The Amazing Purim Superhero Cake

The Amazing Purim Superhero Cake, a photo by Keshet: GLBT inclusion in the Jewish Community on Flickr.

My daughter wrote a prize-winning book. It's called "the Amazing Purim Superhero." It was just published by Kar-Ben. Some people in Miami decided to have a party to celebrate the publication of my daughter's book. They had a cake depicting the book's cover. I am overwhelmed.

A voice from the past ... and the future

I can't believe over six months have passed since my last post. I guess facebook has replaced blogger as my habitual journal tool, but sometimes it's nice to stretch out and write some more rambling thoughts. Littlest granddaughter ("The Doodle") is now 13 months old and has stolen my heart. My time in Florida this year (well, actually last year, but let's not quibble) has been spent doing lots and lots of babysitting and some grown-up socializing for me, especially when The Doodle started mornings at daycare after her first birthday. This week's high point will be taking all three of my granddaughters to the kids day orchestra rehearsal conducted by Itzhak Perlman at his Perlman Music Program in Sarasota! Yes, the Vancouver branch is making the trek southward for some Florida sunshine, and I will have my brood all together for a week. My heart is full..

Grandma Sophie Gold

Movie clip was recorded by my father in 1938, of his mother pushing me in my carriage, on Palm Street in Lindenhurst, Long Island. Dad's camera was 16mm. I transcribed the film to VHS cassette several years ago and then to DVD last year. Finally, yesterday, I got it into iMovie. Subtitles and music to come...stay tuned.

Landlady Savta

Owning two homes is not an indicator of wealth: it's an indicator of having beloved family in North America and having a life in Tel Aviv. To finance this dilemma, I plan to rent out whichever home I'm not in. So far, the plan is to be based in Israel for seven months, Florida for the remaining five. The Florida home is in a resort town, and the "high season" starts in January, so that's when that home is available for rent.

Tel Aviv is a year-round place, but I realized that my absence coincides with the academic calendar's Fall semester, so I've listed my Tel Aviv apartment on a web site called Sabbatical Homes. To make it tenant-friendly, my dear friend and professional Interior Designer Danny Isaacs helped me re-configure the living spaces and the result is so lovely I'm planning to keep it this way year-round!

If you know a couple or a single person looking to make a four- or five-month sojourn in Israel between the months of August and January, not necessarily an academic, but necessarily responsible and honest, please tell them about my wonderfully-located home.

More Jaffa

I love going to evening art class so I can see this scene each week at twilight. My art teacher's studio is just beyond the archway, and is so rich with Old City atmosphere that I immediately go into a different place in my head when I enter. All stress, strife, conflict, tension, and worries evaporate. Aaaaah.

Mission Accomplished

Back home in Tel Aviv, having established my Florida base and played an appropriate grandmotherly role in the birth of my third granddaughter. The stay was neatly divided into two parts:

Part 1 - furnishing the condo (thank you Beverly S., Anne L., Lois & Harold R., Goodwill, Craig's List, Target, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and Sur La Table).

Part 2 - babysitting and cooking.

There were also a Part 3 and a Part 4 , which overlapped with Part 2: hosting houseguests, and finding a tenant for Feb-May (thanks again to Craig's List).

During the course of Part 4 I learned that my condo's target market is not exactly the typical snowbird who wants a swimming pool, water views, fitness room, and tennis court, all in a tropically-landscaped suburban setting. The people who want to live in my condo are people who may be thinking of buying in the area but in any case want to try Sarasota out during the best weather months, and also want to have the benefit of a more urban experience: walking to Whole Foods, the beautiful public library complete with aquarium, the opera, the Community Arts Center, Main Street cafes, shops, and festivals, the Players Community Theater, etc. They also don't want to pay for all the luxurious amenities, which add about $3,000 a month to the high season rents. [Note: as Brian reminds me, I have not considered foreign tourists, whose vacation needs don't necessarily match the snowbirds'.]

All of this by way of saying that if you know of such a person or couple, probably but not necessarily over 50, who are tired of Northern winters and are considering a 4-month (or longer) interlude in a reasonably-priced, comfortable, fully-furnished, 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom Florida condo starting Feb. 1, 2012, send them my way please.

New Granddaughter!!!

Born Saturday, November 6, 2010 at 11:40AM Mother, daughter, father, big sister, and grandparents all doing well.

It doesn't get better than this!

Copenhagen!

