Dear Team-

I would like to express my disgust and dismay at the choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration.

As a Jew, I am always very uncomfortable with the encroachment of dominant Christian forces into the public sphere, not only because it is anti-American, but because the tendency is for Christians of the ilk of Warren to want to limit my ability to express my religious beliefs. As a Jew I do not hold the same beliefs on abortion, polygamy, or other Warren touchstones.

As an American who voted for you, I am concerned that your pragmatism, which I respect, has bled into pandering with this choice. Is this the change we were expecting? It is not feeling exactly like change, more like status quo with a good marketing campaign.

As a gay man, I am offended that Rick Warren equates me and all my fellow gays glibly with pedophiles and perverts. I happen to be a hard working, tax paying, G-d fearing, red blooded, home owning, charity giving, give-a-seat-up-for-the-old-lady-on-the-bus American. Warren and his ilk take the words of Jesus, some of the most profound ever recorded, which extol nothing but inclusion and somehow manipulate them into a tool for divisiveness. I sometimes wonder if Warren and his ilk have read the same Gospels I have.

Do you want to bring us together or pander to hate?

You and your team are smart educated women and men, this however is a mistake and smart people admit when they are wrong and move on. That kind of stand-up fortitude is the change I had hoped for.

Sincerely,
Nathan Tableman

Once again my Ducati dropped dead while out driving around. I was on my way to Max’s house to store it while I move. In the 139 tunnel that leads from downtown Jersey City to the Pulaski Skyway my bike stalled and refused to start. I was nearly hit by several cars until a large truck stopped and blocked traffic for me. I pushed the bike to the traffic circle at Tonnele Ave. Then Progressive couldn’t find a town truck for me. After several hours I am back home, alive, with a slightly scratched bike.

Eric and I made a nedar to say yizkor for the one of us the dies first.

I think…I might have run out of things to say.

I am in the process of looking at buying a new place! Here is some of the info. It is designed by the pretty well known SHoP Architects. The project is called “Garden Street Lofts“. Here are some snippets:

Located at the corner of 14th Street and Garden Street, Garden Street Lofts is the first high-rise residential building going for LEED certification as a sustainable building in the Hoboken, NJ area. The development consists of the renovation and conversion of a five-story 35,400 sq. ft. former coconut warehouse, originally constructed in 1911, to luxury residential condominium use.

In achieving sustainable design elements, Garden Street Lofts implements high-end HVAC systems which allow for fresh filtered air and a cleaner, healthy interior living environment. In addition to highly efficient mechanical systems, the residence’s overall low energy use is enabled by the large windows and open plan, reducing the amount of heating and cooling per individual unit.

Custom fabricated zinc panel system is a pre-weathered metal requiring no treatment such as painting or any other coatings. It absorbs and reflects light in distinctive ways giving off a different appearance at various times throughout the day. 

Seems pretty cool, right??

I have always been troubled by this power G-d has to revivify the dead. It freaks me out, just to be really up front.

But yesterday I had a thought, after all I have been through in the last month, I have been feeling dead inside. Like everything takes 100000 times the effort, I am walking through molasses, and I have no more soul inside. It is hidden behind klippot of extraordinary thickness.

Then yesterday I had a little light go off: the power of the words of G-d are that they can have so many meanings. These exact same words that I used to roll my eyes at suddenly took on a very different meaning: G-d have the love, power, and might to ‘raise’ me from me current ‘death’.

I was reminded once again that the olympics are upon us. I have more than a couple friends who are very excited about this.

I find myself yawning and hoping it ends quickly without me having to notice.

It is party because I do no understand the capacity in people to sit and watch sports. In this round it is compounded by my cool feelings towards China. Yeah international politics are complicated, but a society that traffics in the organs of prisoners is a bit much for me.

If you are reading this for the first time please do not think I give my nation a ‘pass’!! There are indeed no victims, only continual victimizers.

I am not a nativist, nor a xenophobe, simply victim of the importation of inexpensive Asain labor for our grad schools coming back to haunt us.

So yeah, let’s just be thankful the olympics are smack in the middle of beachtime!!!

You wanna hear another great story of how much of a sucker I am? While Idan Bitton was making dates on our anniversary and doing lord knows what. I was thinking about how hard it would be for him to go live on his own here in NYC.

As a gesture to him, to let him know I support him, I noticed that he liked this particular wine at Iron Horse vinyards: 2003 T-bar-T Benchmark and bought a bottle.

As we stood at the vineyard, me thinking he was just “confused” and looking for some clarity in his life, not knowing he was cheating on me and being really duplicitous, I did this little thing I used to do to show affection to him; I would touch the top of his right ear, this time saying, “hey, I love you, and I want you to be happy, I am going to get us a bottle and we can toast your new place.”

In retrospect his silence was an indication of his duplicity. I should have observed this at the time, but as I have been told recently: do not be too self critical about this, you loved the man and you were doing the best you could to show that.

I am sure you are not shocked at this statement!

It has been about 2 weeks and Bono is missing. I hope he either has a nice new owner or his demise was humane. It is just really sad to sustain such hit to lose a beloved pet.

I have all this space suddenly! My closet is empty, my dresser is empty, my house is really empty. I have been avoiding putting things into the empty space. No real reason, I just don’t want to look at it right now.

But I placed a sweater into the dresser and just started to cry. In like 5 seconds. Amazing.

It is very interesting to me that when I think back to some of the very pointed conversations I have had over the years there are a couple things that stand out. One of the most poignant is the one where I was forced into realizing that sometimes you need to do something that hurts really badly to achieve a better long term outcome.

It makes perfect sense, until you have to do it.