Benjamin Rubenstein's Blog

Welcome to another episode of Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells, where I share true and personal stories. You can listen to this on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, iHeartRadio, JioSaavn, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Spreaker, or your favorite podcast platform by way of the RSS feed. You can also listen to or read it below. I hope you enjoy!

This story is titled I Tried Getting the Black Lives Matter Sign Removed At My Apartment Building. It’s about how I made believe I was an investigative journalist to uncover why I feel the Black Lives Matter symbol has come to mean something other than what it used to represent.

Note: Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells is best when heard, not read, because of the emotion the art of oral storytelling evokes. If you can, I encourage you to listen to the audio. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

I tried getting the Black Lives Matter sign removed at my apartment building. You know the sign I mean. It’s the one with those three words in block letters spread across three rows with the black and white (and sometimes yellow) background. The design of those three words acts as a symbol, which is displayed on so many signs in yards and on doors and windows. One sits in my building’s courtyard.

The Black Lives Matter symbol—like any symbol—represents what its creator wants to convey and wants others to take from it. But sometimes, the person who sees the symbol perceives it differently.

Until October 10, I perceived the Black Lives Matter symbol the same as, I assumed, most people I knew and how the creators intended: it represented the needed fight against racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by Blacks. 

I imagine I’d heard of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013. That’s when the political and social movement started after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second degree murder after killing a Black teen named Trayvon Martin. The movement picked up steam over the years until it became a worldwide phenomenon in 2020 after police officer Derek Chauvin killed a Black man named George Floyd.

In case these Covid years have jumbled your brain, let me remind you of this phenomenon with an example. In June 2020, the words Black Lives Matter were painted in yellow letters on two consecutive blocks of a section of 16th Street in Washington, D.C. The letters spanned the width of the two-lane street, rendering them almost 50 feet tall. D.C.’s mayor renamed the plaza around those letters Black Lives Matter Plaza NW. I walked across those 16 letters soon after they were painted. It all felt righteous. That mural has since become a permanent installation. 

Though over half of all existing tweets that included the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag were posted from May to September 2020, the movement is still going strong.

But, that's not all BLM is. Black Lives Matter is a political and social movement and multiple organizations. I didn’t know that before October 10, and I only discovered that after Black Lives Matter hit my news feed that day. 

On October 10, my news feed showed that an entity on X calling itself Black Lives Matter Chicago posted an image reveling in what Hamas militants had done three days earlier. Many hundreds of them breached Israel’s border and subsequently raped, mutilated, burned, and murdered over 1,400 people and stole over 200. The horrors worsened as some leaders of organizations and elected officials failed in their messaging to acknowledge that evil. And yet, those craven messages weren’t even the worst. The most wicked messages were those that—as Rabbi Angela Buchdahl at Central Synagogue would say in her first sermon following the massacre—included “words like ‘resistance,’ ‘decolonizing,’ or ‘freedom fighters.’ Words that valorized—and even celebrated—Hamas terrorism, words that perversely found a way to blame Israel for these monstrous attacks. The contortions people engaged in to blame defenseless children, teenagers at a music festival, or Holocaust survivors for their own murder betrayed a moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy I could not believe was possible.”

As I read more and more of those types of messages, I wanted to buy plane tickets for their authors to go hang out with their new paragliding friends in Hamas. Shalom, Felicia.

And on October 10, my plane ticket offer went to whoever at Black Lives Matter Chicago , which may have become the most recent in a long line of Jew-hating symbols.

I immediately emailed the board at my apartment building. I explained what Black Lives Matter Chicago had posted and reminded the board members we were currently promoting the symbol of Black Lives Matter by way of the sign in our courtyard. “Please have the owner of the Black Lives Matter sign remove it,” I wrote simply. 

Though I live in what’s known as a “cohousing” community, which means all residents typically must agree to changes, I figured Black Lives Matter Chicago’s bigotry would allow the board to swiftly decide to have the sign removed. I was wrong.

The board president wrote back after denying my request, “We are a community of many deeply felt beliefs and opinions and we live together with mutual respect and understanding.”

Huh? I was confused. I couldn’t imagine any neighbor believing it was cool to align with that bigotry. Even if someone felt that way, wasn’t our community also about creating a welcoming environment for all? Surely the board misunderstood the vileness of what Black Lives Matter Chicago had posted. 

So, I wrote a second email to the board to try and make clear what transpired and how I felt about it. I tried to demonstrate that the perpetrators’ mission is to kill Jews. Most of the victims happened to be Jews, almost always the group in the U.S. most targeted in religion-related hate crimes—sometimes by a factor of six over the next most targeted. I felt that Black Lives Matter Chicago endorsed what was among the most barbaric acts against other humans I’ve seen in my lifetime. In turn, with our Black Lives Matter symbol that couldn’t be missed as residents return home from work and guests visit for the first time and everyone in between, we were endorsing the same.

The board president responded once again. She said the board would take no action, and if I wanted to have the sign removed, I’d need to convince every resident to do so. “The Chicago chapter of the Black Lives Matter organization has apologized,” the president added, as if the phrase “We’re sorry” could make anything said previously null and void.

At this point, I stepped back from my feelings. Was I overreacting? Was I making false assumptions or misinterpreting something? Was I being played by fake accounts?

