My favorite bull

He's got a fig leaf covering his private parts, because his name is "Jerusalem Bull" and we do not want to offend the population.

Have I mentioned that the bulls are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange? You can see more (since last night) photos on Flickr.

The Cows Have Come Home!

Well, maybe they're bulls, but whatever they are, they pulled up to greet me an hour ago as I took Shuki down to Rothschild Blvd. for her evening walk. After doing a double-take to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, I ran home to get my camera, and you can see more photos of the Tel Aviv bulls on flickr.

The truckers told me the bulls are going to be installed up and down the boulevard, but the only reason they could give was that "the mayor has too much money." I wonder whether this is supposed to signal a bull market?

There is definitely life outside my apartment!

Piangi, Piangi: Zefirelli's Traviata gives me tears of joy (and a lotta links)

So many associations with grand opera, all good:

Mom and Dad's courting.

Mom and Dad going out to the Met for subscription Friday night, with Mom all dressed up in a floor-length skirt, and my big brother Googleman babysitting me (heaven!).

Memorizing the Carmen libretto for high school French class, and going to a performance at the Met with my beloved French teacher.

Studying operas at college, with Professor Donald J. Grout, who subsequently wrote a definitive book on the subject.

Taking Mom to see her all-time favorite opera at the Met, Die Rosenkavelier, for what we both knew would be the last time, in December 1979.

Receiving a piece of the original 39th Street New York Metropolitan Opera House (1883) as a gift, purchased from an urban archaeologist after the new Lincoln Center Met was built (1966).


Living within walking distance of the gorgeous Tel Aviv Opera house.

And now, the joy of having seen and heard the delicious performance of La Traviata, Franco Zefirelli's production, with a great soprano, Elena Mosuc, performing the role of Violetta!

Followed today by the joy of meeting, in person, the one and only Noorster!

Some Thanksgiving Memories

Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday when I lived in the USA. We always celebrated it and there was no religious component to introduce conflict or ambiguity. Oma was a fine cook, and stuffed roast turkey was one of her specialties. Among the regular guests were my favorite Aunt, Reba, and her husband Julius. Julius was my mother's brother, and he and Reba were childless, not by choice; for a while during WWII they took in foster children. They were both warm and affectionate people: Reba more outgoing, Julius more gentle.

Reba and Julius lived in the tiniest two-storey house in Suffolk County Long Island, during the days when it was mostly farmland and fishing docks. Reba's clam chowder was legendary (kashrut was a non-issue in my family), and in summer my brothers loved to go clamming with Uncle Julius at the nearby beaches to provide her with ingredients. Uncle Julius cultivated tomatoes and cucumbers in their disproportionately large garden. He also commuted to his work by Long Island Railroad and this was the glamour part: Uncle Julius was one of the first members of the Theatrical Lighting Electricians' Union, and he got to work the spotlights for Broadway shows. I was too little to go, but my older brothers and cousins remember seeing many a Broadway hit from the booth where Uncle Julius worked.

For the first couple of years of my life, we rented the house right next door to Uncle Julius and Aunt Reba, and my earliest memories are of the sounds of the mah jong tiles, and "Bam" and "Crack" coming from the ladies' games downstairs. It was a coal-heated house, and my mother would arise before dawn in winter to light the furnace in the cellar. It was a real cellar, not a basement, with entrance doors outside. (Does anyone know who said "cellar door" is one of the most beautiful phrases in English?)

Anyhow, back to Thanksgiving. A couple of years after I got married, my in-laws and my parents, my husband and I were all invited to Aunt Reba's for Thanksgiving dinner. At that dinner, with all the most important people present, we announced Big News: I was pregnant with elswhere! That Thanksgiving signalled the beginning of a gradual family transition for me from Daughter to HomeMaker. I was 29 years old.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The Streaming Meemies

I just discovered invented an amazing new music genre: double-streaming. First I opened a streaming radio station in RealPlayer. Then, thinking Windows would know enough to block it, I opened another streaming radio station in WinAmp. Oy, Windows! Guess what? The two stations played simultaneously. Move over, Charles Ives.

