This NYTimes story about an interfaith initiative gave me the warm-fuzzies. Granted, the three religious leaders are a Reform Jew, a Congregationalist, and a Sufi (I'll feel even better when Hasidim, Southern Baptists, and Wahhabis are able to do this together). And the Debbie Downer in me wonders what is wrong with the Abrahamic religions that they are the only major world faiths that need this kind of dialogue? (The Dharmic religions never seem to have that much trouble with each other or the rest of the world.) Still, the Pollyanna in me will take it!
This piece in the NYTimes challenges our recent, often naive, assumptions that all antiquities should be repatriated to the modern governments currently ruling over the geographic region from which the artifacts and art objects originally emerged. Whether I agree with them or not, some arguments for repatriation are reasoned and not without merit (e.g., Athens' call for the Elgin Marbles). However, too often, I find the nationalist demands emanating from places like Cairo, Rome, and Ankara to be cynical, and the tactics to be extortionary. Before we empty the Louvre and the Met and the British Museum, I want some assurance that their contents can be properly preserved and protected (how's that for alliteration?), and that the world's access to them will be reasonably easy and safe. For example, in light of the Luxor massacre, I'm not all that eager about the idea of the Nofretete Bust leaving Berlin for Egypt. And if the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities is antisemitic, then I'm even less eager about it.
On PBS right now, I'm watching Charlie Rose's interview with Melinda Gates, and I'm totally impressed. And upon googling her, am proud to learn that she's a Texan! I'm a bit surprised I hadn't ever known more about her, or what's she's doing. The more I listen to her, the more I find myself asking, "When is she going to run for president???"
Art:21 on PBS. Specifically, a new episode I've never seen, titled Systems and featuring my favorite artist of the past decade who works in two dimensions, Julie Mehretu! At the 2004 Whitney Biennial, her work (a sample below) totally sucked me in and consumed a lot of my time (in a good way). If my #1 dream job (rich patron and career-making collector à la Charles Saatchi), #2 dream job (director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art à la Philippe de Montebello), or #3 dream job (architecture critic for the New York Times à la Ada Louise Huxtable) never materializes, my #4 dream job would be the gallerist representing Julie Mehretu!
Empirical Construction. 2003. Acrylic and ink on canvas, 9'8" x 14'7"
Texas' senior-Senator-cum-gubernatorial-candidate, Kay Bailey Hutchison! I've always been a fan, and so much want her to become the next governor of my home state. I don't know all the details, but apparently our current governor is a bit of a douchebag (that's what happens when you let a Texas A&M alumnus into the Governor's Mansion for the first time in the history of statehood. Just think... in the dome of the Capitol's rotunda in Austin, there will now hang an official portrait of an Aggie. Abomination!).
For those of you who didn't like George W. Bush, you'd loathe Rick Perry. [But if you like Giorgio, you'll love Primo!] If John McCain had been serious about wanting to win the White House, no one would even know the name of Sandra Poland, and today we might be talking about the country's first female VP. Not to diminish the impact of our first African-American presidency, but her candidacy could have been a realistic shot at breaking a barrier no matter which ticket won the 2008 presidential election.
And just look at her. She is the quintessential picture that comes to mind when you hear the words "the senatorfrom Texas"... both senatorial and Texan. I admit, I am partial to the look... she resembles most of the Lindas. Not that appearances should matter. Who am I kidding? I doubt that you could look like Barbara Mikulski, Carl Levin, or Patty Murray, and get elected governor of the Lone Star state (we're attracted to the attractive, don't judge!), so let's be real. But Kay is from Galveston (Mother City of the Republic) and a former cheerleader at the University of Texas. What else could Texas possibly want in a governor that has a snowball's-chance-in-hell of being elected? Go Kay, go!
With everyone I know going to Uganda this past summer or in the near future, Entebbe had been on my mind recently. This BBC story about the Israeli Foreign Minister's recent wreath-laying at the old terminal there was weirdly timely. The breathtaking audacity of the surprise raid still gives me goosebumps. Sadly, I was also reminded that, while fair-minded critics of Israel's policies make good-faith efforts to distinguish between the Israeli government and all Jews, people like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the Baader-Meinhof seldom do.
