Daily Archives: August 23, 2014

Where desert mountain waits

Sun dried jerky of your past
Lies heavy on the stomach-heart
Grumbles, protests, lingers
Long, long after cactus
Arid faith
Uprooted by a desert mountain
Cloudburst flood
Has withered, blunted tines
No longer barbed
While jerky past still grumbles
Lies heavy on the stomach heart.

Lie still and watch
Lantern sun swings overhead
This banner day
Sliver moon salutes from darkened sky

Take heart.  Take heart.  Take heart.

Move the grumble upward to a song
To tines’ decay

Take heart take heart take heart

While dormant hidden succulents
Await return of desert mountain
Cloud burst flood
And full moon rises.

Jack Purcell, From Poems of the New Old West, copyright 2003, NineLives Press

 

Tomato ice cubes

So. Hi readers.

I’ve told you in the past about being a low-sodium fanatic. I don’t want to ingest any more salt than comes with whatever I’m eating back when it was the next best thing to being alive. Eggs when they come out of the shell and hit the frying pan running. Or on the half-shell, boiled.

In the past I’ve explained how I blend onions and make ice cubes so’s to allow easy use for broths and blogs. I’ve told in loving detail how I do the same with jalapeno.

And now I’m telling you Jeanne’s sons had a bumper crop of tomatoes and I’ve blended all I could get my hands on, frozen them in ice cube trays after boiling them down. Now I’m telling you a large tomato doesn’t have a dozen milligrams of sodium.

Well hell, I also told you a few days ago my faith is eroding … showed you another viewpoint from Dr. Mercola, which might help mitigate my fanaticism. Once I’ve digested it, if I’m still alive.

But he didn’t say anything about tomato ice cubes. And damn I do love the idea of all the stuff I’m going to be able to do with them, 8.5 mg of sodium, or not.
Meanwhile:
Onion ice cubes, jalapeno ice cubes
Low sodium / no sodium Saimin
Internet Wisdom

Old Jules

 

Gun Hill Road and Orange is somethingorother Black

Hi readers.  Jeanne doesn’t watch movies much but someone told her I might enjoy some made-for-Netflix movie about women in a prison facility.  Which I figured what the hell, might as well try it.  Which I did.  I’ve been known to watch and enjoy a chick flick and if the chicks are all in prison it might still be interesting.

Orange Is the New Black

2013-2014TV-MASeason 2 Now Available A dozen Emmy Award nominations went to this acclaimed comedy drama series including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Lead Actress for star Taylor Schilling. A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman (Schilling) to a women’s prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.

Fact is when I worked in Santa Fe with the Emergency Management Bureau we had some female prisoners working in our offices for a while, cleaning up and polishing our non body parts.  But they started stealing so much when nobody was looking it became too much a pain in the ass to have them around.

Then, in Grants, when I was working for the motel.  We had some female prisoners cleaning the rooms for a while.  But they began selling sexual favors to anyone who’d pay, began screwing the motel manager until he was too exhausted to allow them around anymore.  The regular female employees who usually filled his sexual needs began feeling neglected.  So Orange whatchallit got my attention briefly.

I skipped over all the lingering chickflickisms, the slow motion leading-up-to-sex scenes, the flashbacks of flashbacks of flashbacks.  The titillating leading-up-to lesbian stuff I also found I could skip past.

Which left approximately 10 minutes of viewing pleasure for this episode of Orange is somethingorother.

But Netflix, because I’d watched it, recommended Gun Hill Road.

Gun Hill Road 2011 R 86 minutes Enrique returns home from three years in prison to find his wife is a virtual stranger and his son is in the throes of a sexual identity crisis. More Info Starring: Esai Morales, Judy Reyes Director: Rashaad Ernesto Green

A decent sort of guy gets out of the slammer and finds his wife is on the rebound from an affair.  Handles it fairly well.  Gets a job.  Handles it less well when he discovers his eldest son is one of those other kinds of guys.  Wears sexy female attire and whatnot.

At that point I debated whether I wanted to watch any more of it, but while I was pondering the question the son began smooching with another character in the movie and feeling around, unzipping his trousers.

Soooooo.  I’m not anti-Semitic about that sort of thing.  Don’t even care if my brother marries one.  Or my sister, for that matter.

But that isn’t the same as saying I want to see a lot of details of what they do to one another working up to the other stuff they do to one another.

I’m old fashioned that way.

Old Jules

Robert Satloff, dual citizenship Israel/United States

Hi readers.

