#not enough jewish people on the roster i think…. need to fix this

[entriprises]

what the jewish muses are up to this yom kippur:

bob — he went to services this morning and actually was visiting his folks so it was a whole family affair. they had a big day on friday with a pre yom kippur feast. they’re breaking fast at a local chinese restaurant together in the evening (as has been the tradition for at least a decade). he doesn’t usually fast just because sometimes he’s working but he does when he can

jennifer — she is not fasting because she doesn’t want to and she has not found a good service yet to go to but it’s on the front of her mind that it is yom kippur and she is observing by doing literally nothing. her phone is off. please don’t call

emmett — he’s fasting but he didn’t go to any service and he’s spending the day at home with liam! liam forgot it was yom kippur

bonus: the boyfriends of jewish muses

buck — he was invited to services with tommy and andie and he went and had a good time! he is not fasting but he’s also not eating around tommy and andie. they will all be having dinner together to break fast and buck is cooking! he’s very excited and is trying very hard!

romeo — he’s invited to the dinner and is helping cook but is not fasting and did not attend services (he woke up at 2pm to the text inviting him)

bradley — he’s asking google questions

[prorevenge]

Made these kids work for 9 months for NOTHING!

Okay so a little background before I start my story.

My name is Patrick. I am 18 years old and I’m an Eagle Scout. To get Eagle in my troop you have lead a 50 mile hiking or canoeing trip which typically lasts a week or more. For my leadership I got a long three week trip to Alaska (which is pretty substantial since we live in a city that borders Mexico.) One week for hiking, one for canoeing, and one for touring. This requires we start planning at least 9 months in advance. I am one of two main leaders for this trip and there is one assistant leader to help us.

I’ve changed their names for privacy reasons.

Andy - The other main leader on the trip going for Eagle.

Robert - The assistant leader assigned to help us.

Mr. Sammy - My scoutmaster.

Let’s start from the beginning. Since the trip is in June - July we start planning in August - September. We start out pretty smooth. Andy and I get an idea of who’s going and how much the trip will cost per person while Robert manages payments and some paperwork. Things are good. Later on we start to lose track of our work and get lazy (since the trip is like 8 months away). So Mr. Sammy starts laying into us calling us a bad leadership team.

This is where my battle with Andy and Robert begins.

For some reason unbeknownst to me Andy and Robert decided it was my fault the leadership team had temporarily fallen apart. They team up and decide it’s Me vs Them (which is a really bad way to approach this trip). They don’t talk to me and hide things from me. When I do paperwork they decide not to take it and do it themselves. Whenever Mr. Sammy gets mad about ANYTHING they instantly look for a way to pin the blame on me.

I decide rather than fighting with them I try to reach out and communicate to maybe save the Alaska trip dream team. That didn’t really work. Every single time I talk to them Robert decides to lash back at me for minor things being as rude and condescending as possible. Andy (who hasn’t done anything for the trip) just stands behind him with his thumb up his ass. Keep in mind most of this occurs over text. After I’ve reached out as much as possible I decide “okay motherfuckers. You wanna fight? I’ll fight.” But not in the way you’d think.

Flash forward to maybe 4 months before the trip. Up to this point Robert has done most of the paperwork (since he was deliberately hiding it from me) and has managed all of the payments while Andy has been standing around with his thumb up his ass doing whatever Robert says. Mr. Sammy looks at me like I’m a bag of shit left on his front porch.

This is where the fun begins.

As soon as I get the chance I take all of the up to date paperwork from e-mail to Mr. Sammy from Robert and copy it to my computer. After that I see that the excel documents this kid has made are a TOTAL clusterfuck so I reformat them and update the information to look really uniform and pretty (even if your document is full of bullshit having it look pretty is half the battle). From this point on the paperwork is in my control. I send and e-mail to Mr. Sammy with the subject “UPDATED ALASKA PAPERWORK (insert date)”. From that point on the old man only excepts my copy which Robert and Andy don’t have. Even if they download it from my email I make sure to be the one who updates it and emails it first. I copy my two “partners” on every single email to Mr. Sammy just to say “look at me”.

