Antigonos' Annals

2011-09-07T12:29:00.001+03:00

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Mike Keefe
Denver Post
Sep 7, 2011

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Pencil Me In

2011-09-02T16:19:00.002+03:00

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Nate Beeler
Washington Examiner
Sep 2, 2011

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Not to mention conflicts with the NFL SEASON OPENER!!! Which is guaranteed to be, if not more important, vastly more entertaining than political shenanigans...fortunately, Obama folded. I can see him now, addressing a joint session of Congress with all its members watching the game on the smartphones on their desks...

Ras Burqa, Again

2011-08-18T20:31:00.002+03:00

Back in 1978, when I was in Ulpan Etzion, my Hebrew teachers were delirious with joy because of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, and the peace with Egypt. It was the beginning of the end of hostility against Israel. The other Arab States would follow. I was roundly criticized when I said I thought that any "peace" with Egypt would not survive either a change of government or more than 20-30 years.

It quickly became obvious what peace with Egypt meant. No Egyptians visited Israel. No Egyptian trade agreements with Israel. No Israeli businesses opened branches in Egypt, although Israelis seemed to fall over themselves in the first years trying to do the Exodus in reverse, taking holidays over Passover along the Nile. The official government line continued to be anti-Semitic. There were no invitations for Israeli authors to show their works at Egyptian book fairs, and so on. With the exception of certain tourist sites along the coasts, and the highways, the Sinai became a virtual no-man's land again.

Then, in 1985, there was the Ras Burqa incident, which shocked Israelis. According to Wikipedia,

On October 5, 1985, an Egyptian soldier, Sulayman
Khatir, machine-gunned a group of Israelis, killing three adults
and four young children, on the dunes of Ras Burqa. [1]
The only survivor was 5-year old Tali Griffel, whose mother, Anita, shielded her
with her body.[2]
According to eye witnesses, the Egyptian Central Security
Forces who were nearby refused to help the wounded; furthermore,
they stopped an Israeli doctor and other tourists at gunpoint from administering
any aid to the victims of the shooting, and the wounded Israelis were left to
bleed to death.[3]
Egyptian authorities countered that the Israelis bled to death "because this
crazy soldier refused to let anyone near the area that some of the victims
lay".[4]
The gunman killed one of the Egyptian policeman who tried to arrest him."[5]
Israel protested the Egyptian refusal to allow the victims to be treated by
Israeli doctors or transferred to hospitals in Israel.[6]
Khatir
said the killings were not intentional. He said he could only see a group of
people coming towards him in the dark, refusing his orders to stop.[7]

Seven people were killed in the attack: Anita Griffel, a Canadian-born
sociologist at Hebrew
University of Jerusalem; Hamman Shelach, an Israeli judge, his wife
Ilana and their daughter, Tzlil; Amir Baum, Dina Bari and Ofri Turel. The
Shelachs' oldest son, Oz Shelach, was not with them, and is the only surviving
family member.[8]Hamman
Shelach was the son of Israeli poet Yonatan
Ratosh, founder of the Canaanite movement.

After the shootings, Egyptian authorities claimed that the perpetrator
Sulayman Khatir was mentally ill.[9]
During the initial interrogations, Khatir claimed that he had been unaware of
the identity or nationality of the people he had shot and that they had made no
offense or provocation toward him. The only reason why he had opened fire was
that, as Khatir said, they had trespassed on a prohibited territory.[3]
He was tried by a closed military tribunal and on December 28, 1985 sentenced to
life in prison at hard labor. Ten days later, on January 8, 1986, Khatir was
found dead in his prison hospital room hanging by a strip torn from a sheet of
plastic. The authorities declared his death a suicide.[10]Opposition
parties in Egypt claimed that he had been murdered. [11]

Egyptian opposition politicians hailed Khatir as "hero of Sinai"
for committing the massacre of Israelis.[10]
The glorification of Khatir as a national hero in the Egyptian opposition press
was echoed in other Arab countries, and
mass demonstrations were held in his support. Attempting to justify his actions,
the press did not report that all but one of the victims were women or children,
but instead invented miscellaneous pretexts for the shootings. The press claimed
that the Israeli tourists were spies caught photographing secret military
installations, that they spat upon and tore up an Egyptian flag, that half-naked
Israeli women offended Khatir's Muslim conscience, or
that the tourists attacked him. The pro-governmental press remained silent
regarding the facts of the massacre, leaving the claims unchallenged. Many
Egyptian intellectuals and religious leaders joined in extolling Khatir and his
act. Umar al-Tilimsani, the leader of Muslim
Brotherhood, said that "if every Muslim would do what Sulayman did,
Israel would no longer exist". Farid Abd al-Karim, one of the leaders of the Arab Socialist
Party, called Khatir "the conscience of this nation", whose bullets
"washed away the shame" of the Camp David Peace
Accords between Israel and Egypt. Ahmad Nasir of the Egyptian Bar
Association claimed that history would always honor Khatir as "a living model of
a noble Egyptian who refused to be led astray by the treaties of betrayal and
surrender".[12] [The numbers refer to footnotes documenting sources in the original article]

Today, due to as-yet-undetermined circumstances, two Israeli buses were attacked just outside of Eilat, not in the Sinai but where Israel comes to a "point" at the Red Sea. The country is only a couple of kilometers wide there, tapering toward the port, so it is easy to infiltrate, either from Egypt or Jordan. The current supposition, as I write this, is that the terrorists are Hamasniks from Gaza who crossed into the Sinai via the laxly controlled border with Egypt, rather than Egyptian soldiers or Egyptian terrorists based in the Sinai. But the gas pipeline has been sabotaged 4 times in the past months, since Mubarak's government has been overthrown, and there are definitely voices in Egypt calling for an end to the peace treaty with Israel, just as I predicted 33 years ago.

On this issue, I'd rather not be right, but I think there is little if any room for optimism.

How Absurd! Or, Thank You, Lush

2011-08-09T13:57:00.002+03:00

There's an article today in Hudson NY which decries Lush Cosmetics' boycott of Israel. I first discovered Lush when in the UK years ago, and I do indeed like their products [as well as the funny and self-mocking language of their advertisments and descriptions]. Their signature fragrance, Karma, for example, which is claimed to make me smell like an "aging hippie" is absolutely accurate. I may not be a hippie, [well, I was at Woodstock] but I am certainly aging. The shampoo bars are marvelous when traveling, and who can resist a "bath bomb" with a name like "Waving Not Drowning"?

Two separate Israeli entrepreneurs decided to imitate Lush. Neither is as "green" or "organic" as Lush, but both sell much the same range of body and fragrance products. One is called "Sabon shel Paam" ["old fashioned soap"] and the other is Laline. They are very high quality; the stores have lovely decor and do-it-yourself gift package arrangements. I don't have to import bath bombs any more. I can buy soaps by weight, sliced off giant blocks and wheels, etc.

Our shopping malls are thronged with Arab women. Some are indistinguishable from secular Jewish Israelis [until you hear them talk and realize they are speaking Arabic], many wear Western clothes [often quite expensive ones] and the hijab, some are in "classic" dress [floor-length duster-style overcoat and hijab] typical of the region. In Jerusalem, at any rate, they are both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians who have the right papers to enter Israel. They LOVE Laline and Sabon shel Paam. So who, exactly, are Lush "punishing" with their boycott of Israel?

Lush deserves a vote of thanks for creating a new Israeli industry!

(Gadi) Taub and the Taub Center

2011-08-05T21:43:00.003+03:00

The only connection between this link to an article by Gadi Taub and this link is that one refers to an article about the origins of Israel's current social protests and the other is by a professor at the Taub Center which makes many valid points about Israel's education system, which is also in a very bad way. Both are worth reading.

The Godfather Part 3.5, Or Something Like That

2011-08-02T17:08:00.001+03:00

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Tim Campbell
Current Publishing
Aug 2, 2011

EditorialCartoonists.com

I can hear the music....

Two Parades

2011-07-28T19:43:00.002+03:00

Today Jerusalem saw a Gay Pride Parade, and a "stroller parade". The former, of course, promoted a form of sexuality which would end the human race without assisted reproductive technology, while the latter bemoaned how expensive it is to raise kids in Israel -- the unspoken corollary being that if children were more affordable in our society we would probably have more of them. Certainly a large proportion of the couples pushing strollers, being heterosexuals, would like more children.

The juxtaposition of these two "causes" both amuses and fascinates me. The government, you know, actively supports fertility treatment, and not just for classically heterosexual married couples. Single women, and lesbians can have subsidized treatment, and male homosexuals can find surrogate mothers if they wish. It undoubtedly spends more money on the subsidies than on assisting working mothers who need child care but can't afford it.

Chelm, anyone?

Just Another Gazan Fun Day

2011-07-28T19:38:00.003+03:00

This is a very bizarre story. Not because Gazan children might enter the Guinness Book of Records [gee whiz!] but because the organization which has sponsored the event was trashed in protest, apparently. I can't really see the connection between setting such a record and statehood, but I guess the Palestinians think this is how civilized countries behave all the time.

There are times when I think the Palestinians really don't know what they are doing, and times when I think they know all too well what they are doing. In this case, it's biting the hand that feeds them.

And this is what they consider normalcy?

2011-07-27T11:37:00.002+03:00

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Mike Smith
Las Vegas Sun
Jul 27, 2011

EditorialCartoonists.com

This is going to be a weird autumn and winter, between the NFL which hasn't had its usual warm-up, and global warming, which needs to cool off. We haven't had a decent winter in Israel since 1992 -- I mean one in which I had to actually wear a coat.

Underdone?

2011-07-20T21:14:00.002+03:00

The clinic telephone rings.

"Hello, my name is blah-blah and I came to the emergency clinic yesterday because I had sex with my boyfriend two weeks ago and I wanted to know if I'm pregnant. The doctor sent me for a blood test but I don't understand the results".

So far, nothing out of the ordinary. I'm not allowed to give results over the phone, but I can explain them if the patient has gotten them off the internet. It is a bit tricky, because the norms are given immediately below the actual result, and [1], you'd be amazed how many Israeli women don't understand the meaning of a decimal point ["but it says 0.59, isn't that 59?"], and [2] they insist on reading me the normal values and arguing that it does or does not mean they are pregnant [less than 3 international units of human gonadotropin is "negative" for pregnancy; more than 25 means 100% definitely pregnant]

I walk her through the results ["Look for the line which reads HCG QUANT., etc"], which usually takes a few minutes as most Israelis have trouble with the Latin alphabet, especially with abbreviations. Finally she announces that the result is "Three". I ask her how late her period is. She tells me it isn't. I explain that it therefore is too early to have a definitive result and she needs to repeat the test, if she doesn't get her period, in a week or so. She's not exactly happy to hear this: she doesn't like getting stuck for a blood sample [who does?]

"Can't the lab use the blood I've already given?" she asks, at which point I realize that she thinks if the sample "cooks" longer, she'll get a positive result. Sadly, I have to inform her that it doesn't work that way. "Why not?" she asks, and frankly, I can't think of a really good way to answer her. There is a kind of mad logic here -- it IS the blood of a woman who is possibly already pregnant, the sample simply hasn't "matured" enough, like a good wine which improves with age.

No Comment, I Think, Is Needed

2011-06-27T20:36:00.000+03:00

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Paul Fell
Artizans Syndicate
Jun 27, 2011

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Just for Fun

2011-06-25T10:26:00.001+03:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MTwq1_9VH68

2011-06-10T13:03:00.000+03:00

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Joe Heller
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Jun 10, 2011

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Roundup: It's Been A Busy Day

2011-06-05T20:24:00.003+03:00

Today, the Six Days' War began 44 years ago. It ought to be called the "44 Years' War" because we are still fighting it. Here are some links to relevant articles:

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=223726

http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Video/Article.aspx?id=223730

And, in other news:
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=223728 I'm sure those who sympathize with Palestinian terrorists can justify these "freedom fighters".

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of the much-vaunted reconciliation:
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=223723

An Interesting Map

2011-06-05T20:09:00.002+03:00

I downloaded the free sample of a Kindle book -- Charles Freeman's "A New History of Early Christianity"
today,

and there is a VERY interesting map in the first chapter, showing where the two indigenous peoples, during the Roman occupation, the Samaritans and the Jews, lived. Of course, the period of Jesus' life and the early Church was a good 700 years before Mohammad so there were no Muslims or "Palestinians" in the area.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Jews inhabited what is today the Galilee -- and the area known as the West Bank [we don't call it Judea without reason] It is very striking. I invite you to do the same as I did, and then ponder on where, exactly, is the Jewish heartland. It isn't Tel Aviv. And how fraudulent Arab claims really are.

I can accept that the farther into the past one goes, the chances of mythology swallowing up historical evidence increases. I too am somewhat skeptical of the existence of the Biblical Abraham [but not a tribal leader, or series of them, who did what Abraham is supposed to have done; I think that's quite real] and even of there having been a real individual named Moses [although I do think there was an Exodus, probably of a small enough band that the Egyptians didn't get too upset about it]. But by the Roman period there is no doubt whatsoever of the Jewish presence in what is now Israel and the West Bank. Indeed, predominantly the West Bank.

Confusion Reigns Supreme

2011-05-22T19:58:00.002+03:00

Obama put his foot in his mouth when he made his Middle East speech; today, to AIPAC, trying to redeem himself, he made it worse. Commentary magazine has three excellent comments: here , here, and here, and there will probably be more to link to in the next few days.

Fortunately for us, the Palestinians are as unwelcoming for Obama's cockamamie ideas as are the Israelis. Fatah has already announced that there won't be any talks at all until Israel retreats to the 1948 armistice lines and that includes relinquishing Jerusalem's Old City. As Bibi so simply said, Israel will not accept indefensible borders. Tourists have often asked me why Ben Gurion Airport is so close to Tel Aviv -- should there be an accident, the civilian casualties on the ground would be horrific. When I explain that Israel was exactly 17 miles wide at this point between 1948 and 1967 and the airport could not be sited farther from Tel Aviv as it was on the border, mouths gape open in astonishment.

Flying time from Amman, Jordan to Tel Aviv is 20 minutes. In the event of an attack the Israeli Air Force has 20 seconds to scramble, which is why a substantial portion of it is always in the air. Driving time from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv is about 40 minutes (except when traffic is heavy, which is just about always). It takes about as long to drive the entire length of Israel from the Lebanese border to Eilat as it does to drive from Boston to Washington, DC --and that's on pretty bad roads, if we had decent highways through the Jordan Valley and the Negev, the trip would take 6 hours or less. Flying time from BG to Eilat is half an hour. Even with all the territory Israel gained in the Six Days' War, Israel is still a very small country. But Obama thinks we will commit suicide for him. Hah.

"Medwife" and Proud of It

2011-05-21T21:23:00.003+03:00

Midwife is a generic word for a person who attends a woman in labor and delivers the baby (do NOT ever use the word "birth" as a transitive verb around me. It is a noun). Roughly speaking, midwives come in two varieties in the US: "direct entry" midwives and Certified Nurse Midwives. "Direct entry" midwifery can mean just about anything: any woman who is either apprenticed to someone who calls herself a midwife, or who does a "course" (which may be anything at all --there is no governing body -- ranging from hippie nonsense to basic obstetrics). She may never have had to pass any examination, either theoretical or practical to demonstrate that she has a requisite level of knowledge and ability.

At the time I studied midwifery in the UK (1974-75), there were no accredited or licensed midwives in the US except for graduates of two institutions, one of which was the Frontier Nursing School in Kentucky. It was a post-graduate school for those who were holders of certificates from 3 year diploma nursing courses (academic degrees in nursing having only begun a few years previously; the vast majority of registered nurses were diploma holders) and who were licensed, after examination, as Registered Nurses in one or more states. (When I finished nursing school in 1967, there weren't any accredited midwives at all in New York and most other states). The Frontier Nursing School provided midwives originally to remote, rural regions like Appalachia where women had no access to doctors at all. Even as late as the 1940s they made their rounds on horseback in some places.

The reason I chose Cambridge in the UK was because the British had a reputation for a very high level of excellence in their midwives. One of the texts I used, the classic "Maggie Myles" (Textbook of Midwifery by Margaret Myles, 8th edition) actually stated that trained midwives were one of the UK's "major exports", especially to the Commonwealth countries and former colonies of the now-defunct British Empire. It was a year course, 9 months in hospital, three months "on the district" (i.e. doing home visits and home births), open only to those who had the British equivalent (SRN) of the American RN. A State Certified Midwife had certain legal obligations, her code of practice was extremely clear and precise, so that we worked with, not for, doctors, and had considerable autonomy about giving medications, etc. Once, however, certain parameters had been crossed, we could no longer be the main care provider. When I returned to the US, my SCM was the full equivalent of a CNM. Now, with all nurses being required to be the holders of at least a BA, courses to become a Certified Nurse Midwife in the US is a Masters' degree program. My British SCM was accepted unconditionally in Israel and I was granted a license by reciprocity; since I came to live in Israel in 1976, I've never practiced as a midwife in the US, although I worked as an RN in Labor and Delivery from nursing school graduation until 1974, so that I've never worked outside of maternity nursing in 44 years.

The current situation in the US is a mess. Some states do not permit midwives of any type to attend births; some define anyone attending a birth as a midwife even if she has had no education of any variety, some states allow CNMs, and lastly there are states which grant privileges to holders of a bewildering assortment of qualifications and licenses: CM, CPM, PM, LM, etc. Unlike the UK, there is no national professional body which sets curricula, or registers, or supervises midwifery practice.

