but what about this," pointing at Stella, so soft and perfect and tiny, splashing around with her little rubber ducks in the tub. I tell you, it snapped me out of it in a heartbeat. Thanks, Ab.

Save me from the wee turtles!

Classic MMWR article this week. It combines a dangerous disease, an unusual vector, illegality and good old fashioned hectoring. The disease? Salmonellosis. The vector? Small pet turtles. Illegality? You're not supposed to sell small turtles as pets, but they are easily purchased at flea markets, etc. Hectoring? Dig in.

The best part about the article is that I get to quote Groundskeeper Willie.

The Glorious Fourth

A beautiful Fourth of July (at least until around 4:30 this afternoon when it got all drizzly) here in the Boston area. We enjoyed the Needham parade this morning. It is very small town, very friendly and a short drive away. Last year it was very hot, Stella was an infant and Roxanne was a bit overwhelmed by the noise and the crowds. Stella did well this year, mostly playing with some gravel in the gutter (ah, the life of a second child) and only getting fussy as we stayed out deep into her nap time. Roxanne had a ball -  she liked the clowns, the bagpipers, the "big bell" on one float (of course), the soldiers, the flags and the street sweeper that had trouble cleaning up the leavings of a passing horse. Nothing entertains a toddler more than large animal feces and related problems. Actually, most of the adults were amused by the street sweeper and the pooping horse as well. This adult, at least.

I hope you all enjoyed the 4th as well.