Now, you might ask, "Why would anyone want to do that?"

Wrong question.

The right question is "How much would someone be willing to pay to do that?"

Or maybe, "How can I turn that into something guys/girls will swoon over and make me beloved by millions?"

Anyhow, ours not to reason why. Just tell your fans you learned it from Savtadotty. And don't worry that I'm losing my marbles. I was always like this. Just ask my kids.

Weekend Radio Memories

Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
Yes, we have it every day.
We sing this song, it will make us strong
And it makes us shout Hurray!
It's good for growing babies
And grownups too, to eat.
For all the family's breakfast
You can't beat Cream of Wheat.

It's a Saturday morning in the 1940's and that commercial is playing for my favorite radio program, "Let's Pretend." (Kudos to the jingle writer for burning his commercial into my brain so thoroughly that it's lasted about 60 years.) Later in the day I might play with a friend or go to the movies (a double-feature). Still later I might have to clean up my stuff from the living-room, if it happened to be my parents' turn to host their monthly card game.

Dad loved to play pinochle. After dinner, on card game nights, we transformed the dining room into a home-casino by reversing the table pads on the maple dining table to their green baize side. Then we put out decks of Bicycle cards, the carousel of red, white, and blue melamine poker chips, and the ash trays…at least half of Dad's friends were cigar-smokers. My mother would have baked a cake or pie for the coffee break, or bought a box of cookies from Jack Rose's Bakery around the corner, and we filled cut-glass dishes with sliced pineapple and dried apricots, dates, marzipan or chocolates.

What a collection of guys Dad's card-player cronies were: Aaron G. the dentist, Jules S. the optometrist, Sam S. the news photographer, Otto R. the dress manufacturer, and Ben F. the disbarred-lawyer who sold encyclopedias. Mrs. R. and Mrs. F. never appeared, and maybe no longer existed. Mrs. S. was exotic because she had an English accent from Leeds…Sam had met her on assignment before the US entered WWII. Mrs. G was exotic because she was Aaron's second wife, worked as his dental assistant, and was not even Jewish!

My mom, Mrs. S., Mrs. G., and my mom's oldest friend, an unmarried lady who "went to business," made up a foursome for Canasta at the bridge table in the living room, which was why I had to remove my stuff.

As the evening progressed, the cigar smoke wafted up to my bedroom where I hid reading a book. Eventually, as the shouting and cursing (in Yiddish) (by the men) got louder and louder, I drifted off to sleep. The sounds and scents of them having a really good time were familiar and comforting.

The next morning, Sunday, my favorite radio program was "The Children's Hour." The song I remember from that one was:

Less work for mother
Let's lend her a hand
Less work for mother
And she'll understand
She's your only treasure
Just make her life a pleasure
Less work for mother dear.

That jingle could have been an appliance, a prepared food or a laundry soap commercial, but it was probably for Horn & Hardart automats, New York's only fast-food and take-out chain, who actually did sponsor the program. I just remember feeling guilty every time I heard the song, like I was supposed to be the one to make less work for mother. Not through buying her take-out food, but by drying the dishes better or practising the piano longer, or something else I couldn't figure out. However, before I did anything for mother, I just had to listen to my program…

Vas You Der, Charlie? Yes, I was.

Being the youngest child of the youngest child, my family's conversations and jokes often referred to events that happened before my time. There were many references to radio shows of the 1930's. Some of them I was able to listen to, like Fibber McGee and Molly, who had a famous closet full of stuff. Every time Molly went to open the closet, Fibber would say "Oh, no, don't open that door." Maybe it was Molly who said it to Fibber. Doesn't matter. Whoever said it, said it too late and you would hear five minutes of "things falling out of a closet" sound effects. And it got even funnier when you knew it was coming.

But the one I never heard was Jack Pearl as Baron Munchausen. I didn't even know it was Jack Pearl's character until I read it in Where Did I Go Right? by his nephew Bernie Brillstein, who became a Hollywood talent manager and producer. Anyhow, apparently the Baron was based on a real German Baron who had a reputation for exaggerating, so I imagine the radio character also exaggerated, and when anyone doubted his reports, he would say his tag line: Vas You Der, Charlie? That phrase has haunted me and made me skeptical of every report of events I didn't personally witness.

