thinking of albert

i found these words today in a letter from elie wiesel:

"i see your father's face more often than when he was alive"

me too. i am talking about him so much during this first week of school. and, finally, some tears are beginning to fall out of my eyes.

you go mika!

msnbc newsreader Mika Brzezinski
the grauniad reports today about an incident on television last wednesday morning. mika brzezinski (daughter of former carter advisor zbigniew) refused to read a report on paris hilton's release from jail as the lead news item. she tried to burn the script and later, when it appeared again on her desk, she shredded it. the paper reports, however, that the moment may be a fake:

"... suspicions remain that Brzezinski's moment of madness was staged, although the worried reactions from her co-hosts when she attempted to set fire to the script on air suggests she wasn't acting."

o my goodness i do hope not. i saw the clip online and could not believe it was real in the sense that she would actually argue with the host and refuse to follow the director's orders. on the little island of my desk in a small room far away, a cheer went up for mika. ffs there is so much more important stuff that we need to be seeing. not to mention the behaviour of the men either side of her, who seemed to be auditioning for spike tv. go mika!

the zoo rabbi - natan slifkin

thanks to libby purves for pointing us to this article in the wall street journal.

here is the rabbi's website. the home page has a lovely video starting with him riding an elephant and both of them waving at us. he also gets nipped a little by an ostrich.

what's the big fuss? basically that as an orthodox rabbi, slifkin goes a bit too far with his acceptance of darwinian theories of evolution:

""Appreciating the role and rule of natural law is an essential prerequisite to appreciating the role and rule of the spiritual law of Torah," Rabbi Slifkin writes in "The Science of Torah.""

the site looks quite interesting to me - certainly worth remembering in times of procrastination.

ding dong farfour is dead

hamas' mickey mouse lookalike
yahoo reports that the mickey mouse character used to preach Hamas dogma on al aqsa tv has been killed off:

"GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A Mickey Mouse lookalike who preached Islamic domination on a Hamas-affiliated children's television program was beaten to death in the show's final episode Friday. In the final skit, "Farfour" was killed by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfour's land. At one point, the mouse called the Israeli a "terrorist." "Farfour was martyred while defending his land," said Sara, the teen presenter. He was killed "by the killers of children," she added. The weekly show, featuring a giant black-and-white rodent with a high-pitched voice, had attracted worldwide attention because the character urged Palestinian children to fight Israel. It was broadcast on Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa TV. Station officials said Friday that Farfour was taken off the air to make room for new programs. Station manager Mohammed Bilal said he did not know what would be shown instead.

Israeli officials have denounced the program, "Tomorrow's Pioneers," as incendiary and outrageous. The program was also opposed by the state-run Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., which is controlled by Fatah, Hamas' rival."

i can only echo rodgers & hammerstein:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught

(YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT - South Pacific )

she thinks it's all over ...

... she was wrong.

i saw michelle pfeiffer on youtube recently - a clip from an interview she did not so long ago. maybe it was on 'ellen' but i'm not sure. anyway, she came across as so terribly uninteresting, and i was sad to feel my ancient yen for her evaporate. however, just saw the above pic on a blog, and i realise that there are still embers of that fire smoldering within. i may be more ardent about ardant, but pfeiffer's publicist has certainly aged her well.

liz claiborne r.i.p.

god help me i am no fashion maven but there have been times such as job interviews and other occasions requiring clothing a bit dressier than my favourite jeans and hoodie when liz claiborne's designs have been a godsend. in sizes that fit and at prices i could afford rubenesque ravaj was able to dress appropriately thanks to her. may she rest in peace.

breaking news from the associated press as reported on yahoo.

the owl of learning (vi)

sowing in tears and reaping in joy comes to mind today. after much wailing and gnashing of teeth by ravaj on monday, conversations with teachers before the maths class led to an extremely unexpectedly enjoyable 3 hour lesson about bases. it's too boring to write about and i am too tired to try. suffice it to say that our teacher ended the session with a joke, and i got it. here it is for you:

there are 10 kinds of people in the world. those who understand binary systems, and those who do not.

what is wrong with this sentence?

from today's daily telegraph with regard to brits killed in the current flooding:

"The Queen and Tony Blair expressed their condolences to those who have lost their lives in the floods."

i am sure those people were honoured and comforted ?????

owl of learning (v)

the agony continues. tried to do my maths homework this evening. several fuses in my brain blew. let's put it this way. i decided i would rather walk in the drenching heat through unlit unknown boston streets in a new york yankees t-shirt than face the pages on my desk.

i guess i need to thank the yankee pitcher for walking home baltimore's winning run in the bottom of the ninth at camden yards. any red sock who saw me this evening would most likely either gloat or pity me, rather than bash me.

