Happy 5772, 2012 and Soon, Year of the Dragon!

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

This is My 600th Blog Entry, Which Is a Cause for Hope in Itself

I've been at this -- blogging -- since Passover, 5768/2007, or for nearly five years. Granted, whereas for the first two+ years, I managed to blog at least three times a week and lately, I'm lucky if once a month, it's still a friend to me and I use it when I need it.

My blog has been a friend when I'm wondering, inspired, sick, lonely, celebratory, suffering from indignities, sad, mournful, grateful, hopeful, what-if'ing in positive or catastrophic directions. On the yawning first day of every new year, I find myself what-if'ing in hopeful directions, though not usually aloud/publicly, as I'm superstitious. What if, in 2012, the rest of 5772 and the upcoming Year of the Dragon, what if I weren't superstitious? And what if:

• The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl again
  
• Pat's and my trip to Israel in June was life-changing and wonderful
  
• My thyroid challenge turned out to be only temporary, i.e., just subacute thyroiditis
  
• I collaborated with colleagues to design and deliver more first-of-a-kind social learning activities for new internal clients
  
• Traveled to a new city or country for work
  
• Exercised at least three times a week and was nice and fit
  
• Earned my Masters in Organization & Leadership with a specialization in Adult Learning and Leadership
  
• Studied and regained some Hebrew fluency
  
• Celebrated my mom's 87th birthday and Pat's mom's 89th
  
• Saw real progress in marriage equality for same-sex couples
  
• Found time to do more fun things with friends, more learning or volunteer work.
  

Like the Jewish Cartoonists Who Invented Superheroes

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Feeling Part of the American Family Once Removed

Every year around this time, I begin to feel un-American. U.S. Thanksgiving is the gateway to the Christmas season that many now inclusively refer to as the holiday season, but I always feel like many Americans really are still thinking of Christmas.

Thank God, this year, "a first look at life's newest solutions:"

This patented "menorahment" reminds me of a similar impulse I learned of five years ago with Pat and our friends Judy & Jim at the Milwaukee Art Museum. While there, we saw a terrific show on comic book artists. Through it, I learned that many of the most famous American superheroes were created by Jewish artists who were realizing their deepest fantasies of what it would be like to be ultra-American, which at that time, was a contrast to how they felt as Jews, i.e., to be loved/admired/respected by the whole community, and to be able to protect it from evil-doers. Somehow, this tree-topper seems born of similar wishes -- to be a star that is part of, yet in parallel apart from, the rest of the earth-bound ornament community. This item was featured in "Skymall" magazine, just in time for the holidays.

Who Am I Kidding?

When I am with people from beyond the United States, I'm reminded that compared to them, I'm as ultra-American as any comic book character, to the point albeit unwittingly of caricature occasionally. For example, with a Dutch friend who lives in Paris, I'm visible from a mile away when we're in Milan on business, in my bright red raincoat; Europeans do not wear such bright colors in their rainwear. Or I'm silly for taking a series of vitamins daily with my breakfast. But here, in the United States, I sometimes feel like a foreigner during this season compared to most of my fellow countrypeople. Perhaps it's the impossibly challenging combo of being a Jew who would never have need for a menorahment along with the challenge of staying engaged in the series of football games that populate our Green Bay branch of our family's home all day on Thanksgiving (and every Sunday and Monday night during the long season).

This year, though, I came to think about this outsider sensation in a new way, since I'm fresh from finishing my Masters thesis on cultural intelligence. Yesterday, I even tweeted about it: "In one way, surely, I'm culturally intelligent: I try to dress like the locals when in Green Bay; today, I'm wearing Packer-logo'ed pants." In the case of my thesis, cultural intelligence referred to being able to work effectively with colleagues and clients from other countries, but in my own life, currently, I've come to realize that there can be a domestic version as well. In addition to aligning my sartorial choices with those of the townspeople, when in Green Bay, Wisconsin, I need to be able to "talk cheese." Or at least, I need to be able to comprehend it when Pat and random strangers engage in it.

