interviewed by siderea
I owe questions to jducoeur, ian_gunn,
lorimelton, and mommyathome. Meanwhile,
here are some answers.
1) So what are you listening to these days? Can you recommend ten or so recordings/downloads/genres and what you like about them?
Well, "what I like" doesn't necessarily equal "what I'd recommend for any given person", so I'll focus on what I'm listening to and the implications can take care of themselves. :-)
In the world of medieval music, I've been listening to Istampita a lot. I love the genre of music and they play it well. It makes me want to get up and dance, which is what it's supposed to do. I try to resist, because usually I'm driving at the time. :-)
In renaissance music, the works of Salamone Rossi. I enjoy his liturgical music, partly because it's pretty and partly because it's my liturgy. :-) He also wrote secular music, and I've been trying to listen to more of that to, y'know, broaden my horizons.
Homespun Ceilidh Band (dglenn's group). They're a hoot to watch perform, but their energy comes through well on the recording too. (Singular thus far, though I've heard part of the draft of the second album and I hope it comes out soon.)
Two filkers in particular, for very different reasons: Julia Ecklar because her voice is powerful and she writes many good, serious songs, and Jordin Kare because he is in many ways the quintessential filker. He writes filks that are very close to the originals, sometimes highly related to those originals, and performs them well enough. (He also writes completely-original songs that I like.)
Craig Taubman's Shabbat album (called "Friday Night Live" I think). This is a good example of where contemporary Jewish music is going, and I find myself singing along to most of it.
Christopher Franke, the guy who did the music for Babylon 5, has a couple of albums. Electronic music is not my genre, to the point where I lack the vocabulary to say what I like and don't like, but I like his. If people who know this genre better can generalize from this one data point, I'd be interested in recommendations for more.
Fred Small, a folk singer from (I think) Cambridge, who, sadly, isn't performing any more. (He became a minister.) My favorite album is probably "I Will Stand Fast", which contains some very touching, well-written, and nicely-performed songs, including "Denmark 1943", "Scott and Jamie" (about a gay couple trying to adopt children), and, on a lighter note, "If I Were a Moose". Other favorites (not from that album) include "Heart of the Apaloosa" and "Genevere and the Fire".
Back to early music, Anonymous 4. I don't care that a lot of it is Christian liturgical (and I often care); it's damn pretty music and they perform it very well. They sound like medieval singers to me; many groups performing the same repertoire don't.
And for something completely different, a download if you can find it (I found it on mp3.com when that existed): "Internet Help Desk" by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. Put the Coke down before listening lest you spew it. We bought some of their albums on the strength of that alone, but they are definitely a mixed bag. But this particular sketch has the typical home computer-user pegged.
2) Rabbi Hillel, it is famously told, answered the mocking challenge "Explain the Torah while standing on one foot and I'll convert to Judaism!" with the statement "'What is hateful to yourself do not do unto another'; the rest is all just commentary." What of the Torah (or Talmud, or other Jewish philosophical and theological writing) have you found the most salient and interesting commentary upon right interpersonal conduct? What have you found most enlightening and helpful?
Improvement in interpersonal conduct -- or at least more awarness of what I'm doing -- is one of the most significant things to come out of all this for me. Yeah, I really enjoy studying and applying the legal process and getting into the obscure details and, of course, building a connection to God, but interactions with other people are pretty important. There's a midrash where God says "would that they forget me entirely if they would treat each other well".
There's an entire philosophical movement in Judaism that focuses on this, called mussar. I've been nibbling around the edges of that; I don't know what's formally part of that and what's not, and I haven't come across "Mussar 101" yet.
I find a lot of inspiration and insight in the writings of the Chofetz Chayim. He expounded on the laws of lason hara (hurtful speech) and issues tied up around that. Reading him has made me more mindful of the power of words, including when you intend to do good and end up doing harm instead. For example, you can give a compliment in a way that implies a criticism to some listeners -- "you've lost weight" can also say "you needed to lose weight", and I try not to do do that. The flip side of that is to not take offense when on the receiving end. If we all strive to both speak well and interpret what others say in the best possible light, the world would be a much more pleasant place. I'm trying to do my part.
