israeli politics

I know I’m very late today but this was the best graduation ever.  Even though our grandson had  small parts and the budding seventh grade girls starred in their performance – clearly influenced by years of ticktock – the script and the concept were incredible.  The incorporation of the problems of Covid, quarantine, absent teachers, cell-phone addiction, multi-culturalism and gender fluidity were all involved. Everything is incorporated into a plot in which the fairy-tale heroes, threatened with disappearance because the children don’t read, invoke Aladdin’s geni, and he sends them to become substitute teachers.  Since they know nothing else, they teach whatever they were expert at.  But then the school is taken over by witches which are finally overcome by their incorporation into the integrated soccer team…

Well, you had to be there – along with the hundreds of doting families.

grammar school graduation – june 28, 2022 Read Post »

israeli politics

I think the US cancelling of Roe vs. Wade woke us up a bit.  We’re talking about cancelling that silly committee that decides about abortions – especially in the first trimester.   

It passed!  Drug-induced abortions in the first trimester.  No more medical board interview!

abortion moves – june 27, 2022 Read Post »

israeli politics

Two separate subjects.

First: Lavender.  I love lavender.  Full of linalul, it keeps the mosquitoes and snakes away and it puts me to sleep.  And this is the lavender season here. They put it into everything from pillows to ice-cream.    It’s very comforting.

I was also comforted as well by the disagreements being aired in the Likkud party.  I knew there were divisions and they were hiding them for the elections, pretending to be united.  And now the divisions are beginning to become clear.  It makes me miss poor Naftali Bennett more than ever.


likkud and lavender – June 26, 2022 Read Post »

israeli politics

As we sat together with our friends and talked of photography and art, the room began to darken.  My friend said, the end of the Sabbath is always sad, and I thought, it must have been like that for me when I worked – especially when I worked four jobs in order to survive.   I worked all week and could pay attention to my home and friends only on the Sabbath.  There was no internet so I Couldn’t work and . Now the children come on Friday night or Saturday at lunch and we rest for the rest of the week.  

There is something very sad in the way we barely keep the sabbath – and the visit of my friends reminded me of that.   

Unfortunately, I begin the week with a stress test first thing in the morning so I’ll keep this short.

 

end of sabbath sadness – june 25, 2 Read Post »

israeli politics

Oh, no!  Don’t tell me women are going to have to start looking for sane states for an abortion, after 50 years of just a little freedom over their bodies.  They are so traumatic as it is!  I can’t believe people do them for fun and need to be regulated.

Suddenly I recalled poems by Gwendolyn Brooks and Anne Sexton about their abortions, and you can see that what they did was never taken lightly. Brooks’ poem can be found here.

but although I’m sure Sexton’s poem is copyrighted as well, I can’t find it, so I’ll put it below.  I’m sure the world is happy that she didn’t have a third child.  She was amazing but totally crazy:

The Abortion by Anne Sexton
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.

Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,


Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all…
he took the fullness that love began.

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward…this baby that I bleed.
 
In Israel, abortions have to be okayed by a board – I think it is 3 people.  But to my knowledge it is usually okayed.   It must be terrifying to have to explain yourself to a board, though. 

Roe vs.Wade – June 24, 2022 Read Post »

israeli politics

One thing I am always tempted by is reading poetry, so when I was asked 10 days ago to read 8 American poems for an adult education class in the museum, together with a musician, I squeezed it into my schedule.  And every few days, another complication arose, making my job much more difficult.  

Today, when I showed up with my little powerpoint of poems I discovered a large hall, with at least a hundred people, and not enough time for half the poems I’d worked on.  The audience had come for the pianist and the singers, and I was there just to give the rubber stamp of education. 

It was like in college when because my boyfriend was far away I played the beard for at least half a dozen gay friends.

When will I learn my lesson?

adult education – june 24,2022 Read Post »

israeli politics

“Yom Assal, yom bassal” was one of the first expressions I ever learned in Arabic. “One day honey, one day onion.”  So with the teachers’ strike the kids are getting used to having school every other day.  The school year is almost over, the kids are learning less and less and now – the government is still negotiating with the teachers about salaries.  

Nobody wants to be a teacher anymore anyway.  They don’t see it as a calling – as I came to see it after many years of struggling to stand in front of an audience.  And why should they think of it as a calling when they are not considered important enough to be paid a living wage?

 

june 23, 2022 – Read Post »