The mama came out and squeaked for a while but I squawked back and she left us alone. When I went over to inspect (it is, after all, my house, not theirs), I found a little mound of speckled eggs. Looked more like pebbles, actually.

This morning on my way out the door I glanced over and saw one lone orange beak, no bigger than your pinky fingernail, pointing straight up. Wide open. In my head I could just hear it saying ‘Mommy…throw up some more food into my mouth.’ And then I kind of felt disgusted but in a warm, sunshiny way.

As I got closer two more beaks popped up, and then I saw the dad glaring at me from beneath the rubharb patch. Man, he was a good looking dude. With that pompadour and his feathers red as embers. If he were a few feet taller, I’d have been a little intimidated.

I’ll post some pictures if I get a chance this evening. Maybe I can even catch them feeding the babies. Now who wouldn’t want to see that?

Yahtzeee!!

My real-life neighbors have stopped giving me free bread, soup and pastries – as they used to do – because their grandson no longer works at the bakery from where the goods came. But they brought me a lawn sign of their preferred political persuasion. They are old-school democrats, by which I mean they are old people who are democrats. He flew combat missions over Berlin in the Second World War. Got hit in the eye with shrapnel.

Once, when I asked him if he thinks about the war much, he said, “I’m pretty much over thinking about it. Got too many other things to think about.”

Doesn’t everybody. Like me, I have squirrels living above the porch. The squirrels are not political, though, so at least there’s that.

But I’m sure they, like everybody else, will feel a great sense of relief when this thing is over. In March I joked about the “grueling race” that was coming between Bush and Kerry. I should have joked more. It was worse than we thought it’d be.

And yet, it wasn’t all that bad. People are still speaking to each other. Some lawn signs have been defaced, true, but the things that hold us together are still holding. The tabloids are still more interested in Mary-Kate’s emotional state than the state of the union. And I’m guessing no matter who wins today (or sometime this month), they will continue to be.

So it’s not our democracy I’m worried about. It’s our children. They’re always the biggest losers on election day. Why? Because we let them vote. Or at least, we let them pretend to vote. Schools everywhere today will be holding mock elections, letting 7 and 8-year-olds fake-choose our next commander-in-chief. This is not a new thing. I did it when I was in grade school; in 1988, Brimhall Elementary was a landslide, a crushing and decisive win for Dukakis.

When I went home that day I thought, “OK, that was nice, what’s next?” We’d elected the president, we’d made the tough choices and picked our man. Let’s move on. Bigger things.

So I was a little surprised that night when the evening news came on. It seemed word of the Massachusetts governor’s victory had not spread rapidly. By the next day, it was clear the rest of the country had vetoed our vote. Or invalidated it. Perhaps we had mispunched?

The mood at school was glum. The whole experience was meant to help us learn about democracy, but the only thing we were learning was that it didn’t work. We picked Dukakis, not Bush. Period. What kind of democracy is this?

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t allow kids to vote. It’s a good introduction to the democratic process. It’s just that we shouldn’t let them vote for the losers.

On the other hand, picking the losing side is a good way of proving to yourself that the world doesn’t end if your man (woman?) doesn’t win. It happened to me in ’88, and then again in 2000 and 2002. In my entire voting history I’ve never been on the winning side. Or maybe it’s that the winner has never been on my side. But that builds character.

And it’s never diminished my enthusiasm for voting. Today after work my girlfriend and I are going to walk down there hand-in-hand, like two school-kids, hoping the vote tally comes down on our side. And after that exercise of civic duty we’re going to go exercise it a little more.

At The Gap. It’s the first Tuesday of the month; 10% off.

Think of it this way: fall has not yet taken all the leaves off the oaks and elms that hang down low over the intersection of Fulham and Hendon. That leaves me with a small window to the west, about the size of a compact car. And yet through it the whole city is visible.

There’s a reason you don’t often see postcard depicting the great Midwestern skyline of Minneapolis. But we’re working on it; lots of construction going on. Mostly lofts, but some big buildings, too. Soon we’ll be the largest metropolis in the Midwest north of Chicago.

