Little Bear Does Tel Aviv (1)

Parents decapitated as requested...

Little Bear Does Zichron (2)

Wow! A house with stairs! Just what Little Bear needs!

Little Bear Does Zichron (1)

Whisked straight from the airport to Zichron Yaakov...

Where the cousins were prepared...

Let The Party Begin!

Little Bear and her devoted parents arrived safely on schedule this morning. She surprised me by emerging from the baggage claim/customs check area on foot rather than en strolleur. The weary travellers are celebrating her first birthday by taking a nap. B.D. Cake is all decorated, be-candled, and awaiting the reveille of the celebrant(s).

Is America Ready for My New Pink Purse?

Pink Purse
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

Two weeks' warning...(I've just discovered Kipling, and I don't mean Rudyard.)

Framing Blogs and Blogging Frames

Inspired by an article in today's NY Times by Matt Bai and an April article in The Atlantic Monthly by Marc Cooper.

After the 2004 elections, linguist George Lakoff was catapulted into fame above and beyond his academic framework, by the desperation of the defeated Democrats.

Analysis of the sentence above: the metaphor of physical motion, or even missile warfare, is invoked by the words "catapulted" "above and beyond." A tug at the reader's compassionate or cruel nature is provided by the words "desperation" and "defeated."

My own contact with Lakoff's work began with a reading of his "Metaphors We Live By" 1980 classic, co-authored with Mark Johnson, who seems by comparison to have fallen by the wayside or retreated into blissful obscurity, depending on your personal definition of success.

The sentence above is an example of a post-modern author weaseling about exposing her own point of view and, instead, insisting on dragging the hapless reader into the creation of the text.

My shrink in the 1980's, now deceased, who worshipped at the shrine of the brilliant hypnotherapist Dr. Milton Erickson, also now deceased, succeeded in teaching me the basics of re-framing for use in the context of my own life (not to mention the basics of mortality, by example).

Consequently, rather than trying to discuss framing directly in the context of American politics, I would like to think about uses of framing in the context of blogs.

Blogging Power or Power Blogging

Blogging Power is probably a function of readership quality and quantity. There are political blogs and media blogs and various special-interest blogs like knitting blogs or parenting blogs that exercise blogging power. Their power comes from the broadcast model of communication: one central source to many destinations.

Power Blogging is something else…it is the network model of communication. The power is in the feedback activity and the strength of the connections, rather than the strength of the content/message itself.

Politically, one is centralized, the other is decentralized. The balance between the two is an eternal political struggle everywhere: individual, family, village, nation, state, world.

The Addiction Metaphor

I find blogging intoxicating because it exposes me to my potential for both blogging power and power blogging simultaneously with other bloggers. The mind boggles as it blogs.

I think it's time to walk the dog. As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Too Hot to Blog

And it's only mid-July. I'm also busy childproofing my home for the imminent arrival of The Little Bear, and her doting parents. Yes, she's driving all the way from Florida to Tel Aviv. Estimated arrival next Thursday, exactly on her First Birthday. Party plans proceed apace. All of Israel Awaits The Visitation with Great Eagerness.

Fashion credits: Little Bear is wearing a genuine Yalduti-designed, Sheinkin Street Tel Aviv fashion outfit, originally bought four years ago by Savtadotty for little cousin Mermaid Girl. MG and her moms thoughtfully saved and personally delivered the ensemble for Little Bear's first Chanuka/Christmas Winter Break.

Nehama Hendel

I felt like listening to some music I used to love, and I discovered I still love it. Nehama Hendel had a voice reminiscent of Joan Baez, only Nehama was more musically proficient. And the songs she sings are more rhythmically and melodically complicated. I think I'll have to put her entire recorded oeuvre on my wish list. What I really wish is that she had recorded more before she left this world.

Let me know whether you like her singing too.

Frittering my life away

I don't have time for fun I think this is my idea of fun:

· Updating and organizing bookmarks on the browser(s)
· Downloading photos from the digital camera and uploading them to Flickr
· Entering household expenditures into Quicken
· Downloading updates and running the spyware program
· Synchronizing Palm Pilot and desktop data
· Checking and commenting on blogs
· Updating my blogroll
· Checking my blog site meter
· Revising my Living Will/Advanced Health Directive
· Walking my dog
· Charging rechargeable batteries

Thank God my children were almost grown up before I got a PC (in 1982) and a dog.

Note: there is no file backup activity listed in my schedule…my CD burner is broken, but I never did it anyhow. Risk-loving fool.

Savtadotty is a grouch

I took the Big Five Personality Test when I was feeling grouchy, so my scores are not surprising, but hopefully not accurate either: I'm a O95-C47-E31-A14-N84 Big Five!!

Sweater Finished

I forgot to mention in my earlier post, it's for Mermaid Girl's fourth cousin, the one who was named after Aristedes de Sousa Mendes, the man who saved his grandmother's life in 1942.

