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Things I wanted to write about yesterday but didn't because I wasn't home
The Two Towers: Saw it again, because my sister hadn't seen it yet and I'd promised her. Setting aside the greatness of the movie, I've said this once but it bears repeating: the resemblance between Saruman and Sheik Yassin is positively spooky.
"How can Man deal with such reckless hate?" asked King Theoden. Beats me.
To Be Or Not To Be: Only Mel Brooks can make WWII comedies and get away with it. Damn, he's good. I was surprised to see Tim Matheson of twenty years ago. Not bad at all.
Preparing for the war: There must be a safe zone somewhere between carelessness and paranoia. We have until about 3AM to find it. The more cautious we act, the more foolish it seems, but for now we emptied the bomb shelter from all the crap that was living there and reorganized the canned goods and pastas very prettily.
Getting in Shape: I have 26 days to finally get my ass to the gym like I've been promising myself for the last 4 years, and bring myself to a state where I can run more than half a mile, do at least 50 sit-ups without walking bent over the following day, and be able to do at least one--shudder--push-up.
The new piano and lots of family connections: Brought in from my mom's aunt's house so I (hurray!) don't have to practice on the synthesizer anymore. It's about 110 years old and hasn't been played on for at least 15, leaving it in a pretty horrific state of neglect. The previous player--my grandmother's sister-in-law's brother, who happens to be a locally famous singer, left cigarette burns on three keys (but they're celebrity burns, so I don't mind that much. An appraiser came to look at it and said it wasn't even worth fixing, but if we did it's cost a heap of money. So we called in my dad's cousin's husband instead, who was also my mom's junior high music teacher, and he was too nice to be real, saying he'd do it on the spot for about a tenth of the price we were told. Which is why I woke up to the excruciating sounds of a piano being tuned. Poor guy, he worked for hours. The A key was apparently more than a full scale below tune. There's still a lingering echo now, but at least all the keys work.
Purim: So much Women Power in the Megillah, if you think about it. There's the fact that Queen Esther had the respect, the ear and the trust of the king, and almost singlehandedly prevented the execution of the first recorded case of Anti-Semitism. But more than that there's Vashti, the first Queen, known far and wide for her beauty, who refused to be paraded in front of 127 drunken lords at a banquet at the command of her husband.
I must have dressed up as Esther three times as a kid, but somewhere inside me--and I think, or hope, that every little girl has always felt this--I felt a lot more sympathy and admiration for Vashti.
I wonder about the origin of the story in the first place. Vashti was banished from the kingdom, which wasn't too harsh a punishment when her husband was evidently treating her like crap, and the story takes up a full chapter out of ten in the Megillah. What made the writer decide to put it in, in the first place? It has very little to do with the rest of the tale. Just a story of a woman who dares to defy her husband and gets away with it relatively unharmed (after all, the real Bad Guy in the story was hanged with his wife and ten sons.)
I may have to dig into the sources for this one.
"How can Man deal with such reckless hate?" asked King Theoden. Beats me.
To Be Or Not To Be: Only Mel Brooks can make WWII comedies and get away with it. Damn, he's good. I was surprised to see Tim Matheson of twenty years ago. Not bad at all.
Preparing for the war: There must be a safe zone somewhere between carelessness and paranoia. We have until about 3AM to find it. The more cautious we act, the more foolish it seems, but for now we emptied the bomb shelter from all the crap that was living there and reorganized the canned goods and pastas very prettily.
Getting in Shape: I have 26 days to finally get my ass to the gym like I've been promising myself for the last 4 years, and bring myself to a state where I can run more than half a mile, do at least 50 sit-ups without walking bent over the following day, and be able to do at least one--shudder--push-up.
