A Valentine's Day Solution

There are two kinds of Americans—those who love Valentine’s Day and those who hate Valentine’s Day. For those who hate Valentine’s Day I have a solution which I’m publishing now in order to give you time to make it happen.

Among the haters of Valentine’s Day are florists. Half their annual revenue comes on this one day. Florists sell a hundred and eighty-nine million roses on February 14.

Among those who hate Valentine’s Day are chocolatiers. Fifty eight million pounds of chocolates are sold in the first half of February—including 35 million heart shaped boxes of chocolates. Eight billion pastel colored hearts proclaiming fidelity on them are also sold in association with the patron saint of love.

On Valentine’s Day it is impossible to get a table at a nice restaurant.

In the week or so leading up to Valentine’s Day jewelers’ counters and mail routes—both underutilized most of the year—are clogged. What to do?

Eureka! A solution is at hand.

The fundamental problem is the same “problem” as Christmas—all that commerce and planning and anticipation and activity is funneled into a single day.  One cannot change Christmas (although some do sensibly celebrate the “twelve days of Christmas”) but one can certainly tamper with Valentine’s Day.

My proposal is to spread it over three days. February 14 would remain the same for unmarried lovers—those for whom nothing as quotidian as a weekday will get in the way of celebrating their love. Then (and here comes the revolution) the following Saturday will be Valentine’s Day for married couples. And, finally, the Sunday a week later will be Valentine’s Day for intergenerational love—when parents, grandparents, and children will shower each other with chocolates and roses and cards and eGreetings and meet at ice cream parlors and cheesecake factories.

The advantages are obvious. Florists will have two or even three weeks to vend their bouquets. Chocolatiers will also have the same extension of time to arrange and sell their delights. Making restaurant reservations will decrease in difficulty by 50%. And by the time the third Valentine’s Day comes around—think of all the sales to take advantage of.

And for some, best of all, you can take out both your lover and your spouse on their proper Valentine’s Day. Soon there may be only one kind of American.

Are trash cans too large?

Starting today, when you think about my opinion, think “garbage.” My own was picked up this morning and I feel guilty. Not about the waste but about the weight of it all.

Remember those 31 gallon aluminum cans that punctuated property lines in the 1950s? You can still get them, but I haven’t seen many in my neighborhood. Instead, I see plastic cans with tops that catch on a rim around the top. They start at 32 gallons. But as I look up and down the street I see much larger ones. I had to replace a Rubbermaid can that, at 32 gallons, came with wheels for convenience and had lasted 15 years. The bottom finally wore off from being dragged along the sidewalk.

So I bought a newer model. It holds 45 gallons of garbage and has larger wheels. I pull it to the curb every Sunday night and don’t think about it again until Monday evening when I come home and return the empty can to its sheltered shed.

But the process of selecting this new can led me to think about who would have to lift it and how difficult that would be. A 45 gallon can, filled with garbage bags, is too heavy for me to lift easily. I’m glad for the wheels. But the sanitation workers who come every Monday morning don’t have it so lucky. They have to carry the can to the truck and lift it up high enough such that the top is lower than the bottom allowing for the contents to spill out. Not just for my can, but for Ryan’s and for Vivian’s and for David’s and for Eric’s and for… well, for everyone in my neighborhood. These men spend their days lifting those cans up high enough to empty them into the compactor.

And a 45 gallon can turns out to be one of the smaller trash cans available at home supply stores. You can buy 64 gallon, even 96 gallon cans. 96 Gallons! That’s three times larger, three times heavier, than the can I bought in 1995 when I first moved to Easton.

Those sanitation workers will have to work as long as we who work with our heads, sitting at desks in air conditioned rooms. They won’t get social security benefits any sooner than you or me. Yet they do all this heavy lifting day after day, coming home with muscles melted and clothes smelling from week old mackerel.

It gets worse. I weeded the other day. Filled my old can (only 32 gallons) with the garden refuse. Even this relatively small can was then too heavy for me to lift. How do they do it?

