About a decade ago, the first time I remember having this discussion with a friend of mine, he remarked that he felt his parents had experienced greater dislocation due to technological change than he had. His parents had lived through the growth of radio, the invention of television, the ubiquitous growth of telephones, and the creation and expansion of commercial air travel.

All he and I could come up with, at the time, were faxes, cell phones, and perhaps email; which while significant seemed less amazing than the list he had for his parents. That was a sobering conversation since the common wisdom was that everything was changing so radically. Having said that, I suspect that if I repeated that conversation today we would both come to a different conclusion.

When Information Technology first had an impact it was in large part to make conceptually things that already existed, better; faster and larger filing cabinets, faster calculators, and typewriters with thousands of fonts. As the internet was added to the mix, they became enhanced phones with email, instant messaging, and products like Skype.

And as I have pointed out a number of times before, in the same way TV eventually became much more than radio with pictures, Information Technology and the Internet are increasingly becoming something else, integrated much more tightly with what we are, not just what we do.

A class example of that was an article from last year, about how the memory of people who make use of the Internet has been impacted, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/health/15memory.html. The brain, which is a truly remarkable thing, is pretty smart as an information retrieval device. Information which is likely to be accessible on-line is not remembered as well as information less likely to be retrieved. In effect, all of these ‘cloud’ (oh that awful term) extensions to our computer systems in fact has become an extension of us. Where that will go over time is an interesting question.

As the lines between home and office, work and play, or near and far, and in a broader sense between physical and virtual reality become less and less clear, Computational Nodes are becoming less something to interface with but part of the conversation.

In those happily few times over the last few years that we have lost electrical power to our house, the thing I miss most is connectively. Those who grew up with 24 x 7 connectivity to everything are different than those of us that grew up before that was true. I suspect that the latter, like me, do not appreciate how different we are and the implications of that difference.

I was reminded of that over the last weekend when we visited Westport CT for the Bat Mitzvah of one of Ellen’s cousin’s children (I am sure I am not identifying the relationship correctly, but I assume you get the idea). At one point there was a mild change in plans and we were going to have drive from where we were staying to an unexpected intermediate destination. The person who knew how to get to that destination started telling me the directions.

I immediately stopped them and said to tell all that to Ellen since she in fact was in charge of knowing where we were going and how to get there (with the peripheral advantage that I could blame-shift to her when we got lost). It was at that moment that I remembered the article on how memory works for those people who have access to information on-line, referenced above, and realized that in a real fashion Ellen served that exact same function for me, allowing me to not have to remember directional information that would otherwise be stored in my personal cloud storage, Ellen.

Who knew when I got married 31 years ago next month that I would have gotten such a jump on the rest of society who had to wait decades before they too were able to be transformed by on-line access on a 24×7 basis to the Internet.

While I am wasting time with youtube, I often will update my various social media connections with a link to a video with a song that I am particularly struck by. A recent interaction that resulted from that caused me to think about the mid-west.

When I was growing up I was always a little bit unclear as to exactly where the mid-west started and stopped.

I knew it began somewhere to the west of the Allegheny Mountains. When I was in Cleveland, I knew I was in the mid-west. But exactly when did I leave the mid-west on the other side?

When I drove around the country with Bill Sullivan in his Mustang, and where has Bill Sullivan gone anyway, in 1975 in an effort to forget my then former college girl friend and find exciting and hopefully inappropriate adventures (sadly, none of which happened), I knew when we got to Los Angeles that we were not in the mid-west anymore but when did we cross the line from mid-west to not-mid-west? A mystery unsolved, at least by me.

By the way, Bill’s Mustang had a very high-horsepower engine, could it have been 390 (did they put that kind of engine at the time in a Mustang?). We got perhaps 9 miles per gallon of gas. On the other hand, I remember driving through Arkansas and seeing gas for 23.9 cents/gallon; which actually says more about the lack of inappropriate adventures that happened than it does about gas prices in 1975.

In Phoenix, Bill and I went to a pretty nice French restaurant. When Bill’s steak came, he caused the waiter to become extremely pale when he asked for ketchup to put on the steak. I guess we were not very sophisticated traveler’s.

Other than how big and beautiful and varied the United States is, which you really cannot appreciate without traveling around it on the ground, the other strong memory from that trip was how we fought over what was to play on the radio. That issue became more and more important as the ultimately two-month long drive came to a close. I had to leave it in Minneapolis since I had to report to basic training for the Army Reserves July 6th (only remembered because of that date’s proximity to my birthday). But, as we say, that is another story altogether.

Well, actually I misspoke above, I actually thought about the mid-west because I reflected on whether I was in or past middle-age. I knew that I had entered middle-age at some point though once again not entirely sure when but was unclear as to the exit point. I suspect that the classical definition of the end of middle-age, assuming there IS a classical definition, may be changing as people have longer life-spans. I read somewhere that 50% of all children born in the US now will live to be 100 years old, a remarkable thing.