Why do I bother to delineate the various categories of midwifery in a country I will never live in, God willing, again? Why should it matter, especially as I am coming to the end of my career? Because there are great misconceptions about midwifery, and the role a midwife plays in the care of women.

I tend all sorts of women, in all stages of pregnancy, whether they are high risk or low risk, whether they want medication in labor or do not. (For me, the issue of home birth does not exist: I do not think it is safe under existing conditions, in the US. The trend, in those European countries where it is permitted, under strict regulation, is away from home birth -- but that is another topic, which I hope to deal with in a separate post). Direct entry midwives lack the knowledge to care for any but the simplest, low-risk situation. They certainly do not have the requisite knowledge to safely deliver at home, and no hospital will employ them. The fact that some women do successfully deliver at home is sheer luck. In point of fact, it isn't very many. Less than 1% of births in the US are at home. But the biggest problem with direct entry midwives, as opposed to CNMs lies in the fact that, for the untrained midwife, ideology plays a much larger role than for a CNM. This ideology can be regarded as either inspiring or ominous.

It goes something like this: hospitals have medicalized what is a normal, uncomplicated biological phenomenon; have turned pregnancy and labor into a form of illness from which the average woman needs to be rescued. That pregnant women have been brainwashed into believing that they need medical and/or surgical intervention in order to deliver their babies; that doctors won't allow them to have the "glorious", spontaneous, uncomplicated "birth experience" that women are entitled to have. Usually some reference is made to how simple it all was "back in the good old days" before "medicalization" of labor. As evidence, the ever-rising incidence of Caesarean Section is referred to, called the "unnecessarean", often performed by the "slice and dice" doctor in order to free him to get to his dinner or the golf course. "Trust birth" is one mantra, and much too often, "female empowerment". The term "birth rape" has been coined by radical women who complain of being powerless in the labor room, as if they had more knowledge than the professionals who tend them.

An old, very experienced OB/GYN once said to me that one could only claim that a birth was complicated or uncomplicated in retrospect, and he was right. Things can, and do, go wrong in even the lowest of low-risk births. (This is one of the reasons I like obstetrics: while the vast majority of births will go as expected, when the axe falls, it falls fast and everyone has to be instantly ready; anyone working in midwifery has to wear multiple hats) The stakes are high: women do still die in childbirth, although the numbers are miniscule from the second half of the 20th century onwards, compared to the period before that. Babies die, or are damaged in birth, women may survive but lose their ability to ever become pregnant again. Birth is a kind of Russian Roulette and anyone who does not respect birth's negative potential is an idiot, or willfully blind.

Prior to about 1920 there were few statistics. Birth was indeed thought of as so normal as not to require research or record keeping, beyond the legal requirement for a birth certificate and perhaps a parish register. In the 18th century, it has been noted, the average marriage in certain British parishes lasted for 17 years -- men died from illness or accident, women died in childbirth. It wasn't uncommon for men to marry as many as three times with two wives dying in childbirth, but death in childbirth was regarded as fate, not pathology. These are the wonderful "old days" today's super-natural birth advocates refer back to. I've got a host of stories of deaths and traumatic deliveries, some of which changed the course of history, that simply wouldn't happen today.

Along with better record-keeping, and advances in medical knowledge, came two very important technological improvements: the advent of general anesthesia in the mid-1850s, and antibiotics, namely Penicillin, in the 1940s. Until then, while obstetric forceps had been around since the 18th century (and were often used in extremely traumatic ways in situations that otherwise would have called for intrauterine destruction of the fetus as the only way to get it out), Caesarean Section was virtually impossible unless one was willing to sacrifice the mother to hemorrhage, shock, and/or infection. Suddenly, both the woman and her baby were likely to survive. Maternal deaths plummetted; so did the mortality and morbidity statistics for the baby, although not by such a large amount. Women came to believe that every birth would result in a perfect outcome. And that birth could be painless.

In the 1960s the concept of "natural childbirth" came into being. The drawback of the combination of medications (Demerol --pethidine, scopolamine, and phenergan), given intravenously, called "Twilight Sleep", was that the baby was often born very depressed and needed resuscitation; the medication crossed the placental barrier and into the baby very rapidly. Research claimed that the first half hour after birth was an essential "bonding" time for mother and infant, and with a mother doped up, she was deprived of this (how nearly all of us, born to mothers during the era of heavy medication, ever bonded with our mothers and they with us, was ignored -- just as the generation of bottle-fed infants, often on strict schedules, ever grew up normal is another question). Various techniques, such as Lamaze, were developed to assist the woman to cope with her contractions without getting medication. Up to a point, they worked. A lot depended on the kind of labor the woman was experiencing, and her pain threshold.

It was now known, through statistics, that women having certain kinds of labor had the best outcomes. Contractions and cervical dilatation could be plotted on a graph (the Friedman curve) and if a woman's labor deviated radically, it was shown that medical intervention such as pitocin augmentation, increased the chance of good outcomes. Prolonged labor resulted in a substantial number of cases in increased fetal morbidity and lasting disabilities. The March of Dimes, which originally was set up to deal with cerebral palsy sufferers, which was most often a consequence of prolonged labor, changed its target to birth defects as the number of CP kids declined. The ability to resort to C/S also decreased maternal and fetal mortality and morbidity. Earlier generations simply did not have the technology, or they would have availed themselves of it. Along with improvements in obstetrics came the idea that any bad outcome must be someone's -- usually the doctor's -- fault, and Americans, in general, are very litigious. I can remember when the tools of fetal monitoring and ultrasound were introduced (early 1970s). It was a mixed blessing. It could give warning of impending complications; it could also lead a doctor to the OR faster than he might otherwise have gone -- and if the baby was born pink and screaming, the parents often felt that the operation had been unnecessary. Epidurals, pioneered in the Vietnam War, brought the concept of "painless birth" much closer, too.

And suddenly, what I can only call the "Luddite response" to childbirth came into being. "Natural" childbirth became "childbirth without any medical intervention whatsoever" and appealed to women who had never seen the pre-modern carnage that attended childbirth before modern techniques. To be fair, both doctors and hospitals had managed, by now, to alienate many women, through poor communication and an emphasis on sterility and technology. Delivery rooms which had white-tiled walls had a tough time even admitting that pastel colors might be preferable. Delivery positions other than lithotomy were regarded as primitive. And a husband who wanted to be with his wife in labor was thought very odd indeed, not to mention probably a potential contaminant of the aseptic atmosphere. This is still going on, in places. It's no wonder home birth looks attractive to someone who has no knowledge of the potential dangers of giving birth where there is no instant availability of emergency care. It's no wonder a woman resents a doctor who uses a line like "don't worry your pretty little head" or a variant thereof since the rise of feminism. I've never understood the attraction of suffering unnecessary pain as being "empowering", but I do know there are many women who do so. Sometimes I think it is just to make the doctor, especially if male, uncomfortable.

The history of obstetrics in the US is a very interesting subject. Doctors -- accoucheurs -- were first gaining a foothold among aristocratic women in Europe when America was in its infancy. Wanting only the "best", American women demanded obstetricians to the exclusion of midwives and it's been that way ever since. Indeed, in the 1930s, the only midwives licensed to practice in Louisiana, for example, were black women who tended other poor black women who could not afford a (white) doctor. We were shown a film about one of these when I was in nursing school ("All My Children") and it was appalling.

The super-"natural" school of thought regards persons like myself, who think there is a middle-of-the-road approach to pregnancy and labor not as "midwives" -- that title being reserved for those who eschew all modern advances in medicine -- but as "medwives", midwives who are in thrall to the hated medical establishment. My philosophy is simple: my goal is a healthy mother and baby. Whatever it takes, I'll do. When I can act in accordance with the mother's wishes, I am happy to do so, but my responsibility as a professional will not allow for undue risk to either patient. In my experience, when patients are properly informed, there usually is little opposition to my suggestions. In situations where I am caring for a patient in conjunction with a doctor because of some high-risk condition, I usually find that the doctor and I have a good working relationship; we respect each other's boundaries. The patient benefits from a joint approach. Communication, trust, and respect are of the utmost importance. The practice of obstetrics is both an art and a science. The knack is knowing which to employ in any given situation.

Much has been made of midwives --almost always the direct entry variety -- who accept patients who are patently unsuitable for exclusive midwife care. Right now there is a huge hullabaloo about Karen Carr, who accepted a woman after more responsible midwives refused to take her as a client, due to more than one high-risk condition that made home birth extremely dangerous. In the event, Ms. Carr actually delivered the baby, who died, in a state where she is not licensed to practice, yet she has aroused a surprising degree of support for her action, and the woman's right to take a course of action which caused her baby's death. (The mother, btw, is not being prosecuted for manslaughter, since an unborn fetus has no legal rights. I find this also reprehensible) Due to a plea bargain, Ms. Carr is now able to wreak havoc on more babies and mothers, btw. This is one of the reasons that there should be nationwide licensing, nationwide supervision, nationwide standards of practice. In European countries this is so. But non-CNM midwives in the US resent having any restrictions put on their method of working, and as I stated at the beginning, the US is a patchwork of regulations, or lack of them, for midwifery practice.

So I stand by the title of this post: the term "medwife" is not a negative term, in spite of attempts to make it so. With the increasing shortage of doctors specializing in obstetrics, midwifery will become more common. I only hope that the practitioners are Certified Nurse Midwives, who are real professionals, and that the incompetent, under-educated, unsupervised, "cowboy" midwives are relegated to history.

2011-05-21T21:18:00.002+03:00

(click here to view)

Gordon Campbell
Freelance
May 21, 2011

EditorialCartoonists.com

Do you understand this cartoon? I confess I do not. Does the cartoonist think Obama is betraying Israel by a pro-Palestinian stance, or is he being insufficiently pro-Palestinian [as Abu Mazen has gone on record as saying] Just goes to show the confusion surrounding what exactly Obama said, IMHO.

2011-05-21T19:12:00.000+03:00

(click here to view)

Rob Smith, Jr.
The Glenn Beck Program
May 21, 2011

EditorialCartoonists.com

Why There's Been a Gap in the Blogging

2011-05-21T18:15:00.006+03:00

My son, quite rightfully, has complained that I haven't blogged in a long time. It's true. Not for want of subject matter, however.

An average Antigonos day begins about 7:30 in the morning, when I crawl or stagger from my bed. It usually takes me about 2 hours to sufficiently limber up to the point when all my joints stop screaming at me and my vertebrae stop feeling like a Slinky toy going downstairs (as long as I'm horizontal, the vertebrae are loose enough to only ache; once vertical, I feel them all compressing downward, due to the influence of gravity. I have several ruptured discs in my lumbar spine, with corresponding degenerative changes. Hell, I'm a nurse and I'm in my mid-60s. I've had back pain since I was in my first year in nursing school). After the usual ablutions, I have to check my blood sugar, and take my medications (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, congenital high cholesterol, gastric reflux, and an antidepressant because of all my other chronic conditions). Then, I eat breakfast while watching the news on Sky (British and world) and the BBC. When the antidepressant and my pain medication have kicked in, it's time to begin cleaning up yesterday's mess. And there is always a mess: the Holy One, Blessed Be He, has decreed that for giving my ultra-neat mother, z"l, many years of anguish with my slovenly habits, I should marry a slob and produce slob children. The children are all adults, but we still have a married daughter and husband living with us -- and, as of mid March, a further distraction:

My granddaughter, Shir. Yes, I've become a savta.

By this time, if I'm lucky, it is about 11 a.m. Now I rush to the bank, the shops, the market, etc. Fill the car with gas, get more credit in my E-Z Park device, in short, do everything else. And, not forget to arrange for some lunch to take to work. The life of a diabetic is obsessed with food; you can't skip meals or even delay them much or there will be an attack of hypoglycemia.

At 2 p.m. I'm at work. It isn't physically demanding work, in the main, but the pressure is steady and constant. Every woman who comes to the Women's Health Center I work for wants instant attention. I give instruction about injections, or the injections themselves, to women undergoing fertility treatment; do regular antenatal checks on women who have appointments with one of our high-risk specialists as well as give instruction to those diagnosed with gestational diabetes on how to check their blood sugar properly; and handle all those women who come to the walk-in "emergency" part of the clinic. (Rarely are these women actual emergencies, but nearly all of them are anxious and do not want to wait in line for the doctor. Some are downright crazy; some are physically aggressive)

When I get home at 7:30 p.m., my husband wants pampering and by the time I fix him a meal (we had an agreement that he'd eat his main meal during his working day, but he has long ago forgotten that), and my own, I fall into bed at about 11 p.m., having made the mess I'll have to clean up tomorrow. Let's not talk about laundry.

In between all this, I read my emails and a lot of internet journals and blogs. Often I say to myself, that I simply must reply to this or that article -- but never get around to it, and events usually overtake me long before I have the time to compose anything. Right now I badly need to revise my blogosphere list, as well as post links to my favorite commentators and news analyses. Ah well, I'll get to it when I retire, I say, much as Scarlett would think "tomorrow is another day". The only problem with this is that, although legally I reach retirement age in October, I doubt that, for financial reasons, I can stop working then.

I belong to a number of internet lists. Some are literary, dealing with the works of Dorothy Dunnett and Diana Gabaldon. The Dunnett lists have sub-lists for discussion of other topics, notably politics, and the Compuserve Writers' Forum actually is involved with much more than Diana's writing. I've made, over the years, some great friends on these lists; in 2000 I got to meet other Dunnettophiles in a Gathering in Edinburgh; next time I'm in NYC to visit my son I hope to meet some Gabaldonians.

My other interests include midwifery: two notable blogs are At Your Cervix and Navelgazing Midwife, although I find myself philosophically at odds with both, more or less. These bloggers probably have reservations about me, too. I can only point to my 40 years of experience in the field in defense. I also read some medical blogs written by both American and British doctors --it makes me sad to read what the Brits have to say about the NHS. When I was part of it in the mid-70s there was a lot of grousing about excessive politicization, but in Cambridge at least, it worked well, and there's nothing wrong with the concept.

The first internet list I ever belonged to (and still do) is Tachlis, which is a list devoted to giving practical answers to questions about all aspects of aliyah. "I'm coming to live in Israel in 4 years --should I bring my pressure cooker?" is one of the more meshuggeneh questions asked on the list, but many posters have real concerns that the various aliyah agencies can't, or won't answer. The list is very wide ranging.

The list of online magazines I read is long, tending to political analysis, particularly about Israel, but also about US and European politics, since those issues affect us eventually. My son was particularly concerned about what I thought of Obama's speech the day before yesterday. I'll deal with that in a separate post.

And now it's back to the @#$%^&* dishes....

Somethin's Happenin' Here....

2011-01-29T18:31:00.002+02:00

What it is ain't exactly clear...

At this point, 7 p.m. on Saturday evening in Israel, whatever I write will be overtaken by events, but America, no less than we are, should be afraid, very afraid of the domino effect caused by the popular uprisings in Tunisia, and now Egypt.

Tunisia will likely be under the thumb of Islamic radicals shortly, even though this is not what the protesters wanted, and Mubarak is finished, and Egypt is likely to turn much more fundamentalist as well.

About 40 years ago an Israeli, Rafael Patai, wrote a very good book called "The Arab Mind" in which he noted the degree to which there was an almost total disconnect between the educated and uneducated classes in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt. The educated emulated Western culture, felt considerable shame for the "primitive" fellah, were usually less fanatic and more secular. The peasantry, however, which constitutes the vast majority of the population, saw the educated and wealthier classes as something not quite "Egyptian", something alien. Whoever comes out on top now, one of the first things they will do, once the looting stops, is to close as many Western-style institutions as they can. Incidentally, that will destroy one of Egypt's main sources of income, the tourist industry. Moslem Brotherhood terrorists have already targeted foreign, "decadent" tourists repeatedly. One can only hope that, in the name of Islam, Egypt's ancient treasures won't be damaged as being "idolatrous". Certainly the 10% of Egyptians who are Coptic Christians have reason to be very fearful for their very lives in a Islamic Egypt.

We, of course, are similarly worried. Although the peace treaty signed with Sadat has never actually been a peace treaty -- much more an agreement of non-belligerence, as Egyptians cannot visit Israel nor has there ever been any common business ventures between Israel and Egypt [indeed, the flow of money has been only one way, with Israelis visiting Egypt] and in fact there is rampant, vicious, and government-sponsored anti-Semitism in Egypt -- any change of government in Egypt brings with it a possible abrogation of that treaty. In the case of an Islamic state, it will be almost a certainty. [That's why, when all Israel was in ecstasy over the end of the formal state of war Egypt claimed to be in with Israel, I was opposed to the treaty, back in 1977-78. I was sure it would not survive Sadat. In that I was wrong, because when Mubarak took over after Sadat's assassination, he endorsed it. But I was sure -- am sure -- that the treaty would not last after the Mubarak era]

What is happening in the Middle East is that the traditional fault line between Shi'a and Sunni is reasserting itself. There is huge poverty and corruption in both populations, in all the countries from Turkey to North Africa. The simple folks see Islam as the solution, not the cause, because they are told so, from the mosques. And they are ignorant enough to believe the demagogues who will find a scapegoat for their own inability to give the people what they want. Israel sits, as a kind of mini-America in their midst like a bone in the throat. Now that Obama has shown, in his speech endorsing Mubarak, that he's not only weak but stupid, and that the Americans, fleeing Iraq, aren't to be feared anymore, animosities that are nearly a millennium old are reviving.

