kosher grits

2011-11-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

This week, I am grading a set of short analytical papers... They are so-so, few are outright illiterate, so that's a relief, but I am still so happy when I get a well-written paper that I almost overlook the argument. And then a student, well, several, handed in papers addressed to MRS grits. I just had to briefly vent on Facebook. The ensuing discussion convinced me that FB, far from being a time sucker, facilitates deep international discussions out of a brief rant:

Me: Mrs. Grits ! MRS! A student hands in a paper for MRS Grits! Feh!!

Peter (Australia): They translated from the German: Frau.

Me: Nice try but not quite. Oy! Hey! It's not funny! It's infuriating!... I'm kidding and and aggrieved after a litany of based off of, but more profit off ofs. Sigh. abhinc 17 horas ·

Peter (Australia): Students following corporate-speak blindly ... I've seen such crap from from PR releases abhinc 17 horas ·

Mary (US): Oy, I got a based off of too. Makes me nuts. I also get "Mrs." I think it's a Southern thing. I get it occasionally in stores and businesses. When I inform check-out counter people that the generic for a woman is Ms. just as the generic for a man is Mr., they have no clue. And then there are people for whom Ms. means "Miss." No Ma'am. (I have no problem with Ma'am aside from the fact that it makes me feel a little old.) If I use Ms. it means I use it before, during, and after marriage. Or without marriage. Heck, my mother has Ms. on her address labels and she's 93 and the most married person I know. (Amusing story: a telemarketer, back when I talked to them -- now the answering machine answers all calls at home and it screens 'em right out-- called and said "May I speak with Mrs. Miller?" I replied "There's no Mrs. Miller here." Which was true! Earlier I said to one, "That's my mother," but that was before the above-mentioned address labels. Though she uses Mrs. too, but mostly she just says "call me Sally" and dispenses with the titles.

These students should call you Dr. Grits ! Or Professor Grits! Mrs, feh indeed. I bet they call the male professors Dr. abhinc 17 horas ·

Me: Yes, they should. Might be time for a talk on gender and norms talk in class.

Laura (Switzerland): As long as they don't call you Miss Teacher ;-) abhinc 16 horas · ·

Anna (US): Once at a meeting with a large group of students present, a high-ranking administrative assistant addressed the male professors who were involved as "Dr.," and called me "Ann." After the meeting I wrote an email and asked her to call me Dr. in front of students, as she did the male faculty members. She didn't even seem to realize that what she was doing was condescending. Before I came here, students were calling professors by their first names in our department and were so disrespectful - too immature to handle the privilege of doing that. I came in and said I wanted to be called Dr. Smith, and started calling the other faculty by their titles. What is really aggravating is when they call our TM (code, not translatable on Facebook), who does not have a doctorate, "Dr." abhinc 16 horas ·

Me: Oh Ann how infuriating! Yes, it's really a gender issue. I notice that students behave in a much more respectful manner towards my male colleagues and I don't think I come across as too cozy (my accent alone is scary!). Sigh. It is difficult to change a place's culture. I don't mind being called koshergrits, but not in a place where everybody else is Dr. XY. Tssssssssssssss.

Shoshana (UK): @Ann, it seems to be common practice to address your TAs, supervisors and lecturers who have yet to complete their doctorates as "Dr" and not "Dr-to-be." I notice you have no such problem when applied in the other direction, e.g. many undergrads referring to lecturers as 'professors,' particularly in america, despite said having doctorates and tenure, not professorships. abhinc 16 horas ·

Ann (US): Shoshana, when I was teaching while getting my doctorate, students just called me "Mrs." But when a male without a doctorate does adjunct teaching, he is often called 'Professor.' There is no rhyme or reason to it. Here, the title "professor" is used very loosely. Technically, I am a "assistant professor," but no one uses that title. Many faculty at the college where I teach just go by first names, but this just does not work in the music department, partly because music is assumed to be a soft, easy subject in this country - and we have to be assertive about changing that perception. I noticed when I was a student that women who allowed students to call them by their first names were not respected in the same way as the men were, even if they were highly successful and tenured. I could conceivably let graduate students use my first name, but not young students. And of course unlike in Europe, or Germany at least, you can be a "professor" and have only a master's degree, rather than habilitation. Some of the senior tenured faculty members without doctorates do not like it when younger faculty use their Dr. title because Dr is the more respected title here. abhinc 11 horas ·

Lisa (Israel): Do you do the old "I don't have a husband, but I do have a Ph.D., so you can call me Dr."? (It's even better when you're at a religious school and have an out-of-wedlock daughter. they never make that mistake twice). abhinc 8 horas ·

Nils (Denmark) Per over here in rain-drenched Scandinavia, everybody would be calling you by your first name, regardless of age, gender and rank. AND having you here would mean a much-needed hike to the average IQ as well as the average sense of humour around the place. Only trouble is, the single vacant position at the moment is in Assyriology -- but you could tell them you read the Bavli ...Am I right that in German it's impolite to say Fraülein if you're in doubt, since it seems etymologically to imply "less than Frau"? (it was around 1980 that somebody pointed this out to me, so could have changed, I know) abhinc 8 horas ·

Laura (Switzerland:) Fräulein is the equivalent to Miss (or Mademoiselle, or Señorita for that matter, which both sounds so much nicer) and is NEVER used in Germany except in an intentionally condescending manner. Or sometimes in jest with little girls. It is actually not such a bad word and was used, in the olden days, to distinguish non-married from married women. But of course today it has all kinds of implications.I personally think those antiquated expressions should be used much more often, maiden is lovely, even in German, die Maid. Very antiquated :-) BTW I have the opposite "problem". I am constantly being called Doctor even though I don't have a doctorate. I am "only" a physician, Arzt (or Ärztin, for feminist-minded people). And that does not always come with a "MD". :-)

Dina (Israel): i much prefer the Yiddish מיידעלך. my students call me Dina. i'm not sure if i would respond to Dr. Cohen. Dr. Cohen is my grandpa, the physician... but i just had to call MY professor, and found it very hard to ask for "Dan" on the phone. i'm trying to avoid to call im as much as possible...abhinc 2 horas ·

Nils (Denmark): hehe, I know that feeling. A professor at that I did some assistant work for -- arguably the planet-wide no. 1 in his field -- graciously accepted to be on the committee evaluating my thesis, and immediately after the defense informed me, that I would now have to call him by his first name. That took some getting used to.

Laura (Switzerland): Och, in Switzerland, all women are DAS: Das Heidi, das Vreni, das Fränzi... It's just a diminutive... Das Maitli... Das Büebli....

Nils (Denmark): to be fair to the German language, isn't it automatic that any -lein and -chen noun becomes grammatical neuter? (Small dog = Hundchen, and -- voila -- the creature changed it's grammatical gender, but may be a he or she dog none the less) abhinc 5 minutas ·

Me: Nils: don't tell me you think it-s a coincidence that Germans don't say Herrlein, die Rechnung bitte! abhinc 5 minutas · ·

Nils (Denmark): no doubt whatsoever that you're right there; I only meant that the grammatical phenomenon itself of turning masculine and feminine nouns into neuter when they're diminutive, is applied regardless of gender. The social choice of USING diminutives for women is of course no coincidence :-)... actually there was a satirical Norwegian novel in the 70'es that reversed the phenomenon and had the Danish/Norwegian equivalent of "Herrlein" all over the place (not to mention having young males wear the equivalent of a bra to support their anatomical protuberances)

Me: I read that novel, I LOVED it! Of course, I was 16 but still.

Night of Broken Glass

2011-11-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

Remember! On November 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, a state-sponsored wave of organized anti-Jewish crime hit German Jews and cities. Synagogues and stores were destroyed, thousands arrested, many died, and many now understood that it was better to leave.

In German history, this is a significant date. Note also

- 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall

- 1923: Hitler and Ludendorff launched a failed coup

- 1918: Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the Weimar Republic. It lasted until 1933.

- 1848: Execution of Robert Blum, a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly.

Sarkkozy and Obama

2011-11-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

It's good to know that some things never change! Today, I've been much amused by a slight faux pas committed by French president Sarkozy.

" I cannot stand Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama.

"You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you," Obama replied.

LOL! Who cannot feel for those two who have to deal with Netanyahu and his idiosyncratic political decisions on a daily basis. Although my heart is more with the Israelis and Palestinians who actually have to live with his decisions. One of the first Hebrew sentences I consciously managed to decipher while riding a bus in Israel was: ביב? עושים בשירותים. This lovely epitaph--Bibi? That's what you do in the toilet--had been written into the dust covering a bus stop, in the midst of a slew of suicide bombings that had propelled Bibi back into power. Sadly, though, there seems to be no consensus on either side, and no leadership. While every Israeli I know is fed up with Netanyahu, no other leader has managed to seriously challenge him. Until then, I guess, we'll have to live with him.

2011-11-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went to a birthday party. It was an eightieth birthday, and I was advised to show up in "business casual," a category that made me blanch and run to the phone to consult with my resident specialist. The birthday boy had told me they had goats, and chickens, and really, lived on a farm. His neighborhood is semi-rural, so this didn't seem strange to me. But then I couldn't find it. I plugged the address into my trusty phone. Still no idea. I turned right, I turned left, and passed a rather long 10-foot stone wall. Finally, I took the driveway through an imposing gate and approached a well-lit Italian-Andalusian villa and voila! I'd arrived. Not much of a farm, though, and I immediately felt seriously underdressed. Half the Jewish community was there, all sitting on one side of the pool, while his remaining family and friends, the food, and the booze, were on the other side. I joined the Jews, of course, after a good look at the food.

