davidbessler.com

http://rosemarywashington.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/thoreau-thursdays-26-uncommon-schools-to-soar-beyond-provincialsim/

Cyanogen mod and my double battery on my g2

Good morning Benjamin Muir Bessler! It’s a brisk Friday morning in September. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all the lovely ladies have flowers in their hair.

He’s like a tree frog.  You just stick him there and he stays.

We had Noah’s birthday party at this local bowling alley in Yonkers.  I’ll post more pictures from the party later, but I just had to share this sign I saw there on the “wall of fame.”

It would be interesting to come up with a way to control with whom you’re sitting instead of just where you are sitting on your upcoming flight. Maybe instead of choosing aisle or window, you could choose to sit next to a talker or maybe a sleeper, college grad or undergrad, art major or business major, vegetarian or carnivore. At least make a maximum butt width for an entire row. Why have rows which are 110% butt-full, and some which are 90% butt-full? The guy next to me is gigantic … Just his shoulders … and there are two teeny women and a frail senior sitting in the row behind us.

We had the whole thing planned out. We’d leave the kids with Marni’s parents, and then Marni would drop me off at work on her way to see the latest vampire movie with her friend. When I walked into work, everybody kept saying to me “What are you doing here?”. At first I kept saying, “I’m working tonight,” until it hit me that maybe I wasn’t working tonight. I checked the board, and sure enough, I wasn’t on the schedule. I called Marni and told her that I wasn’t working and luckily she hadn’t made it down to the end of the block. What a treat! I felt like I had just been given a wonderful gift. I spent a few hours at The Bronx Ale House (my local, if I have one), and now I’m waiting for Marni to pick me up so we can go out to eat in the city. Sweet!

It’s Big Foot! And he needs a tissue.

Gabriel driving the boat in the playground

How many Renaissance guys can you fit in an elevator?

We went to buy some clothes for the kids today. Four of the 5 items we brought up to the register rang up for at least 50% more than we thought they were going to be. Had we not been paying attention, we would have been charged $74 instead of $50. Why did this happen? I went back to look at the sign for the baja sweatshirts we tried to buy. I took a look at the sign on the rack (and snapped a picture of it too). How much do you think the tops are? Can you read the tiny letters above and to the left of the “$10” that say “khaki pants” referring to the pants below? Neither could we. The actual price of the bajas was $14.50. The pants had a similar setup and were actually $16.50 while we thought they were $10. As everyone should try to do in order to control the marketplace, we did not purchase any of the “mislabeled” items. When in Old Navy … Buyer beware.

It’s Gabriel’s birthday today, Marni opened this present for him, looked at it and said, “Just what I need another thing with balls that makes too much noise.” … Completely unintentional, and hilarious. Anyone with kids will understand the frustration of cleaning up toys which are free to roll around the house and under furniture, and the headache that comes with noisy toys. Any mother with a husband and two boys will understand Marni’s memorable pun.

I have to head into the city to pick up my Zip Card, stop off at NYCVS, and pick up a book at the book store. I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to take Noah Darwin with me.

Are you kidding me?! 900 calories is 1/2 the day’s energy. I hope that’s only included on the advertisement because they are required by law to warn people of the mistake they are about to make. If you are truly conscious of what you put in your mouth, and live a deliberate lifestyle, then you would not pay $3 at 10am to pack in 900 calories unless you were planning on hiking for 12 hours to the next McDonalds to eat dinner.

My friend Lee Burstiner from our hospital in Tampa came into town last night and stayed over on his way to Boston this evening.  Noah, who had last seen him 2 years ago, and couldn’t have possibly remembered him, took an immediate liking to him.  I took Lee to see our hospital in Manhattan which he hadn’t yet seen.  The kids had a great time.  Noah was cranky at the beginning as usual, but slowly warmed into it.  He never does this, but take a look at that picture of him putting his head down on Lee’s shoulder.  The other image is of Gabriel–comfortable of course from the start–pressing his nose against the glass of the inpatient ward.

Check out this shopping cart full of magazines that are being thrown out at the supermarket near me. Imagine this happens millions of times a day at supermarkets and news stands around the world every day. How do we justify this waste? How much of it is informative news?

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

– Thoreau

So excited. I just picked up a used set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I’ve always wanted one since I was 15 years old. It weighs 122 lbs and stands 4 feet tall when stacked!

