Now that was a decent Shabbat. I studied Hebrew quite a bit, re-tracing what I've covered but I'd not been studying it daily so I felt I needed to do that. I ask myself, Why am I so good at English? Because I'm functioning in English at least all my waking hours, and I dream in English too. Of course I'm good at it.
I remember teaching myself to type. I'd bought a daisywheel typewriter from Floyd's Piano And Typewriter, borrowed a book on touch-typing from the library, and did my exercises, starting from the home position. I didn't stick with it through the whole book so I ended up with some bad habits but at least I had the core idea, the home position, down pat. Then years of IRC and Ebay listing polished me into a fairly good typist.
I suspect the same applies to Hebrew. I need to spend time "in" Hebrew and there are no short cuts. I need to do what I did yesterday, which was study in my Reading Hebrew book and watching movies that are in Hebrew with English subtitles, and so on.
I also watched some great movies, "Haven" and "The Aryan Couple" and some other stuff. I've discovered Jonathan Pollard, yes, *that* Jonathan Pollard, and I guess there's nothing like 30 years in prison to make one get one's views in order because he seems to be about the sanest voice out there. Pollard says Jews are never fully accepted but at best, in the diaspora, tolerated.
That struck a chord with me because as the hated "haole", I was always tolerated at best, never accepted. And it doesn't matter if you're 5th generation, hanai'd into the royal family, etc. The pleasantness of Asians in Hawaii is merely tolerance, not acceptance. Try getting a job working for one of them and you'll find out.
The welcome I've felt at the temple is a new thing to me. They don't care if I'm of modest means because while some there are surely quite wealthy, many are of modest means. It's not like being in a gaggle of fellow "haoles" in Hawaii because they always, always, cared about one's means.
No, they are if I'm in it for the long run. That's the test. Will I learn Hebrew, will I learn the prayers and songs and do the things, and not for a month or three, but for a year or three and do the conversion process and perhaps an adult b'nei mitzvah which is a bar or bat mitzvah but for grown-ups.
They don't know it yet but they're getting, I hope, a very capable ba'al tekiah and if any are interested, a firearms instructor. And perhaps a decent cook.
The next service has a potluck dinner, and I want to see if I can pull off making macadamia nut blintzes, and I'm not letting the fact that I've never made a blintz stand in my way. I suppose I'll be eating a lot of blintzes this week, for practice.
After the service and we'd sung our cowboy songs and I'd nibbled a bit of pastry and had some cucumber slices (yum about these last!) I went out to my bike and the friendly cop was there. I asked him if he'd checked Recycle Book Store for reloading books and he had. He'd bought a Speer reloading manual, and we had a fine old time talking. I told him I was really happy he'd checked the place out, that I'll recommend a restaurant or something to someone and they'll say they'll go, and they never actually do. So to have someone actually take up on my advice and for it to work well for them has me really happy.
I also found (or YouTube found for me) an .... interesting ... video explaining antisemitism in terms of network theory, Jews being "hubs" and other people being "nodes" and using this theory to explain both antisemitism and the amazing endurance of the Jews while the groups who oppress them tend to end up in the dust of history. I'm pretty smart but I'll have to find it again and dig into what the guy's talking about in depth. At my level of understanding it seems to point to the conclusion that if you are a Jew, do the Jewish things. If you are not a Jew or not sure if you are a Jew, follow up on it and ... do the Jewish things.
I had my cup of Elite coffee and cream, and tried to get myself motivated to go out. I finally left at a bit after 2 I guess. I dropped off trash and dropped off some donations at the Japantown little free library. Then I rode through San Pedro Square and it looked really good, lots of people around.
So I rode over to Whole Foods and got some chicken and broccoli and a near-beer and ate and people-watched. The funniest one was a tall skinny motorcyclist who'd gotten one of those packages of sushi, so something in the $12-$15 range. He opened it, checked it out and for some reason it wasn't right and he went over to the trash with it and threw it out. He could have at least gotten a refund if it was bad.
