Museum of Tolerance

Last week I went to the Museum of Tolerance as part of the Diversity Committee at work. I'm still struggling to find words to express what I experienced. The hands-on exhibits were great at getting one involved with the issues we're facing today and from our collective past: child slavery, the history of the world good, bad, and indifferent, and the Holocaust, among many other exhibits.

We only had time to really explore the Holocaust exhibit so that lingers more freshly in mind. I thought I knew about the Holocaust, I read about it in text books... but to experience it through the eyes and words of the survivors, to see actual displays of items that belonged to survivors, this truly brings it to life. At one point each of us was handed a small plastic card with a child's face and name on it. This card worked similar to an ATM card, when slid into the computer it brought up more detailed facts about the person. At the end of the tour I slid my card into a different computer and this time I received a print out of the personal information on the child. I asked the tour guide how they came to know this information about the little boy who's card I had. He was murdered with millions of others, how could they know anything about him? The guide explained that surviving family members in the states had provided the photo and other records.
It is sickening to think that this adorable seven year old, Bronislaw Honig, was murdered simply because he was Jewish. It's something I'll never be able to comprehend. 3,000,000 Polish Jews were murdered. 1,100,000 Russian Jews. I don't recall the exact numbers of the other groups that were exterminated, but the rough total is 6,000,000. SIX MILLION people murdered.

During one of the exhibits a screen played various images while a woman described what she witnessed. She was visiting a relative who had just given birth to a baby girl. Then many trucks arrived. Men from the trucks evacuated the patients from the hospital and drove them away. Visitors were turned out onto the street. A final truck remained with an open bed. A window from above was opened and a small object was tossed into the truck bed. This woman and others on the street weren't quite sure what they were watching until another, then another and another baby were tossed from the window. The people on the street, upon this realization began to scream and cry. They were completely helpless and unable to do anything but breakdown.

How any human being could treat another in this manner, toss it out like trash, is abominable. And yet such atrocities are happening today. Countries trying to do an ethnic cleanse, cocoa farmers enslaving children, terrorist attacks, the trafficking of people... the list of atrocities seems endless. I don't know what the answers are. I don't know how to stop it. I'm still in a state of disbelief, shock.

Trader Joe's to the rescue!

We had plans to go to LACMA (Los Angles County Museum of Art) with a friend who is an Assistant Curator there, but the fires made passage unreasonable. We weren't willing to take the detour routes, we'll go another time. Instead we invited our friend (the curator - she was already in the area) over for dinner. This of course meant we had to figure out what to make on short notice as we originally planned on dining in LA.

Trader Joe's to the rescue. We went there for inspiration and left with a meal waiting to happen. The hubby made gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, arugula salad, and butternut squash apple soup. It was all divine. For dessert we wanted to do chocolate fondue with TJ's marshmallows, biscotti, and apple wedges for dipping. However, we ended up with a chocolate fondon't. It just didn't turn out right, but that's ok because we had the foresight to also purchase TJ's Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels which are amazing! We ended up having a fantastic dinner and leftovers for lunch today. Yum. Thanks TJ's!

Voting by mail

What a fantastic idea! But, even better is that I actually voted via mail - weeks ago! No standing in line, no wondering why this guy is letting a bunch of strangers vote in his garage, no worrying that I'll be late to work. Wish I had known I could vote by mail years ago, what a time saver. Now, hopefully it doesn't get lost in the mail.

Desert Rain, Weekend Thoughts

It rained most of yesterday, which was nice. The grass is all glistening and clean, which of course the dogs do not approve of.

Today the sun is back, which I'm all for! I don't mind a day or two of cloudy skies, but days, weeks, months of bleak, dark skies just puts me in a bummer mood.

Yesterday, to celebrate the rainy day, we had pajama day. It was fabulous. And, with Day Light Savings Time ending the extra hour of sleep was much appreciated. We even showered and managed to leave the house before 8:00 am?! On a Sunday?!

Hopefully the Packers beat the flaming thumbtack dudes, that would make this a perfect weekend.

Junior High - Oh My!

A friend from junior high e-mailed me something I wrote when I was 11 or 12. Too dang funny. It included something about Tom Cruise?! Don't worry Katie, he's all yours.

Gosh, I can't believe she still had it after all these years. Makes me wish I had something similar to share in kind, but I don't. Until recently I wasn't ever the sentimental type.

FOUR Minutes!