OK, we’re already that. And also we’re the only metropolis in the Midwest north of Chicago. And we will never surpass the windy city. The Sears tower alone would make our loftiest edifice tremble and squirm.

Not that I mind. There’s nothing wrong with being mid-sized. We can legitimately pretend to be big, and legitimately pretend to be small. Neither is accurate but neither is incorrect. For what it’s worth I like being able to see both edges of the city without moving my head. Makes it easier to get oriented.

If you’re ever in Minneapolis, don’t open your eyes until you’re standing to the northeast. That’s the best view, in my view, although that’s where I most frequently view it from. So maybe I’m not trustworthy. Or maybe I’m _extra_ trustworthy. You decide.

Last night the buildings sat blinking, silently, and I realized there’s nothing more empty or alone than an empty city. How many human beings could be counted inside those swaying towers at 9:30 at night? 500? 2000?

And at 3:47 in the morning? 20? 7?

Think of all that empty office space; stories upon stories of cold, dead volume. And from my street, between the oak branches, it all looks so small and fragile. As if it really were made of glass.

By contrast the houses on my block show all kinds of signs of life. Rooms shimmer in the blue glow of televisions. Chimneys cough politely, like babies, in little puffs of white. Bathroom windows bead up with steam; putting the kids to bed.

And what do we look like to someone at the top of the IDS tower? There’s nothing to obstruct the view up there, except perhaps an occasional cloud. But last night was flawless; one of those October skies made for full moons and bare branches. So what do they see?

I know what they see. And you do to, if you’ve ever been on a plane at night. It’s a mossy bed of yellow lights, growing haphazardly mold. From the towers of Minneapolis my block is, at best, a ridge of darkness. At worst it’s indistinguishable from the others.

How many people are in the houses on this block at 9:30 pm? 50? 100? So why is it we are the symbol of life and vitality, while poor old Minneapolis must not only stand empty, but also stand for emptiness.

Right, sorry. Why, beside because I said so?

They are so quiet, those skyscrapers. They sleep so peacefully. You’d think for all that cost and all that trouble they’d keep them running round the clock. But no, the tallest buildings in the upper Midwest shut their eyes just like the smallest.

And who knows, maybe looking down on us from way up there, we all look peaceful too. Twinkling away the last few hours before we go to sleep, and only the darkness and the streetlights remain.

Until last Friday, my only encounter with Mr. Keillor had been through the speakers of my car radio, where his breathy, sighing voice found me on my way to other stations. It is true, I am a Minnesotan, born and raised (but not bred). Yet contrary to popular belief, all us Saint Paulites do not each Sabbath eve gather round the old Fitzgerald Theater stage to hear told tales of Woebegone.

We accept those strong women and above-average children as our mascots, proxies of ourselves to an outside world that knows us only for our celebrities. But we do not lie sleeping with our companions in prairie homes. We don’t all speak of winter in reverent tones. The lutefisk swims not atop our stoves. And what’s this about Lutherans?

I’ve heard it said that “A Prairie Home Companion” flirts with boredom. I think perhaps even the faithful followers of the long-running show might accede that point. Keillor’s voice was made for radio. But it was also made for a hypnotist’s office where the hypnotist’s goal is to lure you into a deep sleep. Garrison Keilor could make a CD in which he mumbles gibberish for 78 minutes and make millions selling it to parents of newborns.

“Goo goo,” he says. Breath. “Gah…” Sigh. “Gah.”

Friday night was my first time seeing the show. Well, actually it was a preview show; a dress rehearsal. This was because a) Saturday’s show was sold out, b) preview tickets are cheaper c) I made a mistake. Mix and match.

Nevertheless, it was a complete performance. Music, singing, accordion playing, two mandolin players, and old-timey radio sound effects. “A Prairie Home Companion” is not boring, let me start with that.

That robotic, synchronized clapping you hear on the radio is sincere, though it may not seem it. Keillor stands in the middle of the stage, a tall, stooped-over man, doing a slow-motion stand up routine, and the audience eats it up.

But if you’ve never seem him perform live before, the most interesting thing about the show is the complete blankness in Keillor’s face. Maybe it’s those big cheeks of his, but I think I saw him smile only once throughout the show, and even then it looked like someone was pushing up the corners of his mouth with chopsticks.

