#as if i don’t spend hours every day reading about the new ways israelis have decided to butcher palestinians! what the fuck!

[cvctuslesbian]

my mom tried to call me an idiot today because i said that i think the united states being built on the blood and subjugation of other people is bad

[bluboothalassophile]

25 - JayRae.

Hello,

I meshed both prompt lists I had cause I wasn’t sure which one you wanted. Hope you enjoy! =)

Rain & Books...

Jason liked his job, loved it, it was the best fucking job on the planet. He didn’t expect anyone to get how important it was, or how awesome it was. Being a librarian was the most peaceful, nonpainful way to get through college; it helped him pay for things and spend hours in a quiet environment he could study and work in. He loved it.

He also loved the fact he had a front row seat to see the hottest woman he had ever seen, every day, come in to study. She was his favorite patron; which was probably why he bent over backwards getting books she requested, it wasn’t just because she was cute either. He loved that she read everything, and they could talk; in depth analyze talk books; no one other than his grandfather could do that, and he loved it. He had missed it so much since moving to New York for college. The woman brought him food, near daily, she would have his eternal devotion for that alone. It had started last year at Thanksgiving, she had hurried into the library, asked for her book, he could smell the warm pie she had and somehow between handing over the book and asking about her pie he had found himself being fed the most exquisite pie he had ever had which her brother had cooked.

Apparently, she and her elder brother were living together, and her elder brother was a chef, she always had left over food. He got fed a lot.

Tonight was a quiet night as most of New York City was hunkered down because of a hurricane which was coming barreling up the east coast, it was already storming fiercely, and for the most part his library was empty he had ushered out the patrons who hadn’t darted out when they could. He was going to lock up, but first he needed to find what corner Raven had hidden in this time; he had seen her come in, she had yet to exit.

He found her spread out, nibbling on a cookie, over several books on the history of Vikings.

“Rae, I’m locking up,” he said.

“Oh, shit, sorry, give me a sec I’ll pick up,” she said scrambling up tossing her books in her bag, packing up her laptop, tablet, phone and chargers, slipping the books she had barrowed to their shelves again and grabbing her heavy coat before offering him a cookie.

“Thanks,” he nodded.

“How’s it looking out there?”

“Pretty fierce,” he admitted as they walked through the empty library now.

“Damn,” she grumbled.

“Where are you heading tonight?” he asked.

“My moms are three subway stops away.”

“The subways are closed,” he stated.

“Shit,” she muttered.

“Look, I live literally two blocks over, we can walk there in ten minutes, you can ride out the storm with me,” he offered.

“I shouldn’t…” she started.

“Rae, please, we’re friends, sort of, and I’ll be nothing but a gentleman,” he promised. “I don’t want you walking around in this weather.”

“You try anything and I’ll kick you in the groin as hard as I can,” she warned.

“I’d expect nothing less. So what are you reading today?” he asked as he yanked up her hood before they exited.

“I started the Witcher series,” she admitted. “I’m still reading the Gabriel Allon Series, by Silva but it’s just so much I wanted a break.”

“I like the Gabriel Allon series,” he admitted as he pulled on his Knights cap, she had on a Mets cap, now that he turned back to her, and she had her hood up. “Didn’t peg you as a fan of his works.”

“The Gabriel Allon Series is amazing, brings to light how difficult it is to survive or recover from something like the Holocaust, and how it affects later generations,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and it’s things my grandfather would never talk about, so it’s more interesting because reading those stories opened up a way to talk to him.”

“Your grandfather?”

“Yes, it’s just really cool, to find a bridge to connect with him. He was so withdrawn after his retirement and wouldn’t talk about anything with anyone, and these books are a sort of bridge. Of course, I can’t ask specifics, or he’ll clam up, but we can talk for hours about things now.”

“I’m sorry I feel like I’m missing something here,” he admitted.

“My grandfather is Israeli,” she said as if that clarified things. It clarified nothing but he sensed it best not to press any further.

“That’s cool to have stories give the connection needed. Are you Israeli?”

“I am,” she admitted.

“That explains the accent.”

“I thought it wasn’t noticeable!”

“It’s… slight but there,” he chuckled.

“And what about you? What are you reading?” she asked as they struggled through the rain.

“Don’t laugh, I’m reading Sense and Sensibility,” he said as he caught her arm, and offered his elbow before she was blown away.

“Really!?” she smiled.

“Yeah,” he gave a small smiled.

“That’s a great story,” she decided.

“I am a fan, though I disagree with some of the aspects,” he admitted.

“Like WHAT!” she yelped as she slipped, he grabbed her hard, pulling into an alcove of a building, she was pressed up tightly against him, her wet hair fluttered everywhere as the rain started pelting everything with a force he hadn’t anticipated.

His eyes flicked to her lips, and her eyes were on his when that happened. He didn’t know what happened next, or what changed, but he leaned over and kissed her softly. It wasn’t what he wanted, because since he had met her he had wanted to do more than kiss, but a kiss seemed to much to toss up right now. She changed it as she pulled herself into him, wrapping her tiny frame around him as her hands gripped his shoulders. A small gasp escaped her lips when he shoved her up against the opposite wall, he wanted more.

“We should get to your place,” she whispered.

He said nothing as he looked her over.

[comradesummers]

20 Questions!?

I am to answer these questions and tag 20 some people. 

@left-handed-moth​ tagged me. Thanks!

Height: I’m 1.72 meters, and I think that makes me about 5′7 feet, but I’m not sure.

Last Thing I Googled: I googled how to spell a word in Hebrew that I always mix up (the word is מטומטם, it means stupid). This is pretty embarrassing because spelling in Hebrew is actually much simpler than spelling in English, and this is really something I should know.

Favorite Musicians: I’m a big fan of old soul and R&B stuff, so like Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, any musician that was in the Blues Brothers, that sort of thing. Also, 60′s and 70′s classic rock. I love the Beatles and company, and there’s this Israeli classic rock band called Kaveret that I really recommend for anyone who’s in to that sort of thing. As for more modern stuff, Andra Day is incredible, Janelle Monae is a goddess, and I would kill a man for Lizzo tickets. In other words, I’m very basic.

Song Stuck in My Head: I watched the Elton John movie a few days back, and have subsequently been listening to a lot of his music recently. It’s a new song every day, and today it was Burn Down the Mission.

Followers: Just hit 200!

Following: 121, I should probably follow more people.

Do You Get Asks?: Mostly when I do prompts. I did get anon hate one time, so I guess that’s a landmark.

Amount of Sleep : I have issues with sleep. Usually, it’s about 6 hours a day and on weekends it’s more than that. But sometimes things go very far off the rails, and I’ll spend a week sleeping for two hours a day, and it’s not fun.

Lucky Number: I don’t really have one.

What Are You Wearing?: Perpetually jeans and a t-shirt. Sometimes I’ll spice it up and it’ll be jeans and a tank top.

Dream Job: Working in publishing, or really, just somewhere I can read books for a living. And barring that, maybe something in academia. Idk if any of this is realistic, but hey, that’s why they call it a dream job.

Instruments: I used to take drum lessons, but I was pretty shitty at it. And I did one year of the french horn before that. This is a really long winded way of saying that I don’t play any instruments.

Language: Hebrew was my first language and English was my second, but I would say that my English is actually a bit better than my Hebrew, because when I was 12 I decided I would only read books in English and it stuck. But I’m completely fluent in both languages. I also know some written Arabic, which is different from spoken Arabic, but it’s something. And I’m planning on taking Yiddish next year when I start university.

Favorite song: It changes pretty much every day, but right now, off the top of my head, I’ll say the Dark End of the Street by James Carr.

Random fact: Last year I became a German citizen, for y’know, Holocaust reasons, despite having never set foot in Germany. I should probably amend that at some point.

Aesthetic: I’m really not a visual person, so if I have an aesthetic, I haven’t really noticed. 

I’m honestly too lazy to tag people. If you want to do this, go for it!

[berniesrevolution]

On the list of America’s irrational fears, Palestine is near the top. This is no small feat for a “country” with no actual territory and a population about the size of South Carolina. Despite its lack of an air force, navy, or any real army to speak of, Palestine has long been considered an existential threat to Israel, a nuclear-armed power with one of the most powerful militaries in the world and the full backing of the United States. Since there’s no military or economic justification for this threat, a more nebulous one had to be invented. Thus, Palestinians are depicted in the media as hot-blooded terrorists, driven by the twin passions of fanatical Islam and a seething hatred for Western culture. So engrained is this belief that the op-ed page of the New York Times can “grapple with questions of [Palestinian] rights” by advocating openly for apartheid, forced expulsion, or worse.

This worldview demands an Olympian feat of mental gymnastics. It can only be maintained so long as most Americans have no firsthand contact with Palestine or Palestinian people. Even the smallest act of cultural exchange is enough to make us start questioning the panic-laced myths we’ve been taught since birth.  

Of course, the best way to discover the truth about Palestine is to visit the country yourself, though most Americans don’t have the free time or financial resources to do so (this is not a coincidence). This means that those of us who are fortunate enough to visit have a responsibility to share what we’ve seen and heard, without lapsing into pre-fabricated narratives, even “sympathetic” ones. We can’t fight untruth by telling untruths from the opposite perspective. What we can do, however, is report what we saw and heard in Palestine. We can try to provide a snapshot of daily life and let people come to their own conclusions.

With this in mind, here’s what I learned during a recent trip to the Holy Land…

The Palestinian doorman of the Palm Hostel in Jerusalem is a large and friendly man who insists his name is Mike. My fiancée and I are skeptical, as we’d expected something a bit more Arabic. We ask him what his friends call him.

“Just Mike,” he says, and taps an L&M cigarette against the wooden desk. He’s sitting in a dark alcove with rough stone floors, nestled halfway up the staircase that leads from the fruit market to the Palm’s small arched doorway.  A pleasant, musty oldness floats in the air. You could imagine Indiana Jones staying here, if he’d lost tenure and gone broke for some reason. To Westerners like us, it seems too exotic to have a doorman named Mike.

Before we can ask him again, though, Mike pounces with a question of his own. “You’re from the States, right?” He speaks English with a thick accent and slow but almost flawless diction, an odd combination that is causing my fiancée some visible confusion, which seems amusing to Mike. I tell him that we’re from Minnesota, a small and boring place in the center-north of the USA. His grin gets bigger, which makes me self-conscious, so I also explain that Minnesota has no mountains or sea, and the winters are very cold.

“Yeah, I know,” says Mike. “I lived in El Paso for thirty years. Border cop, K9 unit. It was a nice place. Had a couple kids there.” Now it’s my turn to gawk, and I start to race through all the possible scams he might be trying to pull. Mike seems to guess what I’m thinking. “Really. I even learned some Spanish.” He scrunches his brow in mock concentration and clamps a hairy hand over his forehead. “Hola. ¿Como estás?Una cerveza, por favor.”  He opens his eyes and laughs. “Welcome to Jerusalem, guys. Damascus Gate is that way. Enjoy.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised he knows a handful of Taco Bellisms, or why this convinces me of his honesty. However, now it’s impossible to walk away. We have too many questions. The first one: Why’d he return to Jerusalem? Mike looks down at his cigarette, smoldering into a fine grey tail of ash. He flicks it against a stone and a bright red ember blazes to life.

“This is my home. I had to.”

Later, as we sip sweet Turkish coffee outside a rug shop in the Old City, it occurs to me that Mike was the first Palestinian person I’d ever spoken with face-to-face. His life story seemed unusual, but I have no idea what’s “usual” when it comes to Palestinian lives. I’d never thought about them before, to be honest. The world has an infinite number of stories, and the days are not as long as I’d like. It’s not like I’d chosen to ignore Palestine. I just hadn’t chosen to be interested in it.

Which was odd, because Palestine has been all over the news since I was a kid. There isn’t a single specific story I recall, just a murky soup of words and phrases, like “fragile peace talks” and “two-state solution” and “violent demonstrations.” They all swirl together, settling under the stock image of a bombed-out warzone as the headlines mumbled something about Hamas or Hezbollah or the Palestinian Authority. I remember reading about rockets and settlements, refugees and suicide bombers, non-binding resolutions and vetoed Security Council decisions. Not a single detail had stuck. I could feign awareness of some important-sounding events—the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Summit—but I couldn’t say what decade they happened, or who was involved, or what was decided.

For years, I’d been under the impression that I knew enough about Palestine to be uninterested in what was happening there. This isn’t to say I felt any particular animosity toward the Palestinians. But it’s impossible to fight for every cause, no matter how righteous, if only for reasons of time. Every minute you spend feeding the hungry is a minute you’re not visiting the sick. Life is a zero sum game more often than we’d like to believe.

As we headed toward the Via Dolorosa, the road that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion, I began to feel uneasy. The Israeli police (indistinguishable from soldiers except for the patches on their uniforms) who stood guard at every corner still smiled at us, and they were still apologetic when they forbade us from walking down streets that were “for Muslims only, unfortunately.” Their English was excellent. Many of them were women. They were young and diverse and photogenic, a recruiter’s dream team. But all I could see were their bulletproof vests and submachine guns. Above every ancient stone arch bristled a nest of surveillance cameras. Only a few hours ago, I’d been able to block all that from my sight, leaving me free to enjoy the giddy sensation of strolling through the holiest city on earth.

The road ended at the Lion’s Gate. Just as we approached it, a battered Toyota came rattling through. It screeched to a halt and a squad of Israeli police surrounded the car. All four doors opened and out stepped a Palestinian family. The driver was a young man in his 20s, with short black hair cut in the style of Ronaldo, the famous Real Madrid footballer. When the police told him to turn around and face the wall, he did so without a word. It was obvious this was a daily ritual. The policeman who frisked him looked as bored as it’s possible to look when patting down another man’s genitals. Soon it was over, and the family got back in their car. One of the policemen pulled out his phone and started texting.

If I’d made a video of the search (which I didn’t) and showed it to you with the volume off, you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. The Israeli police didn’t hurt the man, and he barely made eye contact with them. There were no outrageous racial slurs or savage beatings. The only thing you’d see is a group of people in camouflage battle gear standing around a small white sedan, with a middle-aged woman and a couple of young girls off to the right. Unless you have hawk-like eyesight and an exceptional knowledge of obscure uniform insignias, I doubt you’d be able to tell “which side” any of the participants might be on. All you could say for sure is that the police wanted to search the family’s bodies and belongings, and the family looked very unhappy about it, but the police had guns and cameras, and that settled things. It’s interesting what conclusions different people might draw from a scene like that.

Later that night, after we get back to the Palm, I tell Mike about what we saw. He asks what we’d thought. “It was fucked up,” we say.

Mike sighs. “You should see Bethlehem.”    

Jerusalem is so close to Bethlehem that you barely have time to wonder why all the billboards that advertise luxury condos use English instead of Arabic as the second language before you arrive at the wall.

The wall is the most hideous structure I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge, groaning monument to death. Tall grey rectangles bite into the earth like iron teeth, horribly bare, cold, sterile, a towering monstrosity. The wall makes the air taste like poison.

We’re in the car of Mike’s cousin Harun, who is Palestinian, but his car has Israeli plates so we aren’t searched at the checkpoint. We inch past the concrete barriers and armored trucks. Harun holds his identity pass out the window, a soldier waves us through, and a few seconds later we’re in Bethlehem, a short drive from where Jesus Christ was born. It feels like entering prison. I don’t say prison in the sense of an ugly and depressing place you’d prefer not to visit. I say prison in the literal sense: a fortified enclosure where human beings are kept against their will by heavily armed guards who will shoot them if they try to leave. This is what modern life is like in Bethlehem, birthplace of our Lord and Savior.

Looking at the wall from the Israeli side breaks your heart because of its naked ugliness. On the Palestinian side, the unending slabs of concrete have been decorated with slogans, signs, and graffiti, which break your heart for different reasons. One of the hardest parts is reading the sumud series. These are short stories written on plain white posters, plastered to the wall about 10 feet up. Each story comes from a Palestinian woman or girl, and most are written in English, because the only people who read these stories are tourists.

One in particular catches my eye, by a woman named Antoinette:

All my life was in Jerusalem! I was there daily: I worked there at a school as a volunteer and all my friends live there. I used to belong to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and was a volunteer there. I arranged the flowers and was active with the other women. I rented a flat but I was not allowed to stay because I do not have a Jerusalem ID card. Now I cannot go to Jerusalem: the wall separates me from my church, from my life. We are imprisoned here in Bethlehem. All my relationships with Jerusalem are dead. I am a dying woman.

The flowers are what gets me, because my mother also arranges flowers at church. Hers is an Eastern Orthodox congregation in Minneapolis, about 20 minutes by car from my childhood home. That’s about the same distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, although there aren’t any military checkpoints or armored cars patrolling the Minnesotan highways. Until today, I would’ve been unable to imagine what that would even look like. The situation here is so unlike anything I’ve ever encountered in real life that all I can think is, “it’s like a bad war movie.” For the Palestinian people who’ve been living under an increasingly brutal military occupation for the last 70 years, an entire lifetime, I can’t begin to guess at the depths of their helpless anger. What did Antoinette think, the first time the soldiers refused to let her pass? What did she say? What would my mother say? There wouldn’t be a goddamned thing she could do, or I could do, or my father or my sisters, or anyone else. We’d all just have to live with it, the soldiers groping us, beating us, mocking us. No wonder Antoinette gave up hope. In her place, would I be any different? We walk in silence for a long time.

We end up in a refugee camp called Aida, where more than 6,000 people live in an area roughly the size of a Super Target. Here, the air is literally poison. Israeli soldiers have fired so much tear gas into the tiny area that 100 percent of residents now suffer from its effects. If they were using the tear gas against, say, ISIS soldiers instead of Palestinian civilians, this would be a war crime, since “asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases” are banned by the Geneva Protocol. However, such practices are deemed to be acceptable in peacetime, since there’s no chance an unarmed civilian population would be able to retaliate with toxic agents of their own. Without the threat of escalation, chemical warfare is just crowd control.