From that point on I control all of the paperwork. Payments, IDs, the roster, the tip calendar, everyone’s contact info, etc. I have it all under lockdown and make sure Mr. Sammy knows it in every email I send him.

The problem is now that when anything goes wrong there’s even more of a reason for Robert and Andy to verbally assault me and put all the blame on me. But I have my battle plan. I just play it cool. Everything Robert says I just answer “okay, is that all?” And when he’s done I say “thanks for the feedback I’ll keep that in mind.” I’ll give you an example of one of these conversations.

Me: (to a group chat with Andy and Robert) okay guys I updated the roster and other stuff. Robert has anyone else made a payment recently?

Robert: Maybe.

Me: Maybe?

Robert: You’re missing a lot of info on the payment roster. This kind of carelessness is going to cost me my leadership and I won’t stand for it.

(at this point I think “that’s why I’m asking you this dip shit” but I keep cool)

Andy: I agree.

(“As always” I think)

Me: Thats too bad. Would you update me on those payments so I can get it updated?

Robert: I guess. he then gives me all the payment info I need

Me: Thanks Robert! 😄

These conversations always made me want to rip my hair out, but by playing it cool and keeping calm and being nice I never really gave them any reason to go after me. Now they don’t have anything to give to Mr. Sammy to make me look bad. Just them being rude to me while I say things like “Thanks Robert! 😄”

This ended up making the two so mad that they spent most of their time trying to make me look bad and trying to make me mad that they didn’t spend any time working on the planning for the trip. This was fine by me even though I had to play attrition with these guys every night for months over text message. All I cared was that I was looking good, and I was. They weren’t which made them even more mad.

When it comes time to distribute the food we need for the trip I also take that over not letting the other two touch it so they can fuck it up and blame it on me. To be fair I could’ve done a way better job at this but I did get the job done and we had all the food we needed for 2 weeks away from civilization (almost).

After 9 months of ripping my greying hairs out for having to deal with these two annoying pestering balls of hate we are finally flying from our hometown up to Alaska to go on this trip. Andy and Robert decide to sit back and blend in with the crowd of scouts in khaki uniforms which is perfect for me. I step up making it obvious that I was in charge and leading the scouts through each airport. When we land I make sure to get everyone dressed into their hiking clothes in the airport and packed for the hiking trip. (It was past midnight in the airport so no one was around to watch us change.) after that we take a bus to the trailhead.

At this point I have stepped up as much as I can for Mr. Sammy and he noticed pretty well. He also notices Robert and Andy blending in with the crowd not doing anything. I speculate that they probably didn’t want to associate with me because they expected me to mess up and didn’t want to be a part of that mess up. Jokes on them. I’m looking pretty good at this point.

1st day of hiking. We run into a problem. Two of these stupid younger scouts have forgotten they’re dehydrated meat so now we have to divide up the other meat but first have to figure out who has it (I didn’t keep good track of who had what food item which I’m willing to admit is my fault entirely). I notice that after like 36 hours of idleness Robert and Andy have sprung into action to document what food item EVERYONE is carrying. You might think I’d try to stop them but I just thought “hey they’re finally doing something.” I offered them my help multiple times which they refused so I simply sat back and watched.

After they documented everything they called me over to talk. I knew I was about to get a meaningless lecture from a pasty Jewish kid and his Mexican buddy short enough to be speedy Gonzales. It went down exactly as I thought it would. They told me basically...

“This is all your fault and you need to acknowledge that. You didn’t even help us fix it and you really need to start stepping up because you’re making US look bad.” They continued to go on bus that summarizes what the said.

I simply asked “is that all” and then went to bed. I could practically feel the heat from their foreheads as they got angrier and angrier.

