#AllWordsMatter

Whenever someone starts a conversation with, "I had the strangest dream last night," I always hope the story doesn't take a turn for the awkward. I do not need to know that a coworker dreamed about his sixth grade girlfriend stuck in a bathtub of uncooked rice. (You don't need to know that either. Sorry.)

Dreams are intimate, personal machinations of our brains. It's how we process our days and ruminate on our troubles without being overly troubled. Dreams are also where our brains take off into strange and fantastical worlds of horror, ecstasy, and crazy imaginative leaps.as a writer, I've gained and lost a million great ideas in my dreams. A few times I've been lucky enough to wake up and jot something down before it slipped away again.

In this week's Torah portion Joseph (the favorite son of Jacob/Israel) tells his older brothers about his dreams.

"There we were binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly my sheaf stood up and remained upright; then your sheaves gathered around and bowed low to my sheaf."

They already hated him because he was a tattle-tale when he was a boy. Now they really hated him. And Joseph couldn't help but make it worse by telling them about the second dream...

"Look, I have had another dream: And this time, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing, down to me."

The sun, the moon and eleven stars -- that included Joseph's parents. Jacob couldn't shake the insult from his mind, and the brothers' hatred grew. When his brothers found Joseph wandering in the desert, they decided to kill him, but eventually just threw him down a well and tried to sell him to nomads. In the end, they faked his death and reported back to their father that Joseph, his favorite, had died.

Terrorism in Colorado

It's been three days since the terrorist attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, about three hours south of where I live. Nine people were shot and injured. Three people were killed:

• Garrett Swasey, a 44-year old University of Colorado Springs police officer who rushed to the scene when he heard about the incident. He was also the father of two, and elder in his church, and passionate about his faith. 
• Jennifer Markovsky, 35, a military wife and mother of two children, ages 6 and 10. She had gone to PLanned Parenthood to support a friend who had an appointment.
• Ke'Arre Stewart, a 29-year-old Iraqi War Veteran recently stationed at Fort Carson and father of two, was shot outside the clinic just minutes after learning his girlfriend was pregnant. He'd stepped outside to get better cell reception to share the good news. He told everyone else to Get Down! before he was shot and killed.

Don't Say It

How would Joseph's life been different had he followed the old adage, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything"? He carried tales back to his parents when he was a child, earning him the hatred of his brothers.

He was a spoiled brat who, instead of being punished for tattling, received his father's favor and amazing gifts like this colorful coat. 

Joseph had self-serving dreams which, had he kept them to himself, or even presented them in a nicer way, would have done no harm. But he did speak, with cruel intentions and a desire to make his brothers jealous. 

If he could have seen the real consequences, would he have spoken so freely? Did Joseph spend his time in the well, and his time as a slave, wishing he could take back his words and reverse the series of actions they had set in motion. 

#AllWordsMatter

I have to wonder if the right-wing spewers of anti-Planned Parenthood rhetoric understood the potential power of their words. A sampling of their comments, some made before the attack and some (incredibly!) made after.

• Ted Cruz in September: In the September G.O.P. debate, Cruz called Planned Parenthood a “criminal enterprise,” guilty of “multiple felonies.” 
• Cruz in October: “When millions of Americans rose up against Planned Parenthood, I was proud to lead that fight.”
• Jeb Bush has called Planned Parenthood’s practices “horrifying,” and has said that the group is “not actually doing women’s health issues. They are involved in something way different than that.”
• Marco Rubio, who seized on the shooting of Cecil the lion as a reason to ask where the outrage was over Planned Parenthood and “dead babies,” didn’t have anything to say about the victims in Colorado
• Chris Christie, in one debate, talked about Planned Parenthood engaging in “the systematic murder of children in the womb to preserve their body parts.” 
• And after the shooting, Trump was, well... Trump: “Well, I will tell you there is a tremendous group of people that think it’s terrible, all of the videos that they’ve seen with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car. I mean, there are a lot of people that are very unhappy about that.”
• Cary Fiorina claimed that a video showed what sounded like infanticide—the killing of a “fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking”—for the stated sake of harvesting a marketable brain. This was false, and demonstrably so, but Fiorina just kept saying it. 
• And today, before any of the victims are even buried, Cruz dismissed any suggestion of a connection between the shooting and the heated words of Republicans.

Maybe Cruz was right today and there is no connection between these statements and the terrorist attack on Planned Parenthood. It's quite possible that the shooter (who shall remain forever unnamed on this blog) was not consciously listening to the Republican candidates when he was making his plan to attack Planned Parenthood. It's also possible that he came up with "baby parts," a term he used during his siege, completely independently.