Scattered and Confused Musings on Feeling, Thinking, Action: Why Democracy is Good for Religion

I've disabled comments on this post because I don't want to fall into the quicksand of political blogging: it would be bad for my health. You're welcome to send me e-mail comments, though. The Lioness is better suited for this battle, and that's why she's a Lioness and I'm not.

Some people ignore one or two of these three human capabilities. Others try to always line them up, and think they are admirable for being authentic. But feelings should not dictate action without thinking, and all thinking depends on knowledge.

Sometimes thinking and knowledge are flawed. So much for militant Islam. And Christian Crusaders. And Meir Kahane's followers. And Nazis. And adolescent acting-out. And two-year-olds. And paranoid schizophrenia. In fact, a problem in any large organized group is keeping knowledge current. The CIA, the KGB, MI5, Scotland Yard, the FBI and Interpol spend their time and their taxpayers' money updating their knowledge. Sometimes they also update their thinking. One hopes.

I think killing in self-defense is justifiable. What constitutes self-defense? It's not a feeling of fear, it's physically threatening actions by others. Is the state a "self?" Well in fact, that is the purpose of the state. To take over responsibility for the physical self-defense of its citizens in as many situations as possible. That's why you're supposed to call the police if you are physically threatened and have time. That's why "honor killing" is obnoxious to modernists. It's taking the law into your own lands, instead of observing or changing the law. If China declares war on Saudi Arabia, that constitutes a physical threat to Saudi Arabia. Is a religious denomination a "self?" Kind of. Can Protestantism present a physical threat to Islam? Certainly it can, in the context of a state or on an individual basis. But Islam itself is not a state. And neither is Al-Qaeda. Is Islam a "self?" Is Iraq? Is Judaism a "self?" Israel is, but it's not theocracy. So anti-semitism, and anti-islamism undermine democracy, which must teach tolerance and pluralism as state principles. So it is in Protestant England or in Jewish Israel or in Catholic Italy. (For that matter, is Microsoft a "self?" Only for contracts and liability.)

What about corruption in the workplace? It's a slippery slope. Is awarding a contract to a friend a corrupt act? Wrong question. The right question is: under what circumstances is it corrupt to award a contract to a friend? Because when you are a very small business owner, awarding a contract to a friend may be cost-effective. You don't have a Purchasing Department and you know your friend does good work. But as you become the head of a government agency or a large corporation, you have to change your procedures. You have to delegate Purchasing and other decisions. You have to define merit. If you don't, corruption grows. People don't naturally change their procedures, especially when they've been successful. That's why democracies require eternal vigilance. So do banks. So does everyone. And that's why families can't teach everything one needs to know in modern society, except how to learn and change.

Checks and balances keep civilization alive in the face of man-made and natural disasters. I just wish the Palestinians would change their educational materials. [And the Israelis would reduce their maximum public school class size from 40 to 25!]

London

When will Europe and Great Britain "get it?" We are all Israelis, guys.
______________________________________________________________________

Update: Silvan Shalom, Israel's Foreign Minister, said it in more diplomatic language, quoted from Haaretz:

"It should always be recalled that we have been saying for many years, to our great sorrow, that people have always thought that terrorism is only Israel's problem," Shalom continued. "We have said that ultimately terrorism can strike any country in the world that has an ideology of freedom, of democracy, that has an ideology of openness."

Lou Sigel z''l

Our rabbi, Louis Sigel, is gone.

Although after many years' membership in his Reform Temple, I started attending Conservative services to find out why my teenage daughter was getting up early on Saturday mornings, Rabbi Sigel always represented to me the best of the rabbinate, across denominational lines. He was a dignified scholar, short, a bit pompous but not at all unapproachable, and he had a great influence on me.

Drying Hair in Zichron

Hair On a Swing
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

I don't usually walk around with my hair hanging down like this, but I don't like to use hair dryers. I'm actually multi-processing in this picture: drying my hair and watching the grass grow.

Spell with Flickr

You can do it too. Thanks for the link, Fred.

Gay Pride, Jerusalem 2005

I decided to go to Jerusalem to march with the parents participating in the Gay Pride parade yesterday. I was grateful that the parade was scheduled to begin at 7PM, when the heat of the day is over. We were blessed with wonderful weather and excellent police protection. Sad to say, we needed the police: three paraders were stabbed by ultra-religious objectors [UPDATE: news reports say it was one "youth" who escaped, with the aid of fellow gangsters cohorts]. Luckily the victims were not critically injured, and were taken to hospital immediately.

[UPDATE: news headlines state that the parade was stopped. It was, for about five minutes, and then it resumed. I guess they didn't have room in the headlines for "briefly."]

Compared to Tel Aviv, it was a completely different experience. Much more confrontational, scary, smelly (stink bomb from objectors). In sum, the Tel Aviv Pride parade is like a party, the way I imagine Mardi Gras in Rio, whereas the Jerusalem Pride parade was like a protest march.