Cyber-Family

My uncle died last week.  Thanks, but no condolences are necessary. I saw him last some two decades ago. My mother’s oldest brother, he lived in Canada and rarely came to the States and our family rarely headed north. Once we got together for assorted Bat Mitzvahs or weddings, but we all grew apart as time grew long. We never visited. We rarely talked on the phone or corresponded even via Internet convenience. We failed to attend celebrations or even funerals — not because we did not have time, but that we lacked motive.

Today, if I passed my first cousins on the street, I would never recognize them.

My family is not close in either my maternal or paternal clans. We cannot blame distance for the dysfunction. Growing up in my hometown, my family always seemed on the oust with one or the other set my dad’s brothers and their kin. Unfortunately, the three brothers all co-owned the same retail business and the familial animosity reached histrionic proportions when the store shuttered and each sued the other.

Today, my youngest sister and I do not speak. When I attempted to reestablish communications, all my past transgressions of the past 50 years were rehashed (I’m truly sorry I laughed when you fell off the bed and gashed your head open when you were 8, but I really didn’t push you off!!!). My middle sister talks to me when the mood suits her. My parents call weekly and we discuss their latest medical test results (going to the doctor and early-bird suppers at Denny’s seem the most highly anticipated social pastimes of the aged). But we never really discuss feelings, emotions, joys, fears or sorrows. Personal barriers protect us from those truths. We end conversations with “I love you” from obligation not affection.

I bought the Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina merely for its first sentence: “All happy families are alike. Each dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way.” I thought he must have met mine.

 I often wonder why my biological family act as they do? Is it our Russian Jewish ghetto heritage (albeit neither Tolstoy nor Karenina came from that milieu)? Is it some Mediterranean hot-blooded cultural tic in Jewish, Greek, Italian and Arab people that make us more vulnerable to family hostility (and Semitic wars)? Was either the nature or nurture of my ancestors’ pedigree so tainted that we repel each other throughout the generations? 

My husband’s relatives don’t act like this. His first cousins and family come to visit regularly. He knows the intimacies of his third cousin twice removed. My in-laws actually enjoy my company. So with marriage I cleave to my husband and his extended family as my true genealogy.

Another wise writer (whose name, unfortunately, escapes me now) said “Our real family is not necessarily the one we were born into.”  The author spoke not just of my marital kinfolk. Friends can become our true family. So can anonymous voices we meet in cyberspace.

While I do not really mourn my uncle’s death, I do deeply grieve over the loss of members of a cyber-family I have come to know well. I mourn the death of my favorite blog.

For the last three years, we gathered together daily, our electrons converging from the far corners of the galaxy to discuss our shared interest in all things Keith Olbermann. (Not quite a strange interest if one is a liberal living in a major red state with unfairly unbalanced ultra-conservative news offerings). 

I made many friends on that site although I really do not know their true names, where they reside, what they do when not blogging, or about their own family situations. I just know that we have laughed, fretted, critiqued, scorned, cheered and ruminated together on the political-social-cultural Countdown stories we shared via Internet and TV set. Together we survived the Dubya Administration, both Republican and Democratic primaries, the 2008 presidential election, Britney Spears, Sarah Palin and the ongoing Iraqi/Afghan wars.

Here and there, glimpses of our true personalities emerged. I discovered a fellow Buddhist on the group. Several of our blogsters realized they lived in the same city, or enjoyed the same hobbies, or cheered for the same sports teams. A few of us became good friends, talked off-line and helped each other through difficult personal times — illness, job problems, pet loss and, yes, family squabbles. 

Because of the blog, I finally understood the appeal of a Sex in the City coterie — the true deep affection of friends who gather together to discuss life, love and Mr Big (our KO). 

Perhaps this says something disquieting about society today. If we seek our most passionate connections through cable or DSL, what does that envisage for the future of civilization? However, maybe in turn, this need to connect on-line speaks volumes about the ills of humanity today.

Unfortunately, blogs (like jobs and relationships, friends and family) often require too much time, energy and maintenance to continue forever. They go adrift and fade into the pixels of cyberspace. They come and go more frequently than the neighborhood fusion restaurant. Blogs, I have learned, become unrelenting and apathetic taskmasters.

Most blogs claim only a few regular readers. To create a blog that truly captures imagination, ongoing interest, feedback, repeat readers, many lurkers, frequent commenters and the attention of its revered subject is rare indeed.  

But, to create a blog that inspires a true community of friends — no a community of family — who mourn its passing as personal, shines as sheer genius and inimitability . 

So, good-bye dear Either Relevant or True. And thank you, Becky and company for becoming my true cyber-family, if only for a while.

Oy, Ike!

Congress is in chaos; the Federal government broken! Dow Jones plunges into a deja vu Black Monday. Wall Street fears trickle down to Main Street. The automobile-addicted Southeast faces empty gas pumps. And Kruschev’s due at Idlewild (sorry, when panic ensues, an old TV theme song plays in my head). 

