Alef.

The uniform hangs there. An Olive ghost. It has hung there all day Saturday, a cruel reminder that tomorrow it will be possessed again, no longer lifeless. It is clean and perfectly pressed, a glimmering pin and light blue ribbons on the sleeves softens the harshness of the Army tone. He stands in front of it and stares, hoping maybe he can scare it into submission and it will tuck itself away back in the closet. But it's Sunday, the cruelest day for soldiers, and the uniform will not be defeated. So, slowly he puts it on.

Pants. Belt. Tourniquet in the pocket. Shirt. Beret. Gun.

And he says goodybe to his family. The elevator takes us down to the street where we walk quietly to the stop. And we go separate ways and wait until the next time when the ghost returns.

Creating Sustainable Culture

This isn't about the trendy "going green". It's called "permaculture" and the meaning is revolutionary. You don't have to be a hippy (ahem, all of you hippy haters..) and even if you think that global warming is a farce, you can't ignore the fact that we have a responsibility to protect the environment and to be conscious of the implications of our daily actions. This is more than environmental change, its social change, relational change..
Reform Judaism Magazine - Earthcare: An Ethical Culture Designed to Save Our Planet & Ourselves
This article talks with members of Kibbutz Lotan Center for Creative Ecology in the Negev of Israel who teach and practice permaculture.

"In the 1970s, Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist,and one of his students, David Holmgren, developed the concept- a contraction of "permanent agriculture" (or sustainable agriculture) that soon turned into "permanent culture" (or sustainable culture). Permaculture is a culture, philosophy, and design method that teaches us to look at a whole system or problem, to observe how the parts relate, and to mend what needs fixing by applying time-tested substainable practices. For example, when we're about to purchase an item at the store, such as a bottle of milk, rather than think only of its immediate usuage, which is only a small part of the system, we consider the whole picture: Do I really need it, where was it produced, what materials is it made of,and always, what happens after its used, how will it be disposed of? To guide us in our decision-making, permaculture has a simple reference we call "the three ethics"
1) Care of the earth, including all living things-plants, animals, land, water and air
2) Care of people, promoting access to resources, self reliance, community responsibility and
3) Fare Share, placing limits on consumption to assure that the planets limited resources are used wisely and equitably. Now before we make our milk purchase, we can ask: "Care of the earth" questions: were the animals who gave the milk treated well? Were they fed sprayed food which might affect milk quality as well as the earth the food was grown in? Is the dairy farm local, avoiding pollution that would be generated from the milk's transport? We ask "Care of the people" questions: Does the farmer properly manage the manure so as not to pollute the local drinking water? Will the milk sale generate income for a neighborhood farm, increasing the liklihood that money will be resused efficiently within the local area? And we ask "Fare Share" questions too: Are part of the cow pastures and woodlands kept"wild" for wildlife? Can the milk bottle be reused or recycled easily or will disposing of it contribute to the landfill? Once we truly understand that we only have one planet Earth and her resources are limited, we appreciate that we are invested with the power to change Earth, for better or worse, in any decision we make. -Mike Kaplin, co creater, director and head permaculture teacher, Center for Creative Ecology

Not the settling down type...

When I was in 4th grade I wanted to go live with gorillas in the jungles of South America. I would go to the library and sit next to the shelf that held the wildlife books and visit my favorite book on the shelf.. an autobiography by Jane Goodall. She was amazing to me. I tried hard to imagine what it would be like to live in the jungle, away from comforts, to be accepted by a group of animals as family.

My daydreaming continued, it swayed from living in the jungles to moving to England and being a great writer, to joining the Air Force and being a pilot. My dreams never placed me in one place. I was never the girl who planned her wedding and acted it out with Ken and Barbie. I was on my karaoke machine broadcasting news to the world..

The other day I asked the guy I am dating what some of his dreams were and he didn't have much to say, "I always just pictured myself getting married, having kids, enjoying grandkids". Fantastic. What else?..

He then asked me, and ten minutes later after I rambled about every possible thing there is to do in the world, he says "You don't seem like the settling down type.."

Although I do want the goodness that is marriage and children I don't want it at the cost of living a routine/normal/boring life. And I know it's possible but you have to find the right way to do it. In motion. Out of the box. Maybe in the jungle..

Bringing light..

On Chanukah, the Almighty wants us to remember that we have the ability today to bring pure light into our lives. He wants us to remember all the times when we weren’t afraid to face the darkness. He wants us to believe in what is best and pure inside of us, no matter how small that spark of sincerity may be.

And then He takes each of our tiny sparks and fills our lives with light. That is the miracle.

