'Tis the Season to be Israeli

From now until December 26 I am more happy than usual to be a Jew in Israel. No Christmas lights, no gift-shopping hysteria, no Santa Claus, no office parties, no carols, no special concerts of Handel's Messiah. This is not to say that we don't have frantic holiday preparations during the weeks before Passover and Rosh Hashanah (Hannuka is less frantic, being a minor holiday here), but the difference is more than religious. The tone of celebration exemplifies a primary cultural difference: Relationship-ism vs. Materialism.

Before you jump on me for over-generalizing, stereotyping, or sounding judgmental, read on. I have been thinking of the reasons behind this difference for 16 years, and I've concluded it has to do with geography: the size of the USA, combined with or perhaps causing the New Frontier-endless-opportunity-invent-yourself individualism that makes America great, simply discourages even a functional family from staying in one place from generation to generation. Perhaps the most rigidly orthodox believers of all stripes - the families who disown their less-observant or non-observant members - stay in one spot for more than one or two generations, but I don't think they are typical. Upward mobility usually means physicial mobility.

The others who have moved beyond the one-day visit radius sometimes just have to send a gift and/or a card to mark a holiday. It's natural that the Powers of Merchandising and Greeting Cards stepped in to fill the void. Pretty soon (that is, after a generation or so), the idea of the gift displaced the idea of the visit, even when the visit still happens. And if your loved-ones are scattered in various cities, visit logistics and finances can become real obstacles.

So come to Israel next December...it is still the place where Xmas started.

Art and Craft

Did you know that "poetry" + "t" = "pottery"?

Pie from the Sky, Part One

All this blogging about Thanksgiving pies reminds me:

It was January 19, 1991, exactly 10 days after I had returned from Prowesslessnesslessness's college graduation in the USA. The graduation was a nicely human-scale event, because only a small number of people graduated in the middle of the school year, and it was great to see both kids.

January 15 was George Bush Sr.'s ultimatum deadline to Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait, and I was eager to be home in Tel Aviv in time for Saddam not to do it. Some Americans were mystified that I was returning to Israel when war was imminent. (They were probably thinking I was still American, just visiting Israel for a long period, not really emigrating.) Having lived through the exodus of draft-avoiding Americans to Canada during the Vietnam era, I had always been fascinated by the alacrity with which Israelis, not only able-bodied young men, returned home for wars. Even though I wasn't a member of the Israel Defense Forces, I felt I had to go home, because:
1. Why had I moved to Israel if I was going to desert her during bad times?
2. How could I look my Israeli friends and neighbors in the eye if I stayed away while they suffered, and then came back afterwards?
Returning was a foregone conclusion.

Buy January 15 I had my gas mask and instruction booklet. I had sealed up my bedroom with plastic sheeting and duct tape by the time the first sirens went off four nights later. I put the radio on and hunted for commentary in English, but decided to muddle through with the Hebrew broadcasts…all I could find. What a way to learn vocabulary! Verify in the dictionary that "masicha" = mask. The first verb must mean "put on," and later, after the "all clear" siren, the verb around "masicha" must mean "take off." After five months of Ulpan, at least I could tell where the verbs were!

The "booms" in Ramat Gan shake the glass in my bedroom window. I decide to lie under my bed to avoid being cut by shattering glass. When I'm not busy being scared, I discover that I'm really angry at Saddam because I didn't do anything to him, and here he is, trying to kill me. What nerve!

Thinking, "Well, he might succeed," I begin to review my life: what regrets did I have? Not too many, it turned out. I had traveled a great deal, met lots of interesting people, made some really good friends, both long-time and new, enjoyed some of the world's best food and wine (in France), finest music, greatest art, drama, opera, orchestras, dance, books, loved and was loved by my children. I was proud of having given my mother a Good Death (in my home, with the help of a home hospice program…in 1980). A failed marriage, a less-than-spectacular career, but not a failed life. So what had I not done that I still wanted to do?

It turned out that I had never baked a pie. And the reason I had never done it was because my mother was a superb pie-baker, but she never taught me. Her pies were one of her many claims to family fame. Maybe I never asked her to, or maybe she didn't want to share the glory. Here it was, 10 ½ years after her death, and it was too late to ask her now. Lying there, under my bed, I decided that if I survived the weekend scud attacks (there were two more), I would bake an apple pie on my own.

Sunday morning (Sunday is Israel's answer to Monday), I got out my "Joy of Cooking," (it was actually elswhere's "Joy of Cooking;" we had traded my hard-cover edition for her paperback edition before I moved) and studied the pie crust instructions. I decided to try it with the most easily-available ingredients. That meant substituting Israeli margarine for Spry or Crisco, but everything else was the same ("everything" being flour, salt, and water). Granny Smith apples are excellent here, and available year-round. I had a rolling-pin, a pie-dish, and an oven. I was "between jobs" and had no office to go to. So I baked an apple pie, let it cool a bit, and ate a piece. Yum! Did I felt triumphant! This war might kill me, but at least I now knew that I could bake a good apple pie.

To be continued…

Happy Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving used to be the best family-reunion holiday for a secular American family. Now has been exposed to have racist associations. Are there any national-historical holidays that don't? Independence Days celebrate triumph over a former ruling power. Memorial Days try to assign meaning to the premature deaths of fighters for some cause deemed worthy. Religious holidays affirm one belief system's legends and myths, leaving out all the others. Defining boundaries seems to be a painful process, both for individuals and for groups, but don't we need them? I thought diversity means valuing differences, not erasing them.

A contest

Here's how it works: you all submit a definition for the following word, and then we all vote on the winning definition. Oh, and please suggest a good prize too (all I could think of was the world's best hummus w/tehina and beans on fresh pita, but you would have to come to Tel Aviv to claim it.)