Rain was in the forecast when I put that can out and I thought about those dutiful men and that extra weight of water. So I put an older mis-matched cover on top of the leaves and branches. Not a pretty sight, but it deflected an inch or two of water.

There are other things we can do to help out these men who relieve us of that which we remove from our homes as quickly as possible. Reasonably sized cans are one way. But there are others. When no rain is forecast, we can remove that cover so they won’t have to pry it off—house after house. Or we can loosen the cover so it rests easily on top and is just as easily removed the next morning. We can put our trash next to our neighbor’s (my own neighbor taught me this by quiet example)—saving the trash collectors a few steps and an extra stop of the truck. We can seal smelly garbage by double bagging it and we can rinse out our cans occasionally with the garden hose. And surely we can be careful not to hide broken glass or pointed or dangerous objects with the trash.

There are rules and restrictions on what sanitation workers have to pick up at our curb but I find that they always try to err on our side—taking things that they could have left behind. They work hard and they keep our community clean. They deserve some consideration and gratitude from us. At least when it comes to trash cans, bigger is not better.

Jews are Democrats

The High Holy Days this year accompany a Presidential election season. Should we retreat from political action and assess our own personal lives or should we see this as an opportunity to reinforce the Torah’s message to be politically active? One need not sacrifice either but I urge you to work for, and vote for, President Obama and a strong Democratic Congress and I say this for Jewish reasons.

The fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats is this: Republicans believe that America thrives when individuals are left alone to work hard and fulfill their potential. If, in doing this, you make a crappy Corvair or pollute our rivers or use your access to get unfair tax loopholes then the public will not buy your product and the “market” will force you to change your behavior to what is more socially acceptable. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that America will best thrive if we work together as a society to help those who, through no fault of their own, are disadvantaged. Democrats believe in the collective use of our resources (including taxes)—to fund, not just the military and an infrastructure for businesses to profit by (e.g. roads and bridges and police) but also good schools, a clean environment, orchestras, health care, parks, safe and efficient automobiles, a safe and fair workplace…

Christianity is about individual salvation. Judaism is about redemption of the community, the nation of Israel. And so our history in America—a country where Jews have been a part of the voting public since its founding—has been a history of liberalism. Every other ethnic group in this country has voted more conservatively after its immigrant generation—once it became economically secure. The Jews of America, uniquely, continue to vote with the Democratic party, even as we have become as wealthy and as “established” as Episcopalians. The Jews of Beverly Hills are as liberal in their politics as the Jews of Brighton Beach. There is a reason for this.

But assimilation may be taking its toll and this can be measured in our politics. While the Torah demands that our politics work for the immigrant, the poor, and the needy, it is no longer unusual to meet Jews who, without embarrassment, profess to be Republican.  I’m not speaking of the ethnic Orthodox, who have always been more aligned with socially conservative Christians in their un-Jewish opposition to women’s reproductive freedom, marriage equality, public education, etc. I’m speaking of wealthy Jews who, having succeeded economically, are now acting more like those successful Episcopalians. They have every right to vote for their own economic interests, but in doing so, they demonstrate that the American system, not the values of Torah, is governing their politics. Not only assimilation, but overheated anxiety about America’s support for Israel, are taking their toll. What a loss—to America and to Judaism.

If you look up the term “sin” in the (Christian) Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible you’ll find an odd final sentence. It reads, “When it comes to repentance there is no Old Testament remedy for sin. Only in the New Testament would that come.” The writer had to ignore the central message of Isaiah in order to say that. In our Yom Kippur haftara reading we recall the prophet’s message, “Wash yourselves clean. Stop doing evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of (the vulnerable in society). Though your sins be like scarlet, they can be white as snow" (Isaiah 1). In other words, stop sinning. Start doing good. It is not God’s grace, but rather political action, that will redeem us. We can argue about some of the details about what “doing good” means but the Jewish teaching begins with the obligation to create a just society. This is why Jews have supported Democratic candidates more strongly than any other identifiable group in America—since the beginning. It is no less Jewish an act today.