Tales from the Shark Tank

It’s Erev Rosh Hashonah.  This is the season when Jews are obligated to examine their behavior and their relationships to both their fellow human beings and to the Divine.  Among other things, we look for ways to accomplish tikun olam, the healing of the world that we are commanded to undertake.  We are, indeed, “our brother’s keepers”.

I already had that sort of self-examination in mind when I started reading my usual list of blogs this afternoon.  In them, I found discussions of a thing that evidently happened last Friday.  Someone sprayed a chemical irritant into the room being used to care for the youngest congregants in a house of worship.  A number people were treated for chemical irritation to skin, eyes and throats; some of the children needed oxygen because they’d gotten a lung full of the stuff and were so small that it sent them into shock.  Several mothers and children were taken to the hospital for emergency treatment.  Thankfully, no one was so seriously hurt they had to stay, but the congregants were badly frightened, and with good cause.

It clearly fits any reasonable definition of an act of terror.  It is pure luck that no permanent physical harm was done.  It was totally reprehensible.  Nothing exucses a random attack on a house of worship.  Nothing excuses an attack on innocents, and no victims are more innocent than babies.  But this didn’t happen in Pakistan or Iraq.  It happened at a mosque in Dayton, Ohio, in the middle of United States.

Now, I have heard how “they” all hate “us”, where “they” are Muslims.  I have heard that it is “they” who perpetrate the violence.  I have had friends hurt in cross-border raids in Israel.  But my own observation is that fanatics of any and every stripe perpetrate violence, that it accomplishes nothing save to breed fear and vengeance and further violence, and that when “they” are babies and their mothers, nothing can justify it.  I don’t care who is doing what to whom in Afghanistan, or Kurdistan, or Iran or Iraq.  Babies in child care to allow their mothers to worship in peace here, in this country that is supposed to carry the banner for religious freedom – especially here – should be safe.

I’ve studied religiously-prompted violence, both in the course of learning my own religious history and in college.  It leaves marks not only on those present, but marks on cultures that can last for generations or even millenia.  We still celebrate the failure of a plan for destruction that occurred 2600 years ago.  (Purim, which has been summarized as “they tried to kill us, it failed, let’s eat.)  Kristalnacht did not only mark Jewish culture and memory; it has marked German culture.  This isn’t on anything close to the same scale.  It isn’t institutionalized, is not government sponsored or sanctioned.  But it’s still an act of hate, carried out against those who could not possibly have done harm.  It’s still an act of terrorism, the sort of thing we see reported as occurring in places like Islamabad or Belgrade.

Not here.  Not in America.  We’re better than that.  Except it did, and we’re not.  I am ashamed for my country, for a government that has intentionally fed people’s fear and xenophobia so that someone thought it made sense to attack children.  And I’m thinking that what we need now is to learn to think of those little ones not as “their children”, somehow distinct from “our children” – but of all of them as everyone’s children.

I was talking to a friend the other day, and mentioned that I’d made myself a banana cake.  I wanted something with at least some nutritionally redeeming features that would indulge my sweet tooth.  Knowing me very well, she asked if it was from a recipe, or if I’d made it up.  “No, this one’s not mine; I pulled it off the ‘net” I told her.  “I just changed a couple of things.  I cut the amount of butter and sugar, used brown sugar instead of white, added an egg, put in some wheat flour….” and then, hearing what I was saying, ran down.  “I guess it is mine” I concluded.  I changed over half the ingredients as to amount, type or both, added several, and changed the mixing technique.  I doubt the person who originally posted it would recognize their cake in mine.  So….

BANANA OATMEAL SNACK CAKE

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla powder (or 2 tsp extract)
• 1/2 tsp orange extract
• 1/2 tsp ginger or cinnamon
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup white wheat flour (regular whole wheat will work, but has a stronger flavor)
• 3/4 cup oatmeal or mixed grain cereal
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 over-ripe medium bananas, mashed
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup extra dark chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup golden raisins

Preheat oven to 375 F.  Spray a 10″ round cake pan with non-stick spray, and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar.  Add flavorings and eggs and beat well.  Combine flours, oatmeal, baking powder and baking soda.  Combine mashed bananas and buttermilk.  Add dry ingredients alternately with milk/ banana mixture, ending with flour.  Stir in chocolate chips and raisins.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until it passes the classic toothpick test.

Enjoy!

When I was a kid, I kind of had it in my head that each region of the country was prone to its own form of natural disasters.  The west had lightning-set wildfires, California had earthquakes, New England got Nor’easters, the Atlantic and Gulf coasts were vulnerable to hurricanes, and the plains states had tornados. I learned, over time, that those divisions weren’t set in stone, and that disasters could happen in places they did not usually; that southern Indiana could have a wildfire in a drought year, for example, or that tornadoes could and did happen in the mountain states.

