Hi all, Thanks for all of those sweet comments to my last entry, and thanks especially to all those mysterious anonymous people out there who are following our continuing adventures on the dry continent. I have been busier than busy for the last two weeks, including a baby naming, the festival of Purim, a funeral, a number of sick congregants, two upcoming weddings, and a whopping six conversions--three here in Adelaide, and three in Perth. It was those three conversions that found me in Western Australia for 24 1/2 hours, not including three hours' flying time each way.
Standards of the Council for Progressive Rabbis mandate that at least two rabbis be present as a conversion candidate is interviewed by a Beit Din--a religious court. The Beit Din comes at the very end of a process which lasts at least a year and often two. It is quite rare for a person to be turned away by the Beit Din after already completing several written assignments on top of many months of study and participation in the synagogue community. Temple David, the progressive synagogue of Perth, currently has no rabbi, although they are currently at the end of their interview process and hope to have a rabbi soon. In the meantime, I wasy the closest progressive rabbi at a mere 1700 miles away, so I hopped on an airplane to join the synagogue's consulting rabbi Fred Morgan from Melbourne.
I had two goals for the long flight: to fly over the famed Nullarbor Plain and to see a movie. I didn't get either wish. The plane flies over the Southern Ocean for much of the journey and only turns north towards land when the great emptiness of the Nullarbor has been left behind to be replaced by farm land closer to Perth. I waited patiently for the flight attendants to start walking through the cabins with earphones for hire, but no such luck. Time was when everyone got to choose to see or ignore the same movie,which was played on a video player on the plane. No longer. Australian airlines mostly depend on the Foxtel Cable service to provide both short TV shows and pay-per-view movies. Depending on which flight attendant I asked, I heard there was no video service on the plane either because a) the plane was new, and it hadn't yet been outfitted with the right antenna and equipment or b) there is no reception between Adelaide and Perth. Either way, three hours of silence.
I found Perth quite underwhelming. A wave of urban renewal tore through the city in last century and swept away a large number of its beautiful old buildings. Only a small handful remain, and they are dwarfed by blocks of concrete and glass highrise office buildings and condos. My evening hosts, veteran Temple David teacher and mentor Helen Bryant and her husband Harry, gave me a driving tour through the city and up to beautiful Kings Park beyond it. Thank goodness they've mostly left the park alone! We had dinner at their favourite Greek restaurant, then off for an early bedtime to compensate for the disorienting 90 minutes time change.
I was up at 7:00 a.m. the next day and still felt like I was sleeping in! Time for a final read-through of the conversion candidates' essays, a leisurely breakfast in the dining room, and a walk. The lovely Swan River winds through the city, but from my hotel it was quite difficult to get to the paved footpath that runs next to it. I found the one stoplight with a pedestrian crossing in the vicinity and so made it across the busy expressway that parallels the river. But of course I could only walk so far before I had to just turn around and walk back the same way I had come.
Residents and visitors to Perth alike are spooked by the city's traffic,and so I was delivered to the airport a full two hours before my plane was due to leave. Plenty of time for a wander, a very delicious dinner of beer-battered fish and chips,and souvenirs for the kids. Shopping for tchotchkes in an airport is pretty depressing, especially since I have a sense that the Chinese manufacturers just take off the Adelaide tag and slap on a Perth label. I finally settled on to half-snow-globe refrigerator magnets with a cartoon view of downtown Perth and the river. The kids were absolutely delighted!
Can I share a secret with you? I check in at my blog site several times each week, in the forlorn hope that someone out there has written a comment on an entry. Thanks to all of you who have, and particularly to Auntie Em who has been the most faithful correspondent of all. (Even though I get to speak with her by phone an average of once each week!)
After 2 1/2 years of this, I'm beginning to fear that I'm actually sending my blog entries off into a vast void of cyberspace. I worry that the only audience I'm writing for is me. I've tried including a stat counter in my template, but that somehow never seems to work. I'd like to know who's been reading what I have to say so I can know if it's worthwhile continuing. There will always be plenty to fill up the available time.
So, if you're out there and have a minute to post a quick comment letting me know you're reading what I'm writing, that would be quite reassuring. Just post a "hello" or even a "g'day" and maybe write a word of introduction. Thanks for reading--and writing!
WOMADelaide is one of the world's great music festivals. It sources its musicians from Womad, the mother of all world music festivals, and so has access to the very best musicians in the world. The festival takes place over the first weekend in March at Botanic Park, directly across the street from the synagogue. At services at 6:00 p.m. on the Friday, we hear the alluring rhythms drift in and call us out to dance.
Two factors had kept me away from Womadelaide until this year: the cost and the weather. The cost is significant--$180 for a single weekend pass at the group rate. For those who attend all 30 hours of the festival, it's only $6 per hour, which is quite a deal. But that's more than I'd ever paid for a single entertainment experience, and I was a bit daunted. Even more daunting is the issue of the weather. There is just no way of predicting what the weather will feel like doing in early March. In many years, this week marks the return of rain, and concert-goers sit through the performances huddled under rainslickers and blackets. Last year, infamously, the temperature stayed above 105 for the entire weekend. I have one congregant who was so heartbroken at the miserable weather that she decided not to buy a ticket for this year. I joined with a group of Beit Shalom members and purchased my ticket in mid-February, then watched the weather reports fretfully in the days leading up to the big event. The weather was absolutely perfect--warm, but not hot days, and cool nights. As services concluded on Friday evening, I strapped on my concert wristband, strapped on my knapsack (complete with water bottle, snacks, sweater, insect repellant, tissues, and more), and strolled across the street to my first Womadelaide.
The music was just fantastic, and so, for the most part, were the crowds. By the end of the weekend, I had developed serious ISSUES with cellphones and digital cameras. Transcript of a tyypical cellphone conversation, generally during the first song of a performance: "Hello?! Can you hear me?! Okay! I'm about fifteen metres from the stage. I'm holding a glass of beer in the air and waving. I can see you! Can you see me now?! I can see you! Can you see me?!" And so on. And then there were the digital cameras. Here is the technique employed by most would-be photographers: take out your sleek little camera, elbow your way through the crowd until you're standing in front of a much shorter person (me, for example). Now hold your camera at a 45 degree angle up from your face so that you can capture your own personal, grainy and fuzzy video of the artist performing and post it to You Tube along with 35 other grainy and fuzzy versions.
Favourite Womadelaide moments: The quiet and graceful performance by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. This extraordinary singer-songwriter from a small island off the far top end of Australia was the one performer I'd heard of in advance of the festival. It was my privilege and pleasure to crowd in with perhaps 10,000 other listeners enjoying his gorgeous music. And, by contrast, there was Rokia Traore, the stunningly beautiful, infectiously joyous singer from Mali. She started playing at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday and played straight through until 11:15 p.m. She displayed more verve and energy in her spectacular 20 minute encore than she had at the start of the show, which I consider a major accomplishment. It was a terrific ending for the weekend.
