Bernal Heights Park

We like Bernal Heights Park so much it deserves its own blog post. Also I need to make it to 50 to fulfill my yearly blogging goal. :) The park is on the peak of quite a high hill: you find your way up from the surrounding neighborhood using one of any number of little access paths.

 Once at the top the city is at your feet.

The Golden Gate Bridge looks short from here. Dad's neighborhood is on the other side of the green hill, not far from the base of the bridge.

 This is a view of Holly Park, another park on a peak a couple blocks from Jes and Deena's house, the closest spot to take a walk or throw a frisbee.

 Someone made this cool rock pattern on a flat area of scree.

 A coyote lives up here somewhere, but all we saw was dogs.

Then we skipped back down the hill to go home.

SF: Old things

It would not feel right to come here without visiting the old places. We stopped by Dad’s old house. There’s not much to see from the street, and it was painful to be there, because it felt like we were visiting nothing. A hole. The community garden up the street, on the other hand, felt full of life. I have had thirteen years to get used to visiting there in memory of my mom.

We had promised ourselves that we would come back to the Richmond district for dim sum and donuts.

We made ourselves a great picnic at the library, and went home feeling fulfilled.

I think this needs doing, because it’s either go to the old places or avoid going to the old places, and avoidance doesn’t seem right. But I’m glad to spend most of our time on the fun new stuff.

SF: New things

I was worried about our trip to SF for winter break this year, because it was during this same trip last year that we got Dad’s diagnosis, and this would be the first time we stay anywhere other than Dad's house. But I'm so glad we stuck to our plan, because it’s been a great week. We enjoy traveling together. 



And there are all kinds of new things to enjoy. Staying with Jes and Deena is fun; we cook and laugh and go for walks and play games.



They live in a terrific neighborhood in a completely different part of the city – a sunny part of the city, for one thing. Here we are climbing to the top of Bernal Heights, an excellent walk with an unbeatable view at the top.

Living with Jes and Deena helps me experience this visit as the beginning of a new era, rather than brooding on loss and absence. We have found all kinds of interesting things to do that we’ve never done before. For example, in Sausalito, there is a working hydraulic scale model of the San Francisco Bay, which up until a few years ago was used for research. It’s enormous!



We went to a terrific Judaica store in Berkeley and chose Jordan’s bar mitzvah tallit. It is a present from Jes and Deena, and Jes cried in a wonderfully grandparent way when he tried it on.

And we attended the Sound of Music Sing-Along at the Castro Theater, which was a total blast. We sang our guts out, waved the little white flowers and other items in the goody bag at appropriate moments, and laughed hysterically at the well-placed audience comments. What a great time.

I'm looking forward to continuing this travel tradition.

Snow day

Last Friday, before Jordan got his fever, there was a snow day. This was the answer to Aaron's prayers -- he had literally prayed for snow on Thursday night, asking for all of us to be quiet while he did so, and Friday morning there it was, a couple inches, which is plenty for a Seattle kid to be thankful for. By 6:30am the kids were outside shouting with joy, sledding down our ramp and building a big snowman. 

However, by 9am there was NOTHING TO DO. Aaron was sobbing because Jordan wouldn't play outside with him anymore, and Jordan was as if dead from sheer ennui. 

I tried making them a list of snow day activities but they did not find it inspiring.

Professions

Aaron amused himself designing houses today, meaning floor plans. This was inspired by a math lesson in which there was some debate about whether there could be a trapezoidal room in a house. Aaron proposed that triangular closets would do the trick. He really enjoyed this. The picture is an example of an original floor plan of his, complete with the area of each room, including an L-shaped yard (area 112) surrounding a patio (area 28).

