The top ten Christmas songs? From Silver Bells to White Christmas? All written by Jews. Case you didn’t know it.
Enjoy them, one by one, on YouTube. Unless there’s a piano in your house, in which case, there’s liable to be sheet music available for almost every one of them.
Not a big surprise, this, considering the history of American popular music is largely a Jewish one.
Although I think we can skip over Rap. Mercifully. Do the rappers do Christmas? Well they “sing” Ho, Ho, Ho a lot.
Can’t think of a better Christmas present for Texas than this idea of breeding Longhorns in Israel.
Longhorn meat eats sweet, has less cholesterol and calories than chicken, the animals thrive in hot, dry places like the Negev Desert where other cattle don’t, are disease resistant and docile (despite those wicked horns) and so can be herded on foot.
They even like to eat cactus.
The only condition: You can’t have Bevo. He (and his harem) are busy.
Only problem I see is the project guy doesn’t update his blog often. Get on it!
Watched the snow pelting down in Jerusalem last night on the Kotel Cam, so wasn’t surprised today to read in the Jerusalem Post that the holy city is getting smothered in up to 20 inches, its biggest snow storm in fifty years.
Even the usually-reliable Kotel Cam is down today, presumably a wiring problem a technician can’t get there to fix. Or the power is out. My Israeli blog pal Mr. Goon says the snow hasn’t made it to his town, which isn’t that far away as the Hoopoe flies. It has been cold enough (41 degrees, he said) and rainy for his wife to insist that he fire up the oil heater.
Our arctic snap in Austin is easing, with daytime temps in the 50s and a promised gradual “warming” into the low 60s by late next week when forecasters are betting that another arctic blast is likely, this time even colder. So no joy.
Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Rancho Roly Poly, Weather/Climate
“While you were sleeping the past generation, anti-Israel radicals took over much of academia. They now run groups like the Association for Asian American Studies, which was the first academic group in the U.S. to approve a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
“Now the American Studies Association National Council, the leadership of the organization, has endorsed the boycott and is putting the vote to the membership before putting the boycott into effect.”
Two of those “leaders” apparently are right here in Austin at the University of Texas : Ann Cvetkovich who teaches (what else) gender studies and, not incidentally, coedits GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
The other one is Jeremy Dean, a doctoral candidate in English who seems to specialize in race and ethnicity, part of the new radicalization of what used to be called, quaintly, literature.
Will either of them be endorsing future boycotts of Arab and Persian universities that discriminate against women, homosexuals, Jews and Christians? Silly question.
In the meantime you can support the Israeli economy and, thereby, Israel’s many universities (for such a small, beleaguered country) by buying these yummy Xmas gifts as presents. I did.
Or, to be more directly involved, plant some fruit trees in Israel. Or become a Guardian of Jerusalem. There are endless ways to fight back.
UPDATE: Some American universities, such as Columbia and Tufts, have declared themselves Israeli universities and invited the boycotters to boycott them, too. The University of Texas is not yet among them, however.
Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Texana
Tagged Ann Cvetkovich, boycotting Israel, Legal Insurrection, Taste From Israel
(A Reprise of a post from last year. Only a year? Seems longer. Or shorter.)
As Mrs. Charm, Mr. Boy and I return to Texas today (July 1, 2012) from our 10-day visit to Israel, here are some of the things (a few cribbed from this insider’s list) we’ll miss, in addition to my longtime blog-friend and host Snoopy-the-Goon and his family:
Diced cucumbers and tomatoes for breakfast.
An entire country slowly shutting down and settling into Shabbat around 4 pm, every Friday.
Seeing well-dressed young children on urban streets after dark, not always accompanied by an adult but apparently unafraid.
The generally friendly people who seldom failed to nod and say “Shalom,” very much like hearing “Howdy” in Texas.
The supply of beautiful women, with generous decolletage, neither of which ever seemed to run out.
Chez Stephanie B&B ski resort on the slopes of Mount Hermon where we stayed one night. Wonderfully cool temperatures after much lowland heat and humidity. It was late June, after all.
The brave young soldiers of the IDF, men and women, black and white, their automatic rifles slung over their shoulders at the mall and on the street. Even hitch-hiking, which they are no longer supposed to do.
