Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Qwest, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

A few years ago, I installed a few business lines into my home through Qwest. I subsequently found out that the company had assigned me a phone number that had once belonged to another person who had long discontinued their service. Yet I still got phone calls for her. After the first few wrong calls, I asked where they go the number from: “directory assistance” was the answer. I called Qwest to make them aware of this & gave them the previous subscriber’s name & phone #. Qwest’s reply is that this wasn’t possible and there wasn’t any way that this could be happening! Well, it was. The wrong calls kept coming.

Next, I tried to get DSL through Southwest Bell which was trying to compete w. Qwest in the NW. Of course, due to the stupid way these things are regulated–if I want service with SBC, they in turn need to go through Qwest in terms of the actual phone line itself (which is a Qwest line, not SBC). That’s where the fatal bottleneck occurred. One time, a Qwest person forgot to register in the computer that there would be a service change on the line. Another time, a Qwest person forgot to leave a message for another Qwest person about the DSL installation & then went on vacation. Needless to say, my DSL installation had still not occurred after SEVEN (7) WEEKS of trying. That’s when I gave up and got broadband service. Each failure was due to Qwest incompetence. Suspicious minds might even say that Qwest was doing this purposefully to prevent competitors from poaching “their” (as if they owned me) customers.

So I vowed that I’d get rid of Qwest from my life entirely if I could. I went online & found a wonderful, scrappy upstart telecom company beginning to provide local phone service in this area. Their services were great and price was unbeatable. So I signed up with Featurefon. Only problem was that their service wasn’t ready for prime time. After I ended a call I’d get a ring back. Often, after talking on a long distance call that lasted longer than 15-20 minutes, the Featurefon software would simply drop the call. The worst indignity was when our incoming phone service would go down inexplicably. Since we still had outgoing service, we didn’t find out about the service disruption for hours or longer. The worst thing was that they simply couldn’t fix the problems (possibly due to their small corporate size).

So reluctantly, I decided to return to Qwest. That’s when the real fun began.

After placing the order for service, I was told it would take around 11 business days to begin service. On July 10th, Qwest’s records show that they connected service. Qwest’s records also show that they disconnected that same service almost at the same instant. That meant that I no longer had phone service. I’d call Qwest & they’d tell me that their diagnostic tests showed that I DID have service and that everything was working fine. What planet are these people on?

So I demanded a technician be dispatched to check out what was wrong. Shortly later, a technician called me to say: “I’m at your home and no one’s home.” I replied: “I’m at my home and you’re not.” Turns out that the tech’s dispatching computer entry sent him to a different address which now had my phone number assigned to it. So Qwest had connected my phone service to another address entirely. My incoming phone calls were going to this address. Which is why my service stopped.

I called Qwest repair once again to tell them what had happened. I gave them the address at which my service was connected (which the technician had given me). They STILL maintained that this wasn’t possible and that my service was working at my address! After checking through this, they finally decided to talk to the Qwest section that assigns phone numbers. Sure enough, there had been a programming error that HAD assigned my number to a different address. They called me a few hours later to tell me the programming error was corrected and that I should have service. Nope, no service.

I told them to send another technician and this time to send him to my address and not someone else’s. When the technician came the next day, he found that there was a problem at the phone terminal which prevented my service from working. He corrected this and I finally had phone service. Elapsed time from where service was connected (July 10) to when it actually started working: 5 days. Number of calls to Qwest & Featurefon to figure out what was wrong: probably 30-40. Number of hours wasted trying to resolve the problem: 20+.

After telling customer service about this horror story and assuming that they’d fall over backwards to try to make me happy–what did they do for me? One month’s credit for local service. That’s it. “We’re prevented by State and federal regulatory guidelines from treating customers differently.” I replied: “You mean regulators are telling you to provide the same lousy standard of service to each of your customers?” That didn’t go over too well.

So when will there be true, unfettered telecom competition that allows the best company to win, instead of the one with the biggest monopoly on bad service? My new motto: anything but Qwest.

You know I would quit Qwest if I knew there was a reliable, trustworthy local phone service competitor. Let me know if you find one (I live in Seattle).

The Aran Islands lie low on the Atlantic horizon off the Clare coast.
They are enormous slabs of rock
Jutting steeply out of the roiling ocean
Tilting like a table at a rakish angle.

Bleak and featureless
They appear at first glance,
With grey stone walls that wander
In rickety lines up and down the hillsides
Dividing the meager land into small family plots.

The prevailing colors on Aran
Are the grey of stone and the brown of earth—
What little there is of it.
Even the islanders accommodate to drab natural colors in their clothing
With densely knit grey and brown Aran sweaters.
If you see a bright color on the landscape,
Chances are it’s something synthetic or imported,
Plastic
Or a garment bought in the big city
Like the down jackets of the tourists.

If these islands are bleak and featureless,
Then your eye has not seen well.
The enchantment of Aran
Is in the refined spareness of its terrain.
It is a landscape to put off visitors.
Like its own people, they are taciturn.
They will open themselves
When you prove your devotion
And then only grudgingly.

