A fine bookstore, Burton Lysecki Books, sits just around the corner from us. It is literally two blocks away. It took me seven months to turn the corner, past the all-day 7-11, and walk into the store. What I found was relatively astounding. Like many Winnipeg institutions, the outside is extremely unprepossessing. Half-finished siding, a hand-lettered sign, dirty windows and sidewalks filled with sand and snow decorate the store’s exterior. Once inside, I was faced with thousands upon thousands of books, most of them immediately old, aging, and beautifully produced. Whole shelves were filled with now-ancient encyclopedias published by companies that are no longer extant. Other shelves were stacked neatly with gold-edged, leather-bound, small books, at one time issued in series. At the top of one shelf, I saw the entire works of Emerson. I couldn’t reach high enough to pull one of those works down, which seemed apropros. Multiple rooms led to other rooms, some more cramped and claustrophobic and some more open. There were “art” books (with none on “design”) as well as a large area dedicated to “science” and other to “ideas.” (This is the first time I’ve seen a used bookstore with a category called “ideas.”) Sure, there were stacks devoted to science fiction, Penguin fiction, new paperpack fiction, and erotica. There was even, wonderfully amidst the arcania, a collection of 1980s-vintage Playboys, wrapped together in groups of 4 or 5.
Lysecki Books isn’t the only used bookstore in North America. The store, though, is renowned for its superb collections and, from what I understand, well respected among academics and collectors in this city. I used to make a habit of visiting used bookstores years ago in all of the places I’ve resided and visited: Philadelphia; Providence; Boston; Paris; Washington, DC; Krakow; Warsaw; Berlin; Albany; Troy; Brooklyn and Manhattan. I loved feeling the weight of old hardcovers in my hands and knowing that that book held recoverable knowledge that would soon, perhaps, be secretly mine. I loved knowing that troves of information were being archived by the used booksellers of the world and that these purveyors of the written were also the private guards of our collected knowledge.
Today, I felt the immense weight of two bookends squeezing stores just like the one I visited. One bookend is a collection of companies that go by the names of Amazon.com, Chapters, Barnes & Noble and eBay. The other bookend includes the huge, uber-friendly and coffee scented chain stores like Chapters, Barnes & Noble and local large scale retailers. It took me seven months to visit Lysecki Books because I visit, honor, and take tremendous pleasure in the bookends.

We went today to a local synaogogue’s Purim celebration for kids. It was incredibly well-organized and thought-out. Volunteers from all segments of the congration, including teenagers and staff and those from the sisterhood and brotherhood were on hand to make balloon animals for kids, paint their faces, help them throw rings around small objects, and watch them jump up and down in one large and one small bouncing air machine thing. Drawing and crafts abounded. The rabbi (I think it was the rabbi because it typically is for some reason) got to have sponges thrown at his face while staring through a Daffy Duck cutout. He took it serenely and with good humor.
I thought that his response to having small (and some not so small) kids throwing sloppy, wet objects at his face was the response that I would like to have to general setbacks. How do you get that? I figure it comes with a bunch of humility mixed in with nerve, self-confidence, a belief in goodness coupled with a sense of complicity with the most honest facets of the world. Mix in a little humor, a love for innocence and an acceptance of self-violation as well as a bit of sheer naivite and you’ve got a mensch.
Happy Purim.

There are a lot of people I love. They pretty go unmentioned on a blog, and rightly so.
Here are the things I love (I mean I really love) that are not people (in no particular order):

• The ease of death.
• Domain names that end with .ca.
• Slippers in the winter.
• Owning a small business.
• Collapsing discarded food cartons.
• Coloring within the lines.
• Bryant Park.
• The smell of spring.
• Designing with Web standards.
• Animal rights.
• Contemporary Judaism.
• The activity of reading well-kept blogs.
• The quiet of night.
• Margins.
• Documentaries about political success.
• The sky’s light.
• Multiple moons.
• Cement highways.
• Slab serif fonts.
• Any magazine.
• Walking straight.
• Smooth skin.
• Blackness.
• Large ships I don’t have to get on.

I just got back from a run/walk with my friend M.M. at the Pan Am Pool, where there is a sweet, albeit paved, track around the building. To many, this would be about as big a news item as eating raisins with one’s cereal in the morning. For me, it was pretty momentous. I haven’t worked out in any serious, heart-pounding, fat-burning, heat-searing, leg-pushing, arms-moving, lungs-working way probably in about 3, maybe 4, years. The best shape I was ever in was when I prepared for about eight months for hte AIDS Ride, which ended in shame the year after I rode from Boston to New York City in three days.
I can’t explain the level of immediate elation I experienced as I left the gym this morning. It was a combination of relief, satisfaction, adrenaline, and bodily warmth that I don’t know can be experienced otherwise (excepting an unmentioned activity). I feel great and it’s weird to write this. Thank goodness for the Pan Am Pool, for Winnipeg Community Services, and for my friend, M.M.

I do a lot of copying and pasting. So does everybody who uses a keyboard. And it’s true that perhaps the most valuable class in my 20 years of education was a typing class in 9th grade.
Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like without the ability to hit control-c and control-v on that same keyboard. Could I do anything? Would any work get done? Could any code get written, any emails responded to, any spreadsheets built, any ideas revised, any reports written, any Photoshop images get made? I don’t think so. My new theory is that these two keystrokes, and these two keystrokes alone, are the keys to our global efficiency.

