Kibbutz Window

iHell

2013-09-15T04:01:00.000-07:00

Living in Israel, I rarely drink. It’s not really part of the culture, so other than a glass of wine on Friday evenings, I don’t usually indulge. Except for once in a while when I’m stressed or achy-tired and I feel the need for something a bit stronger than vino. Then I typically pick scotch, which I learned how to drink from my dad, may he rest in peace.

The House of Wine next door went out of business recently and reopened its doors last week to sell off its stock, so I went to see what could be had. Mind you, it’s lucky I don’t drink much because the prices of distilled liquor in Israel are mind-blowing. Would you pay $100 for a perfectly ordinary bottle of scotch? Anyway, there on the shelf was a relatively affordable bottle of Wild Turkey Kentucky bourbon. I’d never tried bourbon and I thought this might be my chance. So I bought it and put it on the shelf next to that bottle of gin I’ve had since the ‘90’s – gin doesn’t spoil, does it?

As it happens, last week we also switched our telephones en masse, the way everything is done in the kibbutz. I junked my Samsung phone that never worked properly for an older version of iPhone that wouldn’t detonate the budget and I naively thought I would be better off. If only I had known the pain and suffering I was l inviting onto my head! It took me 2 hours – 2 hours! – to find where to correct the time which was set to Cupertino, California. Nothing about this phone is intuitive. And Apple, being Apple, does not deign to explain the mysteries of its software. It took me another 2 days to find how to change the display language to blessed English and download a ringtone.

Now here’s the really irritating thing about Apple: even their online support is useless. It’s just about impossible to find an answer to the question you’re actually asking. The search feature barely relates to the terms you entered and online chat does not exist in their rarefied world, all of which makes me long for the genuinely helpful universe of Microsoft. I love you, Bill Gates!

In the depths of my distress amid concerns for what this was doing to my blood pressure, I thought, I really need a drink. Then I thought of the bourbon. This was as good a time as any to give it a try. Of course it was instantly relaxing and soothing and I have to tell you – it’s really good with a lovely flavor of malted grain. Who knew? I think I like it even better than scotch. But, please, don’t tell my dad.

It's Positively Medieval

2013-07-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Many, many years ago I spent one glorious week in Salzburg, Austria. I’ll never forget the sheer joy of roaming around the exquisitely charming hometown of Mozart, just as I’ll never forget the guided tour of the Hohensalzburg Fortress that fits on top of it like a snug homburg. Usually I’m a sucker for castles and fortresses, and this one had a number of beautiful features, but the description of the torture chamber freaked me out and I couldn’t get over it.

I think of this every time I want to buy a toothbrush. I look at the shelf, neatly stacked with rows of brushes, and recoil. They look just like the implements of torture I’ve seen in my nightmares, albeit in mockingly cheerful colors, guaranteed to rip my mouth to shreds. There are spikes – actual spikes! – on those things, and the bristles are all pointy and malicious-looking. What dental hygienist from hell thought these would be a good idea?

To add insult to injury, these horrors also carry a hefty price tag. Not only are you expected to turn over your mouth to the Spanish Inquisition, you are required to fork over a big wad of cash for the privilege. All I want is a soft, pleasantly colored brush with even, white bristles – the sort that caresses and treats your mouth like the living thing it is. But these are getting ever harder to find. Instead we’re treated to wares from the Torquemada School of Design. So what I want to know is, is this a dental fad and if so, when will it pass?

Cuisine a la Junk

2013-06-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

I ticked one item off the bucket list recently: I had my first corndog. If they existed in America when I lived there, I’d never heard of them, which is unlikely. So I’m guessing they were invented sometime thereafter. I had heard them disparaged in the mass media as a junk-food abomination. But anything coated in cornbread has to be worthy of consideration, I told myself.

Then they unexpectedly appeared on the grocery store shelf. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A local hotdog manufacturer has started to make them. I can’t imagine what they were thinking. American food doesn’t do well here, except among Americans. Israelis tend to like their meat loaded with cumin and other spices until there is no meat-flavor discernable. Needless to say, I brought the precious item home and tried it right away. It did not disappoint. I cannot say the same thing for the next junky thing I tried.

I saw the package in the store freezer: potatoes with pizza sauce in a crispy coating. For some reason, at the time it sounded irresistible. I don’t know why, I must have been suffering from sunstroke. Anyway, I tried them, too. It’s hard to explain exactly what they are. It’s sort of what you’d get if you squashed a Tater Tot down into a triangle shape. So far, so good. But when you see something promising “pizza sauce” you think, tomato, oregano, garlic. Maybe some more herbs like basil if you’re lucky. There was a tomato presence, but there was nothing saucy about it. Worse, there was no trace of oregano or any other flavor associated with pizza.

