rhiannonskye-blog1

[redvelvetwishtree]

@ pro-Israel and Zionists, is what's happening in Gaza enough to qualify them for self-defence against your murdering, genocidal state? Or do you want them to come out of this all cool and chill and forget what happened? At what point are self-defence and resistance movements/groups okay?

Or does that point never come because you've always wanted them completely wiped off Earth?

Because this time, Israel's acts were majorly exposed. You've always acted like h@mAs eViL without knowing any history. This time, you can't ignore what Israel did. Do Palestinians have your permission to avenge themselves after this? Or is that something only you and other white countries are allowed to do?

How do you now view the situation? Btw all this may be new to you but Israel has always done this every Ramadan, and generally every few weeks every year since decades. You've always conveniently ignored it or stayed oblivious thanks to propaganda machines in your countries but this time Israel's barbarity and cruelty are laid out for you to see.

[nataliesnews]

dco , Monday morning, 26.6.2023 an

, Monday morning, 26.6.2023 and

Natalie Ginsburg <natanyag@gmail.com>

9:39 AM (34 minutes ago)

to Yehudit

Shlomit Steinitz, Natanya Ginsburg

There is nothing  about the Etzion DCO which surprises us any longer. Not the slovenliness of the place, not the filth and stench  of the men's toilet, not the fact that the women's toilet has not been open for years, not that the water closet also has not worked for years. Not the surliness of the woman clerk who now and again comes out and deigns to reply to the  settlers looking for cheap workers....even they are not shown the respect of going into an office but stand outside . One of them came to us and said he had been called in for a meeting at eleven and where was he supposed to go? He was standing and phoning and phoning.  We told him he could now know what the Palestinians go through every day.

So this morning we were not surprised to find   the door ........locked and closed. No notice to explain what is happening. No one answers any phones. Even the Palestinian cleaner could not tell us if there were soldiers inside. Hanna Barag also said that she got no replies to her calls.

Eventually a clerk...or whoever she is as she would not give us any information ....came out and stood between  the fences of the exit from the offices while the settlers   stood  as supplicants below  her in the car park in the heat .. The Palestinians who ask her questions she answers with contempt and, having experienced this ourselves, we do not try to find out why the offices have been closed.

Eventually we got through to the Moked and were given the number 050 3088598. As soon as we got through, a very suspicious young woman asked how we had got the number. I explained who we were and that we had found the DCO locked and wanted to know the reason. We told her that there were at least 10 people waiting in the sun, two who needed to get to a hospital and  others who had actually  been summoned to come. I

This made no impression on her .  She was as impolite as the woman mentioned above and said that she did not have to give us an explanation. When asked her name....what else....we were told that we did not have to know. They should go to Hebron with their problems. This, after some of them had taken a taxi to get to the DCO and would now have to take another to get to Hebron......and who knows it there they would find that the DCO was open. We told her, equally politely, that we hoped that some time when she travelled overseas she would get the same treatment.

For good measure this was also seen along the way.  Do you need any more convincing about whose side the army is on?

A man, living in Beersheba, was  coming back with his sons from a visit to relatives  and  was stopped at Meitar and one of the sons arrested. He does not know why. Nor does he know where he was taken . They are Arab Israelis and live in Beersheva. We hope that the Center for the Defence of the Individual will have helped. It would be interesting in the future to take a phone number so as to follow up.

We stayed for the usual shift if only to tell those who came to the DCO that .......it was closed.

I know I have written this before but this place always reminds me of the poem "The Listeners" about a traveller who comes and knocks and knocks. I looked it up now . It is a mystery poem just as the workings...or unworkings ...of the DCO are. These lines are appropriate as there are cameras all over the DCO and I am sure listening devices.

.Never the least stir made the listeners,   Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

and this explanation, the world in this case being the DCO

Somewhat paradoxically, “The Listeners” acknowledges people's desire to seek understanding while also asserting a certain insurmountable mystery of the world around them.

.

--

dco , Monday morning, 26.6.2023 an

[bountyofbeads]

With Trump as President, the World Is Spiraling Into Chaos https://nyti.ms/305ERbG

With Trump as President, the World Is Spiraling Into Chaos

Trump torched America’s foreign policy infrastructure. The results are becoming clear.

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist | Published August 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 16, 2019 |

Earlier this week, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, visited The New York Times editorial board, and I asked him about the threat of armed conflict between his country and India over Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over the Himalayan territory, which both countries claim, and which is mostly divided between them. India recently revoked the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the part of Kashmir it controls and put nearly seven million people there under virtual house arrest. Pakistan’s prime minister  compared India’s leaders to Nazis and warned that they’ll target Pakistan next. It seems like there’s potential for humanitarian and geopolitical horror.

Khan’s answer was not comforting. “We are two big countries with very large militaries with nuclear capability and a history of conflict,” he said. “So I would not like to burden your imagination on that one, but obviously if things get worse, then things get worse.”