Dun Aoghasa, a cliff-top fortress
Is named for one of the ancient Irish Aenguses,
The pre-Christian sea god
Or the fearsome warrior
Who led early invasions of the mainland.

I mounted the top of the rise
And saw the thick fortress walls
And heard reports at intervals which I took to be sonic booms.
The sea edge came abruptly to meet me;
The drop was so sheer,
The fear of falling so intense
That I could not approach the edge
Except on hands and knees.
Beneath me the sea roiled,
Changing color from deepest copper-blue to white foam.

As I watched the water far below me,
I heard the boom:
It was the impact of monstrous waves crashing into rocks and cliffs below.

K’mo Rachel (Like Rachel) from Kol Ha-shirim ad Ko (All the Poems Until Now, United Kibbutz Press, 1995) is an extraorinarily powerful poem by Dahlia Rabikovitch, a contemporary Israeli poet. In it, she imagines the death of Rachel, the Biblical matriarch, during childbirth. The poet deliberatey divorces every other outside object from her consciousness in order to focus almost monomaniacally on the condition of her subject.

The poem is deeply feminist (if that’s not a dirty word to use these days) in invoking the alienation, isolation and oppression suffered by Rachel and her kindred women in the Biblical era (and today as well). The language and syntax of the poem are relatively simple and straightforward which meshes very well with the profound emotional pathos Rabikovitch attemtps to induce in the reader. Like Lincoln’s Gettsburg Address, the simplicity of the rhetoric blends with a profundity of emotion to create a classic expression of humanity suffering.

Special thanks to, Leah Schechter, of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library for providing me the Hebrew text.

by Dahlia Rabikovitch

To die like Rachel,
With the soul quivering like a bird
Seeking to flee.
Across from the tent stood Jacob and Joseph terrified.
They spoke about her in a shudder.
All the days of her life tumble within her
Like an infant seeking to be born.

How hard.
The love of Jacob devoured her wholly.
Now, as the soul departs,
She has no more desire for all this.

Suddenly the infant wailed
And Jacob came to the tent.
But Rachel does not feel
Rejuvenation washes her face
And head.

A great peace has descended upon her,
The breath of her soul will not rustle a feather.
They laid her between the stones of the hills
And did not mourn her.
I wish
To die like Rachel.

translation © 2003 Richard Silverstein
published in the Berkeley Graduate, January, 1982

כמו רחל

למות כמו רחל
כשהנפש רועדת כציפור
רוצה להימלט.
מעבר לאוהל עמדו נבהלים יעקב ויוסף,
דיברו בה רתת.
כל ימי חייה מתהפכים בה.
כתינוק הרוצה להיוולד.

כמה קשה.
אהבת יעקוב אכלה בה
בכל פה
עכשיו כשהנפש יוצאת
אין לה חפץ בכל זה.

לפת צווח התינוק
ובא יעקוב אל האןל
א רחל אינה מרגישה
עדנה שוטפת את פגיה
ורואשה.

מנוכה גדולה ירדה עליה.
נשמת אפה שב לא תעיד נוצה.
היניחו אותה בין אבני הרים
ולא היספידוה.
למות כמו רחל
אני רוצה.
[apologies for Typepad's scrambling of Hebrew punctuation]

My dog & I yesterday did the Mason Lake-Mt. Defiance trail in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. This is hike of terrific extremes-you get a maximum of enjoyment from a maximum of pain. The views from Mt. Defiance are among the best in the Snoqualmie area (except for Kendall Catwalk) and they include Mt. Baker, Glacier Peak, Mt. Clayton, Mt. Rainer and countless other peaks in a 360 degree view.

But getting there is not easy. This is an extremely strenuous ascent. The trail begins easily enough & the first 1.25 miles are pleasant. But then, at a trail junction unfortunately not noted in 100 Hikes in Washington (the trail Bible I use for my Washington hiking), the trail begins it ascent to heaven or, as I thought to myself hours later while I was still ascending, the ascent to hell. The trail is barely a trail–a “boot-beaten path” as Spring & Manning call it. The trail consists of rolling rocks and sand with very little solid ground beneath your feet. When descending, if you misstep in a place like this you easily end up on your seat or perhaps 10 feet lower than when you took your last step. If you miss the correct trail as I did and take the “wrong” one, you will end up ascending (or bushwhacking) an old stream bed through dense, prickly shrubs which will whip you all over your body. Despite its strenuousness, I almost prefer this ascent to going up the “stairway to hell” which is the other trail.

Besides missing an important trail junction, 100 Hikes makes another serious mistake when it notes that the trail from Mason Lake to Mt. Defiance gains 900 feet (rising from 4,500 to 5,400 feet). In actuality, when I got to the top of Mt. Defiance a fellow hiker told me his GPS told him we were standing at 1,900 meters which comes out to be over 6,000 feet. Perhaps Manning & Spring meant to say “6,200 feet?” At any rate, what I expected to be an easy 2 mile, 900 foot elevation gain hike turned out to be a monstrously difficult and long ascent through exposed terrain and in blinding summer sun.