In addition to two waterfalls, the house also sported some pets, although I only got to hang out with a thirty-five year old cockatoo:

Game theory...

2011-10-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a lecture on game theory, and while I listened to the speaker who argued that game theory was, basically THE tool for American foreign policy, I wondered why he didn't apply his considerable brain power to finding solutions to health care or unemployment. I have never heard game theory applied to these questions, for American researchers, it seems more fashionable to turn to far-off places, in good (post-) colnial(ist) manner. Iraq? Pakistan? North Korea? Israel? No problem. Iowa? Not so much...

At the same time, I thought of these theories when, only hours after a Hamas had committed to a peace deal, Israel flew attacks against Jihad Islam, one of the many small groups committed to military resistance against Israel. What was rarely mentioned, was that bombs had been falling since Wednesday, and that the Israeli response killed no civilians. It seems like a carefully choreographed dance, aimed at keeping a miserable status quo: Hamas calls for peace, but can't/won't quite reign in splinter groups. Israel calls for restraint, but does not stop radical settlers from terrorizing the population. One soldier and one student are set free, and so are 1000 Palestinians.

In the meantime, the Ben Gurion University of the Negev and most schools in the south of Israel remained closed today. The academic year will begin only tomorrow.

Ilan Grapel

2011-10-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

"בחור נפלא" (a great guy)...Ilan Grapel is free. Until a few days ago, the media were pretty quiet about the entire affair. The Emory law student from Queens, imprisoned in Egypt since June, has been set free in yet another exchange of prisoners. I came across Grapel while preparing for a series of classes on the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brothers or more precisely Hamas, it turns out, were involved in his release (or at least some say they were), and apparently also in the last rounds of negotiations of Gilad Shalit's that took place last week. Grapel holds dual US-Israeli citizenship and served in the IDF. He applied for a visa in Tel Aviv, and made, it seems, no bones about being both a Jew and an Israeli. He posted photographs of himself at Tahrir Square, and wrote home regularly. Then he was arrested and things get a bit murky.

According to al Ahram, he was accused of being a Mossad spy and of inciting Egyptians. Why? He was said to have visited synagogues, pretending to be a journalist or a European tourist. Or, it was said, he tried to cross the border into eastern Libya. Alyawm al-masri thought those were ludicrous ideas.

Al Jazeera puts the exchange into context:

And already there is talk of additional prisoner exchanges. No wonder: Egypt will now be able to by 16 fighter jets, and the 25 prisoners, mostly Bedouin drug and weapons' smugglers received a heroes' welcome.

The redemption of prisoners was a central value in rabbinic and medieval Judaism, and has, it seems, not lost its power in the modern state of Israel. Who in the US remembers Bowe Bergdahl, held by the Haqqani network in Afghanistan since 2009? Are there campaigns for his return? If so, I have not heard of any, and my students, many of them former soldiers who have seen action, have never heard his name. Or how about Ahmed Kousay Altaie, missing in Iraq since 2006? FIVE years!

Here's to Bergdahl and Altaie's release from captivity. We sent them to war, we should bring them home.

Greencard stuff

2011-10-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

Last week, I handed in my Greencard application.

I have lived in the United States since the last nineties. Since then, I have gotten married and divorced, begun and completed a Ph.D., and moved several times. Because I had applied for my papers while living in Israel, I initially received a 2-year visa and went through a series of F-1 student visas. Each had to be renewed outside the US, accompanied by the requisite paper work and an appropriate amount of panic. And money. There was the time when I had to prove that I had $20.000 on my account, money that, needless to say, I did not have. The visa clerk suggested that I max out my credit cards for one day, print out the balance and bring it in. A friend offered to sponsor me but she did not earn enough to satisfy the INS. In the end, a fellow graduate student vouched for me. I was on an F-1, a student visa, for a while, switched to OPT (Optional Practical Training) for my Postdoc, then to a J-1 and finally to H1B, a work visa. I have never crossed the US border without an accelerated heart rate, scared to be arrested, called out, or refused entry, especially after 9/11. Not much ever happened to me. At the Canadian border American, border police once asked me to leave the car and I had to force a friend, who thought all this was hilarious, to come with me. Another time, when I was already in my second year of teaching here, a Homeland Security officer asked me what I was studying--the Consulate in Jerusalem had forgotten to invalidate my visa, meaning that I had two valid visas in my passport and had processed me as a student. Luckily, he spoke to me: how could I have proven that I hadn't entered the country illegally as a student?

I have made appointments for consulates through an incomprehensible calling center in India, waited for hours before the Consulate in Eastern Jerusalem, petrified to be blown up--could there be a better target than Americans waiting in the open air?--and I shivered in Europe where I wasn't even allowed to bring in a handbag and where my mother went into a diabetic shock waiting in the freezing cold. I was yelled at by an infamous clerk in Jerusalem, and promptly burst into tears when she told me that she had denied my request because my papers, fedexed by diplomatic pouch, were lacking a form (that later re-emerged). I have picked up my passport in shady buildings, rescheduled flights, and waited panic-stricken by the letterbox for the visa to arrive so I could return "home" in time for the semester. Some moments were comical, so when the queen of visas at my school showed me the first page of the H1B visas on her screen: "Are you involved in sheep herding?" As it turns out, sheepherding is highly subsidized, and there is a quota because of the lack of qualified personnel..

And now, finally, I could apply for a Greencard. These are the forms I had to fill in order to apply:

I-485: Application to register for Permanent Residence
- a list of all organizations I adhered to since age 16, with addresses and dates. This, luckily, was interpreted to refer only to professional organizations, although the form says differently.
- check over $1,070, payable to US Citizenship & Immigration Services
- two photographs, each with my name and "A-number" on the back, tucked into special tiny envelopes that kept them apart.

I-765: Application for Employment Authorization
- a list of all paid jobs with addresses, job descriptions, and dates, that I have held since coming to the US, plus my last job abroad. In my case--being a graduate student--that added up to a lot of jobs until the Visa Queen decided to subsume all this under "Graduate Instructor" which to me sounded silly but was deemed more respectable than "Graduate Assistant"
- two photos, see above.
- This form costs $380 if not filed with I-485

I-131: Application for Travel Document
- Called Advanced Parole, this will enable me to leave the country while I wait for my Greencard to arrive. I applied for multiple entries--who knows how long this will take!
- two photos, see above.

I-693: Medical Examination
- in a sealed envelope
- Lots of Immunizations, incl. tetanus, Syphilis and TB test. This cost $308 because my records didn't arrive on time. There were two guys with guns at the Civil Surgeon's office and I had to go twice.

G-325A: Biographic Information, including a list of my addresses of the last 5 years.

Copy of 1-140 Receipt or Approval Notice--the result of SERIOUS paper work from last year that enabled me to put in a bit for my "parking slot", my place on the list to receive a Greencard.

Employment Verification Letter from my school. Deemed too important to be handed over to me.

Copy of front and back of my current I-94 [proof that I entered and left the country, every tourist receives one of those cards in the airplane and submits it upon leaving the country]

Copy of I-797 to provide evidence of lawful admission and continued maintenance of status, that is, that I hold my current visa lawfully. This particular piece of paper consists of 2 inches of a green sheet of paper. It was given to me three years ago in Israel when I picked up my passport. I only kept it because I kept everything that had to do with my visa and spent seven hours last Tuesday looking for it.

Copies of ALL pages of passports on which any US stamp appears, in my case: 2, 64 pages in all. I had to highlight the most recent US visa and the most recent US Immigration entry stamp in the appropriate passport.

International birth certificate, requested and paid for online from my birth city, a place that has undergone rezoning twice since my birth.

Copy of divorce decree. Boy did I feel crummy re-reading those pages.

Once I had it all together, the actual assembly of the file took about half an hour. Now it's all in a Lockbox in the Dallas of Homeland Security. Mabruk, let's see what happens next.

High Holiday run-down

2011-10-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

Three three-day whammies are a killer, and I feel as if I'd squeezed an week's worth of work into three days, week after week. I am ready for a vacation (and a diet), but here are some random impressions from the first set of chaggim (holidays) spent in toto in the south:

Ten minutes into Kol Nidre, I cup my upper lip lips on the new mahzorim (prayer books) we were using. Definitely a first for me. I saw some really short skirts and high heels in shul. When I walked to shul in the morning, a car flitted by, a snazzy yellow jeep, a hand shot out of the window and a voice that made me jump boomed out: "ShaLOHM" I have no idea who that was.

And then, on Erev (the day before) Sukkot, I got up at the crack of dawn to cook. It was not an auspicious beginning of the day: I burned one dish, the fish balls fell apart, I ripped a skirt and dropped the milk. In addition, my arba minim had not arrived and I had to teach until 5:15. The lulav did turn up eventually, but without lulav rings. I hadn't ever paid attention to lulav rings before I picked up this rather bouncy lulav, and so it took me a second to realize that something was wrong. Luckily, there's youtube:

Looks so easy, right? It's easier when you wind the whole bit a number of times around the lulav...
Otherwise, well, we didn't have a minyan for large parts of the services, but on the other hand, we were we done quite fast... And while I missed my NJ family terribly, the weather was definitely a plus.

Most importantly: quiet till Passover!

