The profit-oriented, purpose-driven existence allows no room for activities with no purpose beyond themselves, a list that includes "sand art, storytelling, Bavarian beer-stein collecting, travel, canasta, ham radio .

UNDWC also organizes language lessons, home nursing classes, and bridge and canasta tournaments.

Lelyveld ties her attempt on her life to "a long, preachy letter" he'd sent arguing that she ought to relent and allow her mother-in-law to visit for Passover because, as he had pleaded, for Grandma "not to be invited for a year and a half, to be perpetually stalled, was to be left isolated, sad, and shamed before her cousins and the friends with whom she played canasta.