Need a sunbeam? The Lady in Red will hunt one up for you.
Looks like she has spotted her quarry:
The quarry:
Ah! It moved. Look out, Lady!
Patience, patience...
Gotcha!
Here she gets one on video:
Isn’t Lady a great sunbeam hunter? I think so.
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
My dear friend Joanna started a forum about organic foods and environmental issues just a few short weeks ago, and already she’s made it into Israel21c:
Other Israelis are also helping to make a difference in the way their fellow citizens are informed about protecting their surroundings. American immigrant Joanna Katzen recently established a website forum for English-speaking Israelis concerned about the environment, interested in organic foods and similar issues. (A parallel site for Hebrew-speakers has been around for a while.)
“The response has been amazing,” she told ISRAEL21c. “Over 100 people joined within less than 48 hours. The forum is apolitical. I hope the exchange of ideas, and thoughts will promote organic farming, responsible consumerism, spirituality and holistic thought. If we can bring about a change in the way people treat the earth; if we can expose more people to this lifestyle, who knows how this ripple effect can affect our lives, hopefully even the prospect of peace in the Middle East.”
The article also mentions Linshom (“to breathe”), a Hebrew-speaking website dedicated to making sure that Israel’s no-smoking laws are enforced.
In other good news—cat-related, no less!—a local cat-welfare organization is about to begin a spaying and neutering program in one of Jerusalem’s downtown neighborhoods.
Slowly but surely, we’re making progress.
Lady in Red, beware! The Skritch Monster is coming to get you!
She’ll skritch the top of your head...
... rub your ears...
... skritch your chin...
... rub your fuzzy tummy...
... watch you knead the air...
... and listen to you purr.
Yes, the Skritch Monster is coming for you, Lady in Red. Be relaxed. Be very relaxed.
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
Take a sunny day, add a few flower bushes, and what do you get? Camera bait!
Here are some more bee pics. Here’s one on an elecampane bush. If you look closely (or enlarge the photo by clicking on it), you can see the pollen baskets at the bee’s knees.
A bee on a lavender stalk. Note the knees.
Back to the elecampane bush: the face of a bee.
I think this may be my best bee shot to date:
The Friday Ark has sailed! On Sunday, the Carnival of the Cats will be at CatSynth.
While I waited for the bus to work this morning, I noticed an elecampane bush in flower. The bees were busy working the blossoms, and I decided to continue my quest for the perfect bee shot. A bee in the air:
On an elecampane blossom:
Then I noticed this critter. It looks like a bee, but it isn’t. Notice the stripey eyes; bees have solid black eyes. Also, it didn’t take off or fly like a bee. (Hmmm... does that make it a wannabe bee?)
Farther down in the bush, well camouflaged, was a grasshopper. I only noticed it because it jumped near me.
(Click all images to enlarge.)
(Now that I think of it, this makes a good Hallowe’en post, because I’m bug-phobic. Yup, bugs scare me. The bigger the bug, the louder the scream. But please don’t get any ideas. If you want to hear me scream, just ask, and leave the critters outside where they belong. OK? Thanks. Whew.)
When I passed the restaurant again this morning as I left work, I saw one of the workers there come out with two cans of cat food and an aluminum pan. He got to work straightaway as four members of the local colony crowded round:
Kitty symmetry again: two silvers, two grays, and they’re even on the same sides!
A view from the rear. One of the grays is looking at me.
Now one of the silvers checks me out:
One of the grays finishes eating and starts washing up:
I couldn’t resist adding these last two photos. Here, three of the cats look up as passersby make a bit of noise:
Here, the cat who didn’t look up before is looking up now.
When I had to go to Tel Aviv for a narration job last week, I decided to head in a few hours early and spend some time at the top of the circular Azrieli Tower (there are also a triangle and a square), looking down on Greater Tel Aviv from the observatory. Here are some pictures I took while I was there.
(Click on any photograph to see a larger version.)
