Riverdale Farm, today, looking for turtles and snails.
I’ve been checking the news everyday, worrying, wondering when and where it will happen. It happened in my lovely city. Lisa tells her (more personal) story of being in Tel Aviv near where the bombing took place.
I was a soldier. I didn’t like it. I don’t have even ONE photo of myself in uniform. Although Israelis (man and woman) take this for granted – all of us served in the army - I realized that out of Israel the fact of me being a soldier truly surprises people. “You should write a book about it!” a bewildered Dutch friend once told me with enthusiasm.
Rachel, a photographer and a friend of a friend whom I didn’t see for more then a year (last time we met it was on Sheinkin street, she visiting from NYC me on my way to Toronto both of us lamenting the difficulties of the nomad’s life) has done an amazing photographic project on Israeli women soldiers. I was so happy to find her web site at Yahoo! Picks. Looking through her photographs I felt that somehow they manage to convey the unique reality of the Israeli society.
Reading Persepolis – a beautiful and highly recommended graphic novel telling "Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution." A guy I know from Daniel’s school excitedly approached me today: “I’ve seen you read Persepolis the other day on a porch in Mutual street (we were visiting friends). It’s exactly what happened to me! It’s my life story!” It took me a minute or two to understand what he was talking about but when I did it warmed my heart –how art enables us to connect and better understand each other. By reading the book I can understand what it was really like – being in Iran during that time – more than any news report could ever do. Reading that story enables me to understand where that friendly guy came from. He felt like sharing it with me because he saw me reading the book and thought that I might understand.
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