Before we continue, there are three things you should know about Aida. The first is that there’s no clear dividing line between Aida and Bethlehem, so an unwary pedestrian can easily wander into the refugee camp without realizing it. The second thing is that it doesn’t look like a refugee camp, at least if you’re expecting a refugee camp to be full of emergency trailers, flimsy tents, and flaming barrels of trash. The third thing is that the kids who live there have terrible taste in soccer teams.

We meet the first group as soon as we enter the camp. There are five of them, all teenage boys. One of them is wearing a knockoff Yankees hat. They’re staring at us, and at once I’m very aware of my camera bag’s bulkiness and the blondeness of my fiancée’s hair. A loudspeaker crackles with the cry of the muzzein, and it’s only then that I realize how deeply we Americans have been conditioned to associate the Arabic language with violence and death. The boys exchange a quick burst of words, raising my blood pressure even higher, and cross the street toward us.

“Hello…  what’s your name?” The kid who speaks first is tall and stocky, wearing the same black track jacket and blue jeans favored by 95 percent of the world’s male adolescents. He’s also sporting the Ronaldo haircut, as are several of his friends. Two of the kids start to pull out cigarettes, so I pull out my cigarettes faster and offer the pack to them. Is this a bad, irresponsible thing to do? Sure, and if you’re worried about the long-term health of these kids’ lungs, you should call the American manufacturers who supply Israel with the chemical weapons that are used to poison the air they breathe every day.

I tell the kid my name is Nick, and he shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Shadi.” He’s carrying a rolled-up book, as are his friends, so I ask if he’s going to school. “Yeah bro, exams. We have three this week.” His friends laugh, and then engage in a quick tussle for the right of explaining that they’re heading to their math exam now, which is a boring and difficult subject, and I agree that it is, although at least you never have to use most of it after you finish school, a sentiment that earns me daps from Shadi and his friends, and we stand there giggling and smoking on the street corner of the refugee camp, though for a few moments we could be anywhere in the world.

My fiancée and I, both teachers by trade, start to pepper the kids with questions. Shadi says that he has one year left at the nearby high school, which is run by the UN refugee agency that was just stripped of half its funding by Trump. After he finishes, he plans to study at Bethlehem University. The other guys nod with approval, and speak of similar hopes. I ask them who their favorite footballer is, and they all say Ronaldo, at which I spit in disbelief, because everyone knows that Ronaldo sucks and Messi is much better, visca el Barça! Shadi and his friends break into huge grins, since few elements of brotherhood are more universal than talking shit about sports. Seconds later we’re howling with laughter as Shadi’s buddy makes insulting pantomimes about Messi’s diminutive size. A small part of my brain is loudly and repeatedly insisting that everything about this moment of life is batshit lunacy, that there’s no reason why I should be standing in a Palestinian refugee camp, yards away from buildings my country helped bomb into rubble, with my pretty fiancée and expensive camera, talking in English slang with a group of boys whose lungs are scarred with chemicals made in the USA, the exact kind of reckless young ruffians whose slingshots and stones are such a terrifying threat to the fearsome Israeli military, and the craziest thing of all is that here in the refugee camp, surrounded by derelict cars and rusty barbed wire and 6,000 displaced Palestinians,  we are not in danger, at least not from whom you’d think. Here, in the refugee camp, we can joke around with people who speak our language and know our cultural references and actively seek to help us navigate their neighborhood. None of this is to say that Aida is a safe, comfortable, or morally defensible place to put human beings, but only that the people who live there treated us with such overwhelming kindness and decency that I have never been more ashamed at what my country does in my name. I tell Shadi and his friends to take the rest of my cigarettes, but they smile and decline.

“We, uh, have to go now,” says Shadi, as his friends start to walk up the street. “Do you have Facebook?” We do, because everyone does, and as we exchange information, I wish him good luck on his math exam. “No way, bro, I suck at math,” he says. We both laugh, and I pat him on the back.

“Fuck math. But hey, you’re gonna do great, Shadi.”

“Thanks bro. Fuck math.”

I hope he gets every question correct on his exam. I hope he goes to university and wins a scholarship to Oxford. I hope he invents some insanely popular widget and it makes him a billion dollars and he never has to breathe tear gas again.

We continue walking through Aida camp. The buildings are square, ugly, and drab, but the walls are decorated with colorful paintings of fish and butterflies and meadows (along with a somewhat darker array of scenes from the Israeli military occupation). We meet a group of cousins, aged four to 10, all girls, who ask if we can speak English. When we offer them a bag of candy, they take one piece each, and run away yelping when a man limps out the front door of their house. “Thank you,” he says, his face a mask of grave civility. Cars, all bearing green-and-white Palestinian plates instead of the blue-and-yellow Israeli ones, slow down so their drivers can shout “Hello!” We meet another group of kids, boys this time, who grab fistfuls of candy and make playful attempts to unfasten my wristwatch. We make a hasty retreat from this group. The streets are scorched in spots where tear gas canisters exploded.  Narrow strips of pockmarked pavement lead us down steep hills and into winding alleys, and soon we’re lost.

This is how we meet Ahmed. He’s a tall man, about 40 years old, with a small black mustache and arms as thin as a stork’s legs. A yellow sofa leans against the concrete wall of the three-storey apartment building where he lives. Ahmed is sitting there with an elderly couple. He asks if we’d like a cup of tea, and although we’ve been warned about the old “come inside for a cup of tea” scam, we accept his offer. The elderly couple greets us in Arabic, and I try not to notice the large plastic bag of orange liquid peeking out from beneath the old man’s shirt.

While we climb the stairs to Ahmed’s apartment, he tells us that the old people are his parents. “They live here,” he says, pointing to the door on the first floor, “because they don’t walk very good. My mother has problems with her legs, my father is sick from the water.” He traces the pipes with his finger, and we see they’re coated in a thick reddish crust. “Here is the home of my big son,” he says when we reach the second floor. “He has a new baby.” We congratulate him on becoming a grandfather. “And I have a new baby, too! Come, I show you!” One more flight of stairs, and we arrive at Ahmed’s apartment.

It looks remarkably similar to a hundred other apartments we’ve visited. Framed photos of various family members hang on the living room walls, which are painted the same not-quite-white as most living room walls. There’s a beautiful red rug and a small TV. A woman is sitting on the sofa, nursing a baby as she folds socks. “My wife,” says Ahmed.

She speaks a little English too, and says that her name is Nada. She has a pale round face and long black hair. Her eyes are soft, kind, and completely exhausted. Yet if she’s annoyed or embarrassed by our presence, she doesn’t show it. She just hands the baby to Ahmed and goes to make the tea.

“I’m sorry for my house,” says Ahmed, cradling his son like a loaf of bread with legs. “We try to be clean, but…” There’s not so much as a slipper out of place, but I know what he means. “We rent this flat. And my son, and my parents. All rent. Before we have a farm, animals, olive trees, but now, we rent.” I ask about his job. He smiles and shakes his head. “I want a job,” he says, “I love to work. With my hands, with my mind. I love to work. But here, haven’t jobs.” For a second he looks like he’s going to continue this line of thinking, but he stops himself. “I help my wife, that is my job.” Ahmed laughs and passes his baby to my fiancée. “And he, he helps in the home?” She demurs while I protest in mock indignation. I do the dishes every morning before she even wakes up! Still laughing, Ahmed rubs his shins, and again it’s easy to forget we’re sitting in a refugee camp in Jesus’ hometown.

Then the baby wheezes. It’s a dry, scratchy wheeze. Ahmed squirms in his seat, looking embarrassed. The baby begins to cough. My fiancée rubs his back as the coughing turns wet and violent.  Machine gun explosions blast from his tiny lungs. As an asthmatic, I recognize the sound of serious sickness. The baby writhes in my fiancée’s lap, struggling to breathe. He’s gasping and it’s getting worse fast. At moments like these, personal experience tells me that a nebulizer can be the difference between life and death. I don’t insult Ahmed by asking if he has one, because it’s clear that he doesn’t. All I can do is rub the boy’s chest with my finger, a stupid and useless massage. He kicks and stretches as if trying to wiggle away from the unseen demon that’s strangling him.

Nada hurries back with the tea. “I’m sorry,” she says, picking up the baby. She coos to him in Arabic and rubs his back, both of which are comforting but neither of which can relax the inflamed tissues of her infant’s lungs. “My baby…” Unable to find the words in English, she looks to her husband.

Ahmed rubs his cheek. “When she is pregnant, one night the soldiers come. They say the children throw stones. They always throw stones. So the soldiers shoot gas in all the houses. In the windows, over there.” His voice gets quieter. “And she is very sick. When the baby is born, he is sick too.” I ask him if it’s possible to find medicine. “Sometimes yes,” says Ahmed, “but very, very expensive.” For the first time, there’s a note of frustration in his voice. “Everything is expensive here. You see this,” and he picks up a pack of diapers, “it cost me thirty shekels. 10 dollars, almost. And the baby needs so many things. It is impossible to buy. I haven’t money for meat, how can I buy medicine?” He points to a plastic bag with four small pitas. “This is our food. One bread for my two sons, and two breads for my wife. She must make milk for our baby.” When I ask him what he eats, he holds up his cup of tea.

Somehow Nada has soothed the baby out of danger. His breathing is almost normal again, just a quiet raspy crackle. She’s still staring at him, her big brown eyes wide with worry. I don’t know how many times she’s done this before. I don’t know how many times are left before her luck runs out. 

Somehow she’s keeping her baby alive with nothing but the sheer force of her love. I ask to use the toilet so I don’t have to cry in front of her.

(Continue Reading)

[earlgreyandadderall-blog]

What Does ADHD Look Like In Girls? - Things I Wish I Knew Ten Years Ago

Hello world!  

I'm back, as promised, and today I'm going to talk about some stuff I wish I knew ten years ago- ADHD symptoms that are common in girls but often get overlooked. Why, you may ask? Because a teacher or parent normally won't notice that a child is struggling unless it's very apparent – if she is extremely hyperactive and disruptive, for example – or if the child admits that they are struggling. That girl in the corner who's always daydreaming, but still gets good grades? Or the one who has a hard time making friends or making relationships work, but otherwise seems "normal" (whatever that means)? She's going to be passed over while her teacher is busy worrying about the boy who can't stay in his seat for more than five minutes. Plus, girls with ADHD are more likely than boys to internalize their struggles, so if you or your child is anything like me, you might not realize something is off until high school or even later, and even when you do, you might be too embarrassed to ask for help.

If anyone besides my mom ever starts reading this blog, one thing that would make me really really happy and feel as if I've made a difference is if even one young woman out there doesn't have to go through the failed relationships, ruined friendships, and lost semesters that I had to go through before she realizes something deeper is going on than just laziness and being emotional. If you're a girl who often feels like she's getting in her own way and suspects there might be something up, but aren't really sure what it might be, here are some often-overlooked ADHD symptoms that you might relate to.

1.   Daydreaming/Getting Bored in School

As long as I can remember, I've had a hard time paying attention in class. When I was very young, I would get called out for daydreaming all the time. I worked on my French homework in science class, flipped aimlessly through my agenda while the teacher was talking, and doodled all over ever single desk I've ever sat in. In grade five, I got in trouble for – get this – reading a book during a spelling test. Don't ask me how I thought I was gonna get away with that, but I was sooooooo booooooored and the teacher was taking soooooo loooooong to read these words that I knew how to spell in grade one. That's a big reason why inattentiveness in female students often gets overlooked- girls with ADHD don't usually perform poorly, especially in elementary school. Because I was gifted, my inattentiveness was treated as a quirk rather than a problem. I had a handful of teachers who tried to give me harder work to keep me motivated, but more often than not I was left to entertain myself. It always bothered me that kids who needed extra help got IEPs, the latest learning technologies, and one-on-one time with the teacher, but kids like me, who needed an extra challenge, were neglected

 2.     Impulsive Spending

The most important thing to keep in mind when analyzing the behaviour of people with ADHD is that our brains don't produce or transmit enough dopamine, which is the feel-good chemical that controls reward-motivated behaviour. Because of that, we seek out anything that will give us a dopamine rush... the only problem is that those behaviours are usually impulsive. You know the saying money can't buy happiness? Yeah, not necessarily true for ADHD brains. At least for a little while after buying something we've managed to convince ourselves we so totally need, we actually do feel really happy, because we're experiencing a dopamine high. My friend recently got me into doing my makeup properly, and I'm embarrassed to admit how much I've spent at Sephora in the last month.  I know it's dumb, but I do it anyway. Why? Because ADHD brains have a hard time distinguishing what is urgent from what is important. Once I get it in my head that I need that contour kit right now (because what if a surprise event comes up in the next week?), I can't convince myself otherwise. That sense of urgency releases dopamine, which tells my brain that wasting $60 to look more like the MUAs on Instagram will make me happy. And for an hour or two it does!... Until I look at my bank account.  

3.     Relationship Problems

So, dopamine rush-producing behaviours are usually impulsive, right? What does that look like when it comes to romantic relationships? Dopamine-seeking brains love anything that's new and novel, and that includes the first phase of a relationship, when you're sooooo in love and can't get enough of each other. Of course, that phase ends, and neurotypical people settle into a more lowkey relationship just fine. ADHD brains? Not so much. If you don't recognize what you're experiencing as a dopamine withdrawal, you may interpret it is a lack of love from your partner, or as a sign that the relationship is getting boring. I tend to fall into the first category, and people like me can become really insecure thinking that our partner doesn't care about us. We become excessively demanding and need dramatic displays of affection all the time, which naturally alienates our partners. If you're somebody who just gets bored, that can result in two unhealthy behaviours: one, moving really quickly from one relationship to the next and never learning how to be alone, and two, cheating. If any or all of these three behaviours are a pattern in your life, you just might have a dopamine shortage, and are unknowingly looking to your partner(s) to fix it.

4.    Word Vomit

It's really hard for me to explain my tendency to over-explain every little thing (ha, that's ironic), especially if I'm nervous about it. Have you ever taken seven sentences to say something that could have been said in one? Found yourself repeating the same thing in different words three times? I find I do this the most when I'm apologizing, or trying to explain why I did something that someone else didn't like or understand. You think you're being helpful, but really you're just annoying the other person. Then you realize how annoying you're being, and apologize for being annoying five times, and now they're annoyed with you for apologizing for being annoying... okay, that's when you know it's time to turn your phone off and cool down. On top of excessive explaining, ADHD brains can get a little word vomit-y when we're talking about something we're passionate about. Just ask my mom- get me on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, or, at the moment, information about ADHD, and you won't get me off it. Sometimes we don't really know when to shut up. If you have a tendency to keep talking even when you know nobody is listening anymore, then you might want to keep reading.

5.    Road Rage

Everybody road rages once in a while (okay, I'm told that not everyone does, but I don't believe it. Come on, how can you NOT scream at the person in front of you going 5 km under the speed limit?) but I legitimately feel claustrophobic and panicky if I'm on a four-lane highway stuck behind a car in each lane going the same speed and I can't get out to pass them. If the person in front of me is doing something stupid, I could literally run them over I get so frustrated, and not just if I'm already cranky- I yell at someone on the road every single day. I'm told this is “apparently” because of our “inattentiveness” and “inability to sit still”, and not because everyone else on the road is a freaking idiot. I don't know if I believe it, but that's what I'm told, anyway. ADHD brains are also more likely to get into car accidents. I've never been in a major accident while driving, thank God, but I'm only 22, and I've had four minor fender benders that, embarrassingly, didn't involve other cars, but me driving into things in parking lots. Once, I just wasn't looking behind me and backed into a pole. Another time, I thought that texting in the Tim Hortons drive-thru was a good idea. You get the idea.

6.   Forgetfulness

Again, everybody forgets things once in a while. But if you're forgetting or misplacing your homework, your car keys, your purse, your work pants (yes, I have actually lost a pair of pants before) every single day, then there might be a problem. Once, I parked my car near campus, spent the day studying in my friends' office, and then got a ride back to my car at the end of the day. My friend Dan was driving up and down the street I told him I had parked on asking me "is that your car? What about that one?" before I realized that I had parked on a different street on the other side of campus. I never thought being a bit scatterbrained was a problem, and if it only happens once in a while, it probably isn't. But all of these symptoms together paint a different picture.

7.    Difficulties With Motivation

I never really enjoyed studying, and I guess I was lucky that throughout grade school and high school, I didn't have to do very much of it. It's not that I didn't like learning, it's just that studying for extended periods of time is so boring. Even in my first three years of university, my super strict immigrant parents watched me like a hawk, so I did what I needed to do, as difficult as it was at times. That all changed when my fourth year rolled around and I moved to Ottawa for an exchange. With no one to stand at the foot of my bed and scream at me until I dragged myself out of it, I just... didn't. It wasn't because I didn't want to, it was just that I couldn't bring myself to. Same went for going to class, doing my readings, handing in assignments, showing up for exams... it wasn't pretty. This can also be a symptom of depression, and many people with ADHD, myself included, meet the diagnostic criteria for depression. The difference is that people with depression can't get out of bed because they're depressed; people with ADHD get depressed because they won't get out of bed.  We aren't lying in bed all day because our mood is low, but because we struggle with executive functioning - motivation, planning, organizing, and self-managing. Those things happen in the prefrontal cortex, and ours are underdeveloped. It can be hard to distinguish where the cycle begins for you, and before being diagnosed, I thought I had depression for sure, but as soon as my psychiatrist explained how ADHD works to me, it fit like a glove.

8.     Starting Projects and Never Finishing Them

This kind of goes hand in hand with lack of motivation, and it's something I've struggled with all my life. It's also one of the very few ADHD symptoms that isn't also a hallmark of something else, like depression or anxiety, so it should be a huge red flag if it's accompanied by some of these other symptoms! Most people tend to procrastinate things they don't want to do, like studying or cleaning their room. A big indicator that you might be dealing with something more than just laziness is when you procrastinate or don't finish even things you actually really want to do. And it's not because you're lazy or don't want to do it, it's because as great as it sounds, you just... can't. If you've ever started a scrapbook and tossed it to the side three days later, tried to start a club on campus but let it fall to the wayside, or created a blog then never actually updated it (I meant to have this posted a solid five days ago, whooooops), then you know what I'm talking about.