He is a funny, funny man, but his face is a lump of warm Playdoh.

Much of Keillor’s monologue this weekend addressed an issue that is top-of-mind for many of us Minnesotans: the looming arrival of hated, suffocating winter.

The last two weeks here have been, as the man said, like something from a murder mystery title sequence. The image that comes to mind is of an Edward Gory illustration, soaked in vinegar. Friday I looked out the window at work at 2 p.m. and it looked exactly as it had at six that morning: dark. Completely dark.

Keillor does a good job of capturing the you’re-not-one-of-us feeling that winter gives to many Minnesotans. “This is the time when people who aren’t from here leave,” he said (quotes used to indicate he was speaking, not that I’m accurately relaying what he said).

Winter, for all its crushing doom, has a nice way of getting everyone to pick teams: you’re either with us (humans) or against us (nature). Most people pick how you’d expect, although there are some who side with winter. But most of those people don’t make it, so, you know, not to worry.

Saturday I had planned on preparing the house for winter (weather-stripping, window-wrapping, etc.), but in the end all I could muster was one painted radiator. Still having problems with water coming through the kitchen ceiling, and the tree in the backyard has developed a dangerous looking baseball-sized crack. But I’ll save that for a things-that-are-broken update later in the week.

Sunday was God’s way of making Garrison Keillor look foolish: it was sixty-five degrees and sunny. A perfect day for a walk, or two or three. On the way home we stopped by the hardware store and picked up two pumpkins, which my girlfriend likes for their decorative value. I can only see them as they’ll look three weeks from now, rotting and slimy, begging my not to touch them. And of course I’ll be the one who has to throw them away, great dripping snot-balls that they will have become.

But for now, they’re just pretty. Pleasant autumn decorations, like colored leaves and apples and cinnamon. If you’re a nice Minnesotan child, dressed up for trick-or-treating, they say “Welcome to this home, we have candy.”

But, as the droop-jowled Keillor said, if you’re from anywhere else, the pumpkins say, “Get out. Go home. Migrate.”

But me, on a really busy day, I barely get out of my chair. I sit and look at a computer screen and mold invisible alternating electrical currents into messages. Like a hallucinatory sculptor.

If I’d worn my pedometer today, it would have had an extremely high count, but that’s just because it’s a cheap freebie, and it counts more steps when you’re sitting than when you’re walking. Kind of poetic, actually.

Most days I try to take a walk during my lunch break. In nice weather this means going outside around our beautiful walking paths. In bad weather I circle the six floors of our gigantic building, starting at the top. Down to one end, down the stairs. Back to the other end, down the stairs. Like an egg in a Rube Goldberg machine. Except I’ve got an I.D. badge.

But today I didn’t even get a chance to circle my own cube. I spun in my chair a few times, and while that may have helped get the blood moving in my limbs, it doesn’t qualify as exercise.

So it was understandable that this evening I wanted to take a walk. This I did, with some determination, despite the risk of missing the end of the Red Sox-Yankees game, which by that time had already gone to extra innings. At around 8:30pm I suited up in coat and hat and gloves, and left the baseball game to fend for itself.

My reasoning was thus: it’s tied in the top of the tenth, they’re going lose, maybe if I leave, they’ll get distracted and win. I have a theory about my influence over the outcomes of distant televised baseball games. It is a shaky and unsubstantiated theory.

But what theory isn’t, really? Alas.

So I grabbed the trash and headed out the back door. After the garbage can, I had no destination in mind. On a cold night, when you’ve dressed adequately, it’s rather comfortable to be outside. It’s just you and the yellow patches on the sidewalk. And the crazies.

But not in my neighborhood. Don’t worry. No crazies here. Well, not many, anyway.

Just in case, though, I followed the path of most streetlights, which is also known as the path to Como Avenue. It winds through the Luther Seminary grounds, under a grove of tall, sprawling oaks, and toward the little commercial cluster at the center of our neighborhood.