Before I did anything further, I had to figure this mess out. It was time for me to make-believe I worked on Dateline.

First, I needed to see if there were other entities claiming to be Black Lives Matter and spewing Jew-hatery. It turns out Black Lives Matter Chicago wasn’t the only one. An entity calling itself Black Lives Matter Grassroots joined in by saying Hamas’ slaughter of Jews was an act of self-defense. Black Lives Matter Los Angeles concurred with Grassroots. And Black Lives Matter D.C. promoted the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!,” a phrase that some interpret to mean expelling Jews from, or murdering Jews in, the region. Maybe there were other Black Lives Matter groups chiming in, but I stopped checking.

Now that I saw an abundance of antisemitism from Black Lives Matter entities, I needed to know how all the chapters and the Grassroots related to the official Black Lives Matter organization, if there was one, and if they related at all. It turns out there is no official Black Lives Matter organization because it is first and foremost a political and social movement, and no single entity can own a movement. To go further, no single entity owns the rights to the Black Lives Matter name, image, brand, symbol, or anything of the like. That leaves the symbol open for shenanigans.

There is a de facto leading organization, though. It’s called the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which operates blacklivesmatter.com. The Global Network Foundation has also been collecting the majority of the funds. The three women who are considered the originators of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag—Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi—also founded the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.

Cullors hasn't been shy about sharing her opinion that everyone should band together to terminate the Jewish homeland in the Middle East. For example, the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School hosted Cullors and several other activists in April of 2015 for a panel titled, Globalizing Ferguson: Racialized Policing and International Resistance. During that panel discussion, Cullors said, “Palestine is our generation’s South Africa. If we don't step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that's called Israel, we're doomed.”

Cullors did have things to say that were actually related to the mission of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation before she resigned in May 2021 from her formal role as executive director. In the Black Lives Matter 2020 Impact Report, she announced chapters. Aha, I thought when I saw this, now we’re getting somewhere in deciphering the organization’s structure. Cullors wrote that Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation would work “hand in hand” with the chapters. She added, “This assembly of chapters, today, makes up BLM Grassroots.”

Further in the Impact Report was a section on the organization’s finances. It stated that Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation “committed funding” to certain chapters such as Chicago’s and D.C.’s.

The Associated Press confirmed in May 2022 that the chapters and Grassroots were not officially affiliated. "In 2020, the foundation did spin off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots. It has a fiscal sponsor managing money granted by the foundation."

In an odd twist, Black Lives Matter Grassroots later sued Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. The Guardian wrote that in the lawsuit, Grassroots claimed the Foundation “mismanaged the funds and had shut local chapters out of decision making.”

A year later, a judge dismissed that civil lawsuit. Even still, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation saw a future in which the two groups—the Foundation and Grassroots—would work together. In its public letter to Grassroots, the Foundation wrote, “Although it may seem impossible now, we see a future where our two organizations can continue to operate separately, without strife, and with outsized impact toward achievement of our common goals."

Ultimately, the social media accounts at the chapters and Grassroots that were spurting anti-Jewish filth were not fake but also were not officially related to the organization that was unofficially the official Black Lives Matter. In other words, despite their chumminess and “common goals,” the Global Network Foundation was not technically related to the chapters and Grassroots. 

It all seemed so opaque when you consider that Black Lives Matter stands for a movement and several organizations. According to Sean Campbell of Columbia's Journalism School, it’s a “bit of a problem that [Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation] has become associated as the name of Black Lives Matter when the two are totally separate.” 

At this point, I felt content with my investigative journalist work and still gross about the symbol displayed in our courtyard. After all the hopefully hundreds of people who felt welcomed by our building’s Black Lives Matter sign over the years, finally there was one person who felt unwelcome by it: me.

I reread what the president of my apartment building’s board had said about Black Lives Matter Chicago having apologized. Did they? I went to the source.

Black Lives Matter Chicago did write that it had sent messages “we aren’t proud of,” which is different from saying, “We’re sorry.” In fact, like some symbols, the phrase “we aren’t proud” is vague enough to warrant a spectrum of interpretations. Perhaps Black Lives Matter Chicago meant, “We’re not proud, but we did feel satisfactory about our messages.” Or, perhaps Black Lives Matter Chicago actually meant it wasn’t proud of how tame they were and wished they’d said outright that Jews deserve to die because they are Jews. “We aren’t proud” could have meant anything.

If Black Lives Matter Chicago had apologized, I bet Rabbi Buchdahl would have forgiven them. After all, as I understand the Jewish rules on forgiveness, if you do harm to another person and then apologize to the person you harmed, then the burden lies with the person harmed to forgive. If he or she doesn’t forgive, then he or she is now the sinner. 

Well, I’m not a rabbi, and I say Black Lives Matter Chicago crossed a line you can’t uncross, and therefore I’d have sinned had they apologized; I wouldn’t have forgiven them. No matter because they didn’t apologize. 

When the Washington Free Beacon asked the larger Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation about the chapters’ Jew hatery, they said, "We don't have any comments on your story…. To clarify, we are not affiliated with BLM Grassroots or BLM Chicago. We are the global/main BLM."