We see this all the time in our lives. You keep one hour of Shabbos, but you keep that hour with a full heart. And God eventually helps you to keep an entire Shabbos. You learn one sentence of Torah a day with the untainted openness to receive wisdom, and the Almighty teaches you more than you could have ever imagined . You say one prayer with pure intentions, and He preserves the echo of that prayer for generations to come.

At the beginning of time, God created a special light that stretched from one end of the world to the other. Under that light, nothing died and nothing rotted. It was a beautiful, healing, infinite light. But it only lasted 36 hours because God saw that the light wasn’t fitting for this world where we need some darkness in order to have free will. So He hid the light away and allows it to shine only in the World to Come where there is no pain and no concealment.

But once a year, on Chanukah, God gives us access to this hidden light that resides in the deepest recesses of our souls. There are 36 candles lit during Chanukah, each candle representing an hour that this hidden light was revealed to the world.
Each candle that we light removes another layer of the curtain that blocks the hidden, precious light of our souls.

Each candle surrounds us with the purity of that little jar of oil that always has one drop left.

Because all we need is one pure thing. One pure image. One pure moment. One pure story.
And like fire giving to fire, light giving to light, soul giving to soul -- that one pure moment gives to the next pure moment. Candle to candle. Until the darkness disappears.

http://www.aish.com/h/c/t/sg/78053147.html

Get Self-Actualized!

Maslow described self-actualization as being "psychologically healthy, fully human, highly evolved, and fully mature". He believed that "healthy" or "self-actualized" individuals possess the following characteristics:

1) An appropriate perception of reality

2) The ability to accept oneself, others and human nature

3)The ability to manifest spontaneity

4) The capacity for focusing concentraion on problem solving

5)A need for detachment and a desire for privacy

6) Independence, autonomy, and a resistance to enculturation

7) An intensity of emotional reaction

8) A frequencty of "peak" experiences that validates the worthwhileness, richness and beauty of life

9) An identification with humankind

10) The ability to achieve satisfactory interpersonal relationships

11) A democratic character structure and strong sense of ethics

12) Creativeness

13) A degree of noncomformance



Freud may be crazy but Maslow has it right :)



In other news check out Priscilla Ahn, she is an amazing singer songwriter.

http://lala.com/zHez

ayfoh atah kesef? Po.

More recycled goods wallets. I made these ones for my Sar-El roommates that I met in Israel, using Bamba packages and maps of Tel Aviv that I grabbed from AM/PM. I even use recycled cereal boxes for the inside part to keep them sturdy :) I'm now like a little racoon digging through the trash and stockpiling ephemera on my desk.

I was lying in bed watching MADE TV and saw this amazing Japanese fellow who made instruments out of vegetables. You've got to see it..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5aUz9cDaCY

Prompting my friend Alberto to send me this one.. The Vegetable Orchestra...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfYt7vRHuY

Beats macaroni tamborines..

I am sitting across from a group of newly hired employees at a local Tim Hortons. They are having their orientation and I am cringing for them. I hear the manager rattling off company policies and procedures that are in the league of the CIA. She informs them that there are “cameras everywhere in here” and that she can even watch them from the comfort of her own home, hyping it up saying how she called the shop late at night one time to tell the kid working the counter to tuck his shirt in.

She needs them to sign their background check forms, in case there are any known bagel thieves on her hands, and in an odd twist I hear everyone answering about what kind of belly button they have.

They are given their uniform, so that they fit into the kitsch of the corporate world and she dismisses them.

How easy is it for us to lose identity?

We are confronted over and over again of images of how things should be, the velvet curtain is pulled shut as the chaos and beauty and conflict of life is going on behind the scenes. We too often live as we are told, think thoughts we are bred to think, Spew out words that are only pleasing to the ones hearing them, and form this identity that is not us, but is what we are because of the influence of the fast, and “correct” world that we live in.

How easy is it for us to just go along with things and not questions why?

We didn’t stop questioning when we were 3 years old, so why are we doing it now? Over and over again children are relentless with getting to the facts. Maybe at this age we won’t be asking “why is the sky blue?” but we should definitely be asking questions until we feel satisfied with why we do things the way we do, why we believe the things that we do.

Life is a constant project of finding out who you are and relishing in it and sharing it with others.

That's all for now. Shalom xo

Nini's friend, P'nelle...

My mom knit this awesome Crocodile scarf, and my niece who could probably tell you the class and family of this species loved it. She prefers playing with her collegiate grade skeleton, or reading about Dinosaurs and bones. Last night she got out the skeleton and I would point to the bones and have her repeat the names.
So cute to hear a 3 year old say "ulna" "femor" and "patella" :)

Preparing for a New Year..