The long-awaited family reunion is now over. It was everything I wanted: centrally-located temporary home, mild weather, plenty of sights to see, both granddaughters and their parents in the same place at the same time. My heart is full :-)

A Matter of Life and Death

A very important and serious read, on the most important subject ever.

Hospice medical care for dying patients: newyorker.com

Gone Fishing

Here it is, three months later, and not a word from me! How did you manage, dear reader (in this case, I fear the singular is literal)? For now, no news is indeed good news: I've been mostly lazy, sometimes dreamy, and sometimes euphoric over the expectation of another grandchild who kindly agreed to arrive in Florida during my stay there this Fall.

Art works

Click on the picture to see what else I've been up to.

Synthesis

I have bought an apartment in Florida very near my son and his family.

My granddaughters made me do it, although they don't know it. Not having had a grandparent as I grew up, I had no idea what grandparenting - or should I say grandchilding? - involved, but living in the intensely familial atmosphere of Israel for 22 years has demonstrated its many benefits at one remove. These little girls are now 5 and 9, and the years seem to be accelerating. As they mature, I want to know them as people and be involved in some of their day-to-day events. I have no medical reason to expect my life to end soon, but it will end someday, and it would be nice to be able to say "Goodbye" to my children in person, not to mention the advantage of having their advocacy in the face of institutions that - everywhere in the developed world - are mostly geared to curing. To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, "There ain't no cure for [mortality] love."

If I could afford it, I would also buy an apartment near my daughter, but she happens to live in the Pacific Northwest, where real estate was almost unaffected by the recent bursting bubble, so financial considerations prevent that. Being on the same continent as she should make it easier for us to spend more time together.

As it is, I will still be in Israel for part of the year, so there remains the problem of summer heat in both Tel Aviv and Florida. Air-conditioning is not a solution for someone whose preference is walking to do daily life errands: grocery shopping, post office, bank, walking the dog, etc. Anyone need a responsible house-sitter in a place that's nice and cool in August?

Y'All Come Down Real Soon

Two whole months without posting? To readers who don't communicate with me in any other way, no I'm not dead! I've just been pretty much preoccupied with the impending purchase of a small second home base, in FLORIDA (West Coast)! I don't want to publish details until the deal is done, which, if things go according to schedule, will be one month from today. What you need to know now is: there will be a guest room and a guest bathroom. So if the prospect of a living-room sofa bed and a shared bathroom in Tel Aviv does not appeal, that excuse for not visiting will soon be eliminated.

Provincial? Choose your province.

Hello everyone! (all 12 of you)

I returned last night from week in Florida, visiting Little Bear and her parents. The inconvenience and expense of air travel should not be undertaken lightly - one needs strong motivation, especially when it is not a business trip. I think I went through 9 or 10 security checks altogether, and one pat-down (at London's Heathrow airport), and many weather delays. The news in Florida was all Haiti all the time. Nothing about Gaza, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Syria, not even Iraq or Iran. Those Floridians do know how to be provincial. So I get home and discover the local news headlines: Israeli medical aid to Haiti. Hah!

Savlanut

Savlanut means "patience" in hebrew. It is one of the first words I learned, and also one of the first words I taught Mermaid Girl.

When you grow up in a young country like the USA (compared to those of Europe, which were my only other frame of reference for the first half of my life), you don't learn much about patience. The time horizon of four years (based on the Presidential election cycle) is about a long as you can think, and working in a stockholder-owned corporation shortens that time horizon to one year at best. Skipping grades at school just reinforces the idea that faster=better. So I was especially disappointed in myself that one of my mothering projects didn't get finished in time. I thought.

See, after my divorce, like all divorced parents (I hope), I felt some guilt with regard to my children. And, much as I didn't want to let that guilt influence my raising them, sometimes I fell into the trap. Just before one Chanuka in the 1970's, when the New York City Museum offered a build-an-authentic-turn-of-the-century-city-dollhouse kit, I succumbed. [Note: "turn-of-the-century" meant from the 19th to the 20th century back in those days.] Of course the offer also addressed some deep dollhouse-loving memories of my own. And when, for a small additional price per item, I could buy authentic turn-of-the-century doll-sized urniture, and wallpaper (!), my resistance was demolished as surely as most real-life turn-of-the-century-houses were.

