{"id":196189,"date":"2008-05-18T23:02:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T04:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/18\/what-i-did-this-weekend-visiting-an-alien-culture\/"},"modified":"2008-05-18T23:02:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T04:02:00","slug":"what-i-did-this-weekend-visiting-an-alien-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/18\/what-i-did-this-weekend-visiting-an-alien-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Did This Weekend, Visiting an Alien Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went to visit my Mother-in-Law.  Her synagogue was honoring her for the volunteer work that she has done, so we went up, along with two of my nephews.<\/p>\n<p>It was a fairly nice affair, but once again, I am reminded just how alien I find Frum<sup>*<\/sup> culture.<\/p>\n<p>From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, you have the entire, no operation of things electrical, so whatever lights are on or off stay on or off (except for a couple on a timer), the stove is left on low with a plate on top of it to serve as a warmer, and light bulbs in the fridge are unscrewed.<\/p>\n<p>I think that Sharon<sup>\u2020<\/sup> finds it all rather comforting, as this is what she grew up with, at least in her later teen years<sup>\u2021<\/sup>, but at synagogue, and at social events I feel as if I am from another world.<\/p>\n<p>The award dinner was actually a bit better that most such events.  At most orthodox weddings that I&#8217;ve been to lately, the seating at the dinner has been sex segregated, but this time, as it was not a religious event per se, we had mixed seating.<\/p>\n<p>We also had the good sense this time to leave our kids with a sitter for the dinner, which had both of our stress levels a lot lower,<\/p>\n<p>The interaction between Charlie&#8217;s Asperger&#8217;s and significantly sized crowds, there were 70+ people there, is frequently not good.  It gets him overstimulated, much in the same way that blood in the water overstimulated.<\/p>\n<p>We went to a couple of museums while were there, most notably <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hudsonvalley.org\/content\/view\/13\/43\/\">Sunnyside<\/a>, Washington Irving&#8217;s house.  It&#8217;s interesting from an architectural and technological perspective, though I think I enjoyed my visits to Monticello when I was living in Charlottesville, VA more, as it was far more ambitious.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, unlike Jefferson, Irving did not bankrupt himself building out his rather more modest house.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Very orthodox culture.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Love of my life, light of the cosmos, <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: bold;\"><span>she who must be obeyed<\/span><\/span>, my wife.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2021<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">As she got older, her parents became rather more observant.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to visit my Mother-in-Law. Her synagogue was honoring her for the volunteer work that she has done, so we went up, along with two of my nephews. It was a fairly nice affair, but once again, I am reminded just how alien I find Frum* culture. From sundown on Friday to sundown on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[976,1011,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-history","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}