Looking out to sea:
Another angle:
The Ayalon Freeway:
Looking out toward Ramat Gan and the Diamond Exchange:
The Tel Aviv North train station is at the center of this photo:
A guide you can hold in the palm of your hand. This little gizmo plays recordings that tell you exactly what you’re looking at, plus a good deal of background material:
Finally, the elevator showing the number 49 just before it began its descent. If you look carefully, you can see the photographer from at least two angles—and no, I didn’t plan it that way!
Oh, yes, the voice-over job went just fine.
From the I Kid You Not Department: Israel TV news has just reported that a cat was spotted in the Knesset cafeteria sink after hours.
From what I could see on the security camera footage they showed, it was a tabby. Maybe some kind-hearted staffer, or even MK, will give it a forever home.
Yesterday, when I was at the pedestrian mall downtown, I saw this torbie beauty:
She was outside a store that sells model cars. Turns out that she lives with the proprietor, whose home is close by, and her name is Virginia. She has a son who prefers to stay home while she spends the day with her human companion at his store. The proprietor told me that once, when he had to go home four times during the course of the day, Virginia accompanied him back and forth each time.
As we can see here, they love each other very much.
I hope I’ll be seeing Virginia again. She’s sweet, and I have a weakness for calicos.
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
Ever work with a director who really gets into micro-managing?
This is a wickedly funny video starring my old college buddy Charles Ilardi, who pioneered the film studies major at our alma mater. Full credits here.
(For those who want or need to know: It is clean, though it hints at risqué behavior at the end.)
Several friends of mine had birthdays recently—two on the same day.
One is Laurence Simon, the King of Catbloggers. Another is Elisson of Blog d’Elisson, whose cats I would love to meet one day. Back to my own neck of the woods, a very dear friend of mine celebrated her birthday on the same day as Laurence’s.
Since all three are Jewish and have cats of their own, I am posting some photos of Israeli cats in their honor. First, a tabby and a tuxxie in the grass:
Next, Lady lounging on the sofa, looking for all the world as though she is sleeping off the carousing of the night before:
Next, a kitty on the tiles:
Ad me’ah ve-esrim (till 120) to all of you!
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
The year of shemitta, or the sabbatical year when fields in Israel are supposed lie fallow, has just begun. Produce that grows in Israel during the sabbatical year must treated with special reverence, since it has what is known as kedushat shemitta—the sanctity of the sabbatical year. There are all sorts of rules about how one is supposed to care for one’s garden during this year, what produce one may buy and even how one should treat their peels, rinds and cores, since produce that has kedushat shemitta may not be disposed of in the ordinary fashion.
I need to ask my local rabbi: what do I do when I find a kitty growing in the planter?
More about the sabbatical year here.
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
On my way to work this morning, I passed by a bicycle ride about to start:
It wasn’t just any bike ride. This was the Team OneFamily trek to Sderot. (More information at the link above.)
I saw people of all stripes getting ready to ride, including a religious woman who wore a kerchief under her helmet and a cut-off skirt over her cycling leggings.
It was so special to see all these people headed for Sderot on their bikes. Made me wish I were going, too.
One of the many bookstores downtown changes its display every week or so. Each display has a theme. This week’s was—you guessed it—cats! (Click on the photo to embiggen.)
In my opinion, one of the books should not be there. But the rest of them look terrific. A veritable feline gold mine in print!
(The window next to it was full of books on classical mythology—for me, a double-header.)
Her Ladyship and Missy go symmetrical again. I love it when they do this.
The Friday Ark.
Open the gates for us
at the time of their closing.
The day is fading,
the sun westering and waning;
let us pass through Your gates.
(from the closing prayer of Yom Kippur)
As I was running errands downtown this morning, something drew me into the doorway of a building, where I saw this:
An open door with a padlock on it, engraved with the word “Eden”—evidently just the name of the company that made it, but pretty symbolic.
May this year see the gates open for all of us. Gemar hatima tova.
No, I haven’t grown a tail...
Either Her Ladyship wants to share hers, or she likes to be in her tent, otherwise known as my skirt.
The Friday Ark. The Carnival of the Cats.
Gemar hatima tova.