Israel is like a pimple, not a cancer. If you are Shi'a, the cancer is any Muslim not Shi'a. If you are Sunni, the cancer comes from certain heretical views held by the Shi'ites. And so on. And, it must be remembered that the Middle East is far from homogenous ethnically. Those who revolted in Tunisia are Berbers; Lebanon is a patchwork of ethnic groups, the Turks are yet another distinct group, as are the Syrians and the Iranians. The modern Egyptian is only marginally racially related to the Egyptian of the Pharaonic period [the most pure are in the remotest villages that never were touched by the Hellenistic or later periods], and the so-called Palestinians are a really mongrel people, with more than twenty distinct ethnic groups participating in their composition, from as far away as the Sudan and the Balkans. The only true Arabs are the Saudis. All are linked by Arabic [it is forbidden to translate the Koran so every child learns enough Arabic to understand it] but Arabic is not the mother tongue of Turks, Tunisians, Iranians, Iraqis, or Kurds, who have very unique cultures.

There's not a lot we can do but sit quietly at present, but like a pimple which constantly reminds you of its existence by pain, needs to be squeezed for relief, and ultimately will be. Watch and see how Iran re-directs its venom from Israel to Sunni nations who attempt to thwart its march toward hegemony of the northern part of the Levant. Watch and see how a resurgent Islamic Egypt and North Africa try to delegitimize those countries with large Shi'a populations and governments, like Lebanon and Iran.

And in the midst of it all, like a tiny amount of flavoring for a cake, sits Al Qaeda, ready to "purify" all Islam in its crusade to conquer the entire Infidel world for the True Faith.

It will take a while for all this ferment to have concrete effects on the US; but it will come, because the adherents of Islam aren't "politically correct" and do not believe in tolerance. But it will come. Welcome to the medieval world of resurgent Islam at the end of the Crusades.

[to be continued, as things, in the words of Howard Cosell, "eventuate".

Kay, Lamb, Cronin, and Howatch

2010-11-27T16:33:00.003+02:00

Sounds like either a legal firm or an advertising agency !

Well, this is really about four authors I'm currently reading [or re-reading, as the case may be], and the similarities between some of them.

Harold Lamb is a big favorite of mine, although his is not a common name in literature these days. He began in the era of pulp fiction, back in the '20s and '30s, writing for Adventure magazine, with his tales of Central Asia, especially those about Klit the Zaporovian Cossack, set in the beginning of the 17th century, and progressed to non-fiction, in particular chronicling the Mongol invasions of the 13th century and their impact on the countries they conquered. March of the Barbarians was one of the first books I read --oh, I guess I was 10 or so --from my father's library, and its influence was immense. Not only did Lamb recount the history, he wrote with great insight of all the cultures of the area, and how so much history is dependent on population migrations. Reading his books [he also wrote a history of the Crusades, and fictionalized biographies of numerous individuals of the period that interested him, such as Sulieman the Magnificent, Omar Khayyam, and Tamerlane, as well as Genghis Khan] was like reading novels. His pulp stories, often of novella length, are now available for Kindle; and I just splurged [mea culpa, mea maxima culpa] $40 for a second-hand first edition of "The Earth Shakers", which is a combination of "March of the Barbarians" and "Tamerlane". His biographies of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane are also available in audiobook form [read by Charlton Griffin] from Audible.com. I'm sorry he's mostly out of print these days; I think he'd have quite a following if reprinted.

When talking about exotic places and times, I've got to admit that, for a long time, I avoided reading anything by Guy Gavriel Kay, because, in general, I'm not a fan of the fantasy genre. Well-written, and plotted SF I enjoyed throughout my childhood because my Dad was also a fan, and I got to read his copies of Astounding/Analog Science Fiction magazine when he'd finished [one of the most memorable stories was a serial called "Dune", for example, which has become a classic] but by my teens, and the Apollo missions, technology seemed to have caught up, more or less, with the imaginations of SF writers [except that no one predicted the PC] and I no longer found the genre so interesting. Fantasy often was a bit too twee for me.

However, the customer reviews on Audible.com for Kay's latest, "Under Heaven" were good, and I like Simon Vance as a narrator, so I thought I'd chance it, and now I'm a fervent fan of his. It helps, of course, that the story takes place in an analogue of China and Mongolia several hundred years before the rise of the Mongols, an area and time that already interested me. I just downloaded the two books of the Sarantine Mosaic for my Kindle, and have "The Lions of Al-Rassam" on order [why Amazon, when it begins to Kindlize an author, don't do Kindle editions of ALL his major books, I don't understand, especially if they are a series]. Kay seems to have started out writing much more fantasy into his novels at the outset of his career, and with each book there is less of it, which is fine by me. I'm not sure yet whether I'll attempt "Tigana" or the Fionavar Tapestry novels. When I read the word "magic", I get a little uneasy [although I did like Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Mists of Avalon" and "The Firebrand" very much. The sequels and prequels to "Mist" were ghastly, IMO].

And this brings me to Susan Howatch's "historical novels": "Wheel of Fortune", "Penmarric", "Cashelmara", "The Rich are Different", and "Sins of the Fathers", in which she retells actual periods of history by placing the main players [renamed, of course], in other periods. Kay creates analogues --alternate universes, if you will, while Howatch shows how history can be "transferred" to another period as fiction. Both are interesting ideas, and are well done, and rather different than standard historical fiction. Very satisfying.

A.J. Cronin is a different kettle of fish entirely. The only real points of similarity are that, like Lamb, he is largely forgotten these days, and like Howatch, he fictionalized real events in several of his novels, most notably in "The Stars Look Down". However, I find his characters to be honestly written, and persuasive. I've known persons like the protagonists of "The Judas Tree", and "Hatter's Castle". His delineations of the working class -- Cronin was an unabashed social activist --at the beginning of the 20th century ring true. The Second World War and the Welfare State largely ended that kind of subculture. Indeed, "The Citadel" was supposed to have been a big influence in starting the NHS. Cronin manages to say a lot with relatively few words. Recently a number of his books have been made available on Audible, but I think they were recorded in the early days of audiobook production. The quality of the recording of "The Citadel" is abysmal -- the narrator sounds like he's at the bottom of a well -- but "The Stars Look Down" is well narrated [but one does hear pages turning and the occasional throat-clearing], and so is "The Judas Tree". It can be a little difficult at times to understand the dialect in "Stars", the narrator is accurate almost to the point of incomprehensibility [unless you're from Yorkshire, I guess] but I prefer that to having the reader give everyone a BBC accent. I think Cronin, who, like Lamb, wound up in Hollywood writing screenplays, should be re-discovered. He's still got a lot to say.

Hope this provides a bit of thought for those "I haven't got anything to read" moments. It might also excuse the thin blogging, recently.

Vindicated, Unfortunately!

2010-11-03T21:03:00.002+02:00

I wrote this on November 8th, 2008. Alas, the midterms have turned out as I predicted. Quite a few other things have come to pass as I expected as well.

Just give me a gaudy turban and a crystal ball....

Now, what will happen in 2012? I'll let you know as soon as my demons inform me, but before I start with the pentacles and incantations, I want to let the election dust settle a bit

The Franchising of Jamie Fraser

2010-10-15T08:44:00.004+02:00

Once upon a time, there was a book called Outlander. It spawned Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager, and so on, until, in the fullness of time, there are seven books in the series, with an 8th in the works. Somewhere along the line, the author, Diana Gabaldon, began writing a number of novels and short stories featuring an 18th century nobleman, Lord John Grey, who is a career military man and diplomat, homosexual, and given to solving mysteries. These books are spin-offs of the Outlander saga -- he first figures in DIA as a 16 year old, and he reappears occasionally in the later books, becoming a major character in the most recent, An Echo in the Bone. Although she occasionally writes something contemporary, Gabaldon, most of the time, sticks with the universe she began to create in Outlander. Each book has some characters die or disappear, each book introduces new ones, so that the cast of characters has become quite large in the two decades that "Gabaldonia" is in existence.

Diana Gabaldon is a lush writer, lavish in description [all carefully researched], and full of small details. In fact, it is this that gives credibility to an otherwise fantastic conception: that time travel exists, and that a British nurse, at the end of WWII, can be transported to Scotland just before the Rising of 1745.

She has been immensely successful: about 17 million books in print so far, with a large fan following, several internet groups who discuss her books endlessly, and she herself is involved with a Compuserve writers' forum and not infrequently meets her fans at publicity events, where she talks and signs books. I've corresponded with her, and got an mention in the Acknowledgments in "Echo" for help with information concerning how to do a breech delivery. She seems a very nice person.

She is also a very intelligent one, and a good businesswoman. Her background is not history, but marine biology, and prior to writing Outlander, was a university lecturer. It's obvious she's good at multitasking; when she was still in academia, as well as raising three children, she had worked for Disney, writing comics, and was beginning her first novel.

Now Ms. Gabaldon seems to have been searching for new horizons with her tale of Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall. There's a new CD called "Outlander: the Musical" and a graphic novel, which is supposed to be the first part of Outlander told from a different viewpoint. What comes next? A Hollywood company has an option on Outlander, for a film, but it's all very vague at this time, and it has been hinted that perhaps a TV miniseries might at some point be considered. What's next? A line of men's colognes and/or women's perfumes named for Jamie and Claire?

The big initial problem Outlander had was of classification. It's not a book one can describe in 30 seconds or less. It is a historical novel with overtones of fantasy [the time travel aspect]. It's an adventure story -- there's plenty of action, and in fact, a not inconsiderable number of men find the saga interesting. And it definitely has a major love story, with explicit scenes that would qualify for an X rating. By default, although it radically departs from the standard formula for the genre, it was usually found on "Romance" shelves in bookstores, despite Ms. Gabaldon's crusade to move it. "Simply call it fiction", she has said. In many ways, it is similar in genre to Clavell's "Shogun" [Blackthorne discovers an unknown civilization, not through time travel, but through journeying to a virtually unknown destination, 17th century Japan, and is transformed by it].

No one would claim Outlander to be high class literature. Yet the decision to turn Outlander into a musical, and then into a graphic novel do not seem to help it achieve recognition that it is anything more than an upwardly mobile bodice ripper. Both the musical and the graphic novel will bring in scads more readers, undoubtedly. But will it also cheapen the original product and turn what should be a serious novelistic ouvre into fluff?

I think it will. I will frankly admit that I can't listen to the CD musical. I've tried, but find it saccharine and sentimental, but I'm not a big musical fan anyway. Just think about Anna Karenina as a musical, or, a better comparison, James Clavell's Shogun as a musical with Dutch sailors in chorus lines or humming samurai in the background while Blackthorne and Mariko sing a love duet. Sort of puts you off your breakfast, doesn't it?

The graphic novel is worse. It absolutely bastardizes the original work, reducing it almost to parody. An 800-odd page book is reduced to 184 pages [actually a bit less as the chapters are divided by title pages]. No one in the book resembles my mental image as based on the written descriptions in the novel itself, and there is enough variation in the artist's renderings that at times one can't even recognize a character who was in a different panel on the same page. In more than one drawing, Jamie looks as if he has mumps. Claire is reduced to a caricature [and is almost a twin of Jamie's sister] Murtagh bears a marked resemblance to the actor Sean Bean. But, to be fair, since I have no experience with graphic novels, it might be that the art work is above average in this book. If so, then the artistic level of graphic novels as a whole must be pretty abysmal.

In order to make fans feel that they are getting full value, a completely extraneous storyline, with a new character, is introduced, for what purpose I really can't tell. The backstory of Claire's particular circumstances, and even why she came to the stone circle through which she traveled back in time, is left out. This must make it a bit difficult for those who haven't read Outlander first. There is so little text that I think, were I asked to make an outline, chapter by chapter, of the original novel, I'd have more text than we have in the graphic version, and most of it is verbatim quotes of snatches of dialogue from the book. This is a book, in short, for the functionally illiterate, who would never dream of actually sitting down and reading a big, thick book. I was always sure it would sell very well -- and the NY Times has had it as #1 for two weeks now. In order to "hook" more readers into buying the other books, Amazon has been selling Outlander for $0.00 for about the same time, undoubtedly hoping that the graphic novel readers would decide they wanted to go for the hard-core stuff after reading the "trailer" that is the graphic novel.

So, as a business decision, the graphic novel seems a good idea. Certainly most of the fans are cooing over it. [So far Amazon hasn't posted any comments by anyone who hasn't already read some of the series, so it is difficult to gauge how the non-Gabaldonophiles are reacting.] Ditto the musical. Both will spread the story of Jamie and Claire to a larger audience. But what will it do to Ms. Gabaldon's literary reputation?

The English Defence League

2010-09-22T11:18:00.003+02:00

Reading this article, I was reminded of those wonderful books by Leo Rosten, "The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N" and "The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N", which are hilarious tales of a WASP teacher in an evening "Americanization school" in the 1930s, which were filled with immigrants from just about everywhere, who were all avid to become "real" Americans. These classes were much more than English lessons, they were about civics and culture too, and immigrants flocked to them, usually after a working day that could be 12 hours long.

Mr. Parkhill ["Mr. Pockhill"] is not at all apologetic for his cultural origins. Neither are his students, for theirs. They don't perceive learning a new culture to denigrate their old one, just that they WANT to be able to live "as Americans" in the wider American culture. They want to show their gratefulness for the opportunity to escape poverty by embracing new values in addition to their old ones. At home, the Italians undoubtedly still "eat Italian" while the Eastern European Jews keep kosher; Madame Olga Trasha goes to a Russian Orthodox church, but not one of this group would dream of trying to demand that all restaurants be kosher, or Italian, or all churches Russian Orthodox.

Yet what we see, over and over again, is that Muslim immigration demands that the host country conform to their requirements, and there is no feeling of being beholden to the host country at all for improved health, work, social conditions. They see no reason why non-Muslims cannot comply with their religious and cultural outlooks. They have provoked the backlash that has created the EDL, and while I deplore any violence, I have to side with those, in Britain and the US who think immigrants should adapt to the host country, or return to where they came, and I'm not apologetic, either.

Chelm, Israel

2010-09-08T11:11:00.002+03:00

The newest idiocy of the religious parties:

Every year, the date for changing clocks back and forth in the autumn and spring is determined by the Orthodox/ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset to suit what they perceive as important religious realities. The date for the autumn change, to "winter" time, is set for just before Yom Kippur, in the quaint belief that it makes for a shorter fast.

Of course, it doesn't. The fast is 25 hours long no matter what time you're on. But on daylight saving, or "summer" time as it is called here, one can sleep through a bit more of the fast following the prayers in the evening, and before they begin again the next morning. In fact, because Tel Aviv and Miami are on roughly the same latitude, the difference between summer and winter time only changes Shabbat and holiday times by about an hour during the year, unlike the UK, for example, which because it is so far north, can bring Shabbat in at 3 p.m. in the winter and not end until 11 p.m. in the summer.

This year the High Holidays come unusually early. Yom Kippur begins on the evening of the 17th of September, so the clocks are due to go back a day or two before. There has been a loud outcry from the general public [including quite a few religious]. It's still summer, really. The temperature is hovering in the high 80s, the sky is cloudless, and will be for a couple of months yet. Besides, nearly all the countries which use a daylight savings system wait until the end of October to change back, and that causes a lot of problems with companies which need to be in frequent communication with firms overseas. But no, the religious element in the Knesset is standing firm!

Dalia Itzik, an MK, demanded that the head of the haredi bloc, Eli Yishai [Shas] come up with an "innovative solution" to the problem. After some thought, he thought he'd found a way out. Israel will still move to winter time just before Yom Kippur, but then return to summer time until the end of October, to remain in sync with the rest of the world! In other words, make an already unpalatable situation even more complicated, not to mention ridiculous.

Words fail me. As of this writing, his ingenious plan has been rejected, and we're due to spend about 6 weeks on different time from everyone else.

I haven't posted a lot recently; the cruise to Norway, and pressures of work, and family, have been pretty stiff, but I hope to remedy that soon.

Here's wishing everyone who reads Antigonos' Annals a healthy, happy, prosperous New Year.

גמר חטימה טובה לשנה של בריות ,פרנסה,ואושר

A Distinction without a Difference

2010-09-08T11:00:00.002+03:00

(click here to view)

Angelo Lopez
The Tri-City Voice
Sep 8, 2010

EditorialCartoonists.com

To Jews, what Christians find objectionable in Muslims and what Muslims find objectionable in Christians is much of a sameness. Both are proselytizing religions which deeply resent the other's proselytization. But then, it is said, isn't it, that that which you dislike in others is that part of yourself with which you are uncomfortable. From the sidelines, as Jews are, in this fight, it is amusing how both sides don't realize this.

2010-07-14T17:18:00.000+03:00

(click here to view)

Bob Gorrell
Creators Syndicate Inc.
Jul 14, 2010

EditorialCartoonists.com

No comment. I don't think it's necessary.

2010-06-30T13:51:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Steve Greenberg
Freelance, Los Angeles
Jun 30, 2010

EditorialCartoonists.com

How Sweet It Is....!