Ultimately, I had a very mixed Womadelaide experience. My ticket entitled me to bring along children for free, and I had been looking forward to a splendid weekend with the kids. But neither Yonatan nor Nadav showed any interest in sitting down and listening to the music. They wanted to get their faces painted and partake of the crafts workshops I'd failed to sign them up for in advance. When I dared to suggest that maybe it might be nice to listen to one of the performers, they were deeply offended.They endured Womadelaide for three hours on Saturday, and then I hauled them home for a night of old cartoons on Disney while I blissed out on Gurrumul and the Australia Dance Company.
And then, late on Sunday morning I was struck by the worst rabbinic occupational hazard: I received word that a much beloved member of the synagogue had suddenly died, and everything sort of collapsed. After spending time with his family, I was compelled by powerful forces to hang out with the kids, which meant not going to Womadelaide. We spent a pleasant afternoon watching a busker out for the Adelaide Fringe and wandering through the Botanic Gardens, with music from Womadelaide drifting in. I made it back for the last four hours of the festival, which was plenty joyous and provided lots of opportunities for therapeutic dancing and yelling--most of all, during Rokia Traore's performance!
Both Yonatan and Nadav had a terrific weekend. Yonatan travelled two hours northeast to the Riverland for a full weekend Scout camp. He engaged in all manner of water-related activities, including sailing, canoeing, and splashing around in the billabong (pond). I threw his camp clothes directly in the washing machine and made an earnest effort not to smell them. Nadav mourned Yonatan's departure and complained bitterly that his brother had abandoned him. To cheer him up, I arranged for him to sleep over at a friend's house Saturday night. The result was that Bobby and I suddenly found ourselves childless for an entire night for the first time since we'd moved to Australia 2 1/2 years ago.
Having a night to ourselves while both the Adelaide Film Festival and Adelaide Fringe were in full swing felt a lot like an early birthday present. We lingered over the two catalogues trying to decide what to do with our free evening. We briefly considered the play "My Life as a Worm," which was described as follows: "Aldous Huxley's Brave New World meets Vanilla Sky on acid! An experimental theatre piece about a world where human worms suffocate in dreams transmitted by corporations." Bobby decided against it, arguing that he would like at least the possibility of enjoying himself at whatever cultural offering we chose. Ultimately, we decided on "Stella," a French film about the sad life of an 11 year-old Parisian girl whose parents are too busy looking after their pub and boarding house to pay attention to her. Bobby wondered how the director decided when to end the movie. He guessed that she had run out film.
The movie itself was someone incidental to the excitement of the evening. We strolled down Rundle Street to the theatre, and the sidewalk was so choked with people that we sometimes had to wait our turn to keep walking. The cafes and pubs were full and exploding with noise on a magnificently cool and clear evening. We picked up our tickets and joined an enormously long line of hip-looking people waiting to file into the theatre. As we made our way back to the car after the movie, the sidewalks were even more crowded and the cafes noisier than before. Theatre-goers were lined up at various points on the street, waiting to push into second-floors of restaurants where late-night shows were soon to start. I really felt like I'd done something beyond my normal plain of existence.
Adelaide is transformed only once each year, as thousands of tourists descend on our festivals and Adelaide natives venture into the city for a heavy dose of culture. I wish there were some way to sustain the buzz year round, but I don't think we could handle it. In the midst of the world economic crisis, it was quite reassuring to see thousands of people having a night on the town. Our economy can sure use the boost.
A few choice quotes from recent days: "[Opposition spokesman on Climate Change] Andrew Robb says the government's climate change policy is deeply flawed, it will damage business, and he also makes the point there's deep splits in the cabinet over the policy, and that your policy is a dog. What's your reaction to this?" --ABC Radio National host Fran Kelly interviewing Climate Change Minister Penny Wong
"I must admit that I did want to see the member for Warringah (Tony Abbott) making a comeback. In a choice between macho and mincing, I would have gone for macho myself. And obviously the Leader of the Opposition (Malcolm Turnbull), faced with the choice of a doberman or poodle, has gone for the poodle." --Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, commenting on Malcolm Turnbull's decision to appoint MP Christopher Pyne over Toby Abbott for a leadership role.
Sometimes, politics in Australia is just so gosh darn fun. They have this great institution called "question time" in parliament, which is when parliamentarians get to stand at the microphone and hurl insults at each other. Julia Gillard seems to be particularly gifted in this regard. Peter Costello is a powerhouse Liberal politician who seems to toy constantly with the idea of taking on more of a leadership role. Many believe former prime minister Paul Keating hit the nail on the head when he commented, "He's all tip and no iceberg." Upon the publication of his memoirs, Ms. Gillard remarked to parliament: "We await this great entry into the literary world - a book with spine from a politician without one. Mr Speaker, you would be aware that sometimes there are movies that fail so badly they go straight to DVD - well I'm betting this one goes straight to paperback. Won't be a very hard spine when that one's published."
It's quite a cultural shift after the polite culture of the United States Congress, where everyone is friends--i.e., "my friend the senator from Washington" and "my friend the representative from Pennsylvania." Ultimately, party politics in the United States are a lot more brutal, even if everyone is a lot nicer to each other in public. Maybe they need the group therapy of Question Time to get out their aggressions. My favourite part of question time is when the house speaker growlss the sacred word "Order!" as if it's actually going to happen.
For sure the politicians display an awareness that Question Time can be a less-than-edifying experience. In the week following the horrendous bushfires in Victoria, all parties in parliament agreed to suspend Question Time and read statements of condolences instead. Certainly the sight of grown men and women saying nasty things about each other would have done little to comfort the hundreds of people who had lost loved ones and the thousands who had lost their homes. Over two weeks have passed now, and the gloves have come back off.
These last several weeks have been a particularly enjoyable time for political fireworks. The opposition Liberal party seems to be in the process of imploding. The latest stoush (to show off my knowledge of Australian slang) came when conservative Liberal MP Cory Bernardi was removed from his prominent leadership position after it came to light that he had dissed his more politically liberal colleague Christopher Pyne in a blog sent to supporters. He accused Pyne of political opportunism and claimed that Pyne had stated that the only reason he'd run as a Liberal politician was because the district he represented was unlikely ever to elect a Labour candidate. Opportunistic politicians?! Perish the thought! Locally, we are quite pleased with MP Pyne's rise through the ranks. The district he represents includes Massada College, and I've gotten to meet him on several public occasions. He even called me to apologise for missing my induction ceremony two years ago. Nice guys should go far.
The other local politician who's seen his name in lights recently is Nick Xenephon. Mr. Xenephon is not a member of parliament; he is a senator. I didn't even know that Australia had a senate until I moved here. Currently, parliament is dominated by the Labor party, and it tends to rubber stamp all legislation that the Labor prime minister presents. Then the legislation moves to the Senate for final approval and often gets voted down. The Liberal and National party coalition in the Senate holds a majority of the seats, but the Labour party has the ability to bypass them by convincing senators from other parties to support their legislation. Like in the Israeli Knesset, this can mean that small parties end up with a big voice. Mr. Xenephon is not even affiliated with a party, but it was his one vote which offered an opportunity for PM Kevin Rudd to pass his stimulus package last week. He quickly became the most powerful man in Australia and a local hero in his home state of South Australia. Senator Xenephon did ultimately vote in favour of the bill. But his yes vote came only after he had exacted commitments from the federal government to deliver desperately-needed funds to shore up the Murray River, which is rapidly dying in this ongoing drought.
