Mermaid Girl is the one who made me a Savta

Have a look at Mermaid Girl's kindergarten school photo. If only teleportation could get her over here for Friday night dinners! Sometimes telephone, Skype, and videochats are just not enough.

wikimeises or meiseswiki

In a burst of lateral thinking, I decided to invent wikimeises, or maybe it's meiseswiki? Since I have no idea how to create a wiki, I leave that to you younger folks. However, from meises I know a little. They are - strictly speaking - Yiddish tales or myths. The most commonly-known meises are bubbameises, or grandma's tales. The interesting thing about bubbameises is, ongoing scientific research sometimes proves them valid. Now that I am becoming chronologically-advantaged, these discoveries are heart-warming indications that we grandmas might still have some worthwhile life-experience to share, albeit gleaned without batteries, surge-protectors, crash-helmets, or professionally-installed carseats.

For example, chicken soup. Some medical researchers - probably during a snivelly flu season - decided to test the bubbameise about chicken soup being good for colds, and voila! It is!

Another meise I remember is "Feed a cold, starve a fever." For the one reader who knows the difference, this could be written as "Feed a cold; starve a fever." Does the the comma represent "therefore" and the the semicolon "but"? Which is it? I don't know. And does either one work? Don't know that either.

How about making funny faces? I seem to remember being cautioned that my face could get stuck that way. (Maybe it did.)

Feel free to contribute your own bubbameises either via comments here or posts on your own blog. One day they could be canonized in a wiki devoted to meises.

A Wonderful Discovery

I was listening to the classical music station, waiting for a very long time to hear the announcer tell me who composed the amazing (and very long) piece. I recognized the melody as one of Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, but the arrangement is very jazzy. Finally I ran out of patience and googled "Mahler jazz" and learn who the composer is: Uri Caine. If you've never heard of him, the following snippet of a review will either intrigue you or send you running to your nearest Grateful Dead or Chopin or Elvis or K.D. Laing.

Lebrecht writes:

He [Caine] has redone Das Lied [Song of the Earth] with a Chinese orchestra, turned the Second Symphony Urlicht into a lonely-heart lament, imposed a Native American chant on the Fifth symphony and given the death of children a smoky nightclub gloss. What started as a fad for subversive Mahlerites has grown into a trans-generic cult.

I'm adding Uri Caine to my Amazon wish list this minute!

Somebody in Minneapolis has a Sense of Humor

My niece the soccer mom lives in Minneapolis. One of her volunteer gigs is to help someone organize some Youth Orchestra programs. She told me she enjoys working with the genial administrator, who is also a part-time conductor and refers to himself as "a Semi-Conductor."

I Heart my Heart

Shabbat morning (that's Saturday morning for the rest of you) I was awakened at the unGodly hour (and on Shabbat!) of 6AM, by my heart. The dear thing had decided to go into runaway beating, probably just to remind me that I have one and to stop being so mean. Anyhow, upon the advice of the Doctor on the Wall, I took myself by taxi to the nearest Hospital Emergency Room, a five-minute ride.

Nobody was doing much of anything over there, what with the day and the early hour, so I meandered past the empty reception area (!) straight into "triage," where I was promptly instructed to lie supine on the nearest gurney and tell my sad story to a lovely bunch of earnest young faces bursting with eagerness to restore me to a more vivacious state. Blood pressure, blood samples, and a chest x-ray were all taken in the time it would have taken me to make scribbled eggs (mikushkeshet).

After a brief nap, I was awakened and informed that I had not in fact raised an embarrassing hypochondriacal false alarm and indeed showed some signs of possibly interesting potential in the heart area, and would I please, please allow them to admit me for observation for a day. Or two. Depending on what the monitor and further tests showed.

Now came one of those moments when I'm truly grateful moving here 17 years ago: not once did cost enter into the decision, neither on the part of the medical staff nor me. How comforting! How right! How civilized!

So I agreed, got rolled to a semi-private room upstairs, hooked to a monitor that bleeped and hee-hawed erratically throughout the day and night, had my blood pressure and temperature taken about three times a day, got interviewed and examined by a team of doctors only slightly older than Mermaid Girl, got fed bland chicken midday dinners twice (once roasted, once boiled), a bland dairy supper once, a bland hard-boiled-egg and congealed gluey white warmish cereal breakfast once, got irritated with my busybody roommate who banged her metal nighttable drawers open and closed all night, and finally was discharged yesterday afternoon with a referral letter to my family doctor and instructions for further tests at my earliest convenience.

