Notes of a Proustian variety and others...
- Went to a Bat Mitzvah reception a few weeks ago. As the meals were being served, one of the people at my table tried to get his without sauce, which led to a discussion what sauce is in Hebrew. No one at the table knew--one person said that if it had been Biblical Hebrew, she would have known, I racked my brain, but nothing came to mind. I really wanted to know, so I tried three different people before asking the rabbi. He looked it up on the Hebrew dictionary app for his phone. It's rotev. I saw the word written out in Hebrew and immediately flashed on the exercise I wrote in Haifa on cooking, where I described cooking spaghetti sauce. I was in my room at the ulpan, thinking hard about various words for pot, stove, different foods, and so on. All from one word.
- Friday night, we had Shabbat dinner for a crowd. Lily came over in the afternoon and went from well to sick over several hours, ending up in a little bed on the kitchen floor. Sometime after dinner and before dessert, her fever went up and, at my suggestion, Miranda attempted to give her baby tylenol. Which she promptly threw up all over the table and herself. Which was sad. But what was cool was that it was easy to take care of. Without missing a beat, Miranda went off to clean up Lily and get her home. The rest of us quickly pulled off the tablecloth and put on a clean one and sat down for dessert. The evening went on until 11 PM.
- Saturday was a pretty good mess of a day--but Dave and I went to a show, "Precious Little," at Shotgun Theater, then to Cafe Colucci for superb Ethiopian food. Then over to Dan and Miranda's to plan the week--where I made the mistake of accidentally snarfing one of Lily's pretzels. Three days later, I'm not ill. While I have no proof, I'm holding the new regime of vitamins responsible for my newfound resistance.
- "Precious Little" was the story of a 42-year-old lesbian linguistics professor who decides to try for a child. Genetic testing reveals that the child has some genetic problems, but with no way to know the severity in the individual child. There is a grad student lover as well, apparently to provide the perspective of youth. The acting and use of language was superb. The actors shifted from one character to another, changing a few clothes, but mostly shifting movement, accent, and language. It was a pleasure to see. But afterwards, in discussing the content, we were really disappointed. Dave pointed out--correctly--that the relationship between prof and grad student was such an egregious breach of ethics as to be unbelievable. The playwright had the relationship labelled as "not recommended." The reality is that a relationship like that (if discovered) would get even a tenured prof fired. And the playwright never had the pregnant prof resolve the question of whether or not to abort the fetus. Having watched Dan and Miranda go through that very situation (albeit with a different genetic problem), I felt that the treatment was incredibly shallow. I suspect that the playwright never bothered to talk to anyone who had actually gone through the experience. How different from Anna Deavere Smith's work, which relies on multiple interviews around a subject and then treats those interviews with utmost respect and dignity. Which brings me to one final complaint: there was no love for any of the characters, only love for the language. Remarkable how much I enjoyed a play that, in retrospect, had so little content. Also remarkable in that it got the "man jumping out of chair" from the Chron...
- Really enjoying having Cindy here and grand-parenting together. We took Lily to the library today. She was still somewhat fussy, but it was fun to share the experience with someone in my shoes--not her parents' shoes.
Way too busy. Not really time to write here, but it's a good warm-up for the rest of the day and I just needed to write something that wasn't dissertation or CBE related.