Tales from the Rat Hole 2

 

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"We're going where?" Mendel asked me as we met outside his school. It was mid day on Wednesday before Thanksgiving but the libraries at Cornell were open until 5pm and my crew was not cooking.

 

"Cornell. Mann Library, up on the Ag-Quad. Luchi-Xara thinks I have to run a Medline search on the genetic aspects of schizophrenia. I mean doesn't everyone know it runs in families?" I glared at Mendel who stared through me.

 

"I'm tired," he complained. "We had extra gym. Those girls love dodgeball."

 

"Dodgeball expeletive deleteds," I agreed with Mendel. Actually, most of gym expletive deleteds. "You know what the doctor said about fresh air and your lungs," I reminded Mendel. Actually she said it for the college students who spend time cooped up in what was once a gym/auditorium but which is now our dining room and meeting room and at night big study lounge.

 

"I'm tired," Mendel complained.

 

"So am I but when did that ever stop me. Look there's soda machines on the Ag Quad. I've still got some money left. I'll buy you a Coke."

 

Mendel shrugged and we started off behind his school toward the steps that led toward Ithaca Gun. Yes, that really is a factory we have. Beyond the steps, the road curved steeply uphill toward Stewart Avenue. We avoided the construction at West Campus where they are demolishing the U-Halls and building residential colleges. We passed Cook and Becker, the first of three residential colleges which aren't colleges at all but modeled after the dorms at Oxford. All these dormitories were empty. Even some of our college student staff had gone home. Unity was styaing on and helping as a ringer on Crew A tonight. Tomorrow both crews would unite for the Thanksgiving feast, and tonight at 7pm Naama, Tamima, and Sherman who is not vermin were going to be speaking at an Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service on Cayuga Street in the Presbyterian Church.

 

Mendel had second thoughts about going to the service. "Look," I told him as we climbed Libe Slope towards the Arts Quad. "Rose Among Thorns is getting respectable."

 

"I don't like churches," Mendel groused. We cut behind Goldwyn Smith Hall and crossed the street towards Rockefeller and climbed the driveway between Rockefeller and Baker. At the top of this driveway was a paved patio like a stage and above it was the Clark Hall patio and the breezeway. On the other side of the breezeway was Bailey Hall which seats one thousand people and the buildings of the Ag Quad. Ag is short for New York State College of Agriculture and Life Science at Cornell University. At the end of the old Ag Quad which is now in shadows due to fairly new high rise buildings towered Mann Library.

 

We went inside. Cornell is rural and no one gives kids any grief. We went upstairs and I asked for a community compute terminal. I had to show my student ID from Boynton. I'm thirteen so just old enough to use the terminal. Mendel said he did not need a terminal. Instead he got to watch me search. Actually, the librarian told me how to set up the search so I got only English language article references and how to get ones that were on target. Medline has subject headings inside it and you have to use them. Medline is a database of articles in biology and medical journals.

 

I ended up with references to fifteen aricles and copies of four of them before we started back to South Hill. I don't understand half of what I copied. I enjoyed going to the periodical shelves and up in to the stacks to find the journals which are bound up like books in bright colored but very plain covers.

 

We have a fair number of biology majors at Rose Among Thorns. They'll have to help me with the articles.

 

Tareisia K. Simmons

Sorry, no college level biology...yet

Rose Among Thorns #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Mendel on Thanksgiving -- Thankgiving is a GENTILE holiday. I am a Jew. That is how it is, but Rose Among Thorns follows halacha at its pleasure, and the adult members who have stayed behind over break demand a feast in honor of this "secular national holiday." Thus a great meeting and disputation was held on Tuesday night concerning the nature of the feast and whether we would obtain a turkey.

 

The problem with a turkey according to Naomi who was the head of the anti-turkey faction was that we would have to "flip the kitchen" from milkig to fleshig. Our kitchen is fairly strictly kosher if one can say such things and it is set to dairy eighty percent of the time.

 

"If the kitchen is flipped we can't have any nice desserts, no butter for rolls, and no cheese," explained Naomi.

 

It was the cheese that clinched her argument. Nearly all the college students worship and revere cheese as if it were an idol. That it has to be made with vegetable rennet does not change matters. Cheese is what they must have. One wonders where these young men and women were brought up and what their mothers served them. Still it is cheese they must have more than a roasted turkey, and cheese which won the day when the matter was put to a vote.

 

This meant that Tuesday night, I got to ride to Syracuse with Naomi and Sherman who is not vermin to procure the kosher cheese for the next four days. We also stopped by Coin and Kayla's in Manlius to receive a special package of kosher chevre which is smelly and salty cheese made from goat's milk but which is especially liked by Sherman and Naomi and a few others of the college kids.

 

By Wednesday evening the making of milkig rolls was well underway. Naama and Naomi took turns kneeding the multigrain dough. I watched. I have warned that baked goods should not be milkig. Naama and Tamima who is our makeshift maschiach (supervisor of kashrus) says milkig baked goods are fine as long as we know they are milkig.

 

This morning the chevre and rolls and several other kinds of cheese appeared on the table for a kind of sneak preview Thanksgiving breakfast. People had their books at the table. Everyone here in Ithaca studies alone because they are unlikely to share the same courses. Cornell is huge but young people need the atmosphere of a study hall even when silent study is the rule and men and women congregate together.

 

Sherman was reading and taking notes between bites of pumpernickel bread and chevre when Tareisia approached him. She had left her roll and port wine cheese at the far end of the table.

 

"Sherman," she said. "You're on Liturgy Committee."

 

"So..." he did not want to be interrupted.

 

"So, I am wondering if we can say a special prayer Friday night and Saturday morning...."

 

"What kind of a special prayer?"

 

"For the men and women of the Sirius Gate..."

 

"The what...."

 

"It's on my mailing list, the Spiritual Telegraph. There's a girl five hundred years in the future. Her father was on the Sirius Gate which they get to using a worm hole which decolumnated or something like that. Anyway everyone on the gate is still alive and will be for several months, but they all ready consider them dead back on Enceladus which is a moon on Saturn where Earnesty lives. It's an awful place, a bubble that is cold and dark on the outside and like dormitory on the inside with only three hundred people in it."

 

"Three hundred," commented Naomi. "That's only fifty more than an old U-Hall had."

 

"Yeah it's real small. They lost forty-seven people except they're not dead. They just wrote them off. Now, they'll probably not make it back but they're alive."

 

"Tareisia," commented Tamima. "There are no Sirius gates and no manned flights to Mars and the last manned flight to the moon was before you were born...."

 

"This is five hundred years in the future," Tareisia protested.