It’s not that it was bad. It wasn’t. It was just so bland in its ho-hummishness that I can’t understand how it made it to the manufacturing stage. A lack of pizzazz should be the kiss of death for any junk creation. In any case, I have learned my lesson. From now on I will stay away from processed convenience stuff, no matter how delectable and tempting it looks, and concentrate on food that doesn’t come in wrappers. That is, except for corndogs.

Downton Blues

2013-06-01T05:44:00.000-07:00

One of the more annoying aspects of Israeli life is the television system – and here I use the word loosely. Nothing could be less systematic. A program could start, say, at 20:45 for the first four episodes and then you tune in for episode 5 at the appointed time only to find that it started half an hour earlier. Annoying.

I thought things would get better with the advent of cable, but I forgot where I was living. The cable company, also being Israeli, is no more reliable than broadcast television. I give you for your consideration the example of “Revenge.” After showing 18 throat-clutchingly delicious episodes, some of them multiple times, it suddenly disappeared from our airwaves without a word of explanation. Where are the last four? Annoying.

But the real annoyance was one I cannot blame on the cable company: I missed the entire third series of “Downton Abbey.” How this happened is still not entirely clear to me. It’s not as if I wasn’t looking out for it. The problem stems from the fact that it is shown on Israeli Channel 1, the taxpayer-supported channel that is so mind-numbingly boring that most of the time it shows stuff on a par with the close-up of a thumb. But after the first of the year I diligently checked the listings in the Jerusalem Post every week to see if the new series was starting. Nothing. Then, sometime around April, I learned from an oft-hand comment in the same newspaper that the series had run. I had missed the whole thing! Really annoying.

I sulked about this for a long time. Who was responsible for the false listings, the Jerusalem Post or Channel 1? More importantly, who could I sue? I have a sneaking suspicion that the Hebrew newspapers got it right, so was the Post just incompetent or was there an anti-English conspiracy? Ultimately, I went ahead and ordered the DVD from Britain. Of course, I already knew the highlights of the season, thanks to spoilers that come directly – and unasked – to my computer from NBC News. Still, now that I’m all caught up with the doings of the Crawley family and their hangers-on, I feel I can rest easy. One less annoyance.

I'm Back

2013-05-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’ve been gone from this space for quite a while. No real reason. Some might call it writer’s block, a slightly presumptuous term for a simple lack of inspiration. No matter, it’s time to climb back on the hobby-horse to see if I can still trot.

One of the odder things that happened in recent months was this: we all got a sms from the head office telling us not to approach the jackal that was lurking near the high school. Since I live not far from there I took notice. Not that I would know a jackal if I saw one – I would probably just have thought it was an especially homely dog. A few days later there was a sign in the dining hall, saying not to worry, the jackals that have been coming onto the kibbutz are not rabid.

Well, that’s a relief. Who wants a rabid jackal nipping at your heels? Of course, I knew they were in the area. You can hear them whooping at night. Before I knew animals were making that noise I had thought it was teenagers howling at the moon to be, I don’t know, funny. But why, I could not help wondering, did the beasts decide to come into our little village? Jackals are supposed to be shy and really wary of human beings, so what were they doing here?

I can only guess that they were tired of foraging in the wild and came looking for fast food. It’s only natural that they would be tempted by the smorgasbord of the kibbutz. And while I can’t imagine they would be dangerous to people, I have been practicing my Cesar-Milan-Dog-Whisperer skills – no touch, no talk, no eye-contact, calm, assertive energy. Just in case.

Rosh Hashana

2011-09-28T06:50:00.001-07:00

I want to wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! Shana tova!

The Great Escape

2011-09-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

When you live in Israel, you get used to a paper full of bad news. But this story made my hair stand on end: there was a mass escape of about 50 crocodiles from a wild-life park in the Jordan Valley. They think they were all recaptured. The article then went on to regale us with Nature Authority personnel fretting over the possibility of escaped crocs mating and setting up a nest in the wild. It seems – I swear I did not know this – that they were an indigenous species until they were hunted to extinction in the beginning of the 20th century.

I parsed the article carefully. “About 50” means they don’t know exactly how many animals there were. So they “think” they were all recaptured, but they don’t know that either. The Nature guys said all those keeping crocodiles must invest in better fences. That means there are even more of them out there, plotting to get loose.

I like animals and although I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about reptiles, I’m not afraid of most of them. No, not even snakes. If I see one I prefer to just let it go on its way, no harm, no foul. But crocodiles and alligators are different. They’re fast, they’re ruthless, they have powerful jaws with lots of big teeth. And most importantly, they’re hunting you. By “you” I mean me. They scare the bejuices out of me. I don’t even like the look of alligator shoes.

