Unless you’re a public figure yourself, your close encounters with famous people are probably limited to one or two in a lifetime. My dad, my older daughter, and I defy the odds in this regard. We seem to have a knack for bumping into the well-known. Let’s begin with my father. Back in the day when cross-country trips were mainly by train, bus, or of course car, my dad would usually come home with a story of his latest close encounter. Before all that, as a young businessman in Lower Manhattan, he would pal around with a young Englishman whose family had sent him to the Produce Exchange in New York City to learn the grain business. On his return, he would take over the family’s thriving concern. The Englishman in question was John Houseman, who would later be a distinguished actor, however, not a grain merchant, and become known to us Americans as the crusty law professor in the “Paper Chase.”...

​You may ask where I get my ideas for these weekly blogs. The answer is mostly from something I’ve recently heard, read, or experienced. In the case of this blog, it’s a matter of something I’ve just read, in fact, of two things. Let me explain. One of the periodicals I subscribe to is The Economist. Generally, I read just the editorials—what the Brits call “leaders”—and maybe one or two of the articles if something happens to strike my fancy. The day is just too short for more, I rationalize. The issue of September 11th-17th 2021, however, caused me to read more. Based on the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, it is titled “9/11—America Then and Now.” The issue attempts to weigh the relative plusses and minuses of the United States’ response to what some consider its second Pearl Harbor. After all, unlike many other countries, the U.S. has managed to avoid attacks on its own sovereign territory and citizens since its two wars with England some 200+ years ago. I’ll tell you about the second thing I read in a minute...

​Well, not really. But then, those Near-Death-Experience people claim with great consistency that things really are better Over There. Come to think of it, so did my spiritual guide, the late Muhammad Subuh (d. 1987). He told his followers that the other life was absolutely superior to this one. So much so that the Almighty felt moved to instill the fear of death into humankind. Otherwise, if word got out, there would be massive suicides. Apparently, we are here in this “Vale of Tears” for a reason, and it’s important for us to stay in the game...

​If you trust photographs, Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the now failed medical-equipment start-up, Theranos, is drop-dead gorgeous. Her pale-blue eyes, Hollywood-worthy features, perfect complexion highlighted by Steve Jobs-style black turtlenecks . . . What’s the old expression? She’s fetching! She’s also about to go on trial for fraud and, if convicted, could receive up to 20 years in jail. One thinks of the phrase “Beauty is as beauty does.” If you’ve read my last week’s blog, you’ll remember the four possibilities with regard to the spiritual-religious dichotomy. Well, I find four similar possibilities concerning beauty. One can be outwardly gorgeous but inwardly blighted; outwardly homely but inwardly angelic; unsightly inside and out; and, in the best of all worlds, outwardly beautiful matched by one’s beauty within. Plato claims that his beloved teacher, Socrates, was unprepossessing in appearance, to say the least, but inside he was all beauty. My favorite professor and later advisor at Yale was like that too. We’ll leave it to the jury to decide concerning Ms. Holmes...

​That’s a question one might find even on the multiplying dating sites these days. Organizations and individuals that track social trends in the United States find that as mainstream religious institutions are losing members, more and more individuals report that they are spiritual, not religious. On the matter of falling membership in formal religious institutions, in a March 29, 2021 article, the Gallup organization reported that “Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.” Even the Roman Catholic Church in America has seen its membership decline by 11%, or two million people, in just the two years between 2017 and 2019 (source: Wikipedia, article on the “Decline of Christianity”)...

​In 1918 came the end of World War I, with some 2.5 million service members returning from the battlefields of Europe. In 1919 Tin Pan Alley produced a highly popular song with words by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis and music by Walter Donaldson: “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm after They’ve Seen Paree?” The composers were describing by implication a then-accelerating American demographic trend of movement from country to city. In 1790 some 90% of the U.S. population lived in the countryside; by the second decade of the 21st century, that number had shrunk to just two percent (source: The Khan Institute). A much more recent trend is American colleges and universities requiring that all undergraduates have some kind of significant international experience. Courses about a society other than our own, even foreign-language programs, were no longer deemed sufficient to open the hearts and minds of young people to the often-unlived fact that all people, even those holding another passport and speaking a different language, were people too. Those who having been following my blogs know that I myself had such an experience as an American Jew spending his junior college year as an exchange student in post-World War II West Germany....

This year, 2021, marks the 1800th anniversary of the first documented major settlement of Jews in Germany. That community, probably formed of Jewish settlers from Italy, was established in Köln, or Cologne on the Rhine, itself a mere 200 years old at the time. Soon settlements were created in other parts of the German territories, but the epicenter remained in the Rhineland, specifically in Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. During the past nearly two millennia, the fate of German Jews, or Ashkenazim, has wavered between the extremes of acceptance, even thriving, for example under Charlemagne and during the post-World War I Weimar Republic, and near-destruction during the Dark Ages, the First Crusade, and—most famously—the Holocaust under the Nazis in the mid-20th Century. By 1939, some 60% of German Jews had emigrated, leaving roughly 214,000 in Germany proper...

