laying off

There is a tradition in Jewish households that, at Shabbat dinner on Friday night, the challah – the braided bread blessed at the start of the meal – remains covered until just before it is blessed. A centuries old story explains a possible reason: On all other nights of the week, the bread is blessed first, while on Friday night, the wine and candles take first position; the cover, then, is to prevent the challah from becoming jealous.

Previously, I always took that explanation as purely symbolic, commentary on how we should give thought to the feelings of people in our lives. But, over the last few days, I’ve begun to suspect the intention is more concrete – literally an attempt to keep the challah from choking us to death in spite by stopping itself partway down our gullets.

I say this because, since I mentioned in passing that I was thinking of trading in my Dell for a new Powerbook, my laptop has been deteriorating at a rather alarming clip. Outlook suddenly refuses to check email automatically. At random intervals, Windows puts itself to sleep for no reason at all. The hinge holding the screen has loosened to the point that the screen itself swings precariously as I type.

And yet, I can’t be angry with my trusty C400. Not just because of the two years of solid service it’s put in thus far, but also because I understand what it’s trying to do. It sees the breakup coming, and it’s preemptively dumping me. Or, if I’m downsizing the Windows part of my life, it’s saying back, “Fire me? You can’t fire me. Because I quit!”

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chicken scratch

You know how, in kindergarten, you draw stick figures and then you move on? Well, I didn’t. Sure, I can stick figure with the best. But that’s about the absolute limit of my drawing ability. I’m what you might call an art retard.

And it’s not just that I can’t draw. I can’t paint either, can’t sketch, draft or doodle. I see pictures vividly in my mind’s eye, and yet, somehow, by the time they make their way to the page or canvas, the dimensions are so far off as to make whatever I produce look like the work of a drunk, crack-addled six-year old.

It’s not for lack of trying either. At several points past, I’ve set out on stints of daily drawing practice, in the hopes that I’d eventually improve. I didnít.

In other spheres of my life, I have an excellent sense of spatial relationships – I can load up a car trunk well enough to go pro. And my sense of composition is elsewhere strong as well – I’ve even occasionally managed to get my photography into gallery showings. But holding pen, brush or pencil, I lose it all completely. My brain says one thing, my hand does another, unintentionally hilarious results ensue.

So, frankly, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that my handwriting is similarly atrocious. Not just so bad that other people can’t tell what I’ve written, but so bad that, a few hours after writing, I can rarely even decipher the scribbles myself.

And this is printing I’m talking about; I gave up cursive five or six days after I supposedly picked it up. Illegible as my print might be, it looks like fine calligraphy against my best attempts at script.

So, for years, even in birthday cards and personal notes, I’ve resorted to my third grade printing technique, uneven letters jumbled up against each other, precariously swaying from vertical to near-horizontal tilt.

Until, that is, today, when I decided I’ve had enough. Today, when I decided that, if I’m going to start feigning adulthood, I need to master some writing to match.

Scoff if you must, but I’m pretty sure it’s important. Until I get this cursive thing down, for example, fatherhood is strictly out of the question; sick notes penned in my usual hand wouldn’t excuse my future progeny – they’d get the poor kids sent straight to an afternoon of detention for forging notes, and for doing it poorly to boot.

So, cursive practice it is. A few minutes each day, in spare moments between more pressing tasks, the quick brown fox will be jumping over the lazy dog. Again and again and again, until I hit flowery cursive that justifies the purchase of manuscript, quill and India ink. Or, at least, until my handwriting is not so atrocious as to jeopardize the afternoon freedom of my hypothetical unborn children.

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brain food

I recently finished reading a pre-release copy of Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs’ wonderful upcoming book The Know-it-All, which, in short, follows Jacobs – concerned that he’s become steadily stupider over the decade since graduating college – on a quest to counter that trend by reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica, cover to cover. The Know-it-All is a surprisingly absorbing read, beautifully blending lessons Jacobs pulls directly from the volumes with the day-to-day impact his quest has on the rest of his life, on his relationships with his wife, colleagues, family and friends.

I enjoyed the book immensely, though I must admit it also brought forth from the back of my mind a similar fear of slow decline since a collegiate thinking peak. These days, I’m thrust into situations that make me think, and think hard, just often enough to remind me that I don’t think hard nearly as often as I should.

I blame that, in large part, on no longer owning a car. Or, to be more precise, on no longer owning a car radio.

I’ve never been a big radio listener outside of the driver’s seat, but, on the road, throughout high school and college, NPR almost never left my radio dial. With each short drive, I’d pick up a small dose of Fresh Air, the World, Marketplace or All Things Considered, any of which never ceased to occupy my imagination.

Certainly, I knew full well that, as a teenage guy, listening to NPR lifted me to nearly unparalleled levels of dorkdom. But I didn’t care. I loved it. I could almost physically feel my brain filling up with new facts and ideas, delivered fresh each day over the airwaves.

In standard New York style, however, I sold my car before moving to the city, and with it the only radio I owned. That was the end of NPR for me, save for short trips out west, when, in cars rented or borrowed, Terry Gross and Bob Edwards once again brought me up to date on the world. I knew that I could theoretically find any of those programs at home, archived online, but, frankly, I was too lazy to do so – I wanted my information pushed, not pulled.

Then, a day or two back, I downloaded a copy of iTunes. I did it mainly because, starting at the end of next week, I’ll be working part-time on a borrowed Mac for a nonprofit consulting project. And, with my trusty Dell laptop slowly disintegrating, I’ve also been toying with the idea of making the Mac switch full-time, trading my Dell for a Powerbook G4 and returning to my Apple roots. I downloaded the Windows version of iTunes as a baby step in that direction, a chance to ease my way into the rounded corners and aqua blues of the Mac world.

Overall, I’ve been fairly impressed with the program. But I was ecstatic about it this afternoon, when I clicked on down to the Radio icon in the left sidebar, just to see what was in there. Ambient, Americana… then, about two-thirds the way through the list: Public.

I clicked. Lo and behold, a veritable cavalcade of NPR stations! I recognized the third on the list, KCRW, from my LA rental car driving, and hit the play button. Instantly: Cory Flintoff, at 128 kilobits per second.

I am not too proud to admit I literally jumped around the room. By another miracle of broadband, NPR will, once again, be flowing back into my brain. Which, frankly, is excellent news, because my apartment doesn’t have nearly enough shelf space for an edition of the Britannica.

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