January 19, 2011 Never got to get a flu shot because I've had flu symptoms off and on most of the winter, but yesterday I felt strong enough - at least for a few minutes - to get a pneumonia shot. Thank goodness for socialized medicine. I walked into the health clinic, told the nurse what I wanted, she swiped my card, saw my age and medical condition, injected me, answered my worried questions about after-effects, told me to wait around in the neighborhood for 20 minutes, and I was off. Of course I imagined myself developing symptoms of reactions, but the stuff i bought in the stores in the twenty minutes while i was waiting for the symptoms to develop cured me completely. As I have mentioned before the McDonalds is right next to Mac-cabi (health clinic) so there is always a mac ice cream to comfort me.
January 20, 2011 You know how I complain about the Rabbinate, how the religious dictate behavior, and how divorce can be so difficult in Israel? The AP News has a story that makes the Rabbis look like sweet democratic champions. Not that this comforts me at all. January 21, 2011 We're wasting our time with Israeli tv tonight. We could have gone out and done something interesting, but I've got too many deadlines. So we watched the various news stations - didn't catch anything new. Then we watched "wonderful land," the local news parody, funny because we wanted to laugh, And then some other 'comedy.' all this proved to us that Friday is not a night for television. And believe me, we're not fussy. We watch local reality shows with great glee. Some of them are not bad - there's one about losing weight where they have 2 teams of obese people completing to lose more and to learn self confidence. It works - they lose weight and they're now involved in a campaign to convince others to eat healthy. Because I know the family of one of the girls, I'm particularly involved in their struggles, but it's a good show in any case. There's also the local version of beauty and the geek, far more complex than the US version. I usually learn more about Israel from watching these programs than any other media. January 22, 2011 This is one of those rare winter Saturdays where the sun is really shining. The radio kept playing "It's such a perfect day" and it really felt like that as we drove along the beach. How can I enjoy myself when people are suffering, an activist asks me, and Ezi shows me a site where they talk about "Israhell" and the holocaust of Palestinians and I read some of the descriptions of what we allegedly do. Hello. Sorry. When you tell a big enough lie often enough it becomes true. But it also blots out the real issues, the real problems. In any case, I'll bet the people in Gaza are also enjoying this day. Jsnuary 23, 2011 The Turkel Committee has published its conclusions and proved to us that we were right about the Marmara. Unfortunately, however, no one else has been convinced... It does no good that two of the members are British and Canadian and educated in objectivity. We didn't have access to the other point of view, so how could we be totally correct. I'm still convinced we are right, but I would have liked to know what they say too.