#BlogExodus 5: Hide

Some days it's nice to hide at home. A book and a cup of tea are company enough.

Some days I hide in my office, in plain sight, invisible, working, keeping my ideas under wraps.

In a city of millions, it's easy to hide -- right out in the open. While everyone chatters about narishkeit, I hide among them...

Alone with my thoughts.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, April 22, corresponding to 15 Nisan. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts. Once again, this series of posts also is priming my heart, mind, and spirit to participate in Beyond Walls: Spiritual Writing at Kenyon, a six-day summer writing seminar that is an initiative of the Kenyon Institute at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH.

#BlogExodus 4: Grow

If I could grow a flower garden, I'd be sure to plant enough seeds to ensure a daily bouquet of patience, acceptance, optimism, happiness, curiosity, compassion, understanding, generosity, hope, and perseverance to carry out into the world with me.

What would you grow in your garden?

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, April 22, corresponding to 15 Nisan. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts. Once again, this series of posts also is priming my heart, mind, and spirit to participate in Beyond Walls: Spiritual Writing at Kenyon, a six-day summer writing seminar that is an initiative of the Kenyon Institute at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH.

#BlogExodus 3: Purity

I have to be honest here: Initially, “purity” didn’t strike me as a particularly Jewish concept.

And, I’m not quite sure what, exactly, it has to do with Passover.
Nonetheless, our daily liturgy includes this prayer about the return of our souls to us each and every day:

Elohai, n’shmah shenatata bi

t’horah hi. Atah b’ratah, atah y’tzartah,

atah n’fachtah bi,

v’atah m’shamrah b’kirbi.

Kol z’man shehan’shamah b’kirbi,

modeh/modah ani l’fanecha,

Adonai Elohai v’Elohei avotai v’imotai,

Ribon kol hamaasim,

Adon kol han’shamot.

Baruch atah, Adonai,

asher b’yado nefesh kol chai

v’ruach kol b’sar ish.

The soul that You have given me, O God, is pure!

You created and formed it, breathed it into me,

and within me You sustain it.

So long as I have breath, therefore,

I will give thanks to You,

my God and the God of all ages,

Source of all being, loving Guide of every human spirit.

Baruch atah, Adonai, asher b’yado nefesh kol chai v’ruach kol b’sar ish.

Then I remembered this blog post and what my Aunt Claire said in it about our Tante Mina:

Tante Mina was a cousin. I don't know how she was related. She was a very short lady and we always used to measure our height against hers. At a very young age we found ourselves taller than her. To know her was to love her because she was so sweet and kind. She was widowed at an early age. I never knew her husband. She was rather poor, and as she got older she arranged to go to a Jewish home for the aged. She was very happy there; she loved the arts and crafts classes and also volunteered to feed those people in the home who were unable to feed themselves. She was a “gutte neshumah,” a good soul. We try to remember her because there is no one else to do so.

Although I haven’t quite connected the dots about purity and Passover, I do understand that to be a gutte neshumah is a worthy – and challenging – goal, and now, the beginning of this last new year of 5775, is a fine time to start striving to achieve it.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, April 22, corresponding to 15 Nisan. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts. Once again, this series of posts also is priming my heart, mind, and spirit to participate in Beyond Walls: Spiritual Writing at Kenyon, a six-day summer writing seminar that is an initiative of the Kenyon Institute at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH.

#BlogExodus 2: Honor

Studying at a long-ago UAHC Kallah at Brandeis University 

One of the selections preceding the Mourner’s Kaddish in the Reform Movement’s prayer book says, in part, this:

We do best homage to our dead when we live our lives more fully,
even in the shadow of our loss.
For each of our lives is worth the life of the whole world;
in each one is the breath of the Ultimate One.
In affirming the One, we affirm the worth of each one
whose life, now ended, brought us closer to the Source of life,
in whose unity no one is alone and every life finds purpose

Whether I have lived it more fully or not, I definitely have lived each of the last nearly six years in the shadow of the loss of my mother. I best honor her memory (and feel closest to her) when I:

1. Work to raise awareness about BRCA mutations and hereditary cancer.
2. Study Torah, especially Lech L’cha (her favorite) and Pinchas, which includes the story of the daughters of Zelophehad.
3. Speak my mind, which I don’t do often enough, but I’m getting better…
4. Vote.
5. Use the library.
6. Nix a Marriott for a different hotel chain.
7. Drink Dunkin’s coconut iced coffee (with a French cruller on the side, annually on Bastille Day, July 14).
8. Root for the Yankees, even though I don’t follow baseball.
9. Assuage irritability with a hefty “Feh,” or “A pox on her house!”
10. Encourage friends to “Go with the right foot” to interviews, new jobs, and adventures of all kinds
11. Gaze out on the Statue of Liberty and remember how lucky she and the rest of us are that her parents and my other grandfather, too, had the foresight, vision, courage, and moxie to leave eastern Europe in a timely way for the goldene medina.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, April 22, corresponding to 15 Nisan. If you want to play along, check out this year's  #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts. Once again, this series of posts also is priming my heart, mind, and spirit to participate in Beyond Walls: Spiritual Writing at Kenyon, a six-day summer writing seminar that is an initiative of the Kenyon Institute at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH.

#BlogExodus 1: Start

This morning during minyan, we added Hallel to our worship to mark the new month of Nisan and, according to "the Rabbis," the third of the four Jewish New Years. (Rosh HaShana, Tu B'shvat, and Elul, the beginning of the fiscal year, are the others.)

A new, fresh start?

Perhaps, but it doesn't feel that way to me.

The calendar may say spring, but the thermometer doesn't. It's 40-some degrees today in New York City, and a cold, damp rain is falling.