And that's all for your tutorial on Australian politics for this week.
The one newspaper I buy each week is The Weekend Australian, and it usually takes me the full week to read through it. This week it sat in a corner of the dining room like the artifact of history it was. The lead stories of diggers in Afghanistan, of the economic stimulus package, of efforts by New South Wales to divert the Snowy River, all seem quaintly dated. They speak of a time when we didn’t know the potential for winds and heat to unleash a destructive force such as this land has never seen. When I pick up that newspaper, I feel a deep sense of loss, of change, of awakening. The feeling brings me back to the morning of September 11, 2001, when my consuming thought was gratitude for a stunningly beautiful autumn day. How could I know that within the hour I would discover a darkness in the world that I had never imagined could be there. This last week has brought with it that same dreadful sense of discovery.
Like everyone else in Australia, I have seen much of this last week pass in a fog. I carry on with my work, but in the silences in between I am haunted by the unending stream of images, of words, of stories. Most of all, I am haunted by what no one lived to witness--the deaths of so many in a terrifying way. Nature, that gentle nurturing force we sometimes call Mother, turned on us more viciously than anyone has ever seen, and it is difficult to escape the impression that nothing is quite the same anymore. I sent an e-mail to colleagues in Melbourne expressing my sympathy. I had to note that had the wind blown differently on that day, we would now be burying our dead along with those in Victoria. Events like this drive home to us how perilous our existence can be, whether we are threatened by fire or flood, heat or cold. What’s more, the strength and brutality of the Victorian bushfires leave us with a profound sense that something is wrong in our world. Fires this terrible should not be happening. Something new has been unleashed, and we long to be able to hide it away again.
This week’s parshah, famously, sees the Israelites standing at Mount Sinai to receive God’s gracious gift of the ten commandments. The text describes how the people stood b’tachtit ha’har. This is a phrase which is translated as “at the foot of the mountain” but which can literally mean “under the mountain.” The rabbis wove a wry midrash in which God picks up the mountain, holds it over the heads of the Israelites, and asks them, “Will you accept these teachings?” At which point the people declare in one voice, “All that God has spoken we will do!” On one level, the story is a clever way of interpreting the problematic Hebrew. On another level, however, it points to a troubling discovery for our ancestors. Prior to this, they have experienced God as a destructive force for the Egyptians, but benevolent to them. God has protected their first-born sons and brought them through a mighty sea on dry land. Now God is revealed as capricious, threatening, unpredictable. God’s bond to them is conditional on their faithfulness, and it is clear the consequences for disobedience may be dreadful. The people huddle together under the dark mass of Mount Sinai and wonder what the future will bring.
This week finds all of us huddling together, mourning our losses, and fretting over the future. The good news is that we are not standing silently by. We see time and time again that catastrophe brings to light the secret goodness that is stored within. The Red Cross is overwhelmed not only with donations of money, but also by those offering to give blood, to buy groceries, to send clothes, to repair homes, to shelter homeless families. Typical for this somewhat argumentative society, debates are raging about how best to prevent such a disaster from ever happening again. The discussions are painful, but I believe they will ultimately result in a more unified and scientically-sound approach in fighting bushfires and saving lives. We are doing what we can. I only wish there was more we could do.
Our heatwave has finally come to an end. We lived through one last brutally hot day on Friday. At 8:00 p.m. it was still 103 degrees! I heard Hobbes meowing like crazy, and found him perched as high on a chair in the living room as he could get: he had spotted a small brown lizard on the ceiling and was hoping that gravity would intervene on his behalf. Bobby cheerfully spotted another refugee from the heat clinging to the curtains: a Huntsman spider. At least it was on the small side: ONLY three inches long or so! Bobby managed to imprison it in a jar and placed it gingerly on the kitchen counter so the boys could admire it in the morning. Yonatan declined to look, and Nadav asked that night if we suspected there were any more Huntsman spiders lurking in the house.
I worried about the wind change predicted to sweep through Adelaide on Saturday, but it arrived quite gently. Over the course of the afternoon and evening, the temperature dropped from 105 degrees down to the low 70s. I awoke today to a blissfully cool morning and even a few miraculous drops of rain on the road.
But this was not a truly happy ending. While South Australia enjoyed a slow and gentle weather change, our next-door state of Victoria was enduring record-breaking heat and ferocious winds, along with dreaded lightning strikes. Dozens of fires broke out across the state during Saturday afternoon, and the winds whipped them into horrifying walls of flame. We awoke today to the news that at least 40 people had died. Over the course of the day the toll has risen to 84 and is predicted to rise further. We are witnessing the deadliest bushfires in Australia's history.
Many in my community can tell tales of the last day of horror: the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983. Those fires ravaged the Adelaide Hills and killed 75 people in Victoria and South Australia, including 14 firefighters. A lot has been learned from that experience, and all firefighters so far are safe and accounted for. But the ferocity of yesterday's fires made it difficult for locals to get out of their homes in time or to stay safe once their homes caught fire. Entire towns of have been wiped off the map, and the photos look to me reminiscent of some of the worst tornado strikes in the United States. The Australian has provided dozens of photos, as well as audio slideshows narrated by journalists who are clearly struggling to keep their composure.
At the same time, the northern part of Queensland has been decimated by line after line of monsoonal storms that have dropped a meter of rain in the last week. A journalist visiting the region reported that more of Queensland was underwater than above it. Residents of the hard-hit town of Ingham are reeling now that they have been hit by flooding for the second time in a week; another seven inches of rain fell overnight, and the local river crested once again. However, local residents interviewed on national radio played down the misery they were experiencing when compared with what is unfolding in Victoria. Roads and homes can always be replaced, they said. Lives can't.
Here in Adelaide, we are weathering our second annual once-in-a-century heatwave. Has it been a hundred years already? If you missed last year's record-breaking heatwave, I wrote about it at length in early March. That was when we had fifteen straight days with daytime temperatures over 95 degrees. It turns out that this was the milder form of heatwave. We are in day seven of our current odyssey, and the temperature has exceeded 104 degrees (40 F) every day. Wednesday was the third hottest day ever recorded in Adelaide--a breath-taking 114 degrees. Happily, the temperature has been dipping every so slightly since that day, and today it didn't even go above a balmy 104. To add insult to injury, the road crew which has been busily digging up our street for the last month or so picked last week to put in the new curbs, and so we've been exiled from our driveway until they finish. This may take some time, since at the moment the crew only works from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and knocks off when the heat becomes too intense. What this means is that we have to walk down the street or around the corner to the car. It only takes two or three minutes, but that's a long time when the heat is this severe.
I've tried to go about my normal routines, but I admit my brain isn't functioning fully. I needed to call a Jewish book publisher in the United States during their office hours, but didn't remember to call them until Friday morning. Others are equally foggy. I think there may be a survival function that kicks in, and bits the brain considers voluntary like remembering what to pick up at the supermarket get set aside. As I noted in my sermon on Friday night, I've become a great deal pushier than usual. I insisted on halting our Shabbat morning service before the Torah reading and called for a water break. I've actually told an elderly congregant off for failing to keep her air conditioner running all the time. What happened to the nice shrinking violet I usually am?