Amos Oz on the Brian Lehrer show

2011-10-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

An interview with Amos Oz on the Brian Lehrer show, calling on Israel to recognize the Palestinian state. And a reading from his latest book, too.

Greencard saga update

2011-10-24T20:22:00.001-07:00

Update on the Greencard Saga:

Last Friday, I was fingerprinted. The "invitation" had shown up in the mail, and although I was petrified to miss my appointment, I verified time and location only about a dozen times. A friend and colleague, went with me or better, drove there and took me with her. I probably would have wrapped my little Honda twice around a tree before I'd arrived there...

The office was located in a nondescript office building. Wise from trips to the American consulates in Europe (where I wasn't even allowed to take in a coat) and Israel (no cell phone or bag), I'd left everything in my car. This, however, was the Deep South and in spite of the big signs NO GUNS! NO CELLPHONES!, the friendly security guys simply asked whether we were packing, My friend walked in with her cell phone and her handbag and I somehow have the feeling they would have watched her little Glock for us, had we brought it. When I entered the first waiting room, it was filled with people, all waiting to be sworn in as citizens. I was nearly in tears-I, who'd been raised in the most anti-nationalist climate possible! The fingerprinting itself took about 2 minutes of pressing my fingertips around on a glass surface, plus getting yelled at because I had failed to sufficiently turn away from the screen. After all that excitement, I went shopping.

Now, all I have to do is wait for my Advanced Parole papers (aka travel permit), and my Greencard.

Christmas in October!

2011-10-24T19:59:00.001-07:00

Today, my neighbors put up their Christmas tree. It's October. OCTOBER. Yes, I am surrounded by a bunch of non-liturgical Baptists, but October? Really? Sukkot was last week, people!

Update: a week later, a friend gave me beautiful etrog tree. It is now sitting on my balcony, looking out at its rival. Take that, Christmas tree!

Peter z"l

2011-02-16T17:19:00.000-08:00

Today, I went to a memorial service for Peter, a long-time community member of the shul I attend. I went because one does those things and, honestly, because I am a fan of his partner. When I met Peter, he was already well into his eighties, and soon forced to succumb to a wheel chair. He had fought in WWII and was proud to be a veteran. For decades, Peter had made a living as a shoe salesman here in a small town, probably selling shoes half the city. He came to shul every Shabbat, and always demanded a hug when anyone would walk by, and for the Torah to be brought down to him, so he could kiss it. And, late in life, he met a new love who had survived Auschwitz, married a GI and had moved south in the early fifties. "Acccch," she would tell me about those first years, still sounding as if she had gotten off the boat yesterday, "you wouldn't believe it. There was no air condishioning, no buildings over four floors, no kulture. Ve came from Havai, can you imagine?! Schrecklich." Having survived Auschwitz, she did not take well to the segregated south and was, I was told, famous for disregarding the "color line" in the little restaurant she ran. Today, at the service, she opened the Aron, the holy arc, together with Peter's brother, and I heard the words עלינו לשבח....anew. Standing upright, the kippah we had bought her in Jerusalem on her head, next to Peter's much younger brother who was bent over, fumbling with his siddur, I thought about this woman who, after years in hiding out in the open, the horrors of the camps and the migration to the Deep South, had found another mate and now lost him. And yet, we are enjoined to give praise. Somehow, today, that felt right.

Thinking of Peter, and may his memory be for a blessing.

Jewish-Muslim/Settler-Palestinian Prayer for Rain

2010-11-11T15:20:00.000-08:00

A month has passed since my last post, and I'll take about the reasons for that in a later post. But today, I attended a rare event, a joint Muslim-Jewish, settler-Palestinian Prayer for Rain.

Little rain has fallen in this country for years, and the dearth of water is noticeable wherever you turn . This being Israel, a drought does not necessarily mean that people save water in any meaningful way (my mother could teach Israelis a thing or two about that!), but the ground is parched. Indeed, it is so dry that the Kinneret, Israel's main sweet water reservoir, has two lower red lines, indicating how many meters the lake is below its minimum. Just a few days ago, the red line dipped below its lowest-ever Lower Red Line and currently stands at 213 meters below sea level.

A prayer for rain can be found in any siddur, but when things get particularly bad, extra prayers can be called for. Israelis have seen it all, communal prayer, rabbis getting up in the air, praying for rain in an airplane. And from time to time, inter-religious councils organize ecumenical prayers for rain. After all, without water, things would and will be much worse.

Today I went to such prayer, organized by Eretz Shalom, a newish settler peace organization:

About 50 people made their way to Ayn Tinnin, one spring over from Ayn Yael, just behind the Kanyon in Malkha, a few kilometer or so after the first checkpoint. It was a hot day, and of course we met at 12:30 p.m. The whole thing started off with one guy getting very upset when Israeli soldiers showed up to check out the commotion. After some energetic screaming on his part, the soldiers took off again. Initially, my friend Tali and her parents and niece, with whom I had come, hung out under a figtree and indulged in some people watching. There were some young settlers, some haredim, a lot of press, a few young Arab men, all chatting and standing around. Eventually, a group of men in galabiyyahs walked quickly up to the spring, which seemed to signal the opening. The mayor (?) or some kind of representative from Bethlehem greeted us in Arabic (with a spotty translation), stressing the importance of a 2-state solution and of an Israel in the borders of 67. Much murmuring ensued. Apparently, there had been an agreement to refrain from political statements, but clearly, this was too good an opportunity. Some more greetings, and then the Jewish men assembled on one side of a small and almost dry water reservoir, while we 7 or so women were relegated to its other side, at a safe distance from the men.

The Jewish organizers had provided photocopies of the Hebrew prayer, mostly psalms and the traditional prayer for rain and, divided by the "water," we prayed for rain. The men began to sing a little, but they were immediately hushed because now came the turn of the Muslims who assembled on top of the spring in a clear line. They prayed two rakat, and then the leader delivered a sermon. It was not translated, and I think it was all about one-earth and ecology, but I am not sure, it might also have been a sermon about a One-state solution for all I know. The media went nuts over the prayer and happily clicked away--the Jews were less picturesque, apart from Harav Ramon (I think that's his name). He came all in white, wore tefilin and kept raising his hands in supplication:

But really, this guy here embraced the moment in the clearest way. He is walking towards the line of Muslim prayer:

And then we made our way back and I returned to the library at Givat Ram, unsure what to make of this. Invited to an "inter-religious prayer for rain" I wondered, once again: What is "inter-religious dialogue" in any case? And can you really "dialogue" in such an uneven distribtion of power? Maybe this is really more about "getting to know one another." Although I am not sure how you do get to know each other, meeting in the middle of the day next to a spring. Granted, the social afterwards might have made a difference, I don't know, I had to leave early. Once more I was struck by some settler's confidence that a coexistence in the territories was a real possibility. But hey, maybe there'll be a rainstorm soon. In the meantime, temperatures will contiinue to rise.

Reuters, too issued a note about the event.

Gift cards for him & her!

2010-10-18T01:41:00.000-07:00

While I am currently in Jerusalem and not teaching, this southerner feels the need to blabber.

Last week, the school year started in Jerusalem, and on my way to the library on Givat Ram, I noticed this lovely picture:
Here, the Student Union is offering gender-specific gift cards to students (!). The boys get shaving gear, women sanitary pads and dish liquid. Yay! Viva la differance!

an execution before Shabbos

2009-05-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at 4 p.m., my house was ready for Shabbat. I had invited some friends to help me empty fridge & freezer before the summer, and most of the work was done. The challot were defrosted, ditto the coq au vin, the ice cream was ready (you can't buy parve ice cream here so I make my own), the apartment clean, and flowers graced my kitchen counter. While putting the finishing touches on the qinoa, NPR told me that a man was to be executed at 6 p.m. I first thought I'd misheard but no, there it was: My city. I had somehow overlooked that I am now living in a state that casually murders people. Glancing around the kitchen, I realized I had 2 hours to spare, and instead of heading downstairs to the gym, I hopped into my car and drove to the jail where the execution was going to take place.

It took me a while but I finally found the place, a recently repainted low-rise building, and completely inconspicuous-looking. Some 10 people were walking up and down the street with signs "Execution is not the solution" and "The death penalty is racist" etc. in English and Spanish. I said hi, picked up one of the signs and took my place in the procession. One guy told me he had been to every single executions since the reinstitution of the death penalty our state. Another woman--a German with ties to the Charleston Jewish community--told me about the four short days in 1977 when this country knew no death penalty. In commemoration of this moment, the movement descends on DC every five years for a ceremonial fast before the Supreme Court. She proudly told me how she had accumulated misdemeanors for unfurling the banner in front of the media. There were others, a socialist, some Christians, all sweating under the heat, waving signs... some cars honked in support, others opened their windows to shake their fists and yell at us. An ambulance entered the compound, with some security.

A few minutes before six, we convened in the small enclosed area that was set aside for the protesters. There was a second area, held at a distance, for the supporters, but Thomas Ivey didn't even warrant that. There were some onlookers hanging out on the other side of the road in the shade, enjoying cool drinks and having a good time. We waited. We stood around, some silent, hands folded, in front of a banner telling us that the US had executed 1171 people since 1977. Two women were chatting about movement stuff. At 6:15, a man in white shirt and tie, flanked by 2 others and plenty of security, briskly made his way towards us. He took out a sheet of paper and read that "at 6:15, Thomas Ivey had died." Then he turned around and walked back inside. One woman yelled: "At 6:15, the State of X has murdered another man", one started crying, and we formed a circle to say a prayer for the man who had just died inside, for his victims, the families, and the executors.