I got to the gas station, its bays all lit up, with cars waiting outside like patients in the hallway of an overcrowded hospital. From there I could see the neon ‘open’ sign of the library. My feelings about the library are pretty straightforward: it’s awesome. It’s just an awesome library. It was built at around the turn of the century as one of the many hundreds that Andrew Carnegie (dare you to pronounce his name right) funded across the country. It has three-story arched windows and beautifully detailed masonry; it looks like an architectural drawing.

The only thing I dislike about the library is its open sign. A library of such historic beauty shouldn’t have a modern, swooshy, oval-shaped open sign. It should have an old-fashioned sign. Hand painted. Or maybe just a porter standing at the door, letting you know if the place is open or not.

Then again, the nice thing about modernity is you can see it a block away. At ten-to-nine on a cold fall night, a warm, bright library looks pretty inviting, even if the invitation comes from a buzzing tube of inert-gas-filled glass rather than a nice old gentleman wearing a cap.

“Who goes to the library at this hour?” I asked myself. The only answers I could think of were: “Crazies,” and “Nobody.”

I went in to check it out, and I was definitely wrong on the latter. There were lots of people in the library; over a dozen. And when I looked over to the right, at the bench by the new fiction, I saw none other than my dad and my little brother. So maybe the neighborhood isn’t as sane as I thought after all.

They had stopped for a moment after returning a movie they’d checked out (it’s only a historic library on the outside, inside it is more neon-sign than cap-porter).

“Hey, how’d you know we were here?” my brother yelled, much too loudly. My dad laughed. I answered, again in too loud a voice, that it was the gentle hand of fate that brought me here, a.k.a. the path of most streetlights. No one said anything about our volume; apparently the rules get a little lax toward the end of the day.

“Believe it or not, I was on a walk,” I said.

“Belie’ dat,” my brother said, or I imagined him saying. Sometimes I wish he were more of a little gangsta’.

“My fish died,” he said, somewhat unconnectedly.

“I.F.S?”

“No,” he said, “a new one. I hadn’t named it yet.”

So sad. The -tomb- toilet of the unknown -soldier- fish.

My brother was reading a spy novel. _The Eagle’s Eye_ or _Operation Beak_ or something like that. He blows through those books in a matter of days, sometime hours. My dad was looking at a picture book about penguins. I think he’s getting old. He used to read books with words. Now it’s penguins.

When the librarian started kicking everyone out, my dad offered me a ride. It was tempting, since I suddenly remembered about the baseball game, but I declined. Serendipity had brought me there; it didn’t seem right to let a minivan bring me home.

So I walked back up toward the seminary, the tall library windows behind me, the tall oaks up ahead. And waiting just a few minutes away? A baseball game and a warm house.

And one more piece of evidence to back up my theory.

“Temperatures dropping into the 30s Friday night with a 40% chance of rain,” the weatherman says, then adding a whispered “… or snow.”

You can just see him hunching his shoulders and scrunching up his face when he says it. Or snow.

Well, you can’t see him since it’s radio and for all you know he’s a well-programmed computer somewhere in Bangladesh, but the effect is the same. And if it’s a computer they’ve done a nice job getting the inflections right.

The meteorologist’s job is not to inform (except in extreme cases, like storms), but to encourage. He’s a counselor, helping you put things into perspective. If Dr. Phil did not already have a successful television career, he could have a good shot at a successful television career.

In a way it surprises me that more meteorologists aren’t trained in psychology. The back page of the metro section, where the weather resides, is like group therapy for the whole state. It’s, “Didja see the weather t’day?” Or, “Looks like a crummy weekend comin’ up.” Or, “Jeez I tell ya’ it’s raining somethin’ awfull out there today!”

And the answer, no matter who you say it to, is always in the affirmative. Yes, we did see the weather. Yes, it will be a horrible weekend. Yes, it is raining.

This is how people bond. It’s our way of feeling like we belong. In this state, where winter (or some close relative) can last almost half the year, it’s not man versus machine. It’s not us against them. It’s Mother Nature; she is the common enemy, and without the constant stream of updates from the local meteorologist we couldn’t put a face on her.