Well, as I posted the other day, I really was there at the ceremony/rally at Rabin Square on Saturday night. My photos came out too dark to publish, and I didn't mention the various flags and banners I saw. I found reports of Bill Clinton's appearance in both The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. Each paper quoted Bill's remarks a little differently from what I heard. The differences were not substantial, and perhaps my hearing was not perfect either.

Haaretz:

...he would say 'there is enough of all this missing. If you really think I lived a good life, if you think I made a noble sacrifice in death, then for goodness sake take up my work and see it through to the end,'" Clinton said.

Jerusalem Post:

...he would say 'enough with all of this. Live the good life, and for goodness' sake, continue my work.'

The Haaretz quote is closer to what I heard, except I didn't hear "there is" at the beginning of the Rabin hypothetical quote.

Baron, I vas der, and still I wonder what actually was said. The Rashomon effect.

But wait, there's more.

At the rally, I saw a number of orange flags waving about. I took these to be the orange of the anti-disengagement protest, and I assumed the flag-wavers were there to show respect for Rabin's memory and to show the largely left-wing audience that right-wingers could be civilized too, not necessarily violent fanatics like the convicted assassin.

My companion (an avid leftie) didn't see orange flags at all; she said the flags were red, and belonged to some other group. She didn't think any anti-disengagement people would have come to that rally.*

The Jerusalem Report didn't refer to flags, although they may have mentioned banners. Here's what Haaretz said:

The crowds waved Israeli flags, held candles and sang songs of peace.

*Update: Shaister was there too. The photo at the top of his post shows the flags, near the "Shalom" banner on the left. Are they orange or red?

Then I read Don Radlauer's post, commenting on Adloyada's post regarding history and narratives. And I was reminded that even eyewitnesses as well as historians, construct reports that fit their personal narratives. They have to omit something, no matter how accurate they try to be. There is a spectrum from objective to subjective, more complicated than "true" and "false," and in a different dimension from "right" and "wrong" (or even "right" and "left.")

Live News

I walked over to Rabin Square tonight to see the tekes (ceremony) in honor of the 10th anniversary of Itzhak Rabin's death and to hear Bill Clinton speak. But first, Shimon Peres had some words to say, and then Ahinoam Nini sang, and Aviv Gefen, and David Broza. It felt good to be in that square on this balmy evening and to feel that belonging feeling you get when you know the songs. Then Bill spoke, briefly and quietly:

I am profoundly honored to come here today and stand in solidarity with you. There has not been a single week in the past 10 years during which I didn't think of him or miss him. He is as real to me today as he was on his last day on this earth...

...When you leave here tonight, after we will sing and we will miss him once more, remember: If he were here, he would say 'enough with all of this. Live the good life, and for goodness' sake, continue my work.'

Thank you, God bless you, Shalom Haver.

Then, when all the celebrities and politicians started to join Miri Aloni in singing the "Shir HaShalom," the Clintons' security contingent had to be reassured that the area was "sterile" so that Bill could get his wish and come back on stage to sing along. He stayed for "Hatikvah."

First Blogaversary

It's been a year of blogging! I thought I'd better prepare a special first anniversary post, so I went out on a photography expedition, and this is the best I could come up with, from the back of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv. If you're curious about the "Tfu Tfu Tfu," I explain it here, although the exact reference in the context of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, the Queen, and the Hamsa, is rather fuzzy. Interpretations are invited.

A Mogul Moment

Remember the old Hollywood movies that always depicted producer/mogul types sitting at huge desks, with a multitude of telephones ringing simultaneously? (If you do, you're pretty old to be blogging, but so am I.)

