Israel

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

For Israeli Family Photos, See Prior Blog Entry

Everyone on our tour, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, it seemed, including Pat and I, had a crush on the beautiful, brilliant, funny Odelia Shabi, our tour guide (above), who was proudly Yemenite. Abel Pann, one of Israel's premier 20th-century artists, used Yemenite models among others in his art, for example, this image above (see a larger version). If there were an Olympics for country tour guides, Odelia would take the Gold Medal for Israel. How much can I express Pat's and my adoration as fans before embarrassing ourselves, let alone Odelia?

Pat snapped this photo of me (above) looking happy and lovingly at her on our first evening in Jerusalem, when Shabbat was on the way shortly. I couldn't believe we were actually there, together finally. As I wrote in a prior blog-entry, during all of my previous stays in Israel, from 15 onward, I pursued romance with boys and girls and then men and women who might have loved Israel, but who did not love me. In this case, I was finally with someone who loved me back, if not yet who loved Israel. Perhaps for Pat, Israel would be like golf was for me; we always played together because I knew how enormously happy it made her to be on a golf course, but golf was not natively beloved to me.

These two photos (above) depicted Pat & me on our final night in Jerusalem and our fourth day in Israel, under nearly a full moon. If this was for Pat just like a round of golf was for me, then it was an atypical round, where we played the most beautiful, uncrowded course and where I had a hugely successful game and was buoyed by it...because that's how Pat seemed by then -- extraordinarily happy and sated. Or maybe Pat was still mostly loving that I loved Israel, and her extra selflessness released endorphins. I'm not sure which it was, and it didn't seem to matter, since both of us felt ultra-relaxed and pleased for whatever reason, even beyond how we feel, say, on a summer evening when we're rocking in our double rocker on the back-deck of our house.

Our first night in Jerusalem, which was our very first night in Israel together, we ate dinner at Cinematech, which was also the cool place to go in 1985-86, when I was a Hebrew University student for the year. It seemed out of reach to me then, as the place where kids with money went on dates, and I didn't have much of either back then. What a triumph to be having a romantic dinner with my wife Pat, ordering whatever I wanted on the menu and paying with our collective money. And then afterward, we caught a cab to the Kotel (Wall), to watch the dancing there (above). Since Pat & I are both women, unlike opposite-gender couples, we were able to approach the Wall together and touch it side-by-side, and to kiss the same spot of it. As we moved back from it, Pat snapped photos of gorgeous female Israeli soldiers dancing.

So much shame scattered to the winds, thank God; last time I was there at night, I was a 20 year old who felt the way I did in a Women's locker room, forcing myself to look at the ground while in the Women's section, and then who also felt impossibly awkward in the open plaza behind the prayer sections, where other young men and women stood together -- but not too closely, of course -- becoming acquainted.

Our friend Eleanor Horowitz (above, left) lives in Herzliya and is a lawyer and artist. Like me, she was a Freshman and Sophomore at the University of Michigan and also studied at Hebrew University during her Junior year. Unlike me, she stayed in Israel for her Senior year and graduated from Hebrew University, and made aliyah, also graduating from Hebrew U.'s Law school as well as studying at Bezalel, Israel's premier art school. She always seemed heroic to me -- one of the brave ones who flirted with aliyah during her Junior year abroad and then who actually made it.

Both of these books (above) are at the Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew University, in the library where I hung out a lot as a student, and which I took Pat to visit during our one afternoon that we had free from the tour. The book with the cover in Hebrew is also by Flannery O'Connor; it's the collection of short stories, *A Good Man Is Hard to Find*, translated into Hebrew, and it has the story I chose to include in my Comparative Literature thesis upon my return to Ann Arbor, "Good Country People". I don't remember seeing that book when I found the peacock-covered one in 1986. Both could actually be from that time, since the covers of both have been reinforced with extra cardboard.

Flannery O'Connor was like a friend in Israel back then. "Good Country People" particularly gave me what I needed, a theme that mirrored my life at the time: My emphasis was on objects of desire, rather than on finding real love (and healthy desire) with a similarly-intentioned woman. The desires of Flannery O'Connor's protagonist, along with those of all of the women I compared among the four short stories of my thesis, were thwarted and ultimately damned. Cheery.

Imagine my gratification at returning with my wife Pat to the very place where everything seemed so unsettled and unsettling romantically and being able to stamp it with a happy ending. Here we are a couple of days later at the Dead Sea (above), being photographed by a lovely guy from the tour group, Ishaan.

