City Guide Tel Aviv 2008

City Guide Tel Aviv 2008
Originally uploaded by savtadotty

The past couple of weeks have been an enchanted time in Tel Aviv: fantastic balmy spring weather day after day, hordes of tourists visiting, Birthright tour buses parked all over my neighborhood, stirring birthday programming in the air, on the ground, and in the media, and, to top it off, a barrage of interesting local events. Imagine having to choose between Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, and the book party for this year's edition of City Guide Tel Aviv! Al and Tom were at Tel Aviv University, and the book party was at Beit Kastiel, an amazing party venue disguised as an upscale furniture showroom in the Florentine neighborhood. I decided to go for the glamor, not to mention the champagne and caviar, especially as lots of local celebrities were there. Being an ignoramus about local happening culture I didn't recognize anyone except my own friends, including Lisa Goldman, who wrote the text in both last year's and this year's editions of the book, and The Noorster, who did the proofreading. Because Lisa was surrounded by fans and paparazi, I decided that proofreaders of English, especially those whose mother tongue is not English (!), deserve some celebrity too, so I asked The Noorster autograph my copy.

And I walked home, which I couldn't have done from the University.

Will You Still Love Me?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?

Well I'm way past 64 - I'm 71 to be exact - and until this year truly believed I was 26. Every year I just got to be a better and wiser 26. Oh I didn't look 26 and I didn't try to, but I felt 26. I guess I could describe it as feeling like a 26-year-old trapped in a slowly aging body.

This past year several things happened and now I'm feeling - and it's been sudden - like an old woman, nearing the end of her life. No need to list them: a litany of life-events that will happen to you too some day, if they haven't already, provided you live long enough. I'm still clinging to the notion that the medication I've been taking for psoriasis - methotrexate - is the cause of this unpleasant shift in perspective, and at this moment the Gods of Socialized Medicine in Israel are deciding whether I can switch to another, newer, much more costly, and possibly more effective treatment. Assuming they approve my request, there are two big unanswered questions:

1) will the new meds keep my psoriasis under control without nasty side-effects?
and
2) will I return to feeling 26?

The third question, the one I'm really afraid to ask or count, is: what if the answers to both of those questions are negative?

Tune in next week.

And what about Naomi? **

**Can you remember the source of this quote without Googling?

Mothering

It's Mother's Day in North America, and my daughter wrote a post that makes me proud to be her mother and also makes me happy she's a better mother than I was at her age. I'm not fishing for compliments here, because we each do the best we can with what we have. It's just that her best is better. Hurray!

Vindicated

My years of working in the computer industry were not in vain. I'm now playing a game of Internet Scrabble (on Scrabulous) with three friends: one in Paris studying art, one in New York visiting family, and one in Tel Aviv enjoying the lovely Spring weather, I hope.

The American Election Campaign: choose your family or choose your century?

Having spent my life looking for patterns, I'm ashamed of how long it took me to see these two. The first one hit me only yesterday. Americans (including me) will be voting for the member of a nuclear "family" they want to lead them: Dad (McCain, the protector), Mom (Hillary, the ambitious hard-worker), or Son (Obama, the futurist)?

Alternatively, today it occurred to me that we're also choosing our favorite century: 19th (McCain), 20th (Hillary), or 21st (Obama).

Looking at it either way, you can see why I haven't decided yet. If I'm in a pessimistic or fearful mood, I like McCain, pragmatic - Hillary, optimistic - Obama.

Please discuss.

Seder table, afterwards

Seder table, afterwards
Originally uploaded by savtadotty

We're all stuffed and full of wine.

My Brother's War

It's a work in progress, but at least all the letters in the shoebox have been transcribed, and a small selection of the many photos scanned and uploaded. It's what I've been doing instead of posting at Cousin Lucy's. How on earth did I ever manage to get to work every day and still have a life? My hat's off to you working people!

OH, and Happy Passover!