Jewish Favorites

Here are some choice selections from the "Jewish Favorites" section of the karaoke book at the Eagles:

Adon Olam (prayer)
Deyenu (also religious)
Dreydel, The
Hanukah Medley
Hatikva (the Israeli national anthem?)
Ose Shalom (more religiousness)

as Jane said "I guess this is the old edition, since they haven't included Throw the Jew Down the Well yet."

Recap

Based on extensive feedback I will try not to do a rundown of my life to date, which would probably be more interesting than expected, but still less interesting than I hope. The one major thing that has happened recently is the big No on 6 win. Meaning South Dakotans can still have abortions! Twice a month! With a 24 hour waiting period and parental consent (if you're under 18)! Yay! and also, you know, not so yay, but better than nothing. It was exciting to see that South Dakotans aren't all totally convinced that the pre-born are being targeted and subjected to genocide- although way more people are convinced of that than I would have thought possible. Hopefully this win means that the SD legislature will not try to pass another ban with exceptions for rape and incest, but who knows.

I experienced a bizarre moment of NY/SD intersection when a theater group came to perform skits related to abortion. Some of them were moving, but the 3 actors & fiddle player sitting on chairs on a bare stage re-enacting bits from other peoples work re: having abortions, not wanting to have abortions, the struggle to have abortions seemed a little ridiculous. I felt like I should be in a loft in Brooklyn not a college campus in South Dakota. I understand that people wanted to do something good for the cause, but I'm not sure that a touring theater troupe was doing much more than preaching to the choir. Luckily it doesn't really matter now since the election was successful.

more to come, sooner then last time.

Diversity in the Dakotas

I came back from a painfully boring conference in Lincoln, Nebraska last Saturday. I had spent three and a half long days inside the UNL student union listening to people discuss service-learning. I had not gone outside for most of that time, and my one jaunt outside of the work environment was going to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah with the UNL Hillel kids. I had the bazillionth experience since moving of speaking to someone on the phone, not knowing what they look like, and planning to meet them at a certain location. Luckily, I was correct in assuming that a small group of awkward Jewish college freshmen and sophomores would be easy to spot. Especially because the only other people in the area were the Cornhusker cheerleaders. Anyway, synagogue was nice and all, but two things stuck out to me 1) people are generally incredibly awkward. why is it so hard to make conversation? a few Jews together in the midwest surrounded by football obsessed, corn growing, blonde men and women should be able to have something to talk about. I guess Jewish geography is played less outside of the East Coast. 2) The synagogue had a choir and an organ. Barf. No, really, I almost did, I had to stop myself from shooting the rabbi dirty looks. Whoops.

Coming back to Vermillion after that time in Nebraska, you can see that I was ready to do something interesting. Luckily, this weekend was also the beginning of Navratri, a Hindu festival which is celebrated at the India Siouxland Association in Elk Point, a small town 20 minutes form here. It was nice to be surrounded by Indian families with women wearing saris and children everywhere. There was lots of dancing, but I felt better watching the women's saris spin than actually trying to dance. Especially because I was reminded how bad I am at Indian dancing, and how challenging it is to be graceful. The dancing seemed like it would go on for hours, so I went back to my friend Vani's house where her mom made delicious Indian food that Vani and I ate while watching the movie Hyderabad Blues. Needless to say, I was somewhere close to heaven.

My final foray into doing something different came on Sunday night when I piled into the car with my roommate and her friends and went up to the monthly drag show at the one gay bar in Sioux Falls named Touche'z, but pronounced touch-ies. Unfortunately drag queen shows are generally disappointing and this one was no different. The outfits were scary and each person knew maybe 50% of their song, so the lip synching was weak, and instead of dancing each drag queen just semi-paraded around the bar stopping to pick up dollar bills and pose for the camera. Adding to the bizarre dynamic, the bar was filming the whole show (though god knows who would watch it) so there was a hugely bright light tracking each drag queen around the room.

It turns out that my roommate's boss is from New Rochelle, is around my age and went to CTY (nerd camp for those of you not in the know) at the same site as me, but a few years earlier. We played Jewish geography till we were blue in the face and have plans to go to Kol Nidre together with the other young Jew in Sioux Falls. Randomly, one of the drag queens who was dressed the best, but had no talent, started talking to all of us and mentioned that he was Jewish, then clarified that he was really Norwegian, but Jewish in spirit. Have I mentioned that there aren't a lot of Jewish people here? or that my roommate introduced me as her Jewish roommate who is celebrating the "Jew year." I don't really have the energy to be the one Jew who explains all the holidays and corrects the things that I find frustrating, but I do also find myself talking about being Jewish A LOT and am happy to have found some other "members of the tribe"- a term I would never use, but a Jewish law professor here thinks is great.

