When I was a teenager I began to question my religious faith.  Not in a rebellious way, just in a way that is appropriate for a teenager transitioning into a thoughtful adult.  I was confident that in time I would find the answers I sought and come back to my religious roots.

After a decade or so it began to concern me that I was not able to resolve my religious inquiry.  I took solace in the fact that questioning and learning are integral aspects of my base religion, that I would never be ostracized for my rejection of blind faith.  I considered whether I might be an agnostic or an atheist.  I have to admit, as prevalent as religion is, atheism struck me as downright lonely.  I am still so effected by this that I find it hard to publicly acknowledge the main target of my inquiry, the central tenet of religion: G-d.  But I knew I could not 'settle' without the answers I sought.

After another decade I came to accept that whether by evolution or intelligent design, I have a brain, a healthy dose of curiosity, and a stubborn streak; to refuse to use them in this or any other context would be to deny my humanity - and a slap in the face of the force(s), whatever they may be, that created me.

Three decades after my initial religious journey, and today is Rosh Hashanah.  At service this morning, the Rabbi talked about today's Torah reading - the story about Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.  The Rabbi offered two interpretations, one of which was obedience - that sacrificing his son was God's test of Abraham's obedience.  And Abraham passed.  I simply cannot accept that.  Blind obedience breeds Nazis.  The Rabbi presented another interpretation, which was Abraham's refusal to question the command, and on that front Abraham failed.  Although I prefer this interpretation, it doesn't match the text in our prayer book.

Between my own religious journey, my experience as a parent, and my work with students, one thing has become profoundly clear in my mind.  Humans possess an innate and burning need to make sense of our world.  The drive is so strong that we WILL find reason even if we have to make it up.  I find this is true with math and science, but I also believe it is true with religion.  The Rabbi also spoke about how events that don't seem to make sense (usually because they are in some way unjust) have a divine purpose.  The implication is that we are unable to comprehend the hidden purpose, which I take issue with.  Again, humans have brains.  Unless you believe that the brain is analogous to the metaphoric apple, we must use them.  I simply don't believe that God would give us the greatest gift of all, and forbid us from using it.

Boo hoo.  Life has been dragging me down. 

My husband has been having a problem with recurring fevers for a year and a half.  The fevers go up for a week or two, then back to normal for a week or two, up, down, up down, for several months.  Then they disappear.  The fevers come with night sweats and weight loss.  He's seen a dozen doctors including all kinds of specialists, most dismiss him after the first round of tests.  But he found one doctor, thank God, who is paying close attention in more ways than one.  Dr. K was the only one who noticed that, although J's iron was back to normal after a bout with anemia, it was normal for most people.  Turns out what's normal for most people is not normal for J, and his iron had not returned to his own normal level.  After prescribing an iron supplement which didn't work, Dr. K realized that J's anemia is not due to iron deficiency; J has chronic disease anemia which is very different.

Then came the blow.  Fever, of course, is a symptom of just about everything.  I could not for the life of me find anything about recurring fever, or fever combined with night sweats.  Then last week one of J's blood tests showed enlarged lymphocytes.  This led me to read about leukemia, and something called "B symptoms".  What the heck are "B symptoms"?  Well, turns out they are fever, night sweats, and weight loss, and they are classic symptoms of lymphoma.  The article further described something called "Pel-Ebstein" fever, which - yup - goes up and down in 1-2 week cycles.  I nearly shit a brick.  On one hand, oh my God, cancer.  On the other hand, a potential diagnosis, and a highly treatable cancer with a very high survival rate. Dr. K is also unbelievably good at returning phone calls and answering questions. He pointed out that half the doctors in Maryland have been looking at J's blood, and none have seen evidence of lymphoma.  He won't rule it out, but it's not high on his list.

We had another event last week.  My daughters' friend at school was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL).  My first reaction was fear for my daughters, they are unbelievably sensitive.  They still cry over the loss of our old dogs, I hope to God they won't have to experience the death of a friend at this age.  Luckily, ALL has a good prognosis.  Until...last weekend we found out that she has a rare kind of ALL, called Philadelphia Positive (Ph+).  The Ph+ ALL prognosis has been described as very poor to dismal.  One option is bone marrow transplant, but it's very hard to find a donor, and even with a match the risks are very high.  Now I find it's not just my daughters I fear for.  I like this family.  My motto is "I don't like other peoples' kids", but the first time I met R she impressed me because she was kind to my kids.  I found her mother C and told her so, and I like C too.  Does that matter?  It's not like I would wish something like this on anyone else's family.  But it just seems too close to home.  Maybe because it's my kids' friend, maybe because this is going down at the same time I learned about the B symptoms and I've just reached an emotional overload. 