The concept that northwest Indiana could be vulnerable to hurricane-flooding never crossed my mind, though.  It’s just about 1200 miles from here to Galveston, where Ike first came ashore.  And yet the reality is that the usually 3 minute, 1 mile drive from home to my son’s school takes about 10 minutes and nearly 5 miles, because while I can get to the intersection a quarter mile from home, there is about 700 feet of lake across what is usually the road between the stop sign and the house.  It’s not deep, no more than a foot, but that’s quite enough to drown a car’s engine.  School was closed the day after Ike came through, because half the district, including our house, wasn’t accessible to the buses.

I understand the mechanics of floods; it’s a part of the thunder-storm vulnerability of this region.  But the concept of a storm so enormous that it could fling flooding rains like a child’s pin-wheel across a thousand miles is just beyond my ability to grasp other than theoretically, even as I look out the window at the expansion of our marsh that still blocks our way to the east.

A little over a month ago, I gave my mom a pair of cats, one a calico and the other a tortie.  The calico is working out beautifully, but the tortie is a bit too maniacal for Mom.  (I’m not sure if it’s tortie-crazies or pure cattitude.)  Now she’s asked me if I can please either find her a new home or return her to the shelter whence she came.

So I am seeking a new home for a tiny (7 pound) tortoiseshell lady.  She’s about 16 months old, has had one litter of kittens and has since been spayed, has all her shots good through next August, and is generally a very healthy little cat.  Her one physiological quirk is that she seems to be allergic to fish.  Give her chicken-based food and she’s fine, though, and mom has found it no bother.

It would obviously be easier if the new home were somewhere in central Indiana, but I’ll work with whatever I need to.

I’m making some beaded jewelry, bookmarks, and assorted sundry other pretties for our temple’s gift shop, so today, in search of appropriate charms, I betook myself to one of the semi-local big-chain craft/ hobby stores.  It’s a bit of a drive, but no one local has anything resembling a decent selection of charms and pendants.  This emporium has an entire wall of charms, so that is where I went.

There was nothing.  Not one single charm that I could use or even improvise from.  Rows and rows, literally, of crosses in different designs and styles and metals, but not so much as a basic six-pointed star.  I even saw a couple of goddess-charms, though the buyers probably thought of them as fantasy or “New Age” or Art Nouveau.  You’d think, looking at that display, that no one had ever heard of anything other than Christianity.

I walked out, thoroughly irritated.  On my way from the very back of the store, though, I paid closer attention to things I’d kind of ignored on the way in.  There were candies by the cash regsiters, as is common, but these little Altoid-type tins were labelled “Scripture Mints”.  The label identified them as fish shaped mints, to “spread the word one piece at a time”.  Then there was the sign with the hours.  Not content merely to give the information, it went through the week, then said, in larger, bolder type than the rest of the sign “Closed Sundays to allow our employees time for family and worship.”

Putting their faith in their business is their privilege, though I could wish they were a little less in my face about it.  But to completely ignore other elements of the culture bothers me considerably more.  It feels as though in declining to make the symbols available, they are trying to deny the existence of those for whom the symbols are important.  I suppose I should have expected that anyone whose corporate ethos went to the extent of selling “Craft Chain brand Scripture Mints” and announcing that they were closed on Sunday in a way that showed how religious they are would not make the symbols of other religions available.  I should have, but I didn’t.  Next time I’ll know better.  And next time, I think I’ll shop online.

The local synagogue hosted the annual cookout/ picnic/ call it what you will for the Northwest Indiana Jewish Federation today.  The organizers sent out a request for donations of things to use as prizes for kid’s games, snacks, desserts, and so forth.  One of the things I’ve been known to do is make stretchy bracelets out of beads I’m not likely to use for any major project: “orphan” beads, inadvertently purchased cheapies, non-color-fast Chinese seed beads and the like.  I make some of them very small, so that if a mom gets something for herself, I can let her choose a bracelet as a bonus for a small daughter.  I have a bag of about a dozen of them, so I dropped it in my pocket and handed it to the game coordinator.

She pronounced them beautiful, then gave them back to me, saying they were “too nice”.  I told her what sort of materials went into them, and she shook her head.  They didn’t look cheap; they were “too pretty”, and she was concerned that there would be bad feelings if there was a perception that some kids had gotten nicer prizes than others.

So I took them home with me, save for one I gave to a little girl who was sitting at the same table with us, distressed because her efforts to win a prize had been unsuccessful.  Given her mother’s reaction, I think I’ll be making more.  I can put them in a basket in the gift shop, with a price tag that the kids in Hebrew School can afford.

But y’know?  I really don’t understand how a thing can be “too pretty”.  That just makes no sense to me at all.