Bella

Bella

I thought I told you all previously that all of my cats have changed dramatically since I had to give Watson back to the dog people (who will either find him a new home or keep him forever, thank God. He seems much happier there with a bunch of other dogs and people who can walk him.) I can’t find my blogs right now because I keep forgetting and messed myself up.

At any rate, Bella was afraid of Watson and was also a very strange cat when anyone tried to be friendly. She has changed the most. She is now all over the house, and she loves to be petted. She has also taken possession of the box which covers my keyboard, so she determines when the computer can be used. I just have to wait.

A short time ago the box was unsatupon, so I quickly sat down to try to locate a couple of my old blogs. As I struggled, Bella reappeared and sat quietly to my right watching what I was doing, but I took too long, and then----------she bit me!!

ARW
1/28/09

My Operations

The Ins and Outs of My Various Operations

At the behest of my many friends and admirers, I have been persuaded to repeat and reveal some of my most recent suffering, which I am only too happy to do.

First, I want to apologize for the depth of my knowledge about medical terms, and hope that the rest of you will not only be able to understand what I say, but will also admire without envy the expertise with which I use them.

Approximately three years ago, I was walking my dog, when we met a close friend and his dog at the corner just down from my house. We stopped to exchange pleasantries, when I suddenly found my legs swathed in leashes, and I fell into the gutter. To make a short story long, I ended up a few days later having my right hip operated on. Fortunately, I did not actually break my hip, but the upper nob was shattered on the inside, and the surgeon stuck it back together with three long screws.

Then, at the end of the past October, I was hurrying to get into my bank in order to deposit a vast sum of money before it closed. I didn’t see that there was a separate piece of carpet lying on top of the regular carpet, and I tripped with both feet, thus ending up flat on the floor with my glasses off somewhere and a multitude of stars in my eyes. The result was that both hips were badly bruised, and the bruises eventually ended up on the bottoms of both feet. This did not bother me anywhere near as much as the security cameras, and I am taking steps to assure myself and my heirs that we will own the exclusive movie rights to the film. I am also planning to contact various movie companies in Hollywood. This fall may have been one of the really fortunate experiences in my life.

About three weeks after this experience, I had three operations performed at the same time on my right hand and wrist. Arthritis was certainly involved, although what went on was so scientifically intricate that I will not bore you with my medical description. A few of the details more easily explained will be easier for you to follow.

I am a stickler for style and flair, so I was delighted to find that patients can select from colors ranging from black to pink for the color of their casts. Naturally, with my artistic nature, I chose purple for my cast, which reached from my hand almost to my elbow. After a month, the cast was removed so that the surgeon could do a little more work on the three operations. She has a reputation as one of the most capable and distinguished surgeons in the area.

Not wanting to bore you or frighten you with a description of the work my surgeon did after the cast was removed, I decided to close my eyes while she was working. I can say that she injected something into my hand so that I wouldn’t feel any pain. This worked fairly well. My hand had been x-rayed before she did her exploration, and she informed me that there was a screw that had been inserted into my thunb during the operation to join together two bones which had separated, and the screw will remain.

At this point, it is incumbent upon me to inform you that patients and doctors do not always agree about what is going on, and from this point on we did not see things the same way. My arm, at this point, was lying on its back, with my hand facing upward. (On second thought, it might have been facing down, but you have to remember that my eyes were still closed.) Be that as it may, I distinctly heard the doctor ask for the step stool, after which she climbed the stool and planted her left foot on my hand and her right foot on my arm. Then she called for some sort of wrench and yanked two rods out of the middle of the side of my hand. Now, you uderstand that both of these rods where at least eight inches long. I could tell.

When she had finished, another purple cast was placed upon my arm, for a second month. And last week, that cast was removed and replaced with what they told me was a splint, but which is just as long and stiff as my casts, which is just plain old white, which I have to remove so that I can bathe my arm and gradually rub off a great deal of dead skin. And to add to this humiliation, I have to wear this for still another month.