We stood around some more after that, and I introduced myself to the protesters I had not talked to yet. Now I had time to look around a little. There were at least three types of security milling around: what looked like prison guards, a sheriff car, and some other uniforms. They had been there all along, of course, joking, chatting (and I now wonder if they offer counseling for police officers on execution duty). After another couple of minutes, I said good bye to my new acquaintances. While I was sitting in my car, trying to calm down enough (ok, I was pretty hysterical by now) so that I'd be able to drive home, the hearse left the compound, accompanied by blinking police cars, not even 40 minutes after the execution.

These were, for sure, the most surreal 2 hours of my life. From the kitchen to lethal injection, in 20 minutes flat. It seemed so normal, every tiniest detail unfolded according to a seemingly familiar plan, with the difference being that there was virtually no press (one camera team), almost no protesters, no supporters, no publicity. This was for real.

I drove home, had a shower, my friends came--I'd postponed the dinner by a half hour--and made Kiddush. Shabbat. A time to rest and regain a resemblance of equilibrium after the craziness of the week. This week I did not quite succeed. I am still shaken by the experience. When I was a kid, every single execution was big news. Now, living a brief car ride from the death chamber, it barely registers.

Google & Shabbat: sorry, we cannot load this event...

2008-12-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, Shabbat comes in way to early and I struggle to be ready. Ditto with the chaggim and work. But this one was news to me: I received the following message when I tried to teach my new lenovo ideapad the local candlelighting times:

Sorry, we cannot load this event

Sorry, Calendar cannot load this event. The server may be temporarily unavailable, the event may have been deleted, or you may not have access to it anymore. Please try again in a few minutes. If the problem persists, talk to the person who created this event, or visit the Help Center.

©2008 Google - Google Home

Yiddish

2008-12-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

Everything's still up in the air and I'm buried in end-of-the-semester-panic but I thought I'd post a BBC piece on Yiddish, only online till Sunday and an audio slideshow on Yiddish, also from the BBC. Both great fun!

update on Jewish Studies classes

2008-11-21T13:14:00.000-08:00

I spoke to the dean and he suggested to try and get one of the Jewish Studies classes off the ground, so I made a flyer and keep hoping for the best. To my relief, my dean assured me that I would not have to teach 5x a week, a not unlikely scenario. And since last night, when I had my students over for a carb- and fun-filled dinner, I am in a much better mood. What a difference 1.500 calories and some diversion make!

At the same time, I remain suspicious as to the success of a Jewish Studies Program here.

Shabbat Shalom.

my courses...

2008-11-19T21:51:00.000-08:00

I was tentatively told that I will be teaching 2 survey classes next semester. While I am not particularly thrilled about these particular surveys, I am much more bothered by the fact that they are scheduled for every single day of the week. Not only will I not have any full (week) days for research which is supposedly the number 1 priority at my school, I also won't be able to travel for research or go away for Shabbat, the latter not being an argument that is likely to sway anyone. But until now, I figured that, if I am already toughing it out in the south, without a Shabbat community and more or less without a library, at least the job and the experience of teaching Jewish Studies should be really good. What do I do if this turns out not to be the case? Or only after a good number of years?

If none of this can be changed, however, I will not be ambitious next semester. I will go in every day, teach my class and otherwise try to get "the book" out. It might not be so bad then to teach this Intro course.

I thought I was doing just fine until last night when I got a massive migraine that lasted all day. And tonight, after some deliberations and lots of chocolate, I wrote an email to my dean and requested a meeting. We'll see how it goes.

No Jewish Studies classes for me

2008-11-18T15:01:00.001-08:00

This week I found out that a total of four students has registered for the two classes I was supposed to teach in spring. Needless to say, they will probably be canceled. Considering that a third Jewish Studies course on the Holocaust has also been closed for lack of registration, I am now wondering if my school is really ready for the Jewish Studies Program we are planning to set up.

If students are not even willing to watch Shoa movies, a topic hugely popular with American teenagers, what chance do my far more pedestrian courses have?

Certainly, a number of factors came together: Because of the recession, my school is implementing minimum requirements for courses, and many, many courses have been canceled to cut costs, especially in the Humanities. But a number of these classes fulfill mandatory requirements, and not everybody can have switched to Accounting, so what is going on?

And yes, as a newcomer, I still have a reputation and an audience to build but this also works in my favor, not enough time to scare off potential students. Our classes are perhaps not yet sufficiently cross-listed, no PR etc. But my main question remains: has my school done its homework? Is it sure that this program is viable?

Or are Jewish Studies so fabulously popular that is simply assumed that the program will fly? And if so, why? Because ethnic studies are so popular? Or to attract Jews and Jewish money, as some have suggested?

no ice scrapers in the south

2008-11-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

It's "cold" now at night and every morning, I have to get that ice off my windshield. So far, I've been using my Barnes & Nobles membership card but this leaves my fingers exposed to the ice and so I have been trying to find a scratcher--so far without success. None at Target, and the Advanced Auto lady told me that she imported hers from Michigan. Fabulous. What do people do? Rubbing alcohol? Is this why I see all these drivers sitting in their cars for 10 minutes with the engine running before taking off?!

rabbi's delite

2008-11-16T08:55:00.001-08:00

selling rye bread in a publix down the street from my house

"kosher style" chicken

2008-11-15T16:54:00.000-08:00

This week, the local Jewish student organization organized a student-professor Friday night dinner. It took place at a colleague's place who was nice enough to invite me for Shabbat. The students stressed that it would be a meat dinner, so we all took care to prepare parve side dishes and I was getting excited (meat!!!). When the meat showed up, it was "kosher style"--i.e. the chicken was treife, but the breading parve. Whaaat? Since I got off the plane, I've encountered quite a few people with three sets of dishes--meat, dairy, and treif--and I've seen "kosher style" restaurants but "kosher-style" chicken on Friday night?! Must be a southern thing.

more on food (not for the faint of heart)

2008-11-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

I consider myself a veteran.

In Jerusalem, I watched a mouse jump out of my room, pursued by 2 roommates and a young cat just getting the hang of the chase. I caught a (harmless but disgusting) spider the size of a small plate that had wandered in from the garden and heard my roommate scream when he discovered a giant moth that had chosen the tight space in between toilet bowl and toilet seat to die. And my first conscious act on my first morning in the goldene medine, in Brooklyn, was to slay a roach with my right sandal. With time, I got used to various infestations. In Washington Heights, e.g., we took to rinsing every plate twice: after and before each use and I never left my food out unsupervised. I've woken up to a rat floating in my Upper West Side toilet (these big American toilets with big water basins) and, incensed, immediately wanted to freeze it to send it to my landlord. I should add that my street was called "rat alley" by the locals. That, of course, beat “crack alley” which was the next block. Once, I even had two kinds of mice: tiny little grey balls living in the oven and slightly bigger ones that came out only around 1:30 from underneath the radiator in the living room.

Then I moved to the Deep South.

I learned to catch half-dead bugs in paper cones (they can't climb out fast enough) and release them outside where they belong. I don't gag anymore when I feel them wiggle inside the cone either. I also discovered that people have bug philosophies. One friend is convinced that they come out to die in the middle of the living room when there's no movement for a while and they feel it's "safe". Of course, here, the bugs are a little bigger and take a while to die. Having wandered into the bathroom while a giant roach was hugging the bristles on my tooth brush, my brushes are now permanently housed in these little travel cases and I bought a bunch for visitors, too. They look something like this and I feel much better since I have them:

And then, last night, after a long day, I bought some crispbread, took out the hummus I'd just made and plopped down in front of the telly to watch be-tipul, my latest addiction (I brought back the first 2 seasons). The crispbread was a bit crumbly so I got a knife to spread the humus and, incidentally, looked down--to see literally dozens of little crawly things escaping the slice I'd just broken in half. I started sobbing hysterically and only calmed down after I'd spend a half hour on the phone. This morning, a colleague told me that she takes out a slice and waits a minute for any bugs to come out. They call this civilization? How can people put up with this?!

The food

2008-11-10T10:15:00.001-08:00

There are many ways in which I don't fit in: my accent marking me as a rare foreigner, I'm a Democrat in a sea of Red--a color choice that, considering the anti-socialist hysteria in Republican quarters, never ceases to amaze me--and, of course, there's the food. Could there possibly a treifer culture than southern American cuisine? Boiled p-nuts are not really worth the time it takes to peel them, and lard is everywhere, as are shellfish, and, of course, pork.

This Shabbat, I listened to an entire conversation on how to prepare hogs on sticks (or something like that) and what fun it was to pull the meat off WITH YOUR FINGERS! I'm turning green just thinking about it... How can this be fine while fish with heads is gross? The latter I learned when, a few months after I'd gotten off the plane, I proudly brought in trout and watched my guests slide off their chairs at the sight of their individually cooked and, of course, unbeheaded fish. Strange. The last vegetarian restaurant closed down last year, the next kosher place is about 95 miles away and I've begun to schedule my trips to urban centers around my food urges. I eat a lot of meat when I visit cities. I have ordered burgers when deplaning, and, last week in Chicago, inhaled one of Spertus' Reubenesque sandwiches the spot. One day, I might even drive those 90something miles, just to have a burger. How did people do this for decades?!

Back to work...