TELEPATHETIC

Alone at last?

Just when I thought I'd finally achieved peace of mind, reasonable health, mastered stress management and time management and anger management, having put at least 6,000 miles between me and my adult children for long enough that they've got on with their lives and do their laundry on their own or with their admirable life-partners, just when I got Shuki's (my dog's) thyroid medication properly titrated so she was no longer lethargic or maniacal, just when the time had arrived to "put my affairs in order," and I realized I had almost done them all, just then...
wham! bam! alakazam! in walked The Relatives From Outer Space, who had moved to Israel nine years ago but happily ignored me until They Broke Up, the wife left the country, and the custodial father realized a Savtadotty was exactly what he and his two daughters needed whenever they got bored fighting with one another.

I decided that G*d gave them to me, so when they visited and subsequently left I would appreciate my gift of solitude and Give Thanks in appropriate ways (such as blogging my Thanks into the Blogosphere). If you have comments, please make them very softly, limiting your exclamation points and emoticons as much as you can. My head is sorely tried.

Somebody, Compose This Opera!

First, you have to read the book "A Bargain for Frances" by Russell and Lillian Hoban, (available used from Amazon for as little as $.01). I had never read it until last month, when I was visiting Tractor and her parents. This book needs to be an opera: it has a better plot than "Othello" and just cries out for an operatic production. I know there are some really good writers out there, but can anyone in the blogosphere compose an opera? Fame and fortune are sure to follow.

A picture from Tractor's birth

It was her birth weight: 5 lbs. 1 oz
She is now (at three months) a whopping 12+ pounds, and getting heavier every day.
(I am testing Ofer's photo uploading thingy...if you see this, it worked! Hooray for Ofer! Hooray for ImageShack.us!)

A Sign?

My computer exploded on Sunday. Do you think that's a sign of too much blogging? The computer is now at the Computer Hospital, being diagnosed, and I'm posting this from a friend's computer. We're hoping it was just the power supply. The 220 Volts here seem to get too hot, just like the weather.

Now, about that spoon...

...the one that was once Cousin Lucy's and came into my possession in the early 1980's. Cousin Lucy was my Mom's first cousin and Mom's Maid of Honor at her wedding to my Dad in 1923. Cousin Lucy never married and worked as an upholstery seamstress. She was the person who made all the slipcovers for the chairs and sofa in my Mom's home [Note: Mom used to put floral-patterned slipcovers on the darkly-upholstered chairs and sofa for the summer, and remove them for the winter. This is what stay-at-home moms had time to do in the Olden Days.] When I got married to elswhere's Dad, Cousin Lucy made the all the curtains for our apartment as a wedding present. When Cousin Lucy moved to a nursing home, she asked me what I wanted from her apartment. So I chose a spoon she had bought to commemorate her first/only trip to Israel. As part of my GRM (Global Redistribution of Matter) project, the spoon is now in elswhere's house. Someday, when I get to be a Power Blogger, I will post a picture of it.

The knack

Now I understand. As a newbie, I didn't realize that the Blogger editing interface for posting comments is different from the editing interface for posting blogs.

(I seem to have a knack for instantly using exceptional features of software (and other) products and running smack into confusion. I used to get paid to do this, but it's something I can't turn off. It's my unique brand of geekiness, haunting me day and night.)

So, because my first attempt at linking was in a comment, not in a blog (the way the designers expect "normal" novices to start, I guess), I was dismayed, and publicly too. It's a relief to discover that putting a link in posts works the way I would expect it to. (I expected the comments-editing window to have that cute little toolbar at the top too).

Many thanks to The Lioness, Uge, and Elswhere for your earnest efforts to help.

Throwing Things Away vs. Redistribution

Why is it so hard to throw things away? Until food grows fur, or until I move house (to another country), I seem to need everything to stay where it was. But then my rooms become cluttered, finding stuff and cleaning gets harder and harder, and I feel overwhelmed. Once I do manage to throw something away, I never regret it, and feel lighter and better, so what's going on here?

Well, thanks to George Lakoff's recent publicity (hurrah! my first link!), I see it's a problem of Framing. Instead of defining the things I throw away as Garbage, even if that's where they go, I need to start thinking about the whole thing as a Physics issue. I am an Agent in the Global Redistribution of Matter (GRM). I am enabling The Matter to move from My Space, where it can be replaced by moderately-breathable Air, to some Other Space - a friend's house, the thrift shop, the garbage dump, the recycling bin, a worthy cause - where its utility will increase. Minimal mourning necessary.

I'm going to to test this theory by redistributing some matter right now, and I'll let you know how it turns out. This may take a while...

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

This morning I tore myself away from the computer for a brief moment to walk the dog, whose alias shall henceforth be Shuki. Actually it was 2PM, and Shuki was getting rather impatient for her morning walk. I intentionally don't take money with me on these dog-centered outings, to avoid impulse-buying (my neighborhood is conducive to shopping). So, equipped with cellphone, keys, and pooping-paper (the Jerusalem Post magazine section has the sturdiest newsprint, I've learned by experiment), Shuki and I set forth down Rothschild Boulevard, Autumn sun blazing and a healthy breeze blowing. We bump into a crowd. Uh-oh. Is it an accident? A walking-tour of Bauhaus Tel-Aviv? No. It's a Fashion Shoot! With a Child Model! And parked trailers hanging over into the street and clogging up traffic!

I wonder if this is what Theodore Herzl had in mind: a normal country. Is a Fashion Shoot a sign of normality? Well they are shooting with cameras, not guns. When we got home, I switched on the last 1/2 hour of the "Underground" (Kustariza) video and watched them shoot with both. I don't think there is any normal country any more.

Don't be depressed. There probably never was: just good days and bad days.

Hello Out There

How am I going to do this without knowing HTML?