The new piano and lots of family connections: Brought in from my mom's aunt's house so I (hurray!) don't have to practice on the synthesizer anymore. It's about 110 years old and hasn't been played on for at least 15, leaving it in a pretty horrific state of neglect. The previous player--my grandmother's sister-in-law's brother, who happens to be a locally famous singer, left cigarette burns on three keys (but they're celebrity burns, so I don't mind that much. An appraiser came to look at it and said it wasn't even worth fixing, but if we did it's cost a heap of money. So we called in my dad's cousin's husband instead, who was also my mom's junior high music teacher, and he was too nice to be real, saying he'd do it on the spot for about a tenth of the price we were told. Which is why I woke up to the excruciating sounds of a piano being tuned. Poor guy, he worked for hours. The A key was apparently more than a full scale below tune. There's still a lingering echo now, but at least all the keys work.
Purim: So much Women Power in the Megillah, if you think about it. There's the fact that Queen Esther had the respect, the ear and the trust of the king, and almost singlehandedly prevented the execution of the first recorded case of Anti-Semitism. But more than that there's Vashti, the first Queen, known far and wide for her beauty, who refused to be paraded in front of 127 drunken lords at a banquet at the command of her husband.
I must have dressed up as Esther three times as a kid, but somewhere inside me--and I think, or hope, that every little girl has always felt this--I felt a lot more sympathy and admiration for Vashti.
I wonder about the origin of the story in the first place. Vashti was banished from the kingdom, which wasn't too harsh a punishment when her husband was evidently treating her like crap, and the story takes up a full chapter out of ten in the Megillah. What made the writer decide to put it in, in the first place? It has very little to do with the rest of the tale. Just a story of a woman who dares to defy her husband and gets away with it relatively unharmed (after all, the real Bad Guy in the story was hanged with his wife and ten sons.)
I may have to dig into the sources for this one.
Hey, that's fascinating, Dana.
(Anonymous) 2003-03-21 01:19 am (UTC)(link)Angua (http://angua.diary-x.com/)
Re: Hey, that's fascinating, Dana.
So here's what I dug up.
--According to this article (http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/kitveyet/sde_chem/ester.htm) (Hebrew), the story explains a rather significant social change in ancient Persia. The society was a matriarchal society--boys referred to by the name of the mother, women ruling the household. There was a struggle, blah blah blah, the boys won. And then Vashti suddenly defies her husband and tries to get return the power over to the women, which will shake the power structure of the entire kingdom, plus it'll embarrass the king. God forbid allwomen start having, you know, independent mind. So the king confers with his advisers and eventually decides to banish Vashti from the kingdom and establish the permanent, unchangeable law that the father is the head of the household. To make sure word spreads, he cancels the law that Aramaic is the official language of Persia and each of the 127 countries can now resume speaking their own tongue. All in all, groundbreaking legislation. Important enough to earn a place in the Bible.
--Vashti was, apparently, the great-granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar. You must remember how we hate that guy. On top of which, according to the rumor (and I'm not sure who started it, but if it's good enough for Ye Olde Buncha Rabbis it's supposed to be good enough for me), she tortured young Jewish girls and made them work on the Sabbath. She may have even (seriously!) had a tail. Obviously, this kind of person can't remain publicly unpunished in the Bible, and since Nebuchadnezzer made it alive, she didn't.
Actually, I'm not sure whether Nebuchadnezzar made it alive, and I know she did, but... well.. retribution. You know?
--In addition. The story of Vashti fulfills a purpose as a premise for "mida keneged mida", modern day irony. Rabbi Arthur Waskow (I like him!) says here (http://www.shalomctr.org/html/seas09.html): "My own reading of the Megillah is that it is made up of two intertwined jokes -- very powerful, and in one case bloody, but jokes nevertheless. The second one is the one we all have learned -- what Haman wants to do to the Jews is what happens to him, and he brings it on his own head. That's the bloody joke. The FIRST one (it starts earlier in the story) is that Ahasuerus's decision that no woman is going to tell him what to do puts into motion the train of affairs that ends by his doing EXACTLY what Esther tells him to do. Structurally, this is the same joke as the first one."
Find more here (http://www.jajz-ed.org.il/festivls/purim/pureng3.html), here (http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/910301_Vashti.html) and here (http://207.168.91.4/vjholidays/purim/feminist.htm).
BTW: on naming things: once you've named them Rupert and Jenny, don't you feel an urge to... I dunno, talk to them? Stick a cross on them, perhaps? Exorcise demons when you're nearby?