*sigh*

growing pain

my gorgeous adorable niece has started nursery school. she is only 15 months old, but the place was available and there she is. my mother tells me that the other kids are mostly bigger than she is, and recently one of them smacked her. she had never had that experience before in all of her 15 months, and was so startled, she did not know how to react. my first response upon hearing this was that i am going to get on a plane to berlin and find the child who did it and, well, you know ... of course my friends all pointed out that this is a first experience for her of how life is and can be. yes yes yes i know. but already? and how dare anyone touch my darling niece! and ... and ... and ... *sigh*

the joy of albert

my sister n. sent me this picture recently. on the 8th of july it will be 3 years already since our father died, and my thoughts are very much about him this week. i had never seen this picture before, and it makes me so happy and sad at the same time. i hope you enjoy it.

owl of learning (iv)

today was my first day of school. by the time i got home around 6:30 pm, i didn't know whether to cry, to go to bed for the night or to have a couple of margaritas. o dear! not that i am complaining - it was an experience - i just did not realise how difficult it was going to be :-)

ok - we began with a 3-hour mathematics lesson. since we will have to teach elementary maths, we have to learn it also. i was good at maths when i was at school. on the other hand, the last time i did maths in school was 27 years ago, before two-thirds of the class was born.

shouldn't be a problem. i am intelligent. i can be taught this. i can learn it. and then 15 minutes into the class i am looking at the teacher and she is speaking and i am sure she is speaking swahili and i do not speak swahili. i am ready to cry. i tell her that i think she is speaking swahili. she tries to explain again, and i am not brave enough to tell her i still do not understand. my brain shuts down, and i start building towers out of the little plastik blocks she has given us to help work out problems about eric the sheep.

ok so i am humbled because i can honestly say that i do not recall ever feeling so incompetent and incapable and frustrated and stupid and hopeless. also, i can now empathise with anyone who ever feels like that in a class i may be teaching. i told her i had never felt like this before, and she said then either i must be really brilliant or ... i hastened to make the case against being very brilliant and explained how i had always avoided anything i didn't like in school. i did not say that these were things like biology, swimming and italian. it did not seem relevant.

now i feel like i was hit by a brick. i do sudoku every night, and get quite a lot of the fiendish ones from the times she said plaintively. ah well, 'twas only the first day. i have tear stains on my shirt, but tomorrow i shall wear another shirt. and the introduction to reading torah in the afternoon was enjoyable and more in my comfort zone, so i had time to recover. a bit.

i may return to this subject. probably tomorrow evening in the middle of trying to do the maths homework!

not to mention dawn french

tracey ullman & dawn french
this pic is from the same series as the previous one, and reminded me how much i adore dawn french. i have adored her from the beginning, yet still get ticked off when people say to me, "o you must LOVE 'the vicar of dibley'!" my standard reply is something along the lines of "why on earth would i find any connection with a comedy about a rubenesque female clergyperson's adventures in a rural congregation?" of course i am no longer living in the shenandoah valley, so the response may have become a little more obscure. also, i do happen to love that programme :-) but that is not the point!

anyway, i consider ms french to be a genius of my generation. despite her zaftig physical presence, when she is acting, she becomes the character whether it is tall or short, thin or fat, male or female, black or white. brilliant. i believe that laughter is one of the greatest gifts, and i love her for making me laugh.

ok, am a bit dizzy from the adulating. time to go to bed perhaps ...

sandra bernhard made me laugh

just got "everything bad and beautiful" by sandra bernhard. some of it is a bit weird, and some nearly made me wee from laughing. my favourite line is about britney spears:

"britney, or as we affectionately call her, 'batya', is one of our foremost aramaic scholars."

i guess that one is weird and also wee-ful.

a little bit of a jerusalem pride report

see gay.com for full details. bits and bobs include:

"A 32-year-old ultra-Orthodox man carrying what police called "a homemade explosive device" was arrested before the parade's kickoff, and city officials forced the cancellation of a planned post-parade Pride rally, citing a slow-down strike by firefighters."

"Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service said in a statement it was preparing an "unprecedented operation," readying 200 medics, 45 ambulances, 11 mobile intensive care units and a field command center. Additional medics and ambulances were on standby, the statement said. THEY WERE NOT NEEDED (my capitalisation)."

"Noa Satat, chairwoman of parade organizers Jerusalem Open House, told Reuters: "We are thrilled to be here today, celebrating our freedom of speech in the center of Jerusalem.""

see also jewlicious
pix from the parade at critical-humanism
jerusalem pride photos on flickr

piglet gets around

piglet in newton
this is the house of our friend betsy. she goes by another name now, but when she came to london to stay with us when she was younger, that is how we knew her. the picture was taken when i came to boston and stayed with her when i was younger, well, about a month younger than i am now :-) i absolutely love her house.

the owl of learning (iii)

one of the things about starting in a new anything is the issue of coming out. again. today was the first classroom interaction for my cohort of fellows. we were to share our 'jewish journey'. we were to trace our paths to this day. i made a megilla (small scroll) of photographs. i lined up 18 pictures from various stages of my life so far. in the middle, i included a photo of dbl & myself with the caption 'first love'. i planned to preface the photograph with a bit of a warning, i.e., don't want to be in your face but this is part of it all. anyway, we got split into two groups, and i was in the group without the women i had identified as more traditional (wearing a sheitl was a bit of a clue). i presented my journey to my table, and i think the megilla went down well. i wish, however, that we had all been listening together. that way, if there is to be rejection, it would be less in my face. now i have, or not, to do this individually as the time passes by. *sigh* que sera sera, etc.

julie burchill to study theology

julie burchill is going for a degree in theology? cue goggling eyes bouncing out of sockets on springs. in my early teens, she was the coolest woman alive, writing for the nme about music, mostly punk i think. she's 3 or 4 years older than i am, and was always rather outspoken. that last statement by me might be said to be a massive understatement. under the title of 'queen of spleen: the acid tongue of julie burchill', the independent has a few quotes from her here. my favourite is:

"On those who read her columns: 'Readers are invited to come and spit at me. I will, of course, welcome the attention'."

of course i have nothing against studying theology. several members of my family have done this. it is just surprising that an iconoclast such as she is/was would take the time to do it. none of the articles i have read so far go into much detail with regard to explaining her motivation. the best i can find is in the grauniad, where she describes her conversion to xianity:

" 'One moment I was sitting there on my Bloomsbury sofa, flicking through Time Out, idly wondering whose life to ruin next, and the next moment it was as if a mighty hand had broken - painlessly, patiently, purposefully - a huge jar of ointment over my head' "

if you are interested in reading a more recent interview, this article may do it for you.

i guess one does get burned out being an iconoclast. most of the articles today quote burchill as saying that after 30 years it is time for a rest. she also has a gouty foot. so this may be a really good choice for her. i shall, however, miss her angry prose.

the owl of learning (ii)

a second foray onto campus today, to merge deeper within the system by getting a student id card; and to charm the nurse practitioner into writing out some prescriptions for me by revealing my innermost medical secrets (will anyone tell me how to fill the little plastic cup without making at least a bit of a mess?). since my visit to the health centre was to be a brief one, the policewoman on guard at the construction site allowed me to park behind the traffic cones. when i was done, i drove away, and was immediately flagged down. apparently my car had invited one of the cones to continue the journey with us. so embarrassing. is this a driving equivalent of leaving the bathroom with toilet tissue stuck to one's shoe?

cheesed off

a bit of a cheese war is looming in france sez the ny times.

on the one hand we have the french artisan: “Camembert that is not made with raw milk may be cheese, but it’s not real Camembert,” said Mr. Durand, who took over the family farm when he was only 19 and has run it for 26 years. “To not know a real raw milk Camembert — what a loss that would be. The variety, the diversity, the flavor of cheese — the very heritage of our country — will disappear.”"

on the other hand there is the american expert: "In New York, Steven Jenkins, a cheese expert and senior manager of the Fairway markets, praises the Lactalis Camembert made with treated milk, and sold at Fairway under the label Le Châtelain, as “something awfully darned good.”"

the thing is - the big dairy producers in france treat the milk, for health reasons they say. that is not the problem, though. the issue is that the big dairy producers want the rules to be changed so that their faux camembert may be certified as authentic.

the full story is here. this is a big deal in france. really it is. and my aunt lives in wisconsin, so naturally i was drawn to this story ...