At breakfast today, the hotel cook chatted with us during his break and Pat and he went on endlessly with what I've always thought of as small-talk. I've never seen a conversation like this anywhere in the Northeast, where I grew up. Here, it's common. I first learned about it during -20 degree Fahrenheit weather, when Pat was pumping gas in Green Bay during one of our annual visits 18 years ago. "Where were you?" I asked Pat when she finally returned from paying the gas jockey.

"Oh, we were talkin' cheese," she answered simply.

Somehow, no matter how American I seem to my European friend, with my multivitamins and red raincoat, when we head into Football Season, into the Christmas gateway of Thanksgiving and into Green Bay, Wisconsin, I feel like one of these things is not like the other, to borrow a phrase from the American kids' show, "Sesame Street."

Intercultural Miscommunication

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Even in a Floridian Condo Swimming-pool

What's the worst that could happen if intercultural communication goes awry? The worst: the communicators decide that one another are not human. Do I mean that they think of one another as animals? Not necessarily. Some cultures, and many individual people, revere animals.

Think vermin, i.e., the peskiest sort of animals, e.g., how Jews were regarded by our oppressors during the Holocaust. We were to be "exterminated." My mom told me that her friend Maria's dad helped invent Zyklon-B, the gas that was used in the concentration-camp gas chambers. They are Jews and my mom said he never dreamt that his invention would be used for genocide, let alone that of his own people.

I'm thinking about the mini-series I didn't want to watch with my partner Pat, about the history of Native-Americans, as I didn't really want to know how filthy a number of the first settlers were to them. "They're rich *now*," a friend remarked, referring to their success in the casino industry.

"Yeah, some are," I didn't finish my thought, which was: rich by exploiting the gambling part of human nature, and I wonder if it sometimes feels to some Native-American gambling entrepreneurs like they're avenging their ancestors, since so many of the gamblers likely have Anglo-American foreparents. I'm referring particularly to the gamblers who are addicted to it. Is there a satisfaction in seeing some of the great-great-grandchildren of one's oppressors in a weakened state? Am I projecting?

Vengeance only gets people so far; it doesn't restore the damaged psyches, and bodies, of one's forebearers. Writing of vengeance reminds me of wars, which is apt, since it's Memorial Day. Up until yesterday, I was poised simply to add a tweet to Twitter, thanking our armed-services people for their service. The book I'm reading now for my upcoming Intercultural Communication course, *The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Cultures*, moves me to write more than the 140-character max allowed by Twitter.

I am grateful for armed-servicepeople's personal sacrifices, including those of my father of blessed memory, who served as a radar technician on the U.S.S. Alabama during World War II, so that I could enjoy the freedom I do.

How Wars Begin

I'm also thinking about what *starts* wars. When beings cannot find a way to communicate peacefully, they become violent. The scar down the length of the inside of my left-hand middle-finger proves it; one of our cats was afraid to be put in a pet-carrier to go to the vet and we could not fine a way to help her understand that we weren't endangering her. So she fought bloodily.

The book I'm reading about a Hmong child's life is also a brief history of her people, and among the anthropologists it quotes, W.R. Geddes (1959) makes the analogy between the Hmong people and the Jewish people:

The preservation...of their ethnic identity for such a long time despite their being split into many small groups surrounded by different alien peoples and scattered over a vast geographic area is an outstanding record paralleling in some ways that of the Jews but more remarkable because they lacked the unifying forces of literacy and a doctrinal religion.... (p. 18).

People who feel oppressed, at some point, though they don't necessarily want to fight, are compelled to do so. The analogy with our cat Toonces is not meant to insult Hmong or Jewish people by making a comparison to animals; it's just another example of intercultural miscommunication. On Friday, as I was reading this account of an epileptic Hmong child, on the other side of the couch across from me, a crazy wail issued from the throat of one of our friends' pet-dogs. One of our friends rushed over to find her little dog stretched out rigidly, having a seizure, which had never before happened. And there was a little puddle of urine by her dog-bed, which also had never happened before.

