Karen Alkalay-Gut
to experience Tel Aviv from the point of view of children who live right in the heart is an amazing experience. they seem to be constantly experiencing different things. School always seems experimental, and so does everyday. my 8 year old tells me today his friend's father took them to his work at the Weitzman institute and they did a few experiments with bacteria. His five year old sister took me food shopping down the street. "I don't know if your family needs this," I told her. "Take a picture and we'll send it to mother," she advised. But I had left my phone with her brother so he could record the navigation instructions for my waze. So she offered to skip home and ask. "I know the way," she said, and for a moment her confidence made it seemed perfectly reasonable to let a tiny child wander the streets . she seems to be perfectly at home in the city.
August 6, 2018
Lucy Arish may be the best known Arab news personality in this country, and her recent broadcasts are heart-wrenching. They are in Hebrew of course. But even if you don't understand WHAT she's saying, it's amazing to listen to her.
on my way to a literary evening at Tmuna - with no idea who is on
and it was okay. Odot, a journal of literary criticism - i knew almost none of the writers and critics there, but can listen to Karni Postal and her cello all night.
August 7, 2018
With all the information coming out now about facebook trolling and the whole concept of fake news I just realized that I've been telling the truth all along in poetry and in these pages. I can be wrong, and often make wrong prophecies, but i tell the truth.
okay, i'm officially overwhelmed. i've simply lost control of all the things i promised to do. i spent this morning getting re-acquainted with the site of the government non-profit organization and learning what i need to do to fill out the forms for the past five years of the writers' institution. thank goodness Ezi was with me and exhibited the same confusion and stress with online forms that i felt. these are forms that demand immediate online answers and if you don't know what the next question will be and prepare for it you're caught with your pants down. once you get to know them it's not so bad, but it will still take me a few days to do, and then i can get down to reading doctorates and writing letters for colleagues. no wonder i am barely ekeing out poems.
but there is a really good part of being overwhelmed - meeting again with friends i haven't seen all summer.
and now that i've complained about overwork i have to admit i had the experience of the month eating chirashi at Akiko today.
my big complaint of the day is about the national nurses' strike against the recent violence in the hospitals. if you've been in a hospital here recently you may have noticed how difficult it is to get the attention of a nurse. this is usually because they are on the phone with a doctor while they are filling out a form and counting the number of ivs available at the same time. That is, they are so overworked they can't give patients and caregivers the proper attention, because the hospitals are crucially understaffed. But it is incredibly frustrating for a patient or caregiver who is in any case stressed, and violent reactions are sometimes understandable. We have a minister of health who seems to care much more about what his Rebbe tells him to do than the medical crisis here, and until that situation is corrected there is no way we can improve. Someone suggested a Sasha Baron-Cohen type solution - arming the nurses. right.
August 8, 2018
36 Rockets again - two citizens injured - and all the while we were sitting in a cafe gossiping with old friends. These days must be terrible for the people in the Gaza strip. And what consequences will there be? nothing good.
now many more than 50 rockets - 4 people injured - and it's no where near the end. This is revenge on the 2 snipers we killed yesterday and now that we're trying to shut them up they'll find more reasons for revenge.
August 9, 2018
So the count as of this morning is 150 rockets with 9 people injured. You have to admit we're living in the middle ages with modern weapons. As we were discussing a new internet system with a salesman on the phone, he had to sign off for a minute because of an alarm. Beersheva was hit. Alarms are still going off in the south.
I wonder whether anyone could be happy to get a recommendation for treatment for lymphoma but we were. After a year and a half of watchful waiting, Ezi's going to start a course of biological treatment in the hospital next week. This means tonight I will probably sleep well.
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