 

Tamima exchanged a weird look with Unity. "I can vouch for the letters," Aunt Naama spoke up in Tareisia's behalf. "The people on Enceledus did what Tareisia says they did and the Sirius Gate crew is still very much alive though they feel they are doomed since they seem to have no way back, like an army with its supply lines cut off."

 

Unity rolled her eyes. "Is it possible to pray for someone who has not yet been born and may never be born?"

 

"I'd say John Chung and the rest of the crew got born or we couldn't get letters from them," commented Naama.

 

"OK, so future people have interests," Unity who is a philosophy major laid this out as only philosophy majors can.

 

"You think these are real people," said Naomi. "You know the net is full of hoaxes."

 

"They're real," Tareisia was starting to sound exasperated.

 

"It can't hurt to pray for them," answered Sherman. "Now the question is what kind of prayer."

 

"I'd ask for a miracle except I'm not sure you really can..." Tareisia stared down at the floor. "I know we can't say kaddish."

 

"Of course we can't. These people aren't dead yet!" I sputtered. I don't like getting in to religious arguments with ignoramuses.

 

"OK, is any one perpareing to resuce these people at the Serious Gate?" asked Sherman.

 

"No," answered Tareisia. "In fact, they're taking down the whole Enceledus colony and moving people back to Mars and the Moon."

 

"All right, I see why you are not sure about praying for a miracle," answered Sherman. "This is like someone who is terminally ill. You know they aren't going to make it but surely we don't say kaddish for them either. Would you be satisfied with a 'His will be done?'" Sherman asked Tareisia.

 

"Yes," she said.

 

"OK, Hebrew or English?"

 

I rolled my eyes. Sherman glared at me. "You're lucky we do any Hebrew prayers at all," he snapped. "Most of our population doesn't understand a word of that language and relies on translations."

 

"It's a good thing college students can read silently," Tamima quipped.

 

"English," answered Tareisia.

 

"OK, then we'll do it right after the Refua Shlemas and after the Amida on Friday night. Can everyone live with that?" asked Sherman. Around the table heads nodded.

 

Mendel Memachem Schneerson-Roth

Rose Among Thorns -- #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Naama Roth -- Isabella and the Strata

 

I hate to write it but this Thanksgiving was a holiday marred by strife. The feast featured an elaborate cheese strata surprise as a main dish. Turn up your nose, but this is pure fun. Cheese strata consists of bread dipped in egg and milk and layered with grated cheese. One can also include other items such as rehydrated dried tomatoes, defrosted frozen vegetables, olives, raisins etc... The surprise strata is a very large fairly flat strata with different items tucked in to different parts of it, hence the surprise except we usually mark off different parts of the strata on top to show what is underneath so that the fosters, and younger guests who at times can get picky (We didn't know there was all those foods. You eat so many different things etc....) don't complain too loudly.

 

In addition to the surprise strata were four or five side dishes, mainly composed salads and a big basket of fresh home made rolls. In other words, there was something for everyone to eat on the table.

 

Now among our fosters is a sixteen year old named Isabella. Isabella has made great strides. That is because I take meds myself and am not squeamish to see that a foster who needs treatment stays on her meds or gets on them in the first place. Meds do not make zombies out of kids. If they do, it's a very unpleasant side effect and we stop or change the meds. In Isabella's case, the magic med is Ritalin. It's a first line ADHD medication. Our other ADHD foster is on a pair of second line medications and it was back and forth to the doctor wtih him for a while. He helps out in the kitchen.

 

Both Isabella and the other foster with ADHD received tutoring. They are no longer labeled "learning disabled." Neither are behind in school any more. That said, it takes one to know one. As someone who is differently wired than a lot of people around me, I can see that Isabella is differently wired. She is ambidextrous and she may be a supertaster as well. I've watched her study and sometimes she gets things like lightening adn sometimes she has to connect in an odd kind of sideways fashion to get through her studies. Now that she is caught up and in good standing and in normal classes, no one will investigate the problem any further.

 

On top of all this, this kid who would probably never fallen behind academically if she had been rasied in a normal home and given medication for her ADHD, has had your typical rough trip in to the foster care system. Her mother ran off when Isabella was twelve. She went from Oswego, New York to live with her father in Whitney Point. There were younger siblings and half siblings and wife number two accused the father of doing something unspeakable with one of the younger siblings. I don't even know if this is true but social services believed them and we got the phone call asking if we could take Isabella as an emergency placement. There were no beds for teenagers in Tioga county that night.

 

It takes three days of yelling on the phone to get Isabella's medical history and her school records. Her prescription was in her purse and still had a refill. I asked her if she felt the meds did her any good and while she hated taking them (Ritalin is something you want to titrate.) she knew they worked. We ask for informed consent for all older kids on medication. I got her the refill and an appointment for medication supervision and testing. It's not so hard to make a wounded teen walk.

 

Faced with the big pan of surprise strata though, Isabella lost it. It's hard being sixteen and knowing that there is just no home to which to go back. Isabella's step mother has an order of protection that extends to all of the children even, Isabella, the oldest one whom he never touched. Isabella's father has lost touch for over a month at least once this fall which means he has been out of touch more than in touch. Efforts to find Isabella's mother have failed miserably. Worse yet, Rose Among Thorns does NOT do things one bit like Isabella's family.

 

Isabella looked at the strata and cried out: "Why do you put all this shit in the food?" At our table those ware fighting words. Naomi held her cool and pointed to a corner of the second strata pan. "See that corner. I left it plain for you."

 

"But what if I want more strata?" asked Isabella who was spoiling for a fight.

 

"You either try some with stuff in it, or eat something else. We have six dishes on this table. Surely something here is agreeable. You can pick out the pieces you don't like," I wanted this garbage settled -- NOW!

 

"And if it really comes to it, we have rolls and butter or you can go fetch the peanut butter or cut yourself a bit of cheese."

 

Isabella shoved her plate in to the center of the table. "Your food is disgusting!" she cried out.

 

"And you are an igoranmus who doesn't know what good food tastes like if it bites her on the nose," spat back Naomi.

 

"Coo it now!" snarled Caufeld.

 

"There's nothing to cool. Isabella owes the whole kitchen crew an apology," stated Naomi.

 

"Why, cause I don't like the food?" Isabella asked.

 

"Because of the way you talked about it. You know what to do if you don't like something. Don't eat it. Find something else and just keep quiet. When you criticize the cooks and the food you take away from everyone else' enjoyment of the meal and that is RUDE."

 

"Fuck you!" snapped Isabella who was going red all over her pale face.

 

After a bit more snapping and snarling, Isabella stormed away from the Thanksgiving table in a disgusted and disgusting huff. People are not rational. It is easy to wish for home when you have no home to which to go.