All over the world, things are getting worse. China appears to be weighing a Tiananmen Square-like crackdown in Hong Kong. After I spoke to Khan, hostilities between India and Pakistan ratcheted up further; on Thursday, fighting across the border in Kashmir left three Pakistani soldiers dead. (Pakistan also claimed that five Indian soldiers were killed, but India denied it.) Turkey is threatening to invade Northeast Syria to go after America’s Kurdish allies there, and it’s not clear if an American agreement meant to prevent such an incursion will hold.

North Korea’s nuclear program and ballistic missile testing continue apace. The prospect of a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine is more remote than it’s been in decades. Tensions between America and Iran keep escalating. Relations between Japan and South Korea have broken down. A Pentagon report warns that ISIS is “re-surging” in Syria. The U.K. could see food shortages if the country’s Trumpish prime minister, Boris Johnson, follows through on his promise to crash out of the European Union without an agreement in place for the aftermath. Oh, and the globe may be lurching towards recession.

In a world spiraling towards chaos, we can begin to see the fruits of Donald Trump’s erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy, his systematic undermining of alliances and hollowing out of America’s diplomatic and national security architecture. Over the last two and a half years, Trump has been playing Jenga with the world order, pulling out once piece after another. For a while, things more or less held up. But now the whole structure is teetering.

To be sure, most of these crises have causes other than Trump. Even competent American administrations can’t dictate policy to other countries, particularly powerful ones like India and China. But in one flashpoint after another, the Trump administration has either failed to act appropriately, or acted in ways that have made things worse. ���Almost everything they do is the wrong move,” said Susan Thornton, who until last year was the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, America’s top diplomat for Asia.

Consider Trump’s role in the Kashmir crisis. In July, during a White House visit by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump offered to mediate India and Pakistan’s long-running conflict over Kashmir, even suggesting that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to do so. Modi’s government quickly denied this, and Trump’s words reportedly alarmed India, which has long resisted outside involvement in Kashmir. Two weeks later, India sent troops to lock Kashmir down, then stripped it of its autonomy.

Americans have grown used to ignoring Trump’s casual lies and verbal incontinence, but people in other countries have not. Thornton thinks the president’s comments were a “precipitating factor” in Modi’s decision to annex Kashmir. By blundering into the conflict, she suggested, Trump put the Indian prime minister on the defensive before his Hindu nationalist constituency. “He might not have had to do that,” she said of Modi’s Kashmir takeover, “but he would have had to do something. And this was the thing he was looking to do anyway.”

At the same time, Modi can be confident that Trump, unlike previous American presidents, won’t even pretend to care about democratic backsliding or human rights abuses, particularly against Muslims. “There’s a cost-benefit analysis that any political leader makes,” said Ben Rhodes, a former top Obama national security aide. “If the leader of India felt like he was going to face public criticism, potential scrutiny at the United Nations,” or damage to the bilateral relationship with the United States, “that might affect his cost-benefit analysis.” Trump’s instinctive sympathy for authoritarian leaders empowers them diplomatically.

Obviously, India and Pakistan still have every interest in avoiding a nuclear holocaust. China may show restraint on Hong Kong. Wary of starting a war before the 2020 election, Trump might make a deal with Iran, though probably a worse one than the Obama agreement that he jettisoned. The global economy could slow down but not seize up. We could get through the next 17 months with a world that still looks basically recognizable.

Even then, America will emerge with a desiccated diplomatic corps, strained alliances, and a tattered reputation. It will never again play the same leadership role internationally that it did before Trump.

And that’s the best-case scenario. The most powerful country in the world is being run by a sundowning demagogue whose oceanic ignorance is matched only by his gargantuan ego. The United States has been lucky that things have hung together as much as they have, save the odd government shutdown or white nationalist terrorist attack. But now, in foreign affairs as in the economy, the consequences of not having a functioning American administration are coming into focus. “No U.S. leadership is leaving a vacuum,” said Thornton. We’ll see what gets sucked into it.

If You Think Trump Is Helping Israel, You’re a Fool

By barring Representatives Omar and Tlaib, Netanyahu made the president happy. But he has poisoned relations with America.

By Thomas L. Friedman, Opinion Columnist | Published Aug. 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 16, 2019 |

I am going to say this as simply and clearly as I can: If you’re an American Jew and you’re planning on voting for Donald Trump because you think he is pro-Israel, you’re a damn fool.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Trump has said and done many things that are in the interests of the current Israeli government — and have been widely appreciated by the Israeli public. To deny that would be to deny the obvious. But here’s what’s also obvious. Trump’s way of — and motivation for — expressing his affection for Israel is guided by his political desire to improve his re-election chances by depicting the entire Republican Party as pro-Israel and the entire Democratic Party as anti-Israel.

As a result, Trump — with the knowing help of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — is doing something no American president and Israeli prime minister have done before: They’re making support for Israel a wedge issue in American politics.

