Category: Places

Caroling

Michele, my voice teacher and friend, sent out an invitation to some caroling in her neighborhood. Even though she lives way over in north Berkeley, I decided to go — I didn’t know anyone who was going to go caroling near where we live, and I wasn’t up to organizing caroling on my own.

Close to twenty people gathered in Michele’s living room yesterday evening. We introduced ourselves, and ran through two carols where we thought we might sing some harmony — “Silent Night” and “Deck the Hall.” Fortunately there was another bass there who helped me through “Deck the Hall,” and I was able to help him once or twice in “Silent Night” — it’s always easier to sing your part when there’s someone else singing with you.

We headed out into Michele’s neighborhood. Michele said we would only sing at houses where we could see Christmas decorations. There were half a dozen children with us, and they ran ahead to scope out likely houses. We’d gather on the sidewalk in front of the house, Michele would quietly tell us which carol — “‘Frosty the Snowman,’ page 3 of the packet!” — the kids would ring the doorbell, and as soon as someone showed up, we’d sing.

Some people listened to us while standing indoors; in one case because there were dogs that desperately wanted to get out; in other cases maybe because it’s a little weird to have a score of people standing in front of your house singing. Other people came out and listened. Reactions ranged from politely tolerant to very enthusiastic. One woman, who had a foreign accent (maybe Middle Eastern?), was really very touched by the singing; we sang her another song.

After an hour, we were getting cold, and some of the younger kids were getting a little bit tired. So we all said “Good night!” and “Merry Christmas!” and dispersed into the night; the younger kids probably heading for bed. As for me, I had some errands to run in downtown Berkeley; but I found myself humming Christmas carols all the way home.

Pushkes and the UUSC

Amy, the senior minister at our church, had to tell me what a pushke is. “Pushke” is a Yiddish word for a little box that you keep in your house into which you can place money that is to be donated to charity. I didn’t grow up Jewish, and we just called them money boxes; but I think pushke is a much better word.

Up until this year, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee used to send out little boxes to support their Guest at Your Table program. Every year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, families would come to Sunday services, pick up their Guest at Your Table box — their Guest at Your Table pushke, if you will — and bring it home to put on their kitchen table. Then during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas or New Year’s Day, kids were supposed to put a little money in the box each day. Towards the end of December, families would count up the money they had deposited in the box and the grown-ups would add something to round it up to the nearest ten or twenty dollar mark. On the Sunday before Christmas, all the families would bring their pushkes full of money to be collected at the service, and the congregation would send it all to the UUSC.

This year, the UUSC decided it wasn’t going to send out Guest at Your Table boxes any more. I can understand why they made this decision. Each of those boxes must cost the UUSC a dollar or so; better to spend money on helping people, rather than on Guest at Your Table boxes.

However, I found an interesting informational paper written by Jennifer Noparstak, a graduate student of social work at the University of Michigan. She writes that in the Jewish tradition, pushkes help teach young people about giving and philanthropy. Pushkes teach the importance of anonymous donations: “Anonymous donation maintains a dignified relationship between those who are giving and those who are receiving aid.” Pushkes teach the importance of community in giving: “[The pushke] is also important because it signifies a community effort to aid people who need it and may not be able to ask for it directly. The pushke serves as a means for each member of a household to contribute, both children and adults alike, fostering the importance of giving among all age groups.” And, perhaps most importantly, pushkes cultivate the habit of charitable giving: ” It is considered more credible to develop a habit of giving regularly rather than giving large sums infrequently.”

Here in our congregation, we decided that even though the UUSC isn’t going to make Guest at Your Table boxes any more, it was important for us to provide Guest at Your Table pushkes for our families. Our Guest at Your Table Coordinator, Beth Nord, found plain white gift boxes that are the same size as the old Guest at Your Table boxes (look for 4x4x4″ gift boxes, sometimes sold as gift boxes for coffee mugs; Beth bought ours at Michaels, an arts-and-crafts chain store). We printed out images from the UUSC, sized so they would fit onto the sides of the pushkes — like this:

Pushke

You cut out the four pictures, take one of the plain white gift boxes, glue one picture to each of the four sides, cut a slot in the top for money, and there you have it — your very own Guest at Your Table pushke. Here’s one in the process of being made:

BlogNov2413

This morning during the service, Amy explained where the Guest at Your Table money goes to, while I showed how to make a pushke. After each service, kids came with great enthusiasm to pick up boxes and pictures to take home so they could make their own pushkes. This is the most enthusiasm I’ve ever seen for the Guest at Your Table program!

So the UUSC gets to save money, our kids are more enthusiastic about the Guest at Your Table program, and we continue to provide pushkes to help teach kids about giving anonymously, giving communally, and getting in the habit of giving a little bit every day to charity.