Will edit later

Had Noah’s 3rd birthday party today. It was awesome. He was so excited. It was a Thomas The Tank Engine theme party. All our friends were there … His too. Noah got all sorts of presents and had a great time. We served cupcakes and pizza, and we have so many leftovers.

Check out Jott.com. I just started using this to post to WordPress, it’s awesome. I can also post calendar items to Google Calendar and to do list items to remember the milk. listen

When did the whole “being quiet in the library” thing die? I sit in the Spuyten Duyvil branch of the New York Public Library, and for some reason, all the librarians (are they still called that?) are constantly speaking at top volume.  The silence is broken every 5 minutes or so by a librarian near me answering somebody’s question about the local buses, or where they might find some video tape.  Everyone stops what they are doing, and looks up.   Maybe since the advent of earplug technology, they figure they don’t need to whisper anymore.  Anyone have any ideas?

The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.  Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation.

– Henry David Thoreau in Walden

Just yesterday I was speaking with one of the fathers in the class I help with at the Museum.  The topic for the day was snakes.  There was some discussion of the fear–which some of the parents had–of snakes.  “You want to touch the snake, Johnny?  Nothing to be afraid of.  We discussed how this clued the children into the idea that there was something to be afraid of.  Without this, the children have no natural fear of these smaller creatures.  Many of the children show no reluctance to touch and hold the cocroaches, millipedes, pill bugs, and snakes we have.  The parents were most concerned about the snakes biting them or their children.  They have no such concern when handling the chinchillas–one of which bites (and chews!) her holder without warning, often drawing blood.

I began the second class, by showing as many of the parents and children as I could, the tiny teeth on the articulated skeleton of a similarly-sized snake.  They are obviously not meant to pierce the skin, rather to grasp prey when working the prey head-first into the snake’s mouth.  Still, there remained this fear amongst many of the parents.

I began to wish–to myself at first, and then aloud to my coworkers–that the garter snakes would bite one or several of the parents, so they would see how harmless the bite is.  This was met with some skepticism.  I was bitten countless times by garter snakes, milk snakes, and water snakes when I was a child, and that is how I learned that they are not to be feared. 

The greatest naturalists and most important conservationists al started out, as children or young adults, hunting, fishing, or otherwise getting their hands on animals in ways which today we would not condone.  Darwin, collected animal specimens while on his voyage.  Theodore Roosevelt was an avid hunter and collector of “specimens.”  Take this famous passage from Aldo Leopold:

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Leopold, Aldo: A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, 1948, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987, pp. 129-132. 

I am not codoning hunting.  Rather, I believe that, once again, we have skipped over the middle road.  We, as a society who cherishes the natural world, have swung too far to the other side in protecting her.  We have placed her on a pedistal.  Now, she is known only from a distance.  Most men now only know her as they know history–from what they read in books and are taught in school.  Very few experience nature.  The children don’t know that garter snakes are harmless because they were never bitten by one, and have never opened a snakes mouth with a credit card to look.

Also, because children never exert their dominance over animals and nature, they don’t place them in the category of things which require care and compassion.   If snakes are dangerous, they can obviously fend for themselves, and require no protection from us.  Regardless, reality is that we are the dominant animals on this planet.  When man is not allowed to internalize, experientially, that dominance, it is difficult for him to feel compassion for, and a sense of guardianship over other creatures.

We first discovered this game at our friend Herb’s, and became instantly addicted. Then I lost interest and it sat collecting dust in a drawer. We just dug it out again and Noah is having a blast with it. Hope he doesn’t swallow the marbles!

“At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious …”
-Thoreau, Walden, Sounds
I am itching to go somewhere where it is quiet enough to hear such things. I have not heard silence in a long time. I tried “going” there in my mind. I can picture the scene, but cannot hear the sounds. Why can’t I imagine the sounds?

We had the baby about a month early, and it’s a boy! He’s healthy, and Marni is recovering well. We got lucky again, and our doctor happened to be on call the night (actually morning) we delivered. She is the best, and we were so excited that she was able to deliver our second baby too.

Here are the stats:
Born: 2/18/2008 3:37am
Weight: 6lbs 3oz
Length: 19.5 inches

His hair is black for the time being, but then again so was Noah Darwin’s. He was opening his eyes after like 30 seconds, and continues to open them all the time. He cried once for about 10 seconds right after his cord was cut, and since then has hardly cried.