Ahoy! It’s September 19th—which means that it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Pirates would enjoy my neighborhood, actually. It has lots of large, green parakeets flying wild—maybe they could convince a couple of them to try out a life at sea.
But I wanted to recommend a book in honor of the day. It’s called The Ring Bear, written by David Michael Slater and illustrated by S.G. Brooks. Check it out here.
It has pirates in it, together with a pirate ship that is in danger of being scuttled until a new pirate, complete with eye patch, makes friends with the captain, joins the crew and saves the day.
(Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page for Orson Scott Card’s review, too!)
Arrr, mateys! Ye’ll want to be gettin’ yer hands on this book, I’m thinkin’, if ye or yer little ones wants a good read.
Who remembers the All-of-a-Kind Family series? If you do—and even if you have never read it— you may want to take a look at the following essay, Family Affair:
It is December 1912, and in the front room of a tenement flat on the Lower East Side of Manhattan an eight-year-old girl named Sarah is dusting the piano keys and the lace doilies, the intricately carved heavy wooden table legs and knicknacks from the “old country,” with the greatest of care and even a little bit of enthusiasm. She's playing “find the buttons,” a kind of work-as-treasure-hunt game devised by her clever Mama. The mother of five girls ranging in age from four to twelve, Mama is a master of making life simultaneously instructive and fun in spite of her large family's rather precarious financial situation amid the pickle barrels and clothing vendors of New York’s crowded immigrant enclave. As usual, this particular diversion—one of many in Mama’s arsenal for getting her girls to complete their daily chores without grumbling—proves to be a winner. “I found them! I found them all, every single one of them!” Sarah cries out joyfully as she bursts back into the family kitchen, her dreaded task complete. Dusting will never be the same again.
I knew Sydney Taylor only very briefly, during the last summer she spent at my summer camp, where she had been the dance and dramatics director for many years. At the time, I had no idea that she was the author of a well-known series of children’s books, and she was too modest to say anything about it. It was my bunkmate who told me, asking with incredulity: “What? You mean you never heard of All-of-a-Kind Family?!”
I hadn’t, but I soon fixed the situation by reading all of Sydney Taylor’s books.
The link to the above essay arrived in my in-box only a few hours ago, as I was in the middle of preparing for Rosh ha-Shana—a quick look backward as we prepare to move forward into the new year.
Shana tova to all my readers and friends. May you inscribed for a good and sweet year filled with all blessings.
I had delayed writing this post because I wanted to be sure, but I now have it on very good authority that after approximately half a year of frequent vet visits, oral surgeries, a brief bout with diabetes, medications, injections and more suffering than any cat should ever have to experience, the Lady in Red is finally out of the woods.
Since the vet put her on a prescription cat food (Royal Canin hypoallergenic variety, for those who are interested), Lady has been doing extremely well. Although she is missing most of her teeth—multiple extractions are just about the only thing that help in severe cases of chronic gum inflammation in cats—she is eating and grooming normally, things that she couldn’t do at all when she was so terribly ill. I was very happy to hear that lately she has had a few hairballs—not that I want her to suffer in any way, but hairballs are a “healthy” problem and she’s dealing with them just fine. I’m also told that for the first time in weeks, she has even started playing again. And this is without painkillers or medications of any kind!
I’d like to thank everyone who helped with advice, encouragement and funds. I’m still climbing out of the hole that Lady’s expenses dug beneath me—thanks to your help it shouldn’t take much longer—and I will start sending out the thank-you gifts as soon as I can.
In the meantime, here is a picture from a recent visit to the Lady in Red, showing her well and happy and demanding her due of worship bellyrubs:
Thank you all so much for helping us get through this challenging time, and for helping my old friend get well.
Earlier this week I got a call from a musician from Europe who is currently in Israel. He is going to be producing a CD in several months and was looking for a woman singer to provide harmonies for some of the songs, and he got my telephone number from a mutual acquaintance. When I asked him what kinds of songs he wanted to record, he told me: Religious, spiritual, with Biblical texts. He said that they had been written by a particular songwriter, someone with an Israeli-sounding name whom I’d never heard of.
