June 30, 2016
I spent yesterday in efforts to move this website, to fix it up, to bring myself at last into the 21st century. But I failed. So far.
and there was so much to talk about. where can i begin? it all fades in importance before the terrorist attacks today. A young girl murdered in her bed, two people on the streets stabbed in Netanya.
July 1, 2016
As one can easily see, I'm not recovering as I should. Mechanically I am a wonder - walking easily without a cane around the block, climbing stairs better than before. But I'm only now getting to the point that i can get my own food, and Ezi is having problems getting things together, even though he is really trying to please, so I'm not in the best shape ever. But I will be. And so will he.
July 2, 2016
Finally got out of the house to a relaxing meal with an old friend. Meshek Barzillai is an organic restaurant in Neve Tzedek and I didn't once get kicked in the leg. The food was superior too. Like food i should have been eating all along - not bland, not spicy, healthy, and simple. I had a shake and lasagna. We tried another place yesterday where the food was supposed to be good and simple, but either ordered wrong or we picked the restaurant wrong. the restaurant was called "Guta" and i've been wanting to go for a long time because of the name, but there was something about eating kasha burgers with kasha on the side with a kinoa salad that didn't do me good. It's just opposite the North Market in Ramat Hahayal, and serves the techies in the industrial area. I got kicked in the leg.
Am I the only one who is still following Sayyed Kashua's weekly columns? His retrospective disdain for his life in Israel, folded in with his utter emptiness in his new life in the U.S.? One thing that is obvious is his pleasure at his children's happiness in the educational structure there. I have 5 grandchildren in the educational structure here and I can understand Kashua's joy. Kashua was worried about his children's dual identity here, in the last years Arabs in Jewish schools. I worry about - well i worry about values, about learning, self-realization, awareness of others. i don't get the sense of this here. Although I haven't seen my Israeli grandchildren for over a week - in part because i registered concern at the fear of being injured by athletes jumping on my bed while i was in it, and in part because i still don't drive well enough to react to surprises and can't visit the ones who can't come to me - I've been thinking about them a lot, about the way in which they end the school year, the way in which the next year is presented, about the way in which I was lucky to end primary school.
I had a retired army commander for a grammar school teacher, who allowed me to write the play for the entire class, and we consulted with casting, with length, with music, etc. I don't know how the parents reacted but we had a wild time, while our beloved teacher sat in the front row and shepped naches. Now that I think of it there were not too many values in "The Von Fullogold Murder Case" except that the old man did really die but wanted to test who cared for him and who cared for his money. But originality and collegiate cooperation were key. The year before that our teacher was an old maid anti=semite who had no qualms about putting the 8 jews in her class into a country dance scene in which we were in the background and in the final 2 minutes only. When administrators determine children's roles, they reflect the values of the society. When children have a part in it, they have the opportunity to evaluate and sometimes alter these roles.
(Oh, and we were terrible dancers. that's why we were given this role.)
July 3, 2016
Our tourists came back from Jerusalem today, and one complained of a great disaster - her pedicure chipped. The terrorists hiding in the neighborhood of Hebron, causing the total closure of that whole area, did not affect them in any way as they meandered through the holy city. Neither did the multiplication of hundreds of terrorist propaganda films on facebook demonstrating how to kill Jews.
Does anyone know if a refugee from Africa can get working papers here? I would very much like to employ a woman but i am afraid she is not as legal as she thinks. that means i need a lawyer to hire a cleaner.
July 5, 2016
i do not mean to skip days, but i seem to erase what i've written, despite great efforts to stay on course. i would like to blame it on the anesthesia, but i think it is me. take the story of my glasses. on wednesday i was out in the shopping center, half dead throughout the journey from one teen-age shop to another. when i came home, i discovered my glasses were gone. Of course I spent the next day looking for the glasses in every purse, in every corner of the house, and the day after in a round of shops and restaurants. Yesterday i sent Ezi to ask around again. Last night, I began on the cupboards again. Ezi helped me this time with the bottom drawer. And there they were, hiding between two bottles of cream. Why did I devote so much time to my glasses? Not because they are so useful, but because they are EXPENSIVE. Tom Ford. What I have learned from this is not to buy expensive glasses.
Of course I was also happy to divert attention from all the terror on one hand, confusion of government on the other, and on the third hand, the posturing of Netanyahu in Entebbe. i know he is doing important things in Africa, and maybe maybe we can make some order out of all the refugees here, but I cannot bear posturing. In my experience the more posturing the less substance.
And yet, we went to see Tislam tonight. One would think that watching 60 year olds dancing around the stage would be an event of posturing. And indeed there was a lot of it. But there was also some very good music. And guess what. Even I danced to it.