It’s a fair hike due west to here from the Jordan Valley. But the kibbutz is bordered by reasonably substantial stream that runs east-to-west, so I’m not taking any chances. When I open my door, I look left and right – no crocs? – ok, I can proceed to leave the house. Still, I don’t like living with this anxiety. So my next question is, is Crocodile Dundee a real person and does he make house calls?

Frankengrass

2011-08-31T08:05:00.000-07:00

Lawns in Hometown, America were delicate things. People, usually men, would spend their weekends caring for and obsessing over them, sitting up nights to admire them. They had to be fertilized, mowed and raked, all the while maintaining constant vigilance for the dreaded crabgrass. If all was done perfectly, you would wind up with a proper, well-manicured lawn that must not be walked on. Grass plants are tender and liable to die if tread upon.

The backyard of my childhood home was more mud than grass for just the reason that it couldn’t withstand stomping children’s feet. When I was finally old enough for “Keep off the grass!” to be reasonably enforceable, my father set about replanting the lawn with scientific precision. The ground was aerated and prepared and then the grass seed mixture was planted. It included Kentucky bluegrass which I did expect to be blue. It wasn’t.

Israeli grass is a whole different species. Not only will walking on it not kill it, you can’t kill it. At least, not for long. It always comes back. The stuff is relentless, growing runners with new grass plants on them that cannot be stopped. While mowing does give you the illusion of control, the problem is where the lawn meets the borders. There the tendrils advance without mercy, swallowing everything in their path. Like the Little Prince and his baobabs, if you relax your attention for even a moment you’re going to be inundated. The kibbutz gardeners do what they can to help. A few times a year a guy comes around with a tank of Agent Orange and sprays it around the borders, which does help for a little while. But it always comes back.

I don’t have any proof, but I suspect this grass is a mutant strain, the result of genetic engineering gone wrong. Maybe somebody, with the best of intentions, wanted to develop a variety that could withstand the Israeli climate and a few dozen tanks rolling over it. I’m just speculating. But having just spent the afternoon battling the tenacious tendrils, I’m convinced. This stuff has Mad Scientist written all over it.

Do Not Try This At Home

2011-07-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

What do you suppose would happen if you boiled some eggs on the stove and left them there boiling for a couple of hours until all the water evaporated and the temperature continued to rise…? I found out recently when I put a pan of them to boil, all neatly arranged, and then… forgot all about them.

I don’t actually know much about cooking. My mother was a woman of many wonderful qualities, but she wasn’t really a cook. Most of what I know I learned from watching the amazing Julia Child. “The French Chef” was one of those iconic shows of the 70’s that made an indelible impression on everyone who watched. She took you step by step though the process of whatever she was making, explaining so simply how to do it, what it should look like and, most importantly for me, how to fix it if it went wrong. From Julia I learned how to make a roux and turn it into a fabulous sauce, how to tell if a fish is fresh and how to boil eggs.

I still do it the way Julia said, first punching a tiny hole in the large end to release the air bubble which is what pushes the egg out into the water if it cracks and then boiling for 12 minutes, no more, no less. That is, until senility took over. It’s not even that I was doing anything important, just the usual afternoon stuff. Toward the end, I did smell the scent of something odd cooking. But I live next to a restaurant, I’m sort of used to that.

And then it happened – boom! What was that? Are kids playing with fireworks? BOOM! Is that Hizbullah in the parking lot? I looked toward the window to see what was going on – and then I saw it. The EGGS! They were exploding there on the stove. I got them to the sink as quickly as I could, hoping to save the pan if nothing else, the water hissing and crackling as it hit. Peering through the steam, I saw that the pan could be cleaned and so no real damage was done. But I was dumbstruck by my own dementia. And this surprised even me – exploded eggs are still edible.

Really Cheesy

2011-06-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

This is what Israelis eat for breakfast: you take a cucumber and a tomato and chop them into itsy bitsy pieces, such that they can be swallowed without any meaningful intervention of teeth, and douse them with olive oil and lemon juice. Then you plop some cottage cheese on top or something called white cheese which looks and tastes exactly like the technically non-toxic white paste they made you use in kindergarten for your artwork. Coincidently, this is also what many eat for dinner. Just the thought of facing that in the mornings is enough to turn me and, I think most of my fellow Americans, green – and I don’t mean that in a good way.

Luckily, today there is no lack of granola and Count Chocula to keep me from aggravated nausea. But back in the early days of the state, everyone was poor and food was not so easy to come by. You pretty much ate what you could grow, namely cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplants, or what you could coax from a cow. As often happens, necessity has become tradition, hence the centrality of dairy products to the Israeli diet. And since this is Israel, you’re expected to pay through the nose for them. So imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning to the Cottage Cheese Rebellion.