Sometimes lousy things happen to good people, though it seems more often good things happen to lousy people.  This journalist named Sotloff might be such a case.  One way or the other.  Because a single vowel in his surname separates him from being of the same primary gene stock as a possible foaming at the mouth dual citizenship Israeli in a US positions of power.

The Israeli who’d  like nothing better than to slaughter every Arab on the planet isn’t easily distinguishable from those who only want to steal the land outside legally established Israeli borders inside Palestine.  Individual Israelis have thus far been able to obscure such questions with accusations of anti-Semitism whenever they’ve been spoken.  And obfuscated it further by claiming the lands they don’t own in Palestine and East Jerusalum actually belong to them legally because God said so.

Maybe an unfortunate coincidence for prisoner Sotloff being held by freedom fighters in Syria or Iraq.  Who might, or mightn’t hold dual-citizenship, Israeli/United States.

The non-prisoner Sotloff in question has a nice piece up on Among the Righteous – Lost Stories of the Holocaust in Arab Lands.  I suppose a person would have to buy the DVD to find out whether  it’s typical Israeli anti-Arab propaganda, or some attempt at honesty.

Maybe the guys holding Satloff will fork out the currency and watch it when they’re deciding whether he needs his head chopped off.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/among-the-righteous/about.html

Did any Arabs save Jews during the Holocaust?

March 21, 2010

Among the Righteous recounts Robert Satloff’s eight-year effort to provide a hopeful response to the problems of Holocaust ignorance and denial in the Arab world by asking a question no one had ever before posed: Did any Arabs save any Jews during the Holocaust?

His journey, which began on the streets of Manhattan on September 11, 2001, eventually took him on an eleven-country, four-continent search for courageous Arab heroes who helped protect Jews during their time of need. Along the way, he also unearthed a vast, unexplored story of what actually happened to the half-million Jews of the Arab lands of North Africa under Nazi, Vichy, and Fascist rule.

From the labyrinthine alleys of Tunis to the bustling souk of Fez to forgotten desert slave labor camps along the Morocco-Algeria border, Among the Righteous explores perhaps the last untold story of the greatest human calamity in modern times – the Holocaust. Filmed in eight countries — including Tunisia, Morocco, France, and Israel — the surprising discoveries chronicled in the film are already challenging how both Arabs and Jews view a long-forgotten but vitally important chapter of the Holocaust.

About the Web Site

Most of all, this Web site is an invitation to a conversation about Among the Righteous and a platform for further research. If you have a story to tell an Arab who helped, aided, protected, or saved a Jew during the Holocaust, please share it. If you have personal information about Arab-Jewish relations during the Holocaust, share it. If you would like to comment about the contemporary relevance of this history for Arabs and Jews, post it here. This moderated interactive forum will be open through October 2010.

This Web site complements the book and the PBS documentary film of the same name. It presents in visual form additional material that is not found in either the book or the film. For full context on the stories and information provided on this site, please refer to the book and to the additional educational resources listed on this Web site.

About the Author

Robert Satloff, one of the nation’s leading Middle East experts, is executive director of The Washington Institute, a respected policy think-tank, and host of Dakhil Washington (Inside Washington), a weekly public affairs program on al-Hurra Arabic satellite television network. Since the publication of Among the Righteous, Dr. Satloff and his work have been awarded the Anti-Defamation League’s prestigious Daniel Pearl Award for tolerance promotion as well as national prizes from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Touro Synagogue.

Take It Home

You can purchase a DVD copy of this documentary and the accompanying book through the PBS Shop:

Buy the DVD

Library Mail Art Received August 18th- 22nd

Jeanne’s Library Mail Art Project entries from this week. They just keep coming. From all over the world. I’m sure as hell impressed! Jack

Library Mail Art 2014

We had a great mail week here at Lackman Library! Our first card came from Connie Jean in Cocoa Beach, Florida. It features Frances, from Russell Hoban’s books for children, who is one of my favorite characters!
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We also got three cards in an envelope from Meral Agar in Istanbul, Turkey. Each card is from a different artist so I will show you front and back from each card. Check out their blog:  http://artsin2010.blogspot.com/ It has some really great pieces you don’t want to miss plus a photo of their own mail art display.
First, from Turkan Elci:
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Next, from Oznur Kepce:
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And the third, from Meral Agar:
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Our next 5 pieces came from Moan Lisa , a prolific artist and member of IUOMA, the International Union of Mail Artists, where most of these contributors show and trade their work. Moan Lisa is from Iowa City, Iowa.
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IMG_4576Moan Lisa, thank you for…

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Ship of Theseus by VM Straka aka S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst

Hi readers.  Maybe you’ve been hearing about a book, S, by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst.