Few things are more dangerous to Israel’s long-term interests than its becoming a partisan matter in America, which is Israel’s vital political, military and economic backer in the world.

As Dore Gold, the right-wing former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and once a very close adviser to Netanyahu, warned in a dialogue at the Hudson Institute on Nov. 27, 2018: “You reach out to Democrats, and you reach out to Republicans. And you don’t get caught playing partisan politics in the United States.’’

Trump’s campaign to tar the entire Democratic Party with some of the hostile views toward Israel of a few of its newly elected congresswomen — and Netanyahu’s careless willingness to concede to Trump’s demand and bar two of them, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from visiting Israel and the West Bank — is part of a process that will do huge, long-term damage to Israel’s interests and support in America.

Netanyahu later relented and granted a visa to Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, for a private, “humanitarian’’ visit to see her 90-year-old grandmother — provided she agree in writing not to advocate the boycott of Israel while there. At first Tlaib agreed, but then decided that she would not come under such conditions.

Excuse me, but when did powerful Israel — a noisy, boisterous democracy where Israeli Arabs in its parliament say all kinds of wild and crazy things — get so frightened by what a couple of visiting freshman American congresswomen might see or say? When did Israel get so afraid of saying to them: “Come, visit, go anywhere you want! We’ve got our warts and we’ve got our good stuff. We’d just like you to visit both. But if you don’t, we’ll live with that too. We’re pretty tough.’’

It’s too late for that now. The damage of what Trump and Bibi have been up to — formally making Israel a wedge issue in American politics — is already done. Do not be fooled: Netanyahu, through his machinations with Senate Republicans, can get the United States Congress to give him an audience anytime he wants. But Bibi could not speak on any major American college campus today without massive police protection. The protests would be huge.

And listen now to some of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — you can hear how unhappy they are with the behavior of this Israeli government and its continued occupation of the West Bank. And they are not afraid to say so anymore. As The Jerusalem Post reported on July 11, “Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose presidential candidacy has rallied in recent weeks, told two Jewish anti-occupation activists ‘yes’ when they asked her for support.’’

But who can blame them? Trump is equating the entire Democratic Party with hatred for Israel, while equating support for Netanyahu — who leads the most extreme, far-right government that Israel has ever had, who is facing indictment on three counts of corruption and whose top priority is getting re-elected so that he can have the Israeli Knesset overrule its justice system and keep him out of court — with loving Israel.

How many young Americans want to buy into that narrative? If Bibi wins, he plans to pass a law banning his own indictment on corruption, and then, when Israel’s Supreme Court strikes down that law as illegal, he plans to get the Knesset to pass another law making the Supreme Court subservient to his parliament. I am not making this up. Israel will become a Jewish banana republic.

If and when that happens, every synagogue, every campus Hillel, every Jewish institution, every friend of Israel will have to ask: Can I support such an Israel? It will tear apart the entire pro-Israel community and every synagogue and Jewish Federation.

Then add another factor. By moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — and turning that embassy, led by a Trump crony, Ambassador David Friedman, into an outpost for advancing the interests of Israeli Jewish settlers, not American interests — Trump has essentially greenlighted the Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Again, should Netanyahu remain prime minister — which is possible only if he puts together a ruling coalition made up of far-right parties that want to absorb the West Bank and its 2.5 million Palestinians into Israel — Israel will be on its way to becoming either a binational state of Arabs and Jews or a state that systematically deprives a large and growing segment of its population of the democratic right to vote. Neither will be a Jewish democracy, the dream of Israel’s founders and still the defining, but endangered, political characteristic of the state.

Don’t get me wrong. I strongly oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — which Representatives Omar and Tlaib have embraced — because it wants to erase the possibility of a two-state solution. And I am particularly unhappy with Representative Omar.

I know a lot about her home district in Minnesota, because I grew up in it, in St. Louis Park. Omar represents the biggest concentration of Jews and Muslims living together in one district in the Upper Midwest. She was perfectly placed to be a bridge builder between Muslims and Jews. Instead, sadly, she has been a bridge destroyer between the two since she came to Washington. But anytime she is legitimately criticized, Democrats automatically scream “Islamophobia’’ and defend her. That’s as disturbing as Trump.

I know that more than a few Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, who face so many challenges — from gang violence to unemployment — are asking why is Omar spending time on the West Bank of the Jordan and not on the West Bank of the Mississippi?

I love Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs — but God save me from some of their American friends. So many of them just want to exploit this problem to advance themselves politically, get attention, raise money or delegitimize their opponents.

In that, Trump is not alone — he’s just the worst of the worst.

[the-record-columns]

Jan. 22, 2020: Columns

Jerry Lankford writes his obituary every day...

Ellen Lankford at age 16

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

Note:  The following column is taken from remarks made by Ken Welborn at memorial services this past Saturday for the late Ellen Kay Lankford, sister of The Record's Jerry Lankford.