2008-11-07T07:35:00.000-08:00

The elections are over, the parties are, too, and most of next week's classes are prepared, thanks to a panic attack that had me write out 2 months of lectures over the summer. My computer is still getting fixed (to the tune of $420) and I am unpacking my last boxes, but it seems--gasp!--that I will be ready to begin my own work this week-end. Yay!

Obama in the classroom

2008-11-05T10:55:00.000-08:00

Still full of last night's impressions, I couldn't just go back to business as usual and I printed out some international reactions, among them a Jerusalem Post article on Abner Mikva's talk of Obama's "yiddishe neshama". Great confusion in the classroom. Obama Jewish?! Quite of few of my students bought it without questioning and, apparently, without reading the article in the first place. It's amazing to me that after all this, after months of inflammatory "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" cries, College-age students still could be so uninformed. Sigh.

Yes, they can!

2008-11-05T07:14:00.001-08:00

Amazing. While I still wish I was American right now, I also know that my voice was not needed. What a day we're having here in my little Republican state, in spite of a considerable loss of diversity in the local political representation. With the images from Chicago fresh in mind, I crossed a poor neighbourhood on my way home from an election party, and there, kids were standing outside, cheering on the occasional passer-by. I hope they--and all Americans--remain if not this excited but at least involved. Wouldn't that be a nice change?

Elections

2008-11-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

I spent the last five days before the elections in Chicago and there was a decidedly upbeat buzz in the air, international TV stations were staking out space, students of the many universities on Michigan Avenue were excitedly chatting while waiting for their coffees at Starbucks, and not because classes would be canceled. Even the CVS pharmacy was advertising one-way cameras “for the rally”. This is going to be the biggest party Chicago has ever seen, even Celine canceled her concert and it's going to take place on the very ground where, only 40 years ago, hundreds were wounded in an anti-Vietnam demonstration and under the man whose father was the mayor during the 1968 protests. I wish I could have stayed, even without a ticket!

At home, school was canceled for the day, and when I went to the deserted student coffee shop, the coffee lady, a Black post-middle-aged woman, started chatting with me. While preparing my coffee, and safely perched between the machine and the wall, Easter (really her name!) leaned in and demanded: “Whom did you vote for? “ This wasn't the first time a southerner was unexpectedly direct but I was still surprised; this is, after all, America, and people do not like getting too personal about certain subjects, including politics, in public. I told her I wasn’t eligible to vote but that I was hoping for an Obama victory. With tears in her eyes, she told me that she never thought she’d live to see the day (of a serious African-American candidacy). Many have commented on the historical character of the elections and so it's almost trite to note the obvious. But hers was a sentiment I've encountered a lot, especially from folk who grew up on the wrong side of Segregation, a period that is still in living memory here in the south. Lieberman’s candidacy and the excitement it created among Jews can’t even begin to compare.

Like me, Easter was still worried, but also giddy with excitement. She was quite aware of the difficulties laying ahead--my school e.g. is in the process of "absorbing" a 15% budget cut and more is to come. But her dream is to walk the streets of our (staunchly Republican) town tonight with a camera in hand. I hope I will get to see her photographs soon.

Ganesha and I

2008-10-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

My survey class has moved on to Hinduism. Needless to say, I'm learning a lot, reading the Blackwell's Introduction to Hinduism while preparing for class. Already the opening, dealing with the question of whether Hinduism as a category is a colonial construct, and even if, what that might mean for modern Hindu and non-Hindu definitions of Hinduism left me dizzy, to say the least and that was before I attempted to penetrate the Hindu pantheon!

I am not an expert on Hinduism. I never read the Gita or the Ramayana (still haven't) and my knowledge of modern India barely extends beyond Monsoon Wedding, the Partition and Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations under the Mughals. In this class, I am focusing on a few key concepts (the systems of samsara, mokhsha) and the henotheistic/monotheistic character of Hinduism. The more I think about world religions, the more it seems to me that there are few religions that satisfy the polemical potential of the word polytheism. It's not avodah zarah, people are not praying to statues, not in Christianity, and not in Hinduism, and perhaps that is worth pointing out in class. Many of my survey books, strangely, get sidetracked into talking way too much about sati, the Partition, or Ayodhya--all important yet perhaps not what I want to dwell on when covering a religion in two weeks.

Spending way too much time on you-tube, I dug out a fascinating video showing how kids learn the Veda in a traditional setting. In contrast to traditional Jewish and Muslim learning environments, this is a full-body experience that is later internalized. Just watch the first 2 minutes for a taste.

The rest of the documentary describes an elaborate sacrifice and shows a very hands-on approach to geometry. Perhaps even I would have liked maths, had anyone ever explained to me why I should bother in the first place!

Here's a song that just stuck with me, on Ganesha, the lord of the writers:

My seminar remains great fun, at least for me. We do a lot of close readings which might get stale at some point but so far, so good. At times, my students surprise me. Two weeks ago, for instance, each and every one of them had spent considerable time reading and analyzing portions of an Iranian novel (in English). It was a fun class, making up for times when I feel inadequate and like the rookie I am... like last Wednesday, when nobody had done the readings and I let them go early because I was tired of playing the MC, not the responsible thing to do.

Friday night

2008-10-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

Some are bothered by leather-wearing worshippers on Yom Kippur, others (me) by obsessive message-checkers during services. As someone told me today after shul: "Now, THAT is wrong. If they would use the phone outside of shul, it would be fine." Huh?

I need to come to terms with what it means to belong to a not-so-observant community. It's not as if I had much choice right now, short of moving and changing jobs which is not an option. I am getting used to my surroundings, to (rather general but still) prayers before university-related meals, to "Jesus is my Lord" on cab doors, and to the warm weather, too. What I can't get used to, apparently, is American masorti Judaism. All these Friday-night-dinner cooking, shul-driving Jews, somehow maintaining their Yiddishkeit in small communities, often without the benefit of a thorough Jewish education... you gotta love them, right?!

Last night, I went to a dinner. I was almost faint with excitement to be in a house with the candles lit and to have a meal I didn't have to cook. We sang Shalom Alechem (each stance 3x!), my host made Kiddush and then, to my surprise, took out a couple of NCSY benchers and proceeded to read Eshet Chayil in English, and the first Psalm, too. Clearly, this was a routine. Amazing! The same was repeated when we said Birkat ha-Mazon, even mezuman was made in English. I had never seen anything like it but, strangely, it was not as alienating as I thought it would be, perhaps, because this was still the traditional text, if in a different language. In fact, it was kind of nice to know that people knew what they were reading...

High Holidays

2008-10-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing about High Holidays in a suburban southern shul if you do not drive and are single: there just isn't much going on.

I should say that people in my new shul are absolutely lovely. They have welcomed me with open arms; many remember only too well what it meant to move here, and they are accustomed to deciphering the south to outsiders. I was immediately invited to meals-a pity I don't drive on Shabbat-and my personal information was filed away for possible shidduchim... some things never change LOL. Down here, affiliation rates are far higher than in the rest of the country, in line with the church-going general society, and the local Jews care about being Jewish, they maintain three shuls, a JCC, a day school, and kosher aisles in at least two supermarkets that sell everything from meat to wine.

Still: Most of the holidays clearly are not that meaningful for a lot of people. On Yom Kippur, the woman sitting next to me told me in detail about her breakfast ("I get a headache without my morning coffee"), the guy in front of me kept checking his phone messages (why bother?). Few go to shul when the holidays fall on week-days. We were maybe 25 on Simchat Torah and Sukkot, and 4 on Hoshanah Rabba (incl. the Rabbi and his wife), one of my favorite holidays. Even on Yom Kippur, shul emptied out way before Neilah [the last service of YK], certainly one of the more beauful and interesting prayers of the entire Jewish liturgy and I am still trying to figure out why people do not come back for Neilah instead of leaving early. The local Reform shul, on the other hand, chose an elegant if strange solution and simply ended Yom Kippur an hour early!

Because of my teaching schedule, I could not spend the holidays with my American family and was stuck here. So what did I do? I invited friends for Rosh Hashanah and cooked every comfort food I could think of: Chicken soup with kneidlach, zchug, round challot, hummus, all kinds of veggies and salads, meat balls, and I would have made more meat but I had not been coordinated enough to order it well in advance. Out of my seven guests, three did not come (some cancelling hours before the dinner, some not at all) but it was great fun when we finally started eating around 9:30. They all forgot to bring their contributions--wine or dessert--but thanks to Tali, we drank fantastic Israeli wine and had fruit for desert. Hmm, this was pretty much it. I went to a Chabbad Sukkot event and walked 3 miles to the sukkah of new friends who thought I was insane to walk. The other days, I hung out in shul and then went home. I am extremely well rested, have read a couple of books and I do not think I've slept this much in years.

Next year, thank goodness, will be different. I won't be new anymore and, hopefully, will be able to go away for at least Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot.

the religious south at work

2008-10-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

I finally dug out that USB cable and could download some photos from my camera. This is what someone was handing out on the second day of class, and on campus. And no, the guy was dead serious:

no words necessary....

2008-10-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

this is in the mall up the street from where I live...

Muhammad Ali and religious studies

2008-10-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

Today, one of the students in my lecture class gave a presentation on Muhammad Ali. In his deep-south intonation, he spoke enthusiastically about Ali's successes as a boxer ("The Jungle Rumble! Thrilla in Manila!") and his status as a mainstream superstar that I hadn't been that aware of. I learnt, for instance, that Ali had a reach of 78.8 inches and a ration of 100:5 in his amateur fights which, even I understood, was phenomenal.