Chickenshit, I thought after seeing that. Sometimes, all you have to do is say, “We don’t align with foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas.” That was, apparently, too hard to say for Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. The next words that popped into my head came directly from the Global Network Foundation: common goals. The organization that was in the best position to act as the guardian over the Black Lives Matter symbol lacked the courage or desire to protect it, or worse, delighted in its misdirection because that was a common goal all along. 

This confluence of factors has led what I once felt was a virtuous symbol in the fight for freedom and justice to be hijacked. The Black Lives Matter symbol, to me, has come to mean something other than what it used to represent. The words "black lives matter" are as true now as they ever were and ever will be, but my perception of Black Lives Matter’s symbol has changed. Now, I walk by the Black Lives Matter symbol displayed in my building’s courtyard and am reminded of the global hatred towards Jews that has existed for centuries and seems destined to exist for eternity.

Perhaps the perceptions of all symbols change over time. It's unavoidable as the thing the symbol represents changes and as time and experience lead us to perceive the symbol differently. My research over the past few weeks has been about Black Lives Matter while also not being about that at all. What I have learned throughout this investigation is that you and I and everyone should periodically reevaluate all the symbols that we align with to make sure they still fit with our principles. If they no longer fit, it could be time to cut ties. I know that’s hard to do, as once you align with a symbol it can become part of your identity. Your identity could include symbols like Black Lives Matter, the donkey or elephant representing your political party, or the cross, star and crescent, or Star of David reflecting your religion. Indeed, it can be extremely hard to disengage from these pieces of your identity, and you may have to step way back to see that you must.

As for the sign in my courtyard: maybe this story will lead all my neighbors to agree to have it removed. Though, I suspect not. Nobody could convince me the symbol doesn’t signify Jewish hate to me, and therefore I couldn’t expect to convince others it means something other than what it means to them. In fact, I won’t even try. But, if they ask me how we could show support for Black equality without the Black Lives Matter symbol in our courtyard, I’d respond that there are endless ways, including a new sign that reads “We value Black lives” written in green and purple or any design that strays from the BLM symbol we all know. And if my neighbors ask me how we could possibly remove a symbol that welcomes so many, I’d propose a different question: how do you feel about promoting a symbol that makes a neighbor—even if it’s just one—feel unwelcome?

…But if a Black Lives Matter organization were to post one more picture of a paraglider or anything resembling one—even a zip liner, or shit, I could interpret a hot air balloon as being close enough—then I’ll take down the sign myself and inform my neighbors, “I’m not proud I removed the sign.” They could interpret that however they wish, though what I’d really mean would be: that felt not prideful; it felt righteous.

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

When my wife Stefanie and I were deciding where to get fertility treatment to conceive a child, it dawned on us…of course we’d choose the complex where my semen has been stored in the basement for 22 years. But, did we want to try an IUI or IVF, did we need ICSI and PGT, and what the f*&% are all those things?! This is the story of our fall of 2022 going through fertility treatment. You can watch the video on YouTube or below.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels

Welcome to another episode of Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells, where I share true and personal stories. You can listen to this on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, iHeartRadio, JioSaavn, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Spreaker, or your favorite podcast platform by way of the RSS feed. You can also listen to or read it below, and if you do, I hope you enjoy!

This story is titled The Time I Told Myself I Saved a Life in My Job as Basically a Guy Who Sends Emails. It’s about one of those thrilling times in a desk job when I did something that may have really mattered.

Note: Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells is best when heard, not read, because of the emotion the art of oral storytelling evokes. If you can, I encourage you to listen to the audio. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

Nothing in my professional life had felt more urgent. 

The virus that causes Covid-19 had begun spreading in the U.S. People were terrified. Masks and other personal protective equipment were becoming hard to find. Leaders of organizations were scurrying to get their computer-based staff able to telework indefinitely.

In 2020, I was a computer worker in the U.S. federal government. I had essentially two duties. The first was managing my organization’s new employee orientation, also known as charming new employees into working super hard for us for a long time. The second duty was ensuring high-level documents and inquiries were reviewed and answered. Those “tasks,” as they were called, first came through an email inbox that I and three others managed. Then, whoever was on shift managing the tasksbox had to interpret the request or inquiry, decide which subject matter experts to share it with, how to share it, the deadline for response and other critical instructions, and the overall level of importance. We’d then provide the experts with everything they’d need to complete the task, eventually receive the response, and email the response back up the chain. Usually, at that point, we’d never hear about the tasks again.

The emails that came through the tasksbox were often vague, sometimes near gibberish. Some tasks were given deadlines far in advance, while others had to be completed within a couple hours. This combination of sometimes needing to complete something almost immediately, while initially having no clue what that something was, led me to feeling stress. When I was on shift managing the tasksbox, I wouldn’t dare avert my eyes from the screen for more than three minutes. Sometimes, I’d take the computer with me to the bathroom to ensure I wouldn’t miss something. What if a nonsensical task with a tight deadline came through? I’d need most of the minutes to understand what the task was before I could even get around to facilitating its review or response. I wondered if managing the tasksbox rewired my brain. Every notification, every ping, every bolded subject line increased my heart rate and blood pressure. I wondered if this job was unhealthy for me. And would completing any of these tasks ever matter? I’d likely never know.