My question about middle-age came about after I tweeted the link to one of my favorite Danny Kaye song’s “Inchworm”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXi3bjKowJU. I got a response to that tweet from a young woman I knew who told me that she really liked the song a lot. BUT she had to look up who Danny Kaye was in Wikipedia. When I asked her if she was kidding about having to do the Wikipedia search, she pointed out that she was only three when Danny Kaye had died.

So seriously it was at that moment that I realized I had left middle-age, but when exactly did that happen?

This book tells parallel stories about what happened to Lincoln’s body after his assassination as it was taken on a train ride back to Springfield Illinois and what happened to Jefferson Davis during his escape from Richmond to his capture and then to the end of his life. It is well written and for those interested in the general subject area, a fairly short read with a lot of information that at least I was unaware of.

One of the events that was described toward the end of the book stayed with me after I finished. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922, with among others, Robert Lincoln, Lincoln’s surviving son attending. The crowd listening to the dedication was in large part segregated.

It took many years before the serious beginnings of the promises made at the end of the Civil War to penetrate American society in a meaningful way.

During the time I worked on that effort, I got to know a number of the IADB staff. One of them who was born in  Spain, married an American wife, and now lives in the US, told me that in his opinion there was one particular thing that made America unique. It was that unlike any other country America was founded on the principal that all Governmental power was derived from the people. In most countries, he said, the opposite was the case. In other countries, rights were conferred by the Government.

I am not enough a student of International Political Science to know how accurate that conversation was. But I do believe in the first part, that is that the premise of the American experiment was that Governmental power was “derived from” not “established for”.

Quoting from the Declaration of Independence, a document which will be often quoted today, July 4th, but not paid enough attention to:

“”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

As a second generation American, all of my grandparents were born in Europe, I remain thankful that I am able to be a small part of this continuing attempt to expand the barriers to freedom that America has and continues to represent. I continue to believe that freedom is at its most basic not “freedom from” but “freedom to”.

While I worry that currently we are losing our way a bit, like most American’s for these over 200 years, I remain optimistic that the experiment will continue unabated.

Happy July 4th to all friends of liberty.

We have between 15 and 25 people (I recognize that is a bit of a range) including family, friends, guests from various sources, Jews and non-Jews.

Each year we try and focus on a few themes to focus the more general topic of the Exodus and its implications to us today.

The following is what we are sending out to the participants this year. In addition to the readings we do, we put quotes that at least loosely tie to the themes we are focusing on, on 3 x 5 cards. During the course of the Seder we ask participants to read the quotes and comment on them. Tomorrow, if I remember, I’ll post the quotes we are using.

We welcome all of our guests to share the first Seder this year at our house, Monday evening, April 18; the 15^th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. Passover occurs at the full moon of Nisan, which is the first month of the Hebrew calendar.

In the simplest sense, Passover celebrates the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt after 400 years of slavery to freedom under the leadership of Moses; or as many people know it, when Charlton Heston led Edward G. Robinson away from Yul Brynner.

But in reality, this story and its associated traditions, perhaps the most accessible of all Jewish celebrations, is much richer and more complex. What did freedom mean to the Jews who left Egypt, to the Jews who edited and finalized the wording of the Bible, or to us as we sit here today in one of the most free societies that ever existed.

For those less familiar with the traditions of the Seder and for those new to its celebration in our house, we thought it would be useful to provide a brief summary of what we typically do, and how we have made some minor adjustments due to the special nature of having so many participants of varying ages.

We are commanded to tell the story of the Exodus as if we were there to experience it. We do so during the Seder, which in Hebrew means ‘order’, that is the sequence we tell the story. We use an Haggadah, which in Hebrew means ‘telling’, to provide guidance. At the beginning of the evening, we will explain the steps we will follow.

Each year, we decide on a specific theme associated with the main story of Passover. In the past this has ranged from looking at the role of women in the story to the meaning of freedom itself. This year, we touch on a number of themes, focusing on today’s events to drive the discussion.

What relevant meaning can we derive from the events in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and other places in the geographic homeland of the original Exodus?

In an age of globalization, in a country undergoing significant demographic change, can we learn lessons from how Jews were treated as strangers in a strange land? Throughout the Torah there are numerous commandments about the treatment of strangers in our midst. In a world of political and economic upheaval where globalization and the challenges of refugees are always present, what is our responsibility to the “other”?

And in a time when many people are turning to one might refer to as more traditional forms of religious behavior, what does this mean to what is sometimes referred to as the cultural ‘canary in a coal mine’, the treatment of women in society.

During the time I worked on that effort, I got to know a number of the IADB staff. One of them who was born in  Spain, married an American wife, and now lives in the US, told me that in his opinion there was one particular thing that made America unique. It was that unlike any other country America was founded on the principal that all Governmental power was derived from the people. In most countries, he said, the opposite was the case. In other countries, rights were conferred by the Government.