It is as though the winter rut goes on and on, and I am a cog in the work-a-day world. I go to work, I come home, I go to work, I come home. Every day is nearly the same as the one that came before and the one that will follow.

With few exceptions, I feel bereft of intellectual stimulation, creative banter, and the collegiality that fosters sharing, engagement, and collaboration. Concurrently and collectively, the daily annoyances of life - the stop-in-their-track texters, the dig-into-my-head headphones necessary for nearly every meeting, and, perhaps most of all, the cadre of incompetent nimrods that has mishandled nearly every one of my health insurance claims since January - are just about enough to push me over the edge.

It's a good thing today's "Brother, Give Us A Word" from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist is "blessing," about which Br. Jim Woodrum writes this: "What you're searching for, you already know. God has blessed us with this amazing life, with eyes to see, ears to hear, a mind to discern, and a heart with which to perceive the living presence of God in our midst."

That ought to be enough to start to turn my thinking around….

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, April 22, corresponding to 15 Nisan. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts. Once again, this series of posts also is priming my heart, mind, and spirit to participate in Beyond Walls: Spiritual Writing at Kenyon, a six-day summer writing seminar that is an initiative of the Kenyon Institute at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH.

No, My Mailman Isn't My Pharmacist

Dear The Mums,

If Donald Trump and the current American political scene aren’t enough to keep you rolling in your grave, here’s something that will send you spinning.

On my way home on Thursday night, I stopped into CVS to pick up a refill for the generic version of Lipitor, which costs me about $12. When the pharmacy tech guy – someone I’d never seen there before -- rang it up, it was $98.99. I told him I was sure that wasn't the correct price, but when he didn’t offer to investigate, I swiped my card, took the bag, and left the store.  

Once home, I called the pharmacy and spoke to someone who looked at my record, confirmed that the price was not correct, and said I had a week to return, show my new insurance card and get a refund.  

So last night on my way home, I again stopped into CVS, this time to give them my insurance card and get the refund…or so I thought. Instead, the pharmacist told me that coverage had been denied because I had reached the max on the two “retail refills” allowed on my plan. Now, she said, I’d have to use the insurance company’s mail order pharmacy or obtain an override from the online pharmacy to continue to get refills at CVS. 

I’ll bet your ears were ringing then because I told her that my mailman isn’t my pharmacist and I wasn’t going to order drugs online. “I don’t disagree with you,” she said, and gave me the number to call OptumRx to request the override so she could issue the refund and give me the refill.  

When I finally was able to speak to an OptumRx rep, he talked so fast I could hardly understand what he was saying, never mind that I standing at the pharmacy counter in CVS at the height of the after-work rush. Perhaps worst of all was the chiding tone he used to tell me that if I’d “done what I was supposed to do and contacted the company in January, when they first put a “flag” on my account, I wouldn’t find myself in this position now, but by the end of the call he would be able to grant the override I requested.” He then went on auto-pilot at warp speed to tell me exactly how much I would save by purchasing drugs through the insurance company’s mail order pharmacy. 

Needless to say, none of this information cooled my boiling blood.  

Using my firmest, OMG-I’m-so-angry voice, I told him – through clenched teeth, I think – that I understood the cost savings, but I was in the pharmacy to pick up a refill. I also told him I was not prepared to use an online pharmacy under any circumstances, and that I needed an override immediately. I didn’t bother telling him that this was the first I'd heard about the limit on “retail refills” or that it’s my prerogative to fill prescriptions at whatever establishment I choose, and my reasons for doing so are not any of his ^%#^&$%$%#!#@%^ business. No, I was too sputtering mad to say any of that. 

Yes, in the end, he granted the override, and I was able to obtain the refill at CVS for the $12 I've been paying since January. So, as Daddy would say, ente gut alles gut. 

But… 

If this retail refill limit is, in fact, part of our new prescription plan, it remains to be seen whether my other maintenance drugs also will be declined when their third refills come due later this month. I’m curious to know, too, if I’ll have to jump through these same hoops to get overrides on each of those and whether I’ll have to do so for every third refill, or if the one override that’s now in place will be sufficient for all refills going forward. 

Stay tuned…and thanks for appreciating how maddening this scenario is (I know you do!) because I’m sticking by my belief (and yours, too!) that my mailman isn’t my pharmacist. 

~ Boo!  

P.S. I know I should be grateful to have decent health insurance that includes a drug plan, but the whole scene is such a racket these days that I'm miserable and frustrated in my gratitude.

Thanks, Quo Vadis...You Made a “Habaliever” Out of Me!

As nice as it was to learn that I’d won a Quo Vadis Habana notebook in a recent giveaway, it was even nicer to receive it in the mail!

Although the color wasn’t up to me, I love the “circus peanut” orange of the 4x6 hardcover notebook with the matching elastic closure. Its 80 sheets of 85 g/m² paper are a complementary ivory (I’d call it “vanilla”) with fairly-close-together gray lines for writing – more along the lines of college ruled than wide ruled (pun intended!). A black page marker, a back pocket, and a sewn binding, allowing the book to lay flat, round out the features of this little gem.

The paper – smooth but not slick – takes various inks well, which is exactly what I’ve come to expect from the Clairefontaine brand. Among others, I tested these fountain pens: Schneider, Pilot Metropolitan, Platinum Preppy, and Lamy Vista.

Although I’m partial to the flow of fountain pen ink on this paper, other pens – including a Liquid Flair, a Sharpie, a Le Pen, a regular Flair, a Paper-Mate Ink Joy, and a Uniball Vision Elite – performed well also, with virtually no show through on the opposite side.

I intentionally used the last few pages of the book for this testing so the balance will be available for notes, lists, observations, and the what-not of daily life that I intend to record in my new Habana. It’s the perfect size for a backpack, tote bag, or purse, and that’s exactly where I intend to carry mine.