Oy.

Back on the Wagon

I've ignored this for too long. I am finally completely moved into my house, my roommates are here, my car is back in Vermillion and I have a routine. Fun fun, I know. Well, here are some highlights and soon I will be putting up pictures and updating regularly and you will all benefit with increased South Dakotan knowledge.

Since my last post I've traveled to Minneapolis and West River South Dakota. Minneapolis is a surprisingly hip city. I saw some amazing art and walked everywhere (a good thing because my driving is not so great and I get VERY stressed out) and bought food at the Farmer's Market. Their market doesn't hold a candle to Ithaca's, but it's very funny because they recently passed a law that concealed weapons are allowed so there was a sign up that said "Guns are Banned at the Farmer's Market" and it was framed with the requisite hippy dippy clothes. Gotta love republican logic.

My parents (hi mom! hi dad!) were in town over Labor Day weekend. We went West River where we: got my car towed back to Vermillion, saw the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, Deadwood and about five hundred buffalo. Western South Dakota is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The Badlands look like you are looking into the center of the Earth. I half expected dinosaurs or something to be walking around. Pictures are coming soon. Mt. Rushmore is, you know, Mt. Rushmore. I have to say that it kind of upset me to see it, especially in retrospect. I'm taking a course at USD about women in the Red Power Movement, so basically I'm taking a crash course in modern American Indian history. Learning about the American Indian Movement which staged a take over of Mt. Rushmore in the 70s because all of the Black Hills (where it's located) are Indian land based on Treaties. It's a little upsetting to realize that all of Western South Dakota is so much more beautiful and interesting than Mt. Rushmore, but it's the only place that people know about. That plus the fact that it's four white men carved into land that Indian's claim rights over and most Americans don't even think about.

Ok, more to come...

Installment Two

I'm going to try and fit this one in before a trip to my very first county fair. I have been fearlessly calling everyone I meet and like at all and asking them to do things with me, it's been working so far. Some of these lucky phone call recepients are the people who saved me from certain death in Kennebec last weekend. They were in Rapid City (the city in the western half of the state) for Pride Weekend last week. I know, exciting! The gay community in South Dakota is really building their infrastructure for political organizing. Possibly because of Amendment C, which proposes banning not just gay marriage, but all civil unions and recognition of any relationship that is not marriage. People in SoDak are not taken by the proposal, and it looks like it won't pass. It is similar in principle to the whole banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest thing, people here are not thrilled about abortion or gays, but they are also not chomping at the bit to take away people's individual rights. It is also interesting that the Amendment C slogan is "neighbors don't discriminate." But I digress...

When my friends picked me up on the gravel driveway outside my motel room I was very excited. They felt really bad for me so agreed to stop at the Corn Palace in Mitchell. I don't know if you've ever heard of "the world's only corn palace" but it is a sight to see! Well, sort of, I mean half a million people see it every year, but I don't know that I would go out of my way. Basically one of the town's founders realized that there was nothing attracting people to Mitchell and not enough people for the town to prosper on its own, so he decided to construct the first corn palace. This is just a building (with a basketball court inside) that is decorated with panels of murals that are made out of corn. Each year a new theme is chosen (this years' is Salute to Rodeo). It turns out that was also the theme in 1995. There are not many themes that can be represented in corn that also have to do with the state of South Dakota. I guess Lewis and Clark can't be celebrated all the time.

When we got back to Vermillion I picked up Allison Higganbotham in the HyVee parking lot. My second visitor! She was also pretty horrified at the prospect of me living here for a whole year, but I am feeling better about it every day. Especially because I realized that I'm almost done with month one, hopefully the most boring month of the year because I have had very little to do and no one is around and I knew no one.

I guess the second part of my journey wasn't as interesting as the first, and certainly neither part is as interesting as what could have been had the car not broken down and I had been able to go out to Bear Butte. I heard from someone who had driven out to Sturgis that the bikers by and large were not going to the bar which just opened closest to the Butte. This means that the protesters actually were raising awareness and making the difference they were trying to make. Hearing about it made me happy, but also really frustrated because it is so rare to be able to take part in a movement that actually makes a tangible difference fairly immediately. Ah well, I still have a chance. I did register to vote in South Dakota, so technically my vote will count more this year then in any other year. Also, I get to vote in a booth! Enough about that, off to see some hogs.