The kids don't go back to school until tomorrow, which means we have had the pleasure of their (grumpy) company during this time. Right now they're sleeping in the living room, although the bedroom wing of the house is much more livable than it was last summer thanks to the second window air conditioner we snatched up on e-bay on Tuesday night. (Just in time!) But somehow the cool air just isn't reaching their room, so they're enjoying a camping out ADVENTURE!
Water has figured prominently in our lives this week. We invited ourselves over to a friend's pool one evening, and yesterday afternoon spent a lovely 90 minutes splashing around at our public pool. It's tough when the temperature is over 100 degrees: I was cool from the neck down, but my head was quite hot, and I had to keep wetting down my face to remain relatively happy. On Saturday evening, we trekked down to West Beach to play in the surf. The parking lot at this normally quiet beach was absolutely packed. The beach wasn't. I have yet to see a crowded beach in South Australia; the beaches are just too big to fill up. There were hundreds of people there, but they were spread up and down hundreds of meters of beach, and there was room for all. The ocean water was incredibly warm, although the waves were rough enough that I got sand inside my bathing suit just from standing in the surf. The kids got to ride their body boards again and were happy, and the inside of our car is already hopelessly sandy, so no more damage done.
We are eagerly anticipating the arrival of a cool change sometime on Saturday, with temperatures early next week in the high 70s. Only four more 100+ days to go!
In August of 1963, my parents had an argument. A large rally for jobs, justice, and peace was planned on the Mall in Washington, DC, only a few miles from their home. Hundreds of thousands of people were expected to gather to hear fromprominent civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My mother was keen to attend. My father felt it was a bad idea. There were rumors that some of the demonstrators might resort to violence, and he feared for her safety. In a typical early-60s moment, he declared that the wisest course of action was for her to go to work, and for him to attend alone. My mother went off to work fuming, while my father joined with an estimated crowd of 200,000 to hear Dr. King deliver his iconic “I have a dream” speech. He still has the button from that day. I do believe my mother has now forgiven him.
This last week, my parents had another argument. My father wanted to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama. My mother felt it was too cold, and my father isn’t as young as he used to be. This time, she stayed home by choice, invited friends over, and opened a bottle of champagne. My father, meanwhile, dressed in seven layers, arrived at the Mall at around 8:00 a.m. and stood in the cold until 11:00 a.m waiting for the official events to start up. When I spoke with him to get a report, he had a difficult time articulating the experience, but clearly it was an extraordinary one. Apparently, nearly five hours of -6 degrees was in no way uncomfortable or boring, since a carnival atmosphere prevailed. The people around him were dancing and singing, and the spirit of celebration was warm enough to melt any frozen hearts. He was absolutely elated to have been a part of things.
I can think of few times in my lifetime when people around the world have felt connected by a single, transforming event. The last time was the 2004 Tsunami, and before that was September 11. But how many times have we seen the world caught up in a sense of joy and hope? In her column in the New York Times, Gail Collins described her experience of the inaguration as “Woodstock without the mud.” But she wrote “The big difference was in the national reaction. The only people who felt unified during Woodstock were those who were there — everybody else was horrified or jealous. But the inauguration left the whole country glued together emotionally, one big American ball of hope.”
And, of course, we know that ball of hope extended far beyond the shores of the United States. I listened on Wednesday as callers to 891 Adelaide with strong Aussie accents reported climbing out of bed at 3:00 a.m. to watch the inaguration. I confess I slept through it. But I have been deeply touched and moved to see how this one day in world history seems to have gone a long way in moving citizens of the world to believe we are entering an era of renewed American leadership and integrity. I hope it will be so.
1963 was two years before I was born. The whole school photograph taken when I was in year eight and now displayed on my Facebook page shows a remarkably integrated student body, with faces of every colour. Segregation and prejudice have never been a part of my personal story. But together with the rest of the world, I share a pride and sense of ownership in the triumph of a political and national sensibility that has allowed an African-American to ascend to the most powerful office in the world less than fifty years after the Voting Rights Act made it illegal to keep blacks from voting. It is my victory as well.
My hope and prayer now is that we will see a revolution around the world that will sweep the disenfranchised into public office. Perhaps now we will see Tunisians elected in France, Pakistanis elected in England, and maybe even Koreans elected in Japan. Australia has come a long way since it ended the White Australia policy, but we have yet to see a prime minister who doesn’t have a distinctly British last name. Who will shatter that glass ceiling here?
In this week’s Torah portion, Moses and Aaron take up in earnest the daunting task of persuading Pharoah to free the Jewish people from slavery. Although Moses has been brought up as royalty, he and Aaron speak as slaves to the most powerful man in the world. They triumph in the end, but only because of God’s supernatural intervention. One reason the story resonates so strongly is that the odds are so thoroughly stacked against a nation of slaves winning its freedom. The story of President Obama’s rise has the same mythical quality to it. Aside from the colour of his skin, I am surprised and delighted to see the United States under the leadership of a man bearing such an exuberantly ethnic name. For me, the most remarkable moment in the inauguration came when the deeply conservative Chief Justice Roberts recited the words, “Repeat after me: I Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear.”
None of this changes the perilous situation of the world, and of the United States in particular. But hope can be a powerful weapon against despair, and we certainly need it now.
On the first day of the Obama administration, it seems somewhat self-serving to write about our summer vacation. I'm sorry to have missed the thrill of watching Barack Obama take the presidential oath and deliver his address live, but it was 3:30 a.m. local time. I went to bed in the Bush administration and awoke, I hope, to a whole new world.
We did have a lovely, uneventful holiday in Goolwa, which is about 1 1/4 hours from Adelaide. For the second time, we rented a house from Dodd and Page, the venerable real estate agency in the Fleurieu Peninsula. The contract requires that the house be thoroughly cleaned before departure, which makes for a somewhat frantic final morning. But in exchange, it's possible to rent a lovely home at a far lower rate than we'd pay to stay in a caravan park or motel. We loved the little two bedroom cottage where we spent a very happy week. In fact, it had a number of details (working microwave, heater in the bathroom, oven that doesn't need to be locked shut) that we wouldn't mind having in our house in Adelaide. The only thing it didn't have that we really would have appreciated was insulation. On our first full day, the outside temperature hit 106 degrees, and the house itself heated up astonishingly in a fairly short period. When a gusty change blew through that night at about 2:30 a.m., the house temperature plummetted, and I ran around throwing blankets over everyone. Aside from that, it was wonderful.
I felt like I'd died and landed in a bird sanctuary. A number of native trees in our front yard attracted huge numbers of native birds. Clouds of rainbow lorikeets flew in late in the afternoon, to be replaced by very noisy and much bigger galahs at twilight. Here is a rather dim photo I shot of the birds from our front porch:
The cottage was priced extremely competitively presumably because it wasn't within walking distance the beach. However, it was a pleasant five minute walk to the shockingly shallow Murray River, whose fate is argued over just about daily on the pages of our local newspapers. The jetties are currently all on dry land, as are a number of house boats. If the country of Australia can make some painful decisions, hopefully the day will come soon when the river flows again. In the meantime, Goolwa itself has fallen on hard times. We saw a lot of homes for sale, and a number of shops in Goolwa's business district are for sale. That is too bad, because in general Goolwa is a lovely place to visit. Its beach is magnificent--miles and miles of smooth sand and gorgeous surf. Its prices are not inflated, it has a very nice public library, and a most excellent microbrewery. We contrasted it with Victor Harbor, which is the far better-known tourist destination. We spent just a few hours there, but were put off by the huge crowds of people and the high prices. I did take this photo there, shortly after the boys enjoyed their first bumper car ride ($7 each!).
