A stubborn system

I was up at 4:30 as seems to be usual most of these days. I checked the weather radar and there was a big fat rain system coming in so I decided that even though it looked dry enough to go out, it's not worth it getting soaked. But the system seems to be kind of paused offshore and now it's too late to head out.

The stay-at-home hobbyists are buying all kinds of cockamamie things on Ebay so this is good.

I did some thinking about Hawaii vs. New Orleans vs. Israel last night. The first I know very well. Growing up in Hawaii, with the local-born Japanese the group in power, although I went to school with them, rode the bus with them, attended college with them, dealt with them at the DMV and the post office and in every part of life, I can say with utter confidence that none of them, not a single one, ever treated me any better than they absolutely had to. Many a time I was 1c-2c short at the local Japanese owned little store we shopped at, and I had to go home and find the 1c-2c, there was absolutely no leeway for the hated "haole".

I'd joined the local Buddhist temple with the idea that I'd thereby be accepted among the Japanese-Americans who are 99% of its following and I'd be able to carry that over to Hawaii, but I don't think this is realistic. No matter how much sucking up I do, I will always be the hated "haole" and the worst kind, the kind without lots of money, back there in Hawaii. 

New Orleans is not a place I have experience with. Whites are the group in power, which is good for me, but they're Southern whites so not being a racist holy roller would be a problem. Crime is very high, with whites generally as the target and as whites have it set up everywhere, other races are used as hammer by rich whites to keep non-rich whites down. So for instance I'm mugged in New Orleans and in the interaction, someone alleges that I said the word "nigger" and chances are it's a white judge who will give me extra punishment. My only saving grace there is if I become competent enough in playing the kind of jazz that white people like, that some rich whites decide they like me. So again it would be a matter of sucking up, and the more I sucked up by playing the kind of jazz white people like, the more likely I'd be stabbed by some angry black for stealing "their" music.

I've put a lot of time into researching Israel at least online, with particular help from the videos by Cory Gil-Shuster, who takes questions people send in, and goes out on the street and asks people. So someone will send in a question that's fairly controversial, and would probably get you thrown in jail in the US for asking, and goes out and asks "Palastinians" or Ashkenazim or Mizrahim or whoever the question is to be asked to, or if it's to general people he tries to get a good cross-section, and shows their answers as they give them in his videos. The first thing that struck me, years ago, was that he could video some cranky old Litvak guys at a coffee shop for 15 minutes straight and there's be no beggars, crusty hobos, crazies, etc wandering by in the background. Not a trash can would be rummaged. Try pulling that off in Palo Alto or Mountain View.

This inspired me to do a lot of research, and Israel doesn't have the crime, homelessness, craziness the US does. Prices are half what they are here in San Jose. There are jobs, busking is A-OK, and fresh veggies are in abundance. I was worried I'd be able to maintain my drinking habit, but I've since gotten rid of that. Access to medical care is possible. And Tel Aviv "feels" like Honolulu back in the late 60s when we'd moved to Hawaii in the first place. The beach is near, and I could cover the entire city and greater area on a bike.

I am spurred to write this because I just read on Reddit about their planting some more olive trees. There's a discussion over this; whether it's good because there are less people out, or is it bad because of the general shelter in place.... the majority think it's good. I could seriously see myself making olive "starts" in pots and going out and planting them, in a place I actually care about.

I could even spend some time on a kibbutz! There are kibbutzim that combine work with learning Hebrew, so you get to live, work a bit, learn Hebrew, and have your room and board taken care of for that amount of time plus I think some pocket money.

And here I must confess my yearning for that place for me on the kibbutz. I'd come over from Hawaii and was living in Costa Mesa and spending a lot of time hanging out with the other motorcycle riders down at the Newport pier. There was a little store that sold records and tapes and t-shirts and posters and the usual mid-80s teen/young adult stuff. I'd fled Hawaii to get out of a place where I was a hated outsider to be around "my" people, white people, and was trying on the anti-Semitic sayings and tropes they seemed to generally believe in. So I was in this store, looking around, and said some stupid anti-Jewish thing as I walked out that I don't even remember now. And the (Jewish) guy who ran the place said, "Don't worry, there will be a place for you on the kibbutz".

It's always stayed with me. Did he see my not-really-white complexion and think I'm some kind of young and edgy and alienated Jew, as I think a Chabadnik did years later in Palo Alto? The only other thing I can think is he was insinuating that as a Goy I'd be put into some kind of slave labor on a kibbutz, which makes no sense as that's really not a thing. There'd be a place for me on the kibbutz... even at the time I felt wistfully how much I wanted a place where there'd be a place for me. White culture just does not believe in this. Everyone's on their own.

I'm sure that record store owner has to be dead now. This would be in 1986 or 87. I wish I could go back and apologize but I can't. But there's one thing I can do: If I go to Israel I will go to a kibbutz.

So, I had my coffee etc., and then settled down to some practice and got a decent practice in, a bit more than an hour, then cooked some scrambled eggs and some of the marinated beef I'd just gotten on top of it ... it's not too great and reminds me of the low-grade stuff in school lunches back in Hawaii. Last time I was at H Mart the beef section looked better and I can always buy my beef at Nijiya and get much better quality for the price.

I finally got down to cutting up the political campaign signs and made them into drawer liners and got those all done, which means I could put a huge pile of things I'd listed away, instead of having them backing up in boxes in the office. Then I took my old laptop apart and put the pieces on Ebay along with a few other things. I was actually pretty productive.