I heard that R's parents had to choose among experimental treatments.  I found a doctor in Canada who authored a paper about Ph+ ALL treatment options, and wrote him to ask for advice.  It blew me away, but he actually wrote back, and quickly!  It looked like gibberish at first, but I looked some of the things up.  Basically he recommends a newer tyrosine kinase inhibitor called Dasatinib.  I say that like I know what the hell it means!  I'm learning.  But the important thing is that there has been significant progress in just the last 5 years.  I'm not much of a prayer, but I pray R will be ok.

And my J.

Note that D in my previous post is one of the Girl Scout troop leaders, and M is the "Mesch of the Month" at Hebrew school.  And don't miss the sequel to the post in the comments.

I will not miss today when it is over.

My daughters go to private school.  We are not rich - we are driving old, used cars, live in a modest but comfortable house, and we receive financial aid from the school as well as financial help from relatives.  This means the world to us, our daughters' education - which at this age is intimately tied with their happiness - is more important than anything.  But we've seen their friends' houses, and they are rich.  Most if them are filthy rich.

They used to be good friends with their classmate M, and they still like M a lot.  They invite M to all of their birthday parties, but it's been several years since they've been invited to one of M's birthday parties.  Luckily they haven't noticed this yet.  M's mother D is very outgoing - the life of every party, doctor to the stars, and always in the news for something wonderful that she or her children done.  Now I should warn you that I'm an armchair psychologist.  Although I am well aware that my theories may have no bearing whatsoever in reality, I have a theory about D.  We met D's mother (and hence M's grandmother), who used to work in a school cafeteria.  So I think D grew up poor.  So poor that she's making up for lost time by living the high life now. 

This year my daughters had 2 birthday parties - one for all the girl scouts in their troop, and a slumber party a week later for close friends.  M was invited to both, and accepted both invitations.  At the first party, she had a bag of clothes because she had come from a sleepover with another girl scout.  The next week, we picked up our daughters and the friends who were coming to our slumber party after the girl scouts meeting - but D pulled me aside and told me that M couldn't go because she wasn't feeling well.  I didn't believe D, in large part because M was standing right there having attended the girl scouts meeting.  I believed her even less after the girls who did come to the party played a round of "what did you invite her for?", and I heard a week later that M had taken her turn at that game at school.  So apparently my daughters have friends who don't all get along with each other.  It happens at all ages!  But D taught her daughter that lying is an acceptable way to treat people by doing it right in front of her.  I lost whatever respect I had for D that day.

Fast forward to today, 2 months later.  D called, going on about how uncomfortable this call is.  And then told me that M can't find her silver peace pendant, and my daughter is wearing a silver peace pendant.  If the pendant my daughter is wearing belongs to M, it will say Tiffany's on the back.  So I called my daughter over, explained the situation, and she said she got it for her birthday.  I should mention two things here - I do remember this pendant being among her birthday presents, and my daughter shares my inability to lie.  She is the child who will admit to doing something she isn't supposed to do because lying about it will not even cross her mind, it simply is not in her soul.  But to put the matter to final rest, I turned the pendant over.  It does not say Tiffany's or anything remotely like it - it says 925.  D was relieved, she told me how much she hated the time when her son's friend had stolen his video game.

Perhaps if we were rich I would have known better.  Out of curiosity, I went to the Tiffany's website and clicked the link for silver jewelry.  Then I clicked the link for pendants - a split second before the page changed, I saw it - 925.  The symbol for Tiffany's silver.  My heart sank.

My heart did not sink because there was any chance my daughter stole the necklace, I know her better than that.  If anything, it fell out of M's clothes bag and I swept it up into the box of presents thinking that's what it was.  My heart sank for two reasons - first, my daughter who loves this pendent will have to give it back to it's rightful owner.  Second, my heart sank because this rich party girl who lies for her daughter might think that my daughter is a thief.  But I guess that's life.

I saw some information about an old friend today. We worked together for several years, and we had an unspoken, informal competition to see which of us would get a PhD before the other. Well, ok, that competition may have been in my head. But she won. I had kids first, she got her PhD first. Her career has followed a "meteoric" rise - she was on the cover of the IEEE Spectrum, has led scientific departments and conferences, and now has a faculty position at Stanford.

I suddenly feel not so successful. I am reasonably successful, but I know quite well that I'm not nearly as successful as I could be. I have a wonderful, loving family and a good career. I feel happy, loved, contented, proud, and comfortable, but not successful. I've had periods of great success, generally when I've experienced a deep loss and need to escape into the world of work. Can't I be both happy and successful? My friend is. But then my friend studies space, which is her passion, her childhood dream. I enjoy solving problems, especially really hard ones. But radar has quite simply never been, and never will be, my passion.

Last week I helped a seventh-grader with a third grade ability learn something. She mumbled three little words, and I felt successful. "I get it" she said (and she sounded a little stunned). When I was teaching 9th grade remedial classes, my chattiest student snapped at her classmates to "Shut up - I'm learning!", and I felt successful. I could feel successful everyday, I could be both successful and happy. All I have to do is decimate my salary.

About 10 months ago I wrote this:
"My sweet H doesn't always do what she's told when she's told... Her [second-grade] teacher seems disinterested in her intelligence and her ability, only her obedience. Mrs. P is working hard to enlist my husband and I in breaking our daughter's spirit."

Interesting follow up on that. We saw one of H's classmates at the beach with her mother, and I had a chance to talk briefly with the mom, C. C didn't want to badmouth Mrs. P, but she wasn't crazy about her. I told her we had the same experience. She said Mrs. P told her her daughter was having difficulty getting her work done - that blew me away. After H had been in Mrs. P's class for less than a week, she asked me if H's 1st grade teacher had said anything about her not finishing her work. I told her yes, but I heard the same stories from every other 1st grade parent in H's class. Mrs. P told me I was the only parent she was saying that to this year.

Apparently not. C said Mrs. P told her that her daughter had trouble FOCUSING. I told C that Mrs. P said the exact same thing to me, but I know what that's code for and it's never gonna happen. Well, it's never gonna happen for my kid, but it did happen for C's kid. Mrs. P succeeded in making C think there was something wrong with her daughter, so she took her to the doctor and got her medicated. She behaves better for Mrs. P now and finishes her work when she's told. No matter whether she's learning, or engaged, so long as she's medicated and obedient. That's what really matters in our schools.

After a few months with Mrs. P, my husband and I started to see fear in H's eyes when it was time to do homework. When it turned to consistent terror, we decided we'd had enough of the public school. (Our other daughter was spending her days crying, which as anyone who knows her knows, is NOT our daughter!) So we put H and S back into private school. After a few weeks, we had our first meeting with H's new second grade teacher, Mrs. R. Mrs. R told us that H was doing well, learning the material, on target for her grade, and fitting right in. I asked Mrs. R if H was finishing her work, and she said yes, but she's more interested in the quality of her students' learning than the quantity of worksheets they finish. In less than one month, H went from the worst teacher for her learning style to the best, and she did it without drugs.

The icing on the cake - H will have Mrs. R again for third grade!

And then there was this:

Me: S, what do you want for breakfast?
S: a book.
Me: I mean to eat.
S: a book.
Me: A book is food for your brain, but your body needs food too.
S: But my brain is hungry.
:-) May your brain always be hungry my love.

We had 2 plots left at the family burial site, for my mother and my father. Then my brother was killed in a tragic accident. He was buried there, leaving one plot. A few years later, I bought 2 more plots together in the same section of the cemetery because it was important to ME that my family be together. I never thought it would be only 8 years until we needed to bury my father there.

Within one year my mother started dating. I told her I wasn't ready to hear about it, but she kept telling me anyway. A year after that she was engaged. He's a great guy, he takes good care of her and they're happy. But I was told - not asked - that I would approve of him and give them my blessing. That was before I even met him.

A year later they got married. That was one year ago. Less than 4 years after my father died, my mother changed her name. I'm not stupid, I can do the math. She's not going to be buried next to my father with a different name. Last night she made me listen to her say it. One year of marriage trumps 40 years and 2 children.

The 5th lesson of John Taylor Gatto's "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher":
"Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I, the teacher, can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I then enforce. If I'm told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think. This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily. Successful children do the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or actually it is decided by my faceless employers. The choices are theirs, why should I argue? Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.
Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist...Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do...Don't be too quick to vote for radical school reform if you want to continue getting a paycheck. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know how to tell themselves what to do. It's one of the biggest lessons I teach."