Photographs

I just bought a bike! It was $10 and I hope no one steals it while I put up these pictures. I don't really know what I'm doing, so these will be a hodge podge. Above is the road to my friends house. All around are corn fields and sometimes cows. I often swerve to avoid bunnies. There are some turkeys at the bird feeder. They knock it over almost daily. Then there's the picture of main street. You, Me and Dupree is no longer playing, but Snakes on a Plane is coming this weekend! I don't have many pictures to choose from and I smell really bad from biking and I have to go to work. So, sorry about all that, but when my digital camera gets fixed and I learn how to post pictures and text to this I will keep the photos updated.

Alex B.'s Birthday Bash-- Installment One

It all started on Friday (birthday-2) when I decided that it was worth venturing off on my own to the other side of the state to participate in a protest. The Sturgis motorcycle rally is just starting this weekend, attracting about 500,000 people to the tiny town of Sturgis, just a few miles away from Bear Butte, a sacred Native American site. Each year Sturgis rally interrupts prayer on Bear Butte and each year the bikers get closer and closer to the mountain- a place where silence is necessary for sacred rites to be performed. A biker bar just opened up about 5 miles away from Bear Butte and the owner has not been particularly concerned with the rights of Native Americans. I wrote a paper on this very topic in May for my environmental history class and I felt like it would be pretty lame to sit back and not go to the rally that Native American groups were holding to defend Bear Butte (defendbearbutte.org). It took me a long time to decide that I was brave enough to drive my new car the six hours alone and camp out alone and protest alone and drive back alone on my birthday. I woke up Saturday morning and took off at 7am, feeling pretty good about my decision and better than I'd thought about sharing the road with bazillions of bikers and their trailers and their rvs and their equipment.

When I was beginning to feel a little tired I put on some Christian radio, and believe me, that shit wakes you right up. First Dad was telling little Billy that his friend sounded like no good, and couldn't he wait to meet some new friends at Church. Then Uncle Jim and Aunt Jean educated all the children on hypocrites, mostly on how Jesus doesn't like hypocrites. Then some anonymous kid sang a little song about how bad hypocrites are just to drive the point home. I was getting a little freaked out by the whole talking like the folks in Reefer Madness and cautioning (threatening?) children against crossing Jesus when a new story started. In this tale a woman with a vaguely British, vaguely witchish accent started to talk about how "Rabbis don't even talk to women!" I began to understand that she was speaking from the time of Jesus and was educating me on women's rights. "Even when Peter came home and made his mother rise from her sick bed to prepare food for his friends she was happy, because she was serving Jesus." Then it got staticky and I took my cue to listen elsewhere. btw- this was broadcast from Milwaukee. Shouldn't the Guis family get on that?

Sometime during this I crossed the Missouri river. People here talk about East River/West River all the time. East River (where I live) is where corn and soybeans are grown while West River is like the frontier where ranchers herd cows and steer and do rancher things. I was not prepared for the massive topographical shift right alongside the river. I felt like I had been transported out west, with rolling hills of hay and cows meandering and just a very unique landscape. (I understand that pictures would help, but my camera is broken, which sounds bad, but is apparently just foreshadowing). The scenery kept me motivated, and for the first time in my life I was feeling like I HAD to see Mount Rushmore (a mere 100 ish miles away). The billboards every mile or so advertising a plethora of tourist traps were also working their magic. Gas stations seemed few and far between and while I felt ok watching all the bikers go by from the safety of my car I sort of felt petrified by the chance that I would break down and be left to their mercy. So I pulled off the exit at a little town called Kennebec (pop. appx. 241) and my car promptly died.

Yes, my used car which I had just registered in my name THE DAY BEFORE had died. I magically drifted into the gas station where I calmly informed someone that my battery had died and she calmly called Sam over as he calmly used a tow truck to push my car into the garage. Two hours later, after watching Sam fix some tires, while countless people wearing leather chaps drifted by, some bikers had borrowed the drill bit to fix some big hunk of something, and Sam had sawed at something to attach my battery without using any form of protection and almost certainly getting sparks on his face, it was abundantly clear that it was not just the battery that was dead. After much cursing and frantic phone calling I found that it would cost $400 to tow it to a mechanic, who probably wouldn't be able to look at it until Monday and who knows how much that would cost. I abandoned said car and checked into the Budget Inn that was thankfully right across the street. Just for reference, this is the most exciting thing in Kennebec: http://www.grainelevatorphotos.com/photos/sd/kennebec.html

Happy birthday to me. More later...

O!