 

Late that night, Isabella joined me in the kitchen. I was at my wits end so was cooking. Also we needed food to take to Poghkeepsie for a house dedication. Yes, Rose Among Thorns has opened its seventh house and it's called Rose Among Thorns -- Vassar. Some wealthy Vassar alums are doing more angeling than our angels do in a year. Isabella gazed suspiciously at what was boiling in big pots on the stove.

 

"Those are wheat berries," I told her. "Wheat berries are kernels of wheat. You have to soak them before you cook them, and those are pinto beans. I'm making bean and wheat berry salad and and carrot salad with tropical fruit and there's a key lime apple sauce jello setting in the fridge. Tamima contributed three extra maraschino cherry and nut breads. Isabella made a face. "Why can't you eat normal food?" she cried.

 

"First, the kitchen is kosher and second fancy food tastes better to most of us. It's how we were raised."

 

Isabella plopped herself on a stool.

 

"I remember my first Thanksgiving after I ran away from home. I was your age. I did not have to switch schools. I went to stay with a friend mine from some adventures we had. I even told my parents where I was and got them to bring my things over. I know...very tame for running away, but the point was you don't run away if you're happy. I didn't trust my parents. I didn't know all I know now about them, but boy was I right. At that point though, I felt they had just betrayed me. They let Independent Rainbow get me to 'protect my more promising siblings.' I was a student at Hunter. What the fuck more did they want? I was going to go to a good college. I wasn't broken. I didn't need to be fixed. I didn't need to be discarded either.

 

"I'm like you...." I know Isabella could not possibly believe me so I showed her my medications. "That one is an antipsychotic. That's Xanax. This is heavy duty stuff. Look at me. Do I look normal? Look at these eyes. They don't even work together. I'm nearly blind as a bat without my glasses. I don't even see well enough to drive...no depth perception. Look at these hands..." I held them up. They are badly scarred from climbing an electric fence when I was eighteen when my parents tried to put me in prison school for the summer.

 

"Would a normal person burn the skin off her hands climbing a stupid fence? It hurt that first Thanksgiving. It hurt knowing that my parents would never protect me in the way normal parents would. My parents haven't been on my side since the divorce and maybe before. They're not on my side even today. I have no family. Rose Among Thorns and Independent Rainbow Zia are my families. Do you understand?"

 

"I'm sorry..." stammered Isabella.

 

"You're a wonderfully gifted kid who's going to make a useful if not a very successful adult," I told her.

 

"You don't see the world the way most people do. When I have a problem that I can't solve, I'm going to bring it to you."

 

"You're fucking kidding."

 

"No. Solve the food problem for me."

 

"We should have had a turkey," Isabella began and then she stopped. "It's not use," she sighed. "Why did you even bother. Thanksgiving is family time. How can you still celebrate Thanksgiving when you don't have a family?"

 

"Why should I mourn when I can be joyful and among friends?" I answered.

 

"Yes, but family's different...special...Would I go to jail if I broke the order of protection?"

 

"How would you find your father?"

 

"Write to his lawyer," she answered.

 

"Computer room is down the hall," I offered and Isabella trotted off. I even found the stamps. I told her I would not look at the letter unless she wished to show it to me. She did show it to me. I will not reveal its contents. I also told Isabella that we needed to talk to Caufeld who as guardian ad litem for the house can talk to judges and maybe we can get this mess straighented out. Unlike Isabella, I wanted no part of either of my parents when I was sixteen. I am not ready though, to call Isabella lucky.

 

Naama Roth

Head Steward

Rose Among Thorns -- #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

 

Tareisia -- House Dedication in Poughkeepsie

 

We just got back from a house dedication in Poughkeepsie. At Vassar College a bunch of rich girls have started Rose Among Thorns -- #7 and they have rich alumni to back them and the college administration. I got to ride in the big orange bus four hours all the way to Poughkeepsie which is in the Hudson River Valley. We left at six in the morning. Mendel read his Hebrew books and his poems by Yehuda Halevi. At Uris library the other day, Mendel asked the librarian to recommend Jewish poets who lived before the 1700's. With his books on the bus, Mendel was quite content.

 

As for me, I finally got Naomi to look at my papers. She is an entomology major but knows something about genetics. She looked over the papers and explained that all four of them said schizphrenia is inherited from a recessive gene or more than one recessive genes. This means you have to have two bad genes before you can go crazy. Naomi even showed me how to draw a pedigree but when I drew mine since I know a fair amount about my family going four generations back on both sides, Naomi asked if I was doing it right. I told her that I knew from having talked on the phone and personal experience that my mother, Julietta, my grandmother, Antoinetta and my great grandmother Michalia were all schizophrenics. I even pointed out the aunts who had the disease.

 

Naomi said a word that was worth twenty-five cents. "This is classic domiment mode inheritence. This is one the scientists haven't found or you have an odd gene," she told me. None of this is reassuring. I made up my mind to call my mother on the cell phone as soon as we got back. Luchi-Xara wants her tested along with my grandma and great grandmother before they test me.

 

Needless to say, we got back to Ithaca too late for me to call my mom, even though she lives in Kingsville, Texas which is on central time.

 

The dedication went well. There were services and true to his word, Sherman who is not vermin asked everyone to pray for the crew of the good ship Serious Gate who are adrift at sea and unreachable by rescue and surviving on limited supplies. Someone asked about the ship later at dinner and Sherman said it was stranded up in the Arctic ocean. He said this still happens sometimes especially in the winter. We all prayed a "His will be done" and it was very moving. We do it again tomorrow and keep doing it as long as those on the Serius Gate ship are alive.

 

And the praise choir sang. We sang several songs including One of Our Submarines by Thomas Dolby. We sing this a capella which means with no instruments. The song makes me think about the Sirius Gate ship. Here are the lyrics and you can see why...

 

The chorus in parts -- Missing...missing....missing...missing

 

Soloist #1 -- One of our submarines is missing tonight

Seems she ran aground on manoeuvres

One of our submarines

 

The chorus in one part -- And I can trace my history

The chorus in another part -- Bye bye empire...empire bye bye....

 

The chorus in parts -- Missing missing missing

 

The chorus in parts --- A hungry heart

To regulate their breathing

One more night

the Winter Boys are freezing in their spam time

The Baltic moon

Along the northern seaboard

And down below

The Winter Boys are waiting for the storm

 

 

The chorus in parts -- Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye

Shallow water - channel and tide

And I can trace my history

Down one generation to my home

In one of our submarines

 

 

The chorus in one part -- One of our submarines

The horus in another part -- Missing...missing...missing...missing

 

The chorus in parts -- The red light flicker, sonar weak

Air valves hissing open

Half her pressure blown away

Flounder in the ocean

See the Winter Boys

Drinking heavy water from a spout.

