You are about to enter the Artic-Alpine Zone

i should mention that this blog is not a space for making arguments against the equality of any group of people, on the basis or sex, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, etc.  the internet is a big place- if you want to have such an argument i'm sure you can find another place for it.  comments that don't meet this criteria will be removed. 

Sometimes while raeding eco-blogs, particularly discussions about going off the grid, I see someone chime in claiming that orthodox jews, they live off the grid once a week for shabbat.  Which means either 1. there is a large subculture I am unaware of that turns ALL their lights off for shabbat (even the bathroom), eat cold food rather than leaving the oven or plata on, and unplug the fridge.* or 2. there are some serious misunderstandings about what it means to not use electricity and other utilities.

Anyway, I do want to go dark for a shabbat.  I think dinner by shabbat candle-light must be doable, and might be quite fun, especially if a few of us got together and we had a bunch of candles burning.  I also like the idea of feeling it slowly getting dark as shabbat ends.  I could easily serve cold food, especially as it is getting warmer, but I'm not sure what to do about the fridge- there are ways to handle food safely without one but I'm not sure I have those skills. 
Any ideas?
Anyone up for coming along on this adventure?

*jews are very good at using electricity on shabbat without touching a knob.  my dad used to set his radio to come on for saturday morning car talk, and turn off when it was over.  and i knew a family that rather than not watch TV on shabbat, used to leave it on (cartoon network) the entire 25 hours.

Hey guys,
I've friends only'd a bunch of recent posts, and will probably keep doing so in the future. 
Mainly, I like the idea that not every random creepy person online can read my journal, and I think I may have posted enough personal info that if someone wanted to figure out who I was they could.  or maybe not, but its still makes me uncomfortable.
So if you have an LJ account and I know you in person, feel free to friend me
If you don't and don't plan on getting one, I made up a username and password that is shared, which you can use to log in, if you like.
thanks!

Saturday night I made a decision not to be stressed about yom kippur the way i was on rosh hashana and most of the time, i kept to it.  I also realized that my own ability to have a meaningful yom kippur was not contingent on having time to really get into the davening, or on the davening being inspiring.  it was contingent on . . .me.
so I decided i would have a meaningful yom kippur.  I decided I would live in these moments and not worry about after the fast, by which I mean I would take advantage of this time to reflect and not worry about food.I don't know that I had meaningful conversations with GOd, but I had some meaningful conversations with myself.
I head the shofar gadol, and I listened for the kol dmama in the garden behind the chapel and then in the woods behind comcast.  I promised the universe that I would try to live less inside my own little head and more in other peoples, to see myself as part of something much bigger than me.
so I was ok with the fasting.  with the standing.  with the walking a couple of miles.  with reading sefer yonah loud in a room with bad acoustics adn not using the mike.  It all went well.  And now I'm gonna try to hold onto that heightened control and awareness and write some thank you's to students and hillel staff who helped out.

I finally did find the RAC building and got there just before lecha dodi, joining rivka_m and alanscottevil on the floor.  leftyjew was somewhere accross the room.  It wasn't overwhelmingly loud, but the room was tangibly filled with tefilla.  After davenning, was a potluck dinner with the famous two-table system of veggie and kosher food, then lots of singing.  I had a nasty headache but enjoyed it anyway, and learned of some cool connections to make for the ASB AIDS trip I'll be co-leading. 
On the way back, good conversations with Rob and Jon.  I considered going to shul in the morning but there wasnt anywhere to daven that i was excited about, and i didn't really get out of bed before 11.  I davened on Jon and Zach's porch, not a huge amount of kavana put it was peaceful.. then i started practicing sefer yonah.

just found out that NY times offeres a 50% discount on TImeSelect (which is where they hide the best articles).  I think I might get it.
Thats where they hide Nicholas Kristof's best stuff, who has some of the most inspiring articles on whats going on in the world (I mean inspiring as in kick in the rear end to get up and make thigsn better)
and cause nobody, and I mean nobody, does sarcasm like maureen dowd.