  Good afternoon folks, my name is Ken Welborn and I work for The Record, a newspaper in North Wilkesboro. 

I am sad—yet honored to be here today to speak with you about Ellen Lankford, who died very unexpectedly this past Monday morning at the young age of 57.  Speaking at a service like this is privilege I do not take for granted, and today is no exception, but for some reason, this one feels different.  I will just do the best I can, speaking from my heart.

As I mentioned a moment ago, I work for The Record in North Wilkesboro where I have had the pleasure of working with Jerry Lankford, The Record's editor, for over 20 years. We spend more time together than most married couples do.  I personally value loyalty above all else, and in working with Jerry through these years, I have come know and trust him like very few people in my life—and thanks to him I have had the opportunity of getting to briefly know his relatives.  I never met his brother Gary, who died as a young boy.  Sadly, however, in our years of working together, I have watched him lose his entire immediate family; first his mother Willa Mae, then his brother Mike, and now Ellen, his sister and last sibling. This is the third funeral he has honored me by allowing me to speak.

Jerry Lankford is sad today, I can only imagine how sad he must be, but he sits on that church pew down front today with a clear conscience, because he knows he has spent his entire life caring about—and taking care of—his family.  And a clear conscience is a soft pillow.

I do not profess to have gotten to know Ellen Lankford nearly as well as many here today.  Most of what I know about Ellen came from conversations with Jerry.  He was proud of her—how smart she was, how well she did in school, earning a master's degree in Biology from Appalachian State University and continuing her education further at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.  She made a career as a laboratory scientist at various institutions in Guilford County where she spent most of her adult life.

He also spoke of Ellen with great respect and pride for her willingness to be such a loving aunt to his daughters, and, when Ellen, Mike, and Jerry's mother, Willa Mae, died in 2009, Ellen seamlessly transitioned to a grandmother figure to those girls. She took on the same role for Jerry's grandsons, Sammie and Charlie, years later. 

When Jerry's own health issues prompted his moving in to live with Ellen at her apartment in the Mulberry Community, he will tell you that her medical background, her “Mother Hen” nagging, and her “Fear of God” proclamations, helped get him on the straight and narrow, and has made a substantial difference on his own road to better health.

Again, I cannot profess to knowing everything about Ellen Lankford, but, some months ago, circumstances worked out in such a manner that I was able to do a favor for her regarding some things she had left stored for some time in Guilford County. It really wasn't that big of a favor as far as I was concerned, but Jerry said Ellen was truly grateful and wanted to do something for me. Of course I told him no, that nothing was expected, but she persisted.  Then one morning at work Jerry told me that Ellen had decided she wanted to take me to lunch—and wasn't going to take no for an answer.  When I said no again, he told me I was going to hurt her feelings and would I please meet with her for lunch, as she really wanted to say a special thank you to me.

Well, the lunch went fine, and it turned out I was really glad I went.  Ellen Lankford spent practically all of the entire hour and a half we were there talking about one person—her baby brother, Jerry.  She spoke of his love and kindness for her and of how he had taken such wonderful care of their mother, and everyone else in their family.  She told stories about growing up with Jerry, about the warm feeling of security he gave her just knowing that he was always going to be there for her.  As she continued to speak, it was with tears in her eyes—tears of love—tears comfortably shed in front of what amounted to a perfect stranger—because Jerry meant that much to her. I told her what I could in the way of “Amens” to what she was saying, reminding her that I trusted Jerry with anything I had, and of the countless times he has covered my rear end so to speak, and how I knew he would always keep my confidence. Ellen and me had a Jerry Lankford love fest, and I was a proud participant. 

After that lunch I felt as though I knew Ellen a lot better, and felt better about her. 

We would have an occasional visit if I answered the telephone when she would call to speak with Jerry. I always noticed the little lift in her voice as she would ask “...has my baby brother has made it down there yet?”  It is totally appropriate that when Ellen was in distress this Monday past, Jerry immediately stopped his work and went to her side.  He talked with her, he comforted her, he told her—and once again showed her—that he loved her. 

And he held her hand as she died. She was not alone in her hour of greatest need. Jerry saw to that, as he always saw to everything.

I hope you folks are following what I am getting at. 

I noted earlier that this funeral felt different to me, and it still does. While we are here today to honor the life and memory of Ellen Lankford, I would also like to note the obvious, that funerals are for the living as well. 

As I noted earlier, this is the third Lankford funeral at which I have spoken—I do not want to do a fourth. Jerry Lankford should be there to conduct my funeral. To that end, I would ask, as an appropriate way to honor the life and memory of Ellen, that this family continue to take Jerry into their arms. Hold him close and give him the love, the kindness, and the respect he deserves—simply put, that which he gives every one of you, every day of his life.  He needs it.  He appreciates it.  And I know in my heart that Ellen would certainly approve. 