After our 106 degree day, the temperatures fell abrubtly, and it was another three days before it was warm enough to even consider swimming. Yonatan discovered the thrill of body boarding and became keen to attack waves considerably taller than him.
Elements may conspire to prevent us from taking a beach holiday next year, but for sure we'll be back when we have the chance!
It has been a difficult and painful two weeks. I fluctuate between ignoring the news completely and compulsively checking the internet for news about the Middle East (my preferred websites are The Jewish Daily Forward, The New York Times, and the English translation of Israel's Ha'aretz. There is no inner harmony to be found in the midst of agony and devastation. I mourn for the Palestinian children killed and for the suffering of many others. At the same time I feel for a colleague of mine in Ashkelon who suffers chest pains of anxiety during a simple eight-minute walk to the supermarket and maps out her days based solely on the location of the nearest bomb shelter.
Nor am I free to process my opinions and feelings on my own, since each new day brings news of more demonstrations against Israel--against its actions, but mostly against the reality of the country itself. David Forman wrote brilliantly in The Jerusalem Post about how only Israel's existence is regularly challenged, and not the dozens of other countries artificially constructed in the last century and barely holding together. I stand with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who asks why no one in the Moslem world ever protests against the Moslem terrorists who indiscriminately blow up Moslems and non-Moslems alike and nurture a culture of death. If I was to join a protest today, it would be for the African Union to do SOMETHING in Zimbabwe before there are no people left there to save. The human cost in the Gaza Strip has been horrific, but more children will die of cholera and starvation today in Zimbabwe than have been killed in two weeks of Israeli attacks.
When I'm not glued to my computer or the newspaper, I'm planning my escape. We continue to be blessed with remarkably gorgeous moderate summer temperatures, and I think I can even survive Tuesday's predicted high of of 41 degrees (106 degrees Fahrenheit), since the temperatures for the rest of that week will be quite comfortable. The air is fresh and clear, and the evenings are delightfully cool. Nadav had a terrific time at his birthday party at a local indoor play centre and is counting down the hours to his actual birthday on Tuesday. Yonatan and I have spent a fantastic ten days or so reading Salman Rushdie's book "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which may well be one of the greatest children's books ever. We've been to the movies, visited the pool, and caught up on Doctor Who.
Mostly, I am gearing up for the start of our beach holiday tomorrow. We rented a little house in the seaside town of Goolwa way back in early August and are now looking forward to a full seven days away from the internet and the other demands on daily life. I'll let you know all about it when we return.
"She's really spoiling us," Yonatan whispered to me. We were at the home of Rabbi Aviva Kipen, who was serving us a lavish morning tea of delicious cannolis from the local Italian bakery, personal plum puddings for the kids, and even a Lindt chocolate ball for each of them! Aviva was the eighth and last rabbi of our Melbourne visit. She asked Bobby if he was all "rabbi-ed out," although I must commend him on his good behaviour during our trip! And it didn't hurt that all the rabbis were such warm and welcoming hosts.
We attended services Friday evening at Temple Beth Israel in St. Kilda--the mother of all progressive synagouges in Melbourne. I was amazed at the crowd of people who had gathered for the only Shabbat during Chanukah. Yonatan and Nadav were handed tin chanukah menorahs as we entered and rushed to the front of the sanctuary to light candles for the sixth night. Within a few minutes, the front of the sanctuary was blazing with the light of at least a hundred chanukiot (which, we later learned, scorched one of the tablecloths rather badly!). We were welcomed with big hugs by senior Rabbi Fred Morgan, and by the husband-and-wife team of Gersh Zylberman and Rayna Gevurtz, along with their adorable daughters Adira and Noa. Fred and his wife Sue had invited us to their home for Shabbat dinner, where we spent a lovely evening.
We spent part of Sunday afternoon at the home of Rabbi Ehud Bandel, who heads of the sole Conservative-affiliated synagogue in all of Australia, Kehilat Nitzan. This was a high point for the boys, because Ehud let them play on his kids' Wii for an hour. I was enormously relieved when we returned to Adelaide that Yonatan and Nadav didn't report this to be the best thing they did in Melbourne: they still considered the museum visits to be superior!
The big reason for our voyage to Melbourne was to attend the bat mitzvah of Naomi Keren-Black, daughter of Rabbi Jonathan and Sue Keren-Black. The bat mitzvah celebration took place on Saturday morning at the Leo Baeck Centre in East Kew--a bit of a travel adventure, but one that ended happily at this lovely little synagogue. Naomi sang like an angel, chanted her Torah portion beautifully, and gave a lovely speech. (As an aside, one of the really terrific things Naomi did was to request donations in honour of her bat mitzvah to Nothing but Nets, a project of the United Nations to provide mosquito nets in areas of the world plagued by malaria. By the time of her bat mitzvah, almost 200 nets had been donated through the website!) All during this moving service, Yonatan and Nadav were bouncing off their seats and demanding, "Is it almost over?!" I often think my kids take great price in being the worst behaved children attending services; it seems to be an occupational hazard for the children of rabbis. I find myself increasingly thinking about Yonatan's bar mitzvah, which is a mere three years away. It was very easy to put myself in Jonathan's shoes and imagine myself guiding my own son through the process I've facilitated for so many dozens of other kids. At the lunch afterwards, I met up with Rabbi John Levi, the emeritus rabbi of Temple Beth Israel who is something of a legendary figure--he was the first Australian-born Jew to be ordained a rabbi. I also met his grandchildren Joshua and Amy, and looked forward to seeing them again at the reception the following evening.
The bat mitzvah reception was quite a treat, since it was held on the observation deck of the Rialto Towers, 823 feet off the ground. Nadav was absolutely bewitched by the spectacular views, and he quickly found someone else equally interested in gazing out at the scenery: Rabbi Levi's granddaughter Amy. Nadav and Amy spent the entire evening together, noses pressed to the glass, eating dinner together, and talking very seriously. Of course, Nadav was operating at reduced energy because of his injured elbow, but this somehow improved the charm factor. Amy's mother and I are already planning the wedding in 16 years or so, but we realise there might be a bump or two along the road to true love!
It was at the reception that I finally had a chance to talk to Jonathan's sister-in-law Helen Freeman, who is also a rabbi. Helen is one of three rabbis serving the enormous West London Synagogue--2000 families, or about 5000 members. (By contrast, Beit Shalom has perhaps 150 adult members!) It was an absolute pleasure to meet her and have just a bit of time to share experiences.
We've now been back in Adelaide for nearly a week, and life is settling back in to its normal summer routine. We celebrated the new year at Brighton beach, with a modest fireworks display at 9:30 p.m. We have enjoyed an unusually cool summer so far, although for sure that won't last. More news will follow shortly, since Nadav's birthday party is this afternoon!
