Tel Aviv Diary - October 18-22, 2013 - Karen Alkalay-Gut
October 19, 2013 Park Hayarkon always reminds me of the puzzles I used to do of a child - with lots of centers of activities and hoards of people. Today we went to the bird zoo there, Zapari (the site doesn't do justice to the place.) The amount of activity there, the placidity of the various birds and animals there, the variety of birds - always make me feel good. My partner was not interested in the performance in which birds ride cycles and all that, but preferred breaking pieces from the stale roles placed on a table in the restaurant and feeding the birds, ducks, geese, swans, peacocks, and all the other fowl that gathered around. Yes I have pictures but i haven't put in the appropriate software in my Mac to edit and size them and all that. October 20, 2013 New head of bank here - very exciting - the same woman who's been doing it for half a year was finally appointed officially. After almost every big name from abroad turned us down. It is a very big thing here to let a woman run the money. Huge. Other than that I know little about Carnit Flug except at least we don't have Frau Blecher (whinny) to contend with. (Does any one know what I'm talking about?) now all we have to do is make sure our market doesn't crash totally. October 21, 2013 Okay, this is really crazy but while listening to lectures about the economic situation tonight I kept thinking of the shtetl, of how the husbands studied torah and the wives ran the business. Now we have Janet Yellen and Karnit Flug managing the money of the U.S. and Israel. I hope the men will do something useful with the time the women have freed up for them. October 22, 2013 Local elections here today. Not many people seem to care - so far only 18% have shown up. When we went the whole neighborhood was sleepy and quiet. No waiting, no pressure. But now I'm really worried. The fewer people vote, the better the chances for the corrupt movers and shakers to move in. We've had enough of them recently. Local elections are the opportunity for people to change their lives for the better. But the choices are not absolute. I don't understand Jerusalem, for example, and how a leftist candidate has never appeared. But even the leftist candidate for mayor in Tel Aviv doesn't have a chance. We seem to prefer experienced mayors and there's no way to get experience when the presiding mayors don't let anyone near the experience.
Front page of the NYTimes today has an unidentified girl kidnapped by gypsies. Anyone recognize her? I don't know much about the Roma people except one story I grew up on. When my mother was around 8 she was playing with her friends in Lida in a clearing near the forest, when a man came and gave each child an apple. Except her. When she asked about why she wasn't given one, the man told her to follow him and he would give her one. And she did. Into the forest. Her father found her that night in the gypsy camp, smeared with mud so she wouldn't be recognized, and with pierced ears. He had to buy her back. After she told me that story she didn't have to worry about me talking to strangers.