The bris is scheduled for Monday morning, and we’ll officially name him then. You’ll just have to be patient. We went with a smiliar theme to that of Noah Darwin. No, it’s not Nebuchadnezzer Einstein Bessler, or Shlomo Van Beethoven Bessler … both perfectly acceptable names, just not the one we chose.

This is an animal cracker from the bag of animal crackers they gave us on the plane.  We are not sure what it is.  Just so you know, we don’t think it is the fox from Firefox, because the other animals were a hippo, a cat, a camel and a lion.  Anyway, if you have any ideas, please let us know.

Sorry for the poor image quality, all I had with me was my pocket PC phone.

I could make this a long-winded venting session, but instead, will keep it short so that I can go watch a movie with Marni, which is what I deserve to be doing.

 A dog died of a horrible disease.  The clients paid lots of money to have us try everything we could to save him.  He died during my shift.  The clients were a mess.  I did everything I could to comfort them.  I felt very sorry for them.  When they were done visiting with their dog’s body, they asked me, “What do we do now?”

I told them they should decide what to do with the dog’s remains.  They have two options.  They could opt for communal cremation, the most popular option, where the dog would be cremated with other pets.  Or, they could opt for a private cremation in which they would receive their dog’s ashes back.  I also said we could hold their dog’s remains until they decide.  I remember they looked at me a little strangely, which many of my clients do when I mention the idea of a private cremation and an urn with ashes.  I told them, as I tell all those clients, that some people find having their pet’s ashes around the house “a little weird”.  They said, “We don’t want to deal with that.”

 I assumed they meant, as many of my clients do, that they don’t want to deal with having ashes around as a reminder of the tremendous grief they now feel.  Most of my clients won’t even consider getting another dog months later because it would remind them of their grief.  Apparently, they mean that they didn’t want to deal with the decision then, and would prefer that we hold the body.

We have a form which we often sign off on when the clients relate their wishes verbally.  In the interest of their comfort, I signed off on the form saying they wanted a communal cremation.

2 days later, they called back saying they had done research online and want to have tissue harvested from their dog so they can clone him when cloning is perfected, and then they want a private cremation.

As you might imagine, they were very upset to hear their dog had been communally cremated.  I admit, for someone convinced cloning will bring back their pet, and who wants ashes around to make them feel as if their pet is still with them, this would be very upsetting.  I felt aweful.  I wished I could go back in time to change it, but alas, I couldn’t.

When I spoke with him on the phone, he tried as hard as he could to make me feel as bad about it as possible.  “You took my dog away and burned him with other dogs!”   “That dog was like our child.  My wife and I have no kids.”  “My wife is a mess!  If this was a human there would be a multi-million dollar law suit.”  “I don’t think I should pay a cent for anything that happened at your hospital.”  and my personal favorite, “I work for The New York Times.”

I am proud to have kept my witts about me.  I responded with, “My primary concern is your wife’s and your healing. “  I explained that I have nothing to do with the financial aspect of this discussion, and that I am concerned that they are having trouble with the grieving process because all the tissue samples, ashes, and money in the world will not bring their dog back to them.  I explained that many grieving people have issues with misplaced anger, and that I wanted to help them in any way I could.  I offered to speak with his wife.  He had no interest in what I had to say, but kept insisting that he wanted to talk to the manager of the hospital.

The reason I’m writing this, is that part of me says, “You’ve learned a lesson.  Next time, force the clients to read the paperwork, and physically sign the form themselves.”  The other part of me says, “this man represents 1% of my clients.  The other 99% thank me for my compassionate manner.  They call me to tell me how happy they were with our care, and with my help in dealing with the loss of their pet.  Do I really want to change my ways because of one mistake and one mean person?”

Mistakes happen.  If you are the victim of an honest mistake, realize that if you force people to deviate from their normal behavior just to prevent that occasional mistake, you may be hurting other people.  Sometimes hot coffee spills.  We can all try to be more careful.  We can print warnings on the cups.  We can force cashiers to ALWAYS warn people that their coffee is hot.  We can create special, corrugated, cardboard holders to slide over the triple-layered paper cups.  When the price of coffee goes up because of the costs of doing all these things, the other 4.9 billion people who understand that sometimes accidents happen, suffer. 

OK so it wasn’t short, and it kind of was a venting session.  But I’m done and the movie hasn’t started.