Pat and I were fortunate to swim in six very different bodies of water during our time in Israel. On the Dead Sea, we floated like cork rafts amid heat of 40 degrees Celcius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit -- that was the *air* temperature and the water felt around the same. I need to update My Swimming Autobiography, but meanwhile, I'll mention the Kibbutz Lavi pool here (above). Prior to our arrival at Lavi, we had been hiking and sweating in Beit She'an, which is in a hotter part of the north. Picture our relief at entering this pool, which was indoors, but which had glass doors and giant windows all open to criss-crossing breezes. Other than a pool in a mountainous Madrid suburb, where I was lucky to swim during a business trip half a decade ago, it was the nicest pool I'd ever enjoyed.

Just as I commented to my American first cousin Sari, I keep thinking about accidents of birth: My mom's friend Chaya (above) is probably 90 years old and her parents and she were born in Israel; my mother will be 87 in November and she says that Chaya is a few years older than she.

Our friends Noga and Hilla (left and right, above) also were born in Israel. Hilla's parents came from Tunisia and then took the family to Canada for eight years, but then ultimately returned to Israel. And Noga's parents were from Poland and the Sudan. I need to resist idealizing Noga and Hilla and trying to turn them into symbols of an ideal Israeli couple. They are just another couple in the world, albeit an especially lovely one, trying to take care of their family and each other, just like Pat and I are trying to do...speaking of which, it's time to feed Phoebe and Toonces, our cats.

Nothing like children to bring me back to the present. Phoebe and Toonces are our feline daughters and this photo (above) is from the day we returned from Israel, after Pat cut a bunch of gladioli that had bloomed in our garden while we were away.

A Colleague's Questions and My Answers

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

In Response to a Paper I Wrote During Spring Semester

The course I took this past semester was the most draining and most profound I've taken so far at Teachers College. It was on Educational Biography and Leadership, and the core assignment was for all of us to write our own learning history and how it informed our leadership, and then to exchange papers with one another.

One of the colleagues with whom I shared the paper kindly wrote a number of questions to me in response to having read mine, including:

Q: In addition to her being your “teacher”, was she [your sister] also a friend, or was there a “teacher-student” distance between you? Were you always close with her, or did that sort of evolve as you grew up?

A: She was my teacher and my friend, though I did turn her into an icon to adore, and she had to tell me when she was 18 and I was nearly 13 that she was "not Superman" and I needed to stop treating her as such. That shocked me, to know that she had felt my adoration at all as a burden.

Q: The whole section on your father, and his wishes for you, touched me so much. His encouraging you to write for the newspaper especially....Why do you think you didn’t stick with it, after you had some articles published? Was this your own negative beliefs about your abilities tripping you up?

A: (My colleague was referring to my having written a bit for "The Michigan Daily" as a freshman.) If I were providing the answer back then, I'd tell you that it was a luxury I couldn't continue to afford -- I had to study and work for 10 hours a week while in school and also was studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for my whole junior year -- but really, I agree that it was a combination of giving up before I started and also letting it be the province of a friend on whom I had a crush at the time. Both of us wrote for the "Arts" page and she kept at it, but when our friendship diminished (because she discovered my crush and rebuffed me, which was another tragic story), I didn't want to be around her as much and vice versa.

And yes, I think I couldn't believe how easy it was to get published -- it overwhelmed me. Though I had been an active reporter for my high school newspaper, "The Roundtable," at the college level, at a newspaper that had its own art deco building on campus (which it shared with "The Gargoyle," the school's humor magazine), it seemed like the college journalistic equivalent of being on the Michigan football team. I didn't feel worthy on some level, I guess. And yet the articles I wrote were clever. The best of the few were a feature story for the weekend magazine on the 10th anniversary of the Saturday midnight showing of "Harold and Maude;" another, a review of a gallery opening, including Richard Diebenkorn; and a review of "The Flamingo Kid," a film I liked because of its star, Matt Dillon.

Q: I loved the “Full Moon at Noon” story. Do you still have a copy of it? And if so, would you be willing to share it? (if not that’s fine, I understand!)....What part of him [my father, may his memory be blessed] is still with you, held close? Can you take in, now, that belief that he had in you, his vision of your potential?

A: Unfortunately, I don't know where that story is. It was from the typewriter era. If I had it, I'd be happy to share it in its entirety. I've written about my dad's particular legacy for me before, but not lately. I feel like I got nearly all of his height (he was six feet tall and I'm five nine and a half), and his creativity/sometimes childlike enthusiasm, and also, the self-doubt that can go with being an artist, or with being any sort of human. And also his appetite. He referred to his alma mater as the "Rhode Island School of Desire" (rather than the Rhode Island School of Design) because he developed, and aimed to satisfy, his learning longings so fully while there as an Industrial Design major. He was a toy and game designer professionally and so I always relish opportunities to work with designers in my work at IBM.