I went over my mouth with a toothpick and chewed xylitol gum, and was ready to go. I rode back over to the Old Spaghetti Factory and played for an hour. They have planters put out so the sidewalk is really narrow there where it was wide. It's obvious why they did that - at least before covid, musicians and artists used to go there and play music or display their wares, and as the culture here hates ... culture, something had to be done. I just set up where I always have, narrow sidewalk or not, and it went pretty well until at the end of an hour the crowd had thinned out and the sushi place had been very gradually increasing the volume of their canned music so it was time to go. The funniest "customer" there was a guy who put in a few bucks and wanted to hear some Otis Redding, and this after his saying "Do you play anything else other than the national anthem?" The national anthem being Danny Boy I guess, as I never really get around to playing the national anthem. This guy was drunk, and carrying a drink in a plastic cup in his hand that seemed to involve vodka - I could not help smelling it. He was really crowding in close and I was trying to get rid of him without him realizing this so I played Amazing Grace and went on about it being a sobriety song and big at the AA meetings he really ought to go to, and that didn't work so I finally said I have Covid and that's why I'm outdoors and that worked. He sprang away and went to join his friends.
I went back to Whole Foods, used the loo, and started in to play an hour there. It was now 4:00 so it would be easy to keep track of time. The good old End Times wind was blowing pretty strongly and I didn't have high expectations but it went surprisingly well. One old lady really liked my playing Danny Boy and gave me a thumbs up. It took her forever to get her groceries to her SUV and get them loaded and get herself into the driver's seat and to finally leave, but when she did she stopped by to hand me a $5 through the window and said she really liked it and she'll be singing it the rest of the day.
I said "Great!" and after turning away, sang an impromptu thing about "Oh Johnny boy, why is my toilet so clogged...." etc. This got a real crack-up by a Black guy walking past, into Whole Foods. Later, when I was about done for the day, I had a guy challenge me to play "Chuck Mangione" so I played "Feels So Good" but of course could not hit the really high notes as I'd been playing at least an hour and a half by now. He said/motioned something about how I have to strengthen my midsection and I agree with this.
When I had 15 minutes left, who should show up but Pee-Pee Lady. She was actually kind of friendly today, and people donating to me kept moving their carts past the yellow line, where the carts would jam. At one point she was really yelling at a guy and the guy said he got a bit scared and I said, "She's a scary lady".
I told her I was only playing until 5 so I'd be gone shortly. I realized something about her -she's half deaf so it's no wonder she misconstrues things and has very different ideas of what's going on around her from what's actually going on. Still, we were able to do a bit of "shop talk" and she said she basically sticks around until she has $20 or whatever she needs that day. I told her I'd made $30 in an hour at the Old Spaghetti Factory and after an hour there at Whole Foods I counted up and had $27 so it was $57 for the day.
That's almost exactly what I make at my day job here, if I take my weekly pay check and divide by the 7 days in a week. I went into Whole Foods and bought some macadamia nuts. They had some in the bulk bins, and with two employees right there, I carefully dispensed about two nuts into my hand, popped them in my mouth, and chewed them up. Fresh. Good. The employees didn't appreciate that much, but I went on to get over a pound of them in a bag so I think that mollified them a bit.
I also got some pistachio nuts, and some more vanilla extract because the Whole Foods generic stuff might be better than the Walmart generic stuff.
I found a bunch of books, mainly kids' books, on the way home so all in all it was a good day. I'd left with $20 on me, had bought a nice meal, gotten some expensive nuts for cooking, and in the end had the same $20 on me. Plus some books.
I got back and did things like burned sensitive trash, washed my hair, and sprayed another coat on the backing board for the toilet paper dispenser.
I was hungry and decided it's time to put my plan in action, to make and eat a lot of blintzes to get good at making blintzes. So I made my first batch of macadamia nut blintzes and ate them. I'm really full now. They came out surprisingly well for a first try and keeping in mind I don't measure things when I cook, it's just things like "some" flour, an egg, a bit of salt, a bit more of sugar, and so on.
The filling is pretty easy and can be taste-tested. It's making the crepes that's trickier, and will get better with practice.
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