2010-06-29T19:39:00.002+03:00

At Your Cervix has a post up about doctors who care, reeely care about their patients and take lots of time with them, the so-called "Dr. Wonderfuls" that Barb, on Navelgazing Midwife often goes on about. These are doctors who, according to the econiums on the blogs, try NOT to practice medicine, but behave [the highest compliment!] "like midwives". These are doctors who pay much more attention to their patients' requests than stupid things like evidence-based medicine, so that they take all kinds of risks just to make the patient happy. It all works out very well until the patients begin sueing when there's a bad outcome. Dr. Biter, on the West Coast, has managed to gain an almost fanatical coterie of women who think he's the Cat's Pyjamas, but in only 12 years of practice he has also been named in six lawsuits. One has to wonder why.

But this isn't about "Drs. Wonderful", or "Dr. Grouchy" or any other kind of doctor. It's about communication, or the lack thereof, and time, and patient expectations, and reality.

I'm the last one to deny that most doctors don't have "bedside manners" worth a damn. At Your Cervix has already finished one year of her CNM course [MA, I believe] and until now it's all been about communication. I keep waiting for her to get to midwifery -- I suppose it will show up at some point. Doctors never take courses in how to talk to patients, and to be honest, frank discussions are usually not viable for several reasons. The patient has to trust the doctor, yet he wants the doctor to be somewhat distant and objective, before he can open up and ask "What was that you just said? Can you repeat it in English?" or "Why are you advising this treatment and not that treatment?" because the patient fears the doctor will be annoyed with him for doubting his [the doctor's] pronouncements. [And the doctor, all too often, is. He wants to stay on his pedestal as much as the patient wants him to remain there]. So there is a very fine line in the interaction between patient and doctor. Add to this the fact that in OB the patient is a woman, and the doctor is very often a man, and having a baby is not only emotional but related to sex, and the line can be very fine indeed. One man's compliment can be another man's sexual harassment -- this is the reason all intelligent male doctors will have a female attendant in the room if an internal exam is likely. Females, be they nurses, midwives, or even female physicians, are perceived by the female patient as being less threatening. Those of us in the business know that the most obnoxious doctors [at least as far as their staff colleagues are concerned] can be women, who often need to prove they are tougher than the men, incidentally.

So patients can feel intimidated even when there's no overt intimidation going on, and insensitive doctors can think the patient is entirely satisfied with her treatment unless she signals that she is. The signalling is often misinterpreted as hostility. Trust, and communication, again.

But, the nurses and the midwives, one hears, "listen to me when the doctor doesn't". It depends on what the patient's talking about. It isn't the doctor's job to instruct the patient how to use her glucometer; it is a waste of time to do so, but it is a task the nurse is educated to do. The patient then perceives the nurse as being more interested, more supportive. On a ship, it would be a waste of time for the Captain to shovel coal in the boiler room; he delegates that to the appropriate people. The same thing applies here. The nurse can't determine what the insulin dose should be for a gestational diabetic; the doctor does that, and the nurse shows the patient how to administer it. It's called division of labor.

Now, about time, and reality. Ideally, I would have a half hour with each new patient, to open their pregnancy follow-up card, take a history, chat about the progress of the pregnancy, ask if there are questions, etc. At Your Cervix is interested in bringing the delights [!?] of unmedicated "natural" childbirth to low-income women. Do poor, uninsured women take private midwives? No, they don't. They go to clinics run by teaching hospitals. If a CNM sees a woman, she is a staff midwife, who doesn't pick and choose her patient caseload, she works in a clinic X days a week, or in L&D for X shifts a week. Right away, the one-on-one patient/midwife relationship is compromised. Ms. Hernandez will probably see a number of different midwives through her pregnancy and labor and, because the clinic is almost always crowded, will have only a brief time to speak with one. When doctors are accused of giving their pregnant patients short shrift, the patient doesn't usually know how many patients the doctor has to see within a given time: in my clinic, in a 5 hour stretch, a doctor usually has to see between 40 and 75 women. No time for cozy chats, is there? It's not uncommon for me to be supervising two women having NSTs [fetal monitoring], be teaching a woman about gestational diabetes, and have half a dozen women waiting in the hallway for their BP/weight/urine tests before going in to the doctor. It's a madhouse. And, oh yeah, the phone keeps ringing [usually with asinine questions like "I forgot my pill today but he didn't come inside. Can I get pregnant?" or "I'm 6 weeks pregnant but I'm bleeding and having cramps. I don't have a babysitter. Do I really need to see a doctor?"] The phone queries take more time than anything else.

Whether a woman gives birth in hospital or home, if she retains a private midwife, of course she gets a great deal more attention. She's paying for it [or in some cases, her insurer is]. Most CNMs who don't work in hospital work with a medical group, and depending on how much overhead there is, and how much profit her medical partners want to make, her caseload can be extensive. It often presents a dilemma. Whereas a doctor can relinquish on-the-spot care to the L&D nurses and only get to the hospital when the patient is nearing delivery, or will briefly pop in from time to time, thus being able to manage his office hours as well, the CNM is expected to accompany her patient, acting more as a doula than as a doctor, especially in early labor. Meanwhile, her clinics for her antenatal patients must be cancelled and all the patients rescheduled. The patients really love this, believe me. [Or the practice has several midwives, who cover for each other, which patients, used to seeing a particular midwife, also dislike]

Homebirth midwives make a big point of describing the huge amounts of attention they give their patients. Well, that's because of the infinitesimal number of patients they deliver. Two deliveries a week, 100 a year, is a really heavy caseload for a midwife delivering babies at home, and a midwife with a caseload like that is a physical wreck pretty soon, from exhaustion. Two deliveries a month is more like it, and while sometimes she might have a busy month, with four or five deliveries, she is also likely to go several months without a delivery. Most homebirth midwives can't make a living from this, no matter what they charge, and also work as instructors or doulas [or their partners support them].

So the bottom line is that although a midwife ought to be [1] a CNM, [2] carry a reasonable caseload which allows at least half an hour for each patient, [3] be linked to a major medical facility or have medical back-up which is sympathetic to the idea of promoting the midwife's ideology for birth, [4] has an income commensurate with her education and committment -- the chances are that it's all a long way off. Noticed any flying pigs in the neighborhood recently?

In the present, you do what you can. When I have an obviously distressed patient, I shoo everyone out and close the door, even occasionally lock it [but that doesn't stop patients banging on it anyway] and try to disconnect the phone [but the switchboard operators get antsy with the secretaries because they can't put "emergency" calls through] and give some quality time to the patient. But as the saying goes, until you've walked a mile in a man's shoes, don't judge him -- wait until you're in practice, At Your Cervix, before you make judgements on how patients are treated by their Health Care Providers. BTW, hope the day you begin your new career isn't far off.

Susan Howatch

2010-06-29T17:09:00.000+03:00

In general, I give books with female authors and sensuous pictures on the cover a pass – Danielle Steel, for example, doesn't interest me in the least. So I have often passed over the audiobooks of Susan Howatch available on Audible.com, but when I read the reviews of "Glamorous Powers", I was intrigued, and the audio sample was very well read. It was fantastic. In quick order I ordered the first and third books of the first "Starbridge" trilogy ("Powers" being the second) and devoured them. I also listened to "The Rich are Different", and "Sins of the Fathers", which belong to an earlier, "historical romance" phase. I don't really think that's a good description, but I don't know what else to call the Caesar/Cleopatra/Antony/Augustus story, set in the 1920s to 1950s, with Paul van Zale/Caesar an investment banker. Sounds awful, doesn't it? In the hands of another writer, it might be, but Howatch carries it off magnificently. I'm currently waiting for three more of her books in this genre: "Cashelmara", "Penmarric", and "Wheel of Fortune", which, I understand, are based on Plantagenet history, transplanted to the 19th century.

The "Starbridge" novels, consisting of two trilogies, the first in the 30s and 40s, and the second ending in the 60s (I believe) are followed by a third trilogy, the "St. Benet" trilogy, which carries the story into the 90s. At the heart of all the books are Jonathan Darrow and his son, Nicholas. Both clergymen in the Church of England's "High Church" end of the spectrum, both are unusually psychically sensitive and involved in spiritual counselling and healing. The first two trilogies are mostly concerned with clergymen in various states of nervous and spiritual breakdown; the third set of books has more of an emphasis on those secular persons who Nicholas attempts to heal. In my opinion, while interesting, it is the weakest set of the books, and I personally gravitate more toward Nicholas' mentor and assistant, Lewis Hall (the great-nephew, incidentally, of Nicholas' father's mentor), who is an older, rather curmudgeonly man which a sex drive which gives him problems (since he's divorced, and C of E clergymen are expected to be either married or celibate). It's not that Nicholas is a nonentity, but he's a pale shadow of his father, who is a very charismatic and forceful personality. There is a strong psychological component in the discussions of spiritual direction, but the language, most of the time, is religious rather than psychological, and I'd be happier if the "healing" was in the name of God (which, actually, it is, most of the time) rather than Jesus, who, for me, is a false god. I don't really have a problem with the idea that "demonic forces" are synonomous with neuroses. The implication is that, if there IS spiritual healing which happens in the name of a false god, then [1] either the real God is doing it regardless of the religious orientation of either the patient or the healer, or [2] it would have happened without any recourse to any divinity whatsoever. Once or twice in the books there are scenes in which phrases and actions associated with exorcism are invoked ("Depart, Satan!" or "In the Name of Jesus Christ, leave this person!") with a cross being flourished, and one of the "villains" cannot speak Jesus' name (why wouldn't she, probably with an expletive attached? Plenty of wicked and highly neurotic people do call on Jesus all the time, without ill effect [or beneficial effect, for that matter]. The whole concept that there is something unique about Christian healing (what happens if a Christian is prayed for by a group of Hindus?) makes me uncomfortable. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, Christianity makes me uneasy in a lot of ways. I'd be interested in knowing what clergymen think of Howatch's books.

In any case, I highly recommend her work.

2010-06-23T14:43:00.000+03:00

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Scott Stantis
Chicago Tribune
Jun 23, 2010

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So Far, So Dull

2010-06-15T21:17:00.002+03:00

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Joe Heller
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Jun 15, 2010

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Remind me, just how long is it until Labor Day when the REAL football begins?

2010-06-13T20:14:00.001+03:00

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Nate Beeler
Washington Examiner
Jun 13, 2010

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Support

2010-06-04T12:04:00.002+03:00

It's nice when you find another blogger who independently comes to much the same conclusions you have. And nice, too, when the comments, in general, support one's own thinking. I don't agree 100% with either Shrinkwrapped, or the commenters to his post, but in the main we're thinking along the same lines.

The View from Editorial Cartoonists

2010-06-04T11:42:00.004+03:00

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Scott Stantis
Chicago Tribune
Jun 4, 2010

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Nate Beeler
Washington Examiner
Jun 4, 2010

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Chan Lowe
Sun-Sentinel
Jun 4, 2010

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A Psychoanalyst Notes

2010-06-02T18:00:00.001+03:00

A must-read blog post from Shrinkwrapped.

2010-06-02T17:50:00.000+03:00

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Randy Bish
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Jun 2, 2010

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SNAFU

2010-06-02T15:22:00.002+03:00

Usually, after attending to personal needs and putting on my glasses, my first stop of the morning is my computer. I check my email and the numerous lists and forums to which I belong, then check the Haaretz and Jerusalem Post English sites, The New York Times and the Washington Post.

The past couple of days, to keep my blood pressure more or less normal, I've avoided them. I don't know which upsets me more, the real implications of the Gaza flotilla, or Israel's response to it.

As is so often the case, the flotilla is merely a symptom of a much larger and more serious underlying condition, and for this one has to study history. It's not an accident that the Turks are funding the enterprise, and that should be worrying a lot of folks in Europe and the US.

Equally worrying is the degree to which Western countries are being hoodwinked in relation to the true situation in Gaza and the true aims of both Hamas and the so-called PA "government".

And lastly, just how dangerous it is for Israel to believe its own mythology.

The flotilla itself was created to be a provocation, not a solution, because the problem it ostensibly is addressing -- the lack of "humanitarian goods" in Gaza -- is a false one. The Jerusalem Post today has an article showing that the goods found on the boat have already been supplied by Israel for some time and there is no need for them to be brought specially now. Nor was there any reason for the ships not to have complied with Israel's demand that the flotilla dock at Ashdod for inspection. Israel announced prior to the sailing that it would transfer all humanitarian aid to Gaza. No, the organizers wanted to be martyred for a fake cause -- and Israel gave them what they wanted. Silly Israel.

What is going on now in the Middle East began around the time of the Crusades, although it can be argued that the real beginning began when Shi'a Islam split from Sunni Islam. During the Crusader period there was a virtual civil war between the two Islamic factions (which was one reason the Crusaders managed to succeed in the First Crusade). The Caliph in Baghdad was Shi'a; so was the Caliph in Cairo. The Sunnis, who had been ascendant, and were the majority, were, for a time, swept aside by the Shi'ite "heretics". But that had been reversed by the time the Ottoman Empire was established. But the Shi'ites have long memories, and a big chip on their shoulders.

It is important to remember that the Iranians, Syrians, and Turks are Muslims but not Arabs. Traditionally these countries, together [sometimes] with Iraq and Lebanon, have formed a distinct axis which is ethnically very different from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States. In the 1920s Kemal Ataturk forced Turkey, then the "Sick Man of Europe" to modernize, and become a secular state. But the West has largely rejected Turkey's overtures as inadequate, and there is an Islamic backlash growing. Iran has been all to eager to "assist" Turkey to find its true Islamic "self" because, together with Syria/Lebanon, that forms a bloc which [1] isolates Iraq, which is also a target for the nascent Iranian hegemony and renewed "Caliphate", and [2] can split the Islamic world in two. Iran's ultimate goal is to be the most powerful state in the Middle East. If Iran can site its missiles in Turkey, after Turkey expells NATO and the US bases there, it cripples the West's ability to control Afghanistan, or any other region nearby, and threatens Europe directly.

Hamas has come to make common cause with Hezbollah, as well as Al Qaeda, and therefore is allowing itself to be influenced and supported by Iran, possibly directly although I don't think that right now there is any real proof. So Iran's sinister finger must be sought when looking behind the scenes. Iran encourages Turkey, who funds the Gaza flotilla, to help Hamas. The fate of the Gazans is almost irrelevant. And anything which embarrasses the Israelis is just icing on the cake.

The timing is also interesting because Obama is hosting this "Jewish American Heritage Month" right now, because he desperately needs the Jewish vote in the US this November. Bibi is drumming up support for his policies in the States and is somewhat preoccupied. Whoever planned the Israeli response to the flotilla (assuming anyone actually did) was acting without guidance from the PM, and the Turkish organizers are not loath to embarrass Obama as well. In the Muslim world he is regarded as weak and ineffectual; a bit of a joke really.

For a long time, Israelis have patted themselves on the back and felt that they are very clever; certainly they are a lot cleverer than stupid Arabs. Unfortunately this in itself is a dangerous trap. Arabs are not very intelligent about certain things, but very shrewd indeed about some things, and not all Jews are intelligent at all. Arabs are very adept at telling others what they wish to hear, and do not scruple to lie. It's all part of the game, and of their culture. And they are believed by the gullible. I was told just the other day that Israel faked the Karin A incident, when a boat carrying 80 tons of arms tried to dock at Gaza and was seized by the Israeli Navy. Palestinians moan about how Israel "doesn't want peace" but use schoolbooks whose maps show Palestine from the Jordan to the Mediterranean and use the Arabic version of Sesame Street to extoll child martyrs and a Micky Mouse figure talks about murdering Jews. That's all right. They complain about security fences and borders keeping them out of Israel, but no Israeli dares go to Palestinian territory for fear of being lynched. They want free and unlimited access to Israeli territory but they claim to want their own sovereign state and don't want Jews in it. Borders work both ways, habibi.

The question remains what to do about future flotillas, because the Hamas folks are planning them. The first thing is that there must be no doubt that Israel will not allow them to dock at Gaza, but that it is made absolutely clear that all aid will be transshipped to Gaza after inspection at an Israeli port if the ships come in peacefully. If they do not, the aid will be confiscated or returned to its country of origin. Netanyahu should hold a prime time news conference with as much of the international media as possible and this message must be spread as widely and reiterated as often as possible. Foreign journalists, and UN observers, if it can be arranged, should be on Israeli navy ships. Live filming and broadcasting should begin from the first hailing of any flotilla vessel until it is escorted into port. If networks choose to put foreign correspondents on Palestinian ships but not on Israeli ships, the credentials of correspondents working in Israel should be revoked. [I also think the major news networks should have a correspondent resident in Shderot permanently, btw] If there is a live TV feed, it will be obvious who is attacking whom and with what. Israel has got to realize that the world wants to believe the worst of the Jews at all times. Film released after the event will be called "fake".

During the Second World War, the acronym SNAFU was common. It stands for "Situation Normal, All F**ked Up". It is still applicable.

2010-05-28T20:37:00.000+03:00

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Victor Harville
Stephens Media Group
May 28, 2010

EditorialCartoonists.com

Think I'd better buy a ticket NOW.

Political Cartoon for the Day

2010-05-20T09:50:00.000+03:00

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John Sherffius
May 19, 2010

EditorialCartoonists.com

Posted for no particular reason; just liked it...

Another Brilliant Idea that Comes a Cropper

2010-05-16T13:36:00.003+03:00

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Douglas MacGregor
The News-Press
May 16, 2010

EditorialCartoonists.com

Someone should explain to the geniuses that came up with this idea that secretions from scalp sebaceous glands COAT hairs with oil and sweat; the hair doesn't "soak up" oil. If it did, simple shampooing wouldn't clear it away. All using hair will do is coat the coast with hairy balls of oil, rather than just balls of oil, which is quite bad enough.