I'm not sure there's a definitive source for this, but a related area I just alluded to is looking for the positive. When you see a situation that seems to speak ill of someone (or a community), try to look for an explanation that casts a better light. Maybe most people who behave badly are being bad most of the time, but sometimes there really is a good explanation, and I don't want to risk a targetting error if I'm going to think ill of someone. Ohr Somayach used to publish (electronically) a collection of stories called "the other side of the story", which I was going to link to as examples, but they don't seem to be there any more. Bummer!
I wrote about one small application of all this several years ago; maybe this helps illustrate the kinds of things I'm talking about.
3) Could you tell us the Anne McCaffrey/Robin Wood introduction story again, pleeeeeaaaaaaase?? It was an awesome story.
I think you have me confused with someone else. The only story involving the two of them that I know goes as follows:
Some years ago (15-20), Robin Wood began a series of paintings of characters from the Pern novels. (The work was was published in a book called The People of Pern.) She kicked this off at a con (Darkover) where Anne McCaffrey was the guest of honor, with a stunning portrait of Robinton (the master harper). The original was something approaching 2 feet by 3 feet. Robin was artist guest of honor at that con, so she had the prime location in the art show -- you walked into the room and were greeted by the majestic presence of Robinton.
Early in the con, Robin and Anne were talking and Robin said she had a painting of Robinton in the art show. Anne apologetically explained that she didn't buy Pern artwork any more, and especially with the difficulty of getting it home to Ireland, but Robin said she was telling her so she'd see it, not so she'd buy it. They talked about other things. Later, Anne visited the art show, said "damn", and bid on the painting. :-) (Yes, she ultimately won it at auction.)
4) Where do you stand on the issue of gun control, and why?
"Gun control means hitting your target." (I don't know who said it. Well, first; I learned it from Bandy, aka Andy Beals, but I don't think it's original to him.)
I object to gun control on both philosophical and practical grounds.
The practical objections can be summed up thus: criminals don't pay attention to gun-control laws; don't cripple honest people. Law-abiding people should have available tools to defend against criminal attackers.
Philosophically, I think we need to focus more on ends than means. When someone commits assault or murder, the problem is that he committed assault or murder -- not that he used a gun. We don't have knife-control laws; are crimes involving knives less bad? Less likely if you take the guns away? The guns aren't the problem here.
The price of freedom is that people are free to do things you don't like. If someone carries a gun in a law-abiding manner, that's really none of my concern. If someone carries a gun in a law-breaking manner (such as using it in a robbery), the problem is the law he broke, not the gun. I see gun laws as similar to hate-crime laws in that respect; a murder isn't more wrong because there were racial motives, so make the murder laws deal with the murder appropriately and don't try to tack on some sort of "hate crime" violation. Same with guns; the murder is the problem; charges for having the gun in the first place are irrelevant in a properly-functioning judicial system.
My practical side is willing to grant that I should be concerned if my neighbor starts carrying an AK-47 while looking ominously in my direction, but my philosophical side hasn't yet been able to articulate circumstances under which it is appropriate to pre-emptively limit his liberty. I grant that limits might exist. (How very un-libertarian of me.)
5) Both your barony and your congregation are communities. How do they compare and contrast, both in general and specifically for you, as communities? Are the quality of your friendships in each the same, or if they differ how do they differ? Do you find yourself taking different or similar roles?
My histories with the two communities are different, and I'm not sure how that factors in. I "grew up" in the SCA -- by which I mean that that's where I made the transition from non-functioning teenager to functioning adult, socially speaking -- and have been part of it for close to 25 years. There are people I've known most of that time. In contrast, I walked into my synagogue about 6.5 years ago as a fairly confident adult in general (but not at all confident about religion), and apparently fooled some people early on. (I wasn't trying to, but some thought I had grown up Jewish and others thought I was Orthodox.)
