Things are tense round here right now. California is slashing its education budget and Tom’s a teacher… so, we’re waiting to hear if his school district is going to lay him (and bunch of other teachers) off to try and meet their $5 million short-fall.

Neither one of us has made more than two years into a job before being laid off or having such a horrible situation that we couldn’t stay on any longer. And Tom’s a math & science teacher – that’s supposed to be stable work, y’know? And we moved to an area that desperately needed teachers. We made “good choices.”

“Good choices” don’t mean shit if the world is completely fucked.

I’m watching “Married with Children” (I don’t have cable & I’m sick) and they made a joke about men missing the toilet when they pee.

Now, I’ve lived with boys & men my whole life and I’ve never had pee on the toilet seat or pee on the floor.

But I’ve heard other women make this comment about sons and husbands, and when I babysat, at least two of the boys I took care of had been toilet trained to sit down because their moms swore that they were sick of cleaning up after man-pee.

Tom and I have talked about it and he doesn’t get it either.

First of all, if these guys are peeing all over everything, why aren’t THEY cleaning up after themselves?

Second of all, maybe they can’t hit the toilet because they weren’t potty traied to pee standing up. Good habits start early.

I’m just saying.

I am a very intolerant person.

Things I will not tolerate:
- Sexism
- Homophobia/Transphobia
- Racism
- Bigotry
- Bigamy
- Social Conservatives
- Meritocracy
- Theocracy
- Plutocracy
- Oligarchy
- Monarchy
- Wal*Mart
- Missionaries

Sorry, but I’m just tired of the kinds of people that subscribe to these ideas telling me (and everyone else I know) that we have to be just like them. Go fuck yourselves. I disagree. I am not changing my mind and I don’t have to listen to you, but should you insist on talking at me about these things as positives or the way things should be, I will call you on it – I will call you a racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic un-American asshole, ask you to leave, and then I will turn up The Clash really loud.

When the Rabbi’s assistant is too busy, or out of town, or lazy, or whatever, I have to send out the Yahrzeit notices. A Yahrzeit is the anniversary date of someone’s death. Traditionally, you light a candle on someone’s yahrzeit, but the most important thing is to say the Mourner’s Kaddish, which is a special prayer (one of my favorite episodes of Northern Exposure focuses on Fleischman getting a Minyan together to say the Kaddish) for the deceased. The Yahrzeit notice is a courtesy that the Temple does for members, or former members who bought a plaque, that reminds mourners of upcoming Yahrzeits…

I explain this because in November, I was doing Yahrzeit notices every week because the Rabbi’s assistant went to Israel for a month and left me holding the bag. Of all the things that we do here for members, I would say that these notices are in the top 3.

During that same period, I finally saw the film adaptation of the book Everything Is Illuminated. It is a very good movie. Here is the trailer:

From Wikipedia:

The writing and structure received critical acclaim for the manner in which it switches between two story arcs: (1) fragments of Foer-the-character’s novel-in-progress, where he tells in highly literary English a quasi-magical story about the citizens of Trachimbrod; and (2) a straightforward narrative of searching for Trachimbrod (which is an invented name for the real village Trochenbrod), as told by Alex in broken English. They are tied together by letters sent from Alex to Foer and attached to Alex’s version. Alex’s narrative is most notable for its broken English, which sounds as if he learned English via thesaurus without ever hearing it spoken. Throughout his narrative, he makes frequent use of improper synonyms, such as using the word rigid to mean “difficult”.

At the time I had a notion of writing an article about How Something Is Written vs. Its Topic and how this book and this film clearly succeed in that way. But really, it just got me to thinking about my Jews and how, even though they have White Privilege in the US, they are still Jews. Their inner lives and outer rituals are formed so differently and are based on such different ideas than those that white, non-Jews (the Holocaust, Israel, Antisemitism, the threat of Islam, and the Jewish diaspora are pretty much all anyone at the synagogue talks about, for example), that even though I have so much in common with them, I am never mistaken for Jewish.

This does parallel the story in Everything is Illuminated in some ways, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone – needless to say, I will always be an outsider.

I am currently reading Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policmen’s Union, and it is so amazing that I can hardly stand it. Don’t read the reviews, just know this: It’s a “what-if” – Israel fails in its early days, a bunch of Jews settle in Sitka, there’s tension with the native people, and it’s a hard-boiled detective story peppered with Yiddish and Hebrew.

The summer I turned 19, I had the opportunity to work at a gas station on the Colville Indian Reservation near my hometown. I was plunged into “Life on the Rez” and lucky for me, I quickly made some friendly acquaintances (it also helped that my mom worked with some very well-respected Native ladies). I can’t really explain it very well but that outsider experience really formed my perspective and understanding of other cultures (and I have strong opinions about melding cultures and “belonging” that I think fall outside the norm because if it). But I do think it has caused me to seek out groups of people with whom I will never really be a part of, but I can be a “friendly” with, but not in some Romanticized way. I’m far too pragmatic – it just makes my world bigger.

And so, I think that’s really why I’m still working here. And I think it says something about Native and Jewish cultures that they are open to me becoming a “friendly.” And maybe I should have gone into anthropology.

Protests are happening all over the US at your City Hall on Saturday, November 15th at 10:30am PST/1:30pm EST.

Click here to find out how you can participate.