 9.       Being Scatterbrained

You're in the middle of a sentence and you completely lose your train of thought. Alternatively, you'll be halfway through a sentence then think of something more important that you want to say and totally abandon the idea you're halfway through and start talking about the new one instead. You interrupt people a lot, because you feel like you HAVE to say the thought that just popped into your head right now, lest it no longer be relevant if you wait five minutes, or even worse, you forget it again in 30 seconds. You're in the middle of an important text conversation but you open Instagram while you're waiting for them to text back... then half an hour later you're creeping your crush's ex's brother's best friend when you realize you never answered that super important text. You zone out while people are speaking directly to you, which makes you look super rude because it seems like you aren't paying attention. Our inability to focus hard on things can affect our lives in ways you never would have guessed- for example, I am terrible at proofreading and finding typos, and the number of assignments I've handed in with words missing from the middle of sentences is embarrassing. If this sounds like you (and if course, if this happens all day every day rather than once in a blue moon, because everybody get scatterbrained when they're overwhelmed), then you've come to the right place.

10.     Being SUPER Enthusiastic... Sometimes

We've already established that ADHD brains can have trouble with motivation and with staying committed to something long-term, but that doesn't capture the entire picture. If you think of depression as basically always being in a low state, ADHD is different in that you sort of swing from highs to lows and back again. Like I mentioned, ADHD brains don't have enough dopamine transmitters, and we kind of get addicted to anything that does produce a dopamine high. So if something does make us happy or excited, we're gonna be the happiest, most excited people on earth. My psychiatrist gave me a situation where an ADHD person might win $5 on a scratch off ticket, but the way they jump up and down all excited makes the people around them think they've won a million dollars. In my case, this often looks like getting really excited about a paper or assignment for a class I'm particularly interested in. I'll take out books from the library and hyper-focus on planning the assignment for about three days... then the whole "starting a project but never finishing it" kicks in, and that's a whole different story...

11.    Verbal Aggression (As Opposed to Physical Aggression)

Although I don't mean to generalize or to imply that every single boy or girl is the same, this tends to be a notable difference between girls with ADHD and their male counterparts. Girls are much less likely to be physically violent, but when you piss us off, or trigger our Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (that's what my next post is going to be about, by the way!)… watch out. You might get a verbal beatdown like you've never experienced before. This is one of the ugliest and most frustrating things about having ADHD for me. I'll tell the people I love that I hate them, that they're ruining my life, that I wish they were never born; I'll pick on the things I know they're sensitive about and call them every curse word in the book... only to regret it five minutes and sheepishly try to convince this deeply wounded person that I didn't actually mean it. It sucks. Big time.

And finally, the one I really wish I knew all this time...

12.    Being Diagnosed With Something Else

Throughout this post, I've given a dozen examples of the ways ADHD symptoms can appear like symptoms of depression and anxiety. ADHD in girls is notoriously misdiagnosed, and girls with ADHD are three times as likely as boys to be treated for depression before being properly diagnosed. Beyond that, ADHD can be comorbid with anxiety and depression. I've dealt with anxiety and panic attacks since I was eight, and was formally diagnosed with anxiety at 17. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was told that I meet all the diagnostic criteria for depression, but it was likely that treating my ADHD would make it go away. My depression went away within literally one week of starting ADHD medication. My anxiety did not go away, but it has been reduced by about 50%. I realized that about half of the somatic experiences I identified as panic attacks were not triggered by mental anxiety but by sensory overload because, as ADHD brains do, I was perceiving way too much of what was going on around me and getting overwhelmed to the point that I would experience panic attack symptoms- dizziness, shortness of breath, nausea, you know the drill. Another statistic that would have made a difference in my life is that girls with ADHD are 2.7 times more likely to suffer from anorexia nervosa than girls without ADHD. I struggled with anorexia from age 16 to 19, so this was quite a shock to discover three years later. There's definitely some cool brain science behind that why that is, so maybe it'll be the subject of a future post!

 If you have any questions about this post, or think that you or a loved one might be dealing with ADHD, do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions! I also want to stress that this might seem like a lot, and that anyone dealing with all of this crap would stand out from a mile away, but if that was the case, so many of us wouldn’t go undiagnosed until post-secondary. I experienced all twelve of these signs and symptoms, but the only ones that pushed me to see a psychiatrist were relationship problems, difficulty with motivation, and verbal aggression. Most of these things didn’t seem like they were impacting my day-to-day functioning- I get good grades, have a job, and have no trouble making friends. So please don’t get fall into the trap of telling yourself that what you’re going through “isn’t bad enough to be a real problem.” If something feels off, see a doctor, because you deserve to live the best life possible. 

That’s all for now folks! Stay tuned for my next post about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.

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2018 Year In Review

Previous Posts: (2017) (2016) (2015) (2014) (2013) (2012) (2011) 

2018 has not been a banner year for self care. It has not been a banner year for much of anything, to be honest. This year in review will be much less colourful and exciting than they traditionally tend to be. It has been a year of hard work, stress, and feeling the pressure of the less-fun parts of adulthood creeping up on me. It has been really hard, to be totally honest. I have spent the majority of the year in a deep state of exhaustion and distress. There are positives within it all, though. Big positives, such as: 

I went on my longest trip ever away from home. 

I have developed so much in the professional sense and have fallen so deeply in love with social work and my future career path. 

I have made new friends who reflect these changing influences in my life, and the enduring friendships that have survived all of these years continue to strengthen and deepen as time goes on. 

January: 

Tell me - why does January always suck? 2018 began with an opening double shift on New Year’s Day, which I feel is strongly symbolic of the year as a whole because you have an exhausted Megan struggling to responsibly balance my professional responsibilities, self-care, and partying. On January 3rd, Alex and I booked our flights to Asia and in doing so, solidified that we were going through with a plan made drunkenly over the table last summer at a karaoke bar. 

I did get to spend an awesome ski weekend with Alesta, Sydney x 2, and Shelby. It was especially nice because this particular group of people had never spent time all together - we were just united by being a group of girls who love to ski. We hit Lake Louise on Saturday, stayed overnight at a hostel in Banff, and Alesta and I hit Sunshine on Sunday. In Banff, we got a free jug of sangria because we are cute girls. We went to High Rollers and Sydney was drinking IPAs and porters like a pro. I went alone (like... what? Who am I? How drunk was I?) to Dancing Sasquatch after and made friends with some Nova Scotians in line. One of them paid for my cover and bought me not one but two of those infamous Time Machine drinks and extra bonus - Alesta and I got FREE lift passes at Sunshine. 

At the end of the month, my mental health took a sharp nosedive into oblivion and I don’t even really know why. I started experiencing a violent resurgence of something I haven’t felt since the end of the 12th grade, having what I now recognize as panic attacks. The first one came when I was studying on a Sunday at Higher Ground and I had no idea what the fuck was happening, I’d been there for several hours when I suddenly felt the urge to throw up. I packed up all my shit and burst out the door literally gasping for air but ended up being fine. Just shaky and confused. They started happening more frequently after this, with no predictable trigger, and I started to feel the physical manifestations of stress. That was new and it freaked me out. This lent itself to a lot of strange patterns around eating (since I was constantly feeling nauseous, or I thought I was, I didn’t want to have a full stomach. I also thought I had a food intolerance, and because I’m me was 100% convinced I was pregnant because the stress caused me to miss my period). 

February 

Things started to get so bad in February that I had to plead my manager at Famoso for less hours. He was an idiot in general but also did not seem to grasp the severity of what I told him. He would frequently schedule me for these long swing swifts all weekend long, leaving no time or energy for the mountains of homework I had to do. It did not help. 

February was especially busy with school. That’ll be a recurring theme throughout this year. It could honestly be a summary of this entire year - so I’ll spare you the details. But five courses at the University of Calgary is no joke. 

I never needed reading week so badly in my entire life. I was beyond happy to just be able to take a long weekend and not be at Famoso. Shelby arranged for a giant group of her friends to spend the weekend at her friend Sawyer’s massive, absolutely beautiful cabin in Invermere. I got to spend some quality time with two of my favourite people on the planet - Emma and Sydney. From the minute we got into Emma’s car together, to having ciders at the Emerald Lake Lodge on the way, to eating A&W and sharing a bed and “she gon’ fuck the fridge.” Sydney and I spent one afternoon on homework while everyone else went skiing and I was with her when she got the news that she’d won this massive grant and we celebrated by sitting in this magical massage chair and just loving life. We played Drink, Talk, Learn! And I gave a drunken presentation on the history and etiology of pugs. Emma and I went skating on Lake Windermere to cure our hangovers on Sunday. A keg and a bonfire were involved. It was so Canadian, honestly LOL. And so perfect. 

March 

Although I was still struggling with this weird panic-nausea cycle, it lessened through March as more and more assignments were completed. I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, to use a cliche. I gave three presentations in a week, I remember that being particularly awful. 

I attempted Mellow March for the second time and once again failed. Mildly concerning. I caved on a Wednesday wing night with the Famoso friends. It was 27 days in. So close, so close. 2019 will be my year! 

I started getting really into podcasts at this time because I started commuting using public transit. I got really into Guys We Fucked (which I still love), and This Is Actually Happening. TIAH is kind of fucked up though, and after a while it started to fuck me up. I would have weird dreams about the content and I started becoming paranoid that there was something wrong/extraordinary about me. So I stopped. I guess that is something I have learned about myself this year, is that even when it’s not overt, I am really deeply effected by some of the things I learn. Typically, people of this nature do not excel in the field of social work so allow me to flag this as a place for improvement in the future.

I ran the 5km at the St. Patrick’s Day road race, which was awesome and I won the draw that everyone was entered in and got a FREE pair of these super nice, hot pink New Balance running shoes that I now cherish with my life. 

I had my first round of practicum interviews, which only ended up being one interview because I was offered the placement at CommunityWise before I could interview anywhere else. This is one of the best things to happen the whole year :) 

And a special moment for me as well was on March 31, I got to see Alvvays live. 

April 

In April, I finished hell semester and immediately jetted off to Thailand.

From the get go, the trip was a bit of a shit show. This was my second time to Asia, and my first experience with really planning a trip including flights, hostels, and transportation from place to place without the aid of a tour guide or travel company. We had a time even getting to Bangkok due to an untimely snow storm the day of our departure that forced our flight to Vancouver to be late and causing us to miss our connecting flight to China. After two hours in line at the Air Canada desk, an agent produced a new itinerary for us. Calgary to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Bangkok. He printed the sheets out and when I looked at the times on the paper, the mental math wasn’t adding up. With me, the mental math never really adds up but this time it seemed impossible that we could leave so much later than planned for our trip and arrive in Bangkok only three hours later than we were supposed to. I brought this up with him and he assured me it was fine. I wasn’t satisfied though, and asked a bunch of other airport personnel the same question. They all said we were fine but lo and behold, we land in Hong Kong and are waiting for the Thai Airlines desk to open so we can retrieve the tickets for the last leg of the journey when the agent there tells us, “They put you on the flight that left yesterday.” Anger and distress ensues. I call Air Canada from the airport in Hong Kong and the call drops. I’m straight up crying on the floor at this point. But in the end – we fucking made it.

In Bangkok, I was welcomed back to the stifling heat and humidity of Asia. We met American doctors-to-be who were at the end of their trip and were totally sick of one another and were very happy to have company. We ate massaman curry for every meal, partied on Khao San Road (those nitrous balloons!!! God, they’re so fun!!), and spent a lot of money on a single cocktail just for a photo op at the top of a skyscraper but the sunset was perfect and it was totally worth it.

In Chiang Mai we drank Sangsom and Coca-Cola by the pool and ate street food out of Styrofoam containers. We met these Americans who were teaching English in Chiang Mai and they took us to a night club on the back of their motorbikes. I did a drug I said I’ve never do in one of the bathrooms at this night club and ended up going home with one of the aforementioned teachers. It was funny to me because at about 3:00pm, Alex and I went back to our hostel to change and get ready for the evening and at that point I said, “I think I’m going to end up hooking up with Cory.” I fucking knew. I KNEW.

In Pai, I had the DIRTIEST hostel experience of my life. I was showering… just fully naked and vulnerable in this nasty ass shower when I saw a bug I did not recognize from my sheltered upbringing crawl out of a hole in the wall. I have never felt more small. It was also 43 degrees and we were staying in a tiny hut with a plug-in fan that only worked half the time and somehow had the effect of making the room hotter? Pai was also the first time we rented motorbikes. It’s honestly so dangerous… like, what the fuck, Thailand. We experienced our first flash rainstorm. We went to a place called Sunset Bar and took mushroom shakes and holy shit I’ve never experienced more potent mushrooms in my entire life. We met our Irish friends who we’d later see in Koh Pha Ngan, and I slept with an Israeli soldier on our second-to-last night and I’m almost 100% certain I took his virginity.

Koh Pha Ngan was alllll thunderstorms. We also decided to splurge a bit on food on this island and gorged ourselves with seafood and lavender Moscow mules at this nice restaurant down the road from our hostel. We partied so hard. We went to the pre-parties for the Full Moon – they have the Waterfall party two nights before, and the Jungle party the night before. I had sex with a total stranger at the Waterfall party up against a rock (when I recounted this story to Steven upon returning home he put on a redneck accent and said, “C’mon baby let me take you down to the fuck rock” and now that’s all I hear when I think about this experience in my head). The Full Moon Party was fun but not AS fun as the pre parties. It wasn’t as wild and the beach is so big but everyone concentrates in one little area. I took some kind of mystery pill (as you can see, I was very safe in Thailand) and had yet another sexual experience with a casual partner. I also witnessed a fight in the taxi back because one girl called another girl a stripper. It was bad.

May 

Continuing on with our Asia trip.

We landed in Krabi and intended fully to chill out a little bit after the wildness of Koh Pha Ngan. The first night was chill, we were staying in the Muslim quarter of the Krabi area so there weren’t a ton of nightclubs to go to and the hostel had some kind of run-in with police and weren’t able to take us out on the pub crawl we signed up for (lame). We had a roommate from Vancouver on the second day who bought a bunch of Xanax from a Thai pharmacy and gave me one. I can never do it again because it was so. good. But of course, I took one pill and stopped drinking just in case. This bitch continued drinking and took six or seven Xanax throughout the night. I honestly don’t know how she lived. We went rock climbing and drank beers on a boat tour one day and it was soooo great. We had the hottest tour guide. I did a hike by my lonesome that I nearly died on.

On the ferry ride from Krabi to Koh Phi Phi is where I got the sunburn that will likely give me skin cancer in later life and kill me. 90 minutes on the outside deck of a ferry (because I felt nauseous as fuck and didn’t want to vom in the cabin) absolutely fucked. me. up. We stayed at another pretty fucking gross hostel in Koh Phi Phi, and my roommates were all male which was a new experience for me. I went on a solo booze cruise cause Alex was sick. We took mushrooms again with our Canadian friend Kelsey and god, I was laughing so hard I was crying and I could not stop. I was like rolling around in the sand laughing so fucking hard about Fisherman’s Friends candy. It was so blissful. So pure.

And then… the sickness. This is going to be TMI but… fuck it. A bit of indigestion and stomach trouble is expected whenever a white person enters Asia. Different microbes etc. etc. But this… this was on a new fucking level. I knew something was up because on the morning that we woke up to take our ferry from Koh Phi Phi to Phuket, I vomited. And I never vomit, and I wasn’t that hungover (especially in relation to much of the rest of the trip). I felt okay afterwards though so we soldiered on. Three hour ferry ride, totally fine. We board our bus that will take us from the ferry port in Phuket to our hotel and about halfway through this bus ride, I feel it. I am wearing overalls. My heart starts beating loudly in my chest, sweat begins to bead on my forehead. Holy fuck, I am going to shit my pants. I clench until we get to the hostel – which is, of course, the last stop. It’s like a solid 45 minutes of pain. My stomach is ROILING. I have never felt anything like it.

I honestly know nothing about Phuket because I spent the entire 72 hours we were there running from my bunk bed to the bathroom. I would go so far as to say every ten minutes. At one point, I just brought my laptop into the washroom with me and watched Netflix for a few hours. A roommate who was with us switched rooms (understandably… I’m sorry, Helen). I didn’t eat for four days, literally not a fucking thing. Just Gatorade and water so that I didn’t die of dehydration. Because we had an airplane to catch and I needed to not be shitting the contents of my body out, I saw a doctor. He prescribed me like five different medications and told me just to take like eight of these pills and to expect stomach pain but it would at least get me through the flight to Seoul and hopefully home.

It worked, and we spent the last few days of our trip in Seoul. What an absolutely fascinating and beautiful part of the world. With Kieun as our guide, we got to see the best parts of Seoul. People took photos with us and gave us free shit. I had the absolute best meal of my life (it was the first thing I’d eaten in like four days… I really risked it all with the Korean barbecue honestly…). All-you-can-eat thick fatty slices of pork belly, grilled in front of us and dipped in sesame oil and salt with garlic and spices. Spicy chicken feet on the side, corn with cheese. It was wild. I cannot believe I stomached it.

And on May 12th, we returned home back to our lives and school and work and all of that boring ass shit. I remained ill for a solid six weeks upon returning home. To a lesser degree, I still have not fully recovered. At this point, I am unsure if I ever will. I truly think that second-round Asia gave me skin cancer and permanently altered my gastrointestinal functioning. Worth it? Unsure. But it happened nonetheless.

June 

My brother graduated from university and won a very prestigious award and it was very nice to watch him cross the stage and hear a nice speech about his accomplishments (he won so many scholarships that he basically had a free ride to school – I think it’s clear who inherited the brains).

I finished up my spring courses. Can I just say - spring courses are the worst? The two I picked were especially bad. The one about human sexuality was basically Sex Ed 101 which made for an easy A but I was hoping to investigate deeper on a number of topics. And the second one was way too hard for my tiny brain to accommodate and I got the lowest mark I’ve ever gotten on my paper and it brought me down.

I had a very random unexpected night where I slept with a really close friend of mine (like, friends for over a decade) who I used to have a little bit of a crush on in high school. We were very drunk and it was kind of a curiosity-satisfying move that has actually not resulted in a very big change to our relationship at all but I think it’s worth mentioning because younger me would have been stoked. This one’s for you, younger me!