 

The chorus in parts -- Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye

Shallow water - channel and tide

Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye

Tired illusion drown in the night

 

The chorus in one part -- Bye bye empire, empire bye-bye

The chorus in a second part -- The hungry heart

The chorus in a third part -- Missing...missing...missing

 

The chorus as a three part round ---And I can trace my history

Down one generation to my home

In one of our submarines

 

Soloist #1 --- And I can trace my history,

down one generation to my heart

In one of our submarines

 

Chorus all together in unison...

One of our submarines is missing tonight

 

Silence.

 

Note: we learned to sing this song after Unity arranged it this summer and got all the copyright permissions. This was long before the disaster at the Sirius Gate. By the time we got done with our performance people were standing stunned and almost weepy. One of Our Submarines is just one of those songs that does that to people. Tonight people will be asking what the song is about. Is it about sperm cells, reincarnation, or Thomas Dolby's lost father? It can't be about the Sirius Gate because that is five hundred years in the future.

 

By the time our chorus got done, Unity was slick and shining with sweat. We were exhausted. We went looking for leftover food. There was tons of food since Syracuse, Albany, and Binghamton had all turned out for the dedication. The kitchen at #7 isn't kosher though so Mendel had nothing to eat except a few cookies he had packed.

 

When we got back a few hours ago, Aunt Naama gave Mendel supper. Then she took me aside. "You realize," she told me. "That your mom may not consent to a genetic test."

 

"Why wouldn't she?" I asked.

 

"Because she all ready knows she's sick and may not want to know about passing the disease on. She's got five kids remember."

 

I stared at the floor. I tried to picture my mom feeling guilty for being schizophrenic and having children anyway. Adults do dumb things like that all the time. That is why you hear about women who are HIV positive having babies who could be infected with AIDs an die young.

 

"Also there are insurance and privacy issues...got that?" Naama must have really thought I was dumb.

 

"I got it," I groaned. What can I say. The genes in my family don't follow the rules. Nothing ever works like it is supposed to. Any one with two neurons as Naomi says should know that.

 

Tareisia K. Simmons

Rose Among Thorns -- #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Tareisia and Mendel -- Taresisia was making rice pudding. This concoction of milk, raisins, sugar, and short grain rice was one of the reasons for not having meat this shabbos. Coffee doesn't cut it. Tea and ice tea are the favorite sources of caffeine. Tareisia stood and stirred her pot and just enjoyed the kitchen's warmth. Out in the dining room most of the adult students were studying.

 

I was troubled and sick to my stomach. I thought of going to Naama and may yet do so. It was about the filth on the Telegraph. Such acts...what kind of a mind can be so depraved as to dream them up, let alone do them? "Have you read this evening's Telegraph?" I asked Tareisia.

 

"You mean Peter and Earnesty having lunch. I feel bad for Earnesty but that kid doesn't know there are foster parents who make their kids sleep on mattresses on the floor and who beat them with belts and sticks and who starve them and worse. Our fosters here could set her straight in no time..."

 

"Tareisia did you read all the Telegraph?"

 

"Did you?" she asked.

 

I confessed I had which was why I was distressed. "You mean the sex post," said Tareisia as if what was described in there was nothing. I know Tareisia has a reasonably pure mind, a normal mind any way, but sometimes she is painfully blase when she should be filled with moral outrage.

 

"Yes, the one with Renard DuPrey, David Cheh, and Sabira who doesn't have a last name," I said.

 

"Yeah, I read it. It's gross if you ask me."

 

"It's more than grotesque," I corrected my older sister. "It's depraved men and beasts going at it. Didn't any body read Torah?"

 

"Given the state of most adults in the world, probably not," Tareisia replied. "Just be glad we kids are more moral than those grownups. We aren't going to grow up like that."

 

"That's all you can say!"

 

"No, Jumana Malcha better not show the Telegraph to her mother, Aunt Jennifer, or she might not get to read it any more and we'll miss her. Same with all the rest of the kids here. If some of the parents knew what was on the Telegraph..."

 

"And it doesn't bother you?"

 

"It's gross, I told you all ready. I know that. Look, they're gross and dumb for writing that kind of stuff. There, is that better?"

 

Just then Naama came in the kitchen. "Sherman says to keep it down. He and Blaine are trying to study," she said.

 

"Aunt Naama," complained Tareisia. "Mendel is upset because the panda on the Telegraph got big in Japan and then did it with Sabira."

 

"Well those three are writing about themselves and have no sense of privacy," sighed Naama.

 

"You don't feel it was immoral?" I ask my mother.

 

"No comment," answered Naama. "Actually it doesn't matter what I feel except to you, Mendel. I'm a fine one to talk since I have a boyfriend to whom I'm not married, but Caufeld and I have a bit more privacy where sex is concerned." Naama glanced at Tareisia. "We don't write about it and you don't write about it."

 

"Censor the reader not the writer," Tareisia sing-songed.

 

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

 

"If you don't like something in the Telegraph, skip it and don't complain," she answered.

 

"The Telegraph used to be much worse when I was in high school," Naama added.

 

"It won't corrupt your morals if you don't read it," Tareisia added.

 

"It probably won't corrupt them if you do read it either," answered Naama. "It's just words after all."

 

"But what those words describe...."

 

Tareisia began singing: "Oh you're big in Japan tonight

Big in Japan that's right

Big in Japan oh the Eastern Sea's so blue

Big in Japan that's right

Babe can I sleep by your side,

There's a reason when you're big in Japan..."

 

I went to find my copy of Tanya that I have on permanment loan from the local Chabad house on Triphammer Road. I'd go learn with the college students and forget tonight's Telegraph...wait. "Mamala," I asked Naama.

 

"Yes," she answered.

 

"Will you promise me not ever to invite Renard Dpurey, David Cheh, or Sabira to this house. You don't want this place defiled do you?"

 

"They've never asked to visit so I've never had to not invite them. I don't think a meeting in the day time would hurt. No, I would not want them sleeping over night here. I don't think I want leopars and pandas roaming my halls.

 

Mendel Menachem Schneerson-Roth

Rose Among Thorns #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Naama Roth -- Dear Jan

 

Dear Jan,

 

Outriders, our source for proti eggs and littles, are not extraterrestrials (ET's). They come from a version of Earth 15,000 years in the future. When you think of where humanity was 15,000 years in the past you will no doubt appreciate that this is quite a gulf. A perennial Outrider obsession is which world of the many possible pasts gave rise to their present. For Attawei (one of their future Earths. Outriders come from several different ones), our future (perhaps???), there needs to be a messiah and Luchi-Xara and her crew endlessly discuss and debate whether she is here. They believe the messiah will be/is female.