Snow and dialect

On the last morning of my trip back east, it started snowing. I hadn’t seen snow falling for more than four years, not since we moved to the San Francisco Bay area. I got that familiar, mesmerized, contemplative feeling that you get when you watch snow falling; and almost immediately the worry kicked in: will this affect driving? will my flight be delayed? are my shoes waterproofed? Fortunately the snow stopped after about ten minutes, leaving no accumulation: I got the pleasure of seeing it without all the discomfort that goes along with snow.

While I was in the Boston area, it was interesting to again speak in what the linguists call Eastern New England dialect — popularly known as a “Boston accent,” though really there are several Boston accents which are a subset of Eastern New England dialect, and actually my accent is west of Boston, with a does of New Bedford from my time living there. Whatever my accent, or the accent of the natives I talked with, I found it’s much easier for me to communicate when speaking Eastern New England dialect, and I realized I always feel there’s always something missing when I have to speak American Standard English, that bastard dialect of television and movies that lacks subtlety and emotional nuance.

REA 2013 conference: Project Interfaith & RavelUnravel

During this afternoon’s breakout sessions, I went to a workshop led by Beth Katz, founder and executive director of Project Interfaith, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the growth of understanding and respect between people of different religious traditions.

In the workshop, Beth Katz introduced us to RavelUnravel, Project Interfaith’s online video project. This project has people of many different faiths responding to three basic questions: (1) What is your religious or spiritual identity? (2) What is a stereotype that impacts you based on your religious or spiritual identity? (3) How welcoming do you find our community [i.e., the place in which you live] to be? There are close to a thousand videos on their Web site, and Katz showed us this video as an example:

Project Interfaith has developed curriculum guides to go with the online videos, and during the workshop Katz asked us to review sections of the curriculum guide for college students.

It’s an impressive and well-designed curriculum, and some of the other workshop participants who work in academia were able to give some intelligent feedback. The most I was able to say was that I don’t think the curriculum would work particularly well in my setting, that is, in a local congregation. Nevertheless, I am excited by Project Interfaith’s online video resources, and am thinking these videos could be a resource for our congregation’s “Neighboring Faiths” curriculum.

Death, and violence in the skies

Like me, Howard, the sexton at church, keeps a pair of inexpensive binoculars at work. We trade stories of the birds we see at the church.

This morning, Howard said, he was walking out towards the dumpsters when he saw what looked like a pair of falcons flying over the parking lot. One of the birds was carrying something big in its bill, and the other bird was diving at the first bird. There were also some crows flying around, and attacking the raptors every now and then.

Howard saw the first raptor drop something as it flew over the parking lot; none of the other birds seemed to notice. Howard took me over to where it landed, right next to someone’s minivan: a long naked tail, with bits of skin and tendon still attached to the root end. The fur was grayish-white; it could have been a rat, or a small opossum. After the first bird had dropped the tail, Howard said that it and its followers flew off somewhere else.

(What kind of raptor was it? Howard couldn’t get his binoculars in time to be sure. But at about this time in past years, I have seen Cooper’s Hawks hunting over and around the church grounds; and Cooper’s Hawks are known for being skillful fliers.)

Can’t watch

Now that the Red Sox are in the World Series, I can’t follow them.

No, no, you don’t understand. I first began following the Sox in 1967, during the Year of the Impossible Dream. They lost the Series. I followed them through the 1975 Series. They lost. In 1986, I watched the Series with my then-housemates. The Sox lost again. I followed them through the 2003 AL playoffs. They lost.

In 2004, when they made it into the Series again, I didn’t watch any of the World Series games on TV, nor did I read any coverage in the sports pages. They won. I followed them in 2005. They lost in the first round of the playoffs. I didn’t follow them in 2007, and they won the Series.

I’ve learned my lesson. If I want the Sox to win, I can’t follow them. So don’t talk to me about the Series, OK? I don’t want to know.

Autumnal battle

The window of my office looks out on a patch of lawn about thirty by fifty feet. In the middle of the lawn there’s a live oak tree. This oak tree appears to have produced a bumper crop of acorns this year. This afternoon, I counted at least six Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) on the grass, the surrounding sidewalks, or in the tree; three of them were the black color morph of S. carolinensis.

The squirrels have been digging furiously in the lawn, and in a few places have completely dug up all the grass, leaving a network of small holes about two inches across and one inch deep. Every so often, one squirrel will get too close to another one, which can lead to vocal squabbling and one squirrel chasing another. I also saw at least three American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), who would land on the grass periodically and peck at the ground where the squirrels had been digging. Sometimes a squirrel would run at a crow; and the crow, even though it was somewhat larger than the squirrel, would flap its wings a couple of times and fly out of the way.

Amy and I were watching the squirrels a couple of days ago. “If they would only get organized,” said Amy, “they could run all us humans out of here and take over.” Of course she was exaggerating, but they are aggressive. They have come right into my office while I’ve been sitting at my desk with the door open, looking for food. It’s worth noting that since Eastern Gray Squirrels have been introduced to the Bay area, the native Western Gray Squirrel (Sciurus griseus) has essentially be extirpated from the region.

