Fits of Domesticity

Every so often, I am overcome with the need to cook (in this case, Potato Leek soup, shown before and after puree-ing),

bake (in this case, Banana Bread),

and knit (in this case, socks for moi).

Bagrut Bloopers

Finally tackling some papers I've been saving for too long, I discovered a gem of a collection of mistakes that Israeli High School seniors made on their English matriculation exams*:

[Pizza preparation]

Try putting fungus on your pizza.

You should preparing the pizza as follows: Put the floud and water in the bowel and scrumble it with the spoon.

To make pizza, you have to hit the oven first.

[Application for a summer camp counselor job]

Before I started to play basketball, I was a thick child.

I would like to know the conditions in the camp and if I have to sleep with the youth.

I was in America several times and so I speak fluency English.

[Environmental issues]

We should put garbage into a pubic bin.

In Haifa, there are breeding problems among older people.

Because Israel is a small country, it gets dirty easily.

The Israeli drivers use their zippers a lot and make a lot of noise.

*collected by Stephen Schulman, Senior Examiner for the 1994 Bagrut English Examination, published in an AACI magazine.

No More TV

Here are some of the DVD's I've watched since I jettisoned cable and no longer watch TV:

Dr. Strangelove
Rear Window
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Mrs. Miniver
It Happened One Night
Pat and Mike
The Philadelphia Story
The Maltese Falcon
Intermezzo

Yes, I am living in the past. And knitting.

Holiday Indigestion for Sale

Hot Sufganiot (Chanuka donuts), Roladin Hand-baked Goods Chain
The sufganiot shown are the classic jelly-filled ones, as sold today in Tel Aviv. Check out treppenwitz to see Jerusalem other versions, including such travesties as chocolate and butterscotch.

It's Raining, Not Pouring

The last time I blogged about rain, it was pouring. Today it's just intermittently drizzling, but it's grey and chilly, and I've made soup. I wish I could serve some to my friends in New York City who are struggling today to commute without subways or buses (food is love, doncha know?). I'm reading a good book, and if I had a fireplace, I'd curl up in front of the fire. A working fireplace in Israel is at least as rare and luxurious as it is in a Manhattan apartment. Along with everyone who lives in an Israeli top-floor apartment, I'm just hoping the roof won't leak this year. The long-awaited building repairs have been completed, and they included wrapping the roof in some impressively modern rug-like state-of-the-art waterproof stuff. It cost enough to keep us seriously dry. I heard on the radio that Israel's only ski mountain, Mt. Hermon, may get snow later this week. (Actually, I prefer this less factual, more romantic description of Mt. Hermon) A white Chanukah!

Feminism Founders while Hercules Savta Dotty Naps

After I referred to elswhere's post as an inspiration for my post about racism, she pointed out that her post was actually on feminism, not racism. And I replied that indeed it was, and I would prepare a post on feminism.

In the interim I watched a DVD of the brilliant, dated, and timeless movie "Adam's Rib." After ruminating on that movie and its subject for a couple of weeks, I find I have too much very little to say on the subject of feminism. Once (Western) women were able to obtain birth control products easily, everything changed and nothing has changed. Over the last five decades we tried "equal pay for equal work" and we bumped up against various definitions of equal work. Fast-track 80-hour-a-week jobs became available to more women in more industries, but we bumped up against the glass ceiling, child-care problems, and the stay-at-home-mom controversy. Those of us who chose 40-hour-a-week mommy-track jobs were accused by the more radical feminists of betraying The Cause. Those of us who chose heavy-duty management careers were vilified as Wannabe Men, also traitors to The Cause. When I moved to Israel I met a much wider spectrum of positions and more facets, with religious role-definitions and basic survival complicating the issue further. As if that weren't enough, international events pushed the Global Economy onto page one, and no job provided security against Overseas Outsourcing.

Personal relations that turn into pure competitive power struggles go downhill rapidly, but isn't feminism about power? And isn't racism about power? Women Power! Black Power! Jew Power! Muslim Power! Am I a Power-ist? Or an Anti-Power-ist? Where does Capitalism intersect with Social Welfare? I guess the kindergarten curriculum on Sharing needs updating. Uh oh. My mind boggles.

So for the time being, while I go off to study Power and Its Myriad Manifestations, I unilaterally declare elswhere, given her geographical and generational positioning, in charge of Feminism (and Delicious apples), and myself in charge of Middle East Peace (and Hummus). Stay tuned when we present our platform for World Government By The People and For The People, Including Men, Women, and Children of All Ages.

Shameless Short Promotional Post

Some of you new visitors may not know that I am to be praised for my maternal restraint. I control impulses to flog my daughter's wonderful blog with abandon. However, from time to time, I feel it is my duty to my recently-acquired readers to point you to one of her exceptionally interesting and well-written posts.

