Tel Aviv Diary May 24-28, 2016 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

Tel -Aviv Diary - May 29-June 2, 2016 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

May 29, 2016

i think i'm getting nervous about the pre-op on wednesday. overwhelmed. I couldn't even get excited about the decision to indict Sara Netanyahu. Too much too late maybe.

Sarie Antoinette she is called around here.

May 30, 2016

As I was driving over to Kibbutz Hameuchad to talk with the editor about the book on poets and their graves, "Here Lie," I started thinking about how great it would be to tell Arpad Gut's story to the world, with all the tales the family tells one another that will be lost in history. Of course the editor was most interested in that proposal than any of the others I'm working on. Ezi's grandfather is a story about how and why people came to Israel in the 20's and what they did here.

Then I was on a role. I realized that if I want to look like a human being in all my surgical situations I will need a nice buttoned up dress. And I could do it in an hour. It worked. I got into the mall and out in time to do grocery shopping and get home in time to go to Bar Ilan now for a lecture on Arpad by Adina Stern. We're on our way now.

And indeed it was worth it, even though the computer broke down, the room was moved and the others on the panel were too long. The only surprise is I didn't know there were so many Hungarians in Israel.

May 31, 2016

What do you know? We're not going to Bar Ilan today. Too much pressure and too many half-crippled people involved. There are times one has to give up. and there is a great pleasure in it. Instead I am watching the series "The Jews are Coming" - a wonderful parody of the Bible with many truths, somewhat reminiscent of Monty Python. the first scene has the Jews criticizing the ten commandments so terribly that he breaks the tablets over someone's head.

June 1, 2016

Somehow I thought that the pre=op today would lead immediately to the op. but it's going to take another few days. The 7th of June. That's good because i'm exhausted just from the running around from anesthesiologist to x ray people to office to office to doctor to office.

June 2, 2016

Okay, I got my socks pulled up and i'll be more or less ready for this operation. Just got to get Ezi's birthday party together now.

Politically all is more of a mess than ever.

this may be the time to admit the truth - i don't keep kosher. and tonight we went to our old butcher to stock up on liver and other stuff i'll need to get out of the hospital. "is it true," i asked him, "that people are buying less pork than ever?" Not only did he agree but he went nostalgically back to the old days when he had a little shop in our neighborhood and people bought four times as much pork as now. Bacon, he says, they buy, but pork, which has much more iron and less cholestrol, they pass up.

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