Remember, Remember, the Month of Movember

I love November because that is when all of a sudden a few students look up to me with great respect.

For once!

No, it is not that I become any wiser in November.  Not any funnier either.  And definitely not because I look like George Clooney come November.

It is all because of my beard.

With every passing year, it seems like more and more students sign on to the "No Shave November" idea.  While it might have begun in order to highlight men's health issues, especially prostate cancer awareness, I would think that quite a few males merely wait for an opportunity to neglect that five-o-clock shadow and let it grow into a month-long shadow.  We men are lazy and we know it, and we are not going to waste an opportunity to be lazy.

And thus some students embark on growing facial hair.  Perhaps even for the first time in their lives.

Which is when many find out that not all are born lucky to have hair growing into a beard.  A couple of years ago, a student told me "not all of us can have a beard like you, Dr. Khe."

And I worried that I could never be a role model for students!  Ha!!!

A year or two prior to this student's appreciation for my beard, a student had included in the free-response part of the faculty evaluation form "He has a cool beard."  Apparently she (I have this nagging suspicion it was a she--the evaluations are anonymous) couldn't care whether the class was good or bad because of my intellectual abilities or how good or awful I was in the classroom.  Or, perhaps she was merely employing the old wisdom not to say anything if there is nothing good to say, which is why she didn't comment on my teaching!

Anyway, I worry that women will think that they too want to participate in no-shave-November and will stop shaving.  Their legs, of course.  hehehe ;)  It really doesn't take much to amuse me!

These are interesting and strange times.  Women might stop shaving their legs for the month.  And then, like men posting photos of their beards and mustaches, they will post photos of their hairy legs that can compete with my hairy leg.  Imagine Facebook posts of female friends proudly showing off their unshaven hairy legs!

And you thought all the scary tricks ended with Halloween!

Perhaps it is with the No-Shave-November that some will come to understand what GK Chesterton humorously said decades ago: "You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion."  Beards, like all good things in life, take time.  But, worth all the time and the effort, of course.

In time for November and this post on no-shave, a gift arrived from my daughter.  She knows the open secret that beards are more than facial hair--these are serious philosophical and religious statements ;)

Resistance requires way too much learning!

As the campaign season heated up back in the spring and summer of 2016, I became more and more panicky.  Not merely about the GOP's candidate winning, as much as it was a reason to lose sleep over.  The panic was this, which I told M and two neighbors/friends: trump's rhetoric was so violent that I worried that some nutcase follower of his might try to assassinate Hillary Clinton.

Fortunately, that never happened.

In May 2016, I ended this post with these lines:

It starts with a swastika and 1488 etched on a bench on a bridge over a river :(  Here is to hoping that we will end it all before it even takes hold.

It has taken a firm hold.  A mob of torch-holding thugs marched through a college town chanting "Jews will not replace us."  It was a depressing and terrifying spectacle.  Plenty of violence, triggered by hate, has happened.  The latest was the massacre at Pittsburgh.

Lesson one: I came to know about "Hillel."  I had no idea about this until the tragedy.

We went to the local chapter, which had organized a vigil.  A 69-year old woman cried that she never thought she would have to relive the fears that have always been a part of the Jewish experience in the West.  A young male student broke down talking about his emotions over the attack on Jews in a synagogue.  And more.

What can one do in such situations other than to be there and tell them we are with them!  Empathy--"fancy with the sufferer"--is all we got as humans in these difficult situations.

As M and I opened the door to leave, even as the event continued on, a young woman who was also leaving looked at us and said, "Thank you for coming."

Her words made me teary.

News reports referred to an organization called HIAS.  I had never heard about it.  That was another lesson.  One of the well-known beneficiaries of HIAS's work: Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google. Without HIAS, Brin's family would not have come to the US, and we might never have had Google?

Turns out that HIAS was founded in 1881 to aid Jews fleeing the pogroms.  One of the many that HIAS helped were jared kushner's grandparents:

During the first week of the Trump Administration, Mark Hetfield, the president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), sent the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a copy of a file. It documented Kushner’s grandparents’ immigration to the United States. Like many Jews who fled the pogroms in the Russian Empire, the Kushners were what’s known as “resettled” by HIAS. Resettling meant more or less the same thing then that it does now: processing visas, finding a community that would welcome new immigrants, arranging transportation, insuring that a family has a place to live and access to basic services, and insuring the continuity of those services until new arrivals are, well, resettled.