Unfortunately, the demands of single-motherhood, such as work, carpooling, and home ownership, seemed to intrude on dollhouse time with my daughter, and she suddenly grew up and lost interest in dollhouses before the miniature floral patterned wallpaper was hung. So I stored it all in my brother's basement along with the vinyl record albums, and the wedding dress

Over the years, from time to time, my sister-in-law would ask me what to do with the stored items. Luckily she was patient, and gradually stuff got picked up, mailed, or donated. Eventually, all that was left was the dollhouse furniture. Until this year, when I suggested it might be time for Little Mermaid to enjoy it. It arrive last week, and her reaction: "Better than a million Webkinz."

Sometimes things take longer than you think to sort themselves out. If you have savlanut, that is.

December already? *Updated **Updated again!

The whole month of November flew by without a post by me, while other bloggers were posting away, sometimes daily. Why was I so negligent, you ask? (Assuming there are any of you still out there.) Well here's what was going on:

1. My fifth blogaversary. If that does not explain why I didn't post during November, you just don't know my logic. If you do know my logic, please explain it to me.**

2. Houseguest #1. She went to New York for what she thought would be two months, and sublet her Tel Aviv flat for two months. She returned two weeks early and needed to crash at various friends'. I was good for six nights. If she'd stayed longer, I wouldn't have known, because each day she left before I awoke and returned after I went to sleep, and my dog knows her and therefore didn't bark to announce her comings or goings.

3. Houseguest #2. She needed a brief R&R from her Stressful Life Up North, and I was please to offer Soup Salon + Shabbat hospitality. Fun trading dog stories.

4. Houseguests #3&4. My nephew and his new bride on their first trip to Israel together, although both of them have been before. I got to meet the bride and reaffirm my belief in God: he had to wait until he was 48 to find his beshert, but he did and so did she! It was fun to introduce her to a local friend I thought would be compatible, and to discover that they both studied flute with the same teachers in Paris and Germany!

5. Houseguest #5. The Lord of the Dascha, come to celebrate Thanksgiving. Although it was a day late and there was no turkey, but there was stuffing (modified Savtadotty logic).

6. Houseguest #6. A toy poodle who is still here and will be returning to her convalescing owner in three more days. The excitement of having a second dog in the house has kept both Shuki and me in a state of heightened awareness for the last two weeks.

7. I discovered the Cafe Alexandria downstairs and spent a lot of time and a little money enjoying their excellent bran bread, antipasti, cookies, and shipudim, not in that order. Many more items on their menu to sample, so I should be spending some more happy hours downstairs this month. Cafe A. is dog-friendly and have free wi-fi, but wrangling two dogs was enough for me without shlepping my laptop too. Hence, no blogging.

8. Knitting many a miniature item to mail in time for Chanuka, which has been done. Completed: American Girl Doll dress, American Girl Doll knee socks, American Girl Doll poncho, American Girl Doll and Canadian Girl owner matching sweaters. That last took a bit of marathon knitting, as Canadian Girl owner is growing at a rapid rate, and her sweater was girls' size 12!

9. Painting in oils. I've completed several paintings, and several others are in progress. In case you didn't know, oil takes a long time to dry, but it is also very forgiving, and a couple of the paintings that I thought were done I decided needed a few more touches. Photos will be posted when I've put the final coat of varnish on...stay tuned, o ye loyal remnant!

* How could I forget this one?
10. Bible study. In a doomed attempt to fill a cavernous gap in my education, I take the occasional course in Torah or something vaguely related, provided sat least some of the instruction is in English. In November I started a class on Isaiah, who seems to be quite the scold. but we're only up to Chapter 6 of book One so I'm hoping I.'s prophecies will be a bit more hopeful as we progress. If it's all stick and no carrot, Isaiah won't make it to my Favorites list, I'm warning you.

** I've found the single word for my logic, but it's only in Hebrew: davka! It works for both examples in this post.

Hurray for Air France!

I didn't mention in my post about Iceland, but my Facebook friends know that I missed my original flight there from Tel Aviv via Paris, booked through Expedia. The story was so upsetting that I didn't want to revisit it en blogge for posterity, but it involved my oversleeping and forgetting some essential medicine in the fridge and having to return for it. Although we (Pippi Bluestocking, Little Bear, and I) arrived at the airport one hour before the flight took off, the Air-France check-in window had closed by the time we got through the first security line. After a disappointing exchange with the ticket agent, who said she couldn't re-book us that day, we spent an hour on our laptops and cellphone, rebooking ourselves via Lufthansa through Vienna and Amsterdam. We were lucky to find tickets almost as cheap as the first ones, and managed to race through two airports in time to catch our flights. Expedia assured us we were entitled to a refund from Air France, who had cancelled our itinerary before takeoff.