spent 4.5 hours in meetings last night. thats half an hour more than the amount of sleep I'd gotten the night before.
first there was PVRG< where it was just an intro meeting, but they asked me to come and be te token woman in case any of the newbies girls got scared off by all the boys.  or something.
then CRL (hillel commitee for religious life),  where we seem to have made mild headway in planning unity shabbat, and very little in planning for simchat torah.  oh, and unity shabbat is a whole month after simchat torah, but anyway . . .
-then on to 2.5 hr gabbai meeting where we planned out the whole Yom Kippor service.  We are now done, except for finding a couple good men and women to read the few remaining aliyot.  having it planned it a weight off my back.
got home, spent a few minutes watching the words in my biochem book float around the page, then went to sleep, planning to get up and do it in the morning, which is sort of happening.

So running rosh hashana services went . . . interestingly.
  I didnt mess up in my leyning, which was really the only part of services I enjoyed.  So much so that I might just read sefer Yonah on Yom Kippor.
lets see, what else.  I screwed up page numbers several tiems but not for anything that mattered. 
Other than all that (which is quite alot) I slept, read, ate, and talked with friends.
and I plan to not be at hillel this shabbat so I can catch my breath before falling headfirst into Yom Kippor

I'm tired of making and breaking 21 years worth of New years resolutions.
this year, I'm gonna try not to lsoe my temper. riiiight
this year, I'm gonna speak less lashon hara.  no, really!
stop using disposable things and cut down on my own personal garbage contribution. uh-huh. sure.
this year, i'll go back to beign regularly involved in chesed/community service like I used to be.  umm, in my "spare time"

so partly due to lack of time to think about how Im crashing headlong into a new year, and partly due to my belief that my old way of doing things didn't work, I'm tring a different, vague-er type of goal this year.  Hopefully, if I look work on my mindset, other thigns will come mroe easily.

so:
-to judge others' favorably, or see thigns from their point of view before I judge them.
-to see myself as part of a much bigger picture; that is, to be caught up in the world and not just my own life.

And for you (and I mean, you, who is currently reading this), may you have a new year filled with growth, laughter with or without a reason, walks in the rain, lots of moments to look up at the stars and the clouds, learning new things, a year filled with old friends and new friends, and the wonder of existence. 

and if any of that didn't make sense, no, I did not sleep enough last night :)

I was getting ready to leave bev adn anna's apt tonight when I heard a loud knock on the door.  I opened it, and saw no one there for a monent, then noticed alansottevil and JonL pressed flat against the wall, with goofy grins, apparently "hiding."  I was just saying hi to them, and thinking that it was cute but not the cleverest hiding, when leftyjew jumped out at me from the other side of the shadows.   So they got me there, but it was wonderful to see them.  They brought with them hugs and laughter and that post-college aura of not being stressed constantly.  Jon also got all the knots out of my back, which felt wonderful, and which I am currently putting back in my slouching at my computer.

Now, if only my physics lab report would do itself, and high holiday stuff would self-assemble . . .
but curlybopbop offered to blow shofar, which ended three days of frantic looking for a shofar blower after the guy we thought was doing it bailed. 

A few nights ago I decided to shave my legs.  As it was taking a long time, because my razor kept clogging with hair, I only bothered to do from my ankles to my knees.
I cleaned the hair out of the bottom of the shower and the resulting leg-hairball was at least an inch in diameter.
It is currently next to my sink,  because Im kind of impressed with it, and it will probably remain there until I decide its gross adn throw it out.
just wanted to share this with you all. :)

And now something in my innards is making really loud gurgly noises.  If you were within a few feet of me you'd hear them.  It's been going on for about an hour.  Ok, stomach, I get the message, I promise, no more of those yummy-in-a-gross-way-pretend-fruit-drinks-from-7/11.  happy?

Sometimes its a big world of strangers out there and no matter how many people there are around you, you're still alone, and everyone goes about their lives encased as if in their own little glass bubble where you pass eachother without any contact.
and sometimes one of those strangers reaches out to you and thousands of other people they've never met and probably never will meet.
Thats what reading this article felt like for me this morning.  I've been having a rough couple of days, and when I read this article, in physiology discussion while th TA was messing with the overhead, I sat up a little straighter, and I could breath a little deeper and freeer and realized that I could take on the self-doubt that's been spreading through my brain like an infection, and I can pull myself out of it.
I can like myself without any outside reinforcement. 
I can handle yomim noraim for koach
I can be a good ASB trip leader.
And a billion other things that ive been doubting.