I have been meaning to keep this updated better, but without unfettered internet access it is hard to find myself in a place where it is ok to blather (i.e. work is not an acceptable environment). This past week has been a big one, I took a trip down to Omaha- driving all by myself- and staying with Rebekah, a girl I met at our service-learning training last week. Omaha has plenty of sprawl and mall, but there was also a great downtown area called the Old Market where I went to the Farmer's Market, ate Persian food for lunch and bought a skirt that is very Ithaca hippy reminiscent. We also went to the Joslyn art museum which has two giant Chihuly glass sculptures that are pretty overwhelmingly impressive. The rest of the collection was small, but interesting. They had artists that I'd heard of and seen in other, bigger, more cosmopolitan museums, but the works they displayed were all really interesting and a bit different (did you know that Mondrian painted landscapes, I didn't). Another attraction of Omaha was that I was hanging out with someone my age, who I would actively be friends with even if I weren't in the Midwest. We spent a lot of time sitting around and listening to the band Devotchka (who we then saw in concert) while I read through Rebekah's graphic novel collection. We also stopped at the Hindu temple, located conveniently behind Target. I have never been to a Hindu temple in the US and it was really weird to me that it was air conditioned AND carpeted, but it always feels nice to smell the familiar smell and see Indian families en masse. I am looking forward to visiting the local temple in Elk Point this weekend for some good Indian food and company. Btw, Omaha for some reason thinks that O! is a great catchphrase/marketing thing for their town. I think of Oprah, but whatever.

On the way back to Vermillion I tried to take the scenic route, with the intention of driving through the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska. I have been really interested in learning more about the Native American community, but I have those imperialist guilt pangs about observation vs. learning, etc. Somehow I missed the turn and when I stopped for cheap gas the BIA policeman told me that I should just get on the main road. It was really bizarre to stop at this gas station because I didn't realize that the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) had a police force that was on the reservation, which brought home the fact that I am completely not used to being in "Indian Country."

Last week at the poetry slam (won by a woman whose poem was titled "Mammogram Cryptogram" a witty, rhyming take on why the man who created mammograms should be kicked in the balls) the second place winner read poems about life growing up on the reservation. Besides the fact that it was a little disconcerting to have a mammogram poem followed by this young guy talking about drinking sugar water as a child cause everyone was too drunk and poor to get milk, I continue to be floored by the fact that I really know nothing about this very important part of America. I have been reading Leonard Peltier's Prison Writings which has been depressing, but a good overview of some history that I should really know. Especially since Pine Ridge is about four hours away.

Anyway, this is my lunch hour and I have to get back to work. I am in the process of moving out of my friends house and into my own, so eventually I will have wireless internet at home and we will all benefit.

Pie Salad

So I realized that after years of writing articles that are read mostly by my mother and Adam Buck, I have really only trained myself to write 500-700 word pieces or lengthy academic essays. This is not good because 1) I am no longer in school 2) Articles are meant for newspapers and the like, but I don't write for a newspaper and probably won't for awhile, if ever, and 3) I get bloggers block, which is really pathetic, because the entire point of these things is that people write whatever pours out of their heads. To combat this problem I have decided to list things that I've been doing/thinking about doing in the hopes of weaning myself off the pretend article writing system.

• Last week I sang karaoke at a bar called Tam O'Shanty in Lincoln, Nebraska. I don't know what those words conjure up for you, but if your mental picture does not include red shag carpeting-cum-wallpaper; three men wearing cowboy hats in a non-ironic manner (and one did sing Johnny Cash- of course); an older man who could only make it off his stool to tell me about growing up in North Dakota; a dude named Dave who got so drunk for his birthday that the only song he could successfully sing parts of was Rock Lobster, or me and my new friend leading a bar full of drunks in Salt N' Pepa's classic Shoop, than your mental image was incorrect.
• Back in Vermillion... I hung out with Christine Gallati and Mom. Yes, it's true, I live in a town where the only thing we could think to do on a Friday night was walk around WalMart drinking strawberry milk and eating donuts. To be fair, if Christine had not just spent THIRTEEN hours in the car with her mom we probably would have been collectively coherent enough to pull it together and hang out in a bar. No matter, Christine is da bomb and it was great, if not a little disconcerting, to see her here.
• I spend a lot of time staring at the wild turkeys that hang out on the lawn of my friends house. Have you seen wild turkeys? Have I talked about this already? They are really ugly and look kind of like dinosaurs and when they get angry they puff up and their face turns bright blue and they look like the salt and pepper shakers people use on Thanksgiving, but less majestic and more bizarre.
• People here are OBSESSED with Lewis and Clark. To be fair, I don't know that residents really care so much, but a few years ago it was the sesquicentennial (?) of their expedition and so everything is Lewis and Clark this and Lewis and Clark that. Usually I don't care, but I swam in the Missouri river this weekend and it was pretty amazing. Sad as it is, I don't know that I've ever swam in a river. Is this possible? I was so surprised by the current that I have to think that actually I have never experienced anything like it. The stretch of river between Vermillion and Yankton (near by) is the only not-dammed, unmanipulated stretch and so it actually feels like you are looking at what Lewis and Clark, et. al saw. This is cool.
• My new favorite thing to talk about is the electric company magazine. Let me explain, they have recipes every month that are submitted by their customers and are based around a theme. July's theme was salad, this makes sense because summertime means fresh vegetables and light, breezy suppers. Apparently, salad in South Dakota means things like Pie Salad. Where you, no joke, mix a can of pie filling with a can of drained pineapple and mix it together. Whatever, you may be saying, the only funny thing about that is the name, it's just a variation on fruit salad, but wait! The only salad with vegetables calls for canned vegetables and a cup of sugar. What?