In both groups other people deemed me a useful contributor long before I did. In the SCA, an officer asked me to become her deputy (sounds harmless, right?) and then quit some months later; in my synagogue, I was recruited almost immediately for committee work and put on the board as soon as I became eligible. (I didn't quite drop the phone.) In both groups, after receiving that initial validation I sought out positions where I could help run things. And in both groups, I became very involved very quickly; in my synagogue this remains the case, while in the SCA I've backed off quite a bit.
One difference: authority in the SCA is somewhat decentralized; there basically isn't anyone who over a period of years can be said to wield significant power. About the closest you get is a corporate officer. My synagogue, on the other hand, has two rabbis and an executive director who have all been there for a while (10-25 years). This changes how decisions get made sometimes; it also helps ensure a collective memory that an SCA group sometimes lacks. Also, one of those rabbis in particular matters an awful lot to my participation in the community; while I wouldn't necessarily leave if my rabbi did, I would certainly notice a difference. I cannot name a single person in the SCA of whom I could say that. Lots of people matter in lots of smaller ways, but there isn't that concentration in just a few people. (Note: I'm talking about myself, not other members of the synagogue. I know there are lots of people who don't really interact much with the rabbis and wouldn't be as affected if one of them left.)
A key difference between the SCA and my (or any?) synagogue is how the purpose of the organization factors into my partiicpation. While I'm certainly interested in the middle ages and renaissance (and particularly certain aspects, like music), that's not what drew me into the SCA. I joined for the fighting ("live D&D", I initially thought); I hung around for the friends; I stayed for the people, the arts, and the chance to do things I enjoy that require that kind of setting. If I had never been part of the SCA and were encountering it now for the first time, I don't know if I would join.
In my synagogue, on the other hand, the core factor for me -- this is not true of everyone who goes there -- is the religion; that purpose speaks more strongly to me than the purpose of the SCA ever did, and I did seek out the community based specifically on that interest. I have some strong friendships there, and I hope they'll be long-term, but it doesn't feel the same. Maybe it's just that I don't spend entire weekends or entire weeks with these people the way you do with SCA events. Maybe it's that the communications modes are different; the net matters a lot more for the SCA than for my synagogue, though it matters a lot for other subsets of the Jewish community. Maybe it's just that it's comparatively new.
Both the SCA and a large synagogue like mine contain sub-communities that don't necessarily interact a lot with each other. Some of it's due to focusing on specific interests (e.g. fencing, or the religious school), some of it's clique-based. I see more cliques in the SCA than in my synagogue. This could be a true difference or a difference in perception, but I think it's a true difference.
In both organizations there's a lot of "the same old people" making the place run, and long-term health depends on keeping the flow of new people in and almost-burnt-out people out. There are a lot of similarities between the leaders of an SCA group and the leaders of my synagogue (collectively). And both organizations have a large group of people who just show up once a year for the big event and never contribute much at all; both organizations recognize that this is the case and it's ok.
As for the qualities of the friendships, there's definitely one major difference I've noticed. My SCA friends are friends more broadly; we're likely to go to movies together, go out for dinner, invite each other to mundane gatherings like new-year's-eve parties and baby showers -- all things that have nothing to do with the SCA. So far, I find myself doing things with my synagogue friends that are religion-related in some way -- a Chanukah party, Shabbat dinner, sukkah-hopping, and so on. With two exceptions (a recent outing to hear a string quartet, and a fourth-of-July party my rabbi held), I can't think of a thing that I've done with any of my synagogue friends that wasn't somehow synagogue-related. I think this is due somewhat to newness (I haven't had these friends as long), and some may be due to already having a circle of friends and therefore feeling less need to seek out new social situations. It's not that I don't want to do other things with my synagogue friends; it's just that it feels a little weird to me to initiate, and I don't know why.