On Friday, March 20, 2020, a week after March Madness was canceled and President Trump declared Covid-19 a national emergency, I was at home working. I was on shift managing the tasksbox. I saw the bold subject line of a new email enter the inbox. I tensed up. This one seemed to be of the highest level of importance. I muted the TV behind me to focus on this task. Its gist was basically this: much of the federal government, including my agency, had recently tried getting workers home indefinitely. Now, our headquarters demanded the data later that day. 

What was the total make-up of the workforce of the directorate where I worked in the agency’s office of the chief of staff? What was the make-up of the directorate’s individual offices, how many were settled already working from home, how many were anticipated to be working from home by the end of the week, and of those who were not yet home, why weren’t they? That was the level of data I was now responsible for providing to the people on the other side of the government email black hole.

There was no time to waste. I received this task at 11:30 a.m. and needed to provide the data in an easy-to-read manner by 5 p.m. But how?

I reread the task and wrote down the precise requirements as I understood them. Unlike my confusion after reading some other tasks, I felt confident about the data requested and who could provide it, but was I certain? I chatted with my teammates and our boss to make sure we all understood this task. That would be especially valuable when my shift on the tasksbox would end and someone else would need to take over. They agreed with my initial interpretation. Our boss added that I would exclusively work on this one task and my teammates would take over my shift for any other unrelated tasks. 

I got down to business. I listed my points of contact who could provide the pieces of data I’d need to create the final product. I drafted an email to them describing the task’s urgency and request as succinctly as I could. Here, my background transforming jargon into plain English helped me. I put the bottom line up front in the email draft. I bolded the deadline. I numbered the individual pieces of data I needed from each point of contact. I double checked to make sure it was clear. I triple checked. I had a colleague review the draft language. It all checked out.

Then, the hardest part: creating from scratch one spreadsheet to collect individual pieces of data and another spreadsheet to aggregate all those individual pieces. The first had to be clear enough that the experts could give it one glance and see what they were to provide. It needed built-in formulas so nobody would make an error calculating, and the spreadsheet needed grayed-out fields to keep the experts’ focus on the other fields that needed their attention. 

Did my agency’s headquarters want the percentage of teleworkers to the tenth or the hundredth percent? Those were the kind of questions I had to assume answers to because there wasn’t enough time to confirm. I guessed neither, so I set the percentage fields to show just the whole numbers.

When the spreadsheet was in final shape, I attached it to the email I’d drafted and clicked “send.” 

For now, there was little else to do. I had to assume my instructions were crisp, final, perfect, because there would likely be no time to send revised instructions. So, I waited for experts to return their data to me before consolidating it all.

As I waited, I felt anxious excitement. This was different from the stress I often felt in this duty. Rather, in this case I knew what I was doing. In fact, I felt I was the best person for the task. It also just seemed kind of big and real. Humanity was in a new battle with nature that was anticipated to kill many people—some researchers predicted upwards of 70 million people around the world would die from Covid-19. It was rewarding to realize that the years I’d spent building these skills led me now to play my tiny role in the national emergency.

An hour ticked away. Then another. I checked in with experts at times to see how they were coming along with the data. Another hour ticked away. It was mid afternoon and I hadn’t received any data. Finally, the first set of data came in. I reviewed it, it looked complete, and then I copied that into my second spreadsheet that would act as a final summary report. By late afternoon, all component data had been returned to me, and my compilation spreadsheet was ready to be sent back up the chain. Over 80% of my directorate’s workforce was already indefinitely at home with all the gear they’d need to continue their job functions, and many more workers were on their way there. I clicked “send” one final time. 

How would the data ultimately be used? I wasn’t sure. At the least, I figured the call for data alone was enough of a nudge for leaders to push harder to get even more workers home, if their job duties could be done remotely. Maybe I helped nudge one person to start teleworking one day sooner than he or she otherwise would have. Maybe I helped prevent one Covid-19 infection. Maybe I helped prevent one death. I’ll never know.

I leaned back in my office chair in my apartment in Arlington, Virginia, and logged off my computer for the day. There was nothing left to do. After all, I was just the guy who sends emails. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

Welcome to another episode of Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells, where I typically share true and personal stories though today, I share a fictional short story. You can listen to this on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, JioSaavn, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Spreaker, or your favorite podcast platform by way of the RSS feed. You can also listen to or read it below, and if you do, I hope you enjoy!

First, some background: In March 2020, many public places around the U.S. closed, either voluntarily or by order, to protect vulnerable people from catching Covid-19. Despite the pandemic, less vulnerable young adults cavorted around. They were going to continue partying and living their lives, saying that whatever happens to them—or more likely to their elders— happens. Many people in political or social power criticized the youths. That included pop star Ariana Grande, who tweeted, “The ‘we will be fine because we’re young’ mindset is putting people who aren’t young and/or healthy in a lot of danger.”

But, Grande’s opinion seemed to have little impact. The youths seemed either not to accept or care about their new labels as selfish, cold-hearted, and harbingers of death.

Thinking back on this 2.5 years later got me thinking: what if the tables were turned on who the vulnerable really were?

That question led me to write this story, titled, “Geezers in the Age of the Youth Pandemic.” I performed this story at the Eastern Village Cohousing 18th Anniversary Party. This story is a work of fiction, but with Halloween coming up, who knows—maybe it could become our spooky and morbid reality soon.