We made a date to meet earlier this morning, and soon after we began speaking together a tendril of suspicion wound its way into my mind. I had no overt reason for it, since I had never heard of the songwriter he named, but after only a few minutes I found myself asking: “Is this songwriter a member of the Messianic community?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I think we have a problem.”
And I told him what I had told the previous two musicians from that community who asked me to work with them: as a professional singer, I do not work with Messianics. Maybe I should rephrase that, actually, since after all there is a difference between working on a project where a Messianic may happen to be a co-worker but not the one in charge, and working on a project where a Messianic is the leader or sponsor. So let me be more specific: I will not record or perform any religious songs that I know to have been written by Messianics, and I will not be involved in any musical project, particularly one of a religious character, in which they have an influential role.
Why not? Because the so-called Messianic movement is actually a missionary group whose goal is to convert Jews to Christianity. In order to do this they use lies, deception, deliberate mistranslation of Biblical texts and fear tactics. (Yes, I said “fear tactics.” If you tell me, even with all the politeness and compassion in the world, that I am going to burn forever in the fires of Hell unless I believe and worship the way you do, you are using a fear tactic to get me to change my religion.) In short, they are trying to make my people disappear off the face of the earth, even if by non-violent means. If I were to lend my voice to such an effort, I would be putting the gift that God gave me to the worst possible use—treason against my own people.
The musician himself does not belong to the Messianic community nor, to the best of my knowledge, is he Jewish by birth. As we spoke, I felt that despite my best attempts to explain why I cannot become involved with his project, I don’t think he really got it. In fact, I got the feeling that he thought I ought to be more inclusive, especially when he said: “But doesn’t God say in the Bible that His House will be called a house of prayer for all nations?”
I said: “Yes, absolutely. Jews do not believe that God will punish people who do not believe and worship as we do. It’s the Messianics who believe that. Ask them. They may be very polite about it at first, but if you insist on the truth, they will tell you eventually.”
I apologized for not having asked the question sooner, which would have saved him the trip to my place. I truly hadn’t meant to inconvenience him. Maybe one day we will work together after all.
But it won’t be on a project of Messianic music.
This past week, the Strauss company recalled a batch of their packaged salads due to contamination.
I confess: I am a salad fiend, and I buy packaged salads. I succumbed to temptation several years ago, figuring that I’d earned a break after several decades of standing over a cutting board.
When I telephoned Strauss’s customer-service hotline, the woman I spoke to asked me to read her the date on the package. When I did, she replied: “Zeh lo be-seder”—that’s not OK. The package of salad I had bought a day or so before (and, thank goodness, hadn’t opened yet) was one of the tainted ones, and she told me to discard it immediately.
She took down my name and address and told me that within two weeks I will be receiving a voucher for a free package of salad. Well, that’s nice, I guess.
But it does make me wish I could grow my own vegetables.
Her Ladyship under my skirt. I held the camera toward myself for this one.
This week’s Carnival of the Cats is at Lair’s.
Last week I went with a friend of mine on a walking tour of Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus. The tour ended at the amphitheater, from which one can see the beginning of the Judean Desert, and on a very clear day even part of the Dead Sea. Here are two photographs I took there. (Click to enlarge.)
Last night I found an invitation to join a social network called Quechup in my in-box. Since the invitation came from someone I trusted, I thought, “Why not?” and joined.
I soon found out why not. To my dismay, this network started sending e-mails that were purportedly from me to contacts of mine, inviting them to join their network.
As soon as I found out what was going on, I deleted my account with them. I do not appreciate a hard sell. I appreciate even less any network that sends e-mails to my contacts in my name without my full knowledge and consent.
Yes, I realize that they might be able to argue that they had my consent. Didn’t I read the fine print when I signed up? It says right here in Paragraph 397.2 that they have the right to blah, blah, blah. Nope, doesn’t wash with me. Nothing—but nothing—gives any organization the right to send out automatic e-mails in my name to my contacts or to anyone else. Do that and I’m gone, and I’ll never come back.
So much for Quechup. Goodbye and good riddance.