Of course, HIAS never heard back from kushner.  And not since the shooting either.

Because of this shooting, many people, including me, now know HIAS as the wonderful organization that does phenomenal work, and we now know what it stands for: "for welcoming refugees, and welcoming refugees as Jews."

But, we ought to live a life that does not involve knowing HIAS, or Hillel, or who my DA is.  These are the kinds of people and institutions that work mostly in the background, and we find out who they are only if we need them.  Otherwise, we go about our lives, worrying only about what we might have for dinner.

However, the past three years has been hectic, with the candidate and then the President creating chaos out of everything that he can think about, exhausting us.

Tired we get; resist we will!  And, we shall overcome!

There is no room in our society for gun violence and especially not in a place of worship. Elected officials must stop fanning the flames of hatred, bitterness, and division. We must condemn these terrible acts in the strongest possible terms and work to heal these deep wounds.

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) October 27, 2018

Conservative in the morning. Liberal the rest of the day.

When we were kids, the typical breakfast at home was idli or dosai.  Freshly made.  By mother, of course.

One day, my brother, who was perhaps seven or eight at that time, stuck a hand-written note on the kitchen wall to voice his protest.  The note read: "இட்லி தோசை ஒழிக" (No more idli, dosai.)

Every time we get together, the family has a good laugh recalling that.  He vehemently argues that it was my father who put the thought in his head and that as a good kid he carried it out.  We laugh about that too.  Interestingly enough, he is now a dosai expert, and his kids love, love, love his dosais!

Idli and dosai were all what most of the kids in that part of the old country ate back then.  Or, uppuma.  That was the culture.

Bland, salty, savory is the tradition, not only in the old country culture but in old cultures practically anywhere on the planet:

“The idea that children should have bland, sweet food is a very industrial presumption,” says Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University who grew up in India. “In many parts of the world, breakfast is tepid, sour, fermented and savory.”

Years ago, I told my grandmother that in her cultural context, idli every morning with yogurt is the healthiest way to start the day, and no wonder the old cultural belief is that idli plus yogurt is the best food even for the sickest patient.

Children begin to acquire a taste for pickled egg or fermented lentils early — in the womb, even. Compounds from the foods a pregnant woman eats travel through the amniotic fluid to her baby. After birth, babies prefer the foods they were exposed to in utero, a phenomenon scientists call “prenatal flavor learning.”

What an easy excuse then for chocaholics: "hey, it was my mother's fault that she ate all that chocolate when she was pregnant with me!" ;)

Actually, chocaholics don't need to blame their mothers at all:

Sugar is the notable exception to “food neophobia,” as researchers call that early innate fear. In utero, a 13-week-old fetus will gulp amniotic fluid more quickly when it contains sugar. Our native sweet tooth helps explain the global popularity of sugary cereals and chocolate spreads like Nutella: Getting children to eat sugar is easy. Teaching them to eat slimy fermented soybeans, by contrast, requires a more robust and conservative culinary culture, one that resists the candy-coated breakfast buffet.

What we eat, especially when we are kids, is so much culturally determined.  Almost always, that also sets us up for the rest of our lives, unless we consciously make choices about what we eat.  Cultures are conservative when it comes to breakfast.  Whatever one gets used to becomes the daily breakfast routine.  Why?

People are at their most vulnerable first thing; the day has not yet properly begun and breakfast needs to be safe and reassuring. It is the most conservative meal of the day in all cultures, says Kaori O’Connor, an anthropologist who has written a book about the English breakfast. “We have fusion global food. But in all cultures there remains breakfast. It’s a sacrament with which you begin the day. You can go wacko later,” she continues, “but you want to start ‘right’ whatever that may be. You want to gird your loins; you’re emerging from sleep…You want to know that you’re getting a good start.”

We like that re-assuring rote in the morning.

When I am in the old country, I enjoy my favorite breakfast items there: Poori with potatoes, and idli with vadai.  Whoever invented these combinations deserves a bright star named after them!

Daily life in the adopted home is a routine that fits my dull and boring personality.  No idlis or dosais. No packaged cereals, no donuts, no nothing.  It is bland breakfast day in and day out, and I am happy with it.

I don't post any protest signs in my kitchen! ;)