My friend held her dog and no extra communication was necessary. We recognized what had happened. She was an old dog and she was failing, and it's sad, and they'll take her to the vet for advice in treating the seizures after the holiday-weekend. But what if she were a baby, with her natural parents to advocate for her, but no one would listen to her parents? What if they systematically misunderstood, ignored or contradicted her parents' wishes?

If I were her parents, I would fight to be understood and respected if necessary, no matter how uncivilized I seemed. And I think that's the worst that can happen with intercultural miscommunication: The cultures begin considering it to be a matter of inter-species communication challenges.

If only I could always remember the mantra about other cultures: They're not better or worse, just different, I'd be all-set. It's when I focus on how foreign they seem, or how alien(ated) I feel, that I set the stage for assuming ill-will. I'm reminded of my first few visits to Pat's family in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Pat told me that growing up, any of her classmates who were Black had to be the children of a Green Bay Packer; I inferred that there was not much diversity there.

God, how would I feel there, as someone who's Jewish from birth with East-coast roots? How exotic would I be? How exotic would they be to me with their rabid Packer football patriotism and near-Canadian accents? Standing with Pat, her mom and brother at the Packers Hall of Fame that first visit, I did feel out of my element.

Sixteen Thanksgiving visits later, I feel familiar if not fully kindred with Green Bay. I've been thinking about my historical arm's-length approach to Green Bay while watching the Native-American mini-series and reading this book about the Hmong people and the particular Hmong family. In Green Bay, the Oneida Indians have their own nation, with their own license-plates, and a huge casino. And Pat's mom was a literacy volunteer extraordinaire who helped a number of Green-Bay-based Hmong people to become literate.

The Swimming-pool as a Case Study

A circle of older women -- probably 30 years older than I on average -- stood in the shallow end of the pool when I began my laps this morning. "Would you please swim width-wise on the other side of the rope?" one of them asked me after my first lap.

"It's easier for me to swim laps length-wise. There's room for all of us."

"Well, we'll be going to the wall, so...."

I swam off in a huff and complied, with deep resentment. If I could become so irritable in such a low-stress environment, what a great reminder of how easy it is to interculturally-miscommunicate in more stressful circumstances. Why didn't they understand that it would be extra-repetitive for me to have to swim width-wise? They wondered why I couldn't understand that I had the whole deep-end nearly to myself.

Around 15 minutes into my swim, I relaxed and enjoyed it. Afterward, not yet even thinking of this swimming incident in the context of intercultural communication, I told Pat, "Pat, I know the secret of intercultural miscommunication: Everyone wants to be understood, but not to take the time to understand."

Love Is Even Better to Me Than It Promises

The postings on this site ares my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Inspired by Art

Last night, we used the excuse of iffy weather to keep us from making the trip to NYC for synagogue and instead, stayed home to watch two rented DVDs: "Gray Matters" and "Puccini for Beginners." "Gray Matters" was rewarding ultimately for its beautiful stars, funny moments and good intentions, and "Puccini for Beginners," about which I had a chip on my shoulder after reading the description on the DVD, turned out to be marvelous.

I thought "Puccini..." would be "Chasing Amy"-esque, where the women ended up with men and I ended up frustrated. Instead, it reminded me of my own sexual identity development, which involved pursuing romance both with women and men in my teens and through age 20.

And then this morning, I finished an E.L. Doctorow short story in this week's "New Yorker." It reminded me of a recent "New Yorker" short story by John Updike in the lengths to which it went to demonstrate home-wreckage of particular, upper-middle-class, suburban, opposite-sex couples.

After seeing last night's films of struggles for love, and reading and recalling short stories about damaged love this morning, I felt a surge of happiness for the love I have with Pat. I sang in the supermarket while selecting items that Pat wanted in order to make herself lunch -- Kobe roast beef and a poppy-seed Kaiser roll. Meanwhile, Pat stayed home, chopping vari-colored peppers and throwing them in a pot along with mushrooms, four types of beans, tomatoes and chili powder for me.

The Real Deal

How ironic to be writing this blog entry during football-widow season. And I'm not writing it to score points with Pat either; while she supports my writing, and understands that I need to do it, she never reads any of it.