It's a touching question about whether I can fully see the belief he had in me and my potential now in hindsight because I don't remember any such conversations, other than that one, where he encouraged me to go to the University of Michigan and write for the school newspaper. And then by November 1st of my senior year of high school, he had died.

In 1995, I had a dream about my father that devastated me initially: In real-life, I had proposed that IBM be a major sponsor of the International Gay & Lesbian Business Expo (that's what it was called back then, and it was pioneering of the sponsor-companies then). IBM agreed and 24 gay and lesbian IBMers staffed a giant booth at the Expo and we were swarmed with thrilled customers and future customers the whole time. In addition, my colleague and friend Rob Shook and I gave a business workshop, "Cruising the Information Highway," which again, back then was pioneering, and happily, popular.

The night before the workshop, I dreamt that I was helping to set up the booth, taking flyers out of the pedestal cabinets to post on the pedestals and my dad was crouching alongside me as I was bending over to get the fliers. The only statement I recall of his from the dream was, "I'm sorry, Sarah, but I can't stay." And then he disappeared.

I cried about it to my oldest sister right before co-facilitating what turned out to be a wonderful workshop. I was upset that he couldn't stay because I figured he must not have been able to abide by the mission I was serving, didn't approve of my being lesbian and working to advance gay and lesbian business professionals' success.

At my next session with the therapist I was seeing then, I told her the dream and how hurt by it I was. She said, "Don't you see, Sarah? Your father was apologizing. He was sorry that he couldn't be with you for this important event."

I didn't fully believe my therapist, but it was a possible alternate interpretation, and since then, I've tried to believe in her version.

Q: I am so sorry that you were not able to give birth. Does that desire really feel like it has passed, as you write in your narrative, or do you still think about it with regret?...Does that “not being able to empathize with parents” feel troubling? Does your family accept that “inconceivable” part of you? Were they supportive of you trying to conceive, and when they found out you couldn’t? How does not having given birth affect you now, and the choices you make? Are you trying to give birth in figurative ways?

A: Mostly, it has passed. The regret I feel is that I do not feel driven to adopt a child; it's a shame-based regret, really, i.e., I wish I wanted to be any child's mother badly enough to go to any lengths, but I don't, I must admit. The troubling part of not being able to empathize with parents is most apparent to me when I think of my sisters as mothers. They have something in common with each other that I do not share with them.

My family mostly accepts my not having given birth. My mother, I think, is addicted to grandchildren. I was 42 (and still am till July 13th) when Pat and I were in India, and my mother said to me once long-distance, "Sarah, I read that there are many women in India, who would be willing to carry your eggs." I felt much more sad in response to her suggestion than she knew, but I realized that she meant well and could not resist making it, and so I never told her how much pain it caused.

My ability to go to India for six months with Pat for work was possible because we did not have a child, I think; though I saw expats from many countries, living in India with children and teens, including my local manager, who had brought his family from China, I don't think I would have had the wherewithal to do it.

Pat's and my relationship also feels more peaceful than many couples' I've seen, who've got kids. There is less stress, emotionally and financially. There is also less vividness, I believe, and that's a kind of regret, too. I am always trying to nurture people, especially myself, if not also trying to give birth figuratively. Increasingly, I think of my legacy and how I'll need to have a more public one -- or that I aspire to have a more public one -- since there's no guarantee of a next generation, feeling it directly; we have a niece and three nephews, but they will think of their parents' legacy primarily.

Q: I was struck by the fact that you mention realizations that come “after swimming” twice....I was curious – does swimming, or physical activity in general, serve as a means of insight or connection to inner knowing for you? I am interested in somatic knowing/learning...and always find myself noticing and wondering when someone makes the connection between physical activity and knowing. Is this a conscious process for you (meaning, do you use physical activity consciously to resolve inner dilemmas or gain insight)? Or does it just sort of happen? (I read your swimming autobiography on your blog, but it didn’t really answer my questions!)

A: My partner Pat bought a water-tight iPod case that she swims with and I worry about getting one for myself, since I use swimming to improve my mood, to clear my head, to help me think, to relax my spirit, to sing pop songs to myself when no thoughts are urgent and to plan for the coming day's work. I don't get into the pool, promising myself that I'll have breakthrough insights, but often, insights come in parallel with the repetitive stroke I'm doing lap after lap...as if doing movement on auto-pilot enables sharper thinking at the same time.