On the ride home we had something like this conversation:

Aaron: I think I might like to be an architect. But there are also other things I want to do. Most of all I want to help with some big problems, like maybe I’ll be an environmentalist first, and then I’ll be a money scientist to take care of poverty. I want a job that helps with problems.
Rachel: You really want to help people.
Aaron: I would like to help with some big problems first. Like maybe first I could be an environmentalist. Then maybe after the big problems are solved, or at least on a good track, I could move on to a different area. Then after all the big problems in all the different areas are on a good track, I could do something that is more just for my own interest, like be an architect or a scientist.
Rachel: You have a lot of different interests and you want a chance to do a lot of different things.
Aaron: Yes. Like maybe I could be an environmentalist on Mondays and Wednesdays, and be an architect on Tuesdays, and a scientist on Thursdays and Fridays.
Rachel: Education is very important. Solving big problems takes a lot of knowledge. You have to have good ideas, but also you have to know what people have tried already and what is likely to work the best.
Aaron: I would like to get multiple PhDs and do a lot of different things so that I could help with a lot of different things.
Rachel: You might be able to help with more than one thing at the same time. For example, some architects are working on how to give a lot of people a good kind of house to live in; that can help with all the people that don’t have a good place to live, which is a very important problem. Or how to make a house that is good for the environment. Then you are an environmentalist and an architect.
Aaron: Or like how to make stuff out of bamboo, because bamboo grows very fast.

Fever

Poor Jordan has had a fever for five days, along with a cough, congestion, and an eye infection. The fever is in the 100-102 range, which is officially “slight,” but at 102 he feels pretty lousy. He has missed an entire week of school. This has never happened before. Fortunately, this is a week when I’ve been able to just work from home. He isn’t much trouble; mostly he just lies around. I bring him tea and juice and bananas and empty his bin of tissues. He is very appreciative and tries to be cheerful, though it does get frustrating, lying there day after day. As far as we can tell it’s viral, so there’s nothing to do but wait it out. 

This would be a performance weekend (Lessons and Carols) if he was well enough to participate, but he’s missing at least two of his eight performances. I hear there are a number of other boys sick too. Somehow the rest of us are fine… may it continue to be so.

Edible cell

In science, Aaron modeled cells with candies on a graham cracker substrate. He ate the animal cell at school but saved the plant cell for me to see. Then he and Jordan ate the plant cell with breakfast.

Twizzlers: cell wall & cell membrane

Hershey's thing: nucleus, with nuclear membrane (shell) and DNA (letters)

Chocolate chips: endoplasmic reticulum (carefully arranged in a Z shape because in real life it has a zigzag structure)

Mento: Golgi body

Smarties: mitochondria

Green sprinkles: chloroplasts

Chocolate frosting: vacuole

Vanilla frosting: cytoplasm

Who's invited

I overheard some friends of mine talking about a difficulty that their twelve-year-old daughters were having with each other. It was about who was invited to whose bat mitzvah. Not only that, it was about who knew who was invited to whose bat mitzvah, and what each of them thought it meant that certain people were invited, and what the people who knew who was invited were going to do with that information, and so on. I had to laugh, because there is nothing like that at our house at all. My kids just do things with their friends. They are quite emotionally intelligent (in my opinion), but they do not spend time thinking about the possible implications or alternative interpretations of their social actions. They invite people or they don’t invite people, and that’s pretty much all there is to it.

I told Jordan what I had overheard my friends talking about and he cracked up. He said he never thinks about anything like that. “It’s so stupid,” he said, not in a mean way, more of a “why do people drive themselves crazy for no reason” kind of way. I said that I think this kind of thinking is more common among girls, not that boys can’t also do it (I know several who are masters), but it does seem to be more of a girl style in many cases.

Jordan: Yes. The girls. They are so weird about things like this. If you want to be friends with a girl you have to do nothing wrong for like a week.
Rachel: What do you mean, do nothing wrong?
Aaron: Like finish your math homework?
Jordan: No, not like that. Like one of my friends likes to do these fancy moves like slide down a handrail, but more often he falls off backwards, and we say “Very smooth, Billy.”* Girls don’t want you to do anything wrong like that. Although strangely enough that guy is friends with lots of girls.

I think Jordan’s point was that girls have social requirements, in which actions are (pointlessly, in his opinion) interpreted in terms of what they mean for the relationship.

Having been a girl myself, I totally get this. I remember in middle school and high school, my friends and I obsessed over what someone else’s behavior said about our friendship/romance/enmity/whatever. When we felt bold we even quizzed boys about what it meant when they said that thing, or declined to say a thing. The boys were always maddeningly enigmatic – or at least that’s how I saw them at the time. Now I think they just literally had no idea what we were talking about.

* Billy is not a person; he is their “everyman.”