  Thank you.

Terror and Murder for political gain

By AMBASSADOR EARL COX and KATHLEEN COX

Special to The Record

The United Nations designated Monday, Jan. 27, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

This day also marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau; two World War II Nazi extermination camps located in Poland where millions of Jews and others suffered and lost their lives. 

Next week more than 40 world leaders will gather in Jerusalem to participate in special events and ceremonies called ‘Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism.’  Why? Because humanity is obligated to make certain that ‘never again’ will there be another Holocaust. 

Recently it was revealed that an official Palestinian newspaper published an article calling for murder on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem.  Their goal is to disrupt, and perhaps even cancel, the ceremonies.  We’ve heard nothing of this from mainstream U.S. news outlets but that’s because what Arab leaders say to their people in Arabic is very different from what they say to the English speaking world. 

Contained in the article is the statement, “One shot will disrupt the ceremony and one dead body will cancel it.”  The implicit message is that one of the 40 world leaders slated to be in attendance will be a target.  This is unacceptable.

The Palestinians are deeply opposed to the Holocaust Remembrance ceremony taking place for several reasons.  First of all, most Palestinians have been taught that the Holocaust never really happened. In fact, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, promotes and perpetuates the lie that the Holocaust is a myth. Secondly, the Palestinians believe that Jerusalem, both East and West Jerusalem, belongs fully to them and that it is a place where Jews do not belong. In plain language, Palestinian leaders are promoting murder to further their political agenda.

The international community must reject the Palestinian Authority for promoting terror and murder. They must not be given a free pass. Terror and murder cannot be used, or threatened to be used, in order to achieve political goals. These are the people with whom the world wants Israel to make peace.  It’s outrageous.

Miles and Miles of Hotdogs from an Igloo

By CARL WHITE

Life in the Carolinas

How do you eat a mile-long hot dog?

One foot at a time or at least that’s how Linda Green approaches the process.

Linda Green stopped in at the Igloo shop in Millers Creek to pick up her order. Linda likes her hotdog all the way which includes a split grilled hotdog on a toasted bun with mustard, chili, onions, and slaw. Linda is a loyal customer who has been getting her hot dog, and ice cream fix at the Igloo for the past 40 years.

When I ask her how many she had ordered over the years, it seemed to work out to average two or three for most weeks. With a mile having 5,280 feet it has taken 40 years, but Linda is close to either side of a mile of delicious hot dog bliss.  

Matt Maston was also in line, he has been placing his Igloo order for more than 30 years, he’s another fan of the all the way dog, and he is well on the way to his membership in the Hotdog Mile Club. Matt recalled attending Millers  Creek Elementary   School across the highway from the Igloo and making regular trips.

Nowadays the menu offers up a variety of other options, however the hot dog rules supreme at the Igloo. The business opened in 1976, and was owned and operated by Chancie and Ruth Ashley, who were chicken farmers. The chicken business was changing, and the couple wanted to look at other income sources.

The building was a mail-order novelty concept. When the Igloo opened for business, the people in the surrounding area enjoyed visiting for ice cream. After two years the hotdogs were added to the menu, and over time the chili and slaw were perfected and become a favorite for loyal customers.

Kay Call is the daughter of Chancie and Ruth Ashley, and is now the owner. She recalled the opening days, when for the first two years, ice-cream was the only offering. Hotdogs were the first non-ice-cream food added; the boiled hotdogs were a favorite, however when the grill was added customers loved the extra flavor profile of grilling the dog to finish it off. The chili was, and still is, made from scratch with a slight sweetness and a nice texture. The slaw is made fresh and not complicated.

Cindy Dillard has been employed at the Igloo for 28 years and was working the grill during my visit. Cindy moved around the kitchen and filled order after order with the greatest of ease.

Debbie Whitley has been employed for a few years and said she enjoys being part of the seven-to-eight-person team that keeps the food flowing.

Cindy said the chili and slaw are so well-liked that a lot of the regulars order their dogs sloppy, which is double the amount of an already generous portion.  “It’s sloppy alright, and it’s good,” she said.

I do not doubt that there are many unofficial members of the hot dog mile club. It’s easy to lose track over the years, but one thing is for sure. The modest hot dog has a way of bringing people together and producing a lot of smiles.

Kay has done an excellent job of giving the hot dog its place of honor and respect. She has also preserved a piece of our Americana landscape.

Most of the Igloo buildings have been taken down. However, the one in the Millers Creek Community is standing and is home to a revolving door leading to miles and miles of tasty hot dogs.

You will need a napkin!

[eldritadh-a]

When I was 10 years old, I told my mother I wanted to practice Judaism.

