Thursday, July 19, 2007

Day Three with a Smile


Spent my third morning at Avodat Lev with ADAMAH, followed by breakfast. Smiles all around. And oatmeal. Now I have to remember to bring another Dobie over for dishes; the previous one has been downgraded to a floor sponge.

Lynn offered a class this morning on nonviolence, "Kabbalah of the Margins," and a preview on Lamentations in preparation for Tisha b'Av, a day of fasting and mourning, which is early next week.

I spent far too many hours yesterday and today trying to update the firmware of Shir-Ya'akov's printer and failed to connect to it by FTP, per HP's instructions, by all possible methods. Then, I ended up turning to the simplest of instructions to do a direct file copy to the printer using shared network printing in Windows. I set up printer sharing and opened a DOS command window, entered the command, and it said it copied the one file. Without any feedback from the system, I soon discovered that the printer was busy updating itself with the file I offered. Who knew?!

Tonight, after a brief learning with Ellen Bernstein and checking out the awesome art show opening of the last two weeks of seniors' art projects, I headed to Beit Adamah to help prep ginger for tomorrow night's Japanese Shabbat meal. I'll be back after work tomorrow afternoon to help cook more.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Working Backward to Move Ahead


This morning I went to Adamah House for Avodat Lev ("work of the heart"/morning practice) for the first time in my two years at Freedman. Today felt like a good day to be spontaneous, surprise a few souls, and remember how amazing sleep cycles can be. Yesterday, I assembled a standing shelving unit in the Bookstore. I spent most of the last two weeks in there, while Ben was away, and completed the receipt of our large, annual book order from Ingram. Saturday morning, Anna, Tali, Devorah, Jeanette, and I picked blueberries at Thompson & Finch, an organic berry farm about half an hour west of here. The low-bush blueberries on our mountain here at Freedman I expect will be ripe for picking in a couple weeks.

So, about a month ago, we members of the Neshamah internship program had expressed that our non-work programing seemed largely nonexistent. So, Rabbi Lynn Gottleib, who was already scheduled to be here for a couple retreats in August, agreed to show up right away to be our Rabbi, mentor, and program core for the rest of the summer. Lynn is one of a group of women who collectively were second in rabbinic ordination of women to a female rabbi in the first half of the 20th century. She's been a great friend so far, particularly because she and I share humor style. (Thanks Dad!)

Two families of Canada Geese were born about a month ago. I don't stop in my tracks very often to express how cute I find something. The baby geese were an exception when I spotted them from the dining hall balcony on the grass below. I've enjoyed watching them grow, and now seeing the two families interact together after segregating themselves for the first few weeks.

The summer Senior Adult Vacations program (senior camp) began three weeks ago. Not much to say about that. There have been joys with seniors being here and there have been frustrations with how this property sometimes doesn't seem properly equipped to provide a safe environment for them. Three more weeks before the second half of Elat Chayyim summer retreats arrives.