Balmy Weather

I'm not complaining! No! I'm revelling in the third (or is it fourth?) straight week of delicious balmy weather in Tel Aviv. At the same time, I know we're due for some rainstorms and I fear there might be fierce cold coming, so I'm trying to figure out how to store this lovely warm sunshine and dole it out when it's really needed. I'm dreaming of a mild Christmas.

Birthday Memorial

NewlyPaintedWall
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

The piano was my mother's. Today would have been my mother's 107 birthday! The color colour of the newly-painted wall on the left is Tambour's "English Rose," as it appears in daylight. At night it's much a deeper rich wine color colour. Yes, that's "Shuki" on her bed under the piano.

Holiday Gift for Little Bear

SweaterforLittleBear
Originally uploaded by savtadotty.

The whole Christmas-shopping-thing doesn't happen where I live, and it does where most of my loved-ones live, so this is the season I feel farthest away. I try to send my granddaughters something I make by hand, because it's the next best thing to touching them (sigh).

Another distancing thing is the time-space continuum: packages to the USA from Israel normally take two weeks to arrive, so I have sent most gift packages by now. Unless I get lucky (a web-cam package-opening session), my participation in their holidays is about over. I forgot to photograph the knitted Barbie-outfits I sent to Mermaid Girl.

Can you tell I'm a bit blue? Speaking of blue, the color of Little Bear's sweater is much more lavender than it appears in the photo. I finally learned how to make bobbles, and, drunk with bobbling power, I even made bobble buttons.

Tags of Identity

It seems there is something going on about Blogging Against Racism. Spanglemonkey's and elswhere's posts on the subject have inspired me.

Before the advent of political correctness, there used to be clearly defined categories of identity and you could even ask people to put them on a job application: date of birth, sex, race, religion, nationality, address, education level, profession. You couldn't ask about income, but that was an unstated attribute of identity too, except for Uncle Sam's income tax forms.

The world has changed. People have changed too, at least in superficial ways. And language changes. For example, "Intermarriage" used to mean people of different races or religions got married. It may still mean this, but the phenomenon is so common that the term is losing its value. People of same sexes never married or had children. Now they do. "May-September" romances used to be between a young woman and a much older man, sometimes resulting in marriage. Now it happens the other way as well. Some people had professions, but only a dilettant(e) had more than one in a lifetime. Today the "mid-life crisis" is so common that it's almost an obligatory rite of passage. People may have lived into their 80's or even 90's, but rarely stayed active in matters outside of family after 75. I have reasons to hope that this is no longer the case (!)

Now, for an amazing variety of reasons historical, technological, political, and maybe even biological, identity is becoming more individualized than ever. Categories are handy hooks, but sometimes we get impaled on these very hooks. 21st century technology enables us to trade in our categories for an infinity of tags, and I say "Hurrah!" At the same time, the old categories sometimes serve as an anchor when the plethora of options becomes overwhelming, and this explains fundamentalism. In extreme cases, the reaction to the prospect of infinite diversity results in violence. If the old categories of identity are destroyed, taboos may also be destroyed. Are there no limits? Scary.

I remember from my experience in information modeling I used to draw diagrams for categorizing data, and arrows to show relationships and dependencies. These diagrams got translated into databases, using what may now be considered primitive tools. Search engines have supplemented and in some cases even eliminated physical databases now, and again I say "Hurrah!" The increasing use of tags (labels) in consumer software (like g-mail and flickr) are subtle indicators that the old hierarchical methods of categorizing anything were too limiting to human progress. Hierarchies are the opiates of the masses! Onward and upward with networks! (Not for nothing has the Internet been compared to the Talmud.)

Here are some of my tags, in no particular order: musician, mathematician, computer programmer, systems analyst, tech writer, teacher, usability consultant, mother, grandmother, divorcee, aunt, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, cousin, sexagenerian, heterosexual, American, Jew, Israeli, French-speaker, English-speaker, Hebrew-speaker (hah!), artist, designer, knitter, needlepointer, walker, dancer, reader, baker, cook, opera-lover, choral singer, credit-card shopper, Internet user, blogger. And that's just off the top of my head.

Is it a worthwhile exercise to give yourself and others tags? I guess it depends how you use them. I am a great fan of heterogeneity in my life, so one of my favorite games is to see how many tags I have in common with another person, and how many tags we don't have in common. And then to explore how that person looks at life differently or similarly to me. It's endlessly entertaining, although not always relaxing. (I haven't met a terrorist or a Nazi, but I'm thinking about The Silence of the Lambs, and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood)

I don't want no stinkin' data base! I am not a pigeon, and you can keep your pigeon-holes. (Spammers, beware! I do have limits!)