This hadn’t come out of nowhere; Number the Stars lay on the bed in our tiny hotel room in Venice, and a few months earlier I had begged my mom to take me to the bookstore so I could buy The Diary of Anne Frank. I remember the woman at the checkout counter looked at me skeptically – tiny, round-faced, golden bangs swinging into my blue eyes – and warned my mother that this book might not be appropriate for someone my age. My mother – with her angled face and curly, dark hair – glanced down at me for a moment, then told the lady at the desk that I was reading well above my age group. She bought the book for me, and true to form, I finished it inside of a week. I read every book about the Holocaust I could get my hands on, every book about Jewish culture I could find in the library of my elementary school in some tiny Swiss village on the outskirts of a tiny Swiss city. The day after I informed my mom of my intentions, I begged her for the book of Hebrew folk tales I saw in the gift shop of the Venice Ghetto; the thing weighed as much as I did, and it took me a good long while to read in its entirety, which I was very happy about.

When I was 10 years old, sitting on the bed of that tiny Venice hotel room next to my copy of Number the Stars, I told my mom that I wanted to practice Judaism, and she looked at me in shock and anger. Looking back, I imagine that I can remember her eyes: blue, like mine. Looking back, I can imagine what was crossing her mind: her infant grandmother in the arms of her great-grandparents fleeing pogroms in Russia; her father, who never entered another synagogue after he joined the marines, who can recite Yeats but not the Torah; my agnostic father and his WASP family and the Italo-Jewish / Anglo-Celtic all-Bostonian schism, the walls of my dad’s parents’ house that whispered to my mother ‘you are not one of us’ even when nobody’s voices ever did.

But when I was 10 years old, steeped in stories about brave girls finding solace in humanity and their faith at a time when the entire world wanted them dead, I knew nothing of that more personal history. All I saw in her eyes like mine was a flash of anger that was also present in the next word out of her mouth: “why?”

I stumbled through an explanation about how fascinating and beautiful the religion seemed to me, how good it seemed, how loving. The distaste radiating from her was palpable; looking back, I see myself through her eyes, I see her through her own eyes. Blaming herself for this, for not anticipating this, what else could she expect from burying her Jewish-blooded daughter in literature written by other Jewish women’s daughters?

She watched me sharply while I muddled through my unrehearsed explanation. “You can do whatever you want when you grow up,” she told her 10-year-old, “but you should think hard about whether you really want to be Jewish, and don’t make any decisions right away.” It was the answer I had more or less expected – it was the same thing my dad had told me more broadly when I was much younger and wanted to go play on the Catholic school’s playground (not because I wanted to be Catholic, but because it looked like a really cool playground). It was the same answer, but from my mother, the shock and horror in it wasn’t something I could forget.

Years passed, and I stopped reading books about Jewish girls. My anthology of Hebrew folk tales went into storage in a basement somewhere. Off and on I considered taking Levenson -- my mother’s maiden name -- as my second middle name. I accepted that quarter of myself, but didn’t flaunt it – just as I quietly accepted the Italian, the Irish, the English, the German. The Morabito, the McElhinney, Ermalinde, the Mumford, the Carey.

Over the next decade and a half…

I learned that my mother had gotten plastic surgery on her nose when she was in high school to make it more generically European.

I learned about my great-grandmother, from Russia.

I looked for the name Levenson in lists.

I learned about the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis, and wasn’t sure what to make of it.

I went to Prague, then to Terezin. I saw the ghettos, the graveyards, the concentration camps, the prisons. I saw the synagogues – the secret chambers beneath Terezin’s houses, the wooden parapets soaring over medieval stones by the ancient resting place of rabbis and scholars, the geometric canopies of gold and glass beside a headless statue of Kafka.

When my mom was in Indonesia, a tourist spoke to her in Hebrew because he mistook her for Israeli.

I told the boy I was dating that I was part Jewish. “Can’t you see it?” I asked him. He told me that when I had my hair braided, kind of. Otherwise, not really.

I asked my mother why she had allowed my dad’s family to pressure her into baptizing me as a Protestant. She said her father had taught her never to take a hard stance on anything, especially if it was something a Gentile wanted. To keep her head down if it wasn’t going to cause real damage. To let them do what they wanted, to not make a fuss, to not close any doors – just in case.

I learned more about the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis, and took a hardline pro-Palestine stance. I condemned Israel and Zionists, and threw my support behind Palestine as hard as my little 20-something self could manage.

My mother and I learned simultaneously that the part of Russia her grandmother was from is now part of the Ukraine. My mom set to work learning everything she could about that particular town.

My grandfather had a heart attack and almost died, sparking a return to religion. He began to urge my mother to seek out the Jewish community where she lives – a community she had never been a part of in her entire life, mostly because he had made himself apart from it and brought his family with him. He began to urge her – now a very successful middle-aged UN staffer with a boyfriend – to find a Nice Jewish Boy to marry.

I took a slightly less hardline stance on the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis – one more in line with my belief in the goodness of people and the corruption and cruelty of governments.