As a leadership development facilitator, I learned that if I gave program participants things to play with while they were learning, they'd actually focus more so on the learning and be less distracted, e.g., squeeze-balls et al. Also, I feel much more connected to their learning and my own if I shake hands with participants when they first enter the classroom. It's like a mini learning exchange for me with each handshake.

Finally, I read a year or more ago that most leaders are physically graceful, rather than clumsy. I wonder if there's a connection there, i.e., perhaps leaders are more conscious, but not self-conscious, of their bodies and their minds in parallel. Ever since reading that, I've been even more driven to appear graceful when I am in front of a group of people, and even one-to-one.

Quality and Quantity

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

Life Stories Are Due Tomorrow

For the course I'm taking this semester on life history and leadership, our own life histories (to this point) are due on Monday. We get to read one another's and then each of us will be assigned one of them to be the lead reader, and to provide commentary and help interpret it.

In my insecurity at the prospect of producing it, I remember trying to feel superior, and thinking about the majority of the class, who are half my age: How substantial could their life stories be? And then I felt ashamed on the ride home, as I recalled hearing the author Joyce Carol Oates speak once, and how I was hurt by her similar attitude: I was 30 years old at the time and raised my hand during her Q&A to ask a question about memoir writing.

"A memoir? You have to have *lived* [enough years] to write a memoir," she said, and I disliked her then. She went on about how eager her undergraduate students sometimes were to write memoirs and how inappropriate it seemed to her due to their youth.

I thought she was mean to be so discouraging...and here I was, thinking the same way just 12 years later. Maybe the difference is that I saw my bigotry and was chagrined by it...but if she hadn't said what she had to me, maybe I'd not have had the insight to see my prejudice.

Teenage, then 21, 42, 84...

The other night, my nearly 15-year-old nephew Zach was telling me how he and a friend from 7th grade, and another from 4th grade had found one another on Facebook, and how they met again after not having seen one another for years.

This morning, I checked e-mail on my Columbia University ID and saw a Facebook e-mail notice from a guy, who used to sit behind me in one of my freshman-year classes at Stamford High. It's a similar feeling, but just a big difference in the time lag.

At the Newark Airport on Friday, a young guy was wearing a Hebrew University, Jerusalem sweatshirt and I couldn't resist talking with him. As I've mentioned here before, I studied there for my junior year abroad in college.

Should I talk to him? Shouldn't I? It's so darn early -- around 6 am -- and I'm not yet feeling so sociable, but how many times do I see such a sweatshirt, other than on myself?

"Excuse me. Hi. Did you study there?"

"Yeah." He's not a morning-person, or I'm just not who he feels like talking to right now.

"When did you go?"

"Last year, for a semester."

"Neat! I was there for a year in '85-'86. I loved it!"

He smiled politely and I walked away as quickly and as gracefully as I could.

I was exactly twice his age, and I'm still thinking about what that experience in Israel meant to me. It has been brewing all these years....I wish I could meet someone from IBM, who's 84, and who spent six months in India for IBM at 42...though I don't think we were in the country then. In any case, no doubt, that person might understand what the experience meant with greater hindsight than mine.

Pat's mom will be 84 on Monday and so she's twice my age. I'm always trying to rush my insights and hindsight, I think. I'm envious at the bank of experiences that Pat's mom, and mine, can draw from. Mr. McWilliams, my favorite teacher from high school wrote in my year book, "Sarah, just stay young long enough to grow old."

Have I Ever Been Young?

What did he see? Probably, he saw a 17-year-old , who had lost her father that year and so who was much older than her peers as a result. I've been that way ever since, or maybe even prior to my dad dying.

My family was so much older than I, growing up; my parents were 40 when I was born and my sisters already five and a half and nine, so I had to be precocious if I wanted to keep up, e.g., with vocabulary acquisition....And now, with my partner, being 15 years older than I, I find myself wondering when menopause will begin to hit me when, really, I should have several more years, if not a decade or more left prior to "the change of life."

A friend of ours sent us a hilarious clip recently of a comedy routine by "Mrs. Hughes." She said, When a girl menstruates for the first time, they say, 'And now, you're becoming a woman.' When a woman goes through menopause, they don't tell you what you're becoming....[She rubs her chin and upper-lip, pauses, and says,] "I'm becoming my father."

When my friend Chitra was in the States and met my mom, she told me later, "It's as if you're the mother and she's the daughter. Your mom's so youthful!" Maybe that's why I loved Saffy on "AbFab."