 

As for messianic movements, many of them have been quite successful even after the death of their leader. Sabbetei Zvi and Yaakov Frank both fit this description. The largest religion on my world, Christianity, is founded around what for want of a better word is a false messiah.

 

Now, you want to know whether Moshiacha has arrived. I want to put aside all the quibbling about gender versus chromosomes nad believe that it is so. Her name is Marguerite Weinstein and she was born among the Lubavitcher Chasidim in Brooklyn. The Alte Rebbe, the first Lubavitch Rebbe, (a grand Chasidic rabbi if you will... Some unkindly say a Jewish Pope) predicted and prophesied that the Messiah would be born to a family that came froma village in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Marguerite's ancestry dates back to that city.

 

Marguerite was a typical Lubavitch girl, hard working, an excellent student, ready to marry around her twenty-first birthday but at sixteen she failed to menstruate. Eventually she went to a decent doctor who sent her to an even more decent endocrinologist. What they found out was a bit like the story of the Biblical Dinah. Marguerite has PAIS (grade 6). That's partial androgen insensitivity syndrome. Where her ovaries should have been were undescended testes and her chromosomes are 46 XY.

 

Marguerite lost her marriage prospects and became a freak in the eyes of her parents. She now had a dirty secret. I can't tell you how much this disgusts me. My first boyfriend was a PAIS male (grade 2). PAIS people are normal people even if they can not conceive children.

 

Marguerite fled her community and got as far as Syracuse. She lived hand to mouth and spent her days writing her philosophy and testament whic his kept in a locked vault on CD's. I think she still writes. Unlike previous leaders in her position, she intends to leave an intact written history behind.

 

She made friends and to them she began preaching her doctrine. There are those who want to keep ordinary people in perpetual want and igornance. These are the ones against whom we must fight. We fight by encouraging enducation in academic subjets, religion (one must know one's creed and read one's holy books. The choice of creed is up to the individual) , and recreation (You need to know how to amuse yourself in some way that is not self-destructive.). She also believed that community members must take care of each other. Rose Among Thorns offers free meals, lodging and care for foster children, tutoring, and enrichment, as well as endless volunteer opportunities. The first Rose Among Thorns house was started three and a half years ago in Syracuse, New York. The house I head for Rose Among Thorns is house #2. We recently established house #7 in Poughkeepsie, New York.

 

I hope this explains everything. Do I believe that Marguerite Weisnstein in the Messiah? My answer is that if Rose Among Thorns can bring about a better age for all and if there are enough of us we can do it, then why would you not believe it? You will have your proof.

 

Naama Roth

Head Steward

Rose Among Thorns -- #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

 

PS We are not at war in Iran. We are at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Venezuela.

 

I have art today. I also have "gym." I have social studies and science and reading/English/literature (humanities as Tareisia calls it) and of course mathematics. This is what we call general studies in the Yeshiva. It is a small part of the day because learning is what really matters. That is what we call it, learning and it means learning Torah, Chumash, Talmud, Mussar, Halacha, etc... I knew there were secular schools but was never particularly curious the last time I was alive.

 

If you want to ask me about Little World and the ten years I spent there (There is a reason I am tied to Naama Roth and there you have it.) I saw a lot of schools teaching general studies, but remember I'm a Jew dead or alive. I had little interest beyond learning to get around and make peace with a lot of memories I would rather not discuss. My line of lifetimes is cleaner than Alise' but Alise Liddell and I are very different people. I'm not sure how to put it all without sounding insulting. I'm not sure Alise is not erring by dabbling in sorcery.

 

Now here I am physical again and instead of attending cheder or being home schooled, my "secularly educated" and proud of it, mother puts me in Fall Creek Elementary School. Now I understand the people at the tables in our dining hall turned study hall at night, with their endless devotion to the depth and breadth of general studies. I don't really understand them, but I know most of them started out in places like Fall Creek Elementary.

 

Our subjects are diverse. The teachers here believe educating the body is as important as educating the mind so they turn us out every day after lunch. I try to get to go to the library then but there is no escaping gym. We play dodge all also called firing squad, floor hockey when it rains or there is too much snow in the school yard, track and field, and even rope climbing. My mother will pay me fifteen dollars if I can climb to the top of the rope with the knots in it. She says "the knotted one is doable." I watch sturdy goyishe boys and girls and even some Jewish ones no doubt climb both the knotted and unknotted rope. The gym teacher brings in thumping rhytmic music to get us pumped up for rope climbing, horse vaulting, games on the parallel bars and still rings. I dread when we must do social dancing with both men and women. I have to get across the point that I don't do such things.

 

Art is another problem subject. As a Jew I don't make graven images. This does not get me out of taking art. Quite the contrary, the general studies experts at Rose Among Thorns sat me down and then dragged me up the hill to Cornell one Saturday afternoon and in to the bowels of Sibley Hall's Art and Architecture library. I soon found myself surrounded by art books of a wide variety of art schools that do not involve making faces or pictures of animals. Naama even went to the art teacher and explained my religious objection and suggested other things I could draw instead.

 

The scarey part about the trip to the art library though was passing through Sibley Hall to reach this place. Sibley Hall is a building devoted solely to art. I never thought of painting and drawing as learning but here was devotion to doing a thing and understanding it in a hundred ways just as if it were Torah. Worse still, artists draw both nude bodies and skeletons. I saw a skeleton hanging in a classroom and inked and pencil "studies" of it on the wall. The human form is just a thing to be taken apart and studied as if it were the Divine word. It scaird me.

 

Lindsay, the art major just laughed. She said if I wanted to see scarey she'd take me to the foundry out back where art students learn to use torches to make huge and ungainly metal sculptures. The odd thing is that these are three dimensional pictures of nothing, not any thing with a recongizable form. Lindsay said sometimes they were shapes and that you could read what you wanted in to an abstract and sometimes the right shapes and harmonies made a person feel good..."something like mathematics but without having to solve equations," she added. Naama nodded.

 

Any way, I don't have to make graven images in art, but I don't think I'm going to get out of social dancing in gym. Naama says when I reach middle school sports become more serious and the boys often have gym apart from the girls. That also means no more social dancing for boys which makes her sad. She says that social dancing will help me when I am older. I told her I was NOT MARRYING A SHIKSAH. She fined me twenty-five cents for that comment. I'm shomer negilla if you must know and I expect to stay shomer negilla.

 

Mendel Menachem Schneerson-Roth

Fall Creek Elementary School

202 King St.

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Tareisia Christmas Tree -- "All in!" bellowed Aunt Naama "All in! House meeting, now!"