Rosh Hashanah is on the way.

Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year, commemorating the creation of Adam and Eve, the first human beings. On Rosh Hashana, the Books of Life and Death are open on the heavenly desk. On this "Day of Judgment," we each stand before God and offer our best case for being "created anew" -- i.e. granted another year of life.
The morning before Rosh Hashana, we perform "Hatarat Nedarim" -- annulling all vows. This enables us to enter the new year with a clean slate.

Rosh Hashana asks us to remember how much we are worth to God, to our families, to our friends, and to the world. We feast as an expression of the joy we find in our life. And that understanding must precede the Yom Kippur emphasis on our failings that prompt us to fast and to cry over our imperfections.

This article is about living life to your fullest ability, to conquer you dreams and make change.

http://www.aish.com/h/hh/gar/57642657.html

A new year, full of loving God, family, friends, and everyone we come in contact with.. L'shana Tova!

The Chernobyl Sunflower Project

Sunflowers can clean up nuclear waste. I find it so beautiful...

This sunflower project is one of many international efforts at phytoremediation-the use of plants to absorb pollutants from air, water, and soil. In the United States, both government agencies and private companies, including Exxon Corp. and DuPont are testing a variety of plants to see if they can do some of the dirty work of cleaning up such pollutants as radioactive material, lead, selenium selenium (səlē`nēəm), nonmetallic chemical element; symbol Se; at. no. 34; at. wt. 78.96; m.p. 217°C;; b.p. about 685°C;; sp. gr. 4.81 at 20°C;; valence −2, +4, or +6. , and oil.

Many plants, it turns out, have a taste for these stubborn contaminants.

The Chernobyl sunflower project began in 1994. That summer, researchers from Phytotech, a phytoremediation company in Monmouth Junction, N.J., and their government and university colleagues installed the rafts.

Together, they held 24 sunflowers and dotted a 75-square-meter pond located 1 kilometer from the Chernobyl reactor, says Burt Ensley, Phytotech's president. The plants preferentially absorb cesium and strontium from a mixture of metals, he notes. The plants don't metabolize the radionuclides, but the cesium stays in the roots and most of the strontium moves to the shoots. The company disposes of the plants as radioactive waste after about 3 weeks on the pond.

Ive got my eye on these lately..

Russian Nesting Dolls

This Judith Lieber crystal cupcake purse is gorgeous. I can just drool over it, since I don't think I can afford a $4000 purse anytime soon :)
I LOVE this Obama Chia Head!

like birds to St. Francis's shoulders..

I have the most remarkable story of pure destiny, a serendipity like occurance. It's about meeting someone you were suppose to meet and meeting them half way across the world, in the most unlikely circumstances. It may be unknown why I was suppose to meet this person, but "necessity knows no magic formulae-they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgetable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.."

I'm reading "the Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera and it is about this. Here is an except. It's lovely..

After Tomas had returned to Prague from Zurich, he began to feel uneasy at the thought that his acquaintance with Tereza was the result of six improbable fortuities.

But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?

Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images left by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.

Tomas appeared to Tereza in a hotel restaurant as chance in the absolute. There he sat, poring over an open book, when suddenly he raised his eyes to her, smiled, and said,

"A cognac, please."

At that moment, the radio happened to be playing music. On her way behind the counter to pour the cognac, Tereza turned the volume up. She recognized Beethoven. She had known his music from the time a string quartet from Prague had visited their town. Tereza (who, as we know, yearned for "something higher") went to the concert. The hall was nearly empty. The only other people in the audience were the local pharmacist and his wife. And although the quartet of musicians on stage faced only a trio of spectators down below, they were kind enough not to cancel the concert, and give a private performance of the last three Beethoven quartets.

Then the pharmacist invited the musicians to dinner and asked the girl in the audience to come along with them. From then on, Beethoven came to her image of the world on the other side, the world she yeared for. Rounding the corner with Tomas's cognac, she tried to read chance's message: How was it possible that at the very moment she was taking an order of cognac to a stranger she found attractive, at that very moment to hear Beethoven?

Necessity knows no magic formulae- they are all lef to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

Week in pictures..

Today was my mom's birthday, we celebrated with a family picnic at the park. My grandma made this delicious chocolate cake that resembles a big Simpsons donut. Gotta love sprinkles..

I've been making vinyl wallets lately, mostly from CD inserts and maps. This one with the guns is from a Distillers album, and the back is Bouncing Souls.