To make a long story short I did really really well leading the hiking trip according to scoutmaster Sammy. After we had finished he came up to me and told me I’d done a great job. As far as he was concerned I had earned my leadership requirement for eagle but Andy hadn’t and Robert wasn’t doing well either. He asked me to supervise they’re leadership for the week long canoeing trip and week long touring section.

At this point I had them right where I wanted them. I knew Andy and Robert didn’t have what it took to lead a trip this big, so I sat back and watched them struggle. It was great.

The canoeing portion went awful. Andy and Robert broke our propane stoves on the first day! The food was awful and they never planned ahead one bit. I offered to help but always got turned down. I knew they would do that.

After canoeing came the touring part of the trip which went even worse.

For a portion of our touring trip we stayed in a public park in a small town. Andy and Robert decided it would be a grand idea to leave their stuff outside of their tents at night where anyone could see them. Come morning time and their backpacks were GONE! Not only did they lose their scout uniforms but also their cellphones and wallets! I acted like I cared but on the inside I was laughing my ass off.

Later we stayed in an army barracks in anchorage. Mr Sammy told Andy and I to get the scouts to bed by 10:00 but we both totally forgot. Come 10:20 I was doing laundry for everyone while Andy and Robert were messing around in a community room. People were laughing and playing cards and even showering. Mr. Sammy has just returned from dinner with an old friend and he was FURIOUS to find people still awake. I could hear him chewing out Andy in the hallway. He came into the laundry room and yelled at my friend and I.

“PATRICK! WHY ARE YOU TWO STILL AWAKE!”

“We are doing laundry for the scouts sir.”

“Oh... okay.”

AND HE WALKED OUT WITHOUT PAYING ME ANY ATTENTION! He then proceeded to chew out Andy harder and harder for letting people stay awake. He ended up getting all of the blame. Watching him get yelled at was like seeing fireworks in 1830. Beautiful.

Now, almost a year later, I am an Eagle Scout. In case you didn’t figure it out, Andy and Robert didn’t get credit for leadership on this trip. 9 MONTHS OF WORK DOWN THE DRAIN!!! Andy hasn’t even started writing up his eagle project (which is a ton of awful paperwork in my troop). He actually didn’t come to any meetings for like 2 months after the trip. Robert has been scrambling endlessly to make up for his lost leadership which is really fun to watch.

Now I just drive my brothers to the meetings on Tuesdays and get to watch the pair give me dirty looks. It honestly makes me feel ecstatic. 9 months of dealing with their bullshit every night and 3 weeks of taking it face to face in the woods and it was all worth it!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Feel free to share this story anywhere.

(source) story by (/u/IF_RealTrap)

[susanlerner]

It seems only fitting to put together the two grand finales that have recently marked my literary and personal life: Richard Russo's visit to Butler last April, and my youngest child's bar mitzvah, last weekend. Each finale was comprised of several smaller events.

Like any Jewish mother I started planning my son's bar mitzvah from the moment of his bris. Also, this was the last of my children to come of age. We were lucky enough to have family and friends come in for our celebration from all over the country. All these notions lent the bar mitzvah the feel of a grand finale. Richard Russo was the last and biggest name on this year's Butler's Visiting Writers' Series's roster. Along with the prerequisite reading, Russo agreed to be the judge for a "First Chapter" writing competition staged by the editors at Booth, the literary journal at Butler (a genius idea, may I add). The afternoon before his reading, Russo gathered with us to go over the five finalists.

A little OCD about being late, I was the first one in the room. When the door opened, it was Russo! He entered, extended his hand, and with eyes smiling said, "Hi, call me Rick." I was floating. I think it's true that it can be a mistake to judge by first impressions, but sometimes first impressions say it all.

Three of the editors of Booth, me, my classmate Maggie, and Russo, all sitting around a boardroom table. I have to admit I was pretty nervous; I had no idea how this meeting would play out. I figured Russo would announce the winning chapter, and then give us a brief rundown of the faults of the other four finalists. What actually happened was nothing like that. Russo introduced each of the final entries, one by one, and, while addressing us by name, asked each of us for our opinions. What ensued was a discussion on the merits and pitfalls of each piece. When we had all weighed in -- and how intimidating is that? -- he added his own final thoughts. The meeting turned out to be a master class in novel writing, as he pointed us towards the hallmarks of what makes a winning first chapter.