Adelaide is a place of many charms, including its magnificent beaches, fascinating Central Market, cool city walking mall, and excellent art museums. However, it does not have a single museum with interactive exhibits. Melbourne has two: Scienceworks and the Melbourne Museum. Yonatan and Nadav were lucky enough to enjoy two fantastic children's museums in Pittsburgh, and they'd missed the experience terribly. As far as they were concerned, this was the main thing that had brought us to Melbourne in the first place.
On Friday, we spent a relaxed morning in our cabin and walking the shore in Williamstown (and eating some really excellent pizza). It was Boxing Day--December 26-- so Bobby decided to bypass the museum and instead take the train into Melbourne to do a little clothing shopping. Big Mistake! He spent several horrible hours jammed into the city's main department store with thousands of other shoppers. He couldn't even get close enough to the clothes to ponder buying any, and returned thoroughly discouraged.
The good news was that, since everyone in Melbourne was out shopping that day, Scienceworks was absolutely deserted, and we had a phenomenal 3 1/2 hour visit. Yonatan and Nadav were so excited to be there that they spent the first twenty minutes or so literally dashing around the place just pushing buttons and turning dials. Finally they calmed down enough to start taking in some of the exhibits. We went to see a delightful planetarium show in a nearly empty hall and were treated to an extra talk guiding us through some of the constellations of the southern hemisphere. The kids also spent 30 minutes doing geology experiments, while I got to visit the cafe for a coffee. Mostly, they just enjoyed themselves more completely than they have in a long time--almost in a nostalgic way. It was very endearing, and enough to convince Bobby and me to bring them back for return visit on Sunday morning.
Everything went really well until about the fiftieth time Nadav tried to race Cathy Freeman. Let me explain. Those of you who are familiar with Sportworks in Pittsburgh will know the exhibit in which aspiring runners can race against Jackie Joyner Kersee on a short track. (Note: she always wins. There's no way anyone can run that fast.) There is a similar exhibit in Melbourne, only this time the competition is against legendary Australian runner Cathy Freeman. Nadav adored racing in Pittsburgh, and he took it up again in Melbourne. He ran that 30 foot track like there was no tomorrow, and his time steadily improved the more he raced. But ultimately he got so absorbed in watching his time that he failed to notice the very small person racing hell-for-leather in the opposite direction. The two collided, and Nadav ended up with a sprained elbow. He spent the remainder of our trip with his arm bandaged and in a sling, and he still complains that it's a bit sore after nearly a week.
On Monday, we made our big trek to the Melbourne Museum. This was the one day we relied entirely on public transportation. Melbourne's mass transit system is justly famous. There is a huge network of trains throughout the suburbs, with dozens of trams and buses available closer in. $6.50 for adults and $3.50 for the kids bought us a day pass for unlimited rides. Nadav was thrilled by the train, because within the city limits it runs underground, just like the Metro in Washington, DC! And he loved the trams too, because they're just so cool. Yonatan didn't say anything, but I suspect he enjoyed himself.
The Melbourne Museum itself is housed in a spectacular building, and it's one of the best-conceived museums I've visited. It focuses on general knowledge, but cleverly integrates stuff for kids along with stuff for adults. So, for instance, Yonatan and Nadav were fascinated with interactive exhibits on the Human Mind, while I got to read up on Freud's theory of dream interpretations. We spent an exhausting four hours wandering the halls (including a half-hour break for lunch), and topped up on knowledge on Melbourne's city history, the human mind and body, and the ecology of the forest (complete with live trees and birds). The boys adored an exhibit called "The Virtual Room," where they got to wear 3-D glasses and watch complex shapes float through mid-air. They also enjoyed the Children's Gallery, which is designed for very young children. Some of the exhibits were reminiscent of Pittsburgh's fantastic Children's Museum, and this made them even happier. They're already planning a return visit.
Globally speaking, Melbourne barely qualifies as a city at all. The metropolitan area has only 3.8 million people, which makes it considerably smaller than most major urban centres in the United States. It is, however, three times the size of Adelaide. And the two cities are totally different places. Adelaide is often described as a large country town. Even the neighbourhoods within the very small city of Adelaide itself feel more like suburbs than parts of a city. By contrast, the neighbourhoods of Melbourne are packed with shops, and the variety just on one street can be quite dazzling. Plus it has tall buildings. Lots of them. As we drove across the West Gate Bridge and past downtown Melbourne on Friday afternoon, the boys were positively ecstatic to see so many skyscrapers in one place. On Sunday evening, we had the opportunity to spend time on the observation deck of the Rialto Towers--the tallest building in Melbourne. Nadav spent nearly the entire evening with his nose pressed to the glass.
We didn't actually stay in the big city of Melbourne. All of the caravan parks in the Melbourne area are relatively distant from the city itself. We chose the Hobson's Bay caravan park, conveniently located just down the street from the Mobil oil refinery. This wasn't one of the selection criteria, and actually the oil refinery came as something of a shock. The big selling point for the caravan park (aside from the appeal of a two-bedroom cabin for $110 per night) was that it was a seven minute drive to downtown Williamstown. I had fallen in love with Williamstown when the Council of Progressive Rabbis met here back in October. There is a charming downtown packed with restaurants, plus quite a few shops advertising home made ice cream. We had ice cream three times during our stay! And you can't beat the view:
Drousy Drivers Die: Scenes from a Family Vacation--Scene One
Posted at 9:30 PM, Tuesday, December 30, 2008
We are more than halfway through the 450 mile drive back to Adelaide from Melbourne. It's the part after lunch that is the toughest: knowing that we still have half the drive to get through, and we're all going to just get more tired, grumpy and sore as the day wears on. It doesn't help that we've been mostly subsisting on a diet of Pepsi, Doritos, cashews, and Orios, with more of the same planned to get us home. There is little variation in the scenery from one hour to the next: brown fields, sparse gum trees, roadhouses, and country towns spaced about 30 miles apart. We are discouraged to see that the sole "attraction" on this route--the 14 meter Giant Koala--has changed management, and the little restaurant next door no longer feels nearly as welcoming as it did when we stopped here with Bobby's parents in April.
What really doesn't help is that there are signs about every five miles or so reminding us of the grim consequences of nodding off behind the wheel. Examples: "A micronap can kill in seconds." "Feeling drowsy? Powernap now!" "Revive--arrive alive!" And, of course, "drowsy drivers die."
Other than these upbeat messages, the federal highway authority has done practically nothing to make this long and monotonous drive easier. The governments of Victoria and South Australia haven't stepped up either. There are little "powernap areas" made available for this purpose: these are basically parking spaces right next to the road, which offer very little in the way of peace and quiet. There is also an occasional picnic spot--generally just a sole picnic table with no bathrooms, no running water, and not even a rubbish bin. Happily, a number of small towns have shouldered their responsibility to look after travelers so that we don't feel entirely abandoned. We had a picnic on the drive to Melbourne in the little town of Nhill, which has not one but two sets of easy-to-find public toilets next to lovely playgrounds. Tintinara in South Australia has fewer than 1000 residents but still manages to look after a small playground and public restrooms right next to the petrol station.