Sometimes my mother and I would travel together, often with my little sister. We went back to Prague, went to Barcelona, to Rome. Wherever we went, my mom would seek out the Jewish quarter. She’d look for the ghettos, the synagogues, the statues, the placards. In Berlin we spent hours in museums, wandering through memorials. We let ourselves feel the enormity of the world’s grief. I learned to remember my heritage when it mattered, and detach myself when I needed to. In temples and synagogues; in museums and memorials; in the cemeteries raised up over the course of 800 years and those whose headstones still gleam in the sun 80 years after they were placed there in their thousands; under the weight of the holocaust; I am Jewish.

It’s been 14 years since that night in Venice.

I’m still blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and milk-skinned. Nobody looks at me and just knows. Even the curl of my hair could be Celtic or Italian as easily as it could be Semitic. I could bury that quarter of myself, or keep it so close to my body that no one will ever see it – sort of like I’ve been doing for the past 14 years, since that day when I was 10 and told my mom I wanted to be Jewish.

But I’ve spent too long feeling like an imposter in every identity I think might fit me. When I was 10 years old, I told my half-Jewish mother that I wanted to be Jewish; she told me to wait, to think long and hard about whether Jewishness was something I wanted to claim. I am a practicing Pagan and have no intention of changing that, but I am Jewish. My mother is non-practicing, but she is Jewish; my grandfather was non-practicing for most of his life, but he is Jewish; my great-grandmother never knew her home country because she was Jewish; my great-great-grandparents fled their home because they were Jewish. Why shouldn’t I be?

And if I can take pride in my Italian heritage and know the name of my German ancestor who lived 300 years ago, if I can know the names of my genocidal English forebears who arrived on the Mayflower and the Irish surname with its inconsistent spelling that my family lost somewhere along the way, then I can embrace the ethnicity that comprises a significant fraction of me, that, of the gifts my mother has passed down to me from my great-grandmother, is the least ephemeral.

So I’m Jewish. As much as I am English or Irish, even more than I am Italian or German, I am Jewish. 

Suck it, Nazis.

[trespiratesque]

Day 5

Saturday, 4/15

We had several appointments already scheduled for this day, which dawned drizzly and cold. The very first was with some caracal kittens at the nearby zoo in the Jardin des Plantes. A caracal is a medium wild cat, whose shoulder height measures to about an average human knee. They're reddish tan, with lighter bellies and tall black tufts on their ears. We heard about them pretty much the day we arrived, plus one of the folks at the lab lent Beck her museum card (which all employees receive free and gives them access to all the amenities of the Natural History Museum complex). It would be our second visit to the zoo - we went the last time we were in Paris a few years ago. A selection of animals we saw: red pandas, a yak family, a bunch of different vultures (which are magnificent in person), several kinds of goats, gray cranes, a rhinoceros hornbill, cockatoos (very needy), ostriches, owls, martens, and whatever this important little fellow is.

They have a raccoon enclosure, but there were no "washing-rats" (as translated by yours truly) to be seen in the thin, gray daylight. The primates were diverting, as ever, with orangutans performing some NSFW athletics. And of course, the kittens were marvelously cute, feeding and then rearranging themselves into a sleeping pile. Fortunately, the rain was very light, barely noticeable, so we had no discomfort making our way around the uncrowded zoo. We did have a time limit on our wandering though, and we snagged crepes from a zoo stand on the way out.

Next up was moving to our new place. We'd packed everything up pretty well before we left for the zoo, and after finishing touches, we brought our luggage downstairs to the front hall of the building. I then set off for Gare d'Austerlitz, the nearest train station and taxi source. I hustled to the taxi stand (a 7-10 minute walk) and told the driver in my nervously practiced French: "Hello! I am sorry, I speak French like a cow. I would like to go to rue Buffon, my friend is there with our bags. After, we go to somewhere near Bastille." That got us most of the way there - in the end, the final address was somewhere near the Republique metro instead, but they aren't far apart. Taxis are a whole different ball game in Paris, or at least that's the impression I got from this one. Signs indicating smartphone chargers were available, magazines to read - I think it's more like what Uber's dreams are made of. I believe I even spied bottled water. The car was incredibly clean, the driver was nicely dressed, and even the taxi UI was elegantly integrated into its hardware.

We arrived in a small street, rue Dupetit-Thouars, looking for a door with our number on it. There were a few cafes on the block, and a teensy, triangular open plaza with seating and a ring of flowering trees. Rounding the corner with our bags, a young man on his cellphone waved at us. We introduced ourselves to Jordan, who had been expecting us. He kindly offered to take a bag from me, but I think began to regret the offer around the top of the second flight of stairs. Because this is a classic Paris building with a classic Paris stairwell: cramped, uneven, spiraling stairs with no alternative means of ascent. And we were headed for the fifth floor. I think Beck counted something like 85 stairs from the front door to our door. But there was light at the end of the tunnel, literally - a skylight beckoned us up the final flight, to a short landing with two doors.