​If you live long enough, you’ll experience things that are weird but cool. Here’s an example from my life. Some years ago, I was going to a professional meeting in Indianapolis. When I arrived at the conference hotel, the reception clerk apologized to me since the hotel had been overbooked, and there was no longer room for me. “But don’t worry,” he said. “We’re putting you up just a few blocks down the street at the Claridge, Indiana’s only five-star hotel, and the difference in price is on us.” Okay, I thought. Having to walk a few blocks several times a day when all I’d be doing would be sitting in conference sessions sounded more like an investment in health than an inconvenience. Plus, as someone who’d never spent a night in a five-star establishment, this unexpected change in plans struck me as a piece of good luck and, possibly, the start of an unexpected adventure. How prophetic that thought would prove!

My pre-confession: I love The Atlantic magazine. It’s my favorite. I just renewed my annual subscription with nary a complaint. Hey, I do get the academic rate, but still. It’s the only periodical I tend to read cover to cover, or at least close to that. Last month there was a terrific article by staff writer David Packer called “The Four Americas.” Of them, I clearly fit into the category he called “Smart America.” Sounds good, right? Well not so fast! This month’s edition (September 2021) has a possibly even better article by contributing writer David Brooks, of whom I have long been a fan. Entitled “Blame the Bobos,” in it Brooks argues that “the creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political disfunction.”​

​There are currently two people in my network, both on the young side of middle age, who are thinking about changing their names. I should say that only one is thinking about it, since the other has already filed the paperwork with the local county court for a legal name change. And in this case, the individual is changing both first and last names...

Okay, so what’s a Peddie? No doubt, an ancestor or descendant of the Rev. Thomas B. Peddie, a Baptist Minister from Scotland who settled in central New Jersey in the first half of the 19th century and eventually became the senior minister of the First Baptist Church of Hightstown, New Jersey. As a nice Jewish boy from New York City, I passed that church many a time on my way to Saturday-night dances at the Canteen, lodged above the local firehouse, where other Peddie students had a chance to do the lindy hop or, if they were lucky, slow-dance with high-school-aged girls from the town. You see, back then in the early 1950s, we were boarders at the all-male Peddie School, housed in Hightstown, and the chance to get within a foot of any female in our general age range, even if they were, gulp, Townies, was too tempting to miss. And as the school’s name suggests, it was founded, ironically, as a Baptist girls “seminary” in 1864 by a grant from the good reverend and has carried his name ever since. The good news is, after more than a century as a boys’ prep school, it has been co-ed for some decades now...

​A few years ago, I read a newspaper article on dementia and multilingualism. According to the article, even bilingual people are less likely by some statistically significant percentage to get dementia or Alzheimer’s disease than people who know and use only one language. Apparently, one’s protection from memory loss becomes even greater with each additional language. Okay, so while we are on the subject, here’s a joke. What do you call someone who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What about two languages? Bilingual. And only one language? American! Alas...

Even Jewish kids like me were once urged to follow the Golden Rule. You know: Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. The idea made so much ethical sense that it went beyond its religion of origin. In fact, someone once gave me a sheet that included a kind of negative Golden Rule, i.e., don’t do to others what you would not want done to you. The Silver Rule?! According to this authoritative looking piece of paper, said version could be found in umpteen other religious traditions outside Christianity. But whether in the positive or negative form, this advice has an important drawback. Let me explain...

​Come to think of it, many professions and trades require their practitioners to be licensed. This is true from psychotherapists and massage therapists to doctors, lawyers, accountants, beauticians, airline pilots, and many others. More generally, civilians in all 50 U.S. states are required to have driver’s licenses before they can take to the road in their vehicle. Even permission to practice driving with an instructor or licensed adult is de rigueur. But licensing adults?!

No, I’m not talking about a new soban or Thai-noodle fad diet here. Rather, the noodles in question are Styrofoam swimming noodles, the kind YMCAs and other health clubs seem to have in abundance. Ours, the Mapleton Y in Boulder, Colorado, has them in various diameters and buoyancy levels, square but mainly round, and in yellow, green, blue, and white. In fact, they just got a lovely new supply, since the old ones get a bit frayed around the edges and start looking rat-eaten. “Grab your noodles,” Roxanne, our former long-time chief district judge but now our Water Fitness instructor, will say, adding “and spread out.”

​Doctors are supposed to have patients—or at least patience till they have the paying kind. And I’m a doctor. Well, let’s be honest here. I’m not that kind of doctor. I’m a Ph.D. And if the faux acronym means “piled higher and deeper”—it really means Philosophiae doctor, one learned in philosophy, or love of wisdom—that which is piled higher and deeper is not hundred-dollar bills. My late mother once opined that with handwriting like mine, I could have been a real doctor and made real money. She also allowed as how, after I would bring home a date, “She’s a nice girl, dear, but you could do better.”..