The point of the presentation was of course Ali's conversion, first to the Nation of Islam and then to Sunni Islam, but the guys got all excited about his boxing record and as I am a bit tired out from teaching during the chaggim, I let them run with it for far too long. The marines started discussing why and how he could have received a presidential medal although he had refused to serve in Vietnam (Ali was pardoned in 1971). In honor of the occasion, some of the deep sleepers emerged from their stupor, while the women, strangely and entirely uncharacteristically, remained silent. From boxing, they moved on to Ali's take on jihad which made me very happy because this was also one of today's topics: jihad in the Qur'an, in English parlance, the hijacking of the term by mujahaddin and western journalists and what that meant for the term today etc... For many, the stark multivalence of terms such as jihad is difficult to grasp and I cannot decide if this complexity is only tough for teenagers or compounded by the south where, religiously and in theory, a lot is seen much more clear-cut then elsewhere. We'll see how they do in their quizz on Islam on Friday. I'm expecting some gems!

Here is Muhammad Ali, already marked by Parkinson, lighting the torch:

buying a car in a strange place

2008-10-18T20:14:00.001-07:00

Step 1: Obtaining a driver's license. I do not have an American license and as I hate tests (at least when I can't hand them out myself), I was delighted to find out this state recognized my countries' license. I only had to have it transferred and was told to bring in:
- my original Social Security Card
- a (very) current letter from the Visa people to prove that I was indeed legally employed and in possession of a valid visa (did I note that my state has one of the toughed anti-immigration laws?)
- my original driver's license
- a certified translation (a high school teacher would do)

I ran into my first problem, sorry, challenge, when the visa people at school whom I already know by name noticed that I was lacking a tiny slip of a paper I was apparently given at the American Consulate in Jerusalem, a disingenuous-looking little thing that looked as if a ten-year old could photo shop it:

When I couldn't find it, I was told that it would take a year and $400 to get a new one. In the meantime, I would not be able to get a license, nor, one added to scare me into searching harder, be able to leave the country. Needless to say, I panicked and eventually dug it out from underneath some heap of paper. I went back to the visa people and received my precious letter.
Next came the translation. I translated my driver's license and sent it to a friend in NYC who asked another friend to (truthfully!) confirm that he spoke my language. Ok. He gave me my letter when I was in NY but, unfortunately, forgot to sign it. After some two weeks, the second copy of his letter finally reached me and my Brooklyn-born rosary-toting Jewish cabdriver took me to the one DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles: taking care of everything from licensing to voter registration takes place) dealing with foreign licenses where I was told that I was still missing a form that had to be signed by my translator. I briefly contemplated faking it but thanks to the internet and cellphones, that signature reached me two days later.

Step 2: Taking driving lessons. I hadn't driven in 15 years and was terrified to hit the road again. It took me a while to find a teacher who was ready to take me on, maybe because wasn't providing enough income. My instructor was a tough-talking former waitress/ bank teller whom I couldn't understand for the first 30 minutes (and vice versa). Here, classes last a minimum of 2 hours and I ended up taking a total of four hours. It was fun, mostly, and to my surprise, I could still drive and even parallel park on the first try. I picked up the few American oddities, such as using the median, this scary yet useful middle lane used for left turns, learned to briefly stop when parallel-parking instead of rolling right into my space, and how to park in an incline. Turns out that Americans don't like using the handbrake, for some strange reasons.

Step 3: Choosing a car. That one was easy. I knew I wanted a small, energy-efficient vehicle. Unfortunately, none of the small cars I was familiar with exist in this country because the local safety guidelines necessitate comprehensive changes, essentially canceling out the energy-efficient traits of most European car, let alone the profit-margin. I thought about a used car but decided that I was not ready to haggle and began to make internet inquiries at several car dealerships who got back to me pronto--long live American business sense!

Step 4: Obtaining a loan. I applied online at my bank and played phone-tag with my loan officer for a few days. Once I managed to talk to her in person, she gave me a nice quote before telling me what I had been waiting for all along: that I was not eligible for a loan because I had no Greencard. Great.

Step 5: Buying the car.
My Dad came to visit me last week. He arrived right after Yom Kippur and on Friday, we went shopping. We hit a few used car lots, without success, and had a few close encounters with scary car dealers.

Once at the car dealership I had been in touch with beforehand, things moved surprisingly fast. I knew what I wanted (a basic model Honda Fit with a remote opener which is not standard here) and that was it. My agent, Angela, must have been a novice, she pushed virtually nothing on us. There was a lot of paper work, and for some strange reason, she regularly disappeared for a few minutes. Our chat with Angela had taken place at a small table, while the financial officer whom I met afterwards resided in his own "sound-proof" glass cubicle. He, too, seemed new at his job and hmmed and ahhed, telling me, in essence, that I didn't have much to offer in terms of sureties (big surprise!) and couldn't expect the interest rate I'd been hoping for--in fact, his was better by .5%.

Step 6: Getting the car. My car wasn't available and had to be ordered. After Sukkot, I called to schedule a shuttle as the agent had told me to do. However, when I made my call, I was told that this was really only applicable when cars where being serviced. When I noted that I was after all picking up a new car, I was again told that this was impossible. I am not sure what I said, but I do remember that I slammed down the receiver after telling the manager that I was almost sorry I'd bought my car at his dealership. Five minutes later, they called and delivered the car to my office. And so, after all this, I could finally hop into my sparkling little car and zip away...

On the Blue Ridge Parkway...

2008-10-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

Hemingway in the mall

2008-10-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

I GOT MY CAR (more on this tomorrow) and went shopping. Looking around for a road map, I observed a mother and her daughter browsing the fiction section. Mom pulled out The Old Man and the Sea and began to praise the book enthusiastically. The daughter replied: "Oh, I know that one. I've seen it on i-tune!"

tourist information

2008-10-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

Looking for antique malls, my Dad went to the local tourist information. The lady working there had no idea what he was talking of (there are quite a few here) but with a wink, she handed him a list of the local tattoo parlors...

taking a trip....

2008-10-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

My Dad's visiting and we've been quite busy. I finally bought a car--this, too, was an ordeal and I'll write more on this later, maybe once I actually hold the keys in my hands--and we've been crisscrossing my new home state over the last couple of days. We took a trip up north to the Smokies and spent some leisurely hours on the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway, enjoying the woods in their full Indian summer beauty. Simply gorgeous! Photos will follow.

While this was quite an uplifting drive to take in the middle of the holidays, we also went down to Savannah and took an old highway back home, passing through townlet after townlet of shacks, abandoned houses and many, many rusty trailers and virtually no infrastructure. We were quite shocked to even just drive by so much poverty. In Savannah, I had stood speechless before a photograph showing a man hewing a boat out of a tree trunk, ax in hand--in the year 1936! I had known this was a state with many depressed areas but to SEE them with my own eyes made quite a difference. We drove through what seemed like 100 miles of swamps, clearly inhabited by people who had either nothing, very very little, or quite a bit, perhaps managers of the local timber works who had used the no doubt cheap land prices to put up a mansion in the middle of nowhere. Seeing this at this time of the year and (sort of) in my own backyard, I felt I was given a jarring reminder of our responsibility for those less fortunate--not that I would know what to do, of course...

Chag sameach, wishing everybody who celebrates the holiday a fun Sukkot!

the perfect southern gentleman

2008-10-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

Over kiddush [more or less the chatty time after services in shul], two elderly ladies discuss how couples of their generation shared household chores. Talking about a mutual friend, one tells the other: "O well, you know, her husband was a southern gentleman..."--and I expected her to spin a tale of revolutionary ironing or nappy laundrying--when she continued: "...and he got her a maid right away. She never did a lick of housework!"

grading midterms...

2008-10-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

Some more pearls of wisdom, although the midterms were--regrettably--rather coherent except for, of course, when they weren't:

Defining the nature of the covenant in pre-modern Judaism, a student wrote:
The covenant was when God promised Moses and his people Israel, as long as he and his people kept the Talmud. The Talmud was the first Hebrew Bible. This occurred after Moses and his people escaped from Egypt.

...another festival is Advent, or atonement. Its the period before Jesus was born.

No comment.

I learned a couple of things from this midterm.

1) I hadn't quite realized how many people feel that the government is infringing on their rights as Christians: quite a few of my students felt that this country has deserted the Christians grounding fathers.

2) I clearly spent too much time on the liturgical reforms of the Council of Trent. Their future teachers will no doubt be surprised about their eclectic knowledge and the no doubt gaping holes in many other areas.

3) The importance of botox had escaped me but the ingredients of the drug fascinated my beauty-obsessed students.

4) This student generation has no problems with the presence of gays in their churches, at least in theory.

my local newspaper

2008-10-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

In this week of collapsing banks and markets, my local newspaper had an editorial kvelling about the birth of the writer's second child, reminding us locals in McCain-land that a recession cannot touch the comforts of home and hearth.

walking to shul

2008-10-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

I walk to shul. It's not too far (1 1/2 miles, according to googlemaps) and takes about half an hour each way. At least a third of my fellow shulgoers seems to pass by me on their way, judging from their comments: You WALK? Where do you live? You have to move! Some feel guilty for not stopping, others worry that it isn't safe. Still, after only six weeks in town, more people have taken note of me than in my last shul over two years.