My sweet H doesn't always do what she's told when she's told. It can be frustrating, but it's who she is. It is NOT a reflection of her intelligence or her ability. Her teacher seems disinterested in her intelligence and her ability, only her obedience. Mrs. P is working hard to enlist my husband and I in breaking our daughter's spirit. What will the cost of this be?

From Stanley Milgrams "The Perils Of Obedience":
"This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority...The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred, all of the essential features of obedience follow. The most far-reaching consequence is that the person feels responsible to the authority directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of the actions that the authority prescribes. Morality does not disappear -- it acquires a radically different focus: the subordinate person feels shame or pride depending on how adequately he has performed the actions called for by authority...Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps, but he had only to sit at a desk and shuffle papers. At the same time the man in the camp who actually dropped Cyclon-b into the gas chambers was able to justify his behavior on the ground that he was only following orders from above. Thus there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no one is confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil act. The person who assumes responsibility has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society."

Two supreme court rulings against children in one week. First, the supreme court has determined that the death penalty may not be used for convicted child rapists - in short, no death for any criminal whose victim did not die.

How many ways is this wrong?
1) It only applies to criminals whose crime was against individual citizens. Traitors and spys can still be put to death even if they did not kill anyone. A ballistic missile is more highly valued than a child.
2) In saying 'death only for death', the supreme court is narrowing the definition of "proportionate" by effectively replacing it with "equivalent". The punishment for rape will never be equivalent to the crime, and I don't believe the supreme court even considered what a truly proportionate punishment would be. The majority justices in this case cannot consider a proportionate punishment unless they understand the severity of the crime, and it seems clear to me that they don't.
3) Has "cruel and unusual" been usurped by proportionate and/or equivalent? Unless the supreme court has their own private dictionary, these are not the same thing. I am not all that clear on my own position on this one, perhaps that's why I'm an engineer and not a judge or a lawyer. But these words have very different meanings, and the people who set the standards for the law in our country SHOULD be clear on what that standard is!
4) The last sentence in the second bullett deserves it's own bullett: The majority justices in this case cannot consider a proportionate punishment unless they understand the severity of the crime, and it seems clear to me that they don't. When a victim of rape commits suicide after a decade of mental anguish, then the punishment for the rape must also be adjusted.
5) The day after reducing the maximum sentence for one violent crime, the same supreme court ensured increased proliferation of primary tool of violent crime in our society - guns.

The last bullett is the second court ruling against children - no blanket bans on guns.

How many ways is this wrong?
1) The first 4 words of the second amendment are "A well regulated militia". The 'big question' is whether this amendment pertains to an indiviual's right to bear arms or the collective right to bear arms - it seems to me the 'big question' is answered in the first noun: MILITIA. But the supreme court has determined that an individual can constitute a militia.
2) This is why my children are not allowed to play with toy guns, ever - if their friends play with toy guns, they are likely to mistake the real thing for a toy when they find it in a closet or a drawer. I don't want my children in the room when that happens. I found my father's gun once, luckily I was old enough to know that it wasn't a toy.
3) The intention of the second amendment is "the security of a free State" - "self defense" is NEVER mentioned. Indeed, "self defense" is low on the totem pole in terms of ACTUAL gun use, regardless of the owners' intentions. My father took his gun out of hiding for self defense when there was an intruder one night. He got rid of the gun the next day - the intruder was me.
4) The supreme court has supplanted the definitions of "militia" with "individual" and "security of a free state" with "self defense". They have not yet redefined "well regulated", they've simply ignored it. WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO REGULATE GUN-OWNERSHIP AT LEAST AS MUCH AS CAR-OWNERSHIP. HOW MANY MORE VIGINIA TECH'S WILL IT TAKE FOR US TO LIVE UP TO THAT RESONSIBILITY???

The stories of my father's gun ended well. I was lucky. My husband's cousin - not so much. Our cousin's older son used his gun to kill himself when he couldn't bear the humiliation of being thrown off the football team for getting caught with a beer. Two years later our cousin's younger son killed himself because he couldn't bear his older brother's death. I believe he used the same gun. I've been told that I'm too close to such a tragedy to have an objective opinion, and that our stories are too unusual to be considered typical. Someday I'll write a more reasoned argument to that criticism, but for now, go fuck yourself. Better yet, go shoot yourself - it's your right.