It seems the price of humble “cottage,” as it’s called, has doubled recently – I wouldn’t know because I thought it was way overpriced long before this and refused to buy it – and one righteous guy has had enough. He has organized a boycott on Facebook that has become wildly popular. Now suddenly the media are discovering that we pay twice as much as other countries for all kinds of stuff. It’s looking like the beginnings of a consumer revolution and it’s coming none too soon.

Even the Knesset is getting into the act, responding in true political style with emergency rhetoric. They’re threatening to legislate this, control that, while desperately looking for something more to tax. But even they have not proved totally useless: our Knesset has taken great pains to publish a recipe for making cottage cheese at home. I knew they’d come to the rescue. Now, where did I put my cheesecloth?

Get Me to the Church on Time

2011-05-04T05:33:00.000-07:00

Like every other little girl in the western world, I grew up on the Cinderella story. Back then, Walt Disney was king. After seeing the movie of course I had to have all the paraphernalia that went with it. My favorite was the record and the accompanying book with all the beautiful images from the film and a helpful mouse named Gus to tell you when to turn the pages. So you know when this generation’s royal wedding made it to the screen, I was there, glued to my TV.

Kate was a beautiful bride and Prince William was as handsome as he needed to be. Most importantly from my perspective, the dress was fabulous. Diana’s dress, since comparisons with the previous generation are unavoidable, was hideous. It was a style best described as Hillbilly Chic with ruffles, huge, puffy sleeves and a bow in front. It looked like it was designed by Granny Clampett. But Kate’s was elegant and lovely. What a relief!

Speaking of the Clampetts, there were those family members who should have been left at home. I mean, of course, the princesses in the hats – my sister calls them the ugly stepsisters. It’s never a good thing to leave the palace with chunks of it stuck to your head. You’d think they would have learned that in Etiquette 101. And while I’m on the subject of Just Plain Weird, what was with those trees in the church? Couldn’t they at least have been flowering varieties? It is spring after all.

But I’m nit-picking. It was a lovely, romantic occasion and I wish the young couple boundless happiness. Mind you, I hate monarchy and aristocracy in principle. Like any self-respecting, free-born American I believe that all are created equal and rebel at the idea that an in-bred aristocrat has the right to lord it over me just because an ancestor did something worthy 400 years ago. As an old Yiddish saying has it, aristocracy and carrots have one thing in common: the best part is under the ground.

More Matza, Less Affliction

2011-04-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

We’ve survived another Pesach. Getting through a whole week with no bread, no breaded schnitzel and no Pepperidge Farm is a struggle. The only thing that can get a carb-lover through is matza, also known as the bread of affliction.

Affliction was never so delicious, especially when spread with the beet-colored horseradish that is supposed to represent the bitterness of slavery. I look forward to this stuff all year. So I was unprepared when my Pesach indulgence hit a snag: the kibbutz store has a new manager, an earnest young woman, who apparently has not got the ordering thing down pat.

I bought some matzot the weekend before the holiday. It was rather early, I thought, but they had it, so why not? Little did I know that this would be all I would see for the entire holiday. From then on there was not a crumb to be found. When the rumor would spread that there was again matzot in the store, mobs of kibbutzniks would descend on the hapless clerks. Since matza is brittle stuff, it doesn’t really lend itself to a tug of war, but a few would emerge with the prized packages while most would leave disappointed.

One young clerk tried in true Stalinist fashion to tell me, as she pried my fingers from her throat, that the problem was not the ordering, it was that people were buying too much. I was nonplussed. There is only so much matza a person, even I, can eat. So if by some miracle the clerk had been right, what were people doing with the stuff? Tiling their roofs? Playing square Frisbee? Breaking it into poker chips? My mind went back to our forefathers wandering in the desert. If we have this much trouble with the bread of affliction, what do you suppose happened to them when they ran short of manna from heaven?

Waiting for the Professor

2011-03-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

I said I’d expound on my experience of private medicine and, true to my word, here it is. The Herzliya Medical Center is very nicely appointed. The beds are actually comfortable with electric controls of the kind that have been standard in the US for the past 60 years. Compare this to the iron thing you had to pull with considerable might to raise the head in the Health Fund hospital and you can see why I was happy. The bathrooms are in the rooms, instead of the hall, and you have to share with only 2 other people. Best of all, the nurses were attentive, helpful and plentiful. In other words, the difference between socialized and private medicine is night and day.

The only frustration, and it was a big one, involved waiting for the doctor. I should have known this would be a sore point from the outset. When I went for my first consultation with him, a surgeon who held the exalted rank of professor, a title of which Israelis have a Teutonic awe, I arrived to find the tiny waiting room stuffed with people and the doctor nowhere to be found. He finally turned up about an hour later. I thought this was bad, but I didn’t know that this was the luckiest I would get with him.

