Blog/August 2011/Aug 5th

Aug 5th (See this week's devar torah)

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Hi, again!

We took Daniela to the airport this week so she can return to the US for yet another year. Sarah is just a week away from finishing her first year of National Service. Esther and I are (as usual) slogging away at work, trying to figure out how we're ever going to retire.

Accompanying Daniela to the airport again was a bittersweet experience. More bitter, I'm afraid, than sweet. We're happy that she's happy and pursuing her desires, but we are also filled with trepidation for the future. Besides the wrenching pain in my back (perhaps from lifting very heavy bags), the wrenching pain in my heart made the separation this time more difficult for me than it has been in the past. A large part of that is my increasing alarm at the situation in the United States.

My daughter doesn't share my alarm, probably because like all children she's prone to viewing her parents as being somewhat disconnected from reality. So here are a few news items from just this past week, which should be cause for grave concern to anyone who cares to ponder them:

• In the Land of the Free, the House has just approved a bill mandating Internet companies spy on their customers. So much for First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
• In this video, Tarek Fatah talks about the Islamist threat to the West, and notes that there are three people connected to the Muslim Brotherhood in the White House itself.
• The stock market has plummeted on concerns about the stability of the US economy, no doubt in part because...
• The Congress agreed to a record-breaking debt deal which will only serve to put the US another several trillion dollars in debt, making China happy but destroying the economy of the Land of We the Stupid. Just FYI: the United States is now borrowing 100% of its total economic output (GDP). To put that in perspective for those of us without trillion-dollar incomes, that means borrowing ones entire income each year. No doubt you could get your bank to just pony up the money, right? It should be superfluous to say that that is unsustainable.

OK, enough about that which I cannot change!

Sarah is finishing up her first year of sherut, and is putting together some "mementos" for the ladies she worked with this year. She's got another week or so in Tel Aviv, and then it's back to the clean air of the desert for her (mostly, anyway). Because she'll be staying here and working in an office in Jerusalem during the day, she is planning on taking a course to improve her chances of scoring well on the Psychometric exams next year. She's also interested in taking an art class during the year.

This past shabbat we had an unusual occurrence. A few minutes before candle-lighting, some of our lights went out. So did the refrigerator, and some air-conditioners. Looking at the mains panel I noted nothing wrong; but since we only had a few minutes before shabbat, I ran to get an extension cord so at least the refrigerator would stay on.

After shabbat started, those circuits came alive again for about half an hour, then they went off again for a while. Finally they came back on (though our bedroom air conditioner forgot its programming so we sweltered through shabbat). Since the breakers didn't trip and only some of our circuits were out, I assumed that one of the power feeds to the house was "flaky" (we have three-phase power, so if one feed goes down we still have two).

After shabbat I called our electrician, who suggested I contact our neighbors to find out if any of them experienced problems. He thought it likely the power company had a problem with one of the power feeds, and that probably there was nothing wrong with our electrical system. Turns out he was almost right.

As it happens, the power to our block of four houses is routed through the house on the end. The owner of that house is a building contractor who seems to think that standards are for others. In any case, he had moved the Electric Company's connector inside his house, where it was inaccessible to all but him. One of the EC's fuses blew just before shabbat, taking down one-third of our power (and all the power to one of our neighbors), and the EC came out and fixed it. But they said it was "wrong" that the connector was inside his house, and they would fix that this coming week. So indeed they did, and next time repairs are needed we won't have to get permission from the neighbor.

And on a lighter note:

• This week's Latma
• The Government must lower the temperature!
• The Palestinian Burger King

This week we're dining out for dinner at a friend's house. During the day, we'll have chicken 'n rice and salatim.

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!

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