 

Praise Choir rehearsal was over, and those of us who lived at Rose Among Thorns or worked there filed in and sat down in the dining hall/study hall/meeting room. We had three items on the agenda. The first and least controversial were the security locks for the door between the kitchen and the living area and between the hallway that leads from the foyer to the tutorie and meeting hall on one side and the living area on the other. We were getting a sliding portcolis style gate/grate for the two way hall and an emergency lock for the kitchen. We'd carry electronic swipe cards and use them to unlock these doors. We could bring up to three friends in to the private portion of the house, and in case of a fire, the locks would pop open. Besides the doors could always be opened from the inside without a lock.

 

That motion passed. No one wants the press in any one's private quarters. Our second motion was the Christmas tree. Put quite simply, Rose Among Thorns #2 has a very Jewish ethos. On the other hand the majority of members, both workers who live off site, fosters, and regular residents are not Jews. The argument went back and forth. Mendel and Tamima did not want such an overtly Christian symbol (even if it wasn't an idol) in the room where the conducted synagogue services. Naama did not want a tree with real pine needles that could dry out and catch fire and make a mess. Deborah said that it would not be Christmas without a tree. Athena pointed out how many nonJews make up Rose Among Thorns. Around and around a rather fractious conversation went.

 

Finally, we hammered out a compromise. The tree would be artificial. Funds for it were to come from pocket money and we'd "pass the hat." The tree would also stand in the tutorie not the makeshift sanctuary where we had services.

 

I put $20.00 in the hat. That is forty percent of my pocket money. We get paid at the beginning of the month. Naama put in $20.00 too. Athena Martin, our math tutor from Cortland County put in ten dollars. Stephanie from Ithaca College put in $10.00 Lindsay the art major put in $15.00 and the fosters put in $10.00 a piece. This gave us $115.00 with which to work.

 

Deborah, Caufeld, Stephanie, Naama, and I went to Syracuse to buy the tree at a discount place. We have a tree in the tutorie but no money for deorations except for some cute LED lights that change color. Sherman who is not vermins suggested we go up to Uris Hall where they teach psychology and raid the department scrap piles for colored xerox paper. From that we could make paper ring garlands for the tree and also colorful snowflakes. We could also make construction paper ornaments of different types. I am glad we have an artificial tree.

 

I remember the semll of pine trees in the apartment in Brooklyn. Dad and Grandma Rosalynne always made sure they were kept well watered, but Rose Among Thorns is a big religious house. An artificial tree is fine with me.

 

In other news, Unity, our choir director is crazy. Do you know what song she arranged for us and wants us to sing: Big in Japan? Do you know what that song is about? It's about guys getting erect penises. Ewww.....grosss! People will laugh at us. Unity says most people don't know the joke in the lyrics and the song is beautiful and poteic and will make a fine choral arrangement. Go figure.

 

Tareisia K. Simmons

Rose Among Thorns #2 with a tree in the tutorie!

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

 

Tareisia K. Simmons -- Last night's praise choir rehearsal sounded so good. We were working on Big in Japan by Alphaville. It really does have pretty lyrics in some places even though we all know it is about sex. Unity asked us to listen to ourselves singing in four part harmony and the song sounded sweet and light like snowflakes falling. "You guys are so good!" she exclaimed.

 

In the tutorie, Isabella McKenzie, our sixteen year old foster kid from Whitney Point but who is really from Oswego on Lake Erie, helped decorate the tree. Naama thought she could teach us to make paper garlands from colored scrap paper we found in Uris Hall where they teach psychology on the Cornell Campus, but her garlands were just rings like the kind that kids in pre-k make. Isabella had antoher method of folding tucking and cutting the paper so the garlands came out like long perforated caterpillars of paper. I asked Isabella where she had learned to make garland like that and she said she figured it out herself. I don't know why I'm so impressed.

 

Now the tutorie is full of holiday feeling, or rather Christmas feeling. Lindsay, the art major, made one ceramic and one metal work menorah for Hanukkah both are quite large and they sit on a table near where we keep the ark (a big cupboard)full of Torah scrolls. Yes, we have real Torah scrolls. These are for the Jewish services. We have two religions living here at Rose Among Thorns, five or six if you want to count the different Christian denominations as separate religions.

 

I am dealing with a lot of stuff I can't talk about on the Telegraph right now. Last night, Lindsay, Isabella, and I walked to Cornell around 8:30pm and got there by a bit before 10pm. Our destination was Sibley Library which has the art books. Lindsay wanted to get Isabella a book on paper folding and also on paper making. She ended up with five books. They were very heavy, but Isaella did not complain. She asked to see the Green Dragon which will be burned in a bonfire on St. Patrick's Day after the architecture students parade him around the campus. He is made of paper machier and cardboard and hangs in the dome of Sibley Hall. He is half finished right now. He doesn't have a name. Some people say he is the dragon in the song: Puff the Magic Dragon. I don't know if I believe that. Cornellians think everything revolves about them.

 

Seeing the dragon made me sad because Vijaya would have worked on it if she had not been drafted. She was going to study architecture. She would have been one of the people holding up the dragon in the annual Green Dragon Parade. There she is stuck on the prairie and so unhappy. I don't know what to tell her. There are so many high school and elementary school kids who fell by the wayside when I was younger. You see less of it here in Ithaca, because Ithaca is a prosperous place, but in other places.... Kelli has made it to be fifteen. Maybe she will make it to be eighteen and get through school and go to college. She only has to keep it together for three years. I don't feel sorry for Kokqi by the way. I think people are taking good care of Kokqi.

 

Tareisia K. Simmons

Boynton Middle School

1610 N. Cayuga St.

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Naama Roth -- I received a phone call last night. It was Marguerite. She was sending us another foster care placement, this one completely informal. In this case it was a sixteen year old girl from a place called Lakewood, New Jersey. She had run away from her very strict high school and equally strict family over issues of freedom.

 

"Why are you sending her to me?" I asked Marguerite.

 

"I'm sending you Basia because she has to learn that freedom comes with responsibility," Marguerite answered. "Also I don't run a cult of personality. You know how a lot of Lubavitchers feel about the rabbi. Well, I don't want them feeling that way about me. Basia needs to stand on her own two feet. Not nestle under my wing."

 

"Er uh...Marguerite, Mendel is my little."

 

"He is your little, not the Rebbe any more. That ended in 1994. In fact it will be good for Basia to see Rabbi Schneerson as a gilgal ((reincarnated))."

 

What could I say. The only problems in getting Basia in here besides the fact that informals come without support checks is logistical. Marguerite put Basia on the 9am Greyhound out of Syracuse which arrived around 10:30am which meant there was no one to see her at the station. She gave Basia directions and she made her own way to South Hill. I know she is there because I just called 411 Hillview and made Blaine who was in the tutorie find Basia and put her on.