Now, even in Minnesota Mother Nature takes some time off. This is called Summer. In the summer you don’t need to know the weather because the weather will be good, and you’ll find that out on your own, like a dollar bill left in an old pair of pants.

In the winter meteorology is equally useless (except, like I said before, as a sort of Freudian canvas on which to toss our collective feelings of shame and inadequacy). That’s because in the winter the weather will always be one thing: cold. It might be cold with snow; cold with ice; cold with more cold. But always cold.

It’s only in the spring and fall that the weatherman finds a true purpose. In those times, you need guidance, because beautiful-seeming weather can turn ugly in a matter of minutes. And if you’re not prepared, you’re left standing at the office door, looking out at your car (400 yards away) and hoping someone will trip and drop their umbrella so you can run off with it.

An example: I was born April 20, a full month after the start of spring, in a snowstorm. Had I been capable of standing upright, and had my just-immigrated parents been silly enough to let me do so, the snow would have almost doubled my height. Four days later leaves were beginning to sprout on the trees.

Fall works more or less the same way. Halloween evening, 1991, I went out to gather treats and threaten strangers with tricks wearing nothing but my mother’s nylons and a handkerchief (I was a pirate, argh). That night as I filled my pillowcase with refined sugars, a few drops of rain began to fall. Or snow?

The next morning school was cancelled, the world was white, and snow-laden pine-branches scraped the ground in a bitter lament. “Help,” one of them cried. “I have a bad back.”

But as falls go, this one has been spectacular. Almost every day since the end of summer (a date more felt than known) has been a prize specimen: brisk air, warm sunlight, trees as red as roses. And, for the most part, no need to check the weather. The mornings are cold, the evenings are cold, the days are gifts from forces greater than us.

Until today. This morning a heavy darkness has descended and you can almost hear the vampire-castle music in the background. It is a foreboding day, not just because it signifies the end of fall, but because it screams the beginning of winter.

Unless the weatherman was wrong…and oh, that’s always a possibility. Maybe a butterfly in Colorado will flap its wings (or fail to), and the jet stream will change direction, and Friday the will not be in the 30s but in the 70s. Not the Great Depression but the Sexual Revolution. Hippies! Long hair! Sunshine!

Another week of sunshine. Would that be too much to expect, in a place where, when it comes to the weather, almost anything can be expected?

Nah. My forecast for the rest of the week is resolutely sunny. Winter can come, but I, for one, am not going to herald its arrival.

The rest of the week will be beautiful, with warm temperatures and a light breeze. Friday will be especially nice, with only a very, very tiny chance of rain.

Or snow.

There are so many ways to ridicule the game of baseball that it’s difficult to choose where to start. Difficult, but not impossible.

As a kid whose parents were from South America, I grew up with the notion that soccer (or fútbol, as we called it) was a far superior game. This was despite the fact that neither my parents nor my relatives in Argentina cared about soccer any more than they cared about bais-bol. My grandparents believed, and still believe, that it’s a sport for thugs and low-lifes. My mom worried about head injuries and tackling. Also drugs (Maradonna, cocaine, etc.).

And still, I made a point of treating the national pastime with contempt. I decried it as a non-sport. It required no physical fitness, I said, like golf or chess. It was the most poorly designed of the sports, in my mind, because the rules were strange and arbitrary.

So when the time came in gym class or on the playground to play what was, in the late 80s and early 90s, still The Nation’s Pastime, it was with glum satisfaction that I joined in the game. On one hand, I had to participate in the Sport That Crushed All Other Sports (like soccer). On the other hand, I could criticize to my heart’s delight, from the best vantage point: right field.

This happened throughout my childhood. Late summer nights spent watching wispy dead dandelions under the bright outfield lights. I even played on the rec-center team in a misguided attempt at cultural assimilation.

In the short term, at least, it didn’t work. I never fit in with the boys who collected baseball cards not because everyone else did, but because it was a fact of life, like breathing. These were kids who really did play catch with their dads in the back yard after dinner. My dad and I played multiplication tables.

But over time, baseball made a mark on me in a subtle, nearly undetectable way, like a painting on a sun-facing wall. I remember running up the stairs the night the Twins won the 1991 World Series. We’d just moved into our house.