One chapter, although by far the most polished and professional, lacked a sense of building drama; each of its scenes had the same weight, which led Russo to believe that not all of its aspects were fully imagined. He questioned whether the chapter's crystalline sentences were enough to sustain the novel, saying that they should serve the momentum of the story.

When evaluating another chapter he noted the lack of character development, saying that by the end of the first chapter the reader needed to know more about the protagonist.

The chapter written in epistolary style was a favorite among us, but Russo pointed out that although this unique style make a splash, he was doubtful it could sustain a novel. Russo's point was that although this style lends itself to rapid pacing, it doesn't allow the author to slow scenes down, or to immerse in the physical world of its characters.

Analyzing another chapter, he remarked that the author broke from scene before the action of the scene ended, and went into narration. It's important for an author to know, Russo said, what s(he) wants a scene to accomplish. Scene and narration ground a story over time, and the author of this chapter showed he wasn't comfortable writing either.

Russo then revealed the winning chapter, noting that although it was not the most polished entry, it wowed him with its strong characters, humor and wild imagination. During our discussion of this work he left us with these literary words of wisdom: an easy editing fix consists of marking stuff out with a pencil; what's more worrisome are gaps.

Part Two of Russo's visit was the reading he gave to the packed crowd at Atherton Union. The reading was as multi-faceted as the picture of Charles's ancestors. Russo began by telling us that he had never understood why readers want to know about the personal lives of authors. Recently, though, he said he has come to understand that people bring a curiosity to the relationship between the author and his work. It was this notion, Russo said, that informed the pieces he chose to read that night. Trying something new, he picked a few nonfiction pieces, so he could share a bit about his life, and then followed those up with some fiction, so we could see the relationship between Russo and the stories he writes.

It was a well thought out plan that made for a fascinating reading. Russo's nonfiction was every bit as compelling as his fiction, and it was astounding to see the myriad points of connection between the two.

When Russo finished reading he made some general comments that addressed this connection. He noted that every author uses similar imagery and phraseology within his/her work. For the author these repetitions exist at the molecular level, and are about as close to the author's soul as one can get. Just as Dickens writes about orphans, Russo said, his own work speaks to the despair of small towns past their prime, and the price paid by the men and women who work to sustain them.

Here are a few comments from the Q&A that followed the reading: When asked about a passage from "Bridge of Sighs" that inferred that men are needier than women, Russo replied that in order to go beyond a surface, intellectual understanding, and reach a bone-level understanding, men may need to experience the same thing multiple times. And in addressing the differences between the sexes from another angle, Russo said that literature doesn't exist as men's writing or women's writing, and that writers must be able to transcend the deep boundaries so as to not be trapped in their own experiences. In Russo's most quotable quote of the evening, said that what he believes in first and foremost is imagination.

When speaking about his short story collection, "The Whore's Child," Russo remarked that his protagonist needed to overcome seemingly insurmountable conflict, and that this is required for all great writing. Dramatic urgency. Russo reinforced that the necessary ingredient for a successful story is a conflict he can't figure out how to solve. Writers investigate territory where there are no answers, he said.

Russo spoke about his writing process, saying he begins by reading, to get words in his head. Then he writes for 2-3 hours, longhand, which produces about 2-3 pages. Then he revises. And then he repeats the sequence over and over.

Russo's reading was fabulous, but it couldn't hold a candle to part two of Sam's bar mitzvah. Russo spoke about creating insurmountable problems in his work. One of the practically insurmountable problems in bar mitzvah planning is that Indianapolis has no hotels within walking distance of the synagogues. Try figuring out how and where to house the good-hearted and generous uber-observant cousins who can't drive on the Sabbath seemed like a hopeless task.