A few weeks after returning home, I mustered the energy to send an eloquent plea to the Air France customer service Post Office box (in Florida!), including copies of everything relevant: Expedia confirmation notice, boarding documents, letter from my doctor regarding the medication, etc. etc. I really didn't expect anything to happen, but it was worth a try.

I checked my credit card statement today, and there was a full credit from Air France for all three tickets! Miracles can happen!

More Painting in Oil

...continued from version 1.0...The colors don't show up accurately in the photo, but even if they did, I think they're too muddy. However I enjoyed immensely playing with various brush strokes, and managed to channel a little Van Gogh in at least one part. Can you spot it?

Next week I'll see what I can do to brighten up the colors. Slathering paint with a palette knife is really a kick.

Painting in Oil

While I was in New York, I took a photo of some interesting buildings over on the West Side in the 50's. Now that I'm home, I'm getting back into my regular routine, which includes a once-a-week studio art class. My wonderful teacher encouraged me to start using oil paint, which I last used in 1953. But this time I'm learning about layering the paint, so what I've accomplished so far is just the first layer. I can't wait to see what happens next!

After Twenty-One Years in Israel

How strange that I spent my 21st anniversary of making aliyah in the very place I left on August 28, 1988: New York City. This trip, which I called my Farewell Tour until good friend renamed it First Farewell Tour, was accentuated by a couple of excursions to my childhood home (Forest Hills) and my children's childhood home (Teaneck, NJ). For some reason I had expected to see both places in worse shape than when I left them, but I was pleasantly surprised to find them the same or better. Post-war apartment buildings that blocked my bedroom view of the Empire State Building in 1947 have been converted to co-ops with luxurious landscaping in front of their upgraded lobby doors. Young families seemed to be using every inch of recreation space, and an overall wholesomeness was in the air. My elementary, junior high, and high schools were still in use and, in preparation for the start of the school year, the doors were open for teachers and administrators. They were also open for old alumnae, as my old chum (from the second grade) and I discovered, although we were a bit taken aback by the proliferation of security guards in the lobbies.

In contrast, my views of Manhattan were discouraging. I suppose it's not surprising that, what with the recent financial disaster, the investment capital of the USA should show signs of distress, but I was still shocked to see so many empty storefronts on Madison Avenue. Apparently the thriving middle-class has adopted Brooklyn as its up-and-coming home base, a great irony to one whose relatives fled Brooklyn as soon as possible 60+ years ago. I have to remind myself that New York is a city of very rapid change, and the up-and-down cycles of various neighborhoods proceed more quickly than in slower-paced places - i.e., most of the world. I just never before saw a "down" cycle on the Upper East Side.

The other thing I noticed about New York City, which was always a country-within-a-country, is that is has lost some of its "otherness" with respect to the rest of the USA. The prevalence of national chain stores made it more like a "mall with a subway". Some of those chains started in New York decades ago, but the flagship stores have lost their edge: shopping in Bloomingdale's in New York is no longer a unique experience: you can shop in a similarly-appointed Bloomingdale's in any upscale shopping mall throughout the country, and the salespeople will be equally unhelpful. Even a nice lunch spot like "Le Pain Quotidien" which I would have taken for a New York discovery, seems to be an international franchise imported from Belgium. Globalization does have its down side: homogenization.

It was with mixed feelings that I returned to the building boom in Tel Aviv. From my very limited understanding of economics, the head of the Bank of Israel, a transplanted American named Stanley Fischer, saved Israel from serious financial calamity this time around, by showing unwavering resolve against the pressures of local crony capitalism principles. Thank you Stanley!

To keep from feeling smug, I remember having similar faith in Alan Greenspan, so things can always take a turn for the worse. I think I'm a bit sad at the state of the world, but it could just be the remnants of jet lag the week of reflection preceding Yom Kippur has got me down. And saying "goodbye" to my children and grandchildren yet again reminds me that there's no free lunch. Damn!

L'Shanah Tova

Thanks to Tzvi Fabian of the Isramac group on Yahoo for this excellent New Year's greeting. Tzvi warned, "Don't try this at home."