Note: Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells is best when heard, not read, because of the emotion the art of oral storytelling evokes. If you can, I encourage you to listen to the audio. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

My name is Daniel and I’m a 65-year-old early-retired software engineer, and this is not just my story. Rather, this is the story of all Baby Boomers. All we ever wanted was to remain respected, perhaps even revered, but instead we’ve been forgotten.

But: we Boomers are forgotten no longer. This is our comeback story, and I’m telling it to you from my perch at Bluejacket’s patio during the new pandemic.

Bluejacket is a boilermaker factory-turned-beer palace that brews the tastiest IPA in Washington, D.C. Just three blocks from Nationals Park, this brewery had served as a second home to drunken youths pregaming. But, where are those youths now on this brisk fall evening?

They aren’t here. Even if the World Series hadn’t been canceled, they’d still be stuck at home. I never thought this dream would come true, but all Bluejacket patrons here now are old enough to be members of AARP.

You figure something like this could only happen in a dream. Nobody and no algorithm could have predicted we’d have a new killer just after the Covid. This new virus that causes the disease known as Twenties/Thirties Respiratory Syndrome—or TTRS—multiplied like coding bootcamps across the globe. Most oddly, TTRS is only dangerous to younger adults.

In fact, my cohort is being spared such that we may barely even develop a cough from this new strain. But, the fatality rate in infected individuals aged 20-39 is twenty-five percent. For every four who strut through Bluejacket’s doors to grab its quintessential IPA Lost Weekend—with its citra hops and notes of tangerine and peach—one of those young fools will perish.

So, we Boomers are here saving Bluejacket. The brewery needs us just to stay afloat. That is until TTRS abates and Bluejacket’s former patrons return. But will TTRS abate? Or will it continue its killing spree, leaving so many young, fit carcasses on the streets that they can only be piled and then burned? And if TTRS does continue terminating the youths, will it be because we Boomers ignore pleas for social distancing? Are we accomplices, or worse, are we the real killers by not just staying home and letting the virus die out without anybody to infect?

That’s what the youths are saying, like human selfie stick Ariana Grande who begs us to just stay home. My darling wife of 44 years Sara becomes subdued when she reads posts related to the viral #boomerremover. Seeing her frown and her cheeks lose their rosiness just crushes me. The youths have terrorized her, and Sara says maybe we should just stay home. Maybe we have turned selfish and cold, she says.

No. No. No. My babe is always right, except this time, after all the misery we’ve endured. 

Our suffering began a year ago. As soon as we left the workforce, the youths castrated us. I guess they figured since they could no longer use us to get promoted, we were dead to them. The thing is that we still could have taught them so much. I could have taught them how to utilize our work skills to build a winning fantasy football team. Sara could have taught them that the secret to charming donors—or anyone really—has nothing to do with the smile but everything to do with a desire to share in a good laugh. But, our wisdom was no longer valued, and so nobody under 55 conversed with us unless we were paying them.

Conversing with peers wasn’t much better. All our Boomer friends could discuss were the fancy new job titles their kids were gifted, their grandkids, and their granddogs. But, what about them and their projects? Where had their vigor for their present lives and the present moment disappeared to? Poof, it was gone forever, stolen by the youths like Covid stole our son Tuvia’s zayde’s last breath.

At the beginning of spring, we realized we were catching the same infection of lifelessness that was killing our friends. Tuvia called like he did every Sunday and asked what we’d been up to. I said I was researching which sector-based ETFs to buy. Sara said she was researching the best smart shades on Wirecutter. We threw in some other non sequiturs. We knew we were engaging in just about the lowest form of conversation, but we couldn’t stop it; we had nothing else to offer.

Tuvia said he had to go, but not in the fun way he used to, when he’d have to hop off or get sucked into another long story. Before the youths began killing us, we had endless stories. Stories about the deep-learning healthcare software I’d been creating to improve MRI scans. Cardiac researchers are soon going to have 50 times more data to work with! And stories like the time Sara spilled brisket juice on her yellow cocktail gown at her fundraiser’s gala and just kept on partying.

The call ended. Sara started crying. She said our calls with Tuvia had become shorter and shorter, that he only calls now because he feels obligated, and that at some point he’ll just forget. The youths, including our own son, were forgetting us.

Sara said she wanted to go to bed. I tucked my weary sweetheart in. I pulled the covers tight and kissed her forehead. Right then, I vowed never again to allow her to feel neglected. She’d never feel any less than the goddess she has been throughout our 44 years together.

Then mere days later, Twenties/Thirties Respiratory Syndrome began spreading in the U.S. Researchers quickly discovered that, for people our age, TTRS would pass so subtly that we’d never know we’d contracted it. But the youths—they would have to stay home or risk death.

Within a week of TTRS’s spread, they lost their jobs at a pace that exceeded the worst week of the Great Recession. All sports were canceled. Many establishments shuttered.