I went over to look at the damage the squirrels had done to the lawn. There is nothing in the holes they have dug. The ground is littered with the outer husks of acorns; some of the husks look green and new, some look brown and old. There are plenty of new acorns on the ground. I’m not sure why they are digging so furiously this year; this is not something they have done in past years. Maybe there’s a good reason behind it, or maybe they’re just — well, maybe they’re nuts.

BlogOct1713

Each in his own tongue

William Herbert Carruth was a poet, a professor of literature and writing at Stanford where he taught John Steinbeck (more about Steinbeck in a moment), and a member of the old Palo Alto Unitarian Church. One of his signature poems strikes me as quite characteristic of early twentieth century west coast Unitarianism:

Each in His Own Tongue

A fire-mist and a planet,
   A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
   And caves where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty
   And a face turned from the clod,—
Some call it Evolution,
   And others call it God. Continue reading “Each in his own tongue”

Persimmon

The first time I visited California was in October, 1987. Everything about California was mind-blowing to a young guy like me who had, although I had been to Europe, had never been further west than Washington, D.C. It was my first experience of the Pacific Rim: the landscape of the Rim of Fire, the cultural encounter between east Asia and North America, the climate; even the sight of the sun setting in the Pacific Ocean was mind-blowing, for though I could have seen that sight from western Europe, watching the sun set into the endless Pacific was a very different experience than watching the sun set into the gray North Atlantic.

I stayed for a few days with my cousin Nancy in Oakland. She was the ideal host. She drove me up to Grizzly Peaks where I looked down with amazement on the city of Berkeley a thousand feet below me, and the bridges in San Francisco Bay beyond the city; I could not have imagined then that sixteen years later, that road would be part of my daily commute to work. She took me out to Cliff House to watch the sun set in the Pacific; she took me into Chinatown and Japantown; and she introduced me to locally-grown persimmons (Diospyros kaki).

Nancy had a few persimmons ripening in her kitchen. She found one that was ripe, cut it open, and showed me how you use a spoon to eat it. The combination of the jelly-like texture, the flavor, and the bright orange color were unlike any food I had ever eaten before. After I got back to Massachusetts, I found persimmons in the supermarket, but they never tasted as good as the ones I had eaten in California; they just weren’t worth buying.

Now here I am, living in California, and when I saw a sign in the local supermarket for “Locally Grown Persimmons” of course I bought some. I put them on the kitchen counter next to some late tomatoes that I had just picked in our garden. Nancy tells me that the Chinese word for tomato is xihongshi, meaning “western red persimmon,” and the two fruits do look remarkably alike from a certain angle (the tomato is the smaller one on the left):

BlogOct1013b

The problem with eating persimmons is that if you eat them before they are fully ripe, the high level of tannins will make your mouth feel furry on the inside. You can also get so-called fuyu persimmons, funny stubby little things that contain less tannin in them so you can eat them when they’re not quite ripe. If you’re impatient, as Carol is, perhaps it’s best to eat fuyu persimmons. I’m impatient, and I rarely wait quite long enough before I eat a persimmon; but I’ve come to appreciate the light astringency of a not-entirely ripe persimmon, and to enjoy the faint furry feeling that lingers in your mouth after you’ve eaten one.

The three persimmons I bought have been sitting on the kitchen counter for two whole days now, tempting me. I kept feeling them gently: were they soft all the way down to the stem? Did they feel as though they would collapse in my hand if I picked them up? Finally I decided that one of them was ripe enough to eat. I cut off the end, and scooped out some of the fruit:

BlogOct1013a

Oh, it was good! — I couldn’t believe that I had actually waited long enough for my first persimmon of the season to ripen fully! I ate the whole thing in about five seconds. And then, sure enough, I started to feel that faint furry sensation on the inside of my mouth. It was a very faint sensation, and not unpleasant, but it was enough to remind me that once again I had been too impatient.

Bitter melon

One sunday morning, Dora came up to me with something in her hand. “You said you like bitter food, right?” she said.

“I love bitter things,” I said.

“Then you should try this,” she said, holding out a small, wrinkled green vegetable. “It’s called bitter melon.”

She told me how to prepare it: slice it open, scoop the seeds and pulp out, slice it up and stir-fry it, maybe mixing it with some other vegetables and perhaps some kind of meat, like sausages. Dora comes from a Chinese family, but bitter melon is not just Chinese; when Hong, who is Vietnamese, saw the bitter melon, her eyes lit up, and it turns out she loves it, too — sauteed with garlic, in her case. Both of them agreed that not everyone likes bitter melon.

You’d think a New England Yankee like me, raised on mild and restrained flavors, would not care for bitter melon. But I love it. It’s not an extreme taste; I think of it as being mildly bitter, maybe about as bitter as strong turnips. I haven’t been able to find it in any supermarkets, but fortunately there is one farmer at the San Mateo farmer’s market who carries both the white and green varieties.

Bitter melon