Birds the word at Preusses. I totally fell in love with a pair of lovebirds. If I can find the perfect retro birdcage, they may soon be mine..

Breakfast with friends at Golden Harvest. This is my monstrous strawberry waffle, a little ridiculous. The food, service, and atmosphere at this place is eclectic, unique and full of love

Finding the gems Lansing, MI

So Lansing isn't nearly as exciting as most places, so we have to cherish the few places that make it somewhat unique. It's been my quest since returning from overseas, and being spoiled by spending a good amount of time in a truly one of a kind city (Tel Aviv) that I find what I can love, or like, about Lansing. So I am beginning to compile a list of cafes/shops/bars/venues/etc that can get us out of the rut of the Applebees/"Biggby"/Malls/Walmarty major corporation cycle and into supporting small and local business. I'll be putting up more as I find them!

Cafes and Coffeeshops
http://www.spotteddogcafe.com/
http://www.sweetie-licious.com/
http://www.campusfood.com/restaurant.asp?campusid=65&mlid=251301 (Deckers Coffee)
Fleetwood Diner 2211 S. Cedar

http://www.myspace.com/golden_harvest

Shops
http://www.scavengerhunteco.com/about.html
http://www.octobermoon.net/
Bars and Venues
http://www.myspace.com/basement414
http://www.macsbar.com/
http://www.dagwoodstavern.com/
http://www.tavernonthesq.com/
http://www.crunchyseastlansing.com/

Usually it's Law and Order. A Hallmark movie. Or America's Funniest Home Videos. But lately it's been "Touched by An Angel". It's the show that is blaring as I walk into my elderly clients home at 9pm, reporting for my 12 hour overnight shift. So I sit in a red and white checkered chair and watch with them.
And it's been getting me. Its the same thing; someone is dying and has to make peace with their family, an occasional orphan, an old man who finds out that money isn't everything in the end.. whatever. But the show is actually pretty good. Tonight there was a quote in it that I found inspiring, "Tess" the soulful black angel just miraculously got cured from Alzheimers and is talking to another elderly woman at the nursing home, telling her all the great things about the after life, but she says at one point (throw in some "honeys" and "babys") that "right now I am talking to your soul, I'm not talking to your mind, but your soul".
I think that if we talked to peoples souls, then we would mean a lot more. We talk to fill space, we don't even listen half the time because all we are thinking about is what we are going to say in response as soon as the person we are talking to shuts up.
Our words are often void of meaning. But if we direct our thoughts to the soul, and not the mind, imagine how much more meaningful our words would be... baby.

What do you see?

I remember looking into my newborn nieces eyes thinking about all the things that she would see in her life, wondering what she would remember, what she would think about this world..

It's funny that we all see things differently. What is ugly to someone may be beautiful to the person next to them, what draws us to certain things? Certain scenery, colors, styles..


How we view the world is another thing. We can take the sorrows that we see and let it affect us, and do something about it, or we can simply close our eyes.

Week in Pictures

I made some owls....

My cousin Danielle and I enjoying time at....

B414 in Lansing, Michigan

Making some of these cuties as soon as my owls (pictures coming soon) are done..

It’s so cliché, but I wanted to be a nurse “to help people”. There are so many people out there that are hurting, are sick, and just need someone to give them an extra few minutes, hold their hand, to make them feel cared about. It’s the smallest gestures that make us feel the human connection, that warms our hearts and for a moment or for an eternity makes us remember that there is goodness in the world. Something we can appreciate and take away from.
But doing the work I do is teaching me that although I feel like I am helping, I feel like the people I care for are helping ME, in so many ways. I’m inspired by those we are clinging to life, but still have this luminescent hope that shines through them, and even for those who don’t have the hope, they have the honesty to want to surrender, to say they had a good life and are now ready to go on.
I’m filled with joy, when a client who I’ve been assisting for over a year now tells me he considers me to be one of his closest friends. How your smile just made someone's day. When you feel at the end of the day that you truly made a difference -It’s so rewarding. We have opportunities everyday to make differences, take those opportunities.

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile."- Mother Teresa

This last weekend my sister, dad and I took my niece to Preusses Pets in Lansing's Old Town

She picked out a cute little pink fish :)

The Best Meal I've Ever Had..