All the feelings

The other night while Jordan was out at a choir thing, Dale and I watched Beauty and the Beast with Aaron. He had never seen it. He was especially charmed by the animated household things, and delighted at how closely they resembled the humans they eventually turned back into. He said, “If I was going to turn into something I think it would be a piano. Because a piano has all the feelings. It can be happy,” he said, plunking out a happy little ditty on the actual piano; “it can be sad, or angry, or anything,” playing corresponding chord progressions as he spoke. I love this idea, and I love how he feels about piano.

Causes

I think many of us are thinking extra actively these days about what social causes we want to support. There are so many incredibly important causes, it is hard to know where best to put your resources. I think the best one can do is identify a couple that feel especially essential or close to your heart, and give them time or money regularly (such as a monthly donation) so that they can count on what you are contributing. For myself I am feeling pretty darn good about our subscription to the New York Times; we need the free press more than ever right now. I also care very much about civil liberties, and Dad was a passionate member of the ACLU for decades; I feel very good about "renewing" his membership in our own name. (Did you know that they not only sell pocket constitutions in packs of 10, but also a Pocket Constitution T-Shirt that says "I'll gladly lend you mine"? Awesome.)

As my picks might suggest, I prefer to support strong, well-established organizations that have proven they can do what they set out to do. But I can also understand wanting to contribute to more grassroots efforts. Honestly I feel like there are so many urgent needs, I get overwhelmed thinking about all the things I could be supporting; no way am I going to say what choices someone else should make.

The other thing that feels crucially important to me is to build a strong local community, because when and if the shit really hits the fan, you want people who are physically nearby who can pull together with you. We have this in abundance, thanks to our energetic engagement with both of the kids' schools and with our temple.

Tuesday Soup

Tuesday nights, both of our kids are in religious school from 5:30-8:15, and we host Tuesday Soup. This means that I make a nice pot of soup and friends can come over and eat some and hang out with us if they like. We don't even really care who shows up, or when; if someone comes over, great, and whether they do or they don't, we have soup. Often two or three people show up. The week after the election, there were maybe twenty guests - I think people needed to be together. Unlike most of our gatherings, these are kid-free (because the kids are in religious school), which is a nice change of pace. That said, one of my favorite dinner guests is a baby, not least because this baby totally adores my soup.

Soup has not formerly been part of our regular dinner rotation but I must say, the soups I've made have been delicious. Broccoli cheddar; beef, leek, and barley; lentil, sausage, and chard; indian spiced cauliflower; minestrone. I've learned to make a seriously heavenly chicken broth, the real goldene yoich as I think my Nana would say. Yesterday I even made fresh whole wheat bread to go with the soup. A glorious big pot of soup, a loaf of fresh bread, and friends around the table - who could ask for more?

Family money

I have achieved two awesome milestones: (1) I know what our family assets and debts are (what we have, and what we owe). (2) I know our family's monthly/yearly income and expenses (where our money comes from, where it goes, and how much comes and goes each month/year). This is the first time I have ever known these things, which is embarrassing, but never mind that. I am incredibly satisfied that I know these things now!

I started this process because I inherited some money from my father, and I had some hopes and some fears associated with this inheritance. My hope was that we could afford to make some exciting new purchases: a rental property, or a new car, or solar panels, or... well, we had various fantasies. My fear was that we would spend all the money unintentionally, not even knowing where it went, and then it would be gone, and it would be saying goodbye to my father in yet another painful way. I felt very out of control of our money – I didn't know what we had or where it was going – and therefore I didn't know what to do. I didn't even really know what questions to ask.

I decided I wanted to consider hiring a financial advisor. I have friends who have a financial advisor and feel they have gotten great benefit from that, and other friends who feel it's a waste of money. I got some good recommendations and set up a free consultation. And what do you know: preparation for this consultation included documenting what we have. This was a fair amount of work, because it turns out our accounts are sort of all over the place – we have various checking and savings accounts, multiple retirement accounts, a bunch of insurance policies, and so on. But the financial advisor provided a checklist and a questionnaire, and that enabled me to get it all together. In the process, I found some money I didn't know I had! so that was rewarding. Most of the reward, though, was just the great feeling of knowing what and where it all is.

We did have an initial consultation with a financial advisor, and that was a hour very well spent in my opinion (especially because it was free). Without even doing an analysis he conveyed that we are nowhere near buying a rental property. He said, "What I see here is a wonderful opportunity to save," which I thought was hilariously diplomatic.