All my Entebbe-destined friends, I want you to go there and take a picture of it for Sweet Pickles!
As with scores of his predecessors, the recently-defeated incumbent Taro Aso never made it to the one-year mark. Taro, we hardly knew ya! The only thing I can say for sure about outgoing PM Aso was that he looked the part (I mean that in a good way). When I hear or read the title "Prime Minister of Japan," this is what comes to mind:
Considering that the LDP
has only been out of power for a total of 11 months during the past 55
years, the recent landslide would appear to have some significance. But expectations for big changes might be premature. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Like the majority of Japan's prime ministers, both Mr. Aso and likely successor have comparable political genealogies...
Aso is the great-great-grandson of one of the founders of the Meiji Restoration, the grandson of a former Prime Minister, son-in-law of another former Prime Minister, and brother-in-law of an Imperial Prince, whereas the incoming Yukio Hatoyama is the great-grandson of a former Speaker of the Diet, and the grandson of a former Prime Minister and founder of the JDP.
In some ways, I suppose that Japan's political culture isn't all that different from our own. In the Land of the Rising Sun, most heads-of-government are a Roosevelt, a Kennedy, or a Bush.
Still, it's better than the alternatives. Today during lunch, I overheard a discussion among a mixed group of international students talking about Japan's new political leader. A couple of Middle Eastern students asked the Japanese students whether or not this change of power had happened because of an election. At first, the Japanese students seemed confused by the question, and then appalled at the idea that there would be any other way for their country to install a different political leadership. And I liked what both groups appeared to learn from each other, about their own home countries and about the world.
Wednesday in my International Relations class for the Mexican students, each had to give a small presentation about a female political leader of the 20th or 21st century. After everyone had finished telling the group about the different presidents and prime ministers, I posed the question: "If we had to elect one of these people to become the leader of our class, for whom would you vote, and why?" The options were: Corazon Aquino, Violetta Chamorro, Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel, and Margaret Thatcher (there had been a few other possibilities, but these are the ones they each selected to learn about). Their responses really impressed me. After all 7 of the students had voted, the results were:
To break the tie, they insisted that I cast the deciding vote. I hemmed and hawed, discussing what I liked about each, detailing why it was difficult to choose one. But, of course, I eventually came down to either Thatcher or Meir with Merkel a close third (after all, I'm both a Saxon and a Jew), explaining how significant I felt it was that both Thatcher and Meir had demonstrated that women can be successful as commanders-in-chief. Certainly the Yom Kippur War outweighs the Falklands War in terms of military crises, but since Meir had no chance of winning our class election, I went with Thatcher. If only the Tories had been as smart as my students (John Major? Please.), the Iron Lady might still be kicking ass and taking names!
It looks like Time Team America is finally coming to a PBS station near you! You should totally check it out, because it features my friend, JustJess' old man, and archaeological celebrity B-Hale! Locally, I think we can see it (the Roanoke episode, I believe) on Wednesday at 7:00pm. The Time Team America website (linked above) has a search function under the "TV Schedules" tab, so Sweet Pickles' non-local readers can find out when to catch it. I'm hoping that in addition to sifting through the dirt, B-Hale will also dish the dirt (i.e., share any behind-the-scenes gossip on who was doing whom at the dig site)!