Even if that is all true, this 57-year-old man grew up and lived in a country where terrorist tactics on the part of anti-abortion activists have been accepted by many in the movement.

• Kill an abortion doctor to stop him from doing abortions? Acceptable tactic. 
• Burn down a clinic? Sure, why not? 
• Verbally attack women going into the clinic? It's a matter of course.

Don't believe me? Read this article from a Planned Parenthood worker who documented all the instances of attacks on her clinics:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/heres-what-its-work-planned-parenthood

I understand that people are incredibly passionate about this issue, but how much of that frenzy-whipping has been achieved with outright lies? How much of the violence and terrorism against doctors, nurses, and women seeking health care has been encouraged and praised by anti-abortion rhetoric? How many of the fiery sermons have inspired the terrorists? Inflamed entrenched beliefs?

Radicalized true believers?


When are those who speak such things morally culpable for the actions their words inspire? Why do these candidates support going after other radical extremists who preach terror and violence but they are unwilling to look at what they say with a critical eye?



The lack of reflection on the part of the Republican candidates is distressing.

When will just one of them say, "You know, this guy may have been acting completely on his own, but let's say for a minute he wasn't. What if watching our debates inspired this kind of violence? What if there is someone else out there who might be inspired by address this issue, shouldn't we change how we talk about it? It's the very least we could do."

When?

Why I Finally Added a Flag Overlay to my Facebook Profile Picture

In the days after gay marriage was legalized in all 50 states, many people changed their Facebook profile pictures to celebrate and show their support. Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg got in on it:

In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, the new profile meme was a French flag overlay.
Again, Mark was in on it:

I didn't participate in these profile pic trends, but I'm not criticizing anyone who did. I did post quite a bit about both the Supreme Court decision and the attacks in Paris, so both events were on my mind and in my newsfeed.

Today, though, I did add a flag to my profile picture. This one:

To add this filter to your profile pic, go here: http://rainbowfilter.io/israel

The rainbow flag and the French flag overlays were provided by Facebook, and all users had to do was click a button and, wham!, profile picture changed. It was an official response from Facebook to world events and the currents flowing on social media. They saw a need -- users who wanted to express sympathy and solidarity -- and filled it.

But where were the other flags?

Beirut? Kenya? Israel?

Facebook did receive some public criticism for their lack of response to other terrorist events around the world. Twice as many people were killed by ISIS in the Russian plane bombing than in Paris -- was changing your flag to a Russian flag an option?

95 people were killed and 250 injured in Ankara, Turkey in a terrorist bombing in October. I didn't notice a Turkish flag meme.

In some ways  understand the reasoning. The Middle East is always embroiled in one violent affair or another, and we have come to expect bombings in places like Iraq, Beirut, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria and Turkey. They are foreign, distant places with cultures very different from the Average White Band America where me and my friends grew up, and in which we are raising our children.

But Paris. Paris is the city of American aspiration and admiration. Cultured and multi-cultural, fashionable, well-fed, and the epitome of good taste. It is the inspiration of art and artists, poets and novelists, film directors and songwriters. It's philosophers gave us the ideas upon which America was founded.

When we say, "We are Paris," we all understand what that means. We speak a common western, cultural language. It is more difficult for us to say


We are Kenya
We are Beirut
We are Ankara
We are Russia
We are Malli

So we don't.

And even if our prayers and thoughts go to those victims for a moment or two as a story flicks by on our newsfeed, we do not see a flood of those flags overlaying our friends' faces.

We are Israel.

For me that is the easiest of all. I read Israel, study Israel, sing Israel, and in my own limited way, pray for Israel.

I pray for no young man to have to return from Israel like this:

I pray for no one -- especially so many who are so young -- to ever sing a national anthem in grief:

WATCH: Ezra’s final journey. 18-year-old American volunteer, Ezra Schwartz was murdered in a terrorist attack in Gush Etzion last week. As Ezra was sent to his final resting place in the United States, his friends accompanied him to the airport. In a powerful gesture, they sang Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikva” as Ezra left Israel for the last time. May Ezra’s memory forever be a blessing.via: Ynetnews

I pray for peace.

You'd Run, Too

You'd run, too...


Take a close look at the picture of the medical center "before". That little white car on the right? That's the same year, make and model as my car.
 
Someone drove that car to a medical appointment that day.

Someone like me who had a normal life of car payments, doctor's visits, family dinners, fights about homework, errands to run, etc.

You'd run, too...

Where would you go?
Who would take you in?

You'd run, too...

Why I Decorate My Cube (and You Should, Too!)

I've found that I'm one of the few people in my new group at work to put up any personal mementos in my cube.

No, not like that!