When the day arrived for my operation, I got there a little bit earlier than my 3pm appointment, just to be sure that I wouldn’t keep the doctor and his scalpel waiting. The check-in went smoothly and then I was sent to the ward where everything ground to a halt. I was told to sit in the waiting room – this place was equipped with television monitors that gave patient status updates like the arrivals and departures on an airport display – where I waited. Then I waited some more. Then along about 5pm the elevator doors opened and in strolled the professor. He was just arriving! I continued to wait another hour and a half until someone came and fetched me.

Fast forward to the next day when I’m waiting to be released. Around about noon I got the bad news: the doctor won’t get there to make his rounds until 6 or 7pm. After alerting the media to get the message through to those standing by to pick me up, I settled in for a more or less comfortable wait. 6 o’clock came, 7 o’clock came and went. No professor. The guy finally turns up at 9pm. There was no point in being surly. I thanked him, took my paperwork and made a dash for freedom. The bottom line: the private Herzliya Medical Center is infinitely nicer and more comfortable than the socialist option. But unless you have the patience of Job, avoid the professors.

Don't Mask, Don't Tell

2011-02-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

I picked up my new gas mask on Sunday. I panicked when I first saw the notice of the distribution, not because of the mask and what it represents, but because it said to bring the receipt I got when I turned in my old one. That was an eternity ago. Well, four years. How can anyone expect me to remember where I put a flipping piece of paper so long ago?

That old mask had been hard to part with, like a member of the family. We bonded during the first Gulf War when I had to take it everywhere I went. At night when the inevitable air raid siren signaled that Saddam was hurling yet another scud at us, the mask was actually comforting, although the routine did get a little old toward the end when it was clear there would not be chemical weapons in the missiles. The last air raid or two I told my husband to leave me alone and let me sleep. I wasn’t going to play anymore.

Now I tried to remain calm. I thought, if I was smart – and how often can I claim that? – I wedged the receipt in back of my identity card. I started pulling out all sorts of folded-up bits of paper, some of them historic, until finally the last one which was indeed what I’d been looking for. I would be able to get my new mask without having to throw myself on the mercy of the court and plead senility or some other embarrassing mental defect.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. The soldier-in-charge wasn’t at all interested in my receipt. He only wanted the identity card. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or just really annoyed. But I spent minutes looking for this, I protested. He shrugged. So after years of masklessness, I again have this item of personal protection, nestled in my shoe closet among the footwear. Let’s hope it stays there, undisturbed.

We Are Not Amused

2011-01-18T05:47:00.000-08:00

My sister asks why I have not blogged about my recent 30-hour sojourn in the belly of socialized medicine. It’s a good question. The thing is, I’m not sure I can accurately describe the experience of a Middle Eastern hospital to her or anyone else who hasn’t experienced it firsthand.

To start with, there is no such thing as a semi-private room. I was in a new ward so there were only four beds to a room instead of six. The bed itself was reclaimed from a Nottingham dungeon, consisting of metal strips on a frame topped with a thin mattress filled with lumpy pellets. But even if it had been comfortable, which it wasn’t, it would have been like trying to sleep in a bus station, there being also no such things as visiting hours. Everybody’s whole clan comes meandering through at any old time.

Then there was that one of my roommates who did not stop talking. Ever. Yes, she even talked in her sleep. For the first twelve hours or so we heard in minute detail how she cooks kebab, how she makes humus, where to buy the best pita – all of this to a roomful of fasting people in surgical ward. Then we heard replayed conversations with her daughter on clothes, where to park the car, her uncle’s business dealings with… Here I punctured my own eardrums. At one point I opened my eyes to find her standing at the foot of my bed wanting to know what was wrong with me. “How did you get that? What have you been lifting? Don’t you take care of yourself?” Only in the Middle East could you be expected to justify your life to a total stranger.

All of this would have been worth it, albeit annoying, if I had been treated. But I wasn’t. After being given an injection in the emergency room to stop my screaming, I was transferred to the ward where I was dumped on a bed and left. Eight hours later, a doctor wandered by, pushed on my stomach and left. I saw only one nurse on the ward and nobody would give me any information. The next day I was blithely told that they had no time to fix my problem and were sending me home. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

But when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor I couldn’t believe what I saw: a mall! There were bookstores, drug stores, clothing stores, restaurants – civilization! There was even a MacDonald’s. Yes, MacDonald’s in a hospital. You can chow down on a Big Mac and then go right upstairs and take your chances on a triple bypass. It’s very efficient, probably the only thing in the place that is.