On Friday I received my healthcard from Manitoba Health. I carried my new, stamped Canadian Permanent Resident Visa to the offices, took a number (96) and sat for about 10 minutes. The ladies behind the desk called 86 and there was no answer. Then she called 87 and no answer. 88 was the same. 89 the same. Then customer number 90 went up as did 91 and 92 and 93. She called 94 and there was no one waiting. 95 was called and a large man went up to the desks. She called 96, and I saw down, showed her my visa, gave her my address, told her that this was my first time applying for Medicare and she typed my information into the system. About 2 minutes later, after copying my passport, she handed me back a completed, ready-to-use healthcard. I am now completely insured under the Canadian health system. I’m a bit incredulous; being part of a universal government program that is both desirable and acceptable is a strange thing. For most of my life, being part of any government-sponsored system was cause for concern or anxiety.
Covered for free. How strange.

The cards keep coming. The other day we got a beautiful CD compilation of Xmas music hand-picked by a friend of ours from Toronto. It was nicely packaged what with a photo of their daughter on the front and a custom-made wrap on the CD itself. Professionally printed Xmas cards pile up from vendors, clients, and friends. Friends’ children bring hand-made and elaborate Xmas cards to our daughter. Everywhere I look I see wreaths and jewels and red and green lights. Kids television programming is non-stop Xmas. Any time we visit friends, mounds and mounds of chocolate, cookies, cakes and other sweets are piled around along with nuts, fruit, cheese, and breads. Xmas music fills the ears at the mall. Good cheer. And websites everywhere have re-decorated to accommodate the appropriate seasonal color scheme. Even money itself looks green and red these days. It all adds up to incredible anxiety on my part. Are we doing enough? Do we have enough chocolate on hand for our visiting neighbors? Did I buy enough gifts for everyone? Who did we leave out? What about me? What if they find out we’re Jewish? What then? Is New Year’s part of Xmas? Will I seem too Jewish if I work during my vacation time? Are my cats Christian? One came from Poland so I suppose so. The other is from upstate New York. He’s Christian, right? What color really represents Chanukah, anyway? Hey, and how do you really spell that holiday? And why do Jews have to have gold-foiled chocolate gelt (money) to give to their kids. It comes in little bags. Could there be anything more shameful and fun and sterotypical? Why does it have to be money? Do we have enough candles for the menorahs? What about wrapping paper? There’s never enough wrapping paper. We ran out of tape for the gifts. And we didn’t send out cards. Does that make us look irresponsible? Who should I call about the loud Xmas music emanating from a car nearby? Is that a dog? A dog with a Xmas wreath around its neck? What if I’m sick during New Year’s? Will that ruin the holiday for me and everyone? Hey, look, another dog!

I can’t help it. When I read a thing of beauty, I need to call it out. This is the second post about Einstein and I hope it won’t be the last. Here is Einstein in 1931, a full eight years before the German invasion of Poland and then all of Europe. It’s from a piece called The World As I See It:
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

I’m listening to an incredible program from Speaking of Faith entitled Einstein’s Ethics. The author and physicist James Gates Jr. is speaking about Einstein’s very early take on the utter subjugation of blacks in America. As long ago as 1946, he was writing about and speaking about the brilliance of the Americans and their concommitant hypocristy regarding race in America. It’s almost enough to make one cry.
Here is a quote from his piece called The Negro Question,:
In the United States everyone feels assured of his worth as an individual. No one humbles himself before another person or class. Even the great difference in wealth, the superior power of a few, cannot undermine this healthy self-confidence and natural respect for the dignity of one’s fellow-man.
There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the “Whites” toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.
Today, while reading a book about Ireland, I told my daughter that she is part Irish because her mother is half Irish. She asked me if I was Irish, too. I said that I was not. She then said, “You should get Irish.”

I’m a bad Jew. When living in Brooklyn, I was a member of a congregation, doing volunteer work, enrolling my daughter in school there, and attending shul whenver possible. I would have the honor of treating my parents to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur tickets and I could successfully say hello the Rabbi there without feeling shy and somehow ashamed. I had and have had many ambivalent feelings about synagogues in general; typically, they require you to put your head down and push forward and one has to ignore whatever class and economical factors there might exist at the congregation. Too often, I kind of had to seek out those who were like me, or felt like me, in their commitment to religion and observance and I think I almost found that in Brooklyn a few years ago.
I’ve found that Rabbis and staff at synagogues to be invariably committed to the facility and collection of often difficult congregants that congregate there. I also found that a synagogue is typically run by a few very, very tireless individuals who want to make sure that the place can be the very best it can be; these are the ones who organize events, initiate fundraising, request speakers, and help educate children. It’s an amazingly huge set of responsibilities to be a full member of a congregation and it’s one that I hope I’ll have a chance to have again.
But since moving here, I’ve found it difficult to find just the right place (or know of the right place) to “belong.” It’s a matter of speaking with people, visiting congregations, and, ultimately, taking a risk. No one shul is perfect but there must be a place here where I can call home. We haven’t had the sheer time to do the research but I do hope there will be time soon.
But I’ve also felt like a bad Jew because I haven’t been doing the many things that I associate very strongly with Judaism and Jewishness – volunteering in the community, donating one’s earnings, praying and singing and dovening, and, mostly, reading. I’ve gone Jew LCD: Jewish Lowest Common Denominator.
It’s particularly difficult right now (spiritually or psychologically) because Christmas is almost upon us in full swing. And while, in New York City, one’s religion or religiosity could kind of get lost in the shuffle (for good and for bad), here it’s more apparent. One of the parents at Maeve’s school said today, “Don’t forget to get your Christmas money to me for our present.” I didn’t know what she meant and she explained that she was collecting funds to give to World Vision to give a gift of two goats or a dozen hens to an African or Asian family to give to the teacher. All of the commercial streets in our area have Christmas wreaths and, one by one, the lights are going up on each of the houses around here. We’re not the only Jewish family in the area. But it doesn’t make it any more odd to feel like a self-imposed minority in a new city that, truthfully, seems about as open to minorities as I could imagine.