I finally got around to making my dreaded doctor's appointment. It was scheduled for 4:00 pm. I arrived on time, filled out the necessary paperwork and then waited, and waited, and waited. At 4:45 the nurse called my name. I was weighed, my blood pressure was taken, and I answered a few questions. Back to the waiting room to wait. 5:17 pm I was called again and left alone in a small room with the examining table facing the doorway. Who designs these rooms?! Anyway, the small little curtain hanging from the ceiling really doesn't provide me with a great sense of privacy, but hey, I'm not here for a lesson in dignity. Anyway, I continue to wait for the doctor, this time basically naked except for a sheet and a thin little half rob that exposes more than I care to show. Finally at 5:30 pm the doctor sees me. At 5:33 she's finished, by 5:34 she leaves the room. Four minutes! The whole freaking thing took less than 4 minutes! I waited an hour and a half so she could spend less than 4 minutes addressing my needs and concerns. Ugh. I left disgusted and frustrated. Can hardly wait to go through all that again next year.

Paper #2

"Robert Hass in Sun Under Wood often uses simple, everyday scenes, yet his poems are artistically complex and rich with allusion and connection. Find two poems about mothers / motherhood written in English in the past 100 years and write an essay explaining why they fit especially well with the themes in Hass's book. Include the poems with the essay."

This is my next assignment. Seems pretty basic. Hopefully I can find a couple of poems that I understand. I'm sure I'll select something that I think is perfect, only to learn AFTER I've turned in my paper, that the poems weren't about mothers / motherhood or connected in any way to the themes in Hass's book, but instead about about alien space invaders that eat tiny tuna sandwiches with the crusts cut off and find them so terribly distasteful that they blow up the planet and whew, now I don't have to worry about my paper because I'll be space dust.

Is it really any wonder that I can't write a paper? Jeez with the attention span of a gnat I'm lucky I can even dress myself! Oh wait, I haven't, I'm still in my pj's and robe and red framed glasses.

Foggy first paper

I earned the highest grade in class for the first paper: B-. Better than a C, but not by much. Ugh, who am I kidding?! Gotta kick it into high gear if I'm going to do well in this course. Unfortunately I'm as dense as a holiday fruit cake when it come to this stuff. I read a poem and think, "Oh, that's lovely." Then, when we dissect the piece in class I think, "WTF?! Syphilis, that was about syphilis? What the hell did I just read? How, I, ... um... but, wait, ... really? Oh, yes, I see it now. Hmm, syphilis. Well, um, that was the day. Those early years must have been a bitch. Yeah for modern medicine." See, dense like London fog. Oh, that's just my subtle reference to the poem:


London

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

William Blake, 1794


Sooooooo painfully obvious AFTER the fact. When, oh when, will this stuff make sense to me. I worry that it never will. Sure, sometimes a rose is just a rose, but what about ALL the other times when it's not. How will I know the difference? How many times will I have to read the same piece over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over before finally, finally a little light peeks through and the spiders retreat and I see it for what it is. Oh, that's lovely. London fog.

Red Frames

I went a little wild and selected red frames. I usually go for the quite librarian type in tortoise shell specs, but no, no, not on this occasion. Keep in mind the hubby likes the librarian tortoise shells, but claims to really like the red, so why not? They're only glasses. I like em', they're fun. In fact I've been wearing them more often than usual. I've found I'm quite lazy when it comes to my morning and evening routines. I like not having to mess with contacts: cleaning them, popping em' into my eyeballs, peeling them off at night... yeah for glasses!

Photo Op: That's Paula on the right. She's my partner in crime at work. Paula totally rocks. We're a great team and she makes work fun! Fun! When Monday morning whacks me upside the head it doesn't even hurt thanks to Paula's cheerful disposition, wonderful sense of humor and fun-loving spirit.

The "Holiday Gifts" sign in the background is for a work event held in October. Don't ask. It's a "sales" thing, those crazy sales people. The photo was taken on 10/15/08. And what's up with my bangs? Wish I knew! But hey, aren't the frames fantastic? They really help detract from bad-hair days - or at least that's my hope.

Glasses

My left eyeball has buggin' something fierce! As a result I've been wearing my glasses. I usually don't wear my spectacles because my eyes are very sensitive to light and the "transitions' eyeglasses tinting doesn't ever get dark enough to do me any good. These past few days it was cloudy and overcast which seems to have helped. Today though, we have an eye appointment, so hopefully they can figure out what's causing my eyeball pain. The contacts were brand-spanking new out of the package, so I dismissed that as the problem. Perhaps I misdiagnosed it. Guess I'll find out soon enough.