43things.com is a unique website where people post things they want to do, and goals they want to accomplish. Supposedly, from what I could glean from the intro to the site, each registered member has 43 slots to fill with things they want to do. Each thing somebody wants to do has its own page, so when you enter the thing you want to do, it searches to see if there are other people who want to do the same thing. It shows you the list of people who want to do that thing, allows you to add yourself to the list, and adds that thing to your list of things you want to do. There are also comments on that thing below—-a sort of discussion.

I discovered this site when I Googled the following phrase “How do I stop myself from doing things?” I was looking for general advice on how to “train” myself. Getting into the habit of doing things seems more straight forward. It’s breaking habits that seems more difficult. I was looking for general advice, but really had one particular bad habit in mind—-speaking without thinking first. Just saying the first thing that came to mind.

I searched for it, and there are 9 people who want to “think before speaking,” and 7 people who want to “Think then speak,” or something along those lines. Then I found 353 people who want to “Think before I speak.”   By that I mean they want to think before they, themselves, speak, and not that they want to think before I, David Bessler, speak.  The truth is,  I speak so quickly sometimes, I’m sure there are those who would like to be able to think before I speak.  “Think before I speak” is just what they typed into the search box at 43things.com.

After I spent a few minutes looking around if there was a way to combine these topics into the one topic they were obviously meant to be—which there is—I moved on and began reading about the site, and exploring a little.   Then I registered and set up my account.

Finally, I settled down into the the first thing I want to do, and began writing this post.  I eventually learned that I could simultaneously post it to my blog.  So I set up my blog and that’s want I’m doing now.  But I digress. Back to the bad habit of not thinking before I speak.

This happens most when I’m angry.  I’m going to try waiting some amount of time before responding.  Don’t know how long that should be. Also, having somebody to bitch to about it helps bide the time.

This connection in my mind between anger and not thinking reminded me of something I head learned time and again in Yeshiva.  There’s a chapter in Maimonides Mishna Torah which discusses this very topic.  It speaks about anger and about the value of silence and thinking before you speak.  You can find a translation here.  Be sure to read chapter 2 items 4 and 5 specifically.

Here’s a good quote from there:

Silence is the maturation of wisdom.  Therefore, one should not be hasty in answering, and one should not speak excessively.

See more progress on: think before I speak

Every Friday I pass right by The Corner Cafe in Riverdale on my way to Rolen Bagels where I get my usual everything bagel with cream cheese and a slice of tomato. Marni and I started going there when we discovered that Bagel Corner, a few blocks from there, doesn’t have a toaster to toast your bagel. “Why wouldn’t they have a toaster to toast your bagel?” Marni asked. Especially when there is another bagel place a few blocks away. The answer, is that Bagel Corner OWNS Rolen Bagels a few blocks away. We didn’t know that when we decided to permanently switch to Rolen Bagels. The first time we went to Rolen, the people smiled at us form behind the counter. They asked us if we wanted our bagel toasted. The bagels were fresh and tasty. We had found our new bagel place. Then things began to change.
Continue reading “Rolen Bagels” →

I crept down the stairs as quietly as I could. I’ve found, from such ventures as a child, that if you place your weight on the edge of the step just where it meets the wall, rather than in the middle, it is less likely to creak. Also, by spending as little time as possible bearing weight on each step, any step that did creak, would do so for only a short time. If I extended this thinking to its logical extreme, it seemed as if I could run down the stairs floating above them silently like a basilisk or Jesus lizard which can almost miraculously run across the surface of a lake.
Continue reading “You’re a Ninja” →

Check out my live spot on Fox’s Good Day NY. I was on Anne Craig’s “Anne About Town” this morning shot live from our hospital on 55th and 9th.

As if i didn’t have enough websites, I just couldn’t resist registering this one today. I cooked Noah his first pot of macaroni and cheese. Read all about it at www.ILoveMacaroniAndCheese.com.

Can you imagine how many thoughts there have been. Ever. Imagine a catalog of all the thoughts of mankind through the ages. Forget the sheer volume. Imagine the content. I know I have lots of thoughts every minute. Many of those thoughts are pretty complex. At least I think they are. Some of them so complex for me that I cannot hold on to their meaning for very long. We all have thoughts like that. Everyone has thoughts like that. Imagine how many of those thoughts were original. Only a handful of people have actually captured those earth-shattering thoughts. A cataolg of human thought would contain ideas that would change life as we know it. Think of all the inventions that were never actualized, concepts never recorded, or theories never evaluated.

