links and some thoughts on being a Jew & antisemitism

I'm linking to this site: Its All Connected and this site: Alas a Blog both posting and taking comments about antisemitism. The author of this series of posts, titled "What We Talk About (and don't talk about) when we talk about (and don't talk about) antisemitism and Israel" is Richard Jeffrey Newman a published poet, writer, translator and educator. RJN is currently working on #5 in the series, which I look forward to reading whenever it goes up.

I've been following the posts and occasionally, briefly, commenting since they started to go up on January 19th. They were inspired, in part by this post by Julie at (and cross posted at Alas a Blog) Modern Mitzvot: Why I've Stopped Talking About Gaza which, after some of RJN's posts and many comments inspired this: A Gentile Priviledge Checklist

I've been riveted by these posts and have a lot of thoughts but nothing I've attempted to write, in the comments sections of a number of the above posts, says what I want to say. So I thought I would start by posting here, on my own blog, that I am following these posts. 

I think that's all I can write even now. Everything I write sounds strange and not quite it and so I will just have to wait until I write something I don't immediately want to delete. Wish me luck, and if you're interested do have a look at the links above. Thanks.

short visit to say hi and some recommendations

Hey-ho (as Kermit the Frog would say),

I've been mulling over this and that the last few weeks, plus I still have a cold, which was really hellacious at first, ten days ago, and now just irritating. I tried breaking up with it earlier today (imagine me yelling at it: "It's OVER! Get out of my body, NOW, and take all your snot rags with you!", kicking the waste paper basket across the room for emphasis). We'll see if that has the desired affect.

Meanwhile, I've been visiting some more web sites.

Here's a few I particularly like:

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

Bizarroblog

Byron Katie's "The Work"

Have fun with these. I'll be back after I change the locks (if I can ever get this darn cold to leave the house).

Snow, Love and Posting Update

Thing A Day has totally inspired me. I have a friend in New York City (one of my oldest friends because her mother and my mother met when they were in undergraduate school together) who is also an artist and she's participating in the thing-a-day thingy linked above. I just talked with her last night and was noting how I haven't been posting very much the last few weeks, partly because I feel like very very few people come to the site, and even fewer post comments. It's kind of discouraging, but after going to thing-a-day I feel a lot better and I'm ready to post my heart out once again!



Above is a photograph I just took of my back porch (the chair is for scale) to illustrate how much snow we've got around here. Too crazy. I've reached my AAA limit in free service calls (until August or something) so now it's $45 everytime I need to get dug out of my own parking space. Really frustrating and I'm counting the days until I can park with impunity again. Or, I should say, get out of my parking space with impunity.

Meanwhile, Valentine's Day came and went, without any genuine activity here in Eva's Icons land. But wait, I have to show you this "dark" valentine I got as a consolation prize (from a friend, Rachel Rice, who makes art that's dispensed from an old cigarette machine now known as the GLAD-iator).







Nice, eh?

Oh, I almost forgot. Dr. Love did have a space walk (read all about it here), but not on Feb. 14th. Everything, it appears, is subject to rescheduling when it comes to outer space.

Dr. Love scheduled for space walk Feb. 14th

It's true! This web site Spaceflight Now has the whole space shuttle Atlantis story including Dr. Stan Love's planned space walk (with another mission specialist, of course) on February 14th. Stan is my cousin-in-law. Stan Love is married to my one and only first cousin, Jancy McPhee. Jancy also works for NASA, but she's trained as a microbiologist, and is not an astronaut. Anyway, they are both awesome.

I was so excited on Thursday when I heard the news (that the shuttle had successfully launched into space) on the radio, I went out to the formery and told all my co-workers (I was in the back putting labels on bread bags when I heard the news on NPR). During my break I looked up the mission update and saw the (not-a-joke-at-all) post about Stan's schedule on Feb. 14th. Over the next hour I told whoever wasn't in the formery at the time what the big news of the day was: Stan Love's in outer space, and guess when his space walk is scheduled?! Nearly everyone guessed correctly. SO CORNY! I LOVE IT!

musician Dan Walker

I went down to the Langdon Street Cafe tonight and drew Dan Walker, who played solo guitar and sang original songs and a few covers. He bills himself as an Americana Roots Music man out of New Hamshire. Pretty good. Damn hard to draw, though. I was feeling quite pissy after an hour and a half of not very satisfying drawing. As I was leaving I ran into Dan as he was coming back inside and told him I liked his playing. I told him I'd done some drawings but wasn't going to show him, because they were crap. But he said some 75 year old characaturist made him look like a woman, and as long as I hadn't done that, they were probably ok. So I showed him, but I was telling him everything that was wrong with the drawings, including the drawing above having an eye that's too big for the rest of his face. But when I held it up to him for comparison, the resemblance was pretty good! Huh! So I'm feeling much better now. Thanks Dan, and good luck on your tour!

P.S. If you haven't seen Maira Kalman's Principles of Uncertainty then do go and check it out as soon as you can! I just got the hard-bound version of the blog she has of the same name (but is no longer adding to) at the New York Times site. It's wonderful. I'm overcome. I want to adopt Maira. Maybe she could be an older cousin? I already have a few of those, so it's not completely out of the question. I'm just saying I'm open to the possibilities. Maira, if you see this, think it over and let me know! Thanks!

Chores

Today is payday, which is helpful, because it's also chore-day. I put the rent in the mail, went to the once-a-month winter farmer's market (bought maple syrup, potatoes, pork ribs and some prepared chicken and rice), did the laundry, dropped off the dvd I saw last night (Ratatoille) at the local video/dvd place savoy theater/downstairs video dropped off some used 5 gallon buckets (that used to hold canola oil, from work) to someone who needs them for their sugar bush (maple sugaring business), went back to the farmer's market to drop off some extra small socks to Laini Fondiller (a woman with extra small feet) who runs Lazy Lady Farm where she makes excellent goat and cow's milk cheeses as well as raises them for meat, and also weaves and sells beautifully hand-dyed handspun wool (she named one of her goats after me, too!). I then got the car washed (and discovered rust in the wheel wells, dagnamit) and then finished up my chores by filling the tank with gas (at $3.06/gallon).



This is a drawing I did in May 2005, of the jar Laini uses to display her feta cheese at the farmer's market. It case you can't read it, it says "We Make Better Fet'r". I would have bought some of her feta today (it IS the best) but she doesn't make it in the winter.

today

It's Friday. I woke up at 6:21 AM. I had been dreaming I was telling my friend Gina all about a crush I was recovering from. It was true to real life detail for detail (except I haven't talked with Gina about any of this, yet). The only thing that was different (than real life) was following Gina from room to room while I told her what had happened between me and my crush-ie.

Thursday morning my therapist asked me to think about how dreams effect real life, and vice-versa. Or, did he ask me how dreams and waking life interact? Or what it means to have dreams, and how they effect us, whatever is going on in our waking lives? Now I can't remember.

I do remember responding to his suggestion with sarcasm, as he knows I have issues about this subject, since my late mother was a Jungian psychoanalyst. Dreams and all that hoo-ha. Interestingly, my dream life seems to be effecting my waking life, despite my mistrust of psychoanalysis. But when my dreams act like my waking life one quarter step removed? I'm sorry, that's just weird.

My weekend is on Fridays and Saturdays. I spend a fair amount of time wandering around the internet during my time off, and today I've been spending some time on Maira Kalman's blog: here

I also ran into an aquaintance who is a bookbinder, who also has a blog and a website: maydaystudio

Both very cool, in totally different ways.

At 7:45 AM I tried getting my car out of my snowfilled driveway. It's only December 21st and I've already gotten stuck three times (front wheels spinning on ice under the snow). My next door neighbor took pity on me and helped me back out. But she said she's gotten stuck just as many times. WTF?! Winter is less than 12 hours old.

Mercifully this didn't take very long, so I made my appointment at the mechanic right on time. He replaced the purge valve, but first listened to another customers's engine, and then, while working on my car, took two or three phone calls and a visit from a potential business insurance provider (who he apparently knows personally...he kept making references to some awkward voice mail messages from someone they know in common). All this in less than an hour, and no more "check engine" light on my dashboard!

I park my car on the other side of my apartment building (where the traction is better) and walk downtown to mail a birthday present to my niece, who will turn 11 on December 24. I got her a little leatherette covered blank book and a graphite pencil. Last year I got her 12 Prismacolor markers and a big sketchbook. I am the art aunt.

I wander into my beloved independent bookstore, which can also be accessed at Bear Pond Books and I page through the 2nd edition of the cream of the crap, "The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker" by Matthew Diffee and Robert Mankoff. It's awesome, partly for the cartoons, but mostly for the seriously silly questionaire all the artists fill out (or ignore, or cover with graffiti, depending). They also have all been asked, apparently, to provide a photograph of 1. a self-portrait; 2. the inside of their refridgerator; 3. drawing a cartoon; 4. their feet; 5. their studio/work space. I love seeing all these artists riffing on the posibilities in these requests. The guy who photographs himself drawing a cartoon, with a handcuff attached to his wrist, also abligingly provides a photo of his foot drawing a cartoon with a (foot?)cuff attached, made my bookstore visit. It's 9:45 AM.

On my way home from downtown I start thinking about posting more of my mom's story on the blog, but first I pop some biscuits and chicken in the oven (I kind of skipped breakfast). I usually check out my main e-mail account, Doonesbury, dykestowatchoutfor, Found Magazine, my hotmail account, alas, a blog, and drawn!, before doing anything else on the web, including look at my own blog. And look at the personals hosted by my local free alternative weekly, Sevendays Personals.

Yeah, that's where I saw the ad for the guy I've had a crush on. He's the sweetest, but not for me. Oh well.

I did a little shopping at the food co-op a few hours ago, which was pretty busy at 3pm, but I knew it would be even busier later. Holiday frantic energy. Two advantages to being single and a Jew at the end of December: a short gift-giving list and it's all done before Dec. 25th.

I did write a bunch of holiday well-wishing cards to my co-workers earlier this week, though. I work at the Red Hen Baking Company, which just moved to Middlesex, VT (from Duxbury) a little over a month ago. I also work for Anne Davis, who is the artist who creates the greeting cards, calendars and now children's books for her company Anne Made Cards, which I used for the aforementioned holiday greetings.

Time to log off and relax on the couch with the latest issue of the New Yorker magazine.

Happy Solstice everybody!