There isn't much to see on my walk: a Japanese restaurant, a garden supplies store that also sells "boiled p-nuts", a bank, a police station, and a public library. I cross a leafy neighborhood that was majority Jewish back when (or so I was told) Jews weren't allowed to own property in town. Ironically, these formerly Jewish houses share space with a country club that didn't accept Jews until recently and reportedly still keeps out African-Americans (!). The gardens house exotic plants, for example enormous rubber trees. In my childhood, they were sorry-looking and populated dusty offices but here, they are impressive creatures with glossy leaves, and I can't get over how big they are.

The foot traffic on my five-lane street, by the way, is so light that this morning, when I took the shortcut by the garden store for the umpteenth time this week, the owner invited me to run in his store because it was cooler!

shanah tovah!

2008-09-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

Have you sent a card out yet? Well, get to it, then! Shanah tovah!

Send this eCard !

Blasphemy in the classroom

2008-09-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think it's good that my student can't see how my chin is hitting the ground so hard that it's practically trailing behind me.

The other day, we watched Jesus Christ Superstar to talk about stereotypes in main stream media. I had planned to use Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, mostly, because some students had repeatedly stressed how deeply meaningful this movie was to them as a faithful account of 'what really happened'... But my school owns no copy and I didn't want to enrich Mel, so I went back to an old favorite of mine, Jesus Christ Superstar:

When I walked into the room, I had a fleeting feeling that this might turn out to be a really bad idea. Sure enough, there was barely a giggle--and who could watch Herod's dance with a straight face!--and one student immediately responded: "It's blasphemy! The film maker can't have been a Christian!" So, okay, I lied and told her he was. After some hesitation, others chimed in, confirming my suspicion that at least a third of them is far less religious than they let on, and they started pointing out the priests' black clothes and outlandish headgear, the pudgy supergay Herod as a representation of Jewish power etc. Nobody, however, remarked on the most obvious problems: the choice to depict Judas as a highly sexualized black guy and Jesus as a blond, blue-eyed and well, Jesus-like (and sexless) figure. When I raised the question of Jesus as a blond man, one of the African-American students looked at me and responded: But that's how he's been presented to us. Seriously?! What do they do in their churches? Hold hands, promise abstinence, and pray for world peace?

Saints and abstinence

2008-09-25T06:39:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, a student gave a presentation on Simon Stylites, one of my favorite saints, immortalized by Bunuel. 37 years on top of a pillar! Students usually love him. This one started with a (to me) novel explanation of asceticism: You know, it's like abstinence, when you promise not to have sex before marriage. All nodded in agreement and once more, my chin hit the ground. He also compared Simon to the Seventh Day Adventists, another example that wouldn't have occurred to me in a million years, maybe, because I know so little about the Adventists... They went on to discuss if Simon had really done the Lord's work ("Jesus says in Luke: Go out to the world...") and after hearing a bit more about the desert fathers they agreed that in fact, he had. I'm glad they liked him, too, if for completely different reasons!

Here is Simon with some of his buddies, note Onouphrious who wore nothing but his hair for forty years (!)

This city's cab drivers

2008-09-24T19:44:00.000-07:00

Still without a car, I have gotten to know my city's cab drivers, all three of them, quite well. The first couldn't find the main street bordering the university and went to the library instead. One, a former Brooklynite, pulled out photocopies of Civil War photographs. The third guy never showed up. Another, an older man, told me segregation stories, virtually bursting from excitement and pride when Obama was nominated--once he'd figured out I wasn't a Republican. One asked me if I knew the fastest way home from the airport (my response: No, but if you take the long way, I'll be annoyed). This was about five minutes before his cab broke down in the dead of the night on a deserted six-lane street. Of course, I immediately called a friend to make sure people would know where to start looking for my body.

What a relief then to be in NY for a week-end where you can flag down a cab instead of waiting at a corner for a half hour for a no-show and, best: I understand the drivers, or at least at a higher rate than here. This time, the cab driver taking me to a friend's wedding in New York asked me happily if I, too, was going to "the wedding". It turned out on the previous day, he'd driven out one of the musicians who'd gotten the time wrong. And when I meant that she should have known that Jewish weddings rarely take place on Shabbat, he smiled and said: Well, I knew that, but I wasn't gonna tell her, was I? Besides, you know, sometimes, they have a Bar or Bas Mitzvah, and then they do have musicians, too, sometimes... Oh, how I felt homesick for the Big Apple at that moment!

Today was another big cab day. I had to go to the DMV to hand in the impressive pile of documents necessary to get my license transferred (not yet! still missing one signature), then home and back to school. When I climed into the cab, I noticed that this one had a rather nice wooden rosary hanging from the rear mirror, a rare sight here. The driver was also unusually jumpy for a southerner, and, sure enough, turned out to be from Brooklyn. After hearing that I was new in town and in a slight non sequitur, he announced that Tuesday would be a big day for the Jews: It'll be Rosh Hashoneh, you know. When I responded that my students would be completely unfamiliar with the term, he exclaimed: They never heard from Rosh Hashone? They must not be from New York. Then he told me about his Jewish mother (hence the Yiddish pronounciation), and his love for the Church ("It's not too big, but I dig it"), pointing out this or that church on the way.

why do jews dance polka?

2008-09-17T11:13:00.001-07:00

I know this is absolutely haram, but I just finished grading my students' quizzes on Judaism and can't resist spreading the joy. Priceless!

Rabi Akiva was the man revealed to Moses by God who sat in the 7th row of the Academy. He was later seen as meat being weighed at a butcher shop and when Moses questioned God, God said something along the lines of "I saw it in my mind and it was so." (this is actually quite an accurate account, but hilarious as a definition of R. Akiva)

Moses Maimonides--philosopher, German, taught Yom Kippur traditions.
--man who led them out of Egypt and receive the ten commandments
--was given the ten commandments. He is well respected in the Jewish cultural and believed to have contact with God himself. (Oh well, from Moses to Moses...)

Bat Mitzvah--coming of age at 13 yrs old, first haircut, reading of "Torah" (some students include: Oral Torah). Huge celebration, get together and have a great time with tradition.

Yom Kippur - drink and get get together for a nice dinner.

Oral Torah - tongues (as a friend noted: there's a dirty joke in there somewhere)

Siddur - a robe of sort that a man wears at his wedding and his funeral. It is usually a wedding present from his wife. (The same student continues:) Kashrut - or maybe this one is a robe worn at the wedding and funeral? I think it's either this one or the "Sidder".

The covenant is a Jewish holiday.

And the polka question? I have no idea but it came right after "Are Jews for Jesus Jewish?" (good question!)

southern Jews

2008-09-11T04:23:00.000-07:00

I think Jews here are accustomed to living undercover, surrounded by a total ignorance of Jewish life and in a very conservative and decidedly Christian culture. Maybe this is why they seem genuinely excited about all the changes they see going on at the moment, it's a kind of communal coming-out. And, indeed, for a mere 10,000 Jews statewide, this community has achieved a lot. In my city of 3000 Jews alone, at least two supermarket have sizeable kosher sections, there are several shuls, a day school, and we even have a brandnew JCC. True, the latter is at least 70% non-Jewish, but that just makes it more Jewish in my eyes. What JCC is still majority Jewish nowadays anyway?

Today, the Yidden turned up for a Jewish-themed lecture, some looking decidedly old-world in their suits with their New York accents, or without: "Ah thenk mah fahmily came here in 1890...", leaving with rather academic books in hand, with a genuine hunger for Jewish knowledge. Having spent just a month here, I cannot imagine what it means to be biblebelted in the long run, but judging by my students who don't know from bagel & lox (!!), it must have been tough. Still, even the kids are trying: today, we had a presentation on Yom Kippur in my intro class. The students had never heard of the Day of Atonement ("atonement from what, professor?"), but here they were, talking about kittels as if they'd been born wearing them, describing rituals, texts, and bringing in home-made Yom Kippur booklets as handouts...

What do College professors do?

2008-09-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a great letter from Notorious PhD telling us. Thanks, Girl Scholar!

the domestic wildlife

2008-09-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

Every night this last month, my flatmate, a well-sized palmetto bug, would zip through through the bathroom to wave me good night. Of course, he could be many, but I preferred to think of him as a survivor of chemical warfare. Last Thursday morning, I found my neighbor, belly up, between the toilet bowl and the sink and by the time I was awake enough to pick him up without turning green, he was gone. I briefly worried and wondered what had happened. Cannibalism? Or maybe he wasn't dead after all and had gone to visit his buddies down by the pool, rustling contently in the leaves...
Anyway, a few hours later I found him in the middle of the living room and when I picked him up, he wriggled between my fingers. Of course, I shrieked, dropped the thing and decided to wait until after I’d returned from my trip to New York. On Monday morning, strengthened by a healthy dose of NY resolve, I slipped into a shoe to step on him before disposing of the carcass--just to be on the safe side--but instead, my toes crunched a roach that had apparently moved into my left shoe... by the time the spray guy came for his monthly tour of my apartment, I basically rolled out the red carpet for him and knew it was time to go out and buy some cans of DDT or whatever its 21st century equivalent might be.

that intro class again

2008-09-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

Today was "show and tell" in my intro class, and I brought in a ton of books, some volumes of the Talmud, Mishnah, Siddurim, Haggadot... the mamouth-size Talmud, a gift from Rob, was a smashing success... They were fascinated by the books but I do not think they are learning much. I picked the wrong teaching book, for starters and will, next time I teach this class, switch to that absolutely awful chatty book the students love, maybe they'd even read it. Secondly, I don't know how to relate to them and their experience of growing up in the south. I set up a website with links and video clips but they don't go there either. Hmm.

this morning

2008-08-29T16:00:00.001-07:00

Today, this man stopped me and asked: "Did you just see a tohr to by?" which, in my mind, obviously turned into "Did you just see a Torah go by?" I mean, it happens. But of course, he was looking for his campus TOUR...

