I was too tired to practice last night so I didn't.
I woke up in time to get ready, have coffee etc., and get out of here at 4. I rode over Crossroads Trading Co. thinking there's no way that shirt I'd seen yesterday would be gone. But it was. Somehow someone just had to have that shirt, although it was a Small which hardly any adults in this area can wear, and they'd bought it.
Yeah it was $15 but it was a nice shirt, and I've experienced this a ton of times, that if you think you might want something, better grab it right away because it will be gone even if you go right back the next day. This goes for new things as much as used. I've had this happen too many times and really missed out.
I found another shirt there at Crossroads that would have been OK if it was an actual Small but it was what I mostly see these days, Mediums labeled Small. It makes sense given the size of the people...
Next I rode up to Santana Row and went to my (apparently) favorite place there, Fjallraven. I had the bag I'd bought a while back, with all its tags and the receipt, in new condition. I was able to trade it for the one I'd seen yesterday that I wanted and even got about $16 back. The smaller bag turns out to be perfect for what I plan to use it for.
I also looked for T-shirts in Big-5 but didn't find anything. It had been another hot day, in the 90s. I stopped at Whole Foods and had a large plate of food from the hot bar and a "Hoppy Refresher" which is a sort of hop/citrus flavored fizzy water made by Lagunitas. It's really good on a hot day like today, and unfortunately actual alcohol-free beers have a fair amount of carbs in them so they're out these days.
On the ride home I found 5 New Yorker magazines and a copy of "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn which I've wanted to read for a while.
I'd noted exactly zero buskers other than the lady who sings by the entrance to the mall across from Santana Row, frankly she's pretty good and sure works hard for her money. Whole Foods had no one, not even the annoying skinny white guy who likes to start arguments, and after eating and relaxing a bit and unlocking my bike to leave, I saw a regular beggar there, a lady who's "performance" is wiggling around like she has to pee, and holding a nearly unreadable sign.
I guess today's freebees were the book and magazines.
Today's horrible news is, the idiot Arabs have decided to try to start off a war in Israel. OK well and fine I guess, but they're doing it by kidnapping civilians, children, grandmothers, everyone *but* actual Israeli soldiers, who might fight back or something. Regular, peaceful, people are doing things like having a picnic or driving down the road in their own 'hood and getting shot to bits and the survivors taken into Gaza to be tortured to death, most probably.
I believe the logic is that if Hamas, the Arab entity in Israel, kicks something off then the rest of the Arab countries will pitch in. Instead, what with all these children and families and grandmothers and little kids being killed and taken, only the most loony splinter groups in the more loony Arab countries are likely to think this is a good idea, and the reasonable Muslims, the majority, are as horrified as everyone else.
This resonates with me because the other big story that's just popped is that someone has "scraped" data from 23andme and come up with a list of about 1 million people whose results have Ashkenazi Jewish in the top 3 in their ancestry. The cooler heads talking about this online are saying things like, "Well, it was inevitable" and "Wasn't this was 23andme was actually intended for in the first place?"
In other words, what they're saying is that 23andme is a wonderful tool for a fascist regime to find out who's of any genetic profile, making it much easier to round 'em up and send 'em off to the death camps. So you have people saying things like, "This is why I never took part in 23andme" but the truth is, all they need is *enough* people to take part and they can figure out everyone else. In a race and ancestry obsessed place like the US (remember a tiny difference in ancestry determined if you were a person or property not long ago) it was a shoo-in for enough people to participate.
When Cheeto Benito got elected, my reaction to the way things are going was to send right off for a kit. I figured my being Jewish was unquestionable, as how else would such a brown person as my mother have some from a line of even browner people, out of Lithuania? I knew Lithuania had had a huge Jewish population before WWII, and my mom even used a fair amount of Yiddishisms, no doubt picked up from a Jewish music teacher she's had when she was a kid and growing up in Los Angeles and probably as movie and entertainment obsessed as any 1930s/40s girl.
My eagerness to spit in that little tube and send it off was that I'd get some solid proof to make good and sure I was proceeding logically, go through the 1-2 year conversion process at the local temple because if you're genetically Jewish but weren't raised observant and don't have a chain of actual documents from the old country, you have to "convert" and really ought to anyway so you're on the same sheet of music with everyone else.
And the reason for this was, that I'd have this genetic information in-hand and be well along in the conversion thing by the time the slow wheels of government get around to singling me out as Jewish, and by that time I'd be packing my bags for Israel. Because I'd sure not be safe here. I assumed Donnie Dumpo would get a 2nd term because there's normally a great advantage in being the incumbent, and on his 2nd term he'd really step up the Nazification.
At the time I figured Israel was a sort of beachy combination of Southern California and the Southwest desert, with an undercurrent of military preparedness out of necessity but in general an educated, liberal sort of place and a bit more difficult than life in the US but worth it.
Since then, as I kept researching out of sheer curiosity, that there's a reason so many Israelis are desperate to move to the US. It's hot, like 120 degrees in the summer. The religious Right there has disproportionate power, and while I thought Netanyahu was going to get thrown out on his ass, he's done better and better and may be set to be president for life. The culture is one of haggling and slight-of-hand, of grifting, which is the opposite of the culture I grew up with in Hawaii where humility and honesty are golden virtues.
When the DNA test came back and said I'm 0% Jewish, that was a hell of a surprise. I was hooked on the idea of retiring in Israel that I even thought, for a while, about converting anyway. But then I learned more about the hellish heat and the grifty, shifty, culture.
Basically moving there means enlisting in a war of Us or Them. As I've mentioned elsewhere, if we in the US hadn't almost completely killed off our "Indians" we'd have the same problem here. The Manifest Destiny crowd did things the Old Testament/Torah way; when you move into a land, you wipe out anyone who's there - or they wipe you out.
This is the situation in Israel. Looking at things from the Arabs' side, you have to wonder why all these European people who've been in Europe for 1000 years or so don't just stay in Europe or the USA. There's so much room in Europe, in the US and Canada and the Americas ...
From the Jews' standpoint, they tried that and look what happened: the Holocaust. Look at what may be brewing in the US and Europe - another one. The far-right in the US constantly attacks Jewish schools and temples, and it's no better in Europe. I imagine the Jews collectively throwing up their hands and saying, "Fine! We're gonna fight wherever we are, let us go back to the land where our people were born as a people; the land that's in our Bible".
I mean, speaking as a dumb American, I think we ought to have given them Utah or something, maybe thrown in Nevada too. But knowing our right wing, it would have involved just as much fighting as Israel's had to do since their founding.
So the Jews decided, "Fuck it. we're going, and we're staying, and if you don't like it, get in line with the rest of 'em that hate us, and if you fuck around with us, you'll find out".
I'm Left as hell and I think Israel's big mistake has been being too soft; too lenient. That's one of the things that creeped me out about the idea of living there, that the Arabs are their enemies and yet they employ them?? Allowing Arabs to come into your factory or farm to work, and one day blow the place up, is stupid on the order of some trusting old granny employing crackheads to clean her house. One day they're cleaning your house and the next they've killed you with a hammer and are cleaning out your house.
So now Hamas has decided to fuck around. They are very much going to find out.
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