August 30, 2017
Trump's strategy for improving the economy was predictable from the beginning - wars promote business, reduce unemployment, increase patriotism.
I've always loved the museum shop at the Diaspora museum - small but with lots of alternatives when you have to buy presents. The scarves, the clothes, the bags, the ceramics, all very colorful and inviting and - theoretically - local. Today the U.N. representative was there as well. I didn't see it reported in the news, but maybe that was a little too pro-israel to note.
August 31, 2017
Every day I discover a new restaurant - usually one that everyone knows about it for years. Today I found "Arnolds." Now I used to go to a restaurant called "Arnolds" when I was in my twenties, and my grandson was incredibly hungry so we three went in. It was 'classy' and crowded, but we were immediately taken to a table. Tamar, who has been really sick and was out for the first time, asked to move to another table. They moved us. She wasn't satisfied, so the waitress took her to a corner behind the cash register to check out the temperature. She approved. It turned out that she was lying to the owners about her age - she told her she was six and starting first grade but she is really only four and a half. Any way we got served and I got to talking about the owners - turns out they were the son and grandson of Arnold. And the drawing on the menu brought me back to when Arnold would sit on his high stool that he brought to the guests' table, and rattle off this evening's fare: lamb in yoghurt, for example. The next night would be a totally different menu. The family runs it differently: after all, it is now housed adjacent to an athletic center and the food is basic - fish and chips, schnitzel. A but overpriced, but good.
September 1, 2017
This is what took place on Tuesday:
Today Orit had an MRI and we discovered that MRIs in Israel are divided differently than the US, that the foot, for example, is in two parts, whereas the MRI she was asked to do in the US covers three parts. In other words an MRI in the US means something different, and her injuries can not be seen from an MRI here. It was like the back MRI I was asked to do a few years back that here did not cover the hip. Had it covered the hips I would have had them replaced a long time ago. I have to find out more about this.
September 2, 2017
Haven't reported on the Tel Aviv Museum in a while - today we went when everyone else was having their Sabbath meal. Only tourists. how wonderful to have a chance to see things up close. the amazing exhibit on responses to natural disasters, the paintings of carpets by Fatma Shana, there were really some interesting exhibits. And wonderfully reminiscent works by people like Nurit David, "Self Portrait as Frau Baumann, Frau Schmitz and Frau Schwartz"> reminding me of Roethke's amazing line about the workers in Roethke's father's hothouse, "they plotted for more than themselves." What an important thought.
September 3, 2017
The Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, is using a poem of mine to introduce an exhibit on photographing the Shoah. It is an incredible event for me. I wanted to show in the poem that to photograph people is to connect somehow with them, and that even when documenting. This is the poem.
A little reminder: North Korea is a good friend of Iran.
To Karen Alkalay-Gut Home Page