Continue reading “Imagine All the People” →

I got rid of the “chat” static page. It was stupid. Not every new idea is a good idea.

For mothers’ day I took Marni to see Art School Confidential. It was great to have a few hours to ourselves—for Marni more than me. She’s the one with a 7-month-old strapped to her waist all day. The movie was crap however. I mean really bad. I came away with the feeling that someone made this movie with some other motive besides making a good movie. I think this is the product of some marketing meeting where a guy in a powder-blue suit and very un-stylish glasses stood up and pointed out that based on his research, spoof movies starring John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi always make at least enough at the box office to be worth making. I know the story is that the movie was adapted from a comic strip, blah blah blah. I’m no movie critic–I guess we all should be considered critics–but I just don’t see how this movie ever made it to the big screen without someone stopping the show and saying, “Whoa. This sucks. We can’t actually show this to people who paid their baby-sitters $40 for the night off to see a movie and then another $8 at the box office.” It could be worse, we could have seen this in New York where tickets would have cost $11.

Continue reading “Film School Confidential” →

This may seem a little angry. If it does, it’s probably because I’m a little angry. Especially now, because I can’t sleep. Tonight I couldn’t sleep because I had a disturbing dream–not a nightmare–just a disturbing dream. It was a nightmare, at one point in my life. It made me want to get out of bed and write about it so the world could understand. So I’m angry. Usually I’m not angry. Only when I think about my “education.” When I got angry as a kid, my mother would tell me to write a letter. So, I’m writing this letter to you, my yeshiva educational system.
Continue reading “Despite my education” →

Periwinkle, Vinca minor, is used to make a chemotherapeutic drug called Vincristine. Here’s a link to some not-so-useful unformation about the periwinkle. Then I came across this flower in a bunch of people’s gardens. I should know what it is but I don’t. I’m just starting on this whole botany thing. Kevin? Any ideas? An example of the monocot leaves (parallel veins) can be seen behind it.

And don’t forget the beautiful magnolias in bloom now.

At 9lbs 10oz they say I was the heaviest baby in Nyack Hospital. Nyack is a town in Rockland County – about 30 minutes north west of Manhattan. My family actually lived in a town nearby called Monsey. We lived in a house on Albert Drive until I was about a year old at which point we moved to another house in Monsey on Nelson Road. The Albert Drive area is now predominantly an ultra-orthodox or hassidic area. In Monsey, there is a hill which used to divide Monsey into two sections. “Down the hill,” as it was called, was primarily Hassidic jews while “up the hill” was more Modern Orthodox jews. The difference between the two is mostly in their respective levels of separation from the secular world. The Hassidic jews live in ghetto-like communities and interact little, if at all, with the secular world. Modern Orthodoxy tends to interact more – subject for another discussion. Albert Drive was actually on the hill geographically. I’m not sure what that says about my family. Either way, we moved up the hill when I was a year old. I was placed in nursery at a local yeshiva elementary school called Adolph Schreiber Hebrew Academy of Rockland or A.S.H.A.R. There have always been rumors that when the Schreibers donated their money to the school, there were plans to name it the Schreiber Hebrew Instute of Torah or S.H.I.T.

I just bought a Nikon 4600 4-megapixel digital camera. Until now I had been using my ancient Cannon Powershot A50 (with a whopping 0.7 megapixels) because I used my camera primarily for images that would be viewed on computer monitors. The time has come, however, for me to move into the 21st century and get a camera suitable for prints. I wanted to get a digital SLR but that proved a little too expensive. Anyway, here’s a picture of breakfast at 3-Star Coffee Shop.

It has really nice macro functions and produces nice images, I take lots of nature pictures and needed that good macro detail for things like flowers and pLants I can’t identify etc …

As you can see, the detail and quality are really quite good. So far so good – I’m happy with it. It was only $179 at Circuit City too … a definite bonus to buying mildly outdated technology (all the hot cameras are now 6 megapixels).

No we didn’t fly or cruise over to Bermuda this week. Someone we met on our cruise 2 years ago sent us this picture of us. It’s a great picture don’t you think?

Me and Gafni outside his dorm at Sde Boker in the Negev where Gafni is working on his master’s thesis in Hydrology. Sde Boker is also the burial place of Ben-Gurion who championed the development of the Negev in Israel.

Here’s a picture of me and Shlomo (AKA Joel) sitting next to a funky mushroom-shaped rock formation in the way to Eyn Akev.