So you supporters of Obamacare, beware what you wish for. This is your future. Mine involves escaping to the Elysian Fields of private medicine where I expect to be treated like the Queen of England. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Still Phony

2010-12-15T05:03:00.000-08:00

I’ve taken a break from this space for some time now. Mostly this has been due to writer’s block. For the life of me I couldn’t think of anything trivial enough to write about. Things have been pretty serious around here: peace talks are in the toilet – raise your hand if you’re sorry about this. Then there was the fire in the Carmel followed by the firestorm in the Knesset and the media. And all of this was followed by the hurricane on Sunday which blew over one of my cypress trees. Well, this was serious to me. But I spent an inordinate amount of time in this period struggling with my new phone.

All I wanted out of life was to download a few ringtones, nothing too fancy. I would go to Google and could plainly see that there was nothing wrong with the connection. But from there the browser would just not work. Ok, once in a while it would give me something like you’d throw a bone to a dog. Most of the time, however, nothing/nada/bupkiss. It was getting me down.

Then yesterday I had a breakthrough. Now, I am renowned in the computer world for the gentleness of my touch and I have never worn-out a keyboard. You see, it turns out that touchscreen is something of a misnomer. I found this out when I tapped the infernal thing quite hard, more out of frustration than inspiration, and it blooming worked!

Suddenly I was able to acquire a few nice pieces like Debussy’s “Girl with the Flaxen Hair.” I’ve never actually seen flax and so I don’t really know what it looks like, but I think this is about a blonde girl because men never change. For my ringtone I went with Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” – just because I love it. I’m so relieved. I think I may also be unblocked.

Phony Baloney

2010-10-26T06:03:00.000-07:00

In the neighborhood where I grew up there was a park with a great, big hill that had a reservoir on top. Most of the hill was wooded and the back of it was quite steep. My friends and I used to love to climb up the back way on the “trails” as we called them. It was a challenge and as close to an adventure as any of us had ever experienced. But for some reason it always freaked out my mother. “If you get hurt, don’t come crying to me,” she would say. I don’t think that ever stopped me and I don’t think I ever got hurt.

All this comes to mind because of our cell phone service provider. Orange says if we don’t buy new phones, they won’t fix the old ones should they need it. I like my old phone. It’s small and cheap and works perfectly as a phone which is all it does. Best of all, it has a flip-open cover, meaning you can close it and it doesn’t dial itself from the bottom of your purse they way the previous one did. I can’t tell you how many messages I got saying, “Your purse called me again.”

So I’ve had a dilemma. Should I keep my perfectly good old phone and hope that nothing goes wrong in the next two years? Is that even a good bet in the world of electronics? Or should I just cough up the money for a new one? Ultimately Orange had more luck than my mother did with the Don’t-come-to-me-if-you-don’t-do-what-I-want admonition. I’ve gotten more cautious in my old age.

That’s why I decided to upgrade. The new phone when it arrives will have a camera, an FM radio, a touch screen, an internet connection and GPS capabilities. I’m hoping I can also use it to talk to people, but that’s not part of the hype. I’ll just be happy if it doesn’t shop on the internet from the bottom of my purse.

What Feast of the Tabernacles?

2010-09-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

We have arrived once again to the week-long holiday of Succot when we celebrate 40 years of wandering in the desert. As I’ve mentioned before in this space, I find it the most perplexing of Jewish holidays. I don’t know about you, but if I had been lost in the desert for all that time with no way to shower and nothing to eat but the same old manna every day, I would want to forget the experience as quickly as possible, not commemorate it.

But commemorate it we do. The main task involves building a tabernacle. When you get an instruction like this you know you’re in trouble. “Tabernacle” is a huge, substantial word for something so flimsy. Besides, some of us are, shall we say, mechanically-challenged and consideration ought to be given. Not only could I not build a tabernacle to save my life, I was the only kid in my kindergarten to flunk Tinker Toys.

Once you have the tabernacle you’re supposed to decorate it with the four species: palm, willow, myrtle and a citron. These aren’t the kinds of things you find laying around so you either have to shlep to a market to buy them at hefty prices or else raid a neighbor’s garden or national park, all of which is pretty unsavory.

Like I said, this holiday is nothing but trouble. The neighbors and Park Service wardens can rest peacefully and the emergency services can stand down: I will not build the tabernacle. In fact, I think I’ll just ignore the whole thing until it goes away. Wishing everyone a happy holiday, just please wake me when it’s over.

No Milk Today and Not Much Else

2010-09-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

I’m so naive. After the splendidly long holiday weekend I genuinely expected to be able to shop as usual on Sunday afternoon. Wrong. I stepped into the kibbutz store only to be greeted by mostly empty shelves. I thought I had been transported back in time to the Soviet Union. There were no tomatoes, no bananas and no bread. Two people were arguing over the last bunch of grapes. And of course, there was almost no milk. There’s almost none in the whole country.

It seems that Israel’s cows have gone on strike in support of the airport workers. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any case, you can’t fly into or out of the country and you can’t drink a glass of milk while you’re here. What the airport workers grievances are I cannot say, although I suppose they revolve around money, but the cows are said to be aggrieved by the heat.