On what would have been baseball's Opening Day, Sara and I went out to see firsthand what this new world looked like. This was the first time we checked out the patio at Bluejacket, which Tuvia had said was all the rave. No youths were there to shout over us for drink orders, so our server quickly brought us two orangey hazy beers in pretty teku glasses. We held the beer in our mouths, letting the sweetness and bitterness explore our palates. It led our skeletons to feel light, like we were made of air. It was a wonderful evening. We kept returning to Bluejacket, where we’ve been having the time of our lives swapping stories with all the other Boomers we’ve befriended.

In fact, that’s where we are right now on this cool evening. The patio feels so cozy with all the propane heaters blazing. It’d be nice if the World Series game was on, but we got used to the death of sports. We’ve also gotten used to a world without the youths. They’ve been basically out of sight for so long that we actually kind of forget about them. Tuvia said as much after we forgot to call him on Sunday. 

The sparkle is back in my love’s eyes. She’s chatting it up with the other Boomers. She’s got a Lost Weekend in one mittened hand, and her other is whizzing all around, animated as she’s telling a story. Bob Dylan is pulsing through the speakers, so I can’t tell which story Sara is telling. Though, it doesn’t even matter. Whichever it is, she can continue on telling it as long as she’d like. We’re not going anywhere. TTRS can just continue on with its #youthremover. 

Later, Sara may awaken from another nightmare. She’s got this recurring one where she jolts up in bed sweating and mumbling about how she was about to commit filicide. I’ll have to calm my love and remind her it was just a dream. Tuvia is following all the protocols and will be just fine. And besides, whatever happens, happens.

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

I published the seventh edition of my newsletter, this one looking all sleek like this new here website. It’s also my first newsletter since…oh boy…September 2019. But as I state in the newsletter: it's not my fault—covid hit and I got weaker, fatter, and lazier, and I did nothing except watch all the apocalypse movies ever made.

The good news? This newsletter is evidence of my diminished weakness fatness laziness.

I hope you check out the newsletter, and you can also subscribe to the newsletter if you haven’t yet.

I started a storytelling podcast, and you can listen to the first story!

I’ve wanted to start my Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells podcast since February, but I got weaker, fatter, and lazier since the pandemic started, so here we are eight months later. But it’s fine because at least I didn’t get too lazy to start it at all. So here is my first story: Telemarketer-Style Headphones Twinsies: A Love Note to My Girlfriend.

I wrote this story and performed it for Anie on "Valenday," which is one of many shortened words in her lexicon I've adored and adopted, and they've now become a new language for us. Before Anie, I’d basically never had a girlfriend. I’d always attributed that to me being unwanted because of my past diseases and their resulting effects. Who would want me? Nobody, and I accepted that and that was ok. And then Anie arrived, as did "din" consisting of steak and "brocc" and many other new words.

You can listen to this and all future Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer, JioSaavn, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Spreaker, or your favorite podcast platform by way of the RSS feed.…at least, I think that’s true! I hardly know what a podcast is, know even less on how the technology works, and wrote that because I think I’m supposed to! However, I’m certain you can just listen to all the stories right here on my website. After I publish each podcast story, I’ll share it here immediately after, so you don’t have to go far. In fact, if you subscribe to my blog by email then you’ll automatically get notified each time I share an update.

Another thing I think I’m supposed to say is: please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts! How do you do that? Psh don’t ask me, but I know algorithms prefer content with the most reviews so that would help Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells reach more eardrums.

Whichever avenue you choose, if you listen to my story then thanks for giving it a whirl. I will record more stories, which will have better sound quality once I buy a dedicated podcast microphone. And transacting for that just involves clicking buttons, which, in fact, covid has made so many of us better at.

All that said, here is my first story. I’m excited to share this. Thanks for reading and listening. Below the podcast player is a photo related to the story which is kind of a spoiler as to what happens after the story ends, so avert your eyes if you want a surprise. Below that is a transcript of this story. I hope you enjoy.

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Transcript of Telemarketer-Style Headphones Twinsies: A Love Note to My Girlfriend

Note: Benjamin Rubenstein’s Storytells is best when heard, not read, because of the emotion the art of oral storytelling evokes. If you can, I encourage you to listen to the audio. 

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

Dear Anie,

I don’t know if you remember, but a month after we met you made me miss a Christmas party. We’d spent our lovely fifth date exploring downtown Silver Spring in Maryland, and then landed at your apartment. We began talking around 5 p.m. What felt like an hour later and thus time for me to leave for the party, I checked my phone and saw that it was 11. During those six hours I’m sure we told many stories, but mostly I remember your lexicon. You used the word “sitch” any chance you could, even when the word “situation” wouldn’t make sense. And your word “Valenday” saved you from having to utter one more syllable. However, I haven’t yet heard you create a term that captures the way time felt warped to me that night. It was like my past no longer existed...you know, that one in which I could only imagine meeting a gal who would lead me to believe there was nothing else in the universe outside the walls of your seemingly clean apartment if not for its endless—as you call them—”junk drawers.” I was equally unaware of a Christmas party or any other point in the future which time accelerated me towards. It was just you and me synthesized in a moment.

Before you, I’d never synthesized with anyone. In fact, for the entirety of my adulthood until I met you I thought I was stuck in the feeling of being lovestruck. A woman would show interest in me, and then three minutes later I would believe I was in love with her. Eventually, she’d lose interest and I’d feel soul-crushed… but then not long after I’d fall in love with another woman, and on and on. I used to consider my ability to fall in love within three minutes of meeting someone a curse. Now, I think all those imposter loves led me to understand how harmonious I feel with you.