A friend was telling me that 2008 will be a "monument to fun;" she plans to laugh more often. "I didn't laugh enough last year. My partner's --"

"Profound," I interjected.

"Yes, profound, but not that funny. I need to hang out with people like you and Pat more often --"

"Yeah, I'm so, so lucky that Pat's so funny." And then I gave my friend a recent, delicious sample to help her keep her resolution.

In a Spin

Still thinking of the sweet parts of last nights' films, not long after waking up this morning, I reflected aloud about Pat's and my first one-on-one conversation:

"Pat, you actually made me spin around with laughter; it was so *girly* of me."

"Yes, it was," Pat said with pride in her voice. Pat's comic timing while telling me about a film I hadn't even seen was so good that I spun involuntarily at one particularly funny line of hers. I had never done it before, or since, but she agreed that it charmed her and spurred her on. And here we are 15.5 years later.

Us in India Compared to in the United States

Yesterday, I was speaking with a heterosexual colleague, who looked at my blog occasionally while I was in India, and who asked me how it was to be back.

I began to tell her and she added, "And you can be out again." Coming from her mouth, it sounded foreign at first and then right on.

"Yes!" I agreed. I don't think she knew the half of it, nor did most of this blog's readers, I think, as I don't believe I shared this while we were there:

Pat and I slept in the same room only when we traveled and just a few times back in Bangalore during the whole six months. Prior to going to India, we were told a story of a colleague, who took his male partner to India with him on his assignment, and who was rousted out of bed by the police, who told him, "Bring X money to the police station in the morning or...."

The guys left the country on the next plane. Assignment over.

I didn't want anything to spoil my assignment and both of us agreed that we wanted the experience of living in India, so we opted to stay safe and respect the local norms in parallel by having a daily maid only Monday-Friday, so that we could have the freedom to sleep in the same room over the weekends.

As it turned out, Pat's room was uncomfortable to me, since the air conditioner blew at us directly and since her bed was slab-like. And my room didn't appeal to Pat, since the air conditioner didn't face her, and since she couldn't read against the headboard, which she could do in her room.

For six months, mostly then, we slept apart.

During that time, I worried about how it would be when we returned to our bedroom back at home. Would I have grown used to having no one, breathing next to me? Would I end up, wanting to sleep in the guestroom from now on? What if we couldn't fall asleep with each other upon our return?

Once while in India, I took the opportunity to ride to the office with a senior executive and told him of how I almost had opted not to come on the assignment, since I knew that out of respect for the local culture, my partner and I would need to keep a very low profile, being explicitly open about our couple status only among IBMers.

"It's dehumanizing to have to pretend in front of our maid," I told the exec.

The exec. said, "[His boss] said this would happen -- that talented people wouldn't come to India because of this [inability to be open about their sexual orientation, if it wasn't heterosexual]."

He said that he appreciated that we were being mindful of Indian societal norms and that he wanted to be more inclusive of GLBT people at IBM, but that it "...couldn't be a cookie-cutter approach," where we took whatever worked elsewhere around the world and simply applied it to India. "It has to be done in an Indian way," he said, and then suggested that using the media would likely be the smartest approach. "There has been more and more talk about it on TV here," he said, and that was the angle he thought would work....

Narrating a bit of Pat's and my sacrifice to an influential executive might have begun to inspire further inclusion, which is great, but indeed, what has happened to our sleeping habits, since we've returned home?

Miraculously, there's no sleeping re-adjustment. It's even lovelier than it always has been for our having been denied it for half a year, and I'm no longer lonely when I wake up. And our home-bed has such a heavenly mattress, and I'm so grateful, as my colleague suggested, that we don't have to sneak around -- or feel that we need to -- any longer.

Despite Pat's neglect of me for a football marathon this weekend -- the Packers are playing today, and I'm dutifully wearing a green sweatshirt, sporting the Packers logo -- I'm in a romantically grateful mood about us. Alas, Pat's passion is channeled utterly into the game right now. I just heard her screaming in the basement, "First down!"