 

Getting Basia enrolled in school will be fun. This will be her first experience with public education. Finding work for Basia and explaining to her how broke she'll be most of the time will be hard. As for the rest, what baggage the new foster girl is dragging behind her besides a suitcase is a mystery that I am trying not to think about. I'll have to learn when I meet Basia.

 

Naama Roth

Head Steward

Rose Among Thorns -- #2

Mathematics Library

Mallott Hall

Cornell University

Ithaca, New York 14853

Point Two-Five

 

I spent most of today when not in class tied to my cell phone. Between Basia, Kelli, our existing fosters and final exams coming up, I have my hands full.

 

Basia is not useless in the kitchen though a bit baffled by the variety of foods we eat. I've laid down the law about the music we play on the kitchen boom box, No Dr. Dirty. Songs with double entendre are fine as long as no one draws undue attention to them. Basia is welcome to live a secular life (well not really secular, but not haredi or Chasidic if one wants to be particular) if she does so for the right reasons. If she wants to engage the lowest common denoninator, Rose Among Thorns won't accept it.

 

That said, I made her talk to her parents last night. She had to tell them where she was and that she was in good health and attending school. I then talked to her father. He would not put her mother on the line. I told him what Basia had told him and then discussed having her things sent to us since she has clothing and perhaps bedding and books that she had left behind in Lakewood. I was told I had chutzpah. I replied that Basia would stand a better chance of settling down and living a normal happy life if she had her own familiar posessions.

 

I got a long lecture on how bereft the parents were and how Basia was destroying her life. I said that this was a respectable house and it is one! I told the father that Basia was old enough to decide what she wanted in life. I also told him that I had run away at sixteen but for very different reasons.

 

Well, that was not the end of it. As I was eating lunch on the glassed in porch at the Straight, Basia's cousin called. She was Pua, Dov, Alise' boyfriend's sister. Well Basia is family in an odd sort of way. Pua was angry. She was angry because Basia's parents are upset. She was angry because I was not angry. I explained that Basia has a right to choose the life she leads. We all have that choice. Basia would not be allowed to wallow in degradation. "But what about when she needs to get married?" asked Pua. I wanted to laugh, but for private reasons.

 

"There's a Jewish population out of proportion to the general population here in Ithaca. She stands a good chance of meeting a Jewish boy, especially when she gets a bit older. She also does not look in any danger of losing her virginity, getting stoned, turning to crime...what do you want?"

 

"Bashele, belongs at home," Pua wailed.

 

"Basia does not want to go home."

 

I did promise Pua not to tempt Basia with low pleasures. I refuse to do that any way. Basia will find she is up to her eyeballs in school work because eleventh grade is hard. I have her transripts from her old high school and the courses dovetail. She's taking two AP's, biology and American history. That means a lot of work and for the first time her "general studies" will count for something. If Basia chooses Rose Among Thorns, it will be for the right reasons. If she chooses to return to her community, she will return without having missed school and because she can not live in a mixed group. That is up to her.

 

If that was not enough, I was on the phone with the Cheyenne Tribal Government in Lame Deer, Montana. They, not the Lakotah in Rose Bud, South Dakota, manage Kelli's foster care funds. It took four phone calls to talk with the head of social services. The lady at least listened. She did not like Kelli leaving her family. It was bad enough she was off the reservation and in Missoula, but Ithaca, New York. I explained that Kelli wanted this arrangement and her grandmother had consented to it and that it would be good for Kelli to attend an academically challenging high school. I explained that we would like to make Kelli's placement official. The lady worried about Kelli running away back west.

 

"She has to travel nearly three days on a Greyhound bus and spend over two hundred dollars," I explained. "She'll be too far away to run back home. She'll have to make a go of it here." I also explained that Rose Among Thorns was Kelli's best shot.

 

The woman on the other end of the phone disagreed, but she granted me a hearing before the Tribal Council on January 16th. Beacause the Tribal Council is in Lame Deer, I probably will appear at the hearing via speakerphone and conference call.

 

Do I have to tell the rest of you that Kelli's support payments will keep going to her grandmother in Missoula. Her Social Security Survivor's benefit, however, will follow her to Ithaca. The support payment from the Cheyenne Nation may be a lost cause.

 

Caufeld says my best strategy in the hearing before the Tribal Council will be that posession is nine tenths of the law and that at fifteen Kelli will need an adult to sign health insurance forms, permission slips, etc... As a purely practical matter making Kelli's status official will just make everyone's life much easier, including Kelli's. Wish me luck....

 

Naama Roth

Head Steward

Rose Among Thorns #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Mendel Menachem Schneerson-Roth -- Naama won't work on the paper that is due Monday. She had a final this morning early and came back around lunch time. Everyone who is at Cornell is in and out for finals. She worked on the paper until she could not stand it and then to relieve the strain of nerves set herself to hard work in the kitchen.

 

Our food is going to stay milkig since it is the type of set up everyone knows better and if we flip the kitchen in to fleishig mode, we hvae to flip it back and no one will have the time or energy for the effort.

 

Our cooking crews are in disarray. Those who have time sign up to cook on a given night. Those who must study, find a spot, in the dining room, in their bedroom, in the tutorie which opens its unused offices and rooms as study rooms, in the unused bedroom in the dormitory. Everyone here who is an adult is lost in a chaos of books and papers or irritable waiting for a computer or tromping to and from campus at odd times.

 

All studying here is solitary. There are chavrusot in the loose sense, but only in the loose sense. No two students have the same courses. The university's motto is "I shall found an institution where any person can obtain instruction in any study." Ezra Cornell, the GENTILE that he was, meant it.

 

Naama emerged from the office where she was writing her paper and plunked herself down on the kitchen stoold with a groan. Tareisia is on all the crews as is Deborah since younger people do not have winter finals. Tareisia was getting out the brocoli rabe to wash it. Where this came from I don't know, but there were eight bunches of this stuff which is considered a front line delicacy of the green and leafy type though it is not Jewish food, at least not to me.

 

Naama turned to her and said: "I'l take care of that." Washing and breaking up greens is the lowest act especially on a cold day like today where there is sometimes a draft in the kitchen. "Tareisia, you can peel the sweet potatoes. Go get some raunchy ones. Then cut them up and set them boiling for me."

 

I've given up asking what anything is for in this house. Right after I was born I got used to tomato in most food which is the way Naama cooks, though not tonight. Naama filled the sink with warm water and undid the fasteners from the greens. "Don't worry," she chided me. "I'm not eating dirty greens. No bugs..."