I remember getting my first fitted ‘Minnesota’ hat, now trapped in a grave of dust behind a dresser in my little brother’s room.

And I remember the sun going down over a slow freight train out behind right field. The red coat of infield gravel on my shoes and my gloved hand raised above my head to draw the gnats away from me.

There I stood; for all anyone knew I was waiting for a fly ball.

Somewhere between then and now I learned to love baseball. Not for the game itself, which still bores me to tears most of the time, but for the way it burrowed into my memory. Uninvited, unwelcome and out of place, baseball made a place for itself in my life.

It is the end of summer. It is the Twins and the Braves. It the bright crack of a high fly ball, sailing into the summer sky.

Up, out, and into right field.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation announced last week that roadside memorials, while an understandable expression of grief, were an unsafe distraction to drivers. They contacted the families of those who’ve died on our state’s roadways and advised them that their signs, crosses, balloons, etc., would be removed after a reasonable length of time.

These kinds of displays are already banned on interstate highways and freeways, but MnDOT said from now on the signs will be removed from rural highways after six months.

It’s true, the signs are probably distractions to drivers – people tend to slow down or at least turn their heads to get a better look. But they’re also a reminder – someone died here – of how dangerous driving is. There are myriad signs on our highways; they tell us how fast to go, when to turn, when to stop, and when not to stop. But there aren’t any road signs out there that indicate how incredibly dangerous driving is.

There are no “Drive Safely” signs hanging off of overpasses. There are no “Check You Blind Spot” warnings on freeway onramps. There are “Slippery When Wet” signs but none that say “Deadly When Not Careful”.

Maybe they should just sprinkle the highways with informational signs, every ten miles or so, that express the real nature of what it is you’re doing with yourself every time you get in the car. Close to 600 people die on the roads in Minnesota every year. That’s almost two a day. In 2003, car crashes were the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 1 and 33. The highest number of crashes last year occurred from 4pm to 8pm. Rush hour; you’re in it every day.

Why are the roads so dangerous? Well, there’s one obvious culprit; alcohol. It accounts for about 30% of the deaths in Minnesota (in which at least one of the drivers had been drinking). I don’t think you need a sign to make clear that if you drive a car while drunk, you’re going to make deadly mistakes. But what about the other 70%?

Twenty-one percent of the people killed in 2002 in Minnesota were in crashes where driver inattention was cited as a cause. That’s 137 highway memorials that can be attributed to someone not paying attention. And I think that stems from an ingrained problem with drivers today; people forget that cars are dangerous.

You see them everywhere – doing their makeup, brushing their teeth, filling out paperwork, or just driving along obliviously as if their car were on rails and surrounded by an impenetrable wall. You’ve probably done it, too. I have. It’s easy to forget that you’re riding along at 60 mph in a thinly-masked explosive device, because cars are comfortable. They have accessories (stereos, air-conditioning, vanity mirrors, heated seats). They aren’t hard to use; you tap a pedal to speed up, you tap a pedal to slow down, you turn the wheel. No cranking or pushing or waiting.

So it’s easy to start thinking about cars as extensions of our bodies; like a faster form of walking. You don’t concern yourself too much about safety if you’re just walking down the street; why should you if you’re just driving down the highway? It’s not that people don’t know cars are dangerous; everyone knows that. People wear their seatbelts. But knowing they’re dangerous and recognizing that every moment in a car you’re seconds away from being dead are very different things.

I’m not saying everyone needs to freak out and ride bicycles to work. Bikes can be dangerous too, you know. For that matter, walking isn’t that safe, either. But biking and walking are to driving like slingshots and swords are to guns. You can hurt yourself with a slingshot if you’re not careful, but I’d like to see you try to kill yourself with one (OK, not really, but it’s funny to think about).

With a gun, a very small mistake can lead to very dire consequences. It’s the same in a car. I doubt people would try to operate a handgun while at the same time shaving and talking on the phone, because guns are guns, and they’re for killin’. But cars aren’t viewed that way, and that’s a problem.