​I woke up this morning with a Schnappsidee, the great German expression for the kind of inspiration that could (usually) only come from a few glasses too many of, well, schnapps. As it happened, the last alcohol I had had, other than hand sanitizer, was a rather good Coin Margarita two nights ago at one of Boulder’s premier Mexican restaurants. And that drink, for better or worse, had long since lost its potency for revelation...

A picture, especially a bad one, may not be worth a thousand words. But in a place as exotic as Borneo, I thought I’d do something different this week and tell our story in captioned pictures. Enjoy! Reynold Ruslan

​My wife, Cedar, and I had always wanted to have a Peace Corps-like experience. When we were younger, decades before we married, we were each too busy with our U.S.-based lives to consider going somewhere exotic to do something for the greater good. But in 2012, at ages 72 (me) and 67 (Cedar), we finally got our chance....

​In this corner of your mind, weighing in at 195 pounds, is Mr. Creed. In that corner, weighing in at a mere 125 pounds, is Ms. Deed. Make no mistake. This seemingly unequal fight for the future of the world has been going on inside each of us since time immemorial, the battle between the Better and the Worse Angels of our nature. Which side the majority of us are on will make all the difference. To be sure, there are right and wrong actions as well as true and false beliefs. But, in the end, beliefs form the neck which turns the head of action. For example, if you agreed with Donald Trump that the 2020 Presidential Election had been stolen, as many Americans still do, you might have been moved to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Beliefs lead to actions.

​Now if you asked how someone named Reynold Feldman could have a brother named Losuba, few would be surprised. That number would include me. So, here’s a little background. Around six years ago, a retired Episcopal priest attached to our parish contacted me with an unusual request. Before her retirement, she explained, she had worked with the South Sudanese emigré community in Minneapolis. Through them she learned of a very special South Sudanese expat named Losuba. Apparently, as a major general in his country’s army and a liaison to its Department of Defense, he had become a leader in the opposition to the corrupt government then in power. As such, he and his family had received credible death threats. So, his wife and children fled to another East African country while Losuba, hoping to gain political asylum and bring them over later, landed in the U.S. Now he was in our Boulder, Colorado area and needed a place to stay. Could he stay with us?

..​As I write this blog, it is Thursday afternoon, the 13th of May, 2021. This morning at 10 am Eastern Daylight Time, Margaret Vanderbeek Barstow, my wife Cedar’s mother Meg, was pronounced dead. According to the nurse on duty, she had probably passed a half hour earlier. Cedar had just finished at the dentist when she got the call. When she arrived at the Y, where we were both scheduled for one of our thrice-weekly water-fitness classes, she gave me a long hug and told me the news. I wasn’t surprised. I had expected Meg to leave around this time. But when the actual event happens, it’s still a shock. Swimming was helpful. After, we had an initial family Zoom call. Then, ninety minutes later, Dan, the youngest of the three Barstow siblings, set up a Zoom call from Jefferson House, the long-term-care facility that was Mother’s final home. “Long-term” is a kind of misnomer. She was there perhaps six weeks. Anyway, each of us on the call had a chance to see her no-longer-breathing body and say our final goodbyes...

​As I write these words, the recently declared cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians is holding but remains fragile. As an ethnic American Jew who is also a long-time Christian (Episcopalian), I wish my people when they created the modern state of Israel had approached things differently. Of course, Zionism came from the same 19th-century mindset as other ardent nationalisms, including alas Nazism: that is, it was a nationalist philosophy based on ethnic purity. Even David Ben Gurion, a major co-founder and early prime minister of 20th-century Israel and an otherwise visionary leader, said—incorrectly—that Israel was “a land without people for a people with a land.” The only problem was that, as in the Exodus story, there were people already there. In ancient times they were called Philistines. Now there were Palestinians. Okay: spoiler alert! The Arabic word for Palestinian is falustin. Yup! As Yogi Berra famously said, “Déjà vu all over again! These folks were getting misused yet again, this time by a very people who had lost a third of their world population in the Holocaust and should have known better...

​In 1902 Harvard professor, psychologist and philosopher William James—the older brother of the novelist Henry by one year—published his classic study, The Varieties of Religious Experience. Some 119 years later I am keying this blog on a much less lofty topic: the varieties of motel experience. No italics, no capital letters for the more important words. Still, there is something to be learned from the differences among motels across the U.S.

​On April 22, 2021, Margaret Vanderbeek Barstow, Meg, my wonderful mother-in-law, celebrated her 100th birthday. According to what I could find on Google, that is something that less than two-hundredth of one percent of Americans will achieve. And she did it in the midst of the Covid virus pandemic. Not surprisingly, she also came close to celebrating that monumental birthday in her own independent-living apartment at a senior residence in Hartford, Connecticut. Alas, she broke her hip a month before the big day and was now at a nearby long-term-care facility.