The blessing of rumble strips

Rumble strips are a fabulous invention. There you are, tooling along, minding your own business, pursuing your errand, working your way from here to there, thinking about this and that, when suddenly BRRMMMM. The strips warn you of danger. The surprise and the shaking even more than the noise bring you back on course.

You didn't realize you were dozing, or daydreaming, or distracted. You didn't realize you were weaving, threatening to make a mess of your car, yourself, your life and perhaps those of many others. And yet with just a little jostling and a nudge on the wheel, you are back on track.

How cool, how convenient, how valuable if we could install rumble strips along the paths of our lives.

Sometimes  they would help us make necessary changes: There we are, wending our way along life's path when, "BRRMMMM," we hear. " This relationship is not working for you." Or "BRRMMM, this is no longer the right job for you." Or "you are not eating right; living well; caring for self and others enough."

How can the strips tell? They know when we have lost our focus, and started veering into places we shouldn't go.

Sometimes they would keep us on the straight and narrow, reminding us that "there" is not where we ought to be; and "that" is not the thing we ought to do.

Still other times they would warn us to slow down, telling us that we are going too fast, reminding us that important things are coming up, slipping by, needing to be noticed.

The problem is, rumble strips are only put in places where others have gone before. And they don't stop us, they only warn us.

But when we go on our life's journey where no one has been before (or at least so we think), when we are blazing our own paths, there are no pre-laid rumble strips. And even when they are there, we may tend to ignore them.

That, it seems to me, is what Rosh Hashanah, and even more, Yom Kippur, are all about.

Yes, in part these holy days are to help us atone for the past. We need to do proper reckoning for our past.

But even more they are there for us to assess the present and map out our future. Are we on the right path? Are we heading in the right direction? Are we veering off or nodding off or rushing by?

The slight shaking we feel at this time of year, the sudden, forever surprising brrmmm of the shofar, are kindly reminders, saving reminders, that we are the drivers of our lives. It is we who choose our paths. It is we who often have to lay down the boundaries on the roads we travel when others have not already done so for us. It is we who need to mind the rumble strips we encounter as we barrel our merry way through life.

Listen to the rhythm of the road.

May your journey be long, safe and full of discovery.

Who Knew?

This bit of news slipped by me this summer:

Israeli soil scientist Dr. Daniel Hillel was named the 2012 World Food Prize Laureate in June for pioneering "a radically innovative way of bringing water to crops in arid and dry-land regions."

The ceremony was held at the U.S. State Department, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivering the keynote address.

Amb. Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, noted that Dr. Hillel's work was not just a scientific contribution but a social one as well.

“Confronting hunger can bring diverse people together across even the broadest political, ethnic, religious or diplomatic differences," Quinn said. “Dr. Hillel's work and motivation has been to bridge such divisions and to promote peace and understanding in the Middle East by advancing a breakthrough achievement addressing a problem that so many countries share in common: water scarcity. It is significant that Dr. Hillel’s nomination for the World Food Prize contained letters of support from individuals and organizations in Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates."

You can read the entire announcement posted back in June here.

As we enter prepare for the holiday of Sukkot (looking just a bit past the Yamim Noraim, the High Holidays), when we recite prayers and celebrate the life-giving nature of rain, and, on the world stage, sadly witness once again demonstrations of hate and violence between religions and peoples, how wonderful to know that Dr. Hillel has been recognized for contributing so much to easing hunger and bringing dignity and channels of peace to people all over the world

What is stuff for?

In his classic 1977 book, Space and Place, the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan writes:

“Much of a child’s combative possessiveness is not evidence of genuine attachment. It arises out of a need for assurance of his own worth and for a sense of status among his peers.”

Indeed. The question is, how much does this change as we grow up?

From shoes to cars to houses to land to corporate acquisitions ... how much of our stuff do we truly treasure for its inherent value, for the immediate services and pleasures it provides us, and how much do we cherish our possessions for the display value they offer, both to others and ourselves? 

How much do we need, in other words, to prove to ourselves that we are who we hope to be - loved, valued, worthy?

This is the season for such questions. For it is the time when we strip away all the trappings of our surroundings and possessions, all the shells and costumes that serve as our "face" to the world, and look at the naked self.

We cannot easily comfort ourselves or fool ourselves into valuing our place on this earth by counting up our possessions, especially those possessions that other people envy.