Pretty sunsets and puffy clouds which easily rival the Texas ones.
The smell of eucalyptus at Bet She’an in the lower Galilee.
The steep, ancient rock path at Gamla which Mr. Boy’s encouragement (“just a little more way, dad”) finally got me up to the top without a heart attack.
The informal (“individual,” Snoopy says) way most Israelis dress most of the time.
Camel Crossing signs in the mountainous Negev Desert.
The thousands of prayer notes seeking help from G-d rolled up tightly and stuffed into crevices in the Kotel.
Ice cream on a stick for five shekels (about a dollar).
The funny way some of the lower-domination coins are larger than the higher-denomination ones.
The way drivers sat patiently, without honking, in an almost two-hour traffic jam in Jerusalem caused by forest fires whose smoke blanketed the main highway—but honked repeatedly in the hour-long jam caused by Russian PM Putin’s visit to the city.
Riding the Swiss cable car at Masada.
The hugely-generous buffet supper and breakfast at the Lot Hotel on the Dead Sea, and the colorful flowers in the courtyard at Gil’s Guest Rooms where we actually spent the night—even if the Wi-Fi had a poor signal and kept cutting out.
Those curious buttons on the tank tops of Israeli toilets: I finally figured out the difference between the two of them shortly before we left.
The round-abouts which make a lot more sense and are easier to use than the four-way stops in Texas, where no one can remember who is supposed to go first.
The juicy cucumbers you can eat like Popsicles without cutting them, one bite at a time.
Red-clay tile roofs on many residences and more all the time.
Roof-top water heaters which make a lot of sense in a country with so much sun. And would be smart in Central and South Texas, too.
Sparklers on restaurant birthday cakes.
Comments Off on Things we miss about Israel
Posted in Israel, Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana
Tagged Bet She'an, Chez Stephanie, Gamla, Israel, Kotel, Lot Hotel, things we miss about Israel
I don’t normally read detective fiction but I have long enjoyed the work of independent novelist David Chacko. So I picked up (digitally, on my Kindle) his 2008 Devil’s Feathers about a gruesome murder in a tourist town on Turkey’s Aegean coast.
I was rewarded, as always with David, with another good story superbly told and happy to see that the main character, Istanbul Police Inspector Onur Levent, is the subject of a series. That’s worthwhile because of my other reason for reading: to hear from David/Onur about Turkey’s unfortunate slide from Western sophistication to Eastern fundamentalism. It seems to be only skin-deep.
The modern Islamic state, which supplanted the older secular regime I knew as a teenager living in Ankara in 1961-63 (though it can still be glimpsed, at least in the novel, in the occasional framed office photograph of reformer Ataturk in evening dress) is worth understanding because its fundamentalist Islam has turned it from ally to antagonist of Israel and, by extension, of the Big Satan as well.
The turn-around, like the Islamic parties themselves, Levent informs us, are the result of the political rise of the rural village, where misogynistic (and presumably anti-Semitic) tradition has been reinforced by Koranic injunction. But the fundies still put up with teeny bikinis at the seaside for the foreign currency to supplement their older smuggling of drugs and etc. Thus Levent and his wife Emine represent the secular Turkey that still survives, clinging to what’s left of sophistication while taking care not to go too far. As such they are good guides to the new reality.
Posted in Israel, Library, The War
Tagged Attaturk, David Chacko, Devil's Feathers, Islamic Turkey
PJMedia’s Richard Fernandez does nice summaries sometimes and this one on our suspected-but-highly-unlikely Muslim president is a gem:
“The man has single handedly trashed the entire Arab world. Consider. The Muslim Brotherhood is hunted in Egypt, which is about to starve.. Libya is a Mad Max state. People are killing each other for all they are worth in Syria. Jordan and Lebanon are overrun by refugees. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are on the brink. Iraq has slid back into chaos. Afghanistan is due to be handed back to the Taliban. With any luck there will be nuclear war between Iran and Israel.”
Except for that last sentence, of course. Tel Aviv for Tehran is a trade no one needs. But it would be in keeping with this Halloween Horror Story.
Posted in Afghanistan, Blogosphere, Iraq, Israel, Obamalot, The War
Tagged our suspected Muslim president, PJMedia, Richard Fernandez
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