It's a few days later now. Turns out I don't have to write a more reasoned response, someone else beat me to the punch! The full article is at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-gun-deaths-suicide,0,703027.story , but here's an exerpt:

"Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There was nothing unique about that year -- gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years."

When Hillary was on a losing streak, I saw emails, blogs, and articles about how this was just another example of the long history of injustices in this sexist world. These were very detailed and elaborate messages, but I couldn't understand why the authors couldn't see what seemed blatantly obvious to me - exchange race for gender, and the same could be said about Barack Obama. I wanted Hillary, or Barack, or better yet both, to remind their constituencies that yes, of course racism and sexism have existed, do exist, and will continue to exist, but the fact of this presidential race is an enormous leap forward on both fronts! We should be celebrating this, not whining about it.

Then came Reverend Wright. It broke my heart to hear his hateful words, not because I thought that didn't exist, but because I thought it meant the end of our chance for a truly great president. It may still mean that. I wanted to see Barack Obama's heart broken as mine was, but instead I heard him say he hadn't heard the Reverend speak these words - a statement that struck me as utterly ridiculous. When Obama condemned the statements without condemning the man who spoke them, I assumed he had some deep seated reason for standing by him; I needed to know what that reason was.

Three days ago he explained that reason. I didn't hear it in it's entirety until yesterday. The speech in Philadelphia was a demonstration of the kind of greatness I knew Barack Obama was capable of. I didn't expect to see it so soon, but if he does lose this race, he has already shown us what a great leader is.

wow. WOW. I saw "Born without a Face" last night, and it has haunted me all day. When it started I almost turned it off because it was too disturbing, but I kept watching because I wanted to see her "fixed" after the surgery. I'm big on denial. The thoughts that ran through my head were horrible - I wanted her brain to be compromised so she wouldn't be aware of her circumstances, but her brain is perfect. She's a very bright child, and a happy child. I was actually glad that she coudn't hear so she wouldn't have to listen to people gasp and whisper, or worse, tease. But her parents had mechanical ears made for her. I thought about my earlier post, "If God gives according to what you can handle...", and I thought I could never handle that. But I think I was wrong, I would do whatever needed to be done. If I had to handle it, I would, with love. And wow do her parents love her. What an amazing family.

And then there was the image I could not let go. A 2 year old girl in a doctor's office, she can't frown because she has no mouth and she can't cry because she has no tear ducts. But her chest heaving with the mild convulsions of a child afraid of a needle is universal, and at that moment she became mine. And when she reached out for her father's comforting hug, his arms were mine.

I'm a bad mom. Yesterday was my daughters' birthday (and my husband's). We had a party at the children's gym. For whatever reason, my daughters decided to leave the activities in the gym and hang out in the party room. We tried several times to get them to re-join their own birthday party, but they were having fun, and so were their guests. Just not together. Toward the end, after everyone had joined in the party room for cake and it was almost time to leave, my daughter H said she wanted to put on a High School Musical show. A good mother would have told the party guests to shush and listen so her daughter could sing at her own birthday party. But not me. I explained to my sweet H that the party guests had been singing and dancing HSM songs in the gym (we requested a HSM theme) while she and her sister were in the empty party room. Can I go back and do that moment over again?

I started this sentence to my husband last week: "If you subscribe to the theory that God gives to people what they can handle...", and my husband finished exactly what I had begun: "Then God doesn't trust us very much". Our daughters are exceptional children. Of course there are two other possible endings: 1) What was truly difficult was the first 6 months. We handled that - was that handling? it felt like surviving! - and the extended delight and joy of our children since then is reward for that. 2) We need all the peace we can get now because the teenage years will be hell!

If God really did give people what they can handle, then my father would not have buried his son, and they would both still be alive.

Question of the day = torture. I hear the news reports about what judge or politician thinks torture is never tolerable, but won't classify waterboarding as torture. I like to think I'm highminded enough to believe that torture is always wrong, blah blah blah. But the mother of the girl who was videotaped being raped by Chester Stiles wishes he had been found dead. I, on the other hand, am delighted that he was found alive. From what little I know about "prison justice", he deserves what's in store for him.

Wow, I'm joining the blog revlution. The topics I intend to babble on are my family who I am insanely proud of, and my twin journeys of self and spritual discovery.