I love it! And you thought Sweet Pickles' name sounded goyish! :)
What a fascinating story about an isolated community of Peruvian Jews. This quote in particular resonates: "We were isolated for so many decades, living on the jungle’s edge
in a Catholic society without rabbis or a synagogue, in which all we
had were some vague notions of what it meant to be Jewish. But when I was a child, my mother told me
something that forever burned into my mind... She told me,
‘You are a Jew, and you are never to forget that.’ "
boldfaced election fraud on behalf of a clown like Ahmadinejad, or the false hope that the victory of a 'reformer' could have had any real impact on the theocracy that runs Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran has never had real elections in any sense of the word that modern representative democracies would recognize. To have any true hope for change, Iranians should have been filling the streets well before now. The travesty of this 'election' is not its outcome, but rather its limited options (i.e., the pre-approved list of candidacies permitted by the medieval regime). The delusions under which Moussavi's supporters had been laboring were naïve, but their disillusionment and the upheaval it has caused is, nonetheless, disheartening and difficult to watch. After 30 years of this nonsense, I wonder if anyone inside Iran today would be ready to bring back Reza Pahlavi the former Crown Prince (below)? Not in the same capacity as his father (God knows the Middle East already has more than its fair share of dictators), but as a unifying symbol in a parliamentary democracy similar to the Westminster model? To me, this seems like Iran's best hope for a longterm future of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... not the election of Moussavi or any of the other reformist candidates.
From the NYTimes article South Koreans Express Fatigue With a Recalcitrant North: “We sent them food, fertilizer, factories, more than we give our own
poor people,” said the South Korean, Lee Soon-hwan, a 30-year-old
office worker. “And all they pay us back with is this nuclear test.”
Wow. This quote really struck me. Part of me feels like "Duh! Now will you quit diddling around with Pollyanna crap like the 'Sunshine Policy' and get real (e.g., Washington's and Tokyo's Proliferation Security Initiative)?" But the part of me that knows South Koreans' yearning for reunification can read the underlying poignancy of the quote. Sometimes I wonder if the world wouldn't be better off in the long run if the South would just launch a full-scale invasion and get it over with. Either way, I think that 30-year-old office worker should be the next president of South Korea.
Using photographs, radio archives, and music from the era, BBC News has assembled a cool audio slideshow to mark the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Through the eyes of my childhood self, those eleven and a half years were heady times. Looking back, I am reminded of what I liked about her in the first place. The audio slideshow makes clever use of the period music. My only criticism would be, how can a montage about Thatcher's leadership include no significant reference to the historic defeat of Soviet totalitarianism?
The so-called ‘Togato Barberini’ portrait of a Patrician/Senator wearing toga and carrying two imagines (portrait-busts of ancestors). 1st Century BCE. Marble. Centrale Montemartini, Capitoline Museums, Rome.
Livia Deified. Early 1st Century CE. Marble. Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid.
Augustus as Pontifex Maximus. After 12 BCE. Marble. Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome.
Until recently, I hadn't realized that this year was the centennial anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv, the Middle East's highest-ranking world city! Founded on 12 acres of sand dunes north of the venerable port of Jaffa on land purchased from Bedouins, the city's humble birth is documented in this black-and-white photograph of the auction of its first lots. The fact that this image and the modern photo collage are only separated by a hundred years blows my mind. Mazal tov, Spring Hill!
In particular, this quote (attributed to former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan), really resonated:
"France, he said, had made peace with Germany... but it could never -
never - forgive the British and Americans for the liberation."
And who knew Lyndon Johnson was so quick-witted?
On a side note... I don't know if referring to NATO as "Nato" is a Britishism or a new trend in journalism, but it irritates. "Nato" is too close to the Japanese fermented soybean specialty for my comfort.
Until I started doing these lists and including art, I never realized how much of Titian's work I like. If you had asked me before how I felt about Titian, I probably would have been like, "He comes after Raphael and before Tintoretto." It may be time for Sweet Pickles to have another look at ol' Titian.
Titian.Ranuccio Farnese. 1542. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
Gustav Klimt.Mäda Primavesi. 1912. Oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Egypto-Roman mummy-portrait from the Fayyum. Eutyches, Freedman of Kasanios. 2nd Century CE. Encaustic on wood. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Ilan Halimi was a French 23-year-old who was kidnapped by a gang of immigrant youths because he was Jewish. He was tortured for over three weeks. On this date in 2006, Ilan Halimi was found in a Paris suburb... handcuffed to a tree, bound, naked, stabbed multiple times, an ear and a toe severed, and burns covering 80% of his body. He died en route to the hospital. The linked Wikipedia article deserves to be read.