Obama Admits That, Against Ahmadinejad, He's Clueless

2010-04-06T15:32:00.003+03:00

Two articles, one in the Jerusalem Post, and one in Haaretz, came to my attention today, and I find them very alarming, and not just for the threat to my life and country. Ahmadinejad is threatening the entire West, just as I've been predicting for a long time, using Israel as a hostage.

And Obama is too bloody stupid to realize it; and he has wasted a year during which he could have done something about it. Every day, in every way, it is becoming apparent that he is completely unfit for the immensely serious task of being President. He has achieved very little, and is ready to compromise his principles [just look what has happened to the health care reform bill -- and what will happen to it by 2014 when it's supposed to take effect] Now, he's telling Americans that they must accept that a maniac will have a nuclear arsenal. Makes "Munich" and Chamberlain look puny.

And, btw, I find his attempt to co-op Passover revolting. And frankly I find any US rabbis who pander to his distorted idea of what Pesach means equally revolting. The meaning of Pesach isn't universal; it is specific to Klal Israel. Considering how Obama is trying to stop us building in our own capital, how can he say "Next Year in Jerusalem", let alone "Next Year in Rebuilt Jerusalem" which is what Israeli Jews say at their Seder. It is as meaningful as all those "Moroccans for a day" Israeli Ashkenazi politicians who try to profit from Mimouna.

Gee Whiz, It's Another iThingy!

2010-04-04T21:29:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Nate Beeler
Washington Examiner
Apr 4, 2010

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For the moment, I can't see what possible use I would have for an iPad -- but of course, that could change...

Woof!

2010-03-09T19:10:00.001+02:00

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Nate Beeler
Washington Examiner
Mar 9, 2010

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You Read It Here First

2010-02-28T18:30:00.002+02:00

Several years ago, I predicted this (I wrote about an "unconfirmed report from Iran that they had missiles that could hit London") but on at least one list to which I belong I was accused of "warmongering", of course because I am an Israeli, and therefore, "biased".

"Buy Iranian oil at $500 per barrel, or we take out Vienna".

But personally, I think The Clown of Teheran wants a Shi'ite hegemony over the Middle East. The Shi'ites have a long, long grudge against Sunni Islam. Turning Syria into an Iranian proxy is only the first step in Achmadinejad's plan, just as Hitler "only" wanted the Ruhr, and the rights of the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia "guaranteed".

But of course, being Israeli, I'm biased. There's nothing to fear from Achmadinejad, just as there was nothing to fear from Hitler...

Update, Again

2010-02-19T20:37:00.002+02:00

On the 22nd of January I wrote about two couples who I saw frequently in my clinic. (See "A Difficult Week") It might interest you to know that the first couple have had their child, safe and sound, at 36 weeks, and they brought her to see us, a real little charmer. It's always nice when the parents bring in the kid, especially if we've followed them through fertility treatment, and the subsequent pregnancy.

The second couple I mentioned are still getting injections to help maintain the twin pregnancy, and the pregnancy is continuing, but they aren't out of the woods yet, so I've got fingers, toes, and my eyes crossed.

Sent another woman to hospital this week, who is in her 22nd week of pregnancy. She has had problems in previous pregnancies at about this time, and she is exhibiting some worrisome symptoms now. She has been something of a nudnik since the beginning of this pregnancy (who can blame her?) and some of the nurses get a bit exasperated with the lists of questions and complaints she brings to every clinic visit but when she walked in the door of my office this week, all my mental alarm bells began ringing. Sometimes all it takes is a glance to see that, this time, the complaints are real.

Whenever I read some "birthin's naatural, man" nonsense, I think of people like these. The percentage of women who can deliver on the kitchen table and an hour later go hoe the garden is really very low; the percentage who need every iota of medical technology to conceive and carry a pregnancy to viability is also relatively small. The majority fall somewhere in the middle --but anyone who works in obstetrics and thinks the potential for catastrophe isn't always lurking in the shadows, is a fool.

A Conversation or Two

2010-02-19T19:33:00.002+02:00

A sample of typical telephone calls I get at work:

The phone rings, I pick up the receiver: "Women's Clinic, hello."

(Breathless voice on the other end, usually calling from a mobile phone with bad reception or she is in the noisiest intersection in town, and it is obvious she is holding an infant, since the baby's screaming is considerably louder than the woman's voice): "Hello, is this the Women's Clinic?"

I affirm that it is, thinking that it has hardly changed from my greeting not five seconds before, but too wise to say that, as it would lead to impossible complications in explaining why it was the same clinic it was five seconds ago.

Patient: Well, what I wanted to know…my doctor is overseas/on vacation/not available/only has office hours once a week and it isn't for a few days yet…what I wanted to know…you are a nurse, aren't you? You see, I did a pregnancy test today and I want the result, what I mean is that I've got the result from the internet but I don't understand it…" (This is said usually without pausing for breath, which is one problem, since it is usually very hard to understand what she is saying, as if the bad connection and the screaming kid isn't enough)

For reasons known only to the kupah lawyers, who work out of Tel Aviv and have never had any contact with patients, we are not supposed to give lab results over the phone. Kupah members can download results from the internet, but no one ever understands them, which is predictable, since they are patients, not medical professionals. Most of the names of the tests are either abbreviations or in Latin or English, and all are written in the Latin alphabet, which also poses a problem for certain sectors of the Israeli population. Hence, the need to call us, even if they do have the results in their hot little hands. I tell the woman I cannot give her the results over the phone (this often provokes a discussion in which I have to defend the kupah's ostensible regard for patient privacy. That can waste 10 minutes right there, and, btw, shows just how misguided the policy is, as some doctors give their patients instructions to go to hospital, etc. depending on certain lab values) But this lady to whom I am talking has her results in front of her, although I suspect she's probably finding it difficult to juggle her cell phone, her baby, and the page with the results.

Me: All right. Look for the line that begins H.C.G., followed by the word Q.U.A.N.T., 'quant' …

Patient: What? Where? Oh, I see it says " if less than three, negative, if more than 25"…

Me: No, above that.

Patient: What's the "less than three"?

Me: Those are the normal parameters. A result of less than three units means a negative result, more than 25 units means a positive result. Look for the line immediately above that".

Patient: Where it is written 'HCG'?"

Me: Yes. (I'm beginning to get pressure behind my eyeballs) After 'HCG QUANT' and 'S' in parentheses, what is written?

Patient: Negative.

Me: Negative means you are not pregnant.

Patient: Are you sure?

Me: Yes. (the headache is definite by now)

Patient: Why not?

Well, madam (or miss), I'm sure I don't know (no, I don't really say that)

Repeat this conversation, or a variant thereof, at least 5 times a shift. Another interesting fact is that I now know exactly how badly math is taught in Israeli schools. Unless there is no human chorionic gonadotropin to measure at all, the result is given in numbers. A perfectly incredible number of women do not understand the meaning of a decimal point, and vehemently insist that they ARE pregnant, because the result is 0.69 and "69 is more than 25". I've actually been told that I don't know what I'm talking about when I insist that 0.69 is less than 1. I would attribute this to a natural desire to have a positive result, except that I've gotten the same response from women who are anxious not to be pregnant.

Here's another:

The caller has an elderly sort of voice, combined with a strong Middle Eastern or North African accent. She wants to know if her daughter is pregnant. After going through a whole "we can't give results over the phone" spiel, the woman triumphantly says that she has the results in front of her, and her daughter is standing by, but is "unwilling" to come to the phone. The woman also says that she can't read the results, but after mangling several abbreviations, it is apparent that she does indeed have some lab results in front of her. I pull up the exam on my computer, since I don't know precisely to what she is referring. I note that the young lady who had the tests done is 18 years old. I also notice that no pregnancy test was done, only a blood count, which is normal. I tell her mother that. Officially I shouldn't, since I'm talking to a third party, but there's no harm in telling her that her daughter is healthy.

Mother: Why can't you tell if she is pregnant? She had blood drawn.

Me: But not for a pregnancy test.

Mother: What's the big deal? You can't tell from the lab results? Blood is blood, after all.

Me: There are several hundred different kinds of tests that need blood. The doctor did not order a pregnancy test. He ordered a blood count, which tells him several things, such as if your daughter needs to take iron, which she does not.

Mother: You can't tell if she is pregnant from a blood count?

Me: No, I can't. And Madam, I wouldn't tell anyone but your daughter if I did have that result. So why don't you either put her on the line, or ring off? Obviously, I don't say that out loud, either.

Mother: Make a guess. Surely you can tell something from the results. Why else would the doctor order a blood test?

Oh Lord, give me strength. Or give them some intelligence. For a long time, my idea of purgatory was being locked in a room with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing lieder endlessly. I'm beginning to reconsider that, in favor of an unending stream of such telephone calls. I think that might be a lot worse than La Schwarzkopf.

Oh, Goody!

2010-02-19T07:55:00.002+02:00

It seems that quite a few of my favorite "light" novelists will be publishing new books soon.

Lindsey Davis has a novel about the English Civil War, as well as the 20th Falco novel on the way.

Deanna Raybourn is offering "The Dead Travel Fast", but it is unclear (to me, anyway) whether it will feature Lady Julia Grey and Nicholas Brisbane. I rather hope so; I quite like him, even if he occasionally becomes just a little too much like Sherlock Holmes. But maybe marriage has mellowed him (I prefer him unmellowed, however)

Speaking of Holmes, Laurie R. King's Mary Russell will be present in "The God of the Hive". Ms. King's last book, "The Language of Bees", was not one of her best, partly because it seemed truncated at an odd point, and "The God of the Hive" is largely considered by her fans to be its completion -- or so we hope. Ms. King seems to want to make Mary more independent of Holmes, but it is the interaction between the two that is the main attraction, in my opinion.

Amelia Peabody returns! Sensibly, the new novel will take place before the "Tomb of the Golden Bird", which saw Peabody and Emerson, in their late 60s [possibly, in Amelia's case, at 70, although her "editor" has claimed that Amelia fudged her age at some point] present at what was the end of an era in Egyptology, the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. This novel is supposed to take place during the period in 1910 when Ramses was excavating in Palestine. Living, as I do, in one of the places that features in the novel, I eagerly await it. I'm currently listening to all the series in audiobook form again (why are three of the novels only available in abridged form??) and am finding them delightful all over again. It's not just the way Elizabeth Peters writes, but the way Barbara Rosenblat "performs" them.

Diana Gabaldon has an Outlander-connected short story, called "A Leaf in the Wind of All Hallows", appearing soon in an anthology, a Lord John Grey short story in another anthology, and in the autumn will publish the Outlander graphic novel. None of these projects fills me with unalloyed enthusiasm; I really want to read the short stories but mildly resent having to buy fairly expensive books full of lots of other stories that do not (probably) interest me, and I have no interest in adult comic books, especially when the art work looks to me like typical "manga" type of illustration (albeit beautifully colored). But since the story line will expand on the text of the first book in the Outlander series, I'm probably going to have to buy it, just to see what twists DG has come up with.

By the way, I've recently listened to "The Whiskey Rebels" by David Liss, which was very well done -- he's an author I've come to enjoy quite a bit. I heartily recommend the audio version of Dennis Lehane's "The Given Day" as well. Generally speaking, I choose audiobooks which have quite a lot of dialogue and can benefit from a dramatic reading; books with long narrative sections seem to fare badly in audiobook form (despite repeated attempts, I could not get into A.S. Byatt's "The Possession", which has lots of "extracts" from works of the fictional author at the center of the novel, for just that reason) When buying books for Kindle, I tend to go for non-fiction (history, mostly), since I like books with lots of "meat" (the fatter, the better, IMO -- or, to be crass about it, more bangs for my bucks). For the time being, I've got both audiobooks I haven't yet listened to, and a few books to read on my Kindle...together with my iPod, I'm all right, Jack, for the nonce.

Pass the Nausea Antagonist, Please

2010-02-03T16:56:00.002+02:00

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Mike Lester
Rome News Tribune
Feb 3, 2010

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Amazing. A few weeks ago I didn't know who Tim Tebow is. Now I wish I didn't. I really hope he doesn't get drafted into the NFL, or he's likely to be the victim of some of his teammates. Of course, with an IQ as low as his obviously is, another concussion might actually jog the brain cells and improve his intelligence.

Fortunately, since the Superbowl airs here in Israel in the middle of the night, and I tape it and watch it the morning after, I will be able to skip hearing about his miraculous life, along with all the other commercials.

I Suppose the Next Step is an iWallet Full of iMoney...

2010-01-31T10:55:00.003+02:00

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Nate Beeler
Washington Examiner
Jan 31, 2010

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To be honest, I didn't think of "feminine hygiene products" since a different term entirely is used in British English, and anyway, I'm so far past the time when I needed such stuff, it has pretty much slipped my mind.

But I do wonder about the possible confusion between iPOD and iPAD. In certain accents, the words sound almost the same.

For the time being, the iPad is eminently resistable [just as I don't have an iPhone, either]. But my 160 GB iPod Classic is nearly full, and if the iPod Touch gets a bigger memory, I might think about getting one...

If This Young Man Had Been a Moslem

2010-01-22T19:45:00.002+02:00

A few days ago a flight was diverted because of strange behavoir deemed possibly the prelude to an act of terror.

It turned out that the young man who was behaving oddly was davvening with tefillin.

The incident was quickly brought to a close since the boy cooperated with the authorities, explaining what he had been doing, and showing them his tefillin. Neither his parents nor his grandparents have made an issue of what must have been a major embarrassment and not a little frightening for the 17 year old in question.

They, nor their rabbi, nor American Jews in general, have issued threats, of violence or death, against the airline, the US Government, or indeed anyone at all for "insulting Judaism" or "racism" or abusing the right of freedom of religion. No fatwas, no physical attacks, no paranoia, no attempts to sue for damages, as we have seen ever since Salman Rushdie put his life in danger by writing a book, or a Scandinavian cartoonist attempted to poke fun at Islamic extremism, or a Dutch filmmaker who tried to show what lies behind Islamic misogyny. This shows very clearly the difference between the Moslem mentality, and the Jewish mentality. Moslems seem to need to be provocative, "in your face", to demand not just equality under the law but to be superior to the local civil code [witness calls for Shari'a law in the UK for Moslems], and to behave like thwarted, but heavily armed, children when their demands aren't met for complete capitulation.

The Jewish response: “I would suggest, pray on the plane and put the tefillin on later on,” the boy's rabbi said. “Pray, and fulfill the ritual later.” That is called being civilized, something Islam has yet to understand.

A Difficult Week

2010-01-22T17:48:00.002+02:00

It's been a somewhat difficult week. Sunday I felt a cold coming on. Colds, with me, run a predictable course. First I get a bad sore throat, then my nose starts running but the throat feels less tight, and lastly it all goes to my chest, and sits there for up to 10 days.

I doubled my dose of antidepressants for the nonce. I've found the main effect of my particular little blue pill isn't to make me happier, just to make me care less about all the s**t going down, and a cold is one of those things you've just got to last out: "treat it, and it will go away in a week; don't treat it, and it goes away in 7 days". So I faced the next few days, sneezing, sniffling, and coughing, with equanimity.

Of course, I couldn't take any time off work. Right now I work with two other nurses, who work from 8 a.m. to 2-3 p.m. One has 4 children under six years of age at home, which is a commute of over an hour. The other, who can do the occasional evening, has 5 children and is currently attending university in order to upgrade her nursing diploma to a nursing degree. I've created the closest thing to an indispensable position for myself, and while it will be very difficult for the organization to retire me against my will, it means it is also a real problem if I need some time off because either of those nurses will have to put in 11 hour days.

So, with notices plastered everywhere about how vulnerable pregnant women are to both ordinary and H1N1 flu, and how they ought to be inoculated, there I was, pockets filled with tissues, and trying hard not to breathe on anyone. Every medical institution I've ever worked for has made it difficult for nurses to take sick leave; obviously the profession doesn't take its own advice.

For some weeks our completely inadequate facilities ["don't fuss; this clinic is only temporary; no point in doing renovations since in 6 months/a year/2 years/5 years/when the Messiah comes there will be a super-duper new clinic"] have had an additional problem: suddenly both our fetal monitors began to produce static so loud that sometimes the microphones were recording the static rather than the fetal heart rate. When we first complained, we were told it wasn't so bad, and to carry on. When it became obvious that it WAS bad, we were told to "cope somehow". The maintenance folks came around, fiddled with the electrical sockets, said it must be the machines. The technicians from the company that makes the fetal monitors came around, and demonstrated that, when taken to another part of the building and plugged in, there was no noise at all, and told the building maintenance crew it was THEIR problem. Meanwhile we are wrestling with up to 8 women an hour--nearly all with multiple or high risk pregnancies, or who claim not to have felt fetal movements for some time--whose fetal hearts only occasionally can be heard above the static. And at least one of the "emergency walk-in" doctors (we have one doctor specifically for non-scheduled patients all day until midnight) orders an NST on anyone and everyone more than 26 weeks pregnant, no matter what the reason they came ["ran out of prenatal vitamins and need a new prescription"]. He's from the FSU and was so appalled, and terrified, by the stories he heard about doctors in the West being sued for malpractice, he wants to absolutely sure he's missed NOTHING. If a woman wants a prescription for birth control pills he's perfectly capable of sending her to the dentist if he thinks her teeth need cleaning.

