A Modest Tribute to Seth Erlebacher

I was going to try to write something really profound, but I’ve given up, at least for the time being.  Words are woefully inadequate to sum up a man’s life, but I feel it necessary to offer at least a modest tribute to my brother-in-law, Seth Erlebacher, who died last Friday and whose funeral was held today in New York.  Additional facets of Seth’s life will surely be aroused in future days, but today, still too close to the shock of Seth’s passing to have fully reflected on the magnitude of his life, I’d like to mention just a few lasting impressions that I’ll take with me.

His enthusiasm:  Seth’s zest for life was never more apparent than when my family traveled with his, as he packed his family’s days from morning until night, determined to tap every ounce of his opportunity to explore and discover.  My family and I would be the ones to call it a day or sleep in, but Seth, who worked so tirelessly at IBM for so many years, applied the same zeal in his recreation as he did in his work.

His laughter: Seth video-taped my wedding in 1995, so he isn’t actually seen on tape, but he IS heard.  When a family of ducks waddles across the deck where the wedding party is standing, you can hear Seth’s laughter in the background, a high-pitched, hiccup type laugh that was as infectious as it was entertaining.

His inclusiveness:  when Seth’s family hosted a gathering for Passover or Chanukah, it wasn’t just a family or two in attendance, but virtually any person who might not otherwise have plans.  Early on in my relationship with Seth, I was among the many to join in for Passover, only a boyfriend to his sister-in-law at that time, but it was my initiation into the world of Judaism and associated family traditions.  The effort put forth by both he and his wife, Melissa, to host such functions was always staggering, but they did so with joy and with the ultimate aim of inclusion.

His children: amazing kids should of course be commended for their own accomplishments, but I believe the people who raise them deserve just a little bit of credit.   The best qualities of Seth and Melissa have passed on to their children, and I’ve been honored to watch them grow and become the amazing people they are today.

This morning, my son sang at his fourth-grade holiday concert, and the final song was a song of peace.  “Shalom, shalom, may peace be with you, my friend.”  But in Hebrew Shalom has a triple meaning: it means peace, but can also be used to say hello or goodbye.  So as my son sang “shalom,” and as he waved his arm in sign language with a sweeping motion across his chest, I took it as his way, consciously or not, of saying goodbye to his uncle.

So long, Seth.

Another Ponzi Scheme: Friendship Bread

(Note: this is an edited version of a previous essay.  This version will appear soon on Milwaukee's NPR affiliate: 89.7 WUWM)

It’s that time of year again, and the truth is out: those who gleefully hand out kits of homemade friendship bread are in fact NOT kind and warmhearted people, but rather mean-spirited souls who exult in the false hopes and misfortunes of others.

I recently had the honor of receiving the “Friendship Treatment” from Jan, who en route to her yoga class stopped by to offer me a bag filled with a thick, beige liquid along with a printout of instructions. “It’s a ten-day process, and we’re already on day four, so enjoy!” she said, practically skipping back to her van, certain that she’d helped to spread a little sunshine in my dim world, and I admit that initially I was flattered: someone had made bread for me! How thoughtful. How quaint.

For those who haven’t been indoctrinated into the world of friendship bread, the process is basically a ponzi scheme without the financial implications. You start with a few ingredients and mix them in a Ziplock bag. For the next ten days, you squeeze the bag a few times and occasionally add an ingredient or two. Eventually, you divide the mix into four different bags: one that will provide two loaves of bread for yourself, and the rest to be distributed to three friends who will repeat the process, and so on, until every man, woman and child on the planet has prepared, baked and eaten two loaves of bread.

It wasn’t until day ten that I realized just what a scam this bread-making business is. I learned that none of the previous nine days had been necessary at all, because I now had to empty practically every bag, box and bottle in my cupboard to finish the process.

Here are the ingredients I added on day ten:

Sugar, milk, flour, oil, MORE sugar, vanilla, eggs, baking powder, salt, MORE flour, MORE milk, baking soda, instant vanilla pudding mix and cinnamon.

Seriously. I’d basically fallen for a variation of the story “Stone Soup,” in which a man tricks a community to cook a big vat of soup by asking each citizen to add an ingredient, except in this version of the story, I was a community of one.

I have half a mind to give my friend a Ziplock bag filled with water and say, “Here’s a bag of friendship soup. Enjoy!”

So thanks anyway, but I’m going to pass on this charming tradition in the future. You want to be a friend? Bring a six-pack of Guinness over sometime, and if you really must include something baked, offer me your thoughts on world peace.

Murder, Cats and Friendship

Five years ago, my family experienced what can only be described as…well, a double homicide.  During a visit, my sister’s dog killed both of my daughter’s hamsters, not by eating them exactly, but by using his teeth to play with them until they were dead.  And though the event traumatized my children (to this day they block out the dog’s picture on our refrigerator with a strategically placed magnet), the murders did provide us with an opportunity, a silver lining, if you will.  We now had a clean pet-slate, the equivalent of using a small house fire as an excuse to update your living room furniture.  We could now purchase whatever family pet we wanted without worry of compatibility for the rodents we’d been keeping in cages (and whose lids weren’t quite as secure as we’d thought).

On a whim, we chose a couple of cute, flea-ridden kittens, to join our family.  They are now full-grown and flea-free, and they are fine additions to the house, except for one thing:

Do you have any idea how many people are allergic to cats?