Our stomachs weren’t quite ready for food, but our eyes scared us into hunger. We were in the middle of nowhere. Ein Gedi. We were warned that we should bring food, but for sure there had to be at least one restaurant, and there was, except that it closed at 2:00, and now it was nearing 7:00 and there was nothing. As we walked, swallowing hot desert air, an inventory was taken
“I have that bag of nuts we could eat” said Klara
“I have a few packets of oatmeal and 2 rolls from earlier today”
Truth is, it could have held us over until the breakfast that the hostel offered in the morning, but just knowing that we couldn’t go out and get anything to eat made us panic. I mean, it was for one night. People can go plenty of days without eating. And suddenly the leafs on the trees looked like lemons, and the thought of hunting and devouring an Ibex crossed my mind. The sulfur like smell coming from the sea rolled down the road, mixing with the food smells from the other hostel.
“Smells like fart and food” Klara laughed as we treaded up the steep hill
A few hours earlier as we were sitting waiting for Cely’s bus, I felt a plop against my thigh and looked down to see a yellow splat. I looked up and saw the bird perfectly aligned with my leg, and Cely started clapping and cheering like I had just set a world record.
“It’s good luck!!’ she exclaimed as she handed me a tissue
I wiped it off and handed it back to her,
“Here you can have the luck”, but in my head I was hoping that the good luck would come in an edible form.
So back at the Field School, after my shower, I find Klara outside talking to someone she had just met. I sit down, we are overlooking the dead sea, and I realize the new friend of ours works at the place. “So you can get us food?”
“You want food? I have food, but I can’t cook. If you want to cook it, you can have it”
The offer was taken.
“In Israel you can’t get something for nothing. You will really cook? I will call you around 8:00” Dor said as he walked off
The anticipation for a good meal was more than I could take. He picked us up in a golf cart and took us back to his apartment at the Field School. The water was already boiling with spaghetti noodles floating. He said he got it started for us, but he had to leave and go back to work.“Do you know how to make sauce?”
“Yeah, I’m really good at sauces” Klara said, “what do you have?”
He gave us tomatoes, onions and garlic. Olive oil and spices.
“My mom gave me this recipe” he said as he looked at it clipped to a board next to the stove and began to read off the directions, then he was off, “don’t wait for me, I’ll be back in about an hour..”
So we diced and sautéed, grooved to the music he put on for us, shoed away the roaches coming in from out front and tried to make due with what we had, anxiously hoping that it would taste great.
And I think it was the best meal I have ever had. Thank goodness for the bird making its business on my leg.

My Favorite Blog..

http://pikaland.com/

I looooove Pika Land :) :)

"This is so amazing....."

Hiking in Ein Gedi National Park in the Negev, Israel. It's a sight to see; waterfalls streaming down giant rocks, tiny caves and a view of the Dead Sea from the top.

Never felt so close to nature, so small, so accomplished.. so tired..

Ma Nishma

June 14, 2009:
I am sitting in a coffee shop in the busy and energetic Tel Aviv. It is almost 8:00 pm and its full. They are playing Elvis. The waiter speaks ok Hebrew but perfect English. The three women next to me are arguing, their Hebrew forming sentences that don't end, so they speak over each other. I can hear the noise on Dizengoff; vespas flying by, the breeze of the bus, and of course the consistant honking of the taxis. I am trying to write of my experiences here in Israel, but nothing specific comes to mind.

What I will write won't correctly paint the picture.

You can't smell the spice shop in th old city, or the shwarma roasting in Tiberius, or taste of military cornflakes bathed in chocolate milk first thing in the morning. The sound of the rush of soldiers getting home on a Thursday afternoon, the emotional sight of the Western Wall as you walk towards it as the sun is getting low.

I can tell you I walked the entire outside perimeter of the Old City in Jerusalem, randomly walking past churches and holy sites, gazing at the historic walls that enclose a city that is thousands of years old and where the Arab, Jewish, Christian and Armenian quarters blend into eachother. I can't describe the cacophony of vendors shouting, the feel of feet gliding on the smooth and slippery Jerusalem stone side streets, the sight of the sun glowing off the dome of the rock, the taste of fresh squeezed orange juice bought from a Moraccan man who told me his life story, with his 5 year old son, the youngest of 8 waking up from a nap next to me.

I can tell you that I hiked in the desert, swam in the dead sea and walked through the ancient remains of a city build by Herod the Great. But the feeling on your skin that the dead sea leaves behind, the sound of a waterfall in the middle of the desert, the pride you feel after you see how far up you hiked, those are memories.I can tell you stories, but I can't describe the memories. The images, the smells, the feelings that this place instills in me. People come here for different reasons. Some are religious, some have family here, others are Zionist, and most are here for reasons that can't quite be explained. It is a beautiful, magical and mysterious place. And I just found out my waiter is from Detroit. Now, that is truly Israel :)