1. Yesterday I was Sir Edwin. Today I was Angel, the jolly innkeeper on the road to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and shared with the children the joy of feeding and housing pilgrims walking to the cathedral and about the transformation of James after he witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus. I think the children liked Jesus becoming light and a the voice of God speaking from a cloud more than they enjoyed hearing about the murder in the cathedral of Thomas Becket.
2. For anyone interested in delving into what a complicated country Israel is, and how committed Israeli filmmakers are to looking at the human condition, whether the stories are about Egyptians, Syrians, the Druze of the Golan Heights, the Lebanese, Palestinians, or of the many ways of life lived in Israel, turn off the television news and watch some of the movies that have been made in Israel over the last ten to fifteen years. Watch "The Band's Visit". Watch "The Syrian Bride". Watch "Waltz with Bashir".
Today I strolled down to the Bijou Metro and watched "Fill the Void", an Israeli movie about an Orthodox Hassidic family in Tel Aviv, the father a rabbi, whose life is turned upside down when the family's older daughter dies giving birth. I was entranced and moved by how deeply the movie explored the complications of love, parental, grandparental, familial, and romantic within the highly structured and ritualistic Orthodox Hassidic way of life. I love watching the movies of the Middle East, especially those that have come from Israel, Iran, and Palestine. This movie deepened my love for these movies and deepened my understanding of how seriously we dehumanize Israel and the other countries and areas of this region of the world by thinking of them in one-dimensional ways, ways that work on the tv news and in our political arena, but that terribly distort the human factor.
3. I decide to clean out, as much as possible, my vegetables, so I made a stir fry with almost every vegetable in the fridge. I used up the cabbage, onion, peas in the pod, yellow squash, and some of the celery and blended in a block of tofu and enjoyed it with Chinese noodles and peanut sauce. It was a great dinner and there's good looking leftovers!
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