I didn’t.  But I do now.  Statistics may tell you that about fifteen percent of Americans are allergic to cats, but I’d push that number closer to fifty.  Either that or the Chicago-Metro area is a haven for those allergic to felines. 

These days, when I invite someone to our home, I add, “I should mention that we have cats,” in the same tone I might use to say, “We keep a collection of body parts in the freezer.   Is that okay with you?”  I admit my offense and wait for a response, which is often something along the lines of, “Oh, um…well, I guess I could come in for a while, but I’ll be sure not to sit on your furniture.”

In the modern age of mobility, finding and keeping friends is difficult enough.  I may have 168 Facebook friends, but they don’t laugh when I tell a joke or offer a toast when I open a bottle of wine.  Human interaction is a necessity.  I need more excuses to get together with friends, not more excuses to keep them from entering my home.

Which is why I’d like to offer all of you this sage advice: buy a dog.  Or better yet, a hamster.  Just be sure to secure the lid with a bunch of those plastic zippy things the next time your sister’s dog comes over for a visit.

Ending It All

We Americans sure love our endings.  For as many as we’ve endured lately, it’s a wonder that we manage to function at all. 

Earlier this year, I read Jane Leavy’s biography of Mickey Mantle, and though it was a fine read, its title was a bit overreaching:

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the end of America’s Childhood

If Mickey Mantle was really the last boy, then I want to know who the heck’s responsible for the trail of Legos that lodged into the skin of my big toe last week.  And as for the end of America’s Childhood?  I gotta believe that our Union and Confederate soldiers conveyed that sentiment 150 years ago. 

But we like endings.  Endings sell books, and publishers have taken note.  Type in “the end of” at Amazon.com, and you’ll get a whopping 7700 titles in non-fiction alone. 

Endings are occurring all over the place, and they’re starting to make me just a little anxious. 

America’s aristocracy?  Gone. 

Gender?  Sorry, that’s done too. 

Romance?  Yep, finito. 

And I think the Occupy Wall-Street movement would be disappointed to learn that Wall-Street, has in fact, already ended.  My kids will be happy to hear that anger is no longer, but not so happy to learn about the end of youth.  Our friends across the Atlantic will be distraught to hear about the end of the European Dream, though I suspect a few might get a sadistic chuckle over the end of France.  Our troops will likely be furious to read about the end of Iraq, but I think we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief to learn about the end of old politics. 

Now if we could only put an end to new politics.

And what about this title: The End of Modern History in the Middle East.  Isn’t modern history an oxymoron?  And if not, doesn’t all modern history have to come to an end, inasmuch as it becomes recent history or ancient history?

Now, some endings make sense.  The decade of the sixties, for instance, did in fact end.  But did it really have anything to do with the Rolling Stones’ concert at Altamont, or was it more due to…I don’t know, the calendar changing to 1970?

Don Henley once sang about the end of the innocence.  But we’ve lost our innocence so many times by now, I’m starting to feel a little dirty.  And did it really have anything to do with Disney?  Or was it because of the Kennedy Assassination?  Or Watergate?  Or Vietnam.  Or…Mickey Mantle? 

This whole idea that America’s purity was soiled in the 60s and 70s has been exploited countless times, but bittersweet nostalgia still sells books - at least ebooks - to a generation that believes America’s best years are behind us.

I for one would like to propose a new rule: an end to books with the word end in them.  That is, unless the title is, The End of Milwaukee’s Wait for a World Series Title.  I’m hoping for that book in 2012.  

What’s a Good Dad to Do? How About Set Some Limits?

Last February Dalton Conley wrote an article for TIME Magazine about the way social media are actually changing our children’s brains.  The 7 hours and 38 minutes a day that children ages 8 to 18 spend on entertainment media have altered the brains to “pay more attention to environmental stimuli at the expense of focus,” thereby damaging their young minds’ ability to perform high-level thinking.

Bummer. 

As a concerned parent–not to mention a member of a society that will one day have to take care of me–the article had my attention.

But then the author made a stunning revelation without even highlighting it as a problem. 

He writes in the first person (as all TIME columnists do these days–a very strange trend indeed):

But I am still concerned about the effect that 24/7 connectivity has on my kids-and on my 11-year-old son in particular...So what’s a good dad to do?  I’ve set some rules that are designed to aid his social and cognitive development: no Facebook during school, and no electronic devices after 9:30 p.m.

Did any of you catch his tacit admission (along with his really lame limits)?

Facebook policy clearly states:  If you are under age 13, please do not attempt to register for Facebook or provide any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible.

Where’s the ambiguity here?  Facebook says, “don’t do it.”  The boy's father clearly allowed him to lie about his age to register on Facebook.  What else will his son lie about in the future, with or without his father’s expressed permission? 

As for the limits the father set for his son, they really aren’t limits at all.  No Facebook at school?  Kind of a no-brainer.  And no electronic devices after 9:30 p.m?  Isn’t an 11 year-old likely in bed by that time?  If not, why not, and can you lend me a couple ounces of your patience? 

Look.  I’m not a perfect father.  If any of you are therapists, my children may one day pad your wallets with stories of irrational outbursts, control, snide comments, moodiness, and a propensity to let a Packers loss ruin the day.

But please.  Let’s be grown-ups here.  We can set limits for our children.  Our 11 year-olds don’t need to lie and get onto Facebook.  They’ll be just fine if made to wait until age 13. 

As for 7 hours 38 minutes of entertainment media a day?  I don't even know how to respond to that, unless it's a Sunday NFL double-header.  Then I get it.