Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Enough posting about politics. Now, for something completely different. In the old days proud parents used to whip out wallet-size photos of those apples of their eye and show them off to neighbors or relatives. Bloggers have it much better. I can show you full size images.

Apologies to my wife, to whom I promised over several months to edit and publish the 140 new images I just uploaded to my photo gallery site. The images there are from May-September, 2007 and they feature some cool Seattle sites and events like Folklife, the new Olympic Sculpture Park and a cruise on the Puget Sound. Here are two of the best of my twins and oldest son. They’re great subjects and really like the camera. In fact, they’d like to take it right out of my hand and start shooting themselves.

tags children

I was surfing through Ynetnews for information about a post I’m writing about the upcoming Palestinian elections and this image and headline (Hebron children to police chief: Shoot us”) REALLY brought me up short. “WHOA,” I said. “This stuff is beyond the pale.”

In my last post about the Hebron melee I posted images of young settlers abusing Israeli police and Palestinian residents. I’d also seen images of the Gaza withdrawal in which children were manipulated to invoke pity and especially guilt within the Israeli public. But this goes all the way down to the gutter. Putting young children in front the the world media with signs saying “Karadi [the Israeli police chief]–Shoot Me!” Really. All I can do is echo Joseph Welch’s famous lines which finally turned the tables on Senator Joe McCarthy and eventually led to his political demise (in this passage he comes to the defense of a young lawyer accused by McCarthy of belonging to the National Lawyer’s Guild):

Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness…Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I’m a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me…

You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

…If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good.

I couldn’t have put it any better myself. I have three young children. I believe strongly in my political principles. They have often been under attack just as the Hebron settlers feel themselves under attack. But I would never stoop to such narischkeit. It would demean me. It would demean my children. And perhaps worst of all, it would demean my cause. Why should anyone sympathize with adults who do such things to their children?

Finally, I note that Ynet has the good sense to protect the privacy of these poor children by masking their faces. But why didn’t their parents have the good sense not to parade them for public show in the first place?

tags children, hebron, israeli_politics, israeli_settlers

Our twins, Miriam and Adin, turned one year old today. They were born last November 23rd at 7:17 and 7:19 AM at Swedish Hospital. Last year, we missed Thanksgiving because my wife was in the hospital for 5 days (and I with her). It wasn’t much fun. But we’re hoping to make up for what we missed by this year having our usual modest feast with my brother and his friend.

Tonight, after we had dinner we enjoyed our family birthday ritual, sumptuous cupcakes from Dahlia Bakery. These aren’t ordinary cupcakes. They’re the best cupcakes ever made (or at least ever experienced by this author). Each day, the cupcakes are a different flavor. Tonight, they had delectable vanilla icing with devil’s food cake. Janis believes you should give a birthday baby an entire cupcake and let them have their way with it. Me, I’m a bit more fastidious. But I figured hey, it’s their day, let ‘em have their way. It was a gooey mess, but they were happy with it mess and all. We threw them in the tub afterward for a good shampoo (icing in the hair–eeewww!).

We gave each twin his and hers cupcakes with little candles. We lit them in the pitch dark because they’d been crying and I thought it would distract them (it did). Jonah helped blow out each candle with me. We sang Happy Birthday and everyone cheered. Miriam and Adin looked at us with slight, but uncomprehending wonder.

Today’s cute story. No offense to Adin who’s charming, if a tad blustery and obstreperous, but Janis thinks Miriam’s got the smarts of the two. Here’s an example: most days (about 4 times per week) I take them for a long walk in the stroller that takes us down to Madrona Beach where I set them down on the walkway for a crawl-around and throw sticks into the lake for the Lab to retrieve. Then we mosey on down to Leschi and up to Frink Park the whole time walking along Lake Washington Blvd. The past few times I’ve stopped at the swings in Frink Park and set them up for 15 minutes or so of swing time. They look adorable sharing a single swing flying up and down.