 

I could hear Naama snapping the greens apart and throwing the broken up clean greens in one of several colanders. "We got angeled," Naama told us. "It happened three days ago and it's anonymous. The donor walked in and handed me an envelope. Tamima saw it. In the envelope are twenty hundred dollar gift certificates. Ten are to Tops Friendly Markets and ten are to Wegman's. Want a piece of raw greens, Tareisia?"

 

Tareisia grabbed stem of Brocoli rabe and chewed on the bitter green, sucking it like a cigar while sweet potato peelings fell in to a garbage pail.

 

"We'll make another supermarket trip on Sunday. There is a very full pantry right now, hearts of palm, sugar snap peas, mango puree...no Prigat I'm afraid."

 

Basia looked up. Prigat is juice manufactured in Israel. It includes a very tastey grapefruit juice drink. "Tropicanna has a heksher on it," Naama advised Basia who looked as ill at ease in the Rose Among Thorns Ithaca kitchen as any good Lubavitcher woman should. "Can you measure dry ingredients?" Naama asked Basia. Basia blinked. "For baking. We're having a baked goods extravaganza...."

 

"My mother always used mixes," Basia confessed and continued to blink. "Here we cook by measuring and with recipes," Naama explained. "When Tareisia goes in to the pantry to measure the flour and the corn meal and the sugar, Iw ant you to go with her and learn."

 

Basia nodded and Naama gave her orders to drain the kidney beans and set them boiling since Sherman who is often called vermin did not bother to cook the beans last night.

 

Just then a stranger appeared in the kitchen. She had long dark hair and pink skin and nearly yellow eyes. She wore a black down jacket over a pink turtle neck and jeans as tight as leggings and black shearling boots with pom poms on them. Outrageous figures like her who are really not outrageous raise no outrage. Naama merely recognizes them as another woman or man depending on the gender.

 

"I'm Marisa," the figure said. "Lindsay sent me as a substitute. She's still working on her project at the foundry."

 

"Have you cooked before?"

 

"I took home ec in high school."

 

"Can you measure dry ingredients?"

 

"Sure. I cook at Von Cramm."

 

"OK, take off your coat. Put on an apron if you care about your clothes. The measuring implements are on the yellow shelves above the stove. The recipes are posted on table number three. Get some bowls from the cupboard with the open door and then measure me out the dry ingredients. Basia go with Marisa."

 

"What if she..." I asked.

 

"She won't. She said she can do dry ingredients. She won't mess up the recipes. She also won't sabotage the kitchen. I'm glad for free help when I can get it."

 

I shook my head. "Are you going to be able to learn when this is over?" I asked. Naama studies mathematics but that is still learning as are her "education" classes.

 

"Yes," I said. "You want food for shabbos, we need to get it made."

 

Note: here is what we are having from all this chaos....

 

Tonight is the Baked Goods Extravaganza. The covert goal is to provide baked goods to enjoy while studying.

 

Corn bread (made with yellow corn meal)

Sweet potato biscuits

Cheese whirls (also known as cheese biscuits)

Sauteed brocoli rabbe with Veg-All (canned mixed vegetables) and onion.

Democracy Tray consisting of carrot sticks, jicama coins, green olives, black olives, calmyra figs, and hearts of palm.

Kidney bean and string bean salad in Italian dressing.

Peanut butter

Swiss almond cheese spread.

Pink grapefruit jello with strawberries (obtained frozen) for dessert

Fresh fruit for dessert

 

Shabbat Shalom

Mendel Menachem Schneerson-Roth

Rose Among Thorns #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five

 

Naama Roth -- We have managed to pull off services this weekend which is a miracle since it is the weekend that falls midway through an eight day finals cycle. Cornell has a long finals cycle and according to an angel who is an alum it used to go longer in to December and not end so early. Finals also used to be on weekends. This is a new system wtih finals falling earlier and the two day break in between. The two day break is Shabbos but it is also a study day. Our tutorie has been busy in the most painful way and those who aren't tutoring are studying.

 

Naomi, who finally finished her lab project Friday at 4pm, handled the kitchen tonight and made a late but tastey schal schudis, the meal after Shabbos. At sundown, I helped our liturgy committee make havdalah, the ritual for ending Shabbos.

 

I had the braided candle in my hand as I recited the blessing to the crowd of students who had dragged themselves from their studies but whose tired eyes cried out for a break and yearned for those times they had skated at Linah Rink, walked through the gorges, gone skiing or traying, seen movies or indulged in other pleasures. I will go through this ordeal; for I am a student too, one more semester and then things will change. I'll student teach over the summer, I hope, and then probably in January of 2008, start graduate school through the distance education program at SUNY (State University of New York) at Cortland so I can obtain my MAT and a permanent teaching license.

 

The blessing goes.....

 

Blessed art Thou our Lord King of the Universe

Who has separated the holy from the profane.

Blessed art Thou our Lord King of the Universe

Who has separated the days of the week from Shabbos.

Blessed art Thou Lord King of the Universe

Who has created fragrant spices. (We have a spice box that everyone sniffs for a sweet week.)

Blessed art Thou Lord King of the Universe

Who has created fire.

 

With that I spilled some grape juice in to a saucer and doused the Havdala candle and then....

 

My hands stung and I thought of the scars I had from climbing the electric fence gate when I was eighteen. Someone shouted something worthy of the epithet jar. Someone else yelled: "heads up!"

 

The braided Havdala candle crashed to the floor and clattered. It was broken in several pieces and no longer made of wax, but of some kind of dark metal and very hot to the touch. Naomi ran in to the kitchen and got a pot holder. She managed to pick up the candle and set it on one of the tables. It seared the table cloth but the table cloths we use are disposible plastic for a reason.

 

"Do you realize what happened?" asked Mendel.

 

"Do you think?" I asked Mendel.

 

"You need to call Alise," Mendel said. "This is a sign from HaShem that a great miracle has just happened."

 

Sherman snorted. Mendel gave him a dirty look. "A sign and a wonder is not a miracle," I was emphatic.

 

"But we all saw...." cried out Basia.

 

"Yes, but this is just show," I tried to explain back. "It doesn't count. What happens to the people here who are taking exams and the people down in Oak Gardens Plaza and the ones on West Hill and the Near South West Side and the South Side of Syracuse (which is a city of many sides), and in Utica and even Poughkeepsie, that is what counts even if it is not as showy as turning wax to gun metal.

 

"We need to put that candle somewhere sacred," Mendel told me.

 

"Make sure it is close to room temperature first," I replied.

 

Naama Roth

Head Steward

Rose Among Thorns #2

411 Hillview Place

Ithaca, New York 14850

Point Two-Five