ARW
1/22/09

Remember the Alamo and Custer's Battlefield

Who among those children educated in American schools and taught at least the rudimentary historic milestones has not heard of at least one of the two milestones listed above? It must be admitted that there have been many more milestones added to the roads to hell since then, so one begins to become surfeited with such a wealth of terrible information.

Still, don’t you sort of wonder why Hamas has been shelling Israel for such a long period of time? Are they just a bunch of bums (similar to many like them who can be found in this country) who like to just shoot things up for the fun of it when there’s not much else to do?

According to the wonderful book by Martin Gilbert, from which I quoted in my previous blog, it is well known that the Jews have been kicked around and humiliated by countries covering most of the Old World, and they have finally determined to take back the land containing those treasured religious sites so dear to them. Following the 1967 War, the animosity among the various groups living in that area, especially with the Jews, came to a boiling point which evidently culminated in the rise of Hamas. The terrible situation within which the various national and religious groups find themselves appears almost insoluble. What disturbs me most in recent reporting is that emphasis is put upon the Israeli Jews, while the possibly valid historical motivation of Hamas and other groups has not been mentioned.

(Incidentally, while we Americans consider ourselves the greatest nation in the world, and do not hesitate to keep the rest of the world so-educated, do you ever seriously stop to think that the Indians might have a claim to it but live mostly in such poverty that they haven’t the social or physical wherewithal to do anything about it? When we think of Americans, most of us think only of whites. We are gradually and grudgingly adding blacks, but hispanics are pretty much a nono in this enlightened period.)

Back to my title and Israel and Gaza. The number of dead in Gaza has risen above one thousand, with little in the way of food, water, or help for those still living. There was a news report today that starving dogs are roaming the streets feeding upon the corpses of dead children. (And as an animal lover, I cannot bear to lie awake at night thinking of the animals, the ultimate helpless victims of human violence.)

ARW
1/14/09

Shame on Israel

Quotes from “Israel, a History,” by Martin Gilbert, copywrite 2008


The book Gilbert quoted was written by Arie Lova Eliav in 1988, who had been Israel’s Ambassador in Moscow, as well as a member of the Knesset.

“Of the fourth goal of Zionism ‘the goal of peace’, Eliav wrote that not only was it not achieved but, following the Six Day War, Israel ‘became a conqueror and an occupying power’, with subsequent evil consequences that had, he argued, lasted for two decades:

The results of the brilliant victory achieved in the 1967 war included a horrifying exposure of all the evil impulses hidden within Israel as human beings and as a people: arrogance, vanity, indifference to the fate of the defeated, a strong desire to control the conquered territories and to enslave their population to the economy of the victors, and a mystic ritual of ‘sanctification’ of the conquered lands. And one more thing: the insouciance of those who led the victory.

Drunk and dizzy with glory and fame, gorged on the fruits of victory, the leaders imagined themselves all-powerful and believed that time was bound to work on their behalf. They began to think, speak, and act in terms of the supremacy of force, of ‘might is right,’ to which they added a sort of ‘The sword shall devour forever’ fatalism on one hand, and a belief in divine miracles, which would hasten the coming of the Messiah, on the other.

These patterns of thought, speech, and action have led ever-increasing sections of Israeli society, and primarily Israeli youth, to hate the ‘strangers’ in their midst, and to increase
their hostility toward the Arabs. This, in turn, has engendered the settlements on the West Bank—some of them built upon the tricks of land speculators.

The ‘Greater Israel’ movement, whose main goal is to incorporate the West Bank and Gaza into the nation’s borders, has led Zionism and Israel astray, diverting them from their proper path and deflecting them from the achievement of their fundamental goals.

We must now ask ourselves some painful questions: Is Israel still a Jewish state? Is Israel still a democratic state? Are Israel’s economy and society still productive? Is Israel a state—or a society—of tolerance? And is Israel approaching peace?”

ARW
1/5/09