That seems good for now. I will do this more often, don't give up hope. You can look forward to my thoughts on the poetry slam tomorrow night, my experiences transcribing 35 year old tapes in the Oral History Center, and my continuing quest to find friends.

Vermillion

This is my attempt at blogging. It is probably a little confused at the moment because this whole moving to the middle of nowhere with no friends my own age thing while it's about 105 degrees each day is throwing me for a loop. Especially because I'm writing this from a really hip seeming coffee place- though not too hip because they do close at 8pm and aren't open on Sundays- and this place is like the opposite of the rest of town. Anyway, here is my first attempt about talking about here, hopefully the writing gets better as things pick up.

I wonder if this year is just going to be one giant lesson in misunderstandings. I won’t understand people here since I will be too busy getting all freaked out by their inner Jesus love- they won’t understand me- after all, I went to an Ivy League school and am Jewish- and my friends won’t understand why I’m here and I won’t understand why they think that I’m miserable. Am I miserable? I think that it’s more like I’m intrigued, confused, and in a state of suspension. I am waiting to meet people, to move into my house, to get a car, for classes to start, for the campus to get busy, for me to get busy, etc. I guess I do partially wish I were in a city, New York or something, somewhere that my friends are and the living is easy, but that wouldn’t be a challenge in the same way. I can’t claim to want to see America and then assume that driving through it some day will give me that chance. I do also think, more and more, that it would be ridiculous not to see America. I can’t just assume everyone else is a Jesus loving fiend without even meeting them.

And the truth is that it all does seem far more complicated than that. The people here are not morons, everyone talks about this idea of being self-sufficient and self-reliant and un-pretentious as an explanation of the ways of South Dakota. It is clear to the people here that the rest of the country, and certainly the rest of the world, does not care about East river or west river, and that doesn’t seem to bother them. There may be some wistfulness as to outsiders thinking that they are unsophisticated- expressed generally by liberal South Dakotans- but generally, that is not a worry. And isn’t that what I’m fascinated by, the fact that for some people there is no worry as to what other people think of them on a grander scale. Whereas, as Chuck Klosterman points out in Killing Yourself to Live it is virtually impossible to be at a concert in New York City and not feel like everyone there is there at least partially because they have to be there to be cool, or to not miss out- not because they genuinely want to see that band on that night.

Maybe that’s not true, but it certainly feels true, especially whenever I find myself at a hipster event of any type in NYC. At the same time I hope this jaunt in So. Dak isn’t some elaborate method of self delusion where I manifest my stress regarding trying to seem cool in New York by running away to somewhere that has a definition of cool that I don’t know and has previously, and maybe even presently, been irrelevant.

I also am genuinely concerned about my ability to retain my sense of self without feeling like an imposter. Today I went to Welcome Table, a genuinely kind event that is held in the Methodist church each Monday from 5:30-7, known here as dinner time. Different community groups sponsor the dinner each week- tonight’s was sloppy joes with mushy green beans, BBQ potato chips and cake- and serve it to whomever shows up without cost. The idea is not to just serve the impoverished or the disabled, but to hold a sociable event where a wide cross section of Vermillion residents can eat a nice meal together. There is even free child care. So, if this is so nice, and there is no overt mention of Christ, why should it freak me out? I think that since being told that I was going to hell because I do not believe in Christ I have this assumption that many religious Christians view my bottom line as someone who is living life poorly because it is not being lived in service to the Lord. I wonder whether I should try to get over this feeling, or whether I should accept it. It seems like many of the progressives in Vermillion hang out in this coffee house setting in a church and the event has a definite religious flavor. Seeing as I am here to test my limits while trying to understand America better, it seems limiting and possibly discriminatory to not try it out. Then again, maybe I will hide out in this coffee shop forever, eventually making friends that don't seem to emanate religious vibes.