Zackary Sholem Berger's Blog, page 38

Light and dark in Baltimore (by a Charles Village poet)

Light

by Michael Fallon, originally published in the Loch Raven Review

From one end of the block to the other,the burnt-out streetlights leaned into shadow,

the rows of hedges, the blackened doorways,

camouflage for the mugger and the thief,

the houses up to their roofs in darkness.

For 7 days in a row, we called the city.

Busy signals. So

and So away from her desk.

A recorded message announcing the hours 

the office was open. Imagine

the answering machine, a Pandora's Box

full of angry voices.

No wonder we heard nothing.

Then, at 3 in the morning,

the sound of an insistent engine.

Outside my window and 

below, a white truck straddles the lanes,

a huge metal elbow bolted to the back.

A man in the cab dismounts,

hefts a box from the bed,

climbs into a pulpit at the long end of the arm,

jiggles a switch,

raises himself slowly

as the elbow un-bends,

hovers high over the rain slick pavement,

the truck idling beneath him.

He crinks a flashlight against his cheek,

unscrews something,

lifts the lid off the deadened lamppost.

Leans over.

Fumbles a moment.

Straightens up.

There is the gleam of glass

as he lifts it out of the box

and twists it?

Wires it?

Jams it home. 

The light stutters and 

zaps on.

And I see him,

his black face under the plastic helmet,

his orange reflector vest,

as the elbow closes slowly

and he lets himself down, then

heaves something over the tailgate.

I see the bed is heaped with boxes. Some stacked,

Some tossed in at angles,

For the light bulbs he has been changing! 

He drives off leaning slightly forward over the wheel.

The sleepy sound of his engine

dims among the shapes of houses;

while behind him, at 3:15, the length of the street

shines in soft rain.

Why Does Yiddish Poetry Matter?

I will be answering that question tomorrow, at 7:30pm, at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History. I will be unarmed. 

#occupymedicine first principles: disparities or patient-centered care?

If #occupymedicine were to exist, would its first aim be to eliminate disparities (on the model of the 99%/1% critique) or to guarantee evidence-based, patient-centered health care for all? These aims are not mutually incompatible but not the same, either. Discuss please. (Update: Discussion has commenced on Facebook, and I ported it over to Google+. Please chip in there, here, or anywhere.)

Jewish culture – through thick and thin

Jewish culture can be founded on halachah even for the non-fundamentalist.  Just as culture is omnipresent – you can't live without it – so can halacha be omnipresent to the Jewish enterprise. But I don't mean anything as coarse an adjective as "binding." We can choose what culture to participate in, but we all recognize that being cultureless is not an option. Similarly, anyone can choose which halachot to observe, but all halachic Jews recognize that opting out of the system is not on the menu. This assumes some common sense. Not all of the many available halachot can be observed – and if some are missed, we do not, failing to collect $613, go to Hell. Rather each of us can make his or her own halachic canvas.

This is the obvious claim that modernity makes on religious practice. Further, though, we should ask what this canvas is aiming at. What is the point of this halachic esthetic? Part of it is to create a thick description of Jewish life which incorporates halachah on a higher dimension than Shulchan Aruch box-checking. Whatever this art looks like – a portrait, a sculpture, a composition – will be up to the individual, but the medium is dependent on halachic material.

"Translators who hold fast to their originals surrender the originality of their nation": Goethe on translation

There are three kinds of translation. The first acquaints us with the foreign realm in our own understanding; here a simple and prosaic translation is the best. For as prose does away with all the particularities of any poetic art . . . . it does greatest service at the beginning. . . . A second period follows, in which one seeks to transport [versetzen] oneself into the situation of the foreign realm, but only in order to possess oneself of foreign meaning, to reproduce that foreign meaning with one's own . . . We [then] experience a third epoch, which we may call highest and last, that namely in which one seeks to make the translation identical to the original, to have it count not instead of the original but in its place. . . . This last mode meets at its beginning with the greatest resistance; for translators who hold fast to their originals surrender to some extent the originality of their own nation. A third thing thus comes into being, towards which the taste of the public must now develop itself.

From Noten und Abhandlungen zu besserem Verständnis des West-östlichen Divans, Notes and Essays for Better Understanding the East-West Divan, translated by Larry Rosenwald. Excerpted from his keynote address at the recent National Yiddish Book Center conference on translation.

Music, German, and other edifying subjects

1.  I wrote a poem for Sam Zerin and Rachel Dudley, good folks who supported my book, and that poem got set to music by Caitie Daphtary. Then it got performed at their wedding by Dudley herself, and the whole – music, lyrics, performance recording – was published at qarrtsiluni. Transmigrations of a melody, indeed. 

2. A selection of Yiddish literature (including a poem of mine) was translated into German by Thomas Soxberger for the Austrian journal Lichtungen. No on-line excerpt available, unfortunately, but I will see about posting one. (Perhaps though you prefer translations into Russian or French.)

 

 

 

 

#occupymedicine: why not, and why/how

I checked, by the way –  I did the Googling myself. 

Medicine is a profession, and professionals prefer the status quo. We stable middle-agers have a lot to lose. 

But what would it mean to occupy medicine? 

1. Patient-centered care without compromise.

2. Quality care without regard to perverted economic incentives or institutional hideboundedness.

3. Socially conscious medicine implementing public health.

Let's add to the list. Can we occupy medicine incrementally, within our institutions and currently existing structures?

Improving relationships in a broken system

Our health care system is broken, and ideas to change it aren't lacking. We can put more information in the hands of doctors, on the one hand, and give them better electronic medical records. We can empower patients, on the other hand, and make the visit patient-centered. It shouldn't surprise you that the second idea excites me more than the first – but both are important.

But – possibly since it is not amenable to a technological or a advocacy-oriented solution – I haven't seen much about the relationship of doctor and patient. No matter what system we have, or whether/how much progress we make in fixing it, relationships can be improved. Whatever initiatives we implement need to be bipartite. We can't train the doctor to improve their communication with the patient, in one room, and train the patient to be a better self-advocate, in another room, and expect what goes on in the exam room to be a neat addition of these two. 

How do we make this happen? We need to make sure that improving the doctor-patient relationship is a priority in quality improvement.  How should we do this? Thoughts please?

Winter

The everyday is the status which needs no update. The cold with its wrinkles carves itself into your face, into the internal image, the spiritual form, while promises and hopes can barely be felt, which is evern worse than if they never existed at all. In Hebrew there's a word ashlaya, which means illusion. Its sound calls to mind things which appear, wink, and then slip away, transparent veils that are never uncovered, crawling like snakes with all the time in the world.

You look at the sunset ("hashemesh ba'a, ve'alatah hayah" – another word which sounds like the concept, alatah, reminding you of broad-winged, blind bats) and see that, like a ball jumping out of the hands of the losing team, the sun doesn't reach the goal and leaves only painfully beautiful stains, dyes of blood and watercolor, images of winter and every dull subject that the seasons present us.

Holiday By Association

I am neither in the now

nor in the know.  I can say when

to whoever's pouring. No

more rain please. Halloween

Spreads veined wings.  Door-

bells singing. Not my holiday,

me the dour 

non-companion of Bat-boy, Catgirl.  Lights

crouch in attics midst messes

of cottton snow and tree stars.

I can raise a toast to Xmas

with Reeses Cups, from afar.