Toby's B-day party

Today we had Toby's birthday party -- abeit six weeks late (the yearly problem of Toby being born near the beginning of the Three Weeks...I am worried about the therapy bills down the road).

It being the last week in August, just about every kid in Toby's class was on vacation. So, it was a small party. Kara did a brilliant job organizing -- the theme was "Jedi Training," and thus we played "Jedi baseball," "Jedi waterballoon toss" and "Jedi watching of Star Wars Episode I." (I should say that Kara's wording was much cooler than I'm letting on.)

I admit I was stressed. We live in a community where most of Toby's friends are pretty comfortably well-off. While I tend to err on the side of being proud of our more laid-back, rough-and-tumble ways, I can't help but worry sometimes that our kids are going to take flack for being, inevitably, more or less the "poor kids." Don't get me wrong, I feel that we are immensely privileged; Kara and I both have great jobs, are able to give our kids everything we need, really know no wants, at the same time, it's hard sometimes to look around Westchester and not be a bit self-conscious. And like most anxious parents, it is often with our children that our insecurities are given free rein.

So, when only four of Toby's friends could actually make it, and the baseball didn't go so great, and I didn't really manage the balloon toss so well, and one of Toby's friends got hurt feelings and I had to try to fix things, I was pretty worried that Toby would not be having the best time. To eat, we had pizza bagels (Toby's request) and ice cream cake. And, of course, we watched (most of) Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. While the boys (and Beruria, who has discovered her inner five-year-old boy as a 2 1/2 year old girl) seemed to have a good time, I was not convinced that the party wasn't a complete dud.

I don't know exactly why Kara and I are so lucky, but when I was tucking Toby in to bed tonight, I asked him, casually, hopefully covering up my insecurities, whether he had a good time.

"Abba," he says, "you already know that this was the best birthday party EVER. Why are you asking me that?"

What a great kid.

Super-sized Musings

Kara and I watched the documentary Supersize Me last night. For those who don't know, the director of the film decides to take the assertion made by McDonald's -- that their food is not harmful and perhaps even has health benefits -- seriously, and eat a diet composed only of McDonald's food for a full month.

To be honest, his experiment is a bit broader: in fact what he's doing is constructing a sort of "typical" American lifestyle in toto -- reducing excersize, eating fast food for most of his nurtition, etc.

The results are shocking: his health almost collapses before your eyes; he goes from an extremely healthy 6'2" 185 lbs to I think somewhere around 210 lbs, all his physical stats in full-bore disintegration. Although the experiment is contrived and extreme, the point is clear.

All this is interesting in and of itself, but what was most interesting to me was a conversation with his girlfriend, an expert in organic foods and a vegan, who upbraids him at one point not for his radical diet experimentation (although she does do this at other points), but for the fact that he consumes meat at all. "You eat it because you like how it tastes," she asserts, "I'll bet heroin is really, really great. But that doesn't mean I put it in my body," is her overwrought analogy.

Which led me to muse: aside from the generally shrill obnoxiousness that I've found to be somewhat symptomatic among vegitarians (especially vegans), is she right? Is eating meat just a choice made for the pleasure of it, damn the ethical and moral consequences?

Accepting this opinion would make my life a lot easier. Here I am, literally learning how to kill a chicken myself so that I can continue to consume meat produced in a way I believe is ethical; Kara and I have just arranged for milk delivery from a local family farm in order to get milk products produced by cows that are treated well; we're looking at dropping our consumption of red meat to a very low level so that we can afford to subscribe to an organic, grass-fed operation, Mitzvah Meat, that just about doubles the cost of (already very expensive) kosher red meat.

With the exception of the last point -- I'm still not convinced that we need beef or lamb that much -- I don't really hesistate to make the sacrifices in convenience entailed by this stuff. Should I? Is meat -- even meat that is acquired outside the industrial food system -- just a frivolous and murderous luxury?

I am resistant to this conclusion. I think that eating meat, in a fundamental way, is a part of who we are as people. We are ominvorous, we derive important nutrients from other animals. More than that, though (and this may sound a bit...I dunno, strange) -- the idea that when we eat by taking the life of another sentient creature we are engaged in an act that is of deep meaning culturally, historically, and emotionally, has profound existential importance. It is a stark symbol of the unanswerable questions of life, death and meaning. In fact, just writing this makes me even more uncomfortable with my conclusions...

But in the end , it is this significance of meat consumption that makes me even more appalled at the way most meat is brought to the table these days...ESPECIALLY in my community. In observing the laws of kashrut, we are literally endowing the taking of animal life a sanctity that underscores the gravity of the act. Or at least we are supposed to be -- in fact, the kosher meat processing, coupled with the growing affluence of Orthodox Jews in general (enabling us to buy and eat more meat than ever), has made kosher meat consumption as banal and profane as anything else.

Anyway, now I'm getting preachy.

Till later.

Souter's New Digs

I have to say it: I'm disappointed to read in today's Times that former SCJ David Souter is ditching the ol' farmstead for what seems to be a McMansion in the next town.

Here I thought Souter was an old school New Englanda curmudgeon. Turns out he wants the ancient dream of all retired government employees: a Martha Stewart-approved paint scheme.

Reminds me of an old poem by a certain late Northeastern bard:

Stopping by the Road on my Way Home from Yoga

Whose house this is, I think I know

It should be in Chappaqua village though;

Where Martha and Hillary summer every year

'Cause, what else do you do with all that dough?

My Lexus stopped, it seems so queer

To pause without a Starbucks near;

By beauty bark and gardener's jeep

(Did they fire Jose this year?)

The Beamer behind gives his horn a beep,

(What is this guy, some finance creep?)

Middle finger aloft, the gas is pressed

And away he drives, his ire deep.

The driveway is long; the leafblowers gassed

A Range Rover with nanny and children just passed

But on to Balducci's -- the arugula won't last.

But on to Balducci's -- the arugula won't last.