Not to marginalize the wanton slaughter that happened throughout Mumbai by becoming overly focused on the Jewish part of this tragedy, but these 'soft' targets weren't chosen at random.
Is it just me, or does this news footage of what happened at Mumbai's Chabad center seem disconcertingly similar to 1972 news footage from Munich's Olympic Village?
Moshe Holtzberg's parents were younger than I am. [Note: ima, which you hear him scream over and over here at his parents' funeral, is "mama" in Hebrew.]
My new hero, Sandra Samuel:
Regrettably, there hasn't been much positive to say about most journalistic coverage of the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai's Chabad center. However, below is the text of two of the best opinion columns about the attacks that I've read since they happened. While I don't agree with everything they have to say, I fear that the analysis of both writers and the conclusions they draw are, unfortunately and for the most part, dead-on (absolutely no pun intended).
Friday, December 5, 2008
Mark Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable
By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
Shortly
after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, The
Sydney Daily Telegraph's columnist wag, sent him a note-perfect parody
of a typical newspaper headline:
"British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing."
Indeed.
And so it goes. This time round – Mumbai – it was the Associated Press
that filed a story about how Muslims "found themselves on the defensive
once again about bloodshed linked to their religion".
Oh, I don't
know about that. In fact, you'd be hard pressed from most news reports
to figure out the bloodshed was "linked" to any religion, least of all
one beginning with "I-" and ending in "-slam." In the three years since
those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned
the offending formulations – "Islamic terrorists," "Muslim extremists"
– and by the time of the assault on Mumbai found it easier just to call
the alleged perpetrators "militants" or "gunmen" or "teenage gunmen,"
as in the opening line of this report in The Australian: "An Adelaide
woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage
gunmen ran amok."
Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.
The
veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the
more cryptic locution "practitioners." "Practitioners" of what, exactly?
Hard
to say. And getting harder. For the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross
produced a jaw-dropping round-up of Mumbai media coverage: The
discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity,
Jews had been attacked, tortured and killed produced from the New York
Times a serene befuddlement: "It is not known if the Jewish center was
strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."
Hmm.
Greater Mumbai forms one of the world's five biggest cities. It has a
population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in
a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting
therein. An "accidental hostage scene" that one of the "practitioners"
just happened to stumble upon? "I must be the luckiest jihadist in
town. What are the odds?"
Meanwhile, the New Age guru Deepak
Chopra laid all the blame on American foreign policy for "going after
the wrong people" and inflaming moderates, and "that inflammation then
gets organized and appears as this disaster" in Mumbai.
Really?
The inflammation just "appears"? Like a bad pimple? The "fairer" we get
to the, ah, inflamed militant practitioners, the unfairer we get to
everyone else. At the Chabad House, the murdered Jews were described in
almost all the Western media as "ultra-Orthodox," "ultra-" in this
instance being less a term of theological precision than a generalized
code for "strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but
they probably shouldn't have been over there in the first place."
Are
they stranger or weirder than their killers? Two "inflamed moderates"
entered the Chabad House, shouted "Allahu Akbar!," tortured the Jews
and murdered them, including the young rabbi's pregnant wife. Their
2-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny
who hid in a closet and then, risking being mowed down by machine-gun
fire, ran with him to safety.
The Times was being silly in
suggesting this was just an "accidental" hostage opportunity – and not
just because, when Muslim terrorists capture Jews, it's not a hostage
situation, it's a mass murder-in-waiting. The sole surviving "militant"
revealed that the Jewish center had been targeted a year in advance.
The 28-year-old rabbi was Gavriel Holtzberg. His pregnant wife was
Rivka Holtzberg. Their orphaned son is Moshe Holtzberg, and his brave
nanny is Sandra Samuels. Remember their names, not because they're any
more important than the Indians, Britons and Americans targeted in the
attack, but because they are an especially revealing glimpse into the
pathologies of the perpetrators.
