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Our bones are fragile |
Be careful not to fall |
Al leaped |
He landed safely on the steel deck of the ferry that carried him, his daughter, two sons, and |
wife across seven miles of water to an island |
They lived there for two weeks one summer |
Joshua looks out through his tears at the surviving family and friends |
It is hard to see them |
Crying is like chipping the ice from his windshield this morning |
At first, that opaque sheet wouldn’t break |
He had to hammer at it with the edge of his plastic yellow scraper |
Then one hairline crack |
The ice separated into three tectonic plates moving slowly apart on a film of water |
Suddenly one whole plate shattered into shards of glass |
Tears come unbidden |
Then they stop as suddenly |
It is as if he has been crying splinters of ice |
They come from water frozen inside himself |
He wipes ice melt from his cheeks |
Joshua sees the room again with aching clarity, as if he just had the lenses of his glasses |
changed to a new prescription |
He sees people he should know |
They are strangers, dressed in various shades of black and gray |
They are a black and white rainbow |
No, here are his mother, brother, sister |
He sees them as if for the first time |
His mother dabs at the tears streaming down her face with a small sodden bit of Kleenex |
Joshua tells another story |
How, during the Depression in Brooklyn, an ice-cream truck drove past 902 Coney Island |
As it turned the corner, its back door flew open and a cardboard cylinder of ice cream—two |
feet long, ten inches in diameter—fell out |
It was chocolate |
The truck did not come back |
Al and his childhood friends had two choices: they could either eat it or let it melt |
They sat on the stoop and ate all the ice cream |
Throughout his long life, Al would remember that hot afternoon, how cold the ice cream |
felt going down his throat |
It felt, he said, like trying to say an incomprehensible word from the Torah, a word of many |
syllables, all the hard consonants turning in his mouth to that one vowel of |
chocolate, so dark, bitter, and yet silken sweet |
Monday, January 15, 2018 |
Melissa Reiner |
Watch her 2015 TEDx talk: |
How To Listen Like A Musician |
@ TEDxLondonBusinessSchool |
Check out her solo album: |
Great Love Constant Thought |
Listen / Spotify / iTunes |
From Boxing to Bernstein |
One of the pleasures of city-dwelling, especially in a sprawling metropolis like London, is the infinite variety of activities available. Although humans are creatures of habit, sticking to the same watering holes and cuisineries and neighborhoods like a bunch of skittish gazelles, I try to be an exception; I'm not afr... |
Even in Los Angeles, which is very much divided into villages like London (although the average Londoner's tribal association with a geographic corner of the city could well be the product of generations, whereas an Angeleno's preference for their zip code might be younger than their silicone breast implants), I was ha... |
It turns out that transportation time in London is equally as interminable as my Los Angeles journeys, although instead of being ensconced in my own little universe of tunes and air conditioning and hands-free phone calls, swearing at the traffic, I am ensconced in my own little head, squashed into a seat or clinging t... |
Regardless of vomiting passengers, the transportation system in London is a marvel and the four directions of the city are mine for the conquering. I have managed to live in North, South, East and West London so far (Central is a bit pricey for living if excellent for going out) and am managing to run as late as I did ... |
I am not much for sports or extreme nationalism, therefore the Olympics didn't pique my interest as much as it might have. First of all, people keep asking me who I would cheer for: Britain or the US? I am an expat, but not a proper expat since I feel an equal loyalty to my former home (the US) as I do to my current ho... |
Despite my non-engagement with the Olympics, an obligation to history stirred within me: I wondered if this might be my only time to live in a city hosting the Olympics and therefore I should make an attempt to see a live event. When tickets fell into my lap (metaphorically - I still had to pay for them) to see the Wom... |
Since my knowledge of Womens' Boxing was limited to vague remembrances of Clint Eastwood's excellent film (and the hilarious parody of it on the American wince-fest sitcom, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"), I was not very prepared for what I watched. Having no idea how the scoring worked and hoping for some Mike Ty... |
"D'ya think anyone will get their ears chomped on? Or knocked out? How does the scoring work?" I asked the kids, who looked to be early 20's. |
So early 20's that my female friend then asked them, "Shouldn't you be in school?" |
They looked more flummoxed by her question than by my bloodlust, so I explained that she meant "university" when she said "school". Actually I know she meant "highschool" but I didn't want to spend the next three hours next to offended boys who might get extra-intoxicated to prove a point. They kindly explained to us t... |
In contrast to the afternoon of blood sport, I had been offered free tickets to a concert that very night, one of the many Proms held at the Royal Albert Hall, and without being able to bask in the pheromones of conquest floating around the Excel Centre in East London, my friend and I rushed to South Kensington to atte... |
Despite what many athletes and musicians (especially classical musicians) might think, the two seemingly-disparate groups have a lot in common. There is a reason it was trendy to read "The Inner Game of Tennis" at my music conservatory: many of the same psychic tricks are employed to succeed in sports as well as music,... |