The main reason I decided to pay attention to the brief flibberty gibberty of my heart two mornings ago was to avoid realizing my melodramatic fantasy of collapsing at the 11AM brunch I had been invited to. I didn't want to stoop to such a cheap attention-getting maneuver, so "Shuki" represented me at the brunch, and the host and guests very kindly visited/called me in the hospital instead!

Thanks, guys. I'm just fine and it is my heartfelt hope to attend the next brunch, after my treadmill test.

For Hypochondriacs

Trigenital neuralgia

For Geeks

Database Administrator = Lord of the Files

For Real Opera Lovers

"Highlights" albums = The Reduction of the Seraglio

Yom Kippur Irony

Note: If I've written about this somewhere earlier on my blog, it's just a symptom of encroaching senility...no biggie.

I grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Most of my classmates' families belonged to Conservative synagogues and attended services on holidays only. My family were not affiliated, but we observed holidays by having festive meals with many guests and what I later learned were traditional foods.

On Yom Kippur I stayed home from public school, as did many of the teachers. Because we were not observant and I had normal little-girl energy, I wanted to go outside and play, especially to roller-skate and ride my bike. My parents forbade me to do this, because according to their social code it was disrespectful of the more observant neighbors.

How astonishing and ironic to discover that Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv is the day for kids (and adults) to roller-skate and bike.

Don't Give Up

Sailorman 2005
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

Just after Thanksgiving, 2000, my bachelor brother Sailorman collapsed at home in Southern California. Thus began a long sojourn from hospital to hospital to rehab to "independent living" to full-service nursing home.

During those years there were many times when he was taciturn (which was normal for him), disoriented and depressed. Visiting him was an unrewarding and sad experience, and none of the family looked forward to it. Sailorman was the oldest of my two older brothers, and the younger one (now deceased) seemed to have inherited a disproportionate amount of geniality and sociability.

Through the intervention of good doctors, good social workers, and good luck, Sailorman gradually received proper medical and social services. Last year he amazingly developed a "crush" on his glamorous activities director, the one we refer to as "Stupefyin' Jones," who fortunately is both fond of him and good-hearted.

The Jewish Family Services case worker I found for him is a gem, and she recently set him up with a volunteer visitor to the homebound elderly (Sailorman is 79).

Last week I happened to call him when the volunteer was visiting, so I cut short my call and followed up a few days later. I wish I had recorded that conversation as a reminder that where there's life, there's hope.

Me: How's your girlfriend?
Sailorman: Which one?

Gmar Hatimah Tovah!

My dog is the one on the right

The New Yorker, September 12, 2005 (thank you, Steve)

Global Warming Slows Down in Tel Aviv

Every summer in Tel Aviv I think it's hotter than the summer before. Then, around early October, the unbearably hot time of the day shrinks down to a smaller and smaller range...in summer it gets too hot for me to go out by 9AM and becomes bearable after 8PM, then in September 10AM until 6PM, then in October 11AM until 4PM. Of course I do go out during those hours, but I try to minimize the time I remain outside of air-conditioning. Then we change the clocks back and it's Fall or whatever you call it when it's no longer too hot and before it gets too cold. Yes, I admit it does get too cold in Tel Aviv eventually, mostly at night and/or mostly indoors. This has something to do with the building materials and techniques. There is no such thing as insulation here, other than stone, and as every Queen knows, stone make those castles quite chilly in winter. That's how we got beautiful Bayeux tapestries and Persian rugs, even on the walls, not to mention those fetching ermine capes. But not in my house. The walls in my house are full of pictures: a few paintings, many prints, some drawings, and many photos. They don't work as insulation at all. And my floors are bare tile: great in summer. I do have one Killim rug covering the bedroom floor, and I love it year round.

So now we are on the cusp of comfortable for the majority of hours every day. I wonder what I'll complain about then?

Rosh Hashanah 5766

Happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year to all my beloved commenters and lurkers.