I learned that as part of his working with us, if he worked with us, he would be asking us to track our expenses to learn our monthly household cash flow. So after the meeting, I decided to just start on that on my own, and see how far I could get. I realized that if I knew our monthly expenses, I could designate an emergency fund containing six months' expenses, which would be a relief; then I'd know what we had "left," i.e., whether we have a pile of "other money" that we could spend on solar panels or whatever without jeopardizing our basic financial security. Also, if I knew our monthly expenses I could calculate the (monthly/yearly) gap between our income and expenses, which would address my biggest fear (that we are currently losing money without even knowing it).

I've tried to calculate our monthly/yearly expenses before and failed completely, because our expenses are so variable. Every month there's some one-time thing, and some expenses are seasonal (like summer camp), and it all just seemed practically unknowable. But I was energized by my good experience documenting what we have, and I decided I was not going to let this lick me.

The first step was to come up with expense categories relevant to our family. I started with some generic lists I found online, then spent weeks combing through our household transactions, adding and deleting and combining categories until it seemed like I had what I needed. It was important in our case to look at our paychecks, our bank statements, and our credit card statements (for multiple months), because different expenses show up in different places. And now I have it! I have about 12 major categories (such as food and education) and about 50 more detailed categories that facilitate tracking (e.g., groceries/restaurants, tuition for school 1/tuition for school 2/boychoir tuition/etc). This felt like a great achievement in itself.

The next step was to determine the amounts associated with each of these categories. Some were known exactly (tuition is the same every month), so that was easy. Some were variable but easy to average (the electric bill has accessible history). Many, however, were totally unknown to me. Groceries, for example, and entertainment activities, and vacations, and charitable donations, and after school care: I really had no idea of those amounts. So, courageously, I arranged to track these expenses continually and consistently over multiple months. I did this by systematically imposing my expense categories in Mint (all the stuff I need to track shows up there) and documenting the total in each category month by month, in a separate Excel spreadsheet. I did five months of this to begin with (from May to September). That's enough to see some patterns, like groceries. It's not enough for some seasonal categories, so the data is still noisy, but I'll just keep tracking and it will get better over time.

For the Big Moment, to see what everything adds up to, Dale and I sat down together and summed things up. It was exciting! My questions are answered! (With the above caveat about the data still being noisy.) How I love it when questions get answered. Avoiding reporting specific numbers (seriously none of your business), I can cheerfully report the following:

1. Our current expenses are a bit less than our income. Hooray for that!
2. We have enough cash on hand to designate an appropriate emergency fund. Yahoo!
3. There is not enough "other money" for any fantasy expenses. Oh well.
4. We are almost certainly not saving enough for retirement, though this needs more research. College is kind of okay.
5. Overall, our expenses reflect our values very well. We spend a lot of money on the things that we care about a lot. And we agree on those things, which is huge. Our values are perhaps a bit outside our budget, especially given the retirement situation, but it could be worse.

6. I do not currently feel a need for a financial advisor. I think I know what I need to know.

I am very curious to keep this up and see how things evolve as my data gets better!

Bread

I decided to try and make an everyday whole wheat sandwich bread. I used to do this in a bread machine, but my machine wore out, and I don't want to spend $300 on a new one, especially since the bread involved was not perfect (bread machines tend to make hard crusts). I make the best challah I know of, if I do say so myself; there's no machine involved and it's very easy. Five minutes in the morning, no kneading, let it rise in the fridge all day while I'm at work, braid it when I get home and bake for half an hour. Done. The long slow rise in the fridge substitutes for, and is better than, kneading. I would love to have something so straightforward for everyday sandwich bread.

I'm thinking maybe "kneading" in the food processor is a good start; Mark Bittman recommends it. I started with a King Arthur Flour recipe, but instead of the whole room-temperature rising-punching-rising-shaping-rising thing (which I cannot do while I am at work), I let it rise all day in the fridge. Sadly, this loaf did not rise one bit. The dough was approximately the texture of a sandbag. I rolled it out thin and baked it as flatbread instead. Could be worse.