In a well-planned attack on
iconic Mumbai landmarks symbolizing great power and wealth, the
"militants" nevertheless found time to divert 20 percent of their
manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the
city's poor in a nondescript building. If they were just "teenage
gunmen" or "militants" in the cause of Kashmir, engaged in a more or
less conventional territorial dispute with India, why kill the only
rabbi in Mumbai? Dennis Prager got to the absurdity of it when he
invited his readers to imagine Basque separatists attacking Madrid:
"Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid
Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous."
And yet we take it for
granted that Pakistani "militants" in a long-running border dispute
with India would take time out of their hectic schedule to kill Jews.
In going to ever more baroque lengths to avoid saying "Islamic" or
"Muslim" or "terrorist," we have somehow managed to internalize the
pathologies of these men.
We are enjoined to be "understanding,"
and we're doing our best. A Minnesotan suicide bomber (now there's a
phrase) originally from Somalia returned to the old country and blew up
himself and 29 other people last October. His family prevailed upon
your government to have his parts (or as many of them as could be
sifted from the debris) returned to the United States at taxpayer
expense and buried in Burnsville Cemetery. Well, hey, in the current
climate, what's the big deal about a federal bailout of jihad
operational expenses? If that's not "too big to fail," what is?
Last week, a Canadian critic reprimanded me for failing to understand that Muslims feel "vulnerable." Au contraire,
they project tremendous cultural confidence, as well they might:
They're the world's fastest-growing population. A prominent British
Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a
Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying
them as infidels. If he's feeling "vulnerable," he's doing a terrific
job of covering it up.
We are told that the "vast majority" of
the 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate)
are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDS
activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of
the things done in the name of their faith. Rabbi Holtzberg was not
murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of
Bush's foreign policy. He was murdered in the name of Islam – "Allahu
Akbar."
I wrote in my book, "America Alone," that "reforming"
Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign
of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to
accept that. Spread a rumor that a Quran got flushed down the can at
Gitmo, and there'll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish
some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there'll be
protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a
rabbi in Mumbai in the name of Allah, and that's just business as
usual. And, if it is somehow "understandable" that for the first time
in history it's no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are
greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline
informs us, "worry about image." Not enough.
It was obvious to observers around the world
that one of the designated targets of the Pakistani Islamist terrorists
was the Mumbai Chabad House, the one Jewish center in Mumbai. The 10
Islamic terrorists who came from Pakistan to India chose their targets
with great care.
If one assumes that the terrorists' primary goals were to
destabilize India, weaken growing Indian-Pakistani cooperation in
fighting terrorism, and greatly increase Indian-Pakistani tension,
hopefully to the point of military war between the two countries, every
one of the targets made strategic sense. Slaughtering as many people as
possible in India's major economic center, including as many foreign
tourists as possible at Mumbai's finest hotels, also made sense.
But one target seemed to make little sense. In fact, until the
attack was over people were uncertain whether the terrorists' attack on
the Jewish center known as the Chabad House was part of the original
plan or chosen spontaneously. Only when the lone terrorist who was
captured told his interrogators that the Chabad House was planned a
year earlier was it indisputable that killing the Rabbi, his wife,
their children and any other Jews present was part of the plan.
The question is why?
Why would a terrorist group of Islamists from Pakistan whose primary
goal is to have Pakistan gain control of the third of Kashmir that
belongs to India and therefore aimed to destabilize India's major city
devote so much of its efforts — 20 percent of its force of 10 gunmen
whose stated goal was to kill 5,000 — to killing a rabbi and any Jews
with him?
The question echoes one from World War II: Why did Hitler devote so
much time, money, and manpower in order to murder every Jewish man,
woman, and child in every country the Nazis occupied? Why did Hitler —
as documented by the late historian Lucy Dawidowicz in her aptly named
book “The War against the Jews” — weaken the Nazi war effort by
diverting money, troops, and military vehicles from fighting the Allies
to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps?
From the perspective of political scientists, historians, and
contemporary journalists, the answer to these questions is not
rational. But the non-rationality of an answer is not synonymous with
its non-validity.
For the Islamists, as for the Nazis, the destruction of the Jews —
and since 1948, the Jewish state — is central to their worldview.