When I returned home from the Christmas party-less night, I had to write about you and how you led me to believe that time could stretch or even stand still. I wrote that you were an “admittedly lazy non-writer who likes movies and sports and drives a Honda Fit.” I wrote that you and I laughed together with great ease. I wrote you were “even-keeled, used the term ‘it's fine’ for many of life's inconveniences, and used lots of exclamation points in both writing and speech.” 

Over the next couple weeks, you would tell me about your job researching applications for chemical-based patents. The chemistry exceeded my comprehension, but I gathered that one chemical synthesized with another to make a brand new whole. I laughed when you told me about your skepticism regarding the artificial sweeteners you’d been researching. I responded that I was nearly addicted to Coke Zero. There’s no way you’d know this about yourself but soon you’d join me on NFL Sundays with that shiny black aluminum can in hand. It’s not that you enjoyed it more than a Coca-Cola Classic; rather, you just liked copying me, as I liked copying you. We would become Osprey travel bag twinsies and telemarketer-style headphone twinsies. You’d start awakening early like me, I’d start talking like you, and we’d start borrowing the same books from the library, yours on Kindle and mine through audio on my twinsie headphones.

Your sweet voice hovered in my mind, and sometimes I’d call instead of text just to hear it. “What’s for din?” you said once. “Steak and brocc,” I responded because by then I’d become fluent in your language.

I’m now thinking about another of our early dates. We met at the National Arboretum. Before beginning our walk around the gardens, I agonized about whether to use my crutches. I assumed they would disqualify me in your eyes, but I also accepted that that was ok. The crutches were a part of me, and I was done hiding. So, I reached into my backseat to retrieve them. You watched me secure them around my forearms. I told you simply that I use crutches sometimes on long walks to ease the ache around my left hip bone which was surgically removed as treatment for bone cancer. And then you said something that felt blissful to me: you said, “It’s fine!”

You did not run away. You did not reject me. You did not opt-out.

What we had together felt obvious to me, and I wanted to name it. So on my birthday just before New Year’s 2019 I told you, “I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but...you're my girlfriend!"

You interjected. “No! ...You have to ask me!"

I said, “Do you want to be my girlfriend?"

You said, “Yes.”

I’d basically never had a girlfriend before. I’d always attributed that to me being unwanted because of my past diseases and their resulting effects. Who would want me? Nobody, and I accepted that and that was ok. Perhaps as a defense mechanism to others’ impending rejection of me, I even thought romances should last exactly one year. At the one-year anniversary of meeting, the couple just splits, no hard feelings. Or, at the one-year anniversary each party could opt-in and continue for another year, but the default setting was that everyone opts-out. Based on this trailblazing opt-in opt-out system of love, surely someone would accept me on a one-year loan, right?

After you said “yes” to considering yourself my girlfriend, I entered into my gcalendar the one-year anniversary of our first meeting. Only instead of entering it as a one-time event, I scheduled it to repeat every year, forever. With you, I didn’t want to opt-out, and now I can’t fathom opting out. I can’t imagine speed-crutching ahead on a hike, then pausing to wait for you and not seeing you approaching, steady and even-keeled.

Here’s the thing, though: we didn’t continue onwards, at times accelerating forward and at other times seemingly stuck in eternity together, because you lack the judgement that disqualified me in others’ eyes. We continued onwards because we are like those chemicals: we synthesized into one whole. 

We’re still continuing onwards, and there’s no stopping this acceleration so long as I have anything to do with it. So Anie, here’s the sitch: on this Valenday, I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but you’re going to spend the rest of your life with me. I just have to ask you to marry me first.

[Music: Revealed by Ketsa]

One of the first stories I wrote while pursuing my MFA in creative writing, a fictional short story titled “Anne,” published last month in Volume 5 of Switchgrass Review. Back when I drafted “Anne” in 2016, my friend Rachel Yingling had passed away not long before. Rachel was in my thoughts often, and so I created a fictional character, Anne, inspired by her. I hope Rachel would appreciate my fictionalized interpretation of her spirit. Or, at the least, I hope she'd appreciate that the story includes her family's moonshine. 

That sounds like a joke, though in fact I think she would appreciate that. She found humor inside the “casual horror…of diagnosis, treatment, and perhaps peace with it all,” as our mutual friend Corey Nielsen put it. In short, Rachel found the funny where it wasn’t supposed to exist. Rachel endured such suffering that I used to wonder if I could ever do what she did—live with cancer without any possibility of a cure, all while still observing the funny.

It has now been some time since Rachel passed. I think about her less often than I used to. I think it’s cool this story got published now because it has led me to re-remember Rachel.

I hope you enjoy reading Anne, and remember this character is fictional, just a character inspired by Rachel and is not intended to be her.

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Anne, as published in Switchgrass Review

End engagement to the Spaniard because he’s not right. Reassure myself of that decision by calculating he’d leave 127,757 dishes in the sink according to his actuarial life table. Call Mom like I do every evening from my attic bedroom I can barely afford as a legislative assistant. Prepare for her to say, “But Anne, you’re twenty-six.”