As we listened through a large percentage of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" on CD, my mind wandered to what kind of signage might have been more inspirational for weary drivers. Perhaps a story told a few words at a time? Or a very quick brain teaser? Just anything a bit less grim? At any rate, we did survive, and now cheerfully reviving back in the comfort of our own home!
American readers will be familiar with the phenomenon called "Christmas Spirit." The term describes how, within about five days of Christmas, people suddenly become more cheerful and friendly. Even for those of us who don't celebrate Christmas, there is a palpable feeling of comfort and joy in the air. It usually evaporates on the day after, but it's lovely while it lasts.
Unfortunately, here in Australia just the opposite happens as Christmas approaches: people become noticeably more grumpy. It's peaked today on Christmas eve. People are walking around looking like they're just waiting for that one last straw that's going to push them over the top, and then they're going to throw a punch. It's like meeting Clint Eastwood at every street corner announcing, "Go ahead, make my day." The radio is filled with stories of people stressed out by Christmas. My hair dresser is certainly one of them. In my appointment this morning, she railed against the whole business and announced defiantly that she had no intention of seeing ANYONE tomorrow aside from her husband and children. So there! It wasn't until later in the day that I noticed that she had shaved the hair around one ear somewhat more enthusiastically than the hair around the other ear.
It was actually during my hair appointment, that I had my great revelation about why Christmas is so stressful to Australians. No, it's not the heat. It's the absence of Thanksgiving.
Let me explain: Thanksgiving is THE American family holiday. More people travel to see family over Thanksgiving than over Christmas. Both days feature big family meals with conservative, old-fashioned menus and lots of cheer. Practically speaking, what this means is that people playing host for a holiday meal have two opportunities to get it right. If the pumpkin pie gets burned on Thanksgiving, there's still Christmas yet to come to make it right. Not so for Australians. They have only this one day of the year when everything has to be absolutely, completely PERFECT, or everyone involved will be traumatized by the experience and require additional years of costly counseling to recover. More significantly, Thanksgiving and Christmas provide two sacred occasions to visit family. You visit one set of grandparents on Thanksgiving and then visit the other set at the end of December. Blended families have more of a possibility for sane visitation arrangements. In Australia, there's just that 24-hour period to get to see everyone. One mother in a three-generation blended family was interviewed on the radio about the challenges of seeing all five sets of grandparents during the day. I'd be stressed out too!
Meanwhile, we onlookers watch on. We've had a lovely, laid back Chanukah so far, starting with a picnic at a local park that drew 150 members of the Jewish community from both synagogues. It's been cool enough for latkes, but plenty warm to play outside. Tomorrow--Christmas day--we will avoid the fray entirely by driving 9 hours to Melbourne for a quick visit. We'll see some of the museums, plus some of the more famous neighborhoods, and we'll attend a bat mitzvah celebration. So that's four nights of Chanukah in Adelaide, and four nights in Melbourne. Seems just about right.
We are once again racing through the rituals that bring the school year to an end. The kids have had their last day of Scouts, their last day of school, their last day of Sunday school, and awarding of Sunday school certificates. Yonatan's social skills group has finished up, but the end-of-year party is still to come on Monday evening. Both boys have one more swimming lesson each this next week, and then we will be well and truly out of activities until Scouts resume at the very end of January. Bobby is launching a number of ambitious summer projects with the boys: building model airplanes, building boxes for art supplies, and building robots. I am madly scouring websites for information on summer holiday programming, and we are both gearing up for a long seven weeks.
We marked a number of endings and beginnings with the close of the school year. Nadav has completed his second and last year as a Joey Scout. His Joey mob went bowling on Monday evening, and then we drove over to a nearby park where Yonatan's Cub Pack was meeting. Nadav joined in the fun in anticipation of his new status as a big boy Cub Scout next year. For the next year, Yonatan and Nadav will be in Cubs together before Yonatan moves up to real Scouts once he turns eleven. We are looking forward to having just the one meeting each week, plus the fact that both boys are now considered old enough to go on camps without parents.
By far the hardest ending of the last several weeks was the death of Cubs leader Barbara Bruer, known in our household as Akela Barbara. Barbara died ten days ago a little less than a year after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Although she began treatment not long after the school year started, she continued to attend meetings regularly and to to pass her wisdom on both to children and parents. She was a master scout leader and enormous gift to the kids who were part of her pack.
I attended the funeral last Monday, which was held in a broad meadow in Belair National Park. It was a sparkling summer day--warm, but not hot. The squawking of birds distracted us from the service, and butterflies flew down around the coffin. Di Hulse, director of the mighty venture which is 1st Beaumont Scouts, read an excerpt from the works of world scouting founder Robert Baden Powell, and Yonatan's cub leader Greg Bek read it again at the meeting that evening: “While you are living your life on earth, try to do something good which may remain after you. One writer says: "I often think that when the sun goes down the world is hidden by a big blanket from the light of heaven, but the stars are little holes pierced in that blanket by those who have done good deeds in this world. The stars are not all the same size; some are big, some are little, and some men have done great deeds and others have done small deeds, but they have made their hole in the blanket by doing good before they went to heaven." Try to make your hole in the blanket by good work while you are on earth.” Barbara left behind a huge, sparkling hole in our lives, and we are very sorry to lose her.
The Jewish community of Adelaide played host over the weekend to Benjy Maor, who is the Israel emissary for the Jewish National Fund of Australia. (Benjy pointed out that shaliach, the Hebrew term for emissary, is also the term for pizza delivery guy, so his appointment initially caused some confusion among his children.) Benjy kindly volunteered to lead half a dozen programs during his four-day stay, so we were able to keep him very busy. The culmination of his visit was the hour-long lecture he presented Sunday evening on the topic "How Israel is solving the world's water problems." I found this evening to be tremendously inspiring, and it left me hope that perhaps Australia can figure its way out of its water challenges after all.
My "ahah!" moment came with the last question of the evening: Does Israel have any plans to limit its population growth so that it can guarantee an adequate supply of water? The answer was a resounding "no." Israel is the Jewish homeland, and it has an ethical responsibility to accept all Jews who are seeking safe refuge and the opportunity to make a new life in the Jewish state. The population of Israel has ballooned from 600,000 at the time of its establishment sixty years to more than seven million today. What is necessary for Israel's continued prosperity and security, Benjy stated, is for it to find increasingly sophisticated ways to make use of every drop of water it possibly can. I was struck by Israel's confidence that it can solve its water problems with a population only one-third that of Australia with a mere 1/350th the space. If Israel is so sure of itself, then surely Australia can find a way to a brighter future as well. All that is necessary is courageous leadership and cooperation among all parties.
Unfortunately, both of these elements are currently lacking, especially here in the drought-plagued state of South Australia. We read over the weekend that water resources minister Karlene Maywald has spent $14 million to purchase water to guarantee supplies for critical human needs next year. Does this sound scary to you? It sure alarms me. And yet, Adelaide continues to enjoy restrictions on our water use that are much more relaxed than in other parts of the country. We can still use our hoses to water our gardens three hours each week, and there are absolutely no restrictions on how much water we can use inside the house. By contrast, residents of the Melbourne area have been asked to voluntarily restrict their total water use to 155 liters per day, and Brisbane residents have been asked to use only 170 liters of water per day. A discouraging article in The Australian over the weekend noted that when Brisbane's water supply hit emergency levels severals years back, the region embarked on a concerted effort to boost supplies by building more reservoirs and seeking other ways to capture rainwater. South Australia has done none of that. I have the strange feeling that our state government is quietly rearranging the chairs on the Titanic and may get around to notifying us how serious the situation really is shortly before we run out of water entirely.