If anyone has a better explanation for why Pakistani terrorists,
preoccupied with destabilizing India, would expend so much effort at
finding the one Jewish center in a country that is essentially devoid
of Jews, I would like to hear it.
With all the Pakistani Islamists' hatred of Hindus, they did not attack one Hindu temple in India's major city.
With all their hatred of Christian infidels, the terrorists did not seek out one of the 700,000 Christians in Mumbai.
To reinforce my point, imagine a Basque separatist terrorist organization attacking Madrid. Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid
Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous. But no one seems to find it odd
that that Pakistani Muslim terrorists who hate India and want it to give up control of Indian Kashmir would send two of its 10 terrorists
to kill perhaps the only rabbi in Mumbai. As Newsweek reported during
the siege, “Given that Orthodox Jews were being held at gunpoint by
mujahideen (sic), it seemed unlikely there would be survivors.”
Newsweek, like just about everyone else, simply assumes Islamists will
murder Jews whenever and wherever possible.
They are right.
For years I have warned that great evils often begin with the murder
of Jews, and therefore non-Jews who dismiss Jew-hatred (aka
anti-Semitism, aka anti-Zionism), will learn too late that Jew- and
Israel-haters only begin with Jews but never end with them. When
Israeli Jews were almost the only targets of Muslim terrorists, the
world dismissed it as a Jewish or Israeli problem. Then it became an
American and European and Filipino and Thai and Indonesian and Hindu
problem.
Two final points:
One is that it is exquisitely fitting that the same week the murders
in Mumbai were taking place, the United Nations General Assembly passed
six more anti-Israel resolutions. As it has for decades, the U.N. has
again sanctioned hatred for a good and decent country as small on the
map of the world as the Chabad House is on the map of Mumbai.
Two: Statements from Chabad in reaction to the torture-murders of a
28-year-old Chabad rabbi and his wife called on humanity to react to
this evil “with random acts of kindness.” Evil hates goodness. That's
why the terrorists targeted a Chabad Rabbi and his wife.
Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a
visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is
the author of four books, most recently "Happiness Is a Serious
Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.pragerradio.com.
I've been remiss in sharing my heartbreak at what Hurricane Ike has done to my favorite city of my home state, Galveston, 'The Oleander City'. At one time, Galveston was the most important city in Texas, and the most important port in the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the state's old families are 'Islanders' (which is what Galvestonians call themselves). Although eventually displaced by the rise of Houston, Galveston still remains one of the most popular destinations in the state, treasured for its architecture, its food, its beaches and bay, its flora and fauna, its history, and its good-times atmosphere. It is to Texas what Charleston is to South Carolina, what Savannah is to Georgia, what New Orleans is to Louisiana. I hope some of these images will communicate some sense of how amazing a place Galveston is. And when things return to normal, I hope you'll visit there sometime. Come with!!
Well... informally I got the word this morning that all three readers signed off on my comps, and notification has been forwarded to the graduate school. I don't know how great my answers were, but I guess they were at least minimally sufficient. Regardless, I'll take it. So, it looks like Sweet Pickles has another MA under his belt (Size 28), which means he gets to keep his job. This also means, no more classes next semester. Which means, more free time during Fall 2008. And you know what that means... PAR. TAY.
Now, to start Fall 2008 off right (or to end Summer 2008 with a bang), Sweet Pickles heads out tomorrow morning to a condo at Perdido Key, for a long weekend of beach and booze. Vay-cay, baby! The road-trip includes a cast of characters reminiscent of Gilligan's Island: M-Shan (Mary Anne) and B-Whit (Ginger), with whom Sweet Pickles (Mr. Howell) will share a room; M-Kin (the Professor), A-Ev (Mrs. Howell), K-Wad (Gilligan) and L-Hane (the headhunter from that neighboring island). However, I anticipate that the adventure itself will be more like Season 1 of MTV's Road Rules.
Sweetpickles.typepad.com will be on temporary hiatus until I get back. I've gotta go now (and find my Speedo to pack), but I'll leave you with this video that reflects Sweet Pickles' current mood. Enjoy!