Think after she speaks, Wow, she actually said that verbatim.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Your father and I married when I was seventeen, you know. By the time I was your age, I’d had your sister, brother and you.”

“Mom,” I begin, but catch myself before saying my next thought aloud. By twenty-six, she’d also had my younger sister. It wasn’t that Mom forgot about Emma Lee. Rather, her mind was just too full of worry to remember everyone. Nobody else in the family had strayed far from Winslow, Arkansas. 

“Attic bedroom” sounds worse than it is. It’s really just the least expensive room in my group house. That sounds worse than it is, too. “Group house” just means “One-hundred-year-old rowhouse occupied by eight twenty-something transplants who can’t afford apartments in Columbia Heights but won’t move because the neighborhood is the perfect mix of ethnic eateries, dive bars, and leafy parks.” Keep reading Anne in Switchgrass Review…

Hello readers, I expect this will be my last post on this blog because I now have a big bad website with a blog plus all kinds of other features. Come stop by when you get a chance at benjaminrubenstein.com. Thanks for visiting my site over the years, and don't worry I'm not going too far! See you soon at my new website.

Cheers

Benjamin

Silver Spring, Maryland — Benjamin Rubenstein, aka BENjamin ruBENstein, aka me, has launched a new website, benjaminrubenstein.com. This is our, I mean my, first site redesign since I think(?) 2010. The site now features a choose-your-destination on the homepage—like, do you want to learn about Benjamin’s speaking and officiant services or his writing? Whichever destination you choose, you’ll find stunning photos (of the gorgeous venues where Benjamin has spoken and meh photos of Benjamin), a wealth of extravagant information promoting only the aspects of his life he wants you to explore, and outlandish reviews of his work. He swears he didn’t fabricate these reviews.

“I’m so proud to launch my new website,” I said to myself for this press release. “For over 14 years I shared my stories and life on a standalone Blogger blog called cancerslayerblog, but secretly I was a little jelly of others’ full-featured narcissism vehicles on content management behemoths WordPress or Squarespace. Finally I made moves to get my own, and then covid hit and I got weaker, fatter, and lazier, and did nothing except watch all the apocalypse movies ever made…like seriously, all of them. And finally, here we are with benjaminrubenstein.com, the only site on the internet with an ‘about’ page that includes an image of a scanogram.” (Fact check: almost certainly incorrect.)

Some other site features include:

A simple contact form that actually works (at least for now) and will lead to an actual response;

Intuitive forms to subscribe to blog posts, er I mean PRESS RELEASES, and Benjamin’s once-every-quarter-or-so email newsletter; and

Three absolutely breathtaking thumbnail collections demonstrating some of the places Benjamin has been featured in, written in, and spoken at.

We encourage you to peruse the site, subscribe to all the things, and share Benjamin’s for-pay services with everyone you ever met. And stay tuned for fresh and sexy new content, perhaps as soon as this weekend but maybe later because of that whole weaker, fatter, and lazier thing.

We’d like to thank Mike Reda for designing the site and Benjamin’s mother just because.

I obsessed over finding statistics to demonstrate that Kobe Bryant played basketball better than anyone not named Michael Jordan; I obsessed over labeling him “the best basketball player on the planet.” Kobe inspired me more than most others inspired me.

Why Kobe? Actually, I can no longer remember the reason I adored him. It’s like how you remember great speeches for how they made you feel as opposed to their words. I don’t know why I loved the dude; I just know watching and thinking about Kobe made me feel ambitious and amazed.

Now, I don’t care about labels or comparing people. Winning isn’t that important to me, either. Kobe still inspires me, though, just probably for different reasons: his seeming focus and drive to improve himself. A few years ago, I read current NBA player Buddy Hield’s essay, The Secret I Learned from Kobe. Hield had gotten the opportunity to practice with Kobe. They poured themselves into the work for two hours. Before parting ways, Kobe turned to Hield and said, “You know, when I was younger I’d have come back in the afternoon and done the other half of the court.”

I love that. If I need some motivation to focus on my work—or really, to focus on any task I’ve chosen to pursue, however mundane—I can still conjure up an image of Kobe and get a boost.

Once, I nearly purchased his t-shirt jersey. That was in my mid-twenties at a time when I was studying men’s fashion. I didn’t complete the transaction because wearing a shirt imprinted with another man’s name seemed silly. But Kobe died yesterday, and now I wish I’d purchased that shirt so I could honor him.

I’ve been thinking a lot about honor lately. Two weeks ago, my essay about my love for sports published. Really, I think the essay is about how I feel compelled to honor sports for how they helped me when I most needed to be helped. To fully honor sports, I also must keep them in my life. I hope that essay resonated with readers, including those who care little about people who get payed to throw balls.

I think the concept extends to other applications. Like, last week I vacationed with a friend I hadn’t seen in over a year. He and I had bonded over severe illness when we were teens. We sometimes talked until dawn about isolation and fearing telling others about our illnesses. For a decade or more, I needed him. I no longer need him, in a similar way as I no longer need sports, yet I try to maintain our bond, in part to honor what it meant for me when I most needed to be understood.

And so now I write this tidbit about Kobe Bryant, not because I think it's more important than the thousands of other Kobe tidbits you can read, but because I wish to honor what he meant to me at one point in my life.