Anyhow, last night I was sitting at my PC, more a 21st century version of the fireplace than of a huge mahogany desk, minding everybody's business, talking (for free) on my Skype headset with a friend in London. The phone (now and henceforth renamed the "land line") rang. It was my son Prowesslessnesslessness in Florida, asking for an immediate videochat, which we do with our webcams via Yahoo Messenger with Voice. It had to be immediate, because Little Bear was awake and in a Good Mood, which happens often enough, but not often during my waking hours. P doesn't use Skype because we haven't found a nice cheap wireless headset for it yet, whereas his land line works fine with a wireless headset, but it doesn't do video. Or Internet. I quickly wound up the conversation with my London friend and plugged my webcam into a USB port, opening the Messenger software. Pictures! Voice! Much waving and smiling!

As the videochat progressed, my cellphone rang...so I took a break to answer it, because I could see on the callerID that it was Little Bear's Mother's brother (Family Karma) calling; I thought maybe he wanted to conference chat. It turned out he did want some consultation on how to get his Yahoo Messenger to work with voice, having earlier completed a video-only chat with Little Bear and her family. I suspect his situation is hopeless (temporarily?), because he uses a MacIntosh, while we are merrily waving and chatting on Windows platforms, and told him this sad news. Having fielded his call and returned to a limited pantomime for my granddaughter (she's 15 months old, and vocal but just on the brink of verbal), I ignored the next ringing of my land line. Enough is enough! The scene changed from Hollywood mogul's desk to Ernestine's switchboard - remember Ernestine, the wonderful Lily Tomlin telephone operator character..."Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" (Lily, was it you calling me at 10:30 last night?) (Boy, I am I font of entertainment memories!)

After all the family visiting was over, I sat for a moment, contemplating the array of communication devices and channels sitting on my home desk. So much power! So little influence! Samuel Goldwyn, where are you now?

My News

Yesterday the cable guy came and took away my cable box. There is no antenna, so I don't receive the few state-run stations without cable. I've decided to watch only videos and DVDs, using my TV as a monitor. Even the best TV serials are available on DVDs these days, admittedly a little late, but no later than they're broadcast on Israeli TV anyhow. But what about the news?

Well, I get the headlines continuously on my computer's Internet (someone amusingly described an immigrant relative referring to the Internet as "the Clickonit"). And my Hebrew has never been good enough to follow the Israeli commentators' analyses, so I'm stuck with the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz in English, which are also available on my computer. As are the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, most other newspapers of record and most of the magazines I subscribe to. I live near a major thoroughfare, so a series of sirens wailing tells me that there's been a terrorist attack on Tel Aviv. I always call my local friends to see whether they're OK in that instance, no matter where in the city the bombing occurred. The scuds from the first Gulf War were visible and audible from my apartment, so TV was redundant.

When I was in ulpan (total immersion Hebrew school) in 1988, 1989, and again in 1992, the teachers all made the mistake of trying to motivate me to read by saying "You need to read the Israeli newspapers." As far as I could tell, the Israeli newspapers carried mostly news I did not need to read in Hebrew, and I didn't get motivated. If any of them had said "You need to be able to read Yehuda Amichai's poems in the original," or "Amos Oz writes the most beautiful Hebrew," I might have pushed myself a little more. And may still.

About 10 years ago I put myself on a major stress management campaign. It occurred to me (finally) that I had undertaken a big life change and needed every resource possible to make a go of it. I tried yoga, biofeedback, tai chi, talk therapy, even acupuncture. The acupuncturist was the best: he advised walking, and when I didn't comply, he practically ordered me, with an irresistible twinkle in his eye, to get a dog! It turned out to be the best stress-manager for me.

But things seem to have gotten worse everywhere since then. Or maybe my awareness has grown more acute. Mainstream news coverage screams at me, with disasters on every page. I need to turn down the volume, so I've cancelled my TV. With blogs I can get both ground-level and pundit-level news reviews 24/7. More than enough for me. Am I cocooning or am I doing a 21st century thing? Or both?

Going off to take the dog for a walk now.

My Latest Pet (updated)

He was on the ceiling last night, but not this morning. I wonder where he went? I'm not buying a leash, a bed, or special food for this one. I also wonder what those other little objects are up there. It's a 12-foot-high ceiling cum terrarium. Think it's time to call the painter, who is rumored to be vacationing in India after the busy pre-Rosh Hashana painting season.

***************
Update: he's about 4 inches long from head to end of tail.