We went to the High River Rodeo and Cabaret – another unexpected move but oh my god it was so fun. Matt, Steven, Amanda and I. You could buy as many beers as you wanted at a time and they were cheap because fuck the AGLC apparently. The rodeo was actually super fun. The cabaret was redneck af and I happened to see my roommate from the hostel in Koh Phi Phi and his buddies there? Although it was not a friendly reunion because I had unknowingly exposed him for cheating on his girlfriend when he was in Phi Phi (which he did. I shared a room with him, and the girl he loudly banged every night until 4am). Two-stepping ensued and I passed out in the car ride home. I have a great photo of Steven from this night next to a bottle of hot sauce. I do not recall why. I will include it below. 

July 

Okay, I am just going to preface this by saying July was a hot mess. 

Myself, Madison, Maeghan, and Cayley were all single and messing around on dating apps so we decided to create Tinder bingo. It’s exactly what it sounds like. The rules were that you could only cross off two things per date (so that you had to go on a minimum of three to win), you got bonus points for going on a Tinder date with the same person someone else had gone out with, and the first to win got their drinks paid for on a night out. So, I went on exactly one Tinder date. Which is something I said I’ve never do and never really saw myself doing but I went for it on this occasion because I think that in this day and age, a Tinder date is an experience everyone should have. So I bit the bullet, and went for a drink with this guy James at the Oak Tree Tavern. And oh... my god? What a terrible experience? LAUGHABLY terrible. His only desired topic of conversation were the nationalities of people I had slept with and in what circumstances. At one point he asked me, “when was the last time you had sex? Was it good?” He also talked at maximum volume and I guarantee you everyone else at that bar overheard our conversation. Midway through the date, he asked for a review of how he was doing and I told him he seemed a bit nervous. This angered him. He said, “I’M NOT NERVOUS” and I was like, “you asked, buddy.” He asked me if I would pay for him. Cayley literally had to come rescue me and I ran out of his car where he had unbuttoned his pants and had his dick out and was literally on the verge of tears begging me to touch it so hard. I literally bolted out of his car and he yelled out the window, “CALL ME!” He still hits me up on instagram sometimes. I hope his life gets better. 

I also moved again. This is my favourite living situation I’ve ever had. Great roommates who are almost never home. Cute house. Good location. A+ choice by me. 

I got really obsessed with the Thai cave rescue. It was just such a compelling and unique STORY and I would literally come home from work and refresh the BBC live update feed for hours until I fell asleep, then I’d wake up and refresh hoping for good news. I cannot wait for the movie. I will go opening day. #Obsessions 

Stampede!!! Oh my god, what a wonderful Stampede. The most memorable thing is that Steven and I went to the standing rodeo one afternoon and got absolutely. fucking. hammered. Whilst there, we met and befriended two Australian retirees named Lyn and Ken. They are rich and are obsessed with horseriding and rodeo stuff. They purchased many drinks for us and we convinced them to come to Nashville North with us, where they purchased MORE drinks for us and Steven attempted to show them how to two-step. They later invited me to go horseback riding in Banff and I accepted. They literally picked me up, drove me to Banff, we crushed two bottles of wine at the Park gin distillery, went on a three-hour horseback ride through the mountains, they drove me home and I paid for NONE OF IT. It was........ a day. I sat on my bed later and thought to myself, “that was fucking weird.” But now, if I ever go to Melbourne, I will hit them up. 

It was Ali’s birthday and we went camping in Waiparous. We took mushrooms on Saturday and just as they were beginning to fully kick in, the RCMP rolled in and kicked us out of our campsite. What a wild time to be faced with an interaction with the cops. Also - no one could drive except for two people who had stayed sober and they had to shuttle us to a new campsite. Have you ever tried setting up a tent on mushrooms? Do you know how difficult and hilarious it is? 

And lastly at the end of July, I went to Folk Fest. I saw Alvvays again. Front row! Like, against the barrier front row. It was awesome. It was folk fest that inspired me to cut my hair and get bangs again. No regrets. I love my bangs. I also experienced a level of street harassment that I didn’t know was possible from some random, innocent-seeming guy. It was terrifying. I called the police. No bueno. 

August 

In August, I got promoted at my job and basically became a baby manager. It was better in theory than in practice because my shifts got longer, I made less in tips (but more hourly), and the cash out for a restaurant is a long and frustrating process that depends on a lot of small pieces working together correctly in a big ass spreadsheet and I suck at math.

In happier news – August was also the establishment of podcast club. Podcast club is one of the best and dorkiest things I have ever been involved with. We pick a podcast each week to listen to, and get together on Sunday mornings at 10:00am to discuss the contents of the podcast. It was initially open to whomever wanted to come but has since whittled down to a core group and at this point, we’re all so close that it would almost be weird to introduce a new person into the mix. There is Kendal, who I go to school with and who started the whole club. Her boyfriend, Mitch. Lachlan and Maddy who are siblings. Matt, a YouTuber who was kind of a wildcard. Chad, also kind of a wildcard but who works as a youth counsellor – and me! Podcast club has made my life infinitely better and is probably the best thing to come out of 2018, in all honesty.

I also got obsessed with Harry Potter and read like almost the whole series and my new at the time roommates thought I was such a loser because I would literally post up on the couch in the living room with a HP book and they would come back five hours later and I hadn’t moved and all I wanted to talk about was Harry Potter. 

September / October / November 

I am lumping these three months together in this review because truly, they are lumped together in my mind and heart. 

On September 11, I started my first practicum at CommunityWise. I really had no idea what to expect when I started there but looking back, I cannot believe how hard I lucked out. The U of C is VERY clinically-based when it comes to how it educates and describes the practice of social work. CW was the opposite of it all and day-to-day so much happens there that it is honestly impossible not to get dragged in at such a deep level that it literally forces you to care. When I was in practicum, I did a lot of reading and I came across this concept of a “disorienting dilemma” which is “an experience within which a current understanding is found to be insufficient or incorrect and the learner struggles with the resulting conflict of views. Such experiences often are those to which learners point as the beginning of the process of questioning their understanding and views and entering the transformative learning process” (Source). Truly, being in that space over the course of 300 hours created this for me. I was forced to confront a lot of racist and otherwise problematic shit that I have been brought up with and that comes up in small ways for me that I try and quash down for the sake of saving face. Poverty, addiction, mental health issues showed up LITERALLY on the doorstep and I was thrown into it all. The experience was a disorienting dilemma and it shook me out of my bubble and I have never fallen so deeply in love with social work. My supervisor and I formed a VERY close relationship that probably broke some ethical and professional boundaries and she was there for me to discuss social issues and experiences I was having in an honest way that really deconstructed things. I had my debit card stolen by a client on one occasion, had to call the DOAP team because I witnessed people in overdose more times than I can count, had to talk many a person down from suicide, befriended a very mentally ill person who suffers from delusions that they are an alien in a human body sent here to observe earth and report back to their master. We had to kick someone out of a workshop for being racist. It was a wild ride, honestly. There were many many positive things to come out of practicum. I built my professional network in ways I never would have been able to, I was able to move out of the “student” realm and step into the role of a social worker and advocate and professional. I did a lot of public speaking! I was out in the community talking to a million different people. I made videos and posters. And the best part of all is that even when my practicum ended, my connection to CW did not. They have hired me on as a digital storytelling intern (paid!) for the new year. Which is a major confidence boost and I just love CW and everyone there so much. I will literally be forever grateful to them for taking me under their collective wing and showing me I have the skills and abilities to be an effective social worker :) 

Ahem. Now on to some not-so-good things... 

The end of October was kind of difficult because I was attempting to manage practicum responsibilities, actual class projects and homework, second-round practicum interviews, and Famoso. I was very stressed out and it was not good, especially because I got a rejection from one interview and didn’t even get an interview at my top choice. I was feeling very sorry for myself and may or may not have cried at my desk at practicum. It all worked out in the end though, and actually I was offered a placement at the first place I interviewed – they just took a while to get back to me. She called me to let me know this while I was on a run and being idiot me, I picked up… panting and gasping for air in Nose Hill Park. She was like, “We’d like to offer you the place… wait, are you okay?”

I would also like to just slide it in here that I slept with my ex in October. Which wasn’t a particularly momentous occasion and was actually kind of funny because it felt so much like a one night stand. I am mostly putting this in here because I don’t think many people know that and I want to see who reads this far.

Along similarish lines – I PUT MYSELF OUT THERE AND ASKED SOMEONE ON A STRAIGHT UP DATE AND GOT REJECTED AND IT WAS HONESTLY SO EMBARASSING AND BRUTAL and it’s okay now but oh… my god. This also happened around the same time as the rejections from practicum placements and I had such a bad night where I got drunk on my couch alone and Cayley brought me burnt ends from her new job at a brewery because she was #concerned for me and I didn’t want to be alone. That’s a true friend right there.

December 

December is only halfway done - but I feel I can summarize it accurately. It has been a nice, tidy wrap up to the year. A month of podcasts, cleaning my house and my car and my life up, a mysterious knee injury that is really fucking me up, working a lot at Famoso, finishing my practicum and school semester. One thing I am dreading is that my brother’s girlfriend who our family is not particularly fond of will be joining us in Saskatoon this year. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

In General 

2018 has been very stressful for me. But despite the stress, and sometimes out of it, have come some very nice, beautiful things. I said last year in my post that I wanted to become more deeply involved in my community and in activism and social work and in that way I think I have excelled. I’m in it now, you guys. I feel capable. I feel motivated. I feel CONFIDENT. And I’m fucking excited to see what comes in the future. 

I nearly doubled the amount of people I’ve slept with so that’s... a notable thing that happened this year. 

It has been nice to feel a return to a sense of belonging with my old high school group of friends. In a way, I feel more united with them than ever. I guess not having a partner that they all hate helps. But also, I think I’ve just been feeling more and more like myself. But to Connor, Steven, Matt, Adam and the assortment of new(er) members that come and go - I am very grateful for you all. It has also been good for my heart and soul to become so close with people from podcast club. It’s actually like... really hard to make new friends. Podcast club made it easy. And I found myself on a Friday night in Maddy and Ben’s apartment, watching cooking shows and teaching them how to play card games, laughing until I cried and drinking wine. And it’s like... who else gets together on EVERY Sunday morning to discuss podcasts? For fun? I know relationships change and dissolve and grow from each year to the next but I just have a deep feeling that some of these friendships are the real deal. And I’m really lucky. It sounds so ~fake deep~ and lame but honestly podcast club is making me a better, happier, less anxious person. 

2019: 

I think 2019 is going to have to be the year that I really, truly grow the fuck up. I’m not mad about this. I look forward to crushing through 400 more hours of practicum, graduating and getting my degree. Hopefully entering the work force for real (this prospect is honestly so exciting to me... I creep the job boards every day daydreaming about what I might eventually do when I leave the world of waitressing) and making some adult money. 

I also like... totally got fat in 2018 so 2019 will involve some activities to counterbalance this. AND I have a ticket to Big Valley Jamboree. Which is hilarious because I think if you asked 2015 Megan what she’d never do, it would be “go to BVJ” but here I am, ticket in hand, excitement mounting by the day. Boots on, bitches. 

Some of my goals or things I’d like to work on in 2019 are to become less attached to social media and more invested in the actual moment/doing of things rather than recording them (ironic as I type this MASSIVE year in review post, yes), to get into a healthy and sustainable pattern of exercise where I don’t just like become obsessed with it for a little while and then slowly taper off and then do none of it for like six months... and honestly? I want to download a bunch of those dating apps again and just go for it. I think you can learn so much about yourself through dating and I’ve been such a recluse this year for the most part because I have been sort-of-but-not seeing someone since literally JULY but we’re not actually together and I don’t know what’s going on. I just need to get over my own insecurities and anxiety and just jump in with both feet. It’ll be fun. It’ll be crazy. I’m excited. 

The rest of it, as always, is an open book. Who knows where I will be, what I will be doing, or who I will be doing it with by this time next year? Not I. 

[dailyaudiobible]

01/16/2018 DAB Transcript

Genesis 32:13-34:31, Matthew 11:7-30, Psalms 14:1-7, Proverbs 3:19-20

Today is the 16th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It's great to be here with you around the global Fire that is our community. And we’ve come to take the next step forward in the Scriptures as…well…here we are at the 16th day. Man…see…it goes pretty fast. I’m telling you, it’s going to be June before we know it, but there is some ground to cover between here and there and we’ll cover some of that ground today. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Genesis chapter 32 verse 13 through 34 verse 31 today.

Commentary:

Alright. So, we have some pretty significant drama happening in the book of Genesis in Jacob's life. He has had to leave his uncle Laban's household after a couple of decades, secretly, because he fears Laban won't let them leave with his household anyway, with his wives and children, and all that he is gained. So, they leave. Right? And then Laban chases him down. So, he's got problems behind him, but he's also heading right into problems, his brother Esau. So, he's kind of between a rock and a hard place. He’s got problems behind him, he’s got problems in front of him. And we have probably all walked through seasons like that. So, Laban catches up and there's all that drama that we already read and a covenant is established between the two, that they won't cross the boundary line to attack each other. So, that's dealt with. But he’s still got his brother, who he fled from because the last thing his brother Esau promised was that he was going to kill his brother Jacob. So, Jacob has his entire household intact, but he's headed right into that and he doesn't know what it's going to be like, and it brings him a tremendous amount of anxiety and planning. And he gets everyone safe in a couple of different camps and then he's by himself spending the night, and he has this massive wrestling match. And it's been debated who Jacob's actually wrestling with here. On the one hand, it seems to be that the Jacob's wrestling with God. But then there are others would say, no, he was wrestling with his brother, Esau. And the reason for this is that when Jacob and Esau do meet, Jacob says, what a relief to see your friendly smile. It is like seeing the face of God. But Jacob does have this all-night wrestling match, and in the end he is given a blessing and he is given a name change. And his name changes to Israel, which means one who wrestles with God. And now that Jacob's name has been changed to Israel, we understand that his children are the children of Israel. And they will live up to their name. They will wrestle with God most of their existence. And as we’ll see over time, the things that they wrestle with God about are largely the same kinds of things that we do. But Jacob and Esau make peace with one another. Esau wants Jacob to come back right away. Jacob needs to take a slower route because of the kids and the young inside of this livestock. And, so they make an encampment near Shechem.

Now, Shechem is a city that we hear many times in the Bible, but we don't always recognize its significance. Shechem is near where Abraham first received the promise of the land. Shechem is obviously the place where Israel's daughter, Dinah, was raped, which subsequently led to the inhabitant’s destruction. But Shechem is situated between two mountains, not giant mountains, two big hills. One called Mount Ebal and the other called Mount Gerizim. So, this location will have significance later. As we continue into the story those mountains will be known as the mountains of blessing and cursing. And many other things happen in Shechem. And, so, I'm pointing it out now. I don't want to give a bunch of spoiler alerts. I just want you to pay attention to Shechem. As we encounter Shechem you'll see that it has great significance. Many things happen there. And Shechem is located right between the Sea of Galilee and the city of Jerusalem. So, it’s like halfway between the two. So, its modern name is Nablus. And it is situated in what many refer to as the West Bank that at this point. So, modern Israeli citizens are forbidden from going there. But we've gone in there before and filmed because there are ruins in Nablus that are contemporary with the story that we read today, Canaanite Shechem, so one year. So, one year, myself and a small team, we went in and were given permission to do some filming. And the people were very, very kind to us, very gracious. So, besides the Canaanite ruins, Jacob's well is there, which is referenced in the New Testament when Jesus meets a Samaritan woman. So, a lot happens there geographically. And almost no one who makes a pilgrimage to the land of the Bible, to Israel, would visit Shechem. It would not be a safe place to take a group to. But we've been able to get in and film, which leads me to talk about a resource that's available, that we’ve had available for a while, that I haven't mentioned at all this year yet. And that is the Promised Land films.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what's going on around here.

So, here's the deal. I, I mean, I've been to the land of the Bible many times, but there was a first time. And even the first time, it wasn't like a bucket list thing. I didn't necessarily need or want to go there, but I was invited, and I did. And that subsequently kind of rocked my world in terms of just understanding the geography of where the Bible happened, where this stuff that we’re reading about actually happened, because we read it and we kind of picture it in our imagination. We hear a number of locations referred to and so we kind of situate them in our mind just trying to imagine things but we don't really know. It's mostly in our imagination. And yet, these places are real places. And, so, we've taken several pilgrimages with the Daily Audio Bible and we’ll be taking one next month. But in the process of being there, like, you can stand in a place like this and, you know, when you are somewhere you can look wherever you want. So, you can spin in 360°, and you can look up and down, and you can smell the smells, and hear the crunch of the earth beneath your feet. Your there. And I began thinking, how can we bring this closer? Like, how, because when you search these places you can find pictures, but pictures are kind of static views and most of the pictures are of piles of rocks that you don't really understand the significance of. And, so, we began and for, I think it's been four seasons, we've been continuing to film in the land of the Bible in order to let these places that we’re reading about be seen for what they are. And, so, over time, we've pretty much been everywhere that has been archaeologically identified. I mean, that's a moving target, that's constantly changing. But every major site that's been identified as biblical, we've been there and we have filmed.