I decided that part of my mistake had been following the recipe. Flours act differently according to the brand, the weather that day, etc. I know what bread dough should look like, and I should have known that that dough was too dry. My poor little yeasts had nothing to drink, and also they just could not blow up their little balloons in such a dense environment. So a few days later I decided to try again, still using the food processor but only adding flour until the dough was nice and shaggy wet like I know it needs to be. I happened to have a day at home (supervising kids who were off school), so I did the room-temperature rising routine. This bread rose eagerly (I probably let it rise too long while I was in a phone meeting) and stuck to the pan something awful. But it made great french toast.

Next I was ready to try the same recipe but (1) letting it rise in the fridge and (2) lining the loaf pan with parchment paper. This loaf was decent, both breadlike and tasty, but still too dense. See that craggy top? Those wrinkles should have risen into a smooth dome. Not making the grade for an easy everyday bread that outcompetes the one from the store.

I'm not sure what to try next. Maybe I should let it rise even longer in the fridge, like 24 hours instead of 12. Maybe I should let it rise in the kitchen after the fridge, and bake it when the kids go to bed, since I don't need it to be ready for dinner. Maybe I need a different recipe; some say a 100% whole wheat bread needs a sourdough starter. Or maybe I should borrow my friend's bread machine. 

My son the emotion Jedi

Me: I'm feeling kind of sad and nervous. I'm not sure why.
Jordan: I think I know what it is.
Me: Really? What?
Jordan: You're not smiling. Smiling actually makes you feel better. Try it, it really works.

He's right of course. And I could not help but smile every time I looked at him for the rest of that day.

Police

In the car on the way home from school yesterday, at a confusing intersection, a police officer pleasantly waved for us to go in front of him.

Jordan: Police officers are really nice. You think about them chasing criminals or whatever but whenever I see one, I am really glad they are there. I feel safe. I feel secure.
Rachel: I love that you feel that way. That’s how it should be, because police officers should be some of the most important helpers, and they can do the best job being helpers if we trust them and they trust us. But I want to tell you that part of the reason you feel safe and secure with police officers is an unfair reason.
Jordan: What is that?
Rachel: It’s because you are white.
Jordan: That is horribly unfair.
Rachel: I know. It’s terrible. And the fact is that there have been a lot of very bad things that have happened, where police officers have hurt or even killed Black people who they thought were doing something wrong, only the police were mistaken. Sometimes the police were unfairly suspicious of someone because of their prejudices. Sometimes they shot someone instead of only arresting them. Terrible things have happened.
Aaron: Like that guy that was a woodcarver and the police said he was attacking them with a knife but really it was his woodcarving knife and he was just walking across the street. And they shot him and they killed him for basically no reason.
Rachel: Right. Like that. That was incredibly sad, and completely unfair. And that man was Native American.
Jordan: That should not happen.
Rachel: I know. And I am really sorry to tell you that it happens, not just one or two times but over and over. I bet you can imagine that if you were a Black person, knowing about these terrible things, you might not feel safe or secure with the police.
Jordan: I think the police should protect everyone and be fair to everyone.
Rachel: I would like our family to try and help with the way things are so that that could come true.

I am not very hopeful that conversations like this make a lot of difference; there is so much that is wrong, and talk is cheap, and I am very far from being any kind of effective activist against police brutality. But talking about it has got to be better than not talking about it. I am trying to keep taking advantage of moments that come up, like when this picture understandably caught the kids' attention.

The protester Ieshia Evans being detained in Baton Rouge, La., on July 9, 2016.
Photo by Jonathan Bachman.

And of course the more I learn, the more I see the awful effects of racism (and other systems of unfairness) everywhere, so there are more opportunities to talk.

Camp Kesher haikus

I never blog about Camp Kesher, our annual Jewish family camp over Labor Day weekend, because it is the most unplugged weekend of my year and I love it that way. We rarely even take any photos. We just hang out. It is held at Camp Sealth, on the south shore of Vashon Island, which feels about a thousand miles away from our Seattle life even though it hardly takes any time to get there (half an hour drive to the ferry, half an hour ferry ride, and half an hour drive on the other side). It is quite rustic: the cabins are old and drafty and spidery, the bathrooms are smelly and mildewed. But there is a special magic there. Part of the magic is being close to nature all day every day. Part of the magic is being in a thoroughly yet undogmatically Jewish environment. Part of the magic is an entire long weekend of no driving, no cooking, and no fussing about the kids because they spend most of the day in kids' camp. Part of the magic is long stretches of unstructured time... to chat with new friends or old, to attend an interesting lecture by the scholar-in-residence, to sit in a camp chair and read a book, to play an instrument, to contribute to a community art project. Part of the magic is staying up late singing around a campfire, then staying up later playing board games with grownups and laughing ourselves silly. This year, there was a veritable parade of wildlife passing before us on the beach, woods, and water: deer, otters, seals, eagles, and orcas, just doing their thing while you sit in your chair on the sand and take it in. In the past we have seen whales and dolphins. It is a precious few days.