I've written a lot but I'm not sure I actually answered your question. Followup discussion is certainly welcome.
1) So what are you listening to these days? Can you recommend ten or so recordings/downloads/genres and what you like about them?
Well, "what I like" doesn't necessarily equal "what I'd recommend for any given person", so I'll focus on what I'm listening to and the implications can take care of themselves. :-)
In the world of medieval music, I've been listening to Istampita a lot. I love the genre of music and they play it well. It makes me want to get up and dance, which is what it's supposed to do. I try to resist, because usually I'm driving at the time. :-)
In renaissance music, the works of Salamone Rossi. I enjoy his liturgical music, partly because it's pretty and partly because it's my liturgy. :-) He also wrote secular music, and I've been trying to listen to more of that to, y'know, broaden my horizons.
Homespun Ceilidh Band (dglenn's group). They're a hoot to watch perform, but their energy comes through well on the recording too. (Singular thus far, though I've heard part of the draft of the second album and I hope it comes out soon.)
Two filkers in particular, for very different reasons: Julia Ecklar because her voice is powerful and she writes many good, serious songs, and Jordin Kare because he is in many ways the quintessential filker. He writes filks that are very close to the originals, sometimes highly related to those originals, and performs them well enough. (He also writes completely-original songs that I like.)
Craig Taubman's Shabbat album (called "Friday Night Live" I think). This is a good example of where contemporary Jewish music is going, and I find myself singing along to most of it.
Christopher Franke, the guy who did the music for Babylon 5, has a couple of albums. Electronic music is not my genre, to the point where I lack the vocabulary to say what I like and don't like, but I like his. If people who know this genre better can generalize from this one data point, I'd be interested in recommendations for more.
Fred Small, a folk singer from (I think) Cambridge, who, sadly, isn't performing any more. (He became a minister.) My favorite album is probably "I Will Stand Fast", which contains some very touching, well-written, and nicely-performed songs, including "Denmark 1943", "Scott and Jamie" (about a gay couple trying to adopt children), and, on a lighter note, "If I Were a Moose". Other favorites (not from that album) include "Heart of the Apaloosa" and "Genevere and the Fire".
Back to early music, Anonymous 4. I don't care that a lot of it is Christian liturgical (and I often care); it's damn pretty music and they perform it very well. They sound like medieval singers to me; many groups performing the same repertoire don't.
And for something completely different, a download if you can find it (I found it on mp3.com when that existed): "Internet Help Desk" by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. Put the Coke down before listening lest you spew it. We bought some of their albums on the strength of that alone, but they are definitely a mixed bag. But this particular sketch has the typical home computer-user pegged.
2) Rabbi Hillel, it is famously told, answered the mocking challenge "Explain the Torah while standing on one foot and I'll convert to Judaism!" with the statement "'What is hateful to yourself do not do unto another'; the rest is all just commentary." What of the Torah (or Talmud, or other Jewish philosophical and theological writing) have you found the most salient and interesting commentary upon right interpersonal conduct? What have you found most enlightening and helpful?
Improvement in interpersonal conduct -- or at least more awarness of what I'm doing -- is one of the most significant things to come out of all this for me. Yeah, I really enjoy studying and applying the legal process and getting into the obscure details and, of course, building a connection to God, but interactions with other people are pretty important. There's a midrash where God says "would that they forget me entirely if they would treat each other well".
There's an entire philosophical movement in Judaism that focuses on this, called mussar. I've been nibbling around the edges of that; I don't know what's formally part of that and what's not, and I haven't come across "Mussar 101" yet.
I find a lot of inspiration and insight in the writings of the Chofetz Chayim. He expounded on the laws of lason hara (hurtful speech) and issues tied up around that. Reading him has made me more mindful of the power of words, including when you intend to do good and end up doing harm instead. For example, you can give a compliment in a way that implies a criticism to some listeners -- "you've lost weight" can also say "you needed to lose weight", and I try not to do do that. The flip side of that is to not take offense when on the receiving end. If we all strive to both speak well and interpret what others say in the best possible light, the world would be a much more pleasant place. I'm trying to do my part.