So, the Promised Land films are these small little vignettes, you know, some a couple minutes long, most of them no more than five minutes long, to give you a more comprehensive picture of the geography of these places and what happened in them. So, if that interests you as we move our way through the Bible, if you want to be able to refer back to these places and see them with your own eyes and begin to get a sense of their significance, then Promised Land would be great. The Promised Land films are available in the Daily Audio Bible shop. It’s about four hours of content. We cover a lot of ground in the films, so it comes as a double DVD set. And we’ll get that in the mail to you promptly, but you also get immediate access to downloading the films in high definition. Notice that I said download. They won’t stream. You have to download them and then you can play them on your computer or transfer them to your phone or tablet and watch them whenever you want. But those are available at the Daily Audio Bible shop. We created them specifically for this purpose, as all of our resources are created, to help you move through this year in a very meaningful way and to establish this rhythm with the Scriptures as a part of our lives in community every day. So, Promised Land was created with that in mind. So, you can check that out and in the Daily Audio Bible shop.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link right on the homepage. Thank you, humbly and profoundly for your partnership. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello. Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. This is Jay calling from New Jersey. I haven’t called in in a while. I want to talk to you this morning about 2018. You know, for 31 years I have done things my way. I’ve dated who I wanted to date. I’ve married who I wanted to marry. I’ve had sex with who I wanted to have sex with. I have bought what I wanted to buy and lived where I wanted to live, and went where I wanted to go, and said what I wanted to say. Out of all that, of all these years, I’ve gotten myself nothing but rejection, heartache, pain, disappointment, anger, frustration, all the feelings that I don’t want. And I was praying today and looking at some scriptures and realizing that all this time God has been giving me what I thought…well…not what I thought…but what I wanted, or at least what I thought I wanted in my own human understanding. So, I’ve come to the realization that this year I’m going to try my best, one day at a time, one moment at a time, to listen and do the will of God. Heavenly father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I pray now Father that You will give me the strength through Your word, through Your Holy Spirit to do Your will. Father, I pray that Your Angels and Your Holy Spirit will convict me in those times where I’m not listening to do what You want me to do because it’s uncomfortable and I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Good morning DAB family. This is Joyful Noise from Southern California. I’m calling because I’ve been holding onto this for a few days. And I was so excited about it. I journaled in the new journaling option on the DAB player online and…I just…I’m loving this. Thank you so much Brian. So, the concept comes from Matthew 6. And it’s the concept of forgiveness. And Brian took a little time to review it. But here’s the Scripture. Matthew 6:14. ‘For if you forgive others their offenses Your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive others Your Father will not forgive your offenses.’ And I was just so struck by that and struck by Brian’s words afterwards. I posted it on my Facebook page along with the song that he played at the end. Thank you so much Brian. Matthew West, forgiveness. And here’s the words that Brian said. So, hopefully if you didn’t hear the first time, hopefully this resonates with you. And it’s definitely a focus for me in this new year 2018. How much unforgiveness are you carrying around in your life? If you had to imagine it, what would it look like? A nice flower patch or more like a polluted pond? Hold on to unforgiveness. Holding onto unforgiveness is like drinking from a polluted pond. It’s a poison in our life, a cancer for our souls. Jesus isn’t threatening us but bringing us by telling us to forgive. Jesus died for us he forgave us. He forgave us. Forgiveness is a very important thing to God and looks like this. We take those things that are polluted inside of us and we let them go. We drain the pond. What are you holding onto? Release those events and those people to God. And I think, if those of you are sort of motivated by hashtags, my hashtag is #drainthepond. You know, I took these words and I prayed over them and ,although I’ve heard them year after year after year, this is my seventh year through the Bible with the daily audio Bible family, this is not the first time I heard this, of course. It really struck out chord in me, drain that pond. So, for those of you that are holding onto grudges, and I know him definitely one of them, I’m just really praying over it, praying over my heart, praying over those people, praying for the people that have hurt me, whether it was 20 years ago…

Hello Daily Audio Bible family. This is Nathan from Littleton Illinois. Hey, I wanted to share something that happened at church. This was the first service of the year. So, I guess ___ it probably was a week ago. Anyway, so, they start out with a special number, which isn’t so uncommon, and the music was fading out, and the pastor gets up the stage, and says he’s been praying how to start this year off, so we’re starting off with communion. I’m pretty sure that __ people were moved because we get so stuck in a pattern of what happens. We do these ___ songs, then this happens, then the sermon, and then the this and then that. And we put God in a little box and well this is how it should be because it always has been. Ain’t so. So, we started out with communion and he explained it. So we’re in a sermon series about victory and he says and we’re going to celebrate what already happened in 2018. And I know it’s now, but that’s what he said. 2018. And, so, he went on and said, you know, here’s what, how we’re celebrating it. If you think about it, you know, the slaves had silver before they were free. The Last Supper happened before Jesus died on the cross for our sins. So, why should we not celebrate victory before it happens. I thought, woe! I wanted to share that with you guys. We need to be celebrating victories that Jesus has already won. We just need to grab that victory and run with it. Something to think about. Have a great day. Make it a great day.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. This is Brooke calling from lovely Fort Collins Colorado. I am a two-year listener and it might be my second or third call in. But I have a prayer request. It’s for my mom. She was the one who brought the Daily Audio Bible to me and is just an amazing person and…you can see that I’m getting choked up…but…anyway…she is just an amazing person, an amazing daughter of God, a huge heart for Jesus, and just an amazing person. She, we discovered, by a miracle, thank you Jesus for this, she has a mass in her trachea blocking 50% of her windpipe. And she is going in for a very high risk surgery due to the location of the mass, the size of the mass, on Wednesday, January 17th in the afternoon. I just ask that you lift her up. Her doctor is very skilled but we’re not leaning on her physician because we know that God is the great physician. And we have been praying that when her physician goes in there that the mass will be resolved and there is no other answer except for that Jesus healed her. We’ve been praying desperately for about the past month, since we found the mass. She’ll be hospitalized for a couple of days just depending on how the surgery goes. So, I just appreciate your prayers. Her name is Terry and, yeah, I just appreciate that. Thank you, guys. Have a great day. Bye.

Good morning family, good evening, good afternoon, good middle of the night. This call, this is Andrew from the Bay Area. Many of you know me as Drew because you are my family and we’ve been doing this for so long. But this call is for the new listeners. God woke me up just a few minutes ago with an astounding revelation that I don’t even understand. But he asked me to call you. And maybe you haven’t called the Daily Audio Bible yet, maybe you haven’t even prayed yet, maybe you haven’t even really believed yet, but God wants me to share with you that your every thought, your every word, everything you do matters. There’s a story about a woman who came into the temple and she gave less than two pennies. And Jesus said, she gave more than all of you because she gave everything she had, she gave so much. So, what I’m telling you is, you’re not going to understand now, I don’t understand now, but everything we do matters. Can you imagine what God hears every day when He hears our prayers, when He moves powers and principalities in action? Of course, you can’t imagine that because your mind can wrap yourself around it. But we’re glad you’re here as a new listener and we pray for you every day, believe it or not. Even though you don’t call in we are praying for you. We are asking you to tell your friends about this and share the secret with them and ask them to tell their friends and send a million more because what’s your witnessing is not an old dusty book. What you’re witnessing is a foundation of what God has built, what He is building, and what’s about to happen. We live in exciting times and if you trust God, you don’t have to trust us, but if you trust God, He will show you step-by-step. He’ll let you see as much as you can possibly handle and He will build up your faith and make you a mighty warrior in His army. So, trust Him. And trust Him, that when you pray, He moves. He does. About giving and praying for Brian and Jill, give everything you can, but when you give, ask God to send a million more. When you give a dollar, ask God to send a million more. When you say a prayer, ask God to send a million more. When you ask for favor for somebody who’s hurting, ask God to send a million more answers to prayer. I love you guys. Were taking this journey together. You are not alone.

[cristinagooge]

Shinewald: Making this awful moment more tolerable

“Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious,” wrote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

And yet, how much we would give for these hours to pass more quickly.

We sit, cooped up, waiting for time to pass, worrying for our loved ones and ourselves and longing for human connection. We alternate between joy and anger, between hope and despair. A new, intense mood can suddenly overtake us, displacing the last completely.

Time, it seems, has become our enemy, as much as coronavirus.

But as Heschel shows, how we spend, mark and sanctify time is core to Jewishness. It may yet be our way to keep our sanity in a moment when days blur into weeks.

What did you do last Tuesday? I have no clue and you probably don’t either. Tuesdays used to be the days where we had our team meetings at the office and where, once a month, I’d attend Ve’ahavta board meetings. But today, Tuesday is no different than Thursday or even Sunday.  Time is all the same.

Except that, I know precisely what I did Friday and Saturday. Last Friday night, our family, spread across Chicago, Toronto, Vermont and Winnipeg gathered by video to light candles and sing Shabbat songs. Grandparents saw grandchildren, cousins waved to each other and all of us smiled. It was a precious moment of pure joy, just as welcoming Shabbat should be.

We couldn’t have had the same experience on a Tuesday. Even now, when we have nothing but time, we may not have bothered.  The absence of the Shabbat ritual might have made a Tuesday video call feel artificial.

Once Shabbat ended, the online Havdalahs began, and never did the beginning of a new week seem as significant. Shuls and schools and other wonderful Jewish institutions lived their core purpose to the fullest: strengthening our community, even (or especially) in this moment of physical distancing, this time just doing so online.

READ: SHINEWALD: THE DIVERGING CAREERS OF IRWIN COTLER AND ALAN DERSHOWITZ

It may feel like physical distancing is about time, but of course it is entirely about space.  Heschel contrasts Judaism’s approach to time with humankind’s approach to space. “The mythical mind would expect that, after heaven and earth have been established, God would create a holy place.” But, Heschel notes, the Torah first applies the word kadosh (holy) to time – to a day called Shabbat.

Today, Jews use time – how we mark it, how we sanctify it – to break through the spiritual void that is physical distancing.  You see this in videos of Israeli apartment dwellers singing Shabbat songs together on their balconies, in well-wishers communicating holiday greetings online and in many other ways.

I write this before Passover, before my family’s first-ever virtual seders.  The idea, preposterous a month ago, immediately lifted our spirits, giving everyone something to look forward to (and dress up for) and alleviating the fear of spending Passover alone.

For others, the very notion of an online seder is contradictory, given Judaism’s prohibitions against electricity on holy days. But even the more observant will be calling each other just before and immediately after the holy days. This, too, is a deeply Jewish expression of time.

Imagine, now in particular, if you really did treat every single day identically –  if you didn’t separate the holy and the secular, or however you describe it, by somehow marking Shabbat or Passover or anything else in our Jewish cycle. To me, days that are truly indistinguishable seem much more imprisoning than physical distancing.       

Heschel reminds us that, “Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.”

We may not realize it, but through marking Jewish moments in time, we all consecrate those sanctuaries in our own way and, in so doing, we make this awful moment a bit more bearable.

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[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND November 1, 2019 - Terminator: Dark Fate, Motherless Brooklyn, The Irishman and more

My deepest apologies about there not being a column last weekend, but I needed a little personal time to deal with some things and not spending the five or six hours it takes to write this column to deal with those things was the breath of fresh air I desperately needed. Unfortunately, this week’s column won’t be as rich and hearty as it has been either as I’m still trying to get other things done during this very busy time.

The big movie this week is Paramount Pictures’ Terminator: Dark Fate, directed by Tim Miller and bringing back Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, joined by Mackenzie Davis, and newer Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna (Ghost Rider on ABC’sAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). I was kinda mixed on the movie, which I reviewed for The Beat, but I am glad to see Paramount and Skydance trying to keep this stalwart sci-fi action franchise alive despite many hiccups over the past few decades.

The other movie opening Friday in not as many theaters, but one that I enjoyed much more is Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn (Warner Bros), which adapts Jonathan Lethem’s book about a private investigator with Tourette Syndrome who tries to solve the murder of his mentor (played by Bruce Willis in the film). Norton made a bold choice by moving Lethem’s story from modern-day New York City to ‘50s New York, which allowed Norton to play around with some of the major changes in the development of the city by a ruthless developer, played by Alec Baldwin, who is trying to oust African-American communities in Brooklyn. They’re represented by a lawyer, played by the amazing Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I also reviewed thatfor The Beat, and I interviewed Norton, Dafoeand Mbatha-Raw (that last interview will be later this week), but clearly I’m a fan of what Norton was able to do with this one.

I was not as big a fan of Focus Features’ Harriet, starring the fantastic Cynthia Erivo from one on my favorite films of 2018, Bad Times at the El Royale. Usually, I might enjoy a biopic about Harriet Tubman, but I just didn’t really feel like I was learning about this pioneer from this film by Kasi Lemmons, which didn’t really offer much new to what I’ve known since elementary school about Tubman. It’s a shame because stories about slavery times and those who fought against it are important. I just wish this film were better.

I haven’t seen nor will I ever see Entertainment Studios’ animated Arctic Dogs, so I really don’t have much more to say about that one, but you can read more about the above movies and how they might fare this weekend in my Box Office Previewover at The Beat.

We’re going to do things a little differently this week, because I’ve begun to realize that I just can’t do the column the way I’ve been doing it for the last year plus, at least not every week.

As far as LIMITED RELEASES, the big movie of the weekend is Martin Scorsese’s THE IRISHMAN, which Netflix is giving a limited theatrical run for about three weeks before it streams on the service.  It reunites Scorsese with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel but also has him working with Al Pacino for the first time, the latter playing Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa as the film follows the events that led to his disappearance. As luck would have it, I’ve also reviewed THIS over at The Beat.

Besides playing at New York’s IFC Center and Landmark at 57th which are usual theaters for Netflix films, it will also play at the 1000-seat Belasco Theater in Times Square, which is something only a filmmaker as prestigious as Scorsese can pull off. I’m really curious to see how the movie does there.

Also, David Michôd’s THE KING will premiere on the Netflix streaming service after its own theatrical run, and if you read my column a few weeks back, then you already know I was a huge fan of this Shakespeare adaptation starring Timothée Chalamet and Joel Edgerton (who co-wrote the screenplay with Michôd), plus there are great appearances by Robert Pattinson and Ben Mendelsohn, as well.  (At one point, The Crown was supposed to debut its third season this Friday but it’s been moved back a few weeks. Maybe it was too confusing to have these unrelated projects appearing at the same time.)

Apparently, Netflix will also be debuting the drama American Son, based on the Broadway play and starring Kerry Washington this Friday.

There are a lot of really solid docs worth seeking out this weekend including Error Morris’ American Dharma, which I saw at the New York Film Festival in 2018 when it premiered. Because it’s a penetrating interview Breitbart founder Steve Bannon, I can totally understand why so many of my liberal colleagues are against this movie existing but to me, it seems like a good follow-up to Morris’ earlier Oscar-winning doc The Fog of War. It will open at New York’s Film Forum this Friday. Opening at the Metrograph on Friday is David Charles Rodrigues’s Gay Chorus Deep South about a group of hundred LGBTQ singers who tour the south to protest the exclusionary laws being written to deny them of their rights. I haven’t seen Josh Aronson’s To Be of Service (First Run Features/Aronson Film Services) but that deals with veterans being paired with their service docs, and that will open at the Cinema Village in New York on Friday.

Other narratives of note are Paul Harrill’s supernatural thriller Light from Light (Grasshopper Films), starring Jim Gaffigan and Marin Ireland, and the Dutch action-thriller Blood Marie.

I’m going to handle REPERTORY stuff a little differently this week as well, just noting some of the highlights like the continuing “Killer Hitchcock” series at Metrograph that will screen the 3D Dial M for Murder over the weekend. This week’s Halloween edition of Late Nites at Metrograph  is Brian  De Palma’s Carrie from 1976, while Playtime: Family Matinees  will screen both the 1933 King Kong and 1965’s The Sound of Music (also part of its Julie Andrews series) this weekend. (You also should check out Metrograph Pictures’ latest release Downtown ‘81 if you haven’t had a chance as it’s a glorious time capsule of the New York music and art scene of the times.)

Film Forum’s “Shitamachi: Tales of Downtown Tokyo” continues this weekend and through November 7, and I’m supremely disappointed in myself that I haven’t been able to get over there to see more. This weekend, there will be screenings of Godzilla and Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel and more. Uptown at Film at Lincoln Center, they’re kicking off a series called “Poetry and Partition: The Films of Ritwik Ghatak” which will screen eight of the Bengali filmmaker’s films.

The newly-revamped MOMA continues its series Modern Matinees: Iris Barry’s History of Film and Vision Statement: Early Directorial Works, while the IFC Center’s weekend rep. offerings will include The Thin Man  (1934), Austin Powers: International Man of Mysteryand the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, so a fairly mixed bag.

Out in L.A., there series “A Genre of One: the Cinema of Bong Joon Ho” will run at the Egyptian Theaterand Aero Theater with The Host and Mother playing at the former on Thursday night and a double feature of Snowpiercerwith Barking Dogs Never Bite at the latter on Friday and Okjawith Memories of Murder on Saturday. I’ve been a huge fan of the Korean filmmaker for 15 years or rmore and all of these are worth checking out if you live in L.A.

Tarantino’s New Beverly is still showing his films Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (presumably the extended edition) and Pulp Fiction but this weekend will also be screenings of David Cronenberg’s Rabid on Friday and P.T. Andersons’ Hard Eight on Monday, both as matinees.

As far as festivals, one I’ve been wanting to get to for a long time but just haven’t a chance is the Indie Memphis Film Festival which starts on Wednesday and runs through next week. If you happen to be down in that part of Tennessee, you might want to check out some of their programming.

Continuing in New York this week is the CineCina Film Festival, which I hoped to write about last week but got bogged down in the personal issues mentioned above.  It continues to run this week with some impressive international programming representing 17 countries and regions with screenings all across the city. This weekend, the festival includes a Master Class with Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz (Lebanon, Foxtrot), so this looks like a local festival that should continue to grow and find its own identity in coming years.

Still not sure if I’ll get back to the more robust What to Watch This Weekend column next week but there’s more variety including the Stephen King adaptation of Doctor Sleep, the holiday rom-com Last Christmas, Roland Emmerich’s war film Midwayand the John Cena family comedy Playing with Fire.

[the-record-columns]

Aug. 14, 2019: Columns

                                                           Angel

The love of a dog…

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

Anyone who reads this space knows how much I have missed my dog Powder since his death in February of 2018 from an aggressive form of cancer. 

He was truly a good dog who put up a valiant fight without so much as a whine or a whimper and was a blessing to anyone he came into contact with.

Ever since he died, folks, well-meaning folks, mind you; have been telling me I need to get another dog—everything from "...get a puppy, now!" to "...you will know when the right dog comes along—you'll just know." 

No one has tried any harder than my son, Sam, who gave me Powder about 10 years ago as a Christmas present.  He called about puppies, strays, and rescue dogs, all of which I fended off with a simple, "I'm just not ready."

Well, last Wednesday was my birthday, and it was a good one. Lots of visits and phone calls along with the occasional case of Geritol for my "tired blood." 

Sam and my daughter, Jordan, got together and asked me to meet them at Sam's house in Thomasville on Saturday to have a meal and enjoy a birthday cake.  I was glad to do so.