Not enough to kill me. Just enough to provide a serious-enough excuse to abandon this whole 'comps' thing. I've had nervous stomach all day. Tomorrow should be a blast. My previous MA required a written thesis, but no comprehensive exams. So I've got some newfound respect for people (like JustJess and The Thrill) whose MA required them to do both. Eff a bunch of that! If I survive this, I'm adopting N-Man's philosophy (pun intended): Not one more class. Ever.
Shortly, I'm off with T-War to Tasting Society. Tonight is British beers, at J-Bank and T-Bank's house. I just hope I'll be able to enjoy myself and not fret about how underprepared I still am for Monday morning. Maybe if I just get slutty drunk, I won't remember what's looming on my horizon.
Tomorrow is Yom Ha'Atzmaut, i.e., Israel's Independence Day. In the Hebrew calendar, it begins tonight at sundown. So happy birthday, ya sexy badasses!!
This graffiti in very modern Tel Aviv is a Hebrew phrase that is centuries old: Am Yisrael Chai! ("The Jewish people still live!")
The sound clip below is fricking amazing. It's a BBC recording from April, 20 1945 of Jewish survivors of Bergen-Belsen just five days after their liberation. In this first Sabbath ceremony conducted openly on German soil since the beginning of WWII, with people still dying around them, they sing Hatikva ("The Hope"), which would later become the Israeli national anthem. At the end of the song, you hear an old man's voice shout "Am Yisrael Chai!"
On Tuesday evening, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke to several thousand people at a candlelight vigil near City Hall and called on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, which begin in August.
“To all the leaders of the world,” said Rev. Tutu, “for goodness sake, don’t go to Beijing.”
or, "Why Should Only Democracies Get to Hog the Limelight Every Four Years?"
In case you'd forgotten, this is the country the IOC awarded the 2008 Olympics to. Impugning the character of the Dalai Lama?!?! OH REALLY???
Was the IOC high at the time this decision was made?? Beijing beat out Toronto, Paris, Istanbul, and Osaka to host this year's Olympics. Luckily for the rest of the world, by the time the final decision was made, both Cairo and Havana had dropped out of the running. Otherwise, the amateur athletes of the world might have been lending credibility to regimes with even worse human rights records. I suppose we should just be thankful that Tehran and Pyongyang hadn't submitted applications to be considered. However, it does appear that the IOC may be regretting its decision. A little too little, a little to late, in my opinion.
To be honest, I had quit paying much attention to the Olympic Games shortly after the Cold War ended. But 2008 clinches if for me. Who can take the ideals of the Olympics seriously anymore? Like the Sudan's uncontested election to the UN Human Rights Commission, choosing Beijing makes a mockery of the spirit and intent of very Games that Beijing wishes to host. At least Berlin's bid for the 1936 Olympics had won well before the Nazis came to power in Germany. The regime responsible for the Tiananmen Massacre is the same one to whom the IOC awarded the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. In the history of the modern Olympic Games (since Athens in 1896) the only totalitarian regime to be awarded an Olympiad was Moscow in 1980. However, those Games were boycotted by 64 countries, including Argentina, Canada, West Germany, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Turkey, and... China!
Yesterday, Chelsea Clinton was asked another question about the Lewinsky affair. I have to say, this seems uncool to me. It's not that the Lewinsky affair is a "private family matter" (as young Ms. Clinton refers to it)... it is most decidedly not a private family matter any longer. But it seems unfair to pose these kinds of questions to Chelsea. If these questions must be asked at all, they should be directed to Chelsea's mother, who is the one running for president. In effect, asking Chelsea about Lewinsky-related stuff is asking a daughter to publicly disparage her mother. I mean, how is she supposed to answer? ["My mother is too weak to be president because she was a doormat who let my father humiliate her."] Everybody knows that Sweet Pickles is no fan of Senator Clinton, her husband the former president, or their unfortunate-looking daughter (bless her heart). But come on.
Now, if questioners wanted to ask Chelsea about her mother's cankles, I'd be down with that.
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