What has my maturity bought me? It's not a fair question. Maturity simply became one of my traits, like having dark-brown hair and blue eyes.

Savoring Two Senses: Part II

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

**ALL ARE WELCOME**

Especially prior to entering the sanctuary last night, I noticed that message on the marquis of our synagogue, which shares space with Holy Apostles Church. During most of the service last night, I kept marveling at the gorgeous, spirited people, the moving violin, piano and timbrel, along with the chorus, and particularly our soprano friend who contributed to it with her clear, perfect voice.

It was the special, GLBT Pride Shabbat service and as I wrote in Part I, it was packed. Randi Weingarten was a guest drash (sermon) deliverer and accordingly, Rabbi Kleinbaum invited all current and retired New York City teachers, among others, to come to the bimah (altar) to help kindle the Shabbat candles.

The biggest crowd of qualified kindlers I'd ever seen approached the bimah.

One of my favorite high school teachers, I'm confident, was gay, though not openly. How many of these candle kindlers were their students' favorite teachers?

Randi Weingarten's mission in her role, she said, was to help ensure dignity for New York City's students and the people who educate them. She talked about Moses' leadership and how in this week's Torah parsha (Bible portion), his hitting the rock revealed an authoritarian leadership style that had outlived its usefulness.

"Four C's"

And then she spoke of leadership in general, saying that it requires "four C's: Conviction; Compassion; Commitment; and Courage."

She gave an example of courage, saying, if I remember correctly, that when a bill was introduced to include domestic partnership benefits for teachers, one of her close colleagues said, "Please punt on this one. Don't turn it into a floor-fight."

"A floor-fight is what there will be," she said, as she was unwilling to be a "second-class citizen" in the fight for the rights of her teacher-constituency. The bill passed healthily.

Randi Weingarten made me reflect on how to apply the four C's to my own leadership, especially as I prepare to fulfill my upcoming, six-month, short-term foreign service assignment in India:

Conviction: IBM leaders in India will be well-served by further leadership development initiatives and I, in all of my humanity, can be of service to that end. There are new, mutual discoveries to be made by all of us, along with some classic best practices to promote.

Compassion: During my commute to work on Friday, I thought about how I am going to India to be of service to an already-highly-privileged group of people: managers at all levels of our company. I am not going as an NGO delegate, or with the Peace Corps. And yet, every human being needs some form of assistance. Everyone deserves compassion, no matter how privileged. Compassion is a universal, human need.

Commitment: For me, education's main purpose, ultimately, is to produce positive social change, and I suppose that in a corporate environment, I feel that it is to produce positive climate, and then cultural, change. What does that mean to me in a corporate context? Helping realize the most positive-results-producing environment through encouraging inclusive, innovative people worldwide.

Courage: While in India, and anywhere, I need to remember that no one's cultures and norms -- including my own -- are the best. I need the courage to be welcoming of learning others' frames of reference, and to share my own in a way that helps others feel comfortable whenever possible. I need the courage to do my part to ensure that all of us feel like first-class citizens.

I was inspired by Randi Weingarten's example last night. I'm interested in how adults learn to lead in a corporate environment and I loved how she urged the teachers in the congregation to, "...not just educate, but lead."

That Lump in My Throat

In Part I, I wrote about a continuous lump in my throat throughout the service. It was there because I was sad about the warm community from which I was choosing to be physically absent for half a year. What could possibly take its place? What could fill the gap? Why venture away from such a safe, lovely haven?

And in parallel, I remained perpetually on the verge of crying, wondering how anyone who would witness this loving, spiritual, kind, imbued congregation would ever wish to discriminate against, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and our loved ones. It was a miraculous scene, really, as well as a festival of sound; I wish I could let you hear the tune of the most moving piece of liturgy from last night: "Pitchu li sha'arei tzedek ("Open up Your righteous gates")...."

The song includes an amazing statement, which our synagogue uses as a sort of tagline, "Even ma'asu ha'bonim hayitah l'rosh pinah" ("The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.") -- Psalm 118:22.

This morning, I woke up early, again. I cannot seem to sleep a full night's sleep, the closer the departure for India becomes. One of the first things I did was check the online exhibition of our synagogue's history.

It was founded in 1973 and it was so important for me to imagine the early congregants, a number of whom still belong to the shul, just as I tried to imagine my mother's 1950 Hebrew University classmate, Esther from Karachi, no matter her sexual orientation. All of them were pioneers.

What could I do to be pioneering and effective in parallel in the assignment? What *will* I do?

When have you been a pioneer and based on that experience, what are your tips for success?