But I have added some personal touches to my work space, and I've chosen each one of them carefully and after quite a bit of deliberation.Why?

I'm not the most introverted introvert!

As it turns out, being surrounded by software engineers and IT guys makes me one of the most outgoing people in my area. Me! I have to start conversations, make eye contact first, and say hello if I pass someone in the walkway.

I do try to pick up on people's interests, but so far my methods are limited to eavesdropping on their conversations (which are few and far between) or looking around at their work spaces.

[There is one way in which they are social that I'm completely left out of. They smoke (vape, whatever) and go outside together a few times a day. Since I'm not a smoker, and I don't want to pick it up to gain a social advantage, it would help immensely if my coworkers would decorate their cubicles... even a little.]

My Cubicle

Top Row (L to R) Two postcards from Oregon, a bookmark for the upcoming Wyeth exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, My Red Sox "B", a calendar.
Bottom Row (L to R) Grateful Dead dancing bear button, A skull sticker made by a colleague in Oregon, Ellie's 8th grade picture, Ben's bar mitzvah picture, a postcard from the Impressionist exhibit I attended. recently.

 

Official-looking work papers, Pats 2015 schedule, Gronk!, concert tickets, and a key chain made from one of Ben's paintings. (These are further into my cubicle... if you come in, you see them. If you stand at the door, probably not.

Look at all the things you can learn about me!

• I have kids, a girl and a boy
• My daughter wore an AC/DC shirt in her school picture and I still hung it up
• I like art, and am probably planning on going to the Wyeth show
• I like baseball and football, and my favorite teams appear to be the Red Sox and Patriots.
• I'm organized, keep my space neat, I print out calendars and schedules

And there are also things that are designed to elicit questions

• Skull -- what!?
• Kid looks like he's having a bar mitzvah -- Jewish?
• Who's Keller Williams?

It works!

 

Our leadership team visited a few weeks ago. They're from Seattle, Corvallis, Salt Lake City, Palo Alto, and San Diego. They stopped by every person's cubicle to introduce themselves and have a little chat. When one of the execs stopped by mine, he took a look into my cube and said, "Baseball fan?" and we were off and running on a conversation about the upcoming World Series and wasn't it funny how the Back to the Future movie included a reference to my cursed team winning the whole thing...?

Yes, he mixed up the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox, and No, I didn't mention his mistake. (Did I mention this was the executive team?)

Hanging up that "B" was an instant conversation starter, and I didn't have the awkward, stilted conversations that my coworkers had as the execs made their rounds. One mentioned how much he liked the lighthouse on one of the postcards, and he also wants to get back to the Oregon coast. Another had seen a similar skull in our Corvallis office and asked about it. [One of my colleagues in Oregon is a graphic artists and the stickers are his side gig.]

Just the other day, one of the women from a couple of aisles down stopped to say hi to my absent cubicle-mate, peeked into my cube and said, "I like your bear." A conversation about live music ensued. It may go nowhere, but the next time I buy tickets for a Dead-similar band, I'll mention it to her.

Plans for Changing it Up

 

Life in a cubicle-farm can isolating, awkward, and soul-sapping. I hope my sparse, thoughtful decorating style catches on with my neighbors. Just in case it doesn't, I'm planning on rotating out some of the items as time goes on, like a carefully curated art exhibition. Leaving the same things up for months destroys the purpose of people noticing them. They'll blend into the background, or people will forget if they've asked about an item already. A few switches and I can avoid that further awkwardness.

I'll be a social maven before you know it!

All I Have Left is a Song of Peace

In Oklahoma City, people were working at their desks
In London, people were riding the Underground
In Mumbai, people were strolling through a market
In Paris, journalists were working and cartoonists were drawing
In Beirut, Marines were in their barracks
In New York, so many people were enjoying a beautiful Tuesday morning
In Saudi Arabia, people were going to pray
In Aurora, people were going to watch a movie
In Japan, people were commuting to work
In Turkey, people were rallying for freedom
In Washington, DC, people were protecting our country
In Nigeria, people were trying to make it another day
In Tunisia, people were vacationing on the beach
In Iraq, people were trying to rebuild
In too many places, students were trying to get an education

In Paris tonight, hundreds of people went out La Bataclan to see a concert.

I do most of the activities above, but going to see live music is where I find
my peace
my joy
my connection to the universal language of music and dance.

I have to believe the terrorists knew exactly at whom they were aiming their weapons. Concerts are gatherings of happiness and good vibes and being together with strangers and friends who love what you love.

Tonight, 100 or more of those revelers, those music fans, were killed in a holy place by the unholiest of people.

As we enter Shabbat, all I have to offer is a song of peace.
May there one day be a true Shabbat of Shalom.