So as MnDOT starts pulling down memorials over the next few months, maybe they should start putting up other signs in their places. For each memorial, for each spot where somebody died in a car crash, they should place signs that read, simply, “PAY ATTENTION.”

Statistics in this post come from: The Minnestoa Office of Traffic Safety .

Yom Kippur started last Friday evening, and I got off to a pretty good start; I went to services and thought long and hard about all the sins I had committed. Fortunately, the Torah has some tips for those people who aren’t predisposed to feeling bad about themselves. On Yom Kippur, the old book says, you must account even for those sins you committed unknowingly. “Trust me, you’ve been bad, I should know,” God says.

But not knowing about them make makes repenting for those sins a little hard; the most you can say is, “Um…sorry for all the bad stuff I didn’t know I was doing.” Or you can take some educated guesses: “Let me think…oh, I know! When I ordered General Tso’s Chicken at that bad Chinese place! That was a sin, right?”

It’s tricky. Almost anything can be a sin, if you think about it enough. And God wants you to say sorry for all of them, or else you’ll DIE! Well, maybe not die, but you might not get inscribed in the Book of Life, which seems like kind of a downer, at least.

At this time I’d like to point out that while I am Jewish, and I am vaguely qualified to talk about the importance and meaning of this holiday, this has not been and will continue not to be in any way an accurate or truthful description of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. If you are writing a term-paper on the subject and have arrived here via wild and thoughtless Googling, please turn around. I am joking. This is a better place to look.

So.

Friday was OK. I went home a little tired and pensive. “How can I be a better person?” I asked my girlfriend.

“What?” she said. “What are you talking about? Is that a joke?”

It was, sort of. But I couldn’t decide. She fell asleep and I lay awake thinking how I could improve. Most of my answers involved me doing something exciting and getting super-famous. Somehow I don’t think becoming a professional sky-diver is what God has in mind.

Saturday it was impossible to feel bad about yourself, or anything, for that matter. It was the most beautiful day so far this year (calendar year, not Jewish year). Cool, but not cold. Warm, but not hot. Sun and breeze and air so sweet you wanted to run with your mouth open (but only if you could cover your mouth with bug-netting first).

I tried hard to be solemn, but the weather was uncooperative. So I just gave up and decided to be happy. “If this is a sin,” I thought, “I don’t know about it.”

Fasting was no big deal, as usual. When people hear that I’m fasting they always seem shocked. They ask if I’m really not going to eat all day. But not eating for a day is like not going to the bathroom for a day; it’s easy if you just forget about it. In college there were times when I wouldn’t eat for more than a day and not even realize it. That had more to do with being on a 10-meal-a-week meal plan than religion, but still.

Evening came, and I went with my family to the Jewish student center, Hillel, where we always go for services. It’s not really a synagogue; it’s much smaller and less formal, but I’ve always felt comfortable there. The only bad thing is that it’s on the University of Minnesota campus. Actually, it’s right on fraternity row.

The fraternity brothers weren’t feeling too bad about themselves, as far as I could see. Then again, maybe they were actually repenting for their sins while at the same time having a few beers with bikini-clad co-eds in the hot tub on the fraternity lawn. It’s possible. People talk to God in many different ways.

But probably not in that way. It must’ve been homecoming, or awaycoming, or just a football game, or maybe just Saturday, because the -farts- frats were filled with people. It seemed like all of them were having parties. And the one next to Hillel was definitely having a party. The hot-tub was well-stocked with water, alcohol, and people of opposite sexes. Also they had loud music. Such loud music.

On the way in, I thought, “Oh, ha, that’s funny. Bet it won’t be a problem once inside, though.”

Once inside, I thought, “Oh, ha, that’s funny.”

It was a problem. Even with the windows closed tight and the blinds down, the bass-thumping was easily discernible. While I couldn’t pin down the songs, I could clearly pick out the genre. For example, during the first Amidah (The Great Prayer), I am certain they were rocking some East Coast shizznit. Perhaps Jay-Z or Puffy. Then, during the Neilah, it was pretty obvious Slim Shady was up in that mug. Well, not Slim himself, but one of his albums.