 I went down a bit early to spend a little more time with Sam's daughter Carter Grace and ended up running an errand with Sam to see a couple of ladies who babysit for him sometimes.  I had met then at Sam's wedding and looked forward to seeing them again. 

When we got there, they had three dogs running around and one kind of took to me. In fact, except for playing with Carter Grace a bit, she pretty much wallowed all over me.

About halfway back to Sam's house, he told me that the white dog named Angel had been abandoned by its owner who had fallen on a series of hard times and that the two ladies had taken her in to keep her from being sent to the pound.  I remarked at how much her face reminded me of Powder the first time I saw her and said if they hadn't told me she was only five years old, she could have been Powder's little sister.

Then Sam said, "If you want that dog, she is yours."

Remember the folks who said I would just know when it was the right dog.  Well, they were right.  When it came time to leave on Saturday, Sam and I drove back to the ladies house.  One of them was about to not let her go after all, but they did, and Angel came home with me.

I stopped in Elkin to let her stretch her legs and a stranger walked up and began to pet Angel.  She apparently has never met a stranger, so I should have said a new friend walked up.  For him it was love at first sight. 

We ended up spending nearly 45 minutes with a guy we had never met, and, as he left, he said, "You know, I feel that the love of a dog is the nearest thing to God on this earth we will ever see."

I'm with this guy until I am shown different.

Angel was named appropriately, as gentle and kind as any angel could be.  Everyone who sees her asks me how in the world I was lucky enough to find another dog who looked exactly like Powder.

Clearly, I am lucky.

You would think that Angel has been living in The Mayflower, my home, her entire life. It does not seem at all possible that I have had her for only four days.  I find myself talking to her and thanking her for being my dog as she takes every step I take. 

To all the people who loved Powder so much and who were so kind to me during Powder's sickness and death, I know in my heart we all now have something else to be thankful for, and to love.

  A dog named Angel.

The Play Is The Thing

                                                The ‘accused’

By HEATHER DEAN

Record Reporter

Guess who's reprising her role as Maggie in "Dinner at 8, Dead by 9?"

I, along with fellow independent thespians, and several Wilkes Playmakers will be performing at the annual N.C. Clerks Association Meeting, being held in Wilkesboro this year.

This picture is from last September when we performed the sold out show at the Wilkes Art Gallery as a dinner theatre fundraiser.  Megan Barnett caught me right at the time of being accused of the crime. To date, this is still one of my favorite pictures of me in character.

Fast forward to spring of 2019: Jim Byrd, Town Clerk and District 10 Director with the Town of Wilkesboro - Government called asking if I could get together a troupe and present a one-act something, because he wanted to provide something "extra special to show off our town" as Clerks from all over N.C. would be here.

Well, of course I said yes, and even told him I had the perfect show in mind!

I promptly contacted our esteemed Director Barbara Stinson, asked her if she was down to do the show again, (she was) so she sent out emails to our original cast. Alas, some of them had prior commitments, but we were able to fill the slots easily with my fellow actors; It's like my publisher says- it's not about who you know, but sometimes it's about who you know. (But after 25 years and over 100 shows in the theatre "business" I had better be able to pull this off!)

So here we are, in rehearsals to bring something special to the N.C. Clerks Association, and we as actors who love our little county and live to volunteer to bring the stage magic to life couldn't be more please to perform for them!

And no, Mamaw, I still am *not* getting paid to do what I went to college for; but yes, I will still continue to be involved in community and professional theatre alike. 'Cause that's how this theatre girl rolls.

The tiny country making massive contributions 

By AMBASSADOR EARL COX and KATHLEEN COX

Throughout history, the Jewish people have consistently managed to turn seemingly sour situations into positive conditions with mostly sweet outcomes, akin to turning lemons into lemonade.  They have been shoved down and cast out only to come back stronger, sharper, and more intelligent, inventive and ingenious than ever.

Known as the “start-up nation,” Israel is on the cutting edge of just about every field of science and technology.  Would this be the case if Israel had not been forced to always be on guard against those who seek her destruction and the annihilation of every Jew from off the face of the earth?  Possibly not.  Their resilience has led them to brilliance teaching the Jews not only how to survive but, more importantly, how to thrive, and this to the chagrin of her enemies.  

On the same day back in 1948 when the modern State of Israel was born and only a few hours old, she was attacked from every direction by her hostile Arab neighbors who possessed well-trained armies and stockpiles of weapons.  With no trained or organized army and very few munitions, Israel miraculously used her wit and determination to defeat her enemies sending them scurrying to the United Nations seeking help to make Israel stop.  Living under the constant threat of war and terror attacks forced Israel to develop the best intelligence organizations in the world - on the ground, in the air and in cyberspace.  This is quite a contrast to the negative image the media has endeavored to create of Israel as backward oppressors with nothing to offer the world but camels and sandals.

In one way or another the world owes Israel a deep debt of gratitude for the many technological advances we enjoy today.  Over 250 major multinational companies have their R & D (research and development) centers in Israel.  Why?  Because Israel invests in her people producing some of the best and brightest minds in the world.  

The adverse geo-political conditions in which Israel has found itself since it was established in 1948 have forced this small country to invest its limited resources in developing and maintaining superior military capabilities. As computers increasingly found their way into all walks of life and war, cyber defense has become an important activity for the IDF (Israel Defense Force).

With years of intelligence gathering and cybersecurity practice, the IDF has developed a special unit which has evolved into an incubator and accelerator of Israel’s startups, in cybersecurity and other fields.  In Israel, military service is compulsory.  Israeli youth view this as an opportunity to be embraced, not dodged, and in no way is this service viewed as a hardship.  The young people serving in this special IDF unit experience real-life and leading-edge cybersecurity challenges and solutions. Working like startup companies, the young people in this unit get to experience teamwork, leading other people, having responsibility for making significant decisions, and surviving failure, all of which are great preparations for post-military, entrepreneurial life.

Israel recognizes that human capital is a precious commodity and that people —their skills, experience, and ambitions—are the most important ingredient in cyber defense. Israel is known for its dynamic culture full of innovation, and initiative. For Israeli students, cybersecurity education starts in middle school and Israel is the only country in the world in which cybersecurity is an elective in high school. Several Israeli universities offer undergraduate specialization in cybersecurity and Israel is the first country in the world in which a student may earn a PhD in cybersecurity as an independent discipline.  

So, while taking off a prom dress one day and replacing it with combat boots and fatigues the next may seem a hardship or disadvantage to some, to Israeli youth it is embraced as an advantaged pathway leading to a successful career in a highly competitive world.  The disadvantage has become the advantage. Israel’s youth are the solution to cyber treats and the foundation of turning risks into opportunities. 

Don’t mess with my Pimento

By CARL WHITE

Life in the Carolinas

Not so long ago I was traveling from Charlotte to Forest City. On my way I called a friend, Allen Langley. He asked what I was up to and I told him I would soon be passing through Shelby.

He said, "Great, stop by and I’ll ride with you."

I did, and as we drove along he told me about the many things he and his family enjoy doing in the area. He was very excited about eating at The Fountain at Smith's Drugs. They went into business in 1939, and are still the go to meeting place in Forest City.

After we found our table, Wendy Bennett stopped at our table with her daughters and friends. She told me that she started working at The Fountain when she was sixteen and continued there for three years before becoming a nurse. She now champions the call as the mother of three. With a smile, she said Smith's Drugs is full of great memories and is a favorite for her family.

Our waitress was Susan Donnahoe, a quick witted lady of Irish descent. I asked what the most ordered item was. Susan said that would be the grilled homemade Pimento Cheese Sandwich. So that order went in, but before she left the table, I asked if the maker of the pimento cheese was in.

"Let me check," she said.

The manager, Susan Stewart, came to the table. She is also the recipe developer and maker of The Fountain's pimento cheese. While she was not willing to share the secret ingredients, she did say they make at least 45 pounds of the amazing spread every week.

I spoke with other diners who raved about this simple yet tasty comfort food that regulars can’t seem to get enough of. Pimento cheese lovers can get upset with you if you mess with their favorite.

Case in point: some years ago amidst much controversy the traditionally served pimento cheese recipe changed at Augusta National, and is still being talked about today. In an article published by ESPN, the magazine's senior writer Wright Thompson reported that a fan, Paul Jones, said, “I’m fine with adding the female members, and I am tolerating the belly-putters, but changing the pimento cheese recipe is taking change too damn far.”

As it turns out our taste for cheese in no small matter. According to the USDA, Americans have increased their average consumption of cheese from 7.7 pounds in 1950 to 36 pounds in 1915. It was a good lunch and a great visit at Smith’s Drugs.

Allen and I then drove to the town of Rutherfordton to visit KidSenses Children’s INTERACTIVE Museum, located on Main Street. This is a great place with over twenty interactive exhibits designed to stimulate the imagination of young ones. Allen shared memories of taking his daughter to KidSenses for her birthday party when it first opened in 2004.

I had the opportunity to meet the town manager. Doug Barrick shared some very interesting local history, including the fact that Christopher Bechtler minted America’s first one-dollar gold coin here in 1832. This was almost 17 years before the U.S. minted their own. The Bechtler Mint minted more than two million dollars in gold prior to its closure in 1849.

Rutherfordton has a commemorative trail called “The Gold Mile”. It starts at the Bechtler House and winds around town, and is marked with replica Bechtler one-dollar coins. As you walk around this historic town there are information plaques with QR codes that point to additional information online. I did not have time to see everything, so I will need to return.

While a bit cheesy, it was a great day. I love the traditions of good food, education and a visit with the past.

[jewishphilosophyplace]

Haredi Transgender (Abby Stein)

In the depressing and dreary state of our political world in the Age of Trump, this is touching and lovely story about the power of transformation and self-creation is life affirming. For those who can’t get behind the Ha’aretz paywall here I’m posting below the piece by Debra Nussbaum Cohen about Abby Stein, who was born and ordained as a Hasidic rabbi and then transitioned from male to female, leaving her community to find new cultural and spiritual connections.

  By Debra Nussbaum Cohen Feb 14, 2017

NEW YORK – Abby Stein is almost certainly the only ordained Hasidic rabbi who is also a woman. Stein wasn’t female when ordained, of course. She was a young man, soon to be married to a woman also from the strict Satmar community in which they were both raised.

While Stein – then named Yisroel and nicknamed Srully – had long had unsettling feelings about her gender identity, when she married at age 18 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and moved to Monsey, she had no idea that just a few years later her life would be radically different.

But it is. Today Stein, 25, is a Columbia University student, divorced, no longer ultra-Orthodox – and female.

Abby, as she is now known, is a petite young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, whose religious origins are detectable only in the Yiddish accent and cadence of her speech. Estrogen has made her face softer and her body more womanly, and has even induced PMS-like mood swings.

Abby Stein today after undergoing gender transitioning, leaving the religious world, getting a divorce and becoming a student at Columbia University. Debra Nussbaum Cohen She is happier than she has ever been and plans to work on transgender issues in public policy. She may even one day run for local public office.

The sixth of 13 children, Stein was her parents’ first son. It was an upbringing full of cousins, weddings and Shabbos tisches (Friday night community gatherings) with the rebbe. Her father is related in five different ways to the Baal Shem Tov, the mystical 18th-century rabbi and founder of Hasidism. As such, the family has customs that reflect its status. While in strict Hasidic communities women don’t drive, Stein men don’t either. They don’t eat in restaurants and work only in Jewish education. After bar mitzvah the boys wear white knee socks rather than black ones — something most Satmar men do only after marriage.

When young Stein questioned her father about why they didn’t go to amusement parks during the Passover and Sukkot festivals like most Hasidim, he would respond that those things were “pas nisht” — simply “not done” – by Steins.

Something nagged at the little boy from an early age, although she lacked the language to describe it. In the bathtub at age 4, she’d prick her penis with pins because, as Stein tells Haaretz now, “It just felt like it didn’t belong there. I realized right away that I couldn’t tell anyone.”

She voraciously read articles about organ transplant from Yiddish language newspapers Der Yid and HaMaspik, thinking “someday I’ll get a full-body transplant.” At age 11, Stein added a personal prayer to her bedtime recitation of the daily Shema (confession of faith) prayer: to wake up a girl.

At 15 Stein went to a high-school yeshiva of the Vizhnitz Hasidic community in upstate New York. One day a classmate gave her a Hebrew-language translation of Richard Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible?” That led Stein to read “The God Delusion” by atheist Richard Dawkins, and to the discovery in the yeshiva library of books by Rabbi Yitzhak Moshe Erlanger, a scholar of kabbalah, Jewish mysticism.

Students at the yeshiva typically returned home one weekend a month, and Erlanger was in Williamsburg one Shabbat when Stein was there. They spoke for hours and the rabbi gave her an important work about kabbalah to read. “For the first time,” Stein recalls now,

“I realized that gender could be fluid.”

At 17, Stein’s parents conducted the requisite research for a girl recommended by a shadchan (matchmaker) and the two met for a b’show at the girl’s married sister’s apartment. While theoretically either of them could have declined the match, when the prospective groom arrived the table was already set to celebrate their engagement. “It’s extremely taboo” to turn down such a match, similar to breaking an engagement in the non-ultra-Orthodox world, says Stein.

The bride called Stein’s mother every week, but Stein herself had no contact with the bride during the year leading up to their wedding. The night before the chuppah, she went to the rebbe’s son for marital instruction. She was told they were to have sex only on Friday and Tuesday nights, after midnight, in the dark and in one position. Gender identity doubts persisted, Stein says, but “I kept telling myself everything would be fine.”

They lived in Monsey and were soon expecting a child. Stein’s feelings rose up anew, she says. “Gender began punching me in the face.” Stein got her hands on a smartphone and, in the bathroom at a mall, began her search. “The first thing I Googled was boy turning into a girl. Then I found a Hebrew Wikipedia page about transgender. I couldn’t read English” (Yiddish is the predominant language among the Satmar sect and in its schools).

She also found an online Israeli forum for trans people. “I realized, ‘Wow, there’s a whole world out there’ and that freaked me out,” says Stein. This was before Caitlyn Jenner and the television show “Transparent,” when there was relatively open, public conversation about trans people.

The couple’s son, Duvid, was born in January 2012; a year later, Stein told her wife that she was a non-believer. They talked about leaving Satmar for a more modern community because “we were still trying to make it work.”

Stein joined the New York-based Footsteps organization, which supports people leaving ultra-Orthodox communities, started taking English as a second language at a local community college, explored various online trans communities and opened a Facebook account as “Chava.” With a Footsteps tutor she prepared to take the high-school equivalency test.

Eventually Stein and her wife separated. She worked in Williamsburg and lived with her parents, with whom she was still close; her wife lived with Duvid at her parents’. At first father and son saw each other weekly, until the wife’s parents decided they could not meet unless their daughter was granted a get, a divorce, and Stein promised not to change her appearance and agreed to see the child just once a month.

Hard-hitting depression

After enrolling in a college-preparation program offered by Columbia University, Stein started spending time at the Hillel Jewish students’ organization on campus, and later applied to the school at Columbia designed for students from non-traditional backgrounds. On her application, which required a lengthy essay, she wrote simply, “I grew up in New York City but until I was 20, I never saw a movie, went to a Broadway show or listened to music” – and was accepted.

Once immersed in studies, Stein hoped her gender identity issues would fade, but several weeks into her first semester depression hit hard; she couldn’t get out of bed. A counselor at the university said he thought the student was hiding something.

Yisroel “Srully” Stein, before coming out as a trans woman named Abby. She is happier than she has ever been before, she says today. Eve Singer By then she had begun using women’s deodorant and letting her hair grow, but wasn’t yet ready to confront gender transitioning head-on. The depression intensified and she looked for a new therapist. At the LGBT center in lower Manhattan, a staffer told Stein she was trans. After working at a Jewish camp that summer, she began to transition. Stein began taking estrogen and a testosterone blocker in September 2015, and started coming out to friends. One showed up with a bag of women’s clothes, another taught her how to apply makeup. She began going to trans support groups.

Stein still dressed outwardly as male though “emotionally it was getting harder” not to make the full transition. She wanted to tell her parents personally about her decision so they didn’t hear it through gossip. One Shabbat, back at home, Stein says she lit candles — solely a woman’s ritual — which she had been doing privately for a year.

“My mother said, ‘You look different,” says Stein, but didn’t ask any specific questions. Taking estrogen has changed Stein, in the interim. A receding hairline has filled in and her hair has grown thicker. Her cheekbones have become fuller, she has breasts and her hips have widened. Her son Duvid, now 5, started calling her “Mama” as soon as she got her ears pierced, she says.

Stein started attending Romemu, a Jewish Renewal, egalitarian Jewish congregation in Manhattan, and became close to its rabbi, David Ingber. He offered to speak with Stein’s father, and they met in late 2015.

“It was the first time [my father] saw me wearing earrings. He said, ‘It would be easier for me to talk to you while you’re wearing a kippah,’” Stein recalls.

Yisroel Stein with his son Duvid and his parents. After Yisroel became Abby, a trans woman, she was called “Mama” by Duvid when she got her ears pierced. Abby Stein Her father, who runs a Williamsburg yeshiva for troubled youth, didn’t say much. “He stayed frozen,” Stein says. “He said, ‘I don’t believe it [transgender] exists.’ I showed him kabbalistic and Hasidic ideas. He said, ‘Why would you do that – women are so much less than men?’ Then he said, ‘You know this means I probably can’t talk to you ever again.’ He stood up, thanked David for taking care of me. He didn’t say goodbye to me, he just walked out the door.”

Her parents have not spoken with her since. Stein called home before the Jewish New Year last fall but got no response from her mother, who answered the phone. “It is painful,” says Stein, who likes baking challah her mother’s way.

Speaking out

Stein had her name legally changed from Yisroel to Abby Chava. Now her birth certificate, driver’s license and school ID indicate that she is female. In an emergency room recently after being hit by a car, a doctor asked when her last menstrual period was. Stein and her ex-wife haven’t spoken directly since their divorce. The woman’s new husband turns Duvid over when Stein comes to pick him up.