Yesterday, though I decided I needed to get home quickly so I didn’t stop at the swings. Not more than 10 steps from where I would’ve turned off to go down to the swings, Miriam started to cry. I bent over and looked down at her, saying: “What do you want?” She kicked her legs with enthusiasm and I had a feeling she wanted swings so I took them both over and we spent our usual 15 minutes flying through the air. When Janis came home from work, I told her the story and she had no doubt that Miriam, even at the tender age of 1, knew where she was and what she wanted. I said to Janis, we’ll try again next time and if she cries again I’ll know she’s a genius.

Today, I also wanted to get home quickly so I tried the same thing–passing the swings by; but Miriam would have none of it crying again until we turned back to the swings. Somebody tell me how a 1 year old can know her surroundings well enough (this is a usual 75-minute walk that covers several miles) to know where the swings were? Does she have the homing instincts of a pigeon?

tags babies, birthdays, children, family, twins

I know my title above sounds like a big downer. But really, this discussion I had with Jonah, my 3 year old was not. It was slightly surreal, sure. It was a little sad. And it was like talking with a relentless force. But it wasn’t a downer.

We were at the Volunteer Park playground in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Jonah likes to play in the brush near the fence on the south side of the park boundary. On the other side of the fence is an early Seattle cemetery (not actively used today, I believe). In doing some online research just now, I discovered its formal name is Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery. For a really cool virtual tour of the cemetery (which is where the image was retrieved from), visit VRSeattle.com.

Jonah walked up to the fence, pointed at the cemetary headstones and said: “What dose rocks, Daddy?” I told him it was a cemetery and you know what his next question was…to which I replied: “It’s a place where they put the bodies of people who’ve died.” “Why dey die, Daddy?” “Well, mostly people get very old and sometimes their bodies don’t work so well when they get very old. That’s how people die.” “You die, Daddy?” “Yes, Jonah. I’m going to die (and seeing the next thought forming in his brain, I tried to head off the next line of questioning–unsuccessfully of course). But it won’t happen for many, many years. And by then you’re going to be a grown man, maybe with a wife and family of your own. So you don’t need to worry about it.” “Why you die, Daddy?” “Well, I’ll probably get very old someday.” “Daddy, when you die, Jonah die too?” “No, sweetie. Remember when we saw the video of the dead whale at the Museum of Natural History and I told you that when an old animal dies, another baby animal comes to take its place. Well, you’ll take my place when I die.” “Daddy, Mommy die too?” “Yes, sweetie, Mommy will die too. But she loves you very much and plans to be with you for ages and ages. In fact, it’s so far away you can’t even count the time till that happens.” Now he started a new line of questioning: “Daddy, when you die you go dere (pointing at the cemetery)?” “I don’t know, Jonah. I don’t think that cemetery takes any more people. I also don’t know if we’ll still be living here. I might want to be buried with my Daddy who died in Florida.” “Daddy, you & Mommy die, be buried dere (pointing at the cemetery)?” The same response as above. “Daddy, when you die Jonah be sad.” “Yes, I know you’ll be sad. But Daddy doesn’t want to die and leave Jonah. It’s just something that happens to everyone whether they want it to or not.” You guessed it–the next question was: “Daddy, Jonah die?” “Yes, Jonah you’ll die too someday, but it won’t be for many, many years and it’s so far away you shouldn’t even worry about it.”

This of course went on interminably. He seemed to repeat each question he asked three times at least and was never fully satisfied with any answer I gave. I was alternately horrified and fascinated by his obssesive interest in the subject. I was also amazed that he was interested at so young an age. I remember I had a morbid fascination with the subject when I was young, but I’m pretty sure I was older than three.

Ever since this conversation, he repeats these same questions every day, usually more than once a day. That’s kids! For a more in depth psychological discussion of this subject, go to hospicenet.org’s Talking To Children About Death.

tags children, death