A Playlist for Aliens: What Would You Add?

What song would you send to space to introduce humanity to the universe?

In 1977 we sent the "gold record" on Voyager. The BBC created a playlist that you can listen to here. It's cool, but outdated. Take a listen here:

To the Makers of Music -- All Worlds, All Times

We sent Bach, Louis Armstrong, Aboriginal singing, animal noises, panpipes and drums, and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode," among others.

Basic assumptions:

1. Aliens can hear

2. Aliens have complex thoughts

3. Aliens have emotions that can be stirred by music

4. Aliens have record players

Just go with it. 

So, what would you add? 

Add a comment below, or just think about it. It's a great mental exercise to try and narrow your choice to one.

Here's my choice, a piece called "Time" by Hans Zimmer, written for the movie "Inception," which I have not yet seen. It has no vocals, so there is no language barrier, and it's designed to evoke an emotional response. (In humans. I've been playing it on repeat and the cat shows no signs of feeling uplifted or nostalgic.)

While we're at it, I'd also add a photograph, the Hubble Deep Space Field. The view from our planet when we stopped and focused our telescope on a seemingly empty and dark slice of space only to discover thousands of galaxies, millions of stars, and maybe life. Maybe some alien species out there will get this image, take a look, and say, "Hey! That's us!" and then reverse engineer their way to Earth. 

*If you haven't seen the video explaining this image, it's definitely worth 6 minutes of your life.

Our Tragic Conditioning

I pass by one of the local high schools every day on my way to work. Usually, there's very little to remark upon. A few kids walking to the bike path who should obviously be in class. Parents zooming into the carpool lane and kids hopping out while the car's still rolling.

This morning, though, was different.

There was a fire truck with lights flashing parked by the front door. Kids were streaming out of the doors -- haphazardly but not panicked.

But my mind jumped straight to the conclusion:

Oh no
Not here
Not again

Please not here

I know the numbers. There are over 100,000 schools in the United States and a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction have had school shootings. There are thousands of movie theaters in the United States and two have been the sites of mass shootings.

The odds are with us.

But the mind is not always rational. It ignores numbers and statistics in the face of what it has seen.

And over the last 20 years, I've seen too much of this:

 So you'll forgive me if it took a minute for reality to set in.

Fire drill.
It's a fire drill.
It's fine.
They're OK.

This is not a post about guns. This is not a post about gun control. This is not a post about mental health care, or politics, or the NRA, or whether schools should hold lock-down drills.

This is a post about what we've become. What we've gotten used to. What has become routine, normal, unexceptional and indistinguishable from one event to the next. Our hearts break over and over again and so often that it's a wonder we can put the pieces back together between shootings.

Or can we?

Yes, I'm Crazy. Meet Ellie's Bat Mitzvah Tutor

"I can open doors and take from the shelves
All the books I’ve longed to hold
I can ask all the questions,
The whys and the wheres
As the mysteries of life unfold
Like a link in a chain
From the past to the future 
That joins me with the children yet to be,
I can now be a part
Of the ongoing stream,
That has always been a part of me" -- Yentl

I always wanted to be a yeshiva boy, in the style of Yentl of course. To study full-time, to argue, to immerse myself with like-minded folks. I still might, but first I have to pass this Torah, l'dor vador, from generation to generation, to my younger child.

If you want your child to study Torah, study Torah in front of them. Because if you only tell them to study, you will instead have children who will one day tell their own children to study Torah.
The Kotzker Rebbe

 I used to have this quote hanging on my office door when I led the religious school at our synagogue. When my life was focused around the Jewish world, the mandate was quite easy. I was always studying Judaism, rituals, holidays, books, web sites, and Torah itself. My kids spent hours waiting for their mom to roll the Torah scrolls to the right parsha, practice her chanting, and prepare to give a drash or lead a Torah study.

Now I go work in a cubicle at an IT company and my life runs on its quarterly calendar, not the Jewish calendar. I'm now one of those parents I was trying so hard to influence when I was principal. Study with your kids. Make the time, It's so important. And study for yourself. Let them see you just flipping through a book where half the text is Hebrew. Easy for me to have said.

It's not so easy, to take the time and make room for Torah when you're not a professional Jew. My own study (and by extension, theirs) has suffered.

So I'm getting radical.

I will be Ellie's bat mitzvah tutor. (She will also study her parsha with the rabbi, but I'll work with her on leading the service, learning how to chant Torah, and all the other ins and outs of the big day.)

Ellie and I have both committed to studying the weekly parsha every week, even if we only takethree minutes to watch the relevant G-dcast video.(If you don't know G-dcast, get to know G-dcast. They have videos and apps for everything Jewish, including at least one for every Torah portion. It's brilliant. www.g-dcast.com)

Wish us luck.

No Writing on Shabbat!

When I originally posted about this Mussar of Writing project, my idea was to"

read every day (done!)
write every day (done!)
post every day (done!).

I'm going to walk back on that last one. Once w eek, on Shabbat, I will skip the posting. Shabbat musings will be for an audience of one. Me.

Instead, I will share a quote about Shabbat by someone who inspires me and a photo of a place that inspires Shabbat-ish thoughts.

Shabbat Shalom. See you Sunday.

The Quote

"The Sabbath is no time for personal anxiety or care, for any activity that might dampen the spirit of joy. The Sabbath is no time to remember sins, to confess, to repent or even to pray for relief or anything we might need. It is a day for praise, not a day for petitions. Fasting, mourning, demonstrations of grief are forbidden.

It is a sin to be sad on the Sabbath day."

Abraham Joshua HeschelThe Sabbath

A Haiku or Two for Nana

William Siegal (July 3, 1923- November 10, 1988)
Shirley Siegal (October 1, 1925-November 2, 1999)
זכרונו לברכה
zichrono l'vracha (May their memories always be for a blessing.)

10-1-25
Ninety if you were still here
Death stopped by too soon

Your voice was boisterous
But it's been so very long
I cannot hear you