I am teaching an intro-level class and am having some trouble reaching my students. I decided to throw my lectures out of the window and to concentrate on one single aspect per lecture, cutting down drastically what I am talking about. My students are bright, but seeing that most of them are religiously conservative, I think I need a new approach. It will take me some time, but today I started with Rabbinic culture and the story of R. Akiva's crowns. It's a favorite of many teachers because it can be taken as an example for Rabbinic attitudes toward authority and the connection to Moshe, and especially the rabbis' acute awareness of the difference between Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism.

But we also read the narrative of the oven of Aknai, and this one really rattled them. The story of Moshe and R. Akiva was strange, in spite of the lovely detail of a Torah scroll I'd pasted next to their text. ("Meat in a butcher shop???! How did they know it was R. Akiva?") But here, it was God Himself speaking, how could the rabbis not drop everything and obey? I had a ball watching them grapple with this different way of approaching text, authority, and the divine. 0:1 for me. This time at least.

taking the bus

2008-08-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

I must be the only faculty member using public transport here. Not that the system is so terrible: the buses are nice, small, air-conditioned, run about once an hour, and mostly show up within 10 minutes of their scheduled time of arrival, give or take. It is a snap to get downtown, and the system would be really great if the buses were coordinated which they aren't, because, as someone put it to me, it "aint no lawyers and stuff taking those buses." As it is, I usually end up walking the last ten blocks or so which is fine before 8 a.m. and a bit tougher at 2 p.m. My new acquaintances here are everything from horrified to fascinated that I get by at all and have been taking me home so often I stopped counting. I usually take the bus in between 7 and 8 in the morning, catching a ride back between 6 and 8 (it stops running around 9). I know the three bus drivers on that route, and, by now, a good part of the passengers, too, although as a bloody foreigner, I am still regarded with some suspicion. They seem to be mostly pensioners, home assistants, hotel workers, foreign students, young families... all struggling to get by and, like me, grateful for the existence of this rather pitiful $1 bus-a-ride system. In contrast to New York or Icy City, people here are talkative in public spaces. Many greet each other by name, they chat about vacation days, work, kids, crime--but no religion, politics, or finances, EVER.... this morning, for example, I was waiting for talk to turn to the Convention, but: not a peep. But maybe that'll be different tomorrow morning, after Obama's speech.

Ok, this was written in the morning, after I caught a connecting bus and reached my office in under 30 minutes, a new record. In the evening, however, I missed the bus by a minute, or perhaps it didn't come--there is a major game going on tonight and the city "center" was completely dead--and then the cab didn't show either. Finally, a colleague rescued me, but while I was waiting for my ride, I suddenly felt little pricks all over my legs. Couldn't see a thing, but once I removed my sunglasses, I noticed little black dots climbing up my legs, feasting perhaps on an impressive layer of sweat. Agh! Were those fireants? Whatever they were, they were biting me, reminding me of the nettles that would hit our legs as kids when we were playing in the woods.

the weather

2008-08-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

Everybody told me it would be hot. My colleagues prophesied I would just melt away and yearn for the winters I lived through in that Icy City. And, true to form, it was 100F at 9 p.m. when I landed again two weeks ago. But since then, it's been fine except for the humidity, about 93% today and rarely below 85%. And today, on my way to school, I finally remembered where I'd encountered this thick air before and I was again in the orangerie in my little town. Always a magical place... who would have thought I'd ever live in such a climate?!

panic attack

2008-08-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

So I just finished the first batch of my student's reaction papers. Wow! This is an honor's class, and the discussion was just fine last week. So, now I just read that Judaism and Islam were founded through human intermediaries (as opposed to Christianity, I assume). Judaism, I learned, relies on teaching & laws from men who were intermediaries between God & men (!). Islam, on the other hand, was founded because Mohammad said he was an intermediary between God & men. (!) Now what do I do? I'm not teaching an intro to world religions...

my Oma

2008-08-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

Advising me on cars--Honda Fit (Jazz) vs. Toyota Yaris--my Dad just informed me that his mother, my grandmother, fell a few weeks ago. She only broke a couple of ribs, but she was pretty confused when he visited her in the hospital, so that his wife very quickly found her a room in an assisted living facility nearby. She is well over 90, and her apartment will be dissolved within the next few weeks.

My Oma and I do not get along. She never was a warm person, and even my mother's admonitions that she "just can't help it. She had a tough life" never made me like her. Yeah, she had a tough life, but so did millions of others who lived through the war. It's true, it probably wasn't much fun to raise a kid (my Dad) as a divorcee in the prude post-war period. Still... in some ways, she lived a very emancipated life. She bought an apartment, and she spent her last decades cruising the world--literally. When I was a kid, she constantly seemed to be on the go to some outlandish place, traveling in these scary buses and sleeping in coffin-like beds onboard. We never had much of a connection and now, it seems, we never will.

Oh, and the woman in the picture is not my Oma, but she might as well be.

new beginnings

2008-08-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

I don't even know where to start. EVERYTHING seems to be different here in the Deep South, even if mass media and chain stores soften the worst culture shock. A few highlights perhaps, to start out with.

My first days at school
We started last Thursday, a week before Labor Day, why, I do not know. I am still not "in the system." Our fabulous administrator managed to get me temp IDs for pretty much everything from library to Blackboard. At the same time, I am freaked out every time I am trying to enter my SSN to see if I am in the "system", so Orwellian, and incredulous at the same time that they are really still asking for my SSN...

My office is fabulously beautiful, I can see a couple of old trees and a bit of sky, it's large, too, with an extra work area for research, a sitting area for visiting students, and the biggest desk I've ever had. Built-in book cases cover most walls floor-to-ceiling, and my books do not even fill a quarter of the shelf space. Yay!

I am teaching a survey and an upper-level seminar and in both classes, my students behaved as expected: sullen in the survey and interested in the latter. While my deepest fears--that I won't understand my students--have not (yet!) come true, I am constantly reminded of the very different student body. They really are more religious, more isolated from the world, and far more ready to shed any vestiges of PC behavior they might have had. A colleague asked her students to jot down some ideas about Jewish humor. The responses: money-hungry, cheap, ugly... My students talked a lot about the "morals" that religion brought about. Hmm.

Jews at school
My school managed to schedule the meet & greet for the new faculty families on Yom Kippur and when I gently complained, I was informed that the event had been moved--to erev Yom Kippur. I guess they will have a steep learning curve! The Jewish holidays are not listed among the "please do not schedule exams today" days which did not stop me to cancel class three times.

But my biggest reminder that things are different here took place at a faculty dinner in a colleague's house last week. Held in honor of the incoming grad students in a truly lovely southern house, we were sitting around, chatting idly when, suddenly, all got up, my neighbors took hold of my hands and proceeded to sing grace before meals. This was not considered a Christian affair, as I was informed, presumably because Jesus was not mentioned. Next time, I will offer to say the grace AFTER meals, hehe...

Anyway, in addition to living here, I am hereby resolving to
* work out in the gym downstairs to lose all that dissertation weight, or at least some of it.
* work regularly on my book. Oy.
* drive regularly. Not that that is a stretch here, the locals basically live in their cars and after taking the bus these last weeks, I know why.
* stay in touch with my friends.

2008-07-09T11:48:00.000-07:00

A woman in hijab stopped to let me cross the street. I noted that instead of a license plate, her car sported this white crescent plus palm tree on blue and I thought: "How nice that she customized her car." It was, as I learned a bit later, the state flag...

a new language

2008-07-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

Day Zero.

I'm traveling to my new home town. As it turns out, I travel alone, my bag manages to stay behind somewhere, providing endless joys at the phone. At one point, literally the only word I can make out is "bag", but, luckily, the collegue I'm staying with doesn't mind translating.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I landed last night and took the first opportunity to try out my new name in the cab. It went down very well! The driver, "Jack", whose name was helpfully inked into his arm, regaled me with lengthy stories about his army stint in Vietnam and Germany and with local tidbits ("32,000 recruits are cycling through here at any given moment" "they are sending THOUSANDS of people here from DC"). He even pulled out a photo of the city, post-Sherman while driving ("he destroyed everything, everything!" He might have told me more, but that's all I could understand.

My first day in my new dept. My office is not ready (of course) but it has two (!!!) windows, I get to pick the color for its walls and to choose new furniture.

It's shocking to meet polite people and a good thing my Mom isn't around to see that I forgot all she ever taught me. I misunderstand when someone pulls back a chair for me. I plop down on the opposite chair, watching him watch me sit down. Ooops! Of course, if he'd been the average New Yorker, he would have thought I was totally rude if I'd sitten down in his place. And I need to get used to staying in the car until the door is opened and no, this wasn't a date and no, we're not in Europe.

--

Grandma Yvonne cooking grits

2008-06-24T10:59:00.001-07:00

definitely not kosher!

2008-06-24T10:57:00.001-07:00

grits in music:

2008-06-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

more grits: