As usual, things around here are busy. I have been busy signing people up for our incredibly fabulous trip to Vietnam and Cambodia (leaving on November 24). I have shared our training experience with a French speaking guide who is going to be traveling with a French speaking group alongside our group. We will be visiting sites separately, but will be staying in hotels and taking flights together. Yesterday I had a particularly fantastic morning with my daughters. Rachel picked Leah and me up and drove us to Raanana where we enjoyed shopping at our favorite store (“Big Deal”) and stopped for some delicious felafel sandwiches enhanced by goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes.

Today, instead of biking at the gym, I went into the jacuzzi and steam room hoping to knock out this cough that has been with me for the last month. I think I was partially successful since although i am still coughing, it is less often.

*This afternoon, in an effort to make it possible to upload pictures to the web, my daughter Leah tried to upgrade me to a newer version of wordpress. To say that she ran into a nasty interface would be like saying that it got a little wet in Thailand when they had the tsunami. For a while, everything I had written in the last 3.5 years was lost in cyberspace. I madly began downloading Google’s cache of each month of the site. I have about 20 gazillion pages of text and didn’t get it all, but wonder of wonders, she got it all back!!!!

And… tonight I did something I have been waiting to do for a long time. I’ll give you a hint: It’s on a par with riding the ducks for treatment of depression. What? You guessed it? You must have seen it too…..

Mamma Mia!

It was silly and over the top, but I loved it. I love the music. I love the dancing. I even love the costumes and sets and photography. For the duration of the movie and the credits, I was in another place just having a really really good time. Oh, and Sir Kicksalot liked it too.

Love her or hate her, Sarah Palin is a person, a human being, a woman, a wife, a mother, someone who was elected to political office.

Since she was named as Senator McCain’s running mate, she has been ridiculed, termed “stupid”. slandered, and lied about. People have questioned her ability to perform in office and still be a good mother. Sandra Bernhard wanted her “gang-raped” (thought that was funny).

Is that the way we express discomfort with positions we don’t agree with? Is this reasoned discourse?

The main stream media are talking about her failed interview with Katie Couric. Did anyone really listen to the questions? to the tone?

The main stream media clearly have chosen their candidate, and everyone has the right to do that, but does that mean that they also have the right to ridicule and to tear down another human being? I almost can understand the Obama campaign’s need to neutralize her potentially powerful influence, but why do the media feel compelled to do it? What do they have to gain? How do the media conceptualize their job? Is there an ethical code? Does anybody care?

It’s another bright day. One summer, when my sister was visiting, I had the TV on and there was a weather person giving the forecast. My sister found it amusing. After all, she pointed out, what is there to say? “Hot and sunny today, sunny and hot tomorrow, outlook for the weekend, sunny and hot with hot and sunny weather predicted for the beginning of next week.” Actually, in recent years they have added that the temperatures are either “hotter than normal,” “normal, or “below normal.” Of course that presupposes that one knows what “normal” is. Here in the middle east the sun and heat are our permanent residents from some time in April or May until some time in October or November. And, as I have said in previous years, the first rainfall is met with smiles.

Our renovations have not yet begun. Two contractors have been here to see what we want done and to give us estimates on the work. Each spent a lot of time with us. One called us and said he could do parts of the work, but not all of it. The second has not gotten back to us at all. We have two more scheduled to come.

Of course with the end of the shmitta year coming up, I am very excited about the prospects of planting new flowers and shrubs and maybe even trees in our garden. The inability to improve the garden this year has left it looking kind of sad.

I also have been busy making yet another baby blanket. This one is for the adorable Mr. Elazar. The weather being what it is, I think he will be able to wait for it to be done without feeling too cold!

I am more aware than ever that I have a serious (and expensive) addiction: travel. We were away for 6 weeks and returned at the end of July. It is now the 24th of September and I really want to go away somewhere… anywhere. And the last few weeks have been anything but boring. We’ve had time with the grandchildren, visits with friends, two new little people joining the family, contact with old friends… It’s just this wanderlust that I have. I think about China and how happy I am when I am there. It is so very beautiful. I think of Vietnam and its quiet (except for Hanoi and Saigon) beauty. I think of Cambodia and the incredible temples of Angkor. And every memory makes me crave another trip even more!

I’m trying to understand it. I’m trying to understand why people are so frightened by Sarah Palin. Because I can only think that fear is driving otherwise rational people to write and speak in ways they themselves never would have dreamed they would.

I remember when Barry Goldwater was running for president. All of the people I knew were convinced that if he won, we would have a nuclear war. No one trashed him, mocked him, or denigrated him the way they are doing it to Sarah Palin. I don’t get it.

I don’t get that if she made a personal decision to continue a pregnancy with a child with disabilities that that means she would force others to make the same choice. She never said that. She never tried to impose her will on others. In fact, in good feminist tradition, she took control of her own body and decided what she wanted to do. Isn’t that “choice?”

But that isn’t the only thing people are angry at. They have hundreds of justifications for why she is unfit. I remember a long time ago one of my professors taught us that one reason is sufficient– and if there are a large number of reasons, then we call that rationalization.

What do *I* think? I am not sure it matters at all, except when I vote. I can tell you this: I am not afraid of Sarah Palin. I actually think that she is refreshingly real. And she surely is not what those who fear her make her out to be. If I were going to rant, she wouldn’t be the one I would rant about.