I learned over the weekend that Israel recycles 75% of its water and is likely to recycle close to 100% of its water within ten year. Australia recycles 9% of its water. Israel is now able to cultivate large swaths of the Negev Desert by using recycled waste water pumped in from the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Farmers in Australia still compete for the same potable water that we drink in our homes, and that supply is shrinking with each passing dry day.
Will the endless bickering between the states and within the states come to an end so that we can seriously confront the enormity of this problem? Or will we wait until it really is too late?
I was greatly entertained by the story shared in "The Australian" several weeks ago by the wife of frenetic Australian movie director Scott Hicks. She told how her mother had instructed her, "Never marry a boring person." What terrific advice! I was not likewise directed in my choice of a lifetime partner, but have managed nevertheless to have landed in a marriage which is anything but dull.
After a first year spent floundering about in the alien environment of Australia, Bobby ultimately decided that the best thing to do would be to enrol in art school. Since he was the only one in his immediate family who had never attended art school, this wasn't such a leap as it might seem. In fact, just about everyone in Bobby's family is frightfully talented in the art area, and Bobby is no exception. As it turned out, studying fine arts is considerably easier to do in South Australia than just about anywhere in America. To my great amusement, education in the fine arts is classified as vocational training! This means that high-quality arts education with a practical approach is available at vocational tuition; Bobby enrolled as a 2/3 time student in the TAFE Arts Institute and paid a grand total of $1200 for a full year's schooling. He has absolutely adored his studio classes, although it's taken just about the full year for him to recall how to be a student again. He's also had a tough time adjusting to his classmates, who are almost all half his age and of the female sort.
Lately, I accused Bobby of enrolling in art school so that he would have a legitimate excuse to play. He couldn't really deny that this was part of his motivation. He's spent a great deal of the last couple of months working on a final project he entitled "anachrofacts: ingenious artifacts with imaginary histories." He started with a plan to produce the periodic table of the elements in hieroglyphics, Mayan script, and Sumerian cuneiform. We even ordered papyrus from Egypt, but Bobby ran out of time after making this excellent first start in ancient Egyptian numbers.
Ultimately, he settled on making cuneiform tiles. He created a little mold that allowed him to roll out fairly identical clay tiles. He then painstakingly incised the names and numbers of the elements using a stylus he had carved for this purpose. Here is a picture of four of them, including gold, silver and tin. You'll notice that the fourth element has a cat's pawprint in place of a cuneiform character. This is an element which doesn't appear in nature, and Bobby adopted this symbol to show that. The numbers of the elements appear on the top part of the tile, and the symbols in the middle are the elements themselves. Bobby particularly enjoyed these, because he was able to use the original Sumerian language for gold, silver, and tin. (By the way, he learned just about all of his Sumerian on the internet.)
Over two very long days, he either reproduced or made up characters to represent all the elements that exist in nature. Once they were dry, he coated them all with multiple coats of lacquer, then glued them on to a sheet of MDF. Here is the nearly-finished product. (He did lacquer the MDF as well so it ended up looking much less splotchy.)
Bobby showed his periodic table, along with a few stray tiles, at the Arts Institute Art Bazaar this afternoon. He sold three tiles at $5 each and answered lots of questions about his rather whacky artistic concept. I'll hold my breath to see what he comes up with next!
Tuesday afternoon. I picked up both boys from school and drove to a very small community center nearby. This is where Yonatan's social skills group meets for ninety minutes each week. Since March, he and six other boys with Asperger's Syndrome have been practicing the art of interacting with others through a routine of guided discussions, relaxation exercise and games led by two therapists. While Yonatan was hanging out with his mates, Nadav and I joined the other moms and assorted siblings at a nearby cafe for our weekly get-together. After an hour, Nadav and I excused ourselves and drove fifteen minutes to the Unley Swimming Centre for Nadav's 5:30 p.m. lesson. Meanwhile, Bobby picked up Yonatan from his group, which ends at 5:30. Nadav finished his lesson at 6:00 p.m., spent an additional ten minutes splashing around, had a 100 second shower (we counted), and got dressed. We arrived home at about 6:45 p.m. for a quick dinner and homework.
This is the kind of day I swore I would never have when our children were born. We have struggled hard not to fall into the trap of the overprogrammed child. I think we've mostly succeeded, since neither kid has more than one activity on any one day. But I sometimes feel like an overprogrammed parent!
The reason Tuesdays in particular have become so crazy is that I determined that Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. was the only time in the week when I could fit in a swimming lesson for Nadav. Not having swimming lessons wasn't an option. Australians may regularly argue about whether Australian Rules Football or cricket is this country's national sport. But really, there's no question what the Australian national sport is: it's swimming. I had swimming lessons when I was a kid, but I don't think it was necessarily a big thing. I never did become a very strong swimmer, and my parents didn't seem to think that I was disadvantaged for life. I think there are plenty of kids in America whose parents just don't get around to signing there kids up for more than a preliminary round of lessons. By contrast, most of the kids we know who are Yonatan's age can already swim a full kilometer, and a lot of kids Nadav's age are impressively competent in the water. When you're living in a country where some astonishingly high percentage of the citizens live within 50 miles of the ocean, the ability to stay afloat takes on a greater significance.
Some parents might accuse me of child abuse, because Nadav only has swimming lessons six months out of the year. State Swim is a network of indoor pools that offer regimented swimming instruction year round, and we know lots of people whose kids take lessons there. I think State Swim classes are overpriced, and I find it depressing that the kids get kicked out of the pool at the end of their lesson. Lessons at our local pool are slightly cheaper, and the kids can stay in the water for as long as they like when the class is over. The risk in taking lessons at an outdoor pool is that if the weather is chilly, swimming just isn't that appealing. We skipped last week's lesson altogether when the temperature fell below 70 with an even chillier breeze. The water may be heated, but the air isn't.
Unlike Nadav, Yonatan has lessons year round. For most of the past year, he has been taking classes through Child's Play, a group of physical therapists who teach disabled children to swim. Yonatan has an intensive one-on-one lesson for thirty minutes, which really wears him out. Progress has been slow, but it's been steady. He now can almost ALMOST manage all of the components of the freestyle stroke, and he's gradually getting better at breaststroke.
Both boys will have an additional opportunity to hone their swimming skills in the new year: like most other primary schools, Massada College offers two weeks of swimming lessons during class time in the summer term. It's quite a challenge getting the kids into their bathing suits, into the pool, dressed, and back into class. But parents expect swimming lessons in school as well as after school at least once a year. A fellow mother at Massada College told me how she judged if her children had learned enough to stop swimming lessons: if they found themselves on a sinking boat, and they were able to save not only themselves but the people next to them. We have a long way to go!