Jeanne tossed it aside last night with a frustrated sigh.  Which was okay by me.  When she brought S home from the library a couple of weeks ago I had a look, examined the acompanying envelope full of notes, whiz wheels, maps, you name it.  I thumbed through the pages of Ship of Theseus enough to think someone had abused a book unmercifully and unforgiveably.  And when she and another library lady claimed Ship of Theseus isn’t a real book I didn’t believe them.

A quick web search proved me right.  I immediately found a site where VM Straka, his life, and his other books were being discussed in depth.

Sheeze, it required another search after I’d proved myself an idiot to discover it’s all a fake.  A book, Ship of Theseus, as a centerpoint for two imaginary people studying the imaginary author and leaving notes in the margins to one another, following an imaginary mystery about the author and the book.

Well, hell.  I’m the guy who’s read Umberto Eco’s Focault’s Pendulum haf-dozen times and loved it.  I’m almost unique on the planet Earth in that regard.  And I’m the guy who chased the Lost Adams Diggings through half the archives and dusty old books and microfilms pertaining to the 19th Century.

I smiled secretly to myself, knowing I’ve read The Eyre Affair and that entire Tuesday Next series by Jasper Fforde and would read more in an eyeblink, if I couldn’t find a heartbeat to read them in.  And I’ve read all, I think, of the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels and loved them without exception.  Read Filip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series and loved it.  S wasn’t going to throw me any curves.

So I earmarked S in my mind as something I’d do when Jeanne finished it.  And last night when she declared it’s not her bag I smiled to myself and prepared to chase some devils and ghosts through the nights of the living dead I’ve noticed myself having of late.

This morning I picked it up, deciding to start by reading Ship of Theseus and ignoring the notes for a starter.  Tried, but I was continually distracted by the notes.  Because the notes in the margins are one hell of a lot more interesting and better written than the crappy novel they’re written in the margins of.

Probably Doug Doirst and JJ Abrams need to send their ideas off to Umberto Eco if they ever want to try this again.  Eco knows how to write a book.

Old Jules

2010 Space Odyssey Two – Arthur C. Clarke

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

2014 is a good year to read 2010 Space Odyssey Two so’s to help get a better perspective when you read 2061 Odyssey Three.  I’ve got 2001 Space Odyssey sitting over there asking itself why I haven’t re-read it, prior to launching into 2010.  I haven’t confided to it that it’s just too damned far off the mark and leaves me pondering whether it was pure BS.  I was a bit distracted in 2001 because of Y2K, but I’m inclined to think 2001 Space Odyssey and 1984 by George Orwell might have shared some chronological disorders.

Anyway, Clarke’s 2010, published in 1982, at least has briefcase computers.  That’s an encouraging sign.  And although men haven’t ventured beyond the moon, nor even as far as the moon in a longish while, they’re back to discussing the possibility of going to Mars, or maybe an asteroid or comet.  Humanity decided somewhere back in the late-1970s that the moon wasn’t worth the price of admission.  They’ve shot a lot of rocketships at it, set of a bomb trying to find water, but the moon has proved to be more profitable as an abstraction than a reality.  Heck, people have made more money off the moon singing, recording, writing songs about it than they’ve managed to do sending rocketships to it.  Even movies.  There’s been more money made from movies about the moon and about people going to the moon, than from people actually doing it.

So while 2010 Odyssey Two is a fun, interesting and imaginative read by a fine author, it doesn’t recommend itself well under comparisons to reality as we mostly believe we’ve experienced it, or know of other humans experiencing it.

Planet of the Apes is a lot more accurate in that regard.  I don’t know how the hell Planet of the Apes managed to happen right here under our noses without me noticing it before.  But hell, there it is.  Spang spread out all over the planet.  Russian apes killing wossname, Ukraine apes, Syrian apes killing other Syrian apes, Iraq apes, Israel apes killing Palestine apes, Chinese apes killing India Indian apes, African apes killing other African apes, and US apes indiscriminately killing all but Israeli ones.  Which establishes who the real Chosen apes are.

Arthur C. Clarke should have anticipated Planet of the Apes and written about it.  Then he wouldn’t have to be consigned to the Nostradamus and George Orwell stream of close-but-no-cigar prognostications.

Old Jules