Who cares about run on banks when a post-Hurricane Ike Houston faces a more urgent crisis — a run on challahs for this evenings Rosh Hashanah festivities.

Seems that Hurricane Ike left several of Houston’s kosher bakeries in tsoriss. The family-run Three Brothers’ Bakery, a favorite source for the of the yellow, eggy braided bread sustained serious damage by Ike. The bakers planned to knead 3,000 of the challahs for those who need the special round Rosh Hashanah bread to dip into honey, symbolizing the circle of life and hopes of a sweet coming year. To be challah-less during the High Holidays equates to being without fruit cake at Christmas (well, in theory). And any matzo or similarly unleavened alternative will not cut it.

The Houston Chronicle reports that other Jewish food purveyors rush to take up the slack. [Note, I am constantly baffled that in a city the size of Houston — the fourth largest in the US — we have so few true Jewish delis, bakeries, and other food establishments. In my mid-sized Iowa hometown with a tiny Jewish population, we had four kosher Jewish delis and other food stores.]

People stood in line at Kenny & Ziggy’s deli praying to wrangle some challah. Other Jewish mothers (and daughters) resorted to baking their own. 

The Almighty did not smite Jews alone during this holiday season. Hurricane Ike hit during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, a time when Muslims fast, pray and practice charity. The storm cut power to thousands of Muslims homes in Houston, making their nightly break-the-fast meal a vexation. 

But according to the Houston Chronicle, many Muslims believe the inconveniences of powerlessness gave new meaning to their Ramadan observances. Some said the hurricane tested their faith while others said it intensified their understanding of the needy and suffering.

The lack of bread, the lack of power. What has the Lord wrought? If a natural disaster can bring new empathy between often sworn enemies, perhaps some divine intervention with strategically pinpointed whirlwinds may be just what the world needs.

Those Winking Blue Eyes

My mother held a crush on Paul Newman. Even in black-and-white non-Technicolor days before she could swoon over those trickster deep blue eyes, mother venerated Paul. She carried the torch not so much that he was a cinematic god, as he was our cinematic god — a lansman, one of the tribe, a Jewish Cary Grant when most Jewish actors resembled Fyvush Finkel. Oy, so Paul’s lineage proved only half-a-Yid, he played Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus. He fought for our cause and we adopted him. He became “mishpocha.”

Here came an actor with Jewish roots, handsome enough to get the girl instead of Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy (well, at least in the bicycle scene). A Jewish actor who could play a momzer and still be a mensch; a Jewish protagonist who could take the punch and not fall down. Newman served as the standard to which all my future dates could never match — blond, blue-eyed, rugged and (at least partially) Jewish.

I doubt Newman adhered much to his Jewishness anymore than he acquiesced to Hollywood. Newman dressed in the black tie trappings, regularly walked the red-carpeted gauntlet of paparazzi, and acknowledged his Faustian obligations to fans. Yet, Newman seemed much more comfortable in his cable cardigan, a baseball cap or a NASCAR  Indy Racing firesuit than Armani. The green of Connecticut not the beaches of Malibu became his home. He fell in love with a starlit, Joanne Woodward, for more than fifty years. He made Nixon’s enemies list long before today’s trendy Hollywood-Washington fornication.

Newman was the anti-Brangelina. He eschewed the society page to make salad dressing in his garage. Although he called his Newman’s Own product empire “a joke that got out of control” he served as an innovative entrepreneur who promoted all-natural (and often vegan) foods, environmentally friendly packaging and recycling long before being green was easy kitsch. With the mission statement “Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good,” Newman’s company gives all profits to charity, at least $250 million to date. 

One of his favorite recipients was “The Hole in the Wall” Camps, now an international group of respites for children with life-threatening illnesses, including the cancer that took his own life. Newman much preferred to hobnob with the kiddos at camp, named after the real Butch Cassidy’s rat pack, than the snobs on the Walk of Fame.

Newman should be remembered as a humanitarian not an philanthropist. Humanitarians envision a world greater than their own Brentwood (or River Oaks) boundaries. Humanitarians symbolize the quality of being humane. Humanitarians give of the abundance of their own humanity, not the affluence of their wealth. He did so quietly, humbly and unselfishly. He exploited his celebrity to promote true philanthropy rather than exploiting philanthropy to promote celebrity.

Buddhist believe that when we die we reincarnate into a different form based on the karma we merited in past lives. Those who acted with greed and gluttony may find themselves returned as “hungry ghosts” reborn with such tiny mouths and grotesque stomaches they can never savor all gourmet succulence that surrounds them. Others who earned merit through benevolent works may evolve as bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who return to Earth to aid others find Nirvana (or eternal happiness). 

Often, when a great Buddhist teacher or bodhisattva dies, rainbows, shooting stars or other strange phenomena appear in the heavens. I don’t know if Paul Newman believed in Heaven (Buddhists really don’t). But I have to admit, today the sky gleamed with an extraordinary deep shade of blue.

© 2008 by winkingbuddha.com