I don’t know about you, but I’m nonplussed. Summer here is always hot. If you look up the definition of “hot” in Webster’s Dictionary you’ll see it’s defined as “summer in Israel.” This can’t come as a surprise to the cows. As far as I know, they haven’t just emigrated from Finland. But somehow August was so hot that they stopped giving milk in September. This must be bovine logic.

The thing is, it stopped being really hot and humid three weeks ago. So why is there a milk shortage now? How big a lead-time could there be? I would have expected the stuff on the shelves to be slightly fresher than that. Like I said, I’m naïve. It couldn’t possibly be that the milk monopolies are holding back the supply to raise the prices for the holidays. That would be inconceivable.

Swimming the Channel

2010-08-14T01:28:00.000-07:00

I’m a couch potato by nature. There’s nothing I like better than curling up with a mug of whatever and letting the Hollywood entertainment machine work its magic in my head. I’d be overjoyed to never have to move from that state of bliss. Sadly, in the real world if you want to live longer than 15 minutes you have to put in a certain amount of exercise. I don’t like it, but I do it. So when, during a chat with my friend, Maya, she mentioned that she’s swimming every day before work and that I should do it, too, because it gives her so much energy for the rest of the day, I inwardly groaned. The world if full of fitness gurus who want to get you out of bed early and run you around a track “for your own good.”

Still, there was something slightly attractive about the idea of having a dip on these sultry summer mornings. So I started doing it and it’s a humbling experience. I have always loved immersing myself in water. Like Labradors I think water is the best thing in the world. But as for propelling myself through it – isn’t that what outboard motors are for? Luckily, there are very few people there at that hour to witness my performance. I move at glacial speed through the lovely, silky water, enjoying every moment of it and just sorry I have to get out of it to go to work.

I don’t get the energy rush Maya talks about. If anything I find myself longing for a nap afterward. But come to think of it, I haven’t seen her there in the weeks I’ve been doing this. I guess we work on different schedules. In any case, I’m grateful to her for the suggestion because it’s about as pleasant as exercise gets. And as everybody knows, exercise is a good thing when it doesn’t kill you.

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, FIFA

2010-07-11T05:55:00.000-07:00

Now that the World Cup is finally drawing to a blessed close, I find that I have some feelings on the subject. Normally I wouldn’t care because I’m so not a sports fan. Watching any sporting event for me is about as exciting as watching chorus lines of ants marching in and out of their hill. But for some reason this event seems to arouse global passions, so I thought it was worth a look.

Wrong. This is the most boring thing ever invented. As my nephew wisely observed, any sport where you can only score one goal in 130 minutes isn’t worthy of the name. This could be the American in me. We like our athletes to look and act tough. American football could never be played by wimpy little guys in shorts. Americans can’t respect guys in shorts. Well, ok, basketball players – but they’re tall.

So tonight this event which has been going on for 30 or 40 weeks will end. That means only one more night of going to sleep with plugs in my ears to muffle the cheers and groans coming from neighboring fans, especially the slightly incapacitated ones that gather at the House of Wine. Then maybe they’ll talk about something else on Israel Radio.

The final – I like the sound of that – features the team of seriously anti-Semitic Spain against mildly anti-Semitic Holland so I guess you know who I would be rooting for. If I cared, that is. Instead I plan to be blissfully asleep.

Catastrophe

2010-06-26T04:29:00.001-07:00

I’ve always been a cat person. I like dogs –I’m a big fan of Cesar Millan – as well as just about all other mammals and birds but when it comes to sharing living space cats are ideal. They’re sweet and loving and you don’t have to worry about them barking in the night and biting the neighbors.

On the down-side, cats are not really trainable. Or controllable. In fact, they seemed convinced that they are the Masters of the Universe and we humble humans were born to serve them. There may be something to this: cats can change their mass at will which you know if you’ve ever tried to lift an unwilling one.

I bring this all up because of the current tribulations of my poor Chloe. After having disappeared for 3 days she dragged herself home and through the cat flap with a hind leg so broken that even I could tell the bone wasn’t attached to anything. The vet thinks she was hit by a car. I am simply amazed she survived that, got herself home and then also survived the surgery to repair the damage because this cat is 21 years old. How old is that in cat years? I don’t know, but it’s ancient.

I hope our relationship also survives this. Chloe already thinks I’m trying to poison her. The liquid antibiotic I have to force down her throat is pineapple flavored – utterly vomiticious to any self-respecting cat. So I’m not her favorite servant at the moment. But I am full of admiration for her. What a survivor, what a worthy cat!