I've got some bad habits to break.  number one might be worrying that no one likes me when my friends are reaching out to me on a daily basis.  number two is shaking myself out of my funks so that I can get everything accomplished that I need to and not be beating myself up over them. i can do this.

I had my first physics lab this semester.
There are four people in the entire lab. there were seven on the first day of the semester, but three dropped.
we finished an hour early.
this is gonna be fun

"You have to judge every person generously. Even if you have reason to think that person is completely wicked, it's your job to look hard and seek out some bit of goodness, someplace in that person where he is not evil. When you find that bit of goodness, and judge that person that way, you really may raise her up to goodness. Treating people this way allows them to be restored, to come to teshuvah."
-r. nachman of bratzlav

I criticize easily, criticizing myself at least as harshly as I criticize others. For teh rest of Elul, and hopefully beyond that, I'm going to try to move away from that. See the good in the people around me. see the good in myself and therefore give myself room to grow instead of beating myself down.

Or more specifically, what is "arctic-alpine?" (sorry if you were expecting existential angst. I figure as I dont feel like starting HW atm, nows as good a time as any to explain my nome de LJ.
I wanted my user name to be arcticalpinezone, but it was one letter too long, and arcticalpinezon looked weird.
An arctic-alpine zone happens on the summits of mountains over a certain elevation, where the wind blows cold and harsh, even in the hottest part of the summer. As a result, these areas have retained the plants that once covered large parts of north america when during periods of climate much colder than this, that are now found only in the tundra of alaska and northern canada.
By the time you reach an arctic alpine zone, you've been climbing for a while, and up rather steep terrain. You've probably stripped down to a t-shirt, and the cloth between your shirt and backpack is soaked. You're body is feeling tired and your legs and back are aching as you put one foot in front of the other.
you've already noticed the trees changing. deciduous trees replaced by evergreens, mostly spruce, and the spruce gets shorter, stunted, gnarled and twisted by the increasingly strong winds. eventually the trees look like bushes, lying prone, hugging the rock face for dear life. Unless its an unusually calm day, you'll feel it when you "break timber" and enter the arctic alpine zone. You'll feel the cleansing wind whip around you, blowing away the sweat and fatigue and aches, cleaning you out. You raise your arms and twirl, feeling it around you. Then you start to get cold. you put a sweater on, because hypothermia is a real risk when your sweaty and its windy. You continue to hike and notice small white flowers growing all around. another arctic plant. in a well maintained national park, you'll see signs reminding you to only walk on the bare rock- the plants here are so fragile that if you step on them, hikers later in the season will see a footprint-shaped mark of shriveled dead plants where you stepped. This is the arctic-alpine zone. there's no bullshit here. it doesnt matter if you didnt like yourself at the bottom of the mountain, or your best friend is never speaking to you again, or if your nose is funny or your butt is too big, or you didnt get the job you'd been hoping for. You're here, now, the rest doesnt matter. Look around you, the clouds look different, because your seeing them at a different angle. their sides are fluffy and their bottoms are in the shadows. If ist clear, you can see the land fold and rumple in other ridges of mountains, going further back than your eye can distinguish. Breath the cold air into your lungs. breath it out.
try to lock it in your mind so that when you go down you can take a little bit of it with you.

For Anna's b-day, curlybopbop, alanscottevil, anna, and naomi and I drove to rehoboth beatch. we packed quinoa tabouli for dinner, and piled into alans car.
by the time we got there the sun had gone down and we were bundled up in sweatshirts.
the air was chilly but the water wasn't bad at all, and after dinner, anna, alan and I went swimming. so cold. so fun.
we ended the evening with coldstone ice cream and going back to teh beach to stay warm by cuddling and singing. and talking about the moon.
more later. i havnet had breakfast yet.

my mammalian physiology teacher is kind enough to upload his powerpoint slides onto the class website- but only after lecture.
this would be great, except way too much info is presented in class to write down in an orderly, let alone complete manner, that can be reconstructed later while recopying my notes and looking over aforementioned powerpoints.
grrrrr
maybe he doesnt have anything better to do with his time than sit with my in office hours and repeat the material, but sure I do.