Family and conflict; they go hand in hand, don't they? Looking back, everyone -- including myself -- behaved reasonably well, but that doesn't mean the event passed without a few great stories. 

Devora Mack, my great-grandmother, was one of the many faces from the past featured on a large poster board I displayed in the front of the synagogue the morning of my son's bar mitzvah. Devora, who passed in 1939, was known to my father as Babalompola (his child version of baba from Yompola). Thanks to my dad's stories, Babalompola has reigned supreme throughout the years when I dream of my ancestors, so imagine my thrill at getting my hands on her photograph! This pic came courtesy of one of Babalompola's granddaughters, Lorraine Raskin. Lorraine told me how scared she was as a child when she did her granddaughterly duty and bent over the ever supine Babalompola, to kiss her. Dad, on the other hand, tells of a kind, gentle, and not-at-all-scary Baba, one unable to get up off the couch as the result of the watermelon-sized tumor in her gut, of the "female variety."

Life and stories are like this: there's never one answer, one point of view, or one way of telling the tale. For instance, those uber-observant cousins who came to celebrate my son's bar mitzvah. It was crazy complicated it was to arrange walking-distance accommodations for them because, well, I'm a glass half-empty kind of girl. Sure, it was discombobulating to figure out how to make their visit possible, but if I was a glass half-full kind of girl, my story would have told how happy I was that my cousins made this trip to celebrate with me. After decades of estrangement we've reconciled, and this was a show of their love and support. So what's my point? I guess my point is this: when you peel back a story, there are always more layers.

Russo's multi-layered visit at Butler ended with a Q&A especially for Butler's English students. Here Russo shared more thoughts on writing. He explained that in the beginning of his writing career he envisioned his readers as average, working people -- just like the characters in his books. It wasn't until much later that he realized the average, working person doesn't want to be reminded of the sadness and limits in his world; he or she reads -- if he or she even has time to read -- to escape. Russo said he now knows that he is writing for an educated and urban reader, one that may have a small town in his/her background.

Russo spoke about writing about women. He said that because women are in the forefront of his life, he finds himself writing about women more and more. This was scary at first, though, because he was afraid of being told he doesn't understand women.

In speaking about his nonfiction work Russo said he initially shaped his pieces as fiction even though they were factual. The thought of calling the work nonfiction was unnerving. In discussing the tangled boundaries between fiction and fact, Russo said that the question isn't Did you invent this? but How is this shaped? He mentioned Jenny Boyle, a memoirist he admires, a transsexual who transitioned from man to woman. In speaking about Jenny, Russo mentioned this quote: Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it's not true. Now that's a line to remember! Russo said his recent writing has made him realize that the distinctions between fact and fiction are blurred.

Russo said that a writer can't create fictional characters without first learning empathy, and that fiction in general is a complicated business, and many attempting it fail. Every artistic decision the author makes takes other options off the table, and further limits every other choice the author makes down the line. He noted that in the journey to becoming an accomplished writer, the last things to come are voice, and a sense of the author's identity and style.

Russo ended his Q&A by discussing the genesis of his novels, saying that each new novel is born out of the dissatisfaction of the novel that came before. Russo's visit was richer than I could ever imagine, as was my son's bar mitzvah. My uber-observant cousins came, as did my brother, who I've only seen a few times in the past decade. After so many years of living in the land of family-hunger, everyone who has ever staked a claim to my heart found a way to come to Indy and join in my family's celebration. We shared Shabbos dinner the night before the ceremony, listened while my son read from the Torah during his bar mitzvah, and danced to raucous music way later that night, staying up way past our bedtimes. We laughed and reminisced. We bickered and disagreed. We are family -- the best device ever for introducing drama and conflict into a story. The weekend passed like a dream. Even though it's true that, as Russo said, something doesn't have to actually happen for it to be true, I think a version of the flip side also holds: When what you want most in life finally comes true, it may take awhile for it to feel true.