But when I arrived at the summit, I was richly rewarded by an east-west view from the Olympics across he whole Cascade range and north-south from Rainier to Baker. Who could ask for anything more? And on the way up, the wildflowers were in full, gorgeous bloom. I saw penstemon, lupines, Indian paint brush, toad lilies, butterflies and so much more. I will have pictures to prove it when I develop my film roll (and I will post them here when I do).

Mason Lake is a small, but very attactive alpine lake. It doesn’t have the magnificent cirque surroundings of Rachel or Melakwa, but it is pretty in its own right.

Must haves: bug juice (there were bugs of all kinds including big, stinging black flies), walking poles (preferably two), much water

Sarah Lyall wrote a great piece about an growing problem in English social relations As Privet Rises, Neighbors Take Sides in the New York Times. Apparently, tensions have risen to such a pitch that one disgruntled neighbor actually killed someone who refused to trim his garden hedge.

I feel in the gardening community not enough attention is devoted to gardening etiquette, good manners and good behavior. It’s just assumed that since gardeners are good souls engaging in a spiritually rewarding pastime, that it would go without saying that gardeners would be good, reasonable and caring souls. Well, it ain’t true. Gardeners can be stubborn, willful and downright pigheaded fools (I sometimes count myself among them).

The issue of using hedges as barriers in order to maintain privacy is one that affects me personally. I garden in my home in Madrona (Seattle). The entire southern side of my property is dominated by an English laurel hedge that at its top height reaches between 40-50 feet high. Some books say 30 feet is maximum, but that isn’t the case with this monstrous specimen. The hedge’s length is about 60 feet. The research librarian at the Miller Library at the University of Washington helped me do some botanical research on English laurels and two books in particular (I’ll have to dig up her e mail in which she names the titles & authors) warn against using this plant as a privacy hedge.

In The Complete Shade Gardener (Houghton Mifflin), George Schenk says:

…The planting of an English laurel hedge is an act of aggression against one’s neighbor - and against oneself as well. It is the fightingest of hedges, pushing outward and upward as soon as you turn your back. English laurel is one of the greatest goads to giving up on the yard and moving into an apartment - in a very real sense, this shrub is a real estate agent.

English laurel according to various botanical websites is mildly poisonous (leaves, stem & bark). I have a two year old son and I don’t want him to be endangered by something like this. It can grow up to 5 feet per year. It throws seeds at least 40 feet (well into my yard) forcing me to pick out 50-100 germinated seedlings each year. It sheds leaves profusely and leaves scatter far from their source (forcing me to rake them up on my own property).

Which all leads me to the fact that my neighbor who owns this monstrosity does (in his own defence) trim this hedge once every two years. But in the year when he doesn’t trim I essentially lose about 25% of my yard for gardening purposes since the hedge wipes out that much sunlight. I offered to pay for the trimming in years when he didn’t choose to. He refused. I think he’s being downright selfish, bad mannered and unneighborly.

tags complete-shade-gardener, english-laurel, invasive-plant, privacy-hedge

I've always loved that New York Daily News headline which trashed Gerald Ford during New York City's 1970s financial crisis: "Ford to New York: Drop Dead!" So I thought I'd reuse it here to describe the media's blithe indifference to bloggers. There seems to be a deep philosophical divide between those who populate the web world and those who populate the publishing (media) world. The web was designed (with the glaring exception of Microsoft) to share information among users as quickly and widely as possible. Most online resources do not view themselves as "owning" their sources of information. They might want to be the first to distribute a piece of news or information, but ownership seems an ...

Friday, August 30-Sunday, September 8, 1996 ORVIETO LA BADIA: 8th century monastery turned into a hotel. Stately building with long, dark corridors. Surrounded by rolling hills and farmland and olive trees everywhere. Orvieto produces some of the best olive oil in Italy. Lunch in La Badia restaurant was not especially good. But olive oil was unlike anything I’ve had in U.S. It was bright and fruity, a surprising taste! Dinner at Volpe e L’uva (Wolf and the Egg) recommended in Fred Plotkin’s book (without his guide I would’ve been lost gastronomically): also not great. Concierge at hotel recommended Trattoria Etrusca. What a wonderful dining experience! Thin slice of steak grilled rare and smothered in herbs. ...

Snow Lake looking west Snow Lake looking north This is a 7 1/2 mile round trip hike in the Snoqualmie Pass area of western Washington about 45 minutes by car from Seattle. I took the route to Snow Lake beginning fr. the Alpental parking lot. In getting to the trailhead, be careful if you're using 100 Best Hikes in Washington. The directions are wrong. Trailhead is ONE mile (not two) fr. the freeway exit. Trailhead is at the first main parking lot you reach ...

I am heartened that Israeli-Palestinian relations are on such positive footing these days. The image of Abbas and Sharon speaking together yesterday outside the Prime Minister's office and shaking hands (with gusto-as opposed to the Arafat-Rabin reluctant handshake) afterward...plus the warm, humane words spoken-all of this gives me great hope for the future. Yes, there is a long road to go and groups like Hamas can stain that road with much blood. But the end is in sight and I am confident that there is a good chance that both sides will reach it.