Material possessions are handy in times of stress or uncertainty or loneliness or searching. They can reinforce our sense of self, help us hold onto a vision of self when things seem to be slipping away. They can, sadly, even pretend to substitute for a sense of self. But they cannot create a sense of self. 

So once a year, as we delve into those quiet places of self we usually leave closed, we can ask what things do we need to hold our vision of self? Which things and how much?

And then, if we are honest, we can look at those answers and see what they tell us about the nature of our selves and how we are doing in our lifelong enterprise of becoming, in essence, the person we want to be.

Money for Trees

BGE is trimming and removing thousands of trees in our neighborhoods to protect their electrical wires from damage and destruction. Whatever you think about this program - it is moving forward.

One thing we can all agree on is that Baltimore needs more trees. Both the city and the county have set goals to radically increase their tree canopy (the amount of land covered by the spread of the trees). While cutting the trees may help keep the lights on, it will have devastating effects on all the good things that trees provide: absorbing and slowing our stormwater, cleaning our air, cooling our streets, securing our soil and more. And it sets back both the city's and county's tree goals.

While there is no formal program yet to replace the trees taken down, BGE will help you cover some of the costs to replace certain qualifying trees that they cut down on your property.

There are two steps you need to take:
(1) find out how many trees that were taken down qualify for the voucher program.
(2) purchase the kind of replacement trees that qualify for the voucher program.

If you had trees cut down in your yards, contact Chad Devine at Chad.S.Devine@BGE.com and ask him about the $100 per tree voucher program, and which trees of yours that BGE removed qualify for earning you a $100 voucher.

A replacment tree that qualifies for the program can grow no larger than 25 feet. It must be purchased from a licensed nursery or landscape provider and you must submit your receipt to BGE. You can find a list of qualifying trees here. While fruit trees do not appear on this list, Chad has assured us that small and dwarf fruit trees will qualify as replacement trees.

Any replacement tree is valuable. Replacement fruit trees are doubly so.

The address:
Chad Devine
BGE
White March Center
11350 Pulaski Highway
White Marsh, MD 21162

Many fruit trees qualify - especially dwarf fruit trees that allow easy picking their entire lives. Now is a great time to buy a fruit tree and plant it. And you can get a refund for their costs.
If you do buy and plant a fruit tree, please do also register it on the Baltimore Orchard Project's tree registry.

If you do not want to replace your trees, but would be willing to use your vouchers to purchase replacement trees for others to plant elsewhere in the city and county, please be in touch with me. We are considering setting up a tree exchange to maximize the number of trees planted to replace the trees taken down.

Hope to hear from you.

Happy planting!

We and the Earth

This blog is about Judaism and the world we depend on. It is not the place for partisan politics for one very simple reason: Nature, Creation, Earth - call it what you will - is the only place we all call home.

A healthy Earth is the only thing that keeps us alive.

If the world gets sick, so do we all.

What I am about to say is not about politics. It is about the simple truth that many of us, in our continuing swoon over the impressive and well-earned swagger of technology, seem to have forgotten. Our quest for a healthy Earth is not a quixotic pursuit for some sweet but marginal damsel-in-distress out there. It is not about polar bears or spotted owls.

It is about us. It is about the essential truth that is captured in the resonance of the biblical words adam - humankind, and adamah - earth. The one is dependent on the other. To care for the Earth is to care for Humanity.

Mitt Romney nailed this mistake, this forgetting, in his acceptance speech the other night:

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise … is to help you and your family.

That is a false distinction.

We and our families cannot thrive if oceans come crashing into our homes. Indeed the very next day, Romney went to visit families being helped by government in Louisiana, families once again displaced and disoriented by ocean waters come ashore.

We and our families cannot thrive if harvests are wiped out due to water shortages or soil degradation, or if we cannot afford to buy food, or adequately heat and cool our homes, due to increases in energy and transportation costs.

We need to remember that the health of the earth is the greatest determining factor of our physical health. And the health of the earth is the greatest determining factor of our economy's health as well.

As the economist Herman Daly reminds us, it doesn't make a difference how big our fishing fleet is, or how large our nets are if there are no more fish in the ocean. It doesn't matter how much coal there is in the ground if our water is polluted by the dumping of mountain debris, the air made rancid and the temperatures rising.

Both jobs and life need a healthy environment to thrive. We as individuals, we as families and we as a civilization need a healthy earth.

It is something we cannot forget: We and the Earth. One and the same.