Today Stein wears a triangle charm necklace. Two corners bear symbols for male and female, while the third indicates transgender. She is dating a woman. And she is on a waiting list for sexual reassignment surgery.

At Columbia she’s majoring in political science, and women’s and gender studies. She teaches Hebrew school at Romemu and at the Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, and recently started a part-time community engagement job at the Manhattan borough president’s office.

Stein is also writing a memoir, and someone is making a documentary about her. As the only Hasid in America to come out publicly as transgender, she is in great demand as a speaker from Limmud Jewish education organization, to college and LGBTQ groups. She also runs an online support group for Hasidic trans people.

Most importantly, Stein notes now, she has never felt better.

“I experienced cycles of depression since I was 12,” she says. “Now I have mood swings, but I can deal with that by watching Netflix and eating pickles.”

http://ift.tt/2lNO6J3

[curlygirl79]

First Second Coming, the debut fantasy/supernatural/romance/suspense novel by Jeff Pollak, was released on 1st August. Prior to it’s release, I sat down for a virtual chat with Jeff, and I am delighted to be able to share this with you all today. Let’s jump straight in, and then I will share all the important information about the book with you all.

What was the inspiration behind First Second Comings?

When 9/11 occurred, I watched the World Trade Tower collapse just as everyone else did. Of course, I was horrified by the spectacle. Perhaps more so than others, because I had connections to that building. Born and raised in New York City, I’d been in the building a few times as a child. In my adult years, my law firm would hold annual seminars in the Top of the Tower conference centre every May, to update our New York/New Jersey corporate clients about California law and important appellate decisions. As a partner in the firm I’d function as a speaker, a panelist, or just a meet-and-greet guy. I had some clients in the building and gotten to know some of the conference centre’s staff. So the collapse was very hard to watch – some people I knew in that building didn’t survive, I later learned. That day a random thought came to me, that this planet really needs a new god, someone who is a planetary turnaround specialist. Some fourteen years later, when I’d decided to spend my future retirement writing fiction, the concept of a character who is a planetary turnaround deity came back to me as the seed of a story. I developed it and First Second Coming is the result.

What are your favourite books as a reader?

My all-time favorite books? I’ll break it down by genre.  Historical fiction: James Clavell’s Shogun and Tai-Pan novels. Also Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth and Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost. Fantasy: Tolkien’s Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  Science Fiction: Frank Herbert’s Dune and Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Thriller/Suspense: Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October and John LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Horror: Stephen King’s The Stand. Magical Realism: Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks. Non-fiction: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War Cabinet, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic about that little pond that separates England from the U.S.A.

Which authors inspire you as a writer? Is there a particular author who it would make your day to be compared to?

At the moment the authors who inspire me the most are, in no particular order, Iain Pears, David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami and Daniel Silva. The first Pears book I read, An Instance of the Fingerpost, is told from the point of view of four different individuals. Each POV character narrates the same events entirely differently, leaving the reader amazed that the story  comes together. Pears is a master at that sort of intricate plotting and character development. As for Mitchell, the man’s off the charts as a writer. Incredible talent. I don’t read his books, I savor every sentence in them, especially The Bone Clocks. As for Murakami, I started with 1Q84 and it was a revelation. Something different in its Japanese setting, in the richness of the details of both the real world and the alternative world he creates, and in the uniqueness of the story. Finally, Silva – he writes espionage thrillers along the lines of LeCarre or Follett. Silva’s ongoing series of about twenty books now all involve Israeli Mossad spy Gabriel Allon. Silva’s books are a bit formulaic, but he often incorporates real world events into the story and he has a conciseness to his writing style that I try to emulate in my writing. At this point in my development as a writer, being compared to Silva would probably make my day as I’m not yet at the “master writer” level of a Pears, Mitchell or Murakami. I aspire to get that good, though.

What did you learn over the course of writing First Second Comings that you wish you had known before you started?

Good question. I was learning the craft while I wrote, so I suppose the short answer is “everything.” I attended writers conferences, participated in critique groups, did online courses and researched answers to the “how to” things that came up. If there’s one thing that stands out that I didn’t learn but instead experienced, it’s getting so close to your characters that they actually talk to you unbidden (in your head) while you write. The first time my female main character, Brendali Santamaria, started talking to me I pretty much freaked out. I wasn’t expecting that and didn’t know this is a fairly common occurrence in the writing world. She’d tell me what was actually going on in the story, as differentiated from what my outline said was happening. I enjoyed hearing from her before long. Her romance with Ram Forrester, for example, wasn’t something I had planned to include in the story – but it happened and is now a major piece of First Second Coming.

Do you have a regular writing routine? If you do, what does it look like?

I do now, yes, but while writing most of First Second Coming I’d write as time allowed, around my work and family obligations. Now, as a retiree and empty-nester, I have plenty of free time. I do most of my work in the morning, from about 5:30 to 11:30, taking breaks for exercise and to get showered and dressed. In the afternoons I’ll hike for an hour or so, do any errands or chores that need doing, and write or edit as time permits. I don’t write in the evening, leaving that time for reading or other leisurely pursuits.

Do you have a plan in mind for your next book?

I’ve begun writing the second book in the “New God” series, or to put it another way, the sequel to First Second Coming. I’m also doing research for it and writing a novel that will be a spin-off from the series but not part of it. All those things – the two novels and the research – are in the start-up stages. I hope to have a first draft done on at least one of the two novels by year end.

Thanks so much Jeff, for taking the time to talk to me. Now, onto the all important blurb!

BLURB:

In 2027 the deity known as NTG – short for New Testament God – retires after more than two thousand years of minding the store for his employer, Milky Way Galaxy, Inc. The new god, a planetary turnaround specialist, must decide whether the Earth’s dominant species should or should  not be included in his plan to bring the planet back into full compliance with Milky Way Galaxy, Inc.’s planetary operation standards.

Earth’s new God introduces himself to humanity by unexpectedly appearing on the Ram Forrester Hour talk show. Ram, an atheist, and co-host Brendali Santamaris, a devout Catholic, are stunned. God’s interview, beamed worldwide, shocks and infuriates viewers. They learn that a sixty-day conference will take place in Los Angeles to determine whether humans are capable of helping him implement his planetary turnaround plan. All that those in attendance must do to assure that mankind earns a coveted spot in this God’s good graces is eliminate religious violence forever, without his heavenly help, before the conference ends. Failure means extinction.

God designates Ram and Bren as the conference’s only authorized media reporters. This assignment, fraught with peril, ignites their romance. Not only must the harried couple attend the conference meetings by day and do their show at night, they must also outwit a group of religious fanatics bent on killing them. When conflicts with the conference intensify, it’s up to Ram and Bren to do whatever it takes to protect their budding romance and assure mankind’s survival.

PURCHASE LINKS:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jeff Pollak, the author of First Second Coming and sequels to come, was raised in the Riverdale section of the Bronx by a single mom and two grandparents who lived eight floors up. After graduating from college in Buffalo, Jeff headed west to Los Angeles for law school and spent his entire legal career in and around civil litigation. Now retired, writing fiction is Jeff’s new passion.

  SOCIAL MEDIA:

Goodreads

Website

Twitter

Thanks again Jeff, for taking the time to talk to me. I think this sounds like a fascinating book and I am very much looking forward to reading it.

Join me for a virtual chat with @jspollak author of First Second Comings #bookblogger #q&a #meettheauthor #fantasy #supernatural #suspense #romance #fictioncafewriters #spoonshortagebookclub First Second Coming, the debut fantasy/supernatural/romance/suspense novel by Jeff Pollak, was released on 1st August. Prior to it's release, I sat down for a virtual chat with Jeff, and I am delighted to be able to share this with you all today.

[nataliesnews]

81 today, phone calls, the wadi 1 4. 6.2020

So today I am 81 . After reading about Arthur, my nephew, and a man who is a far relation and at the age of 91 walked as many kilometres I started wondering how many I had walked since coming back from SA.   I worked out that since the beginning of March until yesterday I had done just over 600 kilometre and since my incarceration 540. The best part of the day was the end when I came back from a supper with friends to a conversation with Amy, Daphne, and Glenn on audio. The wonders of the modern world. And phone calls from four continentsw-s,

 One good thing that happened since I came back….My wadi in which I walk a few times each week. There are many steps leading down to it and the balustrade is completely overgrown with weeks and, worst of all, capers with thorns so that I have great trouble going down. I wrote a letter to the municipality to complain and the next day saw three men clearing the area. I thought what a coincidence. But the next day at 7.30 in the morning I am sitting in the wadi resting and the phone rings. A man says, “Geveret Ginsburg, did my workers clean the steps well.” I nearly fainted with shock. But I have written a letter to say how impressed I was. And then a friend sent me the following…..

 https://m.jpost.com/jerusalem/jerusalem-to-get-a-lake-and-a-massive-new-park-630843

 I should live so long!!

 Our pool is due to open in July. Let us hope it works out. Unfortunately it seems that the Arabic intensive course will be held on zoom because they do not have enough classrooms to deal with social distancing. There is no way I can do that. To spend four hours a day, five days a week on zoom would really drive me to despair. I am so sorry as I have seen how wonderful it is to be back together in live bodies for the past two or three weeks. And the town shop is opening up. Such a relief when you run out of one or two things. But big buys I will still do at the little store.

 I had people to supper outside again but three of them I chased away at 8 as Daphne had bought me tickets for Marc Lottering. Fay and Sarah came up with me and we sat and cleibed naches from the South African humour and a touch of home.

 Which leads  me to wonder how many demonstrations I have attended in my life, countless, and how much they have helped….depressing. Israel today allows public figures, celebrities , millionaires, the ultra orthodox to hold events with 100s if not 1000s of people and no one hears a word of the fines they will pay. On the other hand they can go into the tiny shop of a hard-working tailor who says he earns maybe 100, 200 shekel a month and fine him 2000 shekel because he did not put up a sign telling people to wear masks. I didn’t notice Netanyahu phoning to cry with him.

 And this the latest

 Israeli Health Ministry to Probe Quarantine Exemption for Billionaire in Private Jet

Israeli-Cypriot businessman Teddy Sagi allegedly obtained an exemption from the ministry's deputy director general after officials considered charging him with quarantine violation

  I went to a demonstration against police brutality the other night. One woman told me that her son who had said that she was over critical of the police went. He went to help some girls get up as they had tried to sit down in the road……he himself was not sitting….but he got punched himself. So now he has seen for himself.  I was standing on the pavement…legit…..and a policeman came and told me to move. I told him I would not. I was not obstructing a anyone or in the street. The way he looked at me, all of his 18 or 19 years, told me that had I not been standing on two sticks he would have hit  me.

 Police coverups:

Police accused of failing to investigate beach attack on Arab Israeli man

Muhammad Nasasrah was slashed with a knife on Thursday in a suspected hate crime but cops only came to take his statement 3 ‎days later after MK posts about assault. There are stitches all down his back where he was cut.  No one has been arrested

https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-accused-of-failing-to-investigate-beach-attack-on-arab-israeli-man/

And then this coverup of the murder of the Iyad, the autistic young man by the police.

 The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court last week accepted a police request to bar the publication of minutes from a hearing on a petition filed by Halak’s family seeking the release of security camera footage showing him being shot by police.

Iyad Halak (Courtesy)

The family filed the petition and asked the judge to compel the Justice Ministry’s Police Internal Investigations Department to confirm whether it had collected the CCTV footage, saying they were concerned law enforcement would not use it in the probe of the May 30 incident.

   Don't Say We Didn't Know 700

Every year, in May-June, the Israeli army holds maneuvers in the occupied Palestinian Jordan Valley. Tanks move around grain fields and hugely damage them. The shells the army fires cause fires in the grain fields just about to be harvested...

On Tuesday, June 2, 2020, again a 50-dunam fire at Homsa (east of the settler-colony Beqa'ot) was caused by shells. Calls to the Israeli army to put out the fire were not answered.

***

On Thursday, June 4, 2020, Israeli government agents escorted by police came to the Negev Bedouin village Tel Arad and demolished a home.

 c

[bigyack-com]

The Pandemic Work Diary of a Video-Streaming C.E.O.

Anjali Sud has never been busier. As the chief executive of Vimeo — a video-streaming platform with 175 million registered users — Ms. Sud is dealing with swelling traffic as the world, sheltering in place, looks for virtual connections.“We woke up a few weeks ago to unprecedented demand,” she said. “We’re seeing increased usage across our products of two times, five times, 10 times.”Ms. Sud, 36, a former investment banker and marketing director, became the platform’s chief in 2017 and changed the nature of the business — making it less of an entertainment streaming service that competed with the likes of Netflix, and more of a hub for content creators. Vimeo generated nearly $200 million in revenue last year, mostly from subscriber fees. It’s owned by IAC, which also operates Match, Tinder, Care.com and the Daily Beast.Ms. Sud said that churches, nonprofits and fitness instructors have all expanded their use of Vimeo’s tools, and that the platform has also seen a spike in content as varied as programs for children and the live-streaming of funerals.Though she is usually based in New York City, Ms. Sud is now staying with her parents in Michigan while caring for her infant son and managing the company’s more than 600 employees.“I live in a world of perpetual trade-offs,” she said. “I can no longer operate at 100 percent capacity like I’m used to as a C.E.O., as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, as a colleague. I think what I’m learning is that every day, I have to pick the things to let go, and I have to know I’m going to drop some balls, and that’s OK.”

Monday

7:30 a.m. Wake up to cries on the baby monitor. My 18-month-old son, Saavan, is ready for a new day. We have our ritual of diaper change, oatmeal with blueberries and a Sesame Street dance-off. (I’m Abby, he’s Elmo.) I FaceTime with my little sister, who just had a baby in Singapore.8:30 a.m. Chai with my mom before she goes to work. I’m sheltering in Flint, Mich., my hometown. A silver lining of this crisis is getting to spend time with my parents, who both work in health care. My mom oversees a hospital internal medicine residency program, and her residents are on the front line. She tells me that they are both brave and afraid.9 a.m. Zoom call with our chief operating officer and head of human resources. We discuss our new “Vimeo Virtual” series to help employees stay connected through Slack challenges, lunch-and-learns, round tables and online games. This week’s challenge is #socialDISHtancing and everyone posts pics of what they’re eating. I learn we have an increasing number of employees who have lost family members to coronavirus. We decide to start a charitable donation program for anyone going through bereavement.11:55 a.m. Pass Saavan to my husband, Matt. He also works demanding hours, so we’ve been alternating coverage. It’s hectic but we’re also discovering hidden strengths — he makes a mean hot dog, and I’m not bad with brownies out of the box.12 p.m. Our chief marketing officer tells me about a grant program for Vimeo filmmakers to produce videos telling the human stories behind small businesses that have been affected by the pandemic. Everyone from award-winning animators to Oscar-nominated directors have made submissions on entrepreneurs that have inspired them, from an iconic comic book shop in Brooklyn to a flower shop in Budapest to an African contemporary dance company in Minnesota.2 p.m. Review our P&L and latest business outlook. Small businesses, churches, gyms, freelancers, conferences — everyone is using video to stay connected. We decide to increase investment in customer support and technical infrastructure. We also discuss how to weather the economic downturn, and steps we can take to protect employees and prevent layoffs, like slowing hiring and reducing marketing spend. 4 p.m. Weekly call with the chief executives of our parent company, IAC. We go around the virtual room and share how our people and businesses are doing. We talk about team morale and productivity, and what resumption could look like when the time comes — from increased remote work to office layouts and capacity.6 p.m. I take my daily walk around the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s a precious window of me time.9 p.m. I check our WFH Slack channel to see what’s trending, and find this welcome distraction: The Lonely Show. It’s cool to see my colleagues using their creativity to spark laughter in such tense times.

Tuesday

3:40 a.m. Saavan is wailing. Turns out he just dropped his pacifier and wants it back. Crisis averted.6 a.m. Coffee + Bob Dylan playlist + catch up on email. The sun rises and I spot a deer in our backyard. This time last year I was in Tel Aviv, about to acquire an Israeli video start-up. I miss jumping on planes, crowded bars and sushi delivery.10 a.m. Weekly executive meeting. Easter was our biggest live-streaming weekend ever, with 75 times the volume we typically see. Many of our teams are working around the clock to manage the scale, and I worry about burnout. We’ve bulked up our mental health programs with counseling services and workshops. I’m pleased to see employees taking advantage, but I know more people are struggling. I look at my own team on the screen and the little faces popping in and out. My reports are all working parents, and half don’t have child care right now. I decide to send them care packages.12 p.m. FaceTime my nanny, who is with her sister in Brooklyn. She’s worried we don’t have enough toys in Flint, and I add a Fisher Price vacuum cleaner to my Amazon cart.2 p.m. Quick catch-up with the team behind Vimeo Create, our new video-making app. We just launched 100 new social media templates to help businesses stay connected to their customers during the pandemic. Today we look at themes for remote work tips, contactless delivery, donations, at-home fitness and online learning.7 p.m. It’s taco night. Like many, I find myself drawn to comfort food and nostalgia. We drink gin, watch “Law & Order” reruns and play board games. I’m wearing my mom’s velour pajamas and feel like a teenager again. It’s kinda nice.

Wednesday

6:30 a.m. Chai with my dad. He’s a surgeon and entrepreneur, and the person who originally inspired me to get into business. He’s also an aspiring poet, and he reads me something he wrote to capture his feelings about the virus.11 a.m. Meeting with IAC to review funding for the rest of the year. We are growing quickly but are not yet profitable. We’re fortunate that our owners have strong cash reserves and a long-term investment horizon. We discuss a couple different scenarios for how things could play out. It strikes me that precision is impossible right now, and that as an organization our most important strength will be our agility.12 p.m. I tune in a few minutes late to our monthly “staff picks” screening. Over 70 percent of our filmmakers say that being recognized has helped them receive paid future work. Today was our first fully remote screening, and each filmmaker did an intro video from their home. My favorites were a sci-fi film about gender identity, an animated project about food, and a documentary about Betye Saar.3 p.m. Review engineering plan to scale our infrastructure. We’re already delivering over 2 terabits per second of streaming video — that’s more than 60 DVDs’ worth. But every hour more people are moving their businesses entirely online, so we’ve got to prepare for more.4 p.m. Check in on my girlfriends via text. We’ve been attempting the weekend virtual hangout with varying degrees of success. A few of my friends are working in critical response roles — one is on Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 response communication team in London, and another is at the Hospital for Special Surgery.6 p.m. Feed Saavan dinner, which ends with strawberry yogurt smeared all over his hair and mine. Bath time.