I performed at the Royal Albert Hall myself recently, but it was my first concert there as an audience member, and it was also my first Proms concert. Being unfamiliar with the Mass, I was hoping it might be the stylistic cousin to Bernstein's lovely Violin Concerto of sorts, titled "Serenade" and based on Plato's Symp... |
Suffice it to say, that at the finish of an intense day of historical sporting events and my usual quotient of culture-vulturism, my faith in London was renewed: I could zip from beyond the East End to a posh South-West address with ease and in a relatively timely fashion, availing myself of opposite and yet similar sh... |
Can Greece’s democratic institutions keep it in Eurozone? |
Eurogroup meeting. March 2015. Yianis Varoufakis, Greek Minister for Finance (in the middle), Klaus Regling, European Stability Mechanism Managing Director (on the right). (European Council - Council of the European Union Audiovisual Services, Shoot location: Brussels – Belgium, Shoot date: 09/03/2015). |
Eurogroup meeting. March 2015. Yianis Varoufakis, Greek Minister for Finance (in the middle), Klaus Regling, European Stability Mechanism Managing Director (on the right). (European Council – Council of the European Union Audiovisual Services, Shoot location: Brussels – Belgium, Shoot date: 09/03/2015). |
Paris, Washington and Brussels categorically reject the idea of a Grexit, while Berlin is still loudly insisting that the Eurozone can weather at a cost Greece’s secession. Behind closed doors though, the German decision makers are also not at all sure about that. Greece’s exit from Eurozone has lately become the talk ... |
On such a mystifying backdrop, colored more darkly by the rising tensions between Athens and Berlin, a lot of important people thought it was high time they intervened. The tensions between Greece and Germany hit a boiling point last week. The Greeks went so deep in the risky terrain and remembered that they have recei... |
It was high time they intervened |
Frictions between the two governments seemed getting out of hand last Thursday when the German minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble said that his Greek counterpart Yianis Varoufakis is “stupidly naïve”. The statement provoked a diplomatic incident with the Greek embassy in Berlin officially demanding clarifications. F... |
The cycle of interventions |
At that conjuncture, a cycle of interventions opened mainly aimed at supporting Greece. It was Pierre Moscovici who spoke first and he didn’t chew his words. The EU Commissioner for finance and the euro speaking at an interview with the most relevant media for this affair, the ‘Der Spiegel’ magazine, went that far as t... |
Of course the question of how and if Eurozone can withstand a Grexit is not new. However, it acquires special importance every time Greece is struggling to stay afloat, while negotiating its financial survival with her euro area partners. Inappropriately though all and every Greek government of the past five years used... |
2015 is not 2012 |
Nonetheless this time Eurozone is not the same as in the spring of 2012, the last time that Greece had the same problems. The most important variation in today’s frame is that Italy and France have grasped the fact that their economies cannot start growing again under the austere Teutonic economic orthodoxy. The beginn... |
Then Moscovici’s warning that a Grexit may mean the end of Eurozone has more meaning in it. What Germany demands from Greece in order for the Eurozone to continue helping the latter is that Athens continues applying harsh austerity. This is exactly though what the new government of Alexis Tsipras cannot accept. In a wa... |
Save Greece to save yourself |
Last week Jean – Claude Juncker the President of the European Commission in a less unwavering manner followed Moscovici’s remarks. Juncker, after hosting Tsipras for more than 90 minutes in his Berlaymont office last Friday said “This is not a time for Division, this is the time for coming together”. He obviously oppos... |
The Commission is now clearly on the Greek side for one more good reason that Germany itself doesn’t deny. Well informed sources in Berlin say that despite the fact that a Grexit doesn’t represent any more an infeasible financial exercise, the German government is very much worried about the geostrategic repercussions ... |
Alarm bells in Washington and New York |
There are more problems though a Grexit can cause. Last Friday the well known economist Nouriel Roubini said that “a Grexit is out of question” because he added that “the repercussions are immense”. He also mentioned the geopolitical danger if Athens sided with Moscow. Not to forget what Barack Obama told Angela Merkel... |
In short both the Washington top decision makers and the New York bankers who run the western world and that Roubini authentically represents want Greece to stay in the euro area. None of them would buy a German argument that Greece failed Eurozone’s fiscal austerity rules by a few percentage units of GDP. The same see... |
Dark skies in Athens |
Of course this doesn’t mean that Athens is to have a sunny stay in Eurozone. Even the most important ally of Athens in the Eurogroup, the French minister of Finance Michel Sapin, doesn’t miss the opportunity to mock the Greek fixation with some words like ‘Troika’ (EU-ECB-IMF) and ‘Memorandum’ (a deal providing so far ... |
The serious problems for Alexis Tsipras and the Eurozone will appear soon when they will start writing down the new agreement. It’s impossible that the new contract contains financing without austerity, much like in the recent past. Then the Greek government will have to pass it from the Athens Parliament. Undoubtedly ... |
Can the Greeks do it? |
This is not a problem only for Tsipras but for Brussels too. Politically it may prove easier for the government to pass such a new arrangement with the euro area through a referendum, rather than relying on its own Parliamentary group. The 149 SYRIZA MPs in a house of 300, comprise a lot of people from the not so far a... |
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