I'm not sure there's a definitive source for this, but a related area I just alluded to is looking for the positive. When you see a situation that seems to speak ill of someone (or a community), try to look for an explanation that casts a better light. Maybe most people who behave badly are being bad most of the time, but sometimes there really is a good explanation, and I don't want to risk a targetting error if I'm going to think ill of someone. Ohr Somayach used to publish (electronically) a collection of stories called "the other side of the story", which I was going to link to as examples, but they don't seem to be there any more. Bummer!
I wrote about one small application of all this several years ago; maybe this helps illustrate the kinds of things I'm talking about.
3) Could you tell us the Anne McCaffrey/Robin Wood introduction story again, pleeeeeaaaaaaase?? It was an awesome story.
I think you have me confused with someone else. The only story involving the two of them that I know goes as follows:
Some years ago (15-20), Robin Wood began a series of paintings of characters from the Pern novels. (The work was was published in a book called The People of Pern.) She kicked this off at a con (Darkover) where Anne McCaffrey was the guest of honor, with a stunning portrait of Robinton (the master harper). The original was something approaching 2 feet by 3 feet. Robin was artist guest of honor at that con, so she had the prime location in the art show -- you walked into the room and were greeted by the majestic presence of Robinton.
Early in the con, Robin and Anne were talking and Robin said she had a painting of Robinton in the art show. Anne apologetically explained that she didn't buy Pern artwork any more, and especially with the difficulty of getting it home to Ireland, but Robin said she was telling her so she'd see it, not so she'd buy it. They talked about other things. Later, Anne visited the art show, said "damn", and bid on the painting. :-) (Yes, she ultimately won it at auction.)
4) Where do you stand on the issue of gun control, and why?
"Gun control means hitting your target." (I don't know who said it. Well, first; I learned it from Bandy, aka Andy Beals, but I don't think it's original to him.)
I object to gun control on both philosophical and practical grounds.
The practical objections can be summed up thus: criminals don't pay attention to gun-control laws; don't cripple honest people. Law-abiding people should have available tools to defend against criminal attackers.
Philosophically, I think we need to focus more on ends than means. When someone commits assault or murder, the problem is that he committed assault or murder -- not that he used a gun. We don't have knife-control laws; are crimes involving knives less bad? Less likely if you take the guns away? The guns aren't the problem here.
The price of freedom is that people are free to do things you don't like. If someone carries a gun in a law-abiding manner, that's really none of my concern. If someone carries a gun in a law-breaking manner (such as using it in a robbery), the problem is the law he broke, not the gun. I see gun laws as similar to hate-crime laws in that respect; a murder isn't more wrong because there were racial motives, so make the murder laws deal with the murder appropriately and don't try to tack on some sort of "hate crime" violation. Same with guns; the murder is the problem; charges for having the gun in the first place are irrelevant in a properly-functioning judicial system.
My practical side is willing to grant that I should be concerned if my neighbor starts carrying an AK-47 while looking ominously in my direction, but my philosophical side hasn't yet been able to articulate circumstances under which it is appropriate to pre-emptively limit his liberty. I grant that limits might exist. (How very un-libertarian of me.)
5) Both your barony and your congregation are communities. How do they compare and contrast, both in general and specifically for you, as communities? Are the quality of your friendships in each the same, or if they differ how do they differ? Do you find yourself taking different or similar roles?
My histories with the two communities are different, and I'm not sure how that factors in. I "grew up" in the SCA -- by which I mean that that's where I made the transition from non-functioning teenager to functioning adult, socially speaking -- and have been part of it for close to 25 years. There are people I've known most of that time. In contrast, I walked into my synagogue about 6.5 years ago as a fairly confident adult in general (but not at all confident about religion), and apparently fooled some people early on. (I wasn't trying to, but some thought I had grown up Jewish and others thought I was Orthodox.)