Ours was on the left, painted a medium green with a doorbell that didn't work. Jordan opened the door and revealed our new home. The floor was the same hexagon tile as the landings, but in here it was covered in red paint and slanted downward toward the external wall. A small, well-used wooden desk was planted against one white wall, a bricked-off fireplace stood against another, and most of the rest of the walls were punctuated by thrown-open windows. The bedroom featured another window and some built-in cabinets for storage - no space for any furniture other than the bed and a tiny stool/table. The kitchen had a stainless steel countertop, a diminutive refrigerator, and a few cabinets. A tacky fabric printed with images and names of Paris landmarks hung in swathes from ceiling rails all over the place. I made sure the taps worked, and Jordan tried to help us figure out the laundry machine.

Not a washer or dryer, but a washer AND dryer in one. (I'm writing this a full 48 hours later and only now have we begun to understand this mysterious creature.) Laundry was one of the first tasks we undertook after signing papers and saying our farewell to Jordan - it was comforting to know we would be able to wash clothes on our own schedule again. I began to organize the kitchen to my liking and take a tool inventory, while Beck made the bed and unpacked his things. He found that the bottom desk drawer swings out and contains slots for files, which happen to perfectly fit all the board games we brought. The shower is very small, and the bathroom also contains an enigmatic device that may be a heater, or possibly a towel rack? We decided to just pretend it didn't exist rather than risk burning down the building.

After putting together an initial shopping list and taking a moment to revel in our new independence, we set out for the day's next appointment: going to visit the apartment we hoped to move to in nid-May. I'd been corresponding with a Frenchwoman named Linda. We walked there, about 25 minutes' walk, planning to take the Metro back, and arrived about 15 minutes early after stopping for a snack along the way. Beck had the best quiche he'd ever eaten, and I had a ham & cheese croissant. The ham and croissant parts were good, but there was a very soft, almost liquidy cheese hiding inside that I wasn't expecting, which wasn't quite to my taste.  We also picked up a baguette for later.

This building was also very much of a style with what you imagine a residential Parisian building to look like - pastel yellow, tall windows, steep-pitched slate roof with a flat top, 4 or 5 stories tall. It was just a block or two from the Seine on the Left Bank. Linda was there with her boyfriend, cleaning after the previous tenant had left, and let us in through a foyer, up a mercifully short flight of stairs. I knew I was going to like this apartment from the pictures, but in person I absolutely fell in love with it. Airy, clean, spacious, and it had an oven! There was even a bathtub. Linda was totally charming, and Beck and I were falling over ourselves to compliment the place. She said she had others coming to look at it, but she would try to make a decision by the end of the long weekend. (I still haven't heard anything, so answers hopefully to come soon! We are definitely still obssessed with that place.)

We took the Metro home, and stepped into a protest at our stop. I couldn't tell what the aim or purpose was, but I did see some Palestinian flags, and signs calling for justice for someone, not sure who. We hadn't used this Metro before, so it took some time to find our way to our new home, but our other task was grocery shopping anyway so we found somewhere to do that. Monoprix is sort of like a small-scale Target, with heavier emphasis on fresh foods and less on appliances and electronics. This was the Saturday before Easter, and the store was completely packed - not exactly Food Shopping for Dummies, but we got a few essentials to tide us over. It's incredible how overwhelming a shop full of 95% unfamiliar items can be, and we were lucky to have gone grocery shopping in Croatia so many times before since that at least got us knowledge of what lactose-free milk might look like. Walking out with TP, cheese, milk, a couple of veggies, and a couple of snacks felt like a victory.

When we got home, Beck took another look at the still-running laundry machine and made some lentils and green beans for dinner. This place only has two hobs and a microwave, so we're going to do our best as far as cooking. It came out really good. And Beck also gave his folks a call on Skype so they could see the place (I have never managed to get my parents set up with Skype, alas - maybe someone local can help them). It was nice to hear from them (and I'm not just saying that because I know they read this blog).

Sorry for the super long post, but I do have one other thing to mention - I have had a hard time figuring out how to balance the joy and excitement I'm feeling about this adventure with the mountain of awful things happening in and performed by the USA and its military. It feels so tasteless, tone-deaf, to be publicly exuberant about choosing to live overseas when Syrians and Afghanis are living in fear, unable to escape violence done in my name. I am actively looking for ways to be supportive of radical and progressive causes and actions back home while I'm abroad, so if anyone reading this has ideas, please do share them. Anyway, if I seem to be holding back pictures and facebook posts, this is why. I know it's important to also celebrate the good things in life and share our joyful moments, but at the moment it can feel inappropriate. What can help me with this is having direct requests made - for example, a friend who lives in Japan posted on my wall demanding pictures, and that was the push I needed to make my first uploads. I hope everyone back home is staying safe and taking steps appropriate to their own lives to join the struggle against utter bullshit.