[Yesterday one of the medical secretaries plugged in her electric kettle and caused a short circuit. It not only knocked out all the computers in the clinic, it also knocked out all the electronics in the adjoining, very large, pharmacy. I find it immensely fascinating that so much stuff -- nearly one half of an entire floor in the building is on one electrical line. But hey, this is Israel. I wonder if this could be part of our problem...]

But I soldiered on. Old Florence would be proud. I probably only infected a dozen women with my cold, and sent another dozen to the hospital for no good medical reason because I couldn't get a decent FHR tracing. After 42 years I really ought to let this kind of stupidity wash over me; after more than 30 years in Israel I ought to shrug and say "Yiheyeh b'seder" [it'll be all right in the end], or "Hashem yishmor" [God will take care of it]. But my inability to do so is one of the reasons I take little blue pills.

There is a high-risk couple we see on a weekly basis. They are both ex-Americans and extremely ultra-Orthodox, I suspect they are converts, although perhaps the wife is merely a born-again Jew; both are considerably past child-bearing age, and since the husband has a number of fairly severe chronic conditions he may just look like he's in his sixties but might be much younger. I know this is the second marriage for the husband, who speaks freely of his grown children in the US, but it is the first marriage for his wife. She's 40-ish, has gestational diabetes, and only got pregnant after extensive fertility treatment. They came on Thursday for their weekly appointment, and all was well. She's now in her 34th week. An hour later she phoned me to say she was bleeding. I, of course, told her to come back immediately, and our on-call doctor sent her straight into hospital. I hope she can hold the pregnancy for another couple of weeks. While a 34 week premature isn't such a bad situation, it's all relative, and they can still have a rocky course. This is not only a high risk pregnancy, it is a very precious one. She will not be able to try again.

I also give progesterone injections to a woman in her middle thirties who is pregnant, after IVF, with twins. Until the 12th week, progesterone, which maintains the pregnancy, is made by the open wound on the ovary where the egg cell erupted [the corpus luteum]. From the 12th week onwards the placenta produces it. Since several previous pregnancies, also IVF, ended in miscarriage, her doctor has ordered the daily injections this time, and all has seemed to go well. She being now in her 12th week, the dosage is being reduced gradually, and everything was fine until today, when she began bleeding and cramping. The doctor immediately ordered the higher dosage resumed, and we've all got our fingers crossed, but I don't have a good feeling about the outcome. I sat and talked with her and her husband for a while; there really wasn't a lot more I could do. She is highly intelligent -- a psychologist -- who simply left off starting a family early, and then it became apparent that both she and her husband have fertility problems [which is why they had more than one embryo implanted; it seems unlikely that another round of IVF will succeed].

I hate ending the work week like this, with two "cliffhangers". I don't blog often about work, because while it might seem exciting and glamorous to an outsider, most of what I do is really very repetitive and mundane. For every intelligent and knowledgeable patient -- and many of the women in fertility treatment are extremely so -- there is at least one dumb bunny who has, as we nursing professionals are wont to say, an IQ lower than her BUN [blood urea nitrogen, which normally is almost zero]. They ask questions it takes 5 minutes to understand, and since the answer needs to be repeated at least three time for it to sink in, takes 15 minutes of my precious time [the gynecologic equivalent of "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" is "My doctor prescribed vaginal suppositories for me. Where do I put them?" This ranks close to "My boyfriend swears he didn't come inside me. How did I get pregnant?"

Stood Up!

2010-01-07T18:38:00.000+02:00

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Mike Lester
Rome News Tribune
Jan 7, 2010

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"Read My Lips"

2009-12-22T15:50:00.001+02:00

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John Cole
Scranton Times/Tribune
Dec 22, 2009

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Health "Reform"

2009-12-16T14:59:00.002+02:00

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Clay Bennett
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Dec 16, 2009

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Like Mom, the flag, and apple pie, "health reform" has such a nice ring to it. And soon, I am sure, Obama will market this deformed and aborted baby to America as a victory. But nothing's going to get better...

Endless War

2009-12-02T14:27:00.002+02:00

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Bruce Beattie
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Dec 2, 2009

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I don't understand exactly what the American goal is in Afghanistan. Eliminate Al Qaeda and bin Laden? Prop up the Karzai government? Rebuild the country? Guarantee women's rights? Stop the opium trade?

For one thing, bin Laden may not even be in Afghanistan right now. The geography creates a porous border, wherever there actually IS a border anyone recognizes. Anyone other than an Afghani stands out like a sore thumb, and terrorists can always find support, and hide, among the natives. The Karzai government is part of the problem, not the solution. Rebuild the country as What? The 52nd state of America, complete with McDonalds'? The Afghanis don't want to be democratized, or Americanized. They've got a lot of customs that we think are barbarous, but they have always lived that way, and want to continue to do so. Tribal systems and modern democracy are really quite antithetical.

Afghani men want to continue to have absolute control over their women and families. Their religion backs this. America is fooling itself if it thinks it can change this in any appreciable degree. The opium trade pays better than any other cash crop; until it becomes more lucrative NOT to grow it, it will continue, and the cost to the US taxpayer if that were to happen would be immense [and would have to continue indefinitely, or the farmers would just go back to growing opium.

Pakistan is very ambivalent, and cannot be regarded as a partner of the Americans. If fighting can be suppressed in Afghanistan, the Taliban and other terrorists will just go over the border [indeed, they're doing it now] and return to Afghanistan when the heat is off.

The Russians and the British can testify to the fact that there cannot be any real victory in Afghanistan. The most the US can hope for is to quarantine it like a malignant disease, until the entire face of radical Islam changes, and, for that, I'm not holding my breath.

A Very Happy Thanksgiving, and May You Not Need Alka-Seltzer Afterwards!

2009-11-26T14:26:00.000+02:00

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David Donar
Donklephant.com
Nov 26, 2009

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Now, If Brett Favre Was A Baltimore Raven...

2009-11-01T10:25:00.001+02:00

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Joe Heller
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Nov 1, 2009

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Happy Holiday! [Wonder if the Powers That Control Cable Programming will even show the Green Bay-Vikings game in Israel?!]

Blog On! Part 2

2009-10-27T14:44:00.004+02:00

Now, on to aliyah. Almost Eden made aliyah in the summer of 2008, via Nefesh b'Nefesh, with her husband and son. Her blog is subtitled "an aliyah handbook", and when she's not forwarding commentary on the weekly Torah portion, she writes about her experiences and offers her advice. Not surprisingly, she's still seeing Israel through rose-colored glasses. Why shouldn't she? Her family got a considerable sum from NbN [the loan converts to a grant if they stay in Israel for three years], they are getting another grant, called the sal klita, from the Israeli government, they aren't paying income tax [by now they are probably paying a small fraction of what a veteran Israeli pays], property taxes are drastically reduced, and there are a variety of other perks and discounts. Reality begins to bite when one is entering the second half of one's third year and all this dries up.

Almost Eden once posted a spreadsheet totalling the monthly expenses for two American immigrant families. One [I suspect hers] was for three people, the other for four. The expenses totalled between NIS 13k and NIS 18+k per month. The average gross income, for a family of four, with two wage-earners, according to the Bureau of Statistics, is about NIS 12k. The Bureau also publishes a figure for a "basket" of goods and services which it regards as average for the same size family, which says familial expenses are about the same amount. In other words, what comes in, goes out. Almost immediately. And more than half Israeli families are in overdraft.

Translated into dollar terms, neither NIS 13 or 18 k sounds huge, especially when one is used to a dollar income. A take home wage of either, however, in Israel, is huge. In order to have this sum in one's pocket one has to be making, before taxes, more than twice that amount. Income tax is computed roughly as follows: up to a certain ceiling, about NIS 4000, one pays no tax. Then, the next NIS 4000 is taxed at 38%, and everything after that is taxed at 50%. Further, there are two involuntary deductions at source: Bituach Leumi and "Health Law". Each is a percentage of gross income [5 and 4% respectively, I think; it changes from time to time]. So the tax bite is big. The new oleh barely, if at all, feels this. That NIS 15k income sounds very respectable indeed. But my sister-in-law, who had a gross income of NIS 24,000 per month because she was the head of an entire department in Bezeq [our Ma Bell], took home less than NIS 10, ooo. So someone who needs NIS 18k per month needs a family income in excess of NIS 40k. Compare that with myself: working half time for a Sick Fund, I get a gross income of NIS 3500 per month. Nurses who work full-time in hospital, all shifts and Shabbatot, will gross about NIS 9k per month.

Almost Eden also makes a big thing of just how similar Israel is to the US. Ace Hardware! Office Depot! Toys R Us! This is also classic "newbie" behavior, and especially where food items are concerned, nostalgia for the Old Country is usually acute in the beginning. But the answer, in my experience is not to indulge it, except on rare occasions, but seek local -- and cheaper -- equivalents. Or that adjustment to what I call "genteel poverty" will be all the harder.

I admit it's easy to scoff from a distance of 35 years to her one and a bit. But the naivete often amuses me. Stating that an immigrant child is eligible for 45 hours of free language tutoring in school ignores the reality that most schools simply don't have it. Comparing private Jewish education costs in the States with public education here [which is supposed to be free, by law, but is anything but] is comparing apples with oranges. My parents never paid anything for my education in the States, because when I was growing up, private Jewish education wasn't an option. Moreover, the Israeli school system becomes increasingly inadequate as the grades progress and it's a rare family that doesn't have substantial educational costs by high school. $1700 [Almost Eden often quotes prices in dollars] doesn't sound like much when tuition in a private school in the States is $10,000 or more, but when you've got 3 children in the school system and you're living on $2000 per month, $5100 sounds a lot more impressive [and I think Almost Eden's estimates of the cost of the "free education" are low, in my own experience, which is now a decade out of date and undoubtedly higher now.]

I often wish I could revisit olim 10 years after they arrive -- those who are still here -- and see how they've fared. Some, of course, do adapt. They either arrive with a degree of Hebrew fluency, or pick up the language easily. They have friends or family that can give them support and help them navigate an unfamiliar culture. Some are just too stubborn to consider the idea of failure. But a very substantial number cut their losses and leave*, because it just wasn't what they had expected, or prepared [assuming they prepared at all] themselves for. There is a certain hubris in attempting to be an expert on aliyah after a year; I've been here for 35, and I'm not one yet.

*There is an internet message board in the Jerusalem area called Janglo. I keep an ongoing rough estimate of "complete house contents sales" or "moving sales" which are obviously, from what's on offer, sales of people selling up and leaving the country. Now, I'm not saying that these are olim who came into the country via NbN. NbN maintains that 99% of "their" olim stay, but they do not publish any definite figures. But NbN these days is bringing in just about all the North American olim who are coming, and the number of families leaving, according to this rough and highly unscientific survey I'm keeping, is cancelling out more than half the families coming. Traditionally, there are estimates that somewhere between 30% and 70% of all American olim return to the US within 10 years.

Professional Advice

2009-10-27T14:40:00.001+02:00

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Scott Stantis
Birmingham News
Oct 27, 2009

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Blog On! Part 1

2009-10-26T16:20:00.004+02:00

I read a lot of blogs. Some are by midwives and nurses, some by doctors or paramedics, some by olim here in Israel [or getting ready to make aliyah], some are literary, some are about Judaism. (Reminder to self: update the blog list). One is by a woman who attempted a home birth with tragic results, and has subsequently, I am happy to say, had another, thriving baby. There are a few miscellaneous ones: Cranky Epistles, Respectful Insolence, Random Acts of Reality, A Little Pregnant. Some bloggers post regularly; some, like myself (yes, yes, I know -- stop hitting me!) blog only occasionally, and/or infrequently. Some have gone to that Great CyberArchive In The Sky, and are no more.

There are two which I enjoy for entirely perverse reasons. One is by a L&D nurse who's studying for her CNM as a Master's degree program through the Frontier Nursing School, and the other is by a woman who made aliyah with her husband and son just slightly more than a year ago. The reason I write "perverse" is that my own take on similar experiences is so different.

At Your Cervix used to be a very jolly-looking but very fat woman. When I began reading her blog, she was on the verge of having bariatric surgery, so I've followed her through not only the initial surgery, but the following operations (4, I think, so far). Between the descriptions of what she's gone through, and the photos she's posted that show the way she looks now, I am cured of any interest in having bariatric surgery myself. But, if she's happy, well, more power to her!

She works in a very large and high risk unit, and one would think that what she sees would temper her enthusiasm somewhat but she is what I call an "ideologic nurse" and will be an "ideologic midwife". I've never had this viewpoint. The only "failure" in obstetrics is when there is maternal or fetal morbidity or mortality, as far as I'm concerned. A vaginal delivery, preferably without any medication, isn't a "victory". It's nice when it happens, if the woman copes well with the contractions and the labor progresses normally, but it isn't something I feel is essential for the wellbeing of either the woman or her child, and it is that wellbeing that is paramount. At Your Cervix bemoans shifts where her patients are delivered by C-Section (in all fairness, some of the private attendings seem to rush to the OR, but let us not forget that women often choose doctors by word of mouth, and if they want oblivion in labor, they'll find a doctor who medicates heavily, or vice versa) and has stated that she wants to show "poor women" (i.e. those without private doctors, or on Medicaid,I presume) the "joy of natural delivery". In my experience, nearly all these women simply want to have their babies as quickly and painlessly as possible and get as much rest before they have to go home. They really don't want to be convinced to have what they perceive as a more difficult way to have a baby. (I once asked a neighbor where she intended to have her baby, and she named a hospital across town. Since my hospital, which was famed for it's advocacy of "natural" childbirth, was only about 2 blocks away, I asked her why she didn't register there. "I want an epidural as soon as possible. At Misgav Ladach, I've heard they don't give you anything". Of course, we did have an anesthesiologist 24/7, and any woman could have an epidural. But she would not believe me)

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't believe ideology has a place in good medical practice. There's no "one size fits all" and the art of midwifery consists of matching the treatment to the patient. I'm the midwifery professional, not the patient. Of course she can discuss things with me, and I'm willing to be flexible as long as the safety of the mother and baby aren't at stake, and of course the mother (and her partner) are entitled to full explanations of everything I do or propose to do (except in drastic emergency, when I can't take the time) but the bottom line is that I, and no one else, unless I bring in a doctor, is responsible for the woman's and baby's welfare. I'm frankly a little surprised at At Your Cervix. Radical direct entry midwives often espouse the "birthin's normal" philosophy out of pure ignorance of possible outcomes, but AYC works in a high-risk unit. (Mild snark: I wish she wouldn't use the word "birth" as a transitive verb. It's a noun.)

Double Whammy

2009-10-23T17:53:00.000+02:00

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Mike Lester
Rome News Tribune
Oct 23, 2009

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Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.

No Comment 2

2009-10-21T14:49:00.000+02:00

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Jeff Koterba
Omaha World-Herald
Oct 21, 2009

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Solo Flight By An Amateur

2009-10-13T07:10:00.001+02:00

This pretty much encapsulates the way I think about Obama. It's called inexperience.

Nobel Peace Prize for WHAT?

2009-10-10T11:41:00.002+02:00

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Jake Fuller
Artizans
Oct 10, 2009

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A bit facetious, but with a solid grain of truth. Can anyone think of a concrete thing Obama has done in his 9 months in office that really advanced world peace? Perhaps the prize should have gone to his speechwriters.

Beer, Anyone?

2009-10-04T10:42:00.001+02:00

I knew there must be a reason I prefer Guinness.

Intolerance on the Temple Mount

2009-09-29T07:38:00.002+02:00

David Kirschenbaum says it better than I can. Except I cannot see any way to reverse the current situation without a war, and that is unacceptable. We made a terrible mistake when we thought the Wakf would behave in a civilized fashion.

How a Story Is Twisted into Subtle Anti-Semitism

2009-09-28T20:26:00.002+02:00

On Wednesday, the "Tnua Islamit" or Islamic Movement, put out a flyer telling Moslems that the Jews intended using Yom Kippur to "re-conquer" the Temple Mount. On Sunday, a small group of French tourists, all religious Jews, and therefore modestly dressed, went up to the Mount and stood just inside the gate opening onto the flat open space where the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa mosques are situated.

The Dome of the Rock is the place where Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac, and where Moslems believe that Mohammad's horse, having flown from Mecca, touched down for an instant before springing to heaven. Religious Jews, btw, do not step onto the Temple Mount proper, because of the possibility of accidentally standing where the Holy of Holies once stood. (This prohibition explains why the Israelis never attempted to have a permanent presence on the Mount after reclaiming it in 1967. In the mid-70s, the Mount was open to all -- tour guides simply loved to escort tourists there, and into the Dome of the Rock itself -- without the slightest problem, although not at times of Moslem prayer. That changed with the intifadas)

Immediately Palestinians on the Mount began throwing everything that was available on the tourists and their police escort. The assortment of missiles showed they had prepared in advance for this -- entire paving stones, for example, as well as having clubs and pieces of heavy furniture. The police responded by using stun grenades and by the time they had gotten the tourists safely back down, 12 policemen were wounded, some requiring hospitalization, and there were a number of Palestinian arrests.

How do I know this is true, and not just my biased opinion? My son-in-law, who is in the elite police unit which is stationed on the Mount, was hit in the face with a rock (small cut only).