In both groups other people deemed me a useful contributor long before I did. In the SCA, an officer asked me to become her deputy (sounds harmless, right?) and then quit some months later; in my synagogue, I was recruited almost immediately for committee work and put on the board as soon as I became eligible. (I didn't quite drop the phone.) In both groups, after receiving that initial validation I sought out positions where I could help run things. And in both groups, I became very involved very quickly; in my synagogue this remains the case, while in the SCA I've backed off quite a bit.
One difference: authority in the SCA is somewhat decentralized; there basically isn't anyone who over a period of years can be said to wield significant power. About the closest you get is a corporate officer. My synagogue, on the other hand, has two rabbis and an executive director who have all been there for a while (10-25 years). This changes how decisions get made sometimes; it also helps ensure a collective memory that an SCA group sometimes lacks. Also, one of those rabbis in particular matters an awful lot to my participation in the community; while I wouldn't necessarily leave if my rabbi did, I would certainly notice a difference. I cannot name a single person in the SCA of whom I could say that. Lots of people matter in lots of smaller ways, but there isn't that concentration in just a few people. (Note: I'm talking about myself, not other members of the synagogue. I know there are lots of people who don't really interact much with the rabbis and wouldn't be as affected if one of them left.)
A key difference between the SCA and my (or any?) synagogue is how the purpose of the organization factors into my partiicpation. While I'm certainly interested in the middle ages and renaissance (and particularly certain aspects, like music), that's not what drew me into the SCA. I joined for the fighting ("live D&D", I initially thought); I hung around for the friends; I stayed for the people, the arts, and the chance to do things I enjoy that require that kind of setting. If I had never been part of the SCA and were encountering it now for the first time, I don't know if I would join.
In my synagogue, on the other hand, the core factor for me -- this is not true of everyone who goes there -- is the religion; that purpose speaks more strongly to me than the purpose of the SCA ever did, and I did seek out the community based specifically on that interest. I have some strong friendships there, and I hope they'll be long-term, but it doesn't feel the same. Maybe it's just that I don't spend entire weekends or entire weeks with these people the way you do with SCA events. Maybe it's that the communications modes are different; the net matters a lot more for the SCA than for my synagogue, though it matters a lot for other subsets of the Jewish community. Maybe it's just that it's comparatively new.
Both the SCA and a large synagogue like mine contain sub-communities that don't necessarily interact a lot with each other. Some of it's due to focusing on specific interests (e.g. fencing, or the religious school), some of it's clique-based. I see more cliques in the SCA than in my synagogue. This could be a true difference or a difference in perception, but I think it's a true difference.
In both organizations there's a lot of "the same old people" making the place run, and long-term health depends on keeping the flow of new people in and almost-burnt-out people out. There are a lot of similarities between the leaders of an SCA group and the leaders of my synagogue (collectively). And both organizations have a large group of people who just show up once a year for the big event and never contribute much at all; both organizations recognize that this is the case and it's ok.
As for the qualities of the friendships, there's definitely one major difference I've noticed. My SCA friends are friends more broadly; we're likely to go to movies together, go out for dinner, invite each other to mundane gatherings like new-year's-eve parties and baby showers -- all things that have nothing to do with the SCA. So far, I find myself doing things with my synagogue friends that are religion-related in some way -- a Chanukah party, Shabbat dinner, sukkah-hopping, and so on. With two exceptions (a recent outing to hear a string quartet, and a fourth-of-July party my rabbi held), I can't think of a thing that I've done with any of my synagogue friends that wasn't somehow synagogue-related. I think this is due somewhat to newness (I haven't had these friends as long), and some may be due to already having a circle of friends and therefore feeling less need to seek out new social situations. It's not that I don't want to do other things with my synagogue friends; it's just that it feels a little weird to me to initiate, and I don't know why.
I've written a lot but I'm not sure I actually answered your question. Followup discussion is certainly welcome.