Tel Aviv Diary - August 18-22, 2013 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

August 18, 2013

A few months ago we had a conference on Phillip Roth's Nemesis which is about the polio epidemic in the US in the fifties. I hated reading the book. And now we're all getting our kids inoculated with live viruses. Neither Ezi nor I know if we were inoculated way back then, and since he's very vulnerable we've got to find out what to do. Tomorrow he gets a PETscan and we'll see how vulnerable. But since we hang around kids a lot, change diapers here and there, and we're in the middle of a heat wave, I am not comfortable.

August 19, 2013

Much to be delighted in. Ezi's PET scan turned out fine. No details yet - the paperwork isn't done.

When I came home from coffee with the girls I went to my office which is getting cleaner by the minute, and Ezi came in to keep me company. He started poking around and I was about to tell him to keep his paws off my stuff when suddenly he turned up with a tape that said "Hasia" on it. It's the tape I've been promising to find for my brother for months. I didn't want to listen to it - just turn it into a CD for my cousins and brother - because I remembered the last time I heard it I had to run out of the room. But we had to listen to a little bit while Ezi was trying to figure out how to make a copy. She gives amazing details that put me right there, naked with my aunts and grandmother, before a sadistic Polish guard named Max. But I need to listen when I'm less vulnerable.

August 21, 2013

What if your government was using poison gas to keep you from rebelling?

Poison gas.

An ophthalmologist is trained to save vision, to keep people from getting sick. How many thousands have been killed...

See why I'm going crazy. I've spent the evening doing government forms for the writers' association and then screwed the whole thing up with some stupid mistake which may now be totally irreversible, and have no right to even complain. My government may be driving me crazy with this and with policies that make me tear my hair out, but it isn't trying to kill me.

On the contrary, we're deep into polio vaccines right now. When I had my ultrasound in Ra'anana yesterday, i had to plow through crowds of mothers with kids getting their inoculations at the entrance. I really didn't like the idea of vaccines at the entrance - but it's probably been upgraded by now.

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