This is how Slate magazine reported the incident:

When a group of Jews tried to enter a mosque in Jerusalem yesterday,
Palestinians began to protest violently, prompting Israeli police to fight back
with tear gas and stun grenades. The riot occurred a few hours before the start
of Yom Kippur, the most sacred Jewish holy day. Seventeen Israeli police
officers and 13 Palestinians were injured, but none seriously. It is unclear
whether there were also tourists present at the mosque at the time. The complex,
located above a Jewish site of prayer at the Western Wall, includes the sacred
Dome of the Rock mosque. A visit from former Israel premier Ariel Sharon to the
site in 2000 triggered a huge Palestinian uprising at the time, and yesterday
Palestinians warned Israelis not to sabotage the ongoing peace talks underway
with President Obama.

Their story is based on this Reuters article. See how it has been subtly changed to make the Israelis the insensitive aggressors? This, folks, is anti-Semitism, but both the news service, and most of the people who read it, would be shocked to be told so.

I think, if Jesus were alive today, he would be extremely shocked to be told he could not visit Judaism's most holy site (and he would undoubtedly ask "What's a Moslem? What are they doing on my people's Temple Mount?" since they wouldn't exist until 700 years after Jesus lived). What ARE they doing there, indeed?

An Echo In the Bone

2009-09-22T15:24:00.002+03:00

Diana Gabaldon's latest addition to the saga of Jamie and Claire, which began with the book "Outlander" has just been released. The hardcover won't reach me for some time, as it only shipped today, but it's been released for Sony e-book reader and for Kindle and I downloaded it this morning. All six of the previous books in the series have been massive bestsellers, with something like 17 million copies in print (and in a number of translations. Outlander has just been published in Hebrew, btw, as Nochriah)

Not that I've been keeping up with my resolutions to post more (had a vacation in Eilat during which I thought I'd make amends, but Israeli hotels have now wised up and charge for internet access, and phooey on that!), but you probably won't hear from me until I finish the book.

I have something of a special interest in this installment...I helped Ms. Gabaldon with certain subjects...but I think they are great books, anyway. More than simply "historical romance" or an action novel, it's what used to be called a "ripping yarn", with wonderful characterizations, rich plot, and simply fun. The complete series, which I strongly recommend, is:

Outlander (in the UK, called "Cross Stitch")
Dragonfly in Amber
Voyager
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes
An Echo in the Bone

All are available in print and e-book (Sony and Kindle) editions, and in audiobook versions, very well read by Davina Porter. Currently, for contract reasons, The Fiery Cross and A Breath of Snow and Ashes are not available via iTunes or Audible.com but only as CDs from Recorded Books. "Echo" will be released next month on CD, and probably will be available in a few months on Audible and iTunes, as the contractual restrictions on the previous volumes won't be on it.

Denial

2009-09-22T15:23:00.000+03:00

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Steve Greenberg
Freelance, Los Angeles
Sep 22, 2009

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What a shame Achmadinejad exists.

Injecting a Bit of Common Sense

2009-09-11T18:14:00.002+03:00

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Bruce Beattie
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Sep 11, 2009

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IMO, this ought to be translated into a dozen languages and posted in every clinic of the kupah [sick fund, HMO] I work for. So far we've seen barely a handful of persons who even might be sick with swine flu, but boxes of face masks are everywhere [including the security guards' desks], hand sanitizers are being used as if every person who walks through the doors has Ebola, at the very least. Since pregnant women are among the "vulnerable", considerable numbers are staying at home and not going for antenatal checkups lest they be sneezed upon. It's ludicrous.

Socialism 101, or The Gospel According to Obama

2009-09-10T14:49:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Bruce Beattie
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Sep 10, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

Why didn't becoming a "socialist" occur to me when I was in school?

Exactly!

2009-08-28T15:18:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Rob Smith, Jr.
The Glenn Beck Program
Aug 28, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

Beginning to be Obama's nightmare, I fear.

Oh Brett, Just Retire Already!

2009-08-20T17:46:00.000+03:00

(click here to view)

Randy Bish
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Aug 20, 2009

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Woodstock

2009-08-10T14:24:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Joe Heller
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Aug 10, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

I was there. Gawd. And both my daughters are now older than I was then.

Rather Obviously NOT an Obama Supporter

2009-07-30T13:03:00.002+03:00

(click here to view)

Stephen Rustad
Petaluma Argus-Courier
Jul 30, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

I could add a couple of other things Obama's done, or rather, not managed to do well, but I'll refrain. My feelings aren't as strong as this cartoonist's; Obama is, however, living up [or is it down?] to expectations, as far as I'm concerned. Americans want out of Afghanistan, which isn't happening; they want economic recovery, which is still out of reach; they want universal, excellent, and cheap health care [an oxymoron], and don't seem to be as anti-Israel as Obama has been sounding. I sense that the attempt to sound like a combination of Churchill, JFK, and FDR is beginning to wear a bit thin with the electorate. Where's the beef, Barack, and don't forget, the midterm elections are only slightly more than a year away...

Rhetoric Meets Reality

2009-07-27T08:05:00.001+03:00

Krauthammer gets it right, here. The "Change You Can Believe In" is beginning to slip away.

Sometimes I Can Only Shake My Head in Wonder

2009-07-24T17:40:00.003+03:00

A dear friend of mine, the late Rabbi Hugo Gryn, z"l, of the West London Synagogue, once said to me that "since the founding of the State of Israel, world Jewry tends to think they have escaped history". Himself an Auschwitz survivor, Rabbi Gryn then sighed, and said, "They're wrong." This article, in the Boston Review, shows just how correct my rabbinical friend is. What have the Jews ever done to Hugo Chavez, that he makes common cause with the Clown of Teheran, Achmadinejad?

Of course, as has been pointed out in numerous sources, anti-Semitism is protean. The same Jews who "control the world", as "proved" in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (itself a Christian forgery), are those who spread disease because of their poverty and dirt. One size does indeed fit all, where anti-Semites are concerned.

Why No One's Bombing At Present

2009-07-14T14:46:00.003+03:00

Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate on the phenomenon of why there aren't any suicide bombings at present. He has some good thoughts, but it doesn't really go far enough.

It wasn't despair that began the bombings. It was simply the most simple, inexpensive, and brutal kind of terrorism the Palestinians could afford in their constant battle to annihilate Israelis and exterminate the State of Israel.

It backfired. One, in the court of public opinion. The civilized world recoiled instead of applauding the "martyrs". In fact, Islam became tarnished with what the West perceives not as an admirable religious statement but a form of primitive barbarity. The suicide bomber became evidence of a twisted, indeed anti-human, creed. He was not a patriot. He was just a terrorist, and a particularly vicious one at that, deliberately targeting women and children. Suicide bombing, in an ideological sense, was counter-productive, and showed just how great the intellectual gap is between Islam and the West.

Two, the Israelis simply didn't do what they were supposed to do: throw in the towel and leave Israel. In fact, most Israelis went about life as normal. We rode the buses and did the shopping. There was economic damage, of course, as tourists chose other places to spend their money, but this did not really help the Palestinians any and Israel's economic base is diverse. But the morale of the people was not touched, in any real sense. Mobile phone companies sold a lot of phones so parents could keep in touch with their children, and quite a few of us went to more funerals than we normally did, but in the main we resisted by NOT being moved from our usual course. (Palestinians, expecting brutal retaliation a la Assad's gassing of an entire Syrian town, were puzzled and could only conclude that we were "weak". They tend to take this view when we surgically take out a single terrorist leader rather than bomb several hundred family and friends at the same time. It's not a world view they understand, unfortunately)

Three, it actively damaged the Palestinians. Wherever possible, Arabs from over the Green Line were fired and either Israeli Arabs, Jews, or foreign workers were hired. The so-called "security fence" is really nothing more than a closed border. For years the Palestinians have closed their "side"--no Israeli in his right mind can go to places like Ramallah or Gaza without a good chance of being lynched -- while maintaining that it is their "right" to travel freely within pre-1967 Israel. That has now been stopped, and boy, are they mad about it, shouting "apartheid" and forgetting that it's not a good idea to bite the hand that fed it. Israeli employers who used vast amounts of Palestinian labor before the two intifadas now will do just about anything NOT to employ them. The Palestinians want a sovereign state, but they do not really seem to understand that, in that case, the countries bordering their state may not be willing to allow Palestinians free entry into their territory. That goes for Egypt and Jordan, too, neither of which is criticized for not allowing Palestinians to cross their borders with impunity. (Never hear the UN complaining about that). Only if the Palestinians have something positive to offer will they ever regain the jobs they once had in Israel. They've cut off their noses to spite their faces.

No More Words Are Needed

2009-07-09T15:55:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Randy Bish
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Jul 9, 2009

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You Don't Have to Be Jewish To Come From Chelm

2009-07-08T15:03:00.001+03:00

Ay, caramba!

Good Grief, It's Iraq!

2009-06-29T20:14:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Bob Gorrell
Creators Syndicate Inc.
Jun 29, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

2009-06-28T13:04:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Randy Bish
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Jun 28, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

Extreme Shepherding

2009-06-28T08:42:00.001+03:00

The things men do to keep from being bored...

Of Course

2009-06-23T18:36:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Jimmy Margulies
The Record
Jun 23, 2009

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So Far From Being On the Same Page, Are We Even Reading The Same Book?

2009-06-18T13:25:00.002+03:00

Obama called Bibi Netanyahu's policy speech "a step forward". At exactly the same time, all the Arabs were absolutely rejecting it. But then, the existence of a Palestinian state isn't really the issue--it is the question of the legitimacy of Israel's existence, which most Arabs have denied ever since 1948. (The existence or absence of "settlements" is really irrelevant to this)

It seems to me that there is a disconnect, a failure of communication somewhere. How can the rejection of a "step forward" be in any sense, progress?

But this is typical of Obama, so far. Collapsing economy? Throw money at it, especially at banks. Bankrupt auto industry? Throw money at it, incidentally virtually nationalizing the industry. Health care? Decree that costs must be cut, apparently by reducing the coverage given to the elderly and poor, since cutting Medicare and Medicaid are just about the only tools the government has direct power over. There is a distinct feeling that he gets up in the morning, and says to himself "now, what will I solve today?" and once he's made his pronouncement, he rubs his hands and says, "now, that's taken care of; on to another topic".

He seems to do the same thing with foreign policy. Iraq? Pull the US troops out, never mind that the country's not in the least stable. Afghanistan? Send in more soldiers, but do it quietly so American citizens won't be upset. Iran? Don't upset Achmadinejad too much. Other Arabs? Tell them how much you respect Islam. Israel? Bludgeon them with concession demands, just as other Presidents have done. North Korea? Well, that was a surprise, wasn't it? I'll think of something tomorrow.

Well, now, that's really taken care of just about everything, oh wait: homosexuality and abortion.
Have to straddle the fence on that: let's keep things pretty much as they are, shall we? That way, no one gets upset. Pass the buck, let the states decide.

Governments don't actually produce anything. The money it disperses comes from what the taxpaying citizens produce. Obama seems not to mind in the least that he's robbing Peter to pay Paul, although this article in the NY Times seems to indicate that a significant percentage of Americans are uneasy about his "quick fix" approach. To be fair to the man, he's only got a year and a half for the electorate to feel that he's solved their problems (whether or not he's solved them is really not the issue; it's the feel-good factor). The only bright spot on Obama's horizon at the moment is the disunity in the Republican Party, but if the midterm elections return a lot of conservative Democrats with angry or disappointed constituents, it may not be enough to save him. And if he loses his clout on Capitol Hill in those elections, his hands are really tied for the rest of his Presidency.

I'm not really surprised at the way things are turning out. He has the arrogance of inexperience; the idea that he can really solve hitherto intractable problems like the Middle East with a wave of the rhetorical hand, or that money can solve just about everything. He himself created impossible expectations (and already has had to significantly backtrack on some issues).

I am not optimistic (but then, I hardly ever am )

Incredibly Obvious

2009-06-12T11:07:00.001+03:00

One of the reasons I've never gotten an academic degree in nursing. Right on, Nurse Ratched!

Iran's "Personality"

2009-06-09T10:53:00.001+03:00

A good article to read when next contemplating Iran's nuclear aspirations.

Don't Try to Travel Around Jerusalem

2009-06-09T08:24:00.003+03:00

Yesterday, I left work at 7 p.m., as usual. I walked about 2 city blocks, to the bus stop before the one closest to where I work, as that stop is a total nightmare. It's next to the open-air market known as Machaneh Yehuda, and between little old ladies wielding lethal canes and umbrellas and battles between those with shopping carts and baby carriages that make the chariot race in Ben Hur look like kindergarten, getting on the bus and getting a seat is completely impossible. During my "stroll", picking my way over piles of building materials (the sidewalks as well as the street having been torn up for the accursed light railway project), I did not encounter any #18 bus so I can say authoritatively that it was fully 50 minutes at least between buses. For those who don't know, # 18 is not one of those lines running on some obscure peripheral route: it is one of the major lines going from one side of Jerusalem to the other, through the center of town. 23 other buses passed (I counted) while I waited, most of them the double, articulated variety, and most of them only half full. At 7:50 my bus, a single one, arrived, packed to the gills. By dint of shameless appeals, I managed to dislodge a teenager, plugged into both his cellphone and his iPod, and take his seat. I got home at 8:45.

I live in a neighborhood which, if not exactly in city center, isn't on the outskirts either. Remember that by American standards, Jerusalem is a small town (about 700,000 inhabitants). It would have taken me less time to travel to Tel Aviv (about 45 minutes).

Today this appeared in Haaretz. It now takes me nearly as much time to get to and from work as I am actually AT work, and the state of downtown Jerusalem is indescribable. It used to take me half an hour to get from my house to work; now it is usually between an hour to an hour and a half, sometimes more. The first light rail line was supposed to be operational in 2006, and now it is scheduled -- or was scheduled -- for the autumn of 2010. And I will probably never even ride it, as its route is not one I ever travel. I despair.

Obama Lives Up to Expectations

2009-06-08T15:23:00.002+03:00

Israelis, whether they liked Bush or not, knew instinctively that whoever followed him in the White House would do just about anything to reverse Bush's Middle East policy (along with just about everything else Bush did). Bush's unpopularity with the American electorate made this inevitable: whether what Bush did was "right" or "wrong"; effective or not, any new President would want to put his own stamp on his administration as rapidly as possible.

So Obama's speech did not surprise us. Nor does his total misreading of the situation. We are accustomed to being blamed for being the "obstacle to peace" because of a few completely irrelevant settlements. That is NOT why Israel is unwilling to engage in yet more meaningless discussions, and to make yet more worthless --worthless because we get only increased danger in result--concessions while the Arabs commit themselves to absolutely nothing.

IT IS BECAUSE THE PALESTINIANS WILL NOT ABANDON THEIR AVOWED GOAL OF THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL, NOR WILL THEY RECOGNIZE THE RIGHT OF ISRAEL'S EXISTENCE. Somehow, President after President cannot assimilate this simple fact. Israel is expected to bare its collective neck to the Hamas/PA knife; to delegitimate itself while accepting the "right" of Palestinians to total access to every point in the country, to deny itself any means of defending itself. Rockets fall on Ashdod? Tsk, tsk. Israeli civilians killed in suicide attacks on buses? Please, let's not get upset about a minor pecadillo; people die in accidents every day. Israel enter Gaza? The screams of "war crimes" and "atrocity!", not to mention "attempted genocide" ring out loud and clear (and very often, if not from the country which perpetrated the Holocaust, from some of the countries which collaborated with the Nazis and whose Jewish populations were decimated as a result)

I won't, at the moment, go into the problem of precisely who should be governing the land known as "The West Bank", or Gaza. The fact is that the so-called Palestinian Arabs are not the original inhabitants, indeed, a great many of the current inhabitants have been less than a century in the territory (see Joan Peters' "From Time Immemorial" for a fully documented explication of this). All the available archeological evidence shows that the Jews have a prior claim. Anyone familiar with the Bible knows that the area in question, at least as far as Judea and SamariaBut the reality is that both areas are chock-full of Arabs, who aren't going anywhere. If they pose a danger to Israel, and I can't really think of a greater danger than an openly and repeatedly made assertion that they are going to exterminate us, they will have to remain quarantined. There's been a lot of criticism of the security fence, but the fact is, that whenever the borders of the future Palestinian state are determined, there is no automatic "right" of open borders, just as I cannot visit Thailand or Uruguay without a visa even using my US passport. A sovereign country determines to whom it will allow entry and under what conditions.

"Settlements" -- some of which are small towns -- are not really relevant. IF the Palestinians renounce violence, and their avowed aim to destroy Israel, some adjustment can be made. They can hardly expect an open border if they refuse to allow their borders to be open to us. Settlements are used as an issue when they really are not. It is the existence of Israel which is the issue, and Obama should have said something like "When the Palestinians openly admit the right of Israel to exist, and renounce violence against her, then the US will support to the full a bilateral agreement to be fair to both sides".

Obama is ready to try to ride roughshod over Israel as he is trying to ride roughshod over American industry. He's got lots of plans, lots of targets (I find his wanting to "solve" the Middle East in 2 years laughable) but like most Presidents, he is trying to impose his reading of the situation on realities which are quite different than his perceptions. I worry less about a nuclear Iran bombing Tel Aviv (which would not only kill a lot of other Moslems but the radioactivity would blow back on Iran) than a nuclear Iran which threatens Vienna with annihilation unless all Europe buys Iranian oil at $500 a barrel. Or a nuclear Iran which decides to finally get even with all those Sunnis who've sneered at the Shi'ites as schismatics for a few centuries. It would not surprise me in the least if, once the Americans are out of Iraq, Iran decides to settle the score, using its proxies in Iraq, and extend its hegemony over its neighbor. Unfortunately, the message Obama sent to Islamic countries was one of weakness; conciliation is not a tactic of the strong, in their world view. Right now, the Middle East is unstable; Mubarak is old, and not well. The Saudi royal family faces an unprecedented degree of local dissent; the Gulf States are having to cope with reduced oil revenues, Iranian proxies like Hezbollah are hijacking Lebanon and pressuring Syria. Iraq is certainly fragile. Over everything is the specter of religious extremism, from Taliban to the Moslem Brotherhood. To paraphrase an old aphorism, if Israel did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. Opposition to Israel is just about the only unifying factor present today in the Arab world. But, for the moment, the various forces at work are in precarious balance. Let the US be perceived as indecisive or weak, or should Iran gain greatly in power, and the entire framework will shatter.