first day of hebrew school was today.
This is my third year teaching 2nd grade, so you'd think I'd have it down by now.
I'm not sure how much teaching content I actually covered and actually sunk in. things were chaotic, I'd messed up the cut and paste project (not irrevocably).
On the upside, we had a mini-tefilla in the room (the school doesn't do tefilla some days, which is not my favorite message to send to the kids, so I do it with them in the room).
So 1. they're NOT learning that you only daven when its conveniant (though I only daven when its convenient AND I feel like it) and 2. I know what they remember from last year's tefilla. We'll keep doing the tefilla curriculum I made up for my kids last year, so they'd know what they're saying, which I think was a success.
We also agreed on classroom rules, including "raise your hand to speak" "be honest" "be respectful" etc.
We went over the alef-bet, so they can recognize most letters, except for two sisters whose mom didn't bother to enroll them the past two years. It's flashcards for them.
I've got one kid who can't sit still for his life. I'm working on ways to work around that, both by keeping him from getting overstimulated, as well as activities where he can move around as part of the learning.

One of my students told me that her mother says she's fat. 1. she's not. 2. she's seven. 3. Can I please, pretty please, slap the mother upside the head?

"I am not a halachik Jew*"
I try the words on for fit as I walk down the sidewalk, saying them under my breath, the way I sometimes mutter a stray bracha.  
I'm surprised how easy it is to say.  No gut reaction against it, no sense that I'm saying anything scandelous.  nothing.  I say it again.

The harder part is figuring out if I mean it.  

It's a big shift in identity, between my orthodox upbringing, then the past couple of years of insisting that I was halachik-egalitarian when people asked.
From a certain angle, I'm not sure why I would be a halachik Jew.  
I view the torah as the work of human beings.  Human beings who contributed generations of wisdom and insight, human beings who contributed their own societies biases and miopias.  I sometimes learn parts of torah that give me chills (in a good way) and other parts that make me want to rip the text in front of me to shreds.  And sometimes, its just doesn't speak to me at all.
Sometimes I find mitzvot beautiful and then I don't mind keeping them.  Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting minutes saying the same words morning after morning that don't express what I want to say.  And then I stop davening.
Sometimes the hours of shabbat at ticking by, stifelingly quiet, and I think of the things happening on friday night and saturdays, all the opportunities and experiences exchanged for these dull hours.  And I wonder why I'm bothering.  And other times I watch the sky darken on saturday night and pretend that I don't see three stars because I'd like shabbat to last just a little longer.

But what it all comes down to is that I keep mitzvot either because I like them, or out of habit.  And if I do 'em cause I like 'em, why should I do them when I don't?  
and this post is getting harder to write, and I'm not articulating things as well as I'd like, cause I just dont know what I want or think anymore, but to leave off, what will Judaism be to me as a non-halachik Jew?  How do you build jewish community when everyone's just doing what they want?
And I might as well keep the security of this post public, to remind myself not to slip into worrying about what people will think.
Cause I know I can trust you guys, its really myself I'm doubting here.
And with that, time to look over bio notes.

*I don't mean halachikally Jewish, which I am; I mean being a Jew who keeps halacha.

Halfway through class I knew i needed it, but once class ended and I was walking towards the student union, I couldn't remember why.  the co-op. right.  
I worked my way through the beginning of the semester crowd and selected dark roast.  I have no idea if its true but I always associate dark roast as the strongest.  I poured the cup almost full with the steaming dark liquid, then stirred in sugar and soy milk.  the soy creamer mushroomed and swirled like clouds before spreading into an even caramel color.  The line was long so I started drinking it while waiting.  The bitter taste, mitigated by the sugal, mixed with the creamer in a pleasant, stimulating combination.  My brain, long conditioned to this, began buzzing long before the caffiene could have possibly hit, and I felt like I'd just met up with an old friend, or had just returned to being myself after a long break.  I felt ready to conquer the world, or at least my homework and tabling for koach at the hillel BBQ.
The school year has now officially started.