Not As Lost As You'd Think

2010-05-26T05:14:00.000-07:00

This week we said goodbye to the survivors of Oceanic 815 and all the other lost souls of “Lost.” I was a big fan. I see there has been a lot of discussion on the net about the finale, much of it very wrong-headed in my opinion. So here are my thoughts on what we saw.

Most importantly, the survivors were not dead all this time. My evidence for this is a) the producers said so a couple of seasons back and b) otherwise the story doesn’t make sense. There were characters like Ben, Desmond and Juliet who were not on the flight and had their own histories. They were not only seen through the eyes of the survivors. The last shot of wreckage on the beach was the plane carrying Kate, Sawyer & Co.

The sideways alternate universe was some sort of afterlife or more precisely, the anteroom to it. Jack was the last one to realize it, but then he was usually the last one to realize a lot of things. And since it was the afterlife it was outside of time which is why there was no “now” there and people like Hurley who presumably died long after Jack were there.

The polar bear: the Dharma Initiative did animal experiments. You’ll remember the comment when Sawyer and Kate were locked in cages about how much faster the bear figured out how to get food from the machine. The Dharma Initiative was just what it said it was, an organization trying to tap into and exploit the energy at the heart of the island. This is why Jacob (we can assume) had them all killed when they got too close, to protect the island.

It was a great series about grand themes: sin and redemption, the power of love, the overarching need and supreme difficulty of letting go. None of the characters was untainted. Even Hurley told a lie toward the end. But all at the end rose above their flaws to achieve something magnificent – which can also be said of this series. How wonderful it was to have a show that didn’t insult our intelligence. I suspect it will be a long time before we have that again.

Gimme Shelter

2010-05-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow should be fun. The whole country is doing a defense drill. I can’t remember another like it, at least not in recent years. Our government happily assures us that nothing ominous is on the horizon and cautions us not to read anything into this. It’s just an exercise, the lack of which would be irresponsible. I am reassured. It’s not as if there’s a maniac in some not-too-far-off country trying to develop nuclear bombs and threatening to wipe us off the map or something.

As a humble civilian not too much is expected of me. At the sound of the siren one is supposed to sprint to the nearest bomb shelter within 2 minutes – I have visions of my grammar school gym teacher standing by with a stopwatch – and stay there until the all-clear. Luckily for both me and my gym teacher, I don’t have far to run. Like all new houses, mine comes equipped with its own bomb shelter. It’s just behind my back as I write this, the entrance being maybe a meter away. So I’m confident I can make it by the deadline.

The thing is, it’s my walk-in closet. I can spend 10 minutes in there if I have to, so I’m ok for the drill. But would I really want to stay there for hours in a real emergency? I don’t think so. Salient point: there’s no bathroom. That means after two, three hours tops I’m out of there. Way back when Saddam was lobbing scuds at us and we had to have a sealed room, we sealed the bedroom and bathroom so we could wait it out in comfort. Those were the good old days.

I have no one to blame but myself, of course. When I was planning this house, a shelter didn’t seem like such an issue. I thought it was a waste. Kibbutz houses are small and everyone uses this space for something else, be it bedrooms or offices. Then a few months after I moved in, Hizbullah started shooting missiles at us from Lebanon and I wondered whether I should be sleeping in there. That’s out of the question. I’m too old to sleep on the floor and the bed’s too heavy to move. But there’s no need to worry about that now. Tomorrow is just a drill and I can stay there for a few minutes. I may even get some cleaning done.

Bovine Positioning Systems

2010-04-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

If you’ve ever tried to navigate in Boston you know what a nightmare it is. Streets wind around, merge and diverge without so much as a by-your-leave and street names repeat themselves in every neighborhood without any connection to each other. Navigating around the kibbutz is kind of like that in miniature except without any street names.

You can wander around for quite a while, depending on the dependability of the directions you got, until you stumble upon your destination. Not only are the roads unnamed, the buildings are more or less unmarked. I always pity the visitors who ask me for directions and explain to them as exactly as I can what the dining hall looks like. I still remember the directions I got to the laundry sorting place, the Communa, when I was new – “Turn left at the first cow.”

The situation changed about 5 or so years ago when we were all given plaques with our family names hanging on poles in our front yards. This was a vast improvement. Now, assuming you can read the language, you can locate the house of the family you want to visit if you wander around enough without having to knock on a random door to ask if Pinchas lives there.

This all came to mind yesterday as I took a break over the cup of tea I’d made an hour before. Suddenly I was roused from my reverie by the sound of drilling on my house. Upon investigation I found that a number plate had been fastened on, high up next to the eaves. I’m 252. I suppose this means everyone will be locatable by number which is a good thing. But why is it placed so high? So it’ll be identifiable from the air? That’s an alarming thought. Still, it’s a cut above the former system of direction-by-landmark – especially since the cows are now elsewhere.