Yom Kippur prayers, despite the recent modifications by the reform movement, are not known for having much low-end. You can chant Neilah pretty loud, if you try, but you just can’t get it to bump. Y’know?

So it was tough. During the communal prayers when everyone was singing you could sort of forget the party next door (or at least try to pray in time with Biggy, or whoever). But when it was just the rabbi talking or the cantor sounding a few high, lonesome notes, it wasn’t much of a contest.

By the end of the service, I was pretty ready to get out of there; I hadn’t eaten all day, I’d been standing up and praying for the last half-hour, and I kept having to resist the urge to shake my thang. So as the last prayer concluded, I was pleased to see a nice young woman going up to the front of the room, shofar in hand, ready to mark the end of the beginning of the new year (see here if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Somehow, the merry-makers outside found a moment of peace; the music went silent and, briefly, the random moronic yelling ceased. The ba’al tokea (person who blows the shofar) took a deep breath and then let out a long, impressive blast of ram’s-horn-sound. It lasted almost a minute, and it ended in the traditional way, with an abrupt, shrill note.

We were all pleased. “This will be a good year,” I thought. “I will work hard to be a better person.” If only God could give me a sign, something to show me that my sins had been atoned for, that I was on the right track…

And then from outside came a tremendous sound. It rumbled and thundered in an awesome way. There was no doubting it. It was unmistakeable.

It was the Dave Mathews Band.

Usually it’s bread in one of its various Scandinavian forms. I’ve found I have a preference for Scandinavian white bread. Just plain, white bread. It’s what they do best, apparently.

Anyway, last night my neighbor opened her fridge to reveal at least 15 containers of soup. Then she opened the freezer, where there were another dozen or so. Her refrigerator is not uncommonly large, so it was confusing how she could fit so many soup containers in there. It was like a strange, lackluster magic trick.

She hates to throw food out (as do I). In part, I think, it’s because she and her husband worked for years as Lutheran missionaries in Africa, so they know firsthand about hunger. I was never a Lutheran missionary anywhere, and I probably never will be, unless they change the rules about who can be one. But I understand that it’s not good to throw food out if you can help it. I think that’s not just a Lutheran thing.

The problem is, despite my expressed gratitude for her continued kindness (this isn’t the first time she’s called me to offer food, or even the fifth), there just isn’t much of a market for Scandinavian soup over at my house. My roommates (my girlfriend and my, um, normal-friend) seem to accept the bread and even find some uses for it. I make sandwiches with it. Once when a glass broke we used some to pick up the little pieces that would otherwise have gone on tormenting the delicate soles of our feet for months.

But soup has never caught on. It just stays in the freezer, accumulating frost and ice. It’s not that we don’t like the Scandinavian Bakery’s soups; some of them are very tasty. It’s just that I never have room to keep them in the fridge, so I immediately throw them in the freezer. But after an hour all you’ve got is four or five solid bricks, which are not easily converted into anything comestible.

And yet, I can’t bring myself to decline them. I keep hoping that these frozen soups will suddenly become very, very popular and coveted among my friends, like pug-dogs and Gmail accounts. Then I could go around hauling stacks of these little frozen soup-bricks to everybody I know, like a non-denominational Santa Claus. Have you been very good this year? Alright, go to the back of the van and pick out three containers. And then their faces would light up with glee. Soup! Yes! We get soup!

But it’s not that way. No, it really is not. People don’t like soup that much. And if I went around trying to pawn it off on people like a gift, I think they would accept it, but only in deference to what they’d perceive as my growing insanity. Then when I’d leave they’d call my parents and say they were concerned about me.

“So? What else is new,” my parents would answer, in their best Yiddish/New Jersey accent. “Was willst du?”

Or, rather: “Vad vill du ha?”

“Vill du ha more soup!” I’d shout, although deep down I’d know there’s just no more room in the fridge. There is, however, an old stand-up freezer in the basement that came with the house. It’s too big to move, and we have nothing to put in it, so it has always sat there; it’s door agape to keep mold from growing inside it.

But maybe now it’s found a new lease on life! My ancient, basement-trapped freezer will now be a sanctuary for unwanted soup-bricks. And so the cycle of life continues…everything is connected…everything is one.