Obama has until November of 2010 to pull America out of the abyss (or at least to make Americans feel better about the economy; actual recovery will take a lot longer, IMO). His scenario of making Israel into a foreign policy scapegoat yet again will not help him with certain sectors of the American public, especially if, as I expect, Islamic nations rebuff his overtures.

As a postscript, I really wish that Hillary hadn't accepted the post of Foreign Secretary. Of course she is required to support Obama's position. But she is losing credibility daily with those Jewish voters who supported her in the primaries, and this will hurt her in the long run, if she chooses to run in 2012. Tsipi Livni had the good sense to remain in opposition so she wouldn't be tainted by Bibi's government.

No Comment

2009-06-04T14:45:00.001+03:00

(click here to view)

Bruce Beattie
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Jun 4, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

Wouldn't help if he was speaking Arabic. The only message the Moslem world will get from his attempts to appease them is "America is weak; we are winning". Obama hasn't got a clue what he's doing.

Laurie King's Dilemma

2009-05-12T19:55:00.003+03:00

The newest Mary Russell book, The Language of Bees, is out, after much waiting by Mrs. King's fans and a huge media circus beginning over three months ago.

I am underwhelmed.

Let me begin by saying that, apart from the inbuilt paradoxes, the Mary Russell books are not badly written, and can provide an evening's engaging reading. In my view, they are much superior to the Kate Martinelli mysteries. But this latest book is curiously unfinished, and one suspects the promotion was ratcheted high because of the weakness of the offering. To be fair to Mrs. King, her husband has been ill for several years, and died just as she was completing the book, so she must have been distracted during the writing of it.

Mary Russell, if there's anyone out there who does not know, is a half Jewish ["the right half"], left-handed, very tall, somewhat androgynous young woman of American origins [but raised largely in England], who meets Sherlock Holmes when she is a gawky 15 year old and he is retired to keeping bees on the Sussex Downs and is in his fifties. [Mrs. King explains why she does not accept the age Conan Doyle -- through Dr. Watson -- assigns to Holmes in The Last Bow]. Ms. Russell impresses Holmes with the kind of incisive reasoning and observation he has traditionally employed, and over the period of her adolescence she serves a kind of apprenticeship that culminates in partnership and [gasp!] marriage to The Great Man. Someone has commented that Mrs. King has written the ultimate "Mary Sue fanfic", "Mary Sue" being the name given to fan fiction in which the author inserts her or himself. The impression is given weight by Mary Russell's choice of academic specialty, theology, which was also Mrs. King's. [Mrs. King married one of her theology professors, a man more than three decades older than herself, incidentally].

In the course of the books, Holmes and Russell [who normally address each other by surnames] have a variety of adventures, some more fanciful than others. Of course they are both adept at all kinds of arcane skills and talents, and become word-perfect in multiple languages at the drop of a hat.

But there is one immense problem, and it's not turning the asexual Conan Doyle Holmes into a man who loves women. It's the difference between the Victorian world, and that of the Roaring Twenties.

Mrs. King has said that she came to the Holmes Canon [which is what Sherlockians call the collection of tales written by Conan Doyle] via the Jeremy Brett TV adaptations. As the British do, these were very faithful to the original stories, but Brett camped Holmes up to an extraordinary degree, and physically he was quite different from the tall, thin, pale, hawknosed figure of the stories. Brett, of course, was laboring under the stereotyped version of Holmes that had begun with the original illustrations and went through several reinforcements in Hollywood, and was anxious to bring his own interpretation to the part.

Surprisingly, the fictional Holmes has always been attractive to women, possibly because of his sheer inaccessibility to them -- he seems completely indifferent -- and his courtesy. In the Canon, the only woman he admired, according to his biographer, Dr. Watson, gained his respect by seeing through his disguises, not because she was a great beauty. I remember having quite a crush on him when I was about 12--well, who could have a crush on a walrus like Dr. Watson, I ask you? [I have been informed there is quite a lot of "slash" fanfic out there assuming he and Watson were lovers; something I'm sure would have deeply shocked Conan Doyle] There's no intrinsic reason why Holmes should not have had heterosexual relationships from time to time except that he probably found all the women he met to be incredibly stupid.

But the big dilemma that Mrs. King has is transposing a thoroughly Victorian character, working in a Victorian world, into the 20th century, and a 20th century that had gone through the trauma of World War I. In all the previous Mary Russell books Mrs. King has teetered along the edge of an abyss, not quite sure of her footing but not yet tumbling in. Now I think she has.

Holmes' Victorianism is not just a matter of speech patterns, although Mrs. King has struggled with these in the past. [By contrast, read Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody novels; she gets the idiom spot on]. The world Holmes inhabited was a world where there were still unexplored parts of the globe, with exotic natives, such as Andaman Islanders with blow pipes. It was a world lit by gas or kerosene lamps; of pea soup fogs, and wild eccentricity. It was a world with more than a touch of the Gothic, where a murderer could effect his crime by letting a venomous snake through a ventilation shaft, or a hookah-smoking gargoyle of a man could re-create an Indian palace in his gloomy Victorian mansion, where people lived in houses with names like Pondicherry or Wisteria Lodge, and arrived there in horse-drawn conveyances.

Russell, on the other hand, inhabits a much more modern and mechanized world, one that has electric light, and the telephone, and gasoline-powered omnibuses. She doesn't wear bustles or corsets, and her hemlines are not floor-length. Warfare on a scale undreamt of 40 years previously have dimmed the impact of Gordon's martyrdom in Khartoum or the defense of Rorke's Drift in South Africa. Scott and Amundsen have raced to the South Pole, and the Victorian Scott lost. Airplanes are already making the world into a much smaller place, and a much less mysterious one. It is, in short, the difference between the time when Soames Forsyte courted Irene, and when his daughter Fleur fell in love with Irene's son.

In this newest novel, Mrs. King does not make the transition from the Holmes we know to the Holmes of the Twenties convincingly. It would be expected that as Holmes got older -- and he's now well into his sixties, according to the chronology of the series -- he would be less adaptable, rather than more. But it is becoming increasingly difficult, I think, to "hear" his voice. He's a nice guy, but he's not really Holmes any more. The interaction between Damien, Holmes' son by Irene Adler [an idea Sherlockians have been kicking around for ages], and Holmes is weak [well, if Holmes is an unlikely husband, one can imagine what a father he'd be!], and Russell is peculiarly indifferent to both the memory of Holmes' previous love and the attraction of his son [who is, after all, much closer in age to her]. Now that would have been a triangle.

Fans have indicated that what they like in the series above all else is the interaction between Holmes and Russell. In this novel, there's more interaction between Russell and Mycroft [who was a shadowy figure in the Canon; he has become a major figure in most of the books of the Russell series] than between Russell and her husband -- a husband, incidentally, who is almost never affectionate in word or action toward his wife. Their relationship is almost entirely cerebral. I can see why Mrs. King doesn't want her main characters to be falling all over each other all the time, but there never seems to be any communication apart from professional concerns in this latest book.

Lastly, I'm getting a bit bored with the theological side of things. So far one book has dealt with a charismatic female religious figure, rather like Aimee Semple McPherson; an archeological find of religious significance is the main theme of another, and now we have a religious nutcase who has written a mishmash of a book [part Scripture, part Khalil Gibran] and is ritually slaughtering people and animals. And who manages to get away in the end, leaving us to await a further book. Of course, it's a topic Mrs. King knows a lot about. [I still don't know why she had to make Mary Russell Jewish, frankly].

Sigh. I think I'm going to go back to Amelia Peabody. The plots are fantastic, and she's an opinionated, egotistic, shrewish bint with a loud-mouthed husband and a very weird son, but I find them hilarious [in the audiobook versions read by Barbara Rosenblat, at any rate]. And in imitation of Mrs. Emerson, I think what I need now is a good cup of tea. Off to have a brew-up, with my last PG Tips...

Swine Flu

2009-05-09T08:21:00.000+03:00

(click here to view)

Matt Wuerker
Politico.com
May 8, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

If You Feel Three Fetal Movements in the Space of an Hour...

2009-04-13T14:04:00.002+03:00

It's rare I write about my work. For one thing, it's rarely really exciting, and it tends to be very repetitious. But I don't want you all to think I spend all my time frothing at the mouth about religion or Arabs.

Israel has a quasi-governmental health service. Every citizen in Israel pays a monthly sum from his gross income, and it entitles him to a "basket" of basic [very basic] health services via one of the four Sick Funds. You are at liberty to choose which of the four funds you wish to belong to, although in outlying areas there is usually only the largest, Klalit. It is also the oldest and is part of the Histadrut trade organization and the Labor Party. In most respects the kupot are alike these days. Each kupah has its own supplemental packages, and nearly every Israeli takes at least one, because the basic basket really isn't adequate.

So every Israeli has access to doctors, treatments, and medications at either no or vastly reduced cost. Hospitalization is free in most cases. All costs associated with birth are free. Well, not really free, of course; the taxpayer pays. But in general, it's a good system for most Israelis. As a type II diabetic, I have not only a GP, but an endocrinologist, podiatrist, opthalmologist [each costing me the gigantic fee of about $7 per quarter] have free blood tests, blood testing supplies for my glucometer at nominal cost, and my oral meds at about 75% discount.

I work in the Women's Clinic of one of the kupot. We see several different populations: couples in fertility treatment, high risk pregnancies, and "emergency" patients in a special walk-in part of the clinic. Very rarely are these patients really emergencies and that's what drives me crazy. "My regular gynecologist is overseas", they begin. Goodness, if this was really true, at least 75% of Israel's OB/GYN doctors are off on perpetual junkets. A variation, slightly more believable, is "my doctor's not available". Next they want to know why they have to wait their turn for a prescription for birth control pills that they've known for a month they're running out of. "It will just take a minute" they wheedle. Sorry madam, but you see this woman is bleeding all over the floor, she has precedence..."But she arrived after I did!" comes the insulted reply.

Other patients manufacture reasons which they think will get them ultrasound exams that will show what the gender of the fetus is. They are entitled to, nay, encouraged to have ultrasounds at certain points in the pregnancy, but there are those without patience to wait. Yet others demand ultrasounds as some sort of miracle exam that not only discovers all problems but solves them too.

There are minor irritations. "Please weigh yourself". In spite of a big notice on the wall above the scales, the women invariably leap onto the scales. "Step down," I drone, perhaps 50 times an afternoon. "Press the green start button, wait until you see zeros on the scale, then step up onto it". We used to have an electronic scale that switched itself on when stepped upon. This is an "improvement". Today, in the past three hours, I've done 12 fetal monitors [NST], not one for a good reason. All could have been avoided if the women drank enough fluids. "But then I have to pee all the time", they say. With the baby's head pressing on your bladder you're going to run to the bathroom all the time anyway, dear. Go drink at least a liter. I guarantee that within 30 seconds the woman has returned, swearing she's drunk "more" than a liter. One of the doctors I work with has no problem in sending a woman back to me for two or three repeat monitors because he won't transfer a woman to hospital if he can avoid it, and if he does, he wants to be sure there's no fetal distress first [which sort of defeats the purpose].

But more, I guess, is the simple imbecility of a great many of the women who show up. I've known smarter cows. "Three days ago, for 20 minutes, I had contractions; am I in labor?" "Two days ago I was on a bus which came to an abrupt halt. I'm feeling movements all right, but I just wanted to be sure the baby's OK". "Yesterday, I saw a dead kitten in the gutter. I want an ultrasound to be sure it's soul didn't pass into my baby" [yes, really]. There are the women who inject themselves with fertility drugs but find it difficult since they don't remove the cap from the syringe needle. Or the women who call, half hysterical because their glucometers always read the same thing and upon investigation this phenomenon happens even before they stick their fingers with the lancet, as if the machine intuits their blood sugar by telepathy. [they are reading the stick quality assurance code]

I enjoy teaching, but I'm finding my patience has its limits. I've just said the same thing too often, explained the procedure or the process too many times. But I need to continue working until the summer of 2010, because once I have 7 years' seniority, if I become an old age pensioner, I'll get all my medications free for the rest of my life.

So I'm hanging on. Barely.

Hezbollah and Egypt

2009-04-13T13:04:00.003+03:00

The Jerusalem Post has an excellent analysis here which bears out something I wrote about a long time ago -- the ongoing struggle for dominance between Shi'a and Sunni Islam. Don't underestimate it. If the various Arab countries hadn't had Israel to dump on, it would have come to a head sooner, but it's going to be an increasing problem. I wonder if anyone in Washington has figured out the differences, and the historical animosity between the groups yet.

How Could Jesus Eat "Bread" at The Passover Seder which was the "Last Supper"?

2009-04-12T19:28:00.004+03:00

Now I'm going to offend a lot of people. But then, I've been offended by them all my life.

"For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16 NIV )

I find it deeply offensive to humanize God so that He has "family", that He "impregnates" a human woman, just as the pagan gods are supposed to have done, and that he has a "son". For all Jews, that demeans God and is the most utter blasphemy. But of course, in this PC age, I am supposed to nod understandingly at this appalling drivel, a mere restatement of paganism (yes, I know, it's a "Mystery". No, it's not, it's no mystery at all that the minds of most men are incapable of understanding the Jewish and Moslem concept of the incorporeal, omniscient, omnipresent Diety but must create a god which they can anthropromorphosize to fit their limited imaginations. You'd think after about 10,000 years of human civilization they could, but apparently, judging by the success of Christianity, they can't) Christians apparently don't see anything impolite in asking me, as I have repeatedly been asked, "why I don't accept Christ". What's to accept? I'm not interested in regressing to paganism.

So, lissen up: no one has "paid" for your sins. You're going to pay for them. You're going to earn life eternal the hard way--by doing teshuva (penitence) in this world, not by virtue of some quasi-Divine being being tortured to death. So live morally in this life, it's the only one you're likely to have. By doing this, you make of your entire life an act of Divine worship, and it is by far the most effective prayer you'll ever be able to pray. And oh yeah, Jesus was no more resurrected than anyone else, because, assuming he existed at all, he died just like everyone else, being nothing more than a human being. And Christians, however much they try to obscure it, are not even monotheists; the Trinity is a pantheon in exactly the same way all the Hindu gods are aspects of Brahma.

Now I've got that off my chest. Jews, since saying things like that have traditionally resulted in the exhibition of some overt Christian "love", such as pogroms or the auto-da-fe, have learned not to say it when Christians are around. I think it was stimulated, this past week, by an exchange with a Catholic who told me that I was wrong to claim that Maccabees I and II are not part of the Old Testament, because they are in the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible. This person was most emphatic that the Catholic version was the only "correct" version. Well, baby, all I can say is that the Tanach antedates Christianity by centuries; some books by as much as a thousand years (taking the non-Orthodox critical approach as to the authorship of it), and the Catholic version, in particular, is based on a Latin translation of a Greek translation of the Hebrew original. And there are some very good reasons the rabbinical Sages did not include the Books of the Maccabees in the Canon. Quite a bit of the books are heretical, either by implication (God is not mentioned; the victories are attributed to good generalship, and the Hasmoneans combined the High Priesthood and the monarchy, which is prohibited in Judaism)

My advice to Christians this weekend is, stop celebrating a pseudo-event with a pseudo-god. Do what Jesus did: buy some matzah and have a Passover seder instead. Best of all, return to your roots and convert to Judaism.

Hag sameach!

Of Women and Obama's Sleight of Hand

2009-04-11T20:31:00.003+03:00

This article in the NY Times, and the beautiful timing of this Obama gimmick shows just how well the new administration is showing that it is "reaching out" to minorities [are women a minority? Jews certainly are]

First White House "Seder", and he kisses the people vowed to the extermination of Israel on the cheeks, and seems powerless to understand the Islamic mentality that will create a nuclear jihad against the Western Infidel and against Israel if not stopped. What a Christian was doing at a Passover Seder is inexplicable, and to have the announcement of the continued waiver that allows an anti-Jewish and anti-Israel terrorist organization to function in the US is a major insult to every Jew in the Diaspora and in Israel.

Achmadinejad, and the Afghanis now have the true measure of the US President: a man who thinks words substitute for actions, and who thereby shows that he's really so weak he can't stop anyone.

Islamic Courtesy

2009-04-11T12:18:00.003+03:00

(click here to view)

David Horsey
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Apr 11, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

Always tell your guest what he wants to hear. Truth is a secondary consideration.
Will the Americans ever begin to understand that they're not dealing with Westerners in bedsheets? *sigh*

Prompting

2009-03-12T14:53:00.001+02:00

(click here to view)

Jake Fuller
Artizans
Mar 12, 2009

EditorialCartoonists.com

At least, he's got a script. Mine just grunts and scratches; if he's being really romantic, he'll shave first.