Thursday

9:30 a.m. Vimeo Global Town Hall. This is the most important part of my job right now: to be a visible, reassuring presence, and to be both optimistic and real. Today the message I open with is: Hang in there. We’ll get through this together. I update the company on what’s working and what isn’t, and we spend most of the time on anonymous Q. and A. Not surprisingly, the top questions are on mental health resources and office reopening.11 a.m. Matt tells me that Saavan has just said new words: “cookie” and “more.” The first I interpret as a sign of good taste.1 p.m. Virtual lunch with some new hires. Even as we’ve scaled, I like to get to know each person who joins us.2 p.m. I attend a closed-door C.E.O. round table with 14 leaders across the retail, tech, health and nonprofit sectors. It’s hosted by one of the top women in business, whom I’d never met before. She talks about her experience leading through crises over the decades, and it dawns on me that I’m in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’ve been so caught up in the day-to-day that it’s been easy to only look out as far as the next quarter or year. But in many ways, this experience will test and shape my instincts, character and values for the rest of my career.5 p.m. Weekly happy hour with the leadership team. It’s BYOB of course, from negronis to merlot. Governor Cuomo has just extended New York’s shutdown to May 15. The drinks are stronger than usual.8 p.m. I get sucked into the McMillion$ docuseries. Fascinating. Yet, I’m eager for the day when streaming shows isn’t the only thing to do on a Thursday night.Interviews are conducted by email, text and phone, then condensed and edited. Read the full article

[teonikolova]

Things happen when you least expect them. For example I would have never considered moving to France and yet the opportunity came to me out of nowhere one day.Similar is the case here, as Israel was not in our travel list for this year, but my husband sent here urgently for a few weeks due to work. So I decided that this was a sign, and I shouldn’t miss this opportunity so I decided to tag along. 

So here is how the story begins.

We landed on Saturday evening after 5 hour flight, and everything was closed as it was Shabat so if you are planning your travel bear this in mind.We did manage to find a Japanese restaurant (Japanika) which was open. I think we were lucky because it was also very delicious.We kept coming back every other night there.

The next day we woke up early and decided to start exploring the city of Tel Aviv.I did make some plans ahead of what should we visit, but my main wish was just to walk around and explore random streets and mix with the locals.

When you read for Israel often, the information is wrong and advises you how dangerous it is but honestly I felt so much safer than many other places, even Paris where I live for the past 5 years.

My first day was amazing I walked31km around Tel Aviv just exploring the city on foot.

Going around Tel Aviv can be very easy, if you do not wish to walk you can use public transport.You will need to buy a card called Rav-Kav which is reusable contactless stored value smart card for making electronic payments in public transportation. 

Walking

Walking is by far the most pleasant way to get around the city. Because Tel Aviv isn’t big, getting from one end to the other won’t take you much more than an hour. With great weather year-round, walking is a great way to get some vitamin D and exercise. Finding your way is very easy with Google Maps. If you don’t have a cell phone service when you’re here, turn on just GPS or download an offline map and you’re good to go!

Bike around

Tel Aviv is extremely bike friendly, and pretty much everyone in Tel Aviv goes around by bike.Biking lanes connect the entire city, and bikes can be rented at pretty much every corner.

Rent Scooter

Tel Aviv has variety of ways for transportation and one is the electric scooter. The service allows riders to pick up scooters anywhere and ride them for as long as necessary. Riders are charged per minute, and everything is done through the company’s app on a smartphone.

I really felt at home in Tel Aviv, just the way the streets are and the culture of the people.I would not consider moving in Israel as still this is much more religious country for my taste, but I felt comfortable and safe for the timebeing in Tel Aviv.I guess I should have known that I would have fallen for Tel Aviv, because how can you not love cities by the sea.I think there is something special about this kind of cities.

Tel Aviv is blessed with really good urban beaches. Whether for a simple walk along the waterfront during the fall or spring season or a dip in the clear Mediterranean waters when the temperatures rise, going to the beach is among the things to do in Tel Aviv for either fun and relaxation. I noticed that bunch of them was also pet-friendly! I can say overall Tel Aviv is pet friendly and there was dogs everywhere I went. 

It was already the late afternoon on our first day when my husband, who was just finishing work joined me. He came at the best time as the sun started setting, the light was simply stunning and we could not get enough of it. We both were so happy to dip our feet in the water, whenever we go somewhere sunny and nice, nothing can keep us away from the water. The water was very chilly still, I guess as even though it is 20 degrees it is still February.

Now we had completely lost track of time just talking and just enjoying the lovely colors in the sky. It was time to walk back and find something for dinner as we were both starving. 

The light is special at sunrise and sunset, so I am really happy we got to see it not once but almost every night we were there. Indeed, one of the nicest things to do in Tel Aviv is admiring the sunset along the waterfront.

Explore the markets.

Locals know that the best produce, fresh-squeezed juices, hot off the oven bread, melt in your mouth hummus, and fresh herbs and spices can be found at the shuk (market). Markets, indoors and out, are very much a part of the locals of Tel Aviv. Each has its own unique charm and character, offering shoppers the chance to explore exotic foods and other staples in authentic locations.

I had the time to visit only Sarona Market and later the Carmel Market.

I like food markets. I find them to be the perfect place to learn more about the culture of the city and blend with the locals. Also to observe the behavior of people at the market. Be advised that in Israel you can always bargain the prices, they really like bargaining with tourists. So shop and haggle like a local, and don’t give up until you’ve gotten yourself a deal

Besides, markets are the best places to get some cheap yet tasty street food. Sure enough, going to Carmel Market is a must if you are in search for fresh produce and good street food.

The Sarona Market is closed modest market where you can find a lot of spices and nuts, olives, gelato and some modern food stores, but there is a lot of small street food places inside the market where you can have a taste of the local cuisine.

Other popular Tel Aviv markets include Hatikva in South Tel Aviv, Levinsky in Florentin.

The next day I decided to take it slow and chill a bit go somewhere first for breakfast and then figure out where to go and what to see.

I sat in a local cafe and order what was in the menu as “Breakfast for One” after 15 min a man came bringing me everything that I can think of from bread, butter and hummus to hard-boiled eggs. I regret not taking pictures of the breakfast, as it was huge, but I was enjoying it too much.

You should try the breakfast in Tel Aviv, it reminds me so much of home and what most French people would consider brunch not breakfast. When it comes to breakfast, Israelis take it to a whole new level. Salads, bread, tahini, eggs and other deliciousness are ever present at any proper breakfast table there. In Tel Aviv, breakfast is the most important meal, so I can tell you it is very rich and feeling. Israel is full with fantastic restaurants where take pride in showing tourists what food in Israel is all about. As believe it or not Israel is not only Hummus, yes it is amazing but you can also eat it at home, so I advise you to try other local treats do not just concentrate or Falafels and hummus.

Heaven for Vegetarians and Vegans

Big part of Israeli food is naturally vegan, and this is probably the most vegan friendly country you will come across, where every restaurant is offering multiple choices for vegan dishes and some restaurants solely focusing on vegan cuisine, so this will be your heaven.

  Now let’s talk about some of my favourite sour pastry called Boureka.

Boureka is a phyllo pastry stuffed with cheese and /or other ingredients. It’s perfect for breakfast on the go. You’ll find it at any bakery.

This is a standard breakfast pastry for us in Bulgaria also, but we eat it with a lot of white cheese and butter. Here they serve it with hummus, pesto or boiled egg inside and crunchy pickles on side. When they asked me “what would you like inside,” I said nothing and the person looked at strangely… I really just wanted to take it plane first, obviously I tried it with hummus and egg inside also, and spoiler… alert it was really delicious.

Israel has incorporated a lot of cheese in their cuisine, so I asked what type of cheese it is, and local people explained to us that if the milk or cheese is not specified, therefore, this is always Cow’s milk made. If it is sheep, Camel or goat you will definitely see it written in the box. As I am coming from Bulgaria for me, white cheese is also always made with cow‘s milk, but living in France white/feta cheese here is made from sheep or goats milk, which I actually dislike, so I need it to be sure is not feta just white cheese. 

Challah

Probably the most famous Jewish bread, challah is often eaten during Sabbat dinner. It’s a bit dry-is and it is a bit sweet but not as sweet as Brioche or Stollen/Kozunak.

I remember when I went for very first time in US in 2011 I worked for a bagel Bakery/Deli/Inn and I used to take care of the owners three kids as my side job. They were Jewish so every Sabbat I was with them and was lucky as they shared their Sabbat traditions for the short time I spend with them, so they would always bake and offer Challah on Friday at the Bakery.

Explore Old Jaffa.

Old Jaffa a beautiful little town considered part of the greater Tel Aviv area and one of the best places to visit in Tel Aviv. I actually decided to do a 2-hours tour for free there. (if you decide to try, they have free tours with the Sandman webpage.) There are daily free walking tours of Old Jaffa that depart at 11 am and 2:00 pm from the Clock Tower. You will be asked to leave a tip for the tour, as nothing is actually free in Israel, but you can leave what you find appropriate. I did sew people who left as soon as the tour asked for tips, though. I did thought it was a bit rude as the woman who did the tour was very nice, given us a lot of info and also funny.

So we started walking through the narrow streets of Jaffa, passing by the Clock Tower, the Flea Market, the Wishing Bridge, Andromeda’s Rock and Al-Bahr Mosque. And we ended up in Jaffa Port, where we joined in the crowds inside Old. Jaffa.

Old Jaffa, the oldest part of Tel Aviv (whose city by the way, is a UNESCO site)

Jews, Christians and Muslims living in harmony in a small district of Tel Aviv.

Jaffa (yaffo in Hebrew) is about 3,500 years old. Ancient Egypt ruled Jaffa around 1500 B.C. then it kept changing hands – ruled by Philistines, Israelites, Moslems, Mamluks, Crusaders, Ottomans, British, Israel. Jaffa is mentioned in the Bible – as the port to where Jonah fled fearing the wreath of God. Napoleon put a siege around the walls of the town, conquered it and his soldiers conducted a bloody massacre there. Later the walls came down.

  Today Old Jaffa is part of Tel Aviv. It has been reconstructed but still remains an ancient, charming place. It includes a fishermen’s port , exotic allies and antique buildings, lots of art galleries and shops of antiquities, great restaurants (I was surprised to find a Bulgarian restaurant there, until the tour guide actually said that Bulgarians re constructed the fishermen’s port.), a very interesting Flea Market, the wonderful St. Peter church and last, but not least – a great view of Tel Aviv and the shores of the Mediterranean.

  Experience Tel Aviv Things happen when you least expect them. For example I would have never considered moving to France and yet the opportunity came to me out of nowhere one day.Similar is the case here, as Israel was not in our travel list for this year, but my husband sent here urgently for a few weeks due to work. 

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Its 5:49 pm dark/snowy

Welcome to 8 Questions with…..

     You ever watch one of those big movies that take the viewer to several exotic locales? “From London to Toronto to Detroit (okay,maybe not Murder City),to Toyko,etc…..” as the film goes from place to another.    In meeting the lovely Isra Elsalihie,I felt like I was watching a real life movie. Growing up in Sweden to Iraqi parents to going to university in England to finding her voice in New York City,you need a passport and a GPS device just to keep up with Isra!  Equally as comfortable on stage as in front of a camera,Isra is also quite a talented voice over actor and of course you (well,some of you anyways) know I like a good VO actor. The more I looked at Isra,the more convinced there may be nothing that she can’t do.   I am really quite honored to have been able to slow Isra down long enough to ask her “8 Questions”. I gotta hurry,her next journey is leaving and I want to see where Isra is going next…..

Please introduce yourself and tell us what you are currently working on.

   I’m Isra Elsalihie and I am Iraqi-Swedish actor based in NYC. I’m about to shoot a new short directed by Shu Hirayama and written by Ana Ribero. Arresting God, a feature film which co-starred alongside Agam Darshi just became a part of Sundance Development Lab and will be going on to greater things I can’t mention just yet!

What was it like growing up in Sweden? What was life in your home like? Can you share some of your fondest memories growing up?

   Growing up in Sweden was interesting! I grew up with very loving and supportive family, I truly did have a great home environment, and my hometown of Gothenburg, is a beautiful place to grow up, having said that, Gothenburg was and is really segregated in terms of their communities. Something I fought against by working with many different youth groups as a teenager, such as A Shared Future.

When you did catch the acting bug? Did you attend school to get your training? What are some of your favorite experiences when you first started out?

   I caught the acting bug pretty early on! I think I must have been around 11-12? I was very inspired by the magic of theatre and film, and just knew that one way or another I needed to be a part of that world. I finished my two year acting conservatory at Lee Strasberg theatre and film institute. I’ve gone on to take classes with RSC and at other institutions such as ESPA primary stages.

When did you move to New York City? How did you adjust to the cultural change?

   I moved to NYC in the winter of 2015. I think it was one of the coldest winters in NYC in over 20 years, so that first night in NYC was interesting. I remember getting a ride with the worst cab driver I’ve ever met at JFK, and arriving at a Air bnb with no heat, 1.5 h away from school. That first night I was really questioning my choices haha! But I stuck it out and now NYC feels like home. NYC to me, is truly one of the greatest cities in the world, and I’m very lucky to have ended up here.

Can you tell us about winning a place in the 24 Hour Plays National Company? What did you have to do to win a spot? What the experience like?

   Oh wow, 24 Hour Plays Nationals was an incredible experience. The competition for a spot was pretty fierce, I remember all of us getting our acceptance letter pretty late, and we were told that was because our year, 2017, had more applicants than ever before, which was pretty crazy. I won’t bore you with the details, but involved a lot of self-tapes, essays and in person auditions. What we did with 24 Hour Plays Nationals and what I later got to do with LAByrinth, is what I want to do every day as an actor. You’re put in a room with the best and brightest of emerging theatre creatives and told you’re free to create whatever you like with your peers over the course of 24 Hours! It’s definitely one of my favorite experiences.

 What three things do you like and dislike about live theater?

    I love the fact that with live theatre you’re able to take in your audience directly, you’re truly able to have a shared experience with your audience. When I’m not on stage, I’m usually in the back listening to the audience and taking them in before entering. With live theatre you’re able to live through the entire arch of your character in chronological order, vs. TV & Film that’s usually shot out of order. I love that there are no retakes with theatre, there are no do-overs during the show, no cutting to retake that scene, so it forces you to really be present and listening to your fellow actors. I don’t know if I have any real dislikes with theatre. There are certain things that can be challenging at times, but I embrace the challenge. The challenge of theatre is that you’re doing multiple shows a week, most likely eight shows a week and even though each night is going to be different, you still have to sustain your character throughout the run and keep your character fairly consistent.

In terms of material,do you perfer acting in revivals with known works or doing a fresh original play and putting your own stamp on a new character?

   I don’t really have a strong preference, whether it’s a revival or not, I always believe you should put your own stamp on things and bring something new to the character.

Which has more challenges for you,live theater or a filmed production?

   Well, they’re both very different mediums and I enjoy them equally. Live theatre gives you the opportunity to live through a character from beginning to end without chronological jumps, and it also gives you the chance to interact with your audience directly. TV & Film, doesn’t offer that, but it does give you the opportunity to reach a larger audience, beyond the boundaries of the US.

What has been your favorite role to play to date and what has made it special?

   Maryam, in the Old Globe’s production of Noura. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had as an actor. Noura, is written by Heather Raffo, and incredible Iraqi-American playwright, who’s work I’ve admired for a very long time.    I actually did a monologue from Heather’s play 9 Parts of Desire, for my conservatory show and that’s how I first learned about her work. I met her a few months after my graduation at a reading of Noura and professed my love of her work to her, haha! She gave me her contact info and insisted we have coffee. We since stayed friends over the years, but in August I got a call from the Old Globe and Guthrie saying they wanted me to come in and audition for Maryam in Noura.    Heather had apparently given my name to all these theatres so I auditioned and I ended up booking the Old Globe which was the West coast Premiere of Noura and was directed by the amazing Johanna McKeon.

As an Swedish-Iraqi actress, have you experienced being cast in stereotypical roles and do you have an opinion on how to stop that kind of narrowminded casting?

   I have certainly been asked to audition for stereotypical roles in the past. As an actor I don’t really have power over who gets called in for a project or not, but what I can do is create my own work and be open and inclusive with the casting of that. I also believe that actors always have the power of saying no. If I’m asked to audition for a part I find stereotypical, then I decline that audition.

What do you like to do in your downtime? Do you have causes,activities or hobbies you like to do?

   I really value my time with my friends and family, so whenever I have a spare moment, I try to spending it with them. I love to explore the city, I go to a lot of museums and exhibitions and when I can and I like to paint. That’s a very new passion of mine that’s been fun to explore.

  The cheetah and I are flying over to watch you perform in your next live theater production but we are a day early and now you are playing tour guide,what are we doing?

   Oh wow! So many places to go, I love a good stroll in central park, followed by a visit to the MoMa or Met. The Highline is absolutely beautiful as well and you have the Chelsea market right underneath it, where you can get a wonderful dinner or lunch. If you’re looking for an evening activity I’d visit the older cinemas in NYC, like Angelica film center or Metrograph.

I like to thank Isra for sharing her story with us. The cheetah and I are definitely going to be asking to look at “The Invaders” which looks very good.  I am sure Isra is going to leave her positive mark on this planet as joyfully as she can.    There are many ways to keep up with this very on-the-move young artist and we as always,are happy to share them with you all.

First you can find and follow Isra on her InstaGram page Next you can see which projects Isra has upcoming at her IMDb page. Isra also has her own personal website which you can find here.

If you have missed any of the over 80 “8 Questions with…..” interviews we have done,you can catch up by clicking here.

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8 Questions with……..actress Isra Elsalihie Its 5:49 pm dark/snowy Welcome to 8 Questions with.....      You ever watch one of those big movies that take the viewer to several exotic locales?