I am not enough a student of International Political Science to know how accurate that conversation was. But I do believe in the first part, that is that the premise of the American experiment was that Governmental power was “derived from” not “established for”.

Quoting from the Declaration of Independence, a document which will be often quoted today, July 4th, but not paid enough attention to:

“”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

As a second generation American, all of my grandparents were born in Europe, I remain thankful that I am able to be a small part of this continuing attempt to expand the barriers to freedom that America has and continues to represent. I continue to believe that freedom is at its most basic not “freedom from” but “freedom to”.

While I worry that currently we are losing our way a bit, like most American’s for these over 200 years, I remain optimistic that the experiment will continue unabated.

Happy July 4th to all friends of liberty.

The area is really beautiful this time of year, the B&B is very nice (out of town so pretty quiet), we enjoyed walking around a bit late this afternoon and early evening and plan to be battlefield tourists the next two days.

One side note, the ice cream at Kirwin’s, which I am happy to report was started before I was born, an increasingly unlikely situation, and which evidently is a chain, was very good.

We noticed that in the sort-of-farm next door there were two chickens and a horse. It turns out that the two chickens belonged to the neighbor’s first wife and thus we learned the backstory here, in the outskirts of Gettysburg.

Evidently when the owners of the B&B moved in, the neighbor, his wife, and two high school age daughters lived next door. When the two daughters graduated from high school, they went away to college never to return. Some period of time after they left, the wife left and the husband remained living alone.

But not for long.

Less than a year later, a woman moved in. They evidently met on-line and she moved here from Phoenix. Shortly after she moved in, they got married and she bought two chickens (those two chickens).

However, less than a year later, she left also, they believe back to Phoenix where her family was which she missed. The chickens, and the husband, remain.

Ellen and I cannot wait for tomorrow to begin with that as the intro to our time in Gettysburg. How could the what seems like infinite ghost tours talk about that was any more interesting than that. I would rather go over to the next door house and get a tour by the husband.

My personal opinion is that faith is just that, faith. To me, faith does not have to be ‘proven’ by the historicity of religious texts or disproven by the lack of same. My interest has pretty much nothing to do with my Jewish beliefs, but rather curiosity as to whether the historic record is consistent or inconsistent, or has any evidence at all, related to the Bible as history. There has been a lot of new information collected over the last twenty years and the ability to interpret the material already collected has increased enormously. Thus there is lots to read and think about.

Over time, my interests stray a bit from that original focus and have moved to early Christianity and on to the middle ages and Islam, covering what I call the three major Abrahamic religions. When I talk about, and I guess write about, these thoughts I do find myself more cautious when discussing Christianity or Islam, since as a Jew I sometimes feel how my thoughts will be taken, which I try to always disassociate with faith and belief, may be misinterpreted.

A discussion about the Edict of Milan after the jump …

In any event, recently I received an email from the National Defense University, a wonderful institution about their Empires series, http://www.nationalwarcollege.org/EMPIRES/index.htm,  To quote from their web page “The purpose of the “Empires” series is simply to take a sophisticated and explicitly historical look at the experience of past imperial powers, always with an eye towards the United States’ current “imperial” issues.”.

While I intend to attend as many of these as I can, sadly I will not be able to attend the next one because of schedule conflicts.

Since I am easily distracted, I used the excuse of the email to look at past meetings in the series, then looked at the materials from those lectures, then looked at web pages about the topics in the materials, and on and on.

One of the lectures talked about Constantine. Ah-ha, a truly significant figure in Christian history. In fact, I suspect an underestimated such figure. One of the acts that he did was to issue what was called the Edict of Milan in 313. This Edict legalized the worship of Christianity explicitly but the wording was actually an interesting expression of religious freedom. It was issued in the name of Constantinus, Constantine, and Licinius, emperors nominally of the East and West, an organization established by Diocletian before Constantine.

The quote below is from one of the lectures, the emphasis was from the original speaker.

“We, Constantinus and Licinius the Emperors, having met in concord in Milan and having set in order everything which pertains to the common good and public security, are of the opinion that among the various things which we preceived would profit men, or which should be set in order, the first was to be found in the vultivation of religion: we should therefore give both to Christians and to all others free facility to follow the religion which each may desire, so that by this means whatever divinity is enthroned in heaven may be gracious and favourable to us and to all who have been placed under our authority. Therefore we are of the opinion that the following decision is in accordance with sound and true reasoning: that no one who has given his mental assent to the Christian persuasion or to any other which he feels suitable to him should be compelled to deny his conviction, so that the Supreme Godhead (“Summa Divinitas”), whose worship we freely observe, can assist us in all things with his wonted favour and benevolence.”

To me, it sounds amazingly modern.