The Day After Facebook Crashed

*A student of mine (DW) once told me that with ADHD comes a superpower/hyper-focus, a zone. Mine is writing.  I pray to G-d to write in a way that is good for me and is good for the word.  I think that second part may involve people reading what I write.  Though, I do like the idea of being a stone in the river, and the idea that somehow by writing I affect the world even without people reading it.

I wonder who will ever read this.  I believe we are approaching the 17th year of this blog, and there's a lot here.  Years ago I rented a place in Israel in the summer for six weeks.  The woman landlord asked what I was doing and I said I was writing a lot.  She saw me sitting and writing all the time.  Then one time she asked me when I was going to start writing, because to her it meant publishing in a book or paper, etc. Sigh.

I like the writing of John Green, who recently turned his still on going podcast into a book.  He did a piece on the podcast about the experience of signing his name over and over for every copy of the first printing of the book:

"As the sharpie loops around the J and scribbles out the rest, you think- maybe the signing is most of all an attempt to acknowledge the connection that must be forged for any book to work. It's not much, but here is a piece of paper that was touched by both reader and writer.  Here is an attempt to say thank you, knowing that someone is out there - wherever they are - has helped you to feel less alone in this loneliest time."

The piece I just now cited bring, in part, to mind, the poem The Lanyard, by Billy Collins - the part about this is to say thank you... And about it being a small token of thanks up against an indescribable reality, an enormous thing that can't really be articulated and certainly not repaid with a token.

There is much to say, but I am going to do something other than sitting here and writing (I'd love to have a standing, moving desk) for some time now, need to.

Some headlines that I may or may not write more about- two people who approached me after davening this morning, a person that called me yesterday in great stress about life, a person that called me last night about a school related situation they wanted to know if I could help with, my friend in the hospital who I hope to visit asap, Facebook being down yesterday from mid-morning till into the night and how that led me away from there and to here.

** A friend of mine is in the hospital and I spent a while with him today, and saw another friend who is the hospital chaplain.  Meaningful.  There is so much to say, not to say.

*** At trader Joe's this evening I was told that their apple cider vinegar is not kosher. So I explained to the nice worker that a u inside an o is a kosher symbol, and not just the k in the o.  That made us both happy.

**** I heard the same approach to the Dor Haflagah on Rav Dovid Katz that I later learned in Nesivos Shalom.  They each cited the Ran and riffed on him in their own way.  The ran says that the problem was that bad people united together and though the uniting was not bad in and of itself it was going to lead to bad things. Rabbi Katz applied this to history and present realities and how countries unting together can lead to piece and other good things also can lead to collaboration with bad intent.  The Nesivos Shalom notes that Hashem's name, the name that connotes kindness is used every time He is mentioned in this story. This is because what G-d did for them was a preventative measure and an act of kindness.  (A friend of mine asked a good question. G-d always knows what will happen in the future, the bad that can come, doesn't He? So why did he alter things here to prevent the negative outcome, while He doesn't always do that?)