In the fine tradition of summer camp there is an annual talent show, and between acts, we read haikus inspired by camp experiences. Dale and I came up with a few. Green Circle, Rounds Hall, and Orchard Grass are locations at the camp. There are various other inside references.

Reading in my chair
There goes an otter family.
Where is my child?

Mah jongg, Green Circle*
What are they doing out there?

So many tiles.

Game night in Rounds Hall
Cards Against Humanity --
Did you just say that??

Mud pit, Orchard Grass:
Sunk in up to my ankle.
Wet shoes all weekend.

Old friends didn't come.
It's really too bad for them;
Now I have new friends.

Fifth cup of cocoa:
Who took my favorite mug?
Guess I'll use this one.**

Where is your name tag?

What have you done with your shoes?
I ask my children.

Birkat hamazon
Come on up, all you rabbis.
Are we in Brooklyn?***

Freddy and Suzy
I need to use the bathroom.
What time is it now?****

* There is always a contingent of folks that play mah jongg for the entire weekend, near the outdoor amphitheater called the Green Circle.

** First of all, there is a magical machine at Kesher that supplies hot cocoa anytime with the touch of a button; the children are at it like moths at a flame. Second of all, you are encouraged to BYO mug and use it all weekend; there is a table for you to keep your own clean mug handy; but people are always using someone else's mug.

*** There are usually somewhere between three and ten rabbis at Kesher, and we say the blessing after meals after every meal. The rabbis only lead it once, but still, it's a lot of rabbis.

**** Some of the bathrooms are communal, and there is a rule limiting access to men in the first half of every hour and women in the second half of every hour; this is especially helpful for the showers. One bathroom features a sign on the door declaring "Freddy" during the men's time and "Suzy" during the women's time.

Northwest Montana Fair

Even though Kalispell is as close to Glacier as it gets, we got a little tired of driving for hours every day, and were delighted when Dale discovered that the Northwest Montana Fair & Rodeo would be in town while we were there. The parade passed just a couple blocks from our house.

Much candy was tossed by the paraders, and Jordan and Aaron racked up quite a haul (pictured here back at the house, after they had sorted and counted it all).

We were pleased to cheer for Flathead County's democrats. 

At the fair, we saw a domestic yak, which is raised for its fur.

Jordan, Aaron, and Deena all tried archery. It's harder than it looks. The instructors were kids who took it all very seriously. 

Deena and Jordan and I bought wristbands for the carnival, but we could only stomach three rides (and frankly that was one too many). I'll remember that for next time. No pictures, just vivid memories of my queasy stomach and aching neck.

The grand finale of the fair (and indeed the trip) was the rodeo. I've seen rodeos before, but I never pictured myself attending one with my very urban aunts. We all had a blast. The rodeo clown did his schtick, supposedly claiming to be able to inflate a chicken to preposterous size, but instead turning it into a dog.

The bucking broncos are fairly frightening, especially when they almost stomp on the cowboy. Dale had fun getting action shots.

This rodeo featured an event I've never seen before, the Indian Relay Race, which was incredibly exhilarating/impressive/chaotic. The first set of riders gallops pell-mell once around the track; then each rider jumps off the first horse and onto a fresh one (that's the relay), while their team's handlers catch the first horse. This is totally nuts because you have something like fifteen horses in the same area, with riders jumping off one and climbing off another and handlers trying to control the other horses. And it's all bareback. One team failed to catch a horse after the rider jumped off it, and the horse just kept running like hell the whole way around the track again with no rider on it. Sheesh.

This is a barrel-racer. I wonder why barrel-racers are all women. Tradition, I suppose.

And finally the bulls. They are just scary to me. They attack people. But in the end the rodeo clown triumphs.