Castration Clinic

January 31, 2012 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Life 

Monty: before

At first glance, it looks like any other veterinarian’s office. Pictures of dogs and cats on the walls, efficient and busy animal doctors flitting around in blue cotton smocks. But the pets coming this morning to the Jerusalem Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (JSPCA) in Jerusalem’s Talpiot Industrial Zone all had one thing in common: they were about to get snipped.

That’s because the JSPCA specializes in sterilization: spaying for females, neutering for males. It also has the lowest price in town, NIS 438, a good 25% less than our regular vet. You can get the job done for even cheaper if you want to schlep out to Atarot – only NIS 300. The Atarot facility also doubles as a rescue shelter.

The animal in question was our Maltese, Monty. “But he’s just a puppy,” the kids cried out when we told them of our plan to introduce Monty to the joys of sexual ambiguity. The kids were right about his age: Monty’s one-year birthday is coming up at the end of February. And there is a school of thought – dismissed by all the best selling dog trainers in their books – that a male dog should have the chance once in his life to copulate, while girl dogs should have at least one litter.

The problem is that the offspring of those unions more often than not end up at the pound where they’re likely to be put down. So, letting your dog sow his wild oats could be a death sentence for the resulting puppies.

For male dogs there are even better reasons. High testosterone levels lead to a greater chance of testicular cancer. Males also have a tendency of charging into the street to chase females in heat, another potentially fatal move. Plus neutering makes dogs less aggressive. The best age to neuter, the experts say, is between 5-7 months. Protestations from the children aside, our mind was made up.

Still, I was a bit put off by the vet’s first words to me. “He’s here for a castration?” he said in wobbly English. “Well, we prefer to call it ‘neutering,’” I replied somewhat testily (must have been the testosterone). “But he’s so young,” the doctor then added. Hey – are you reading the same books I am, dude?

“He should be done after noon. We’ll call you.”

A few hours later, we picked Monty up. He barely acknowledged us; the anesthesia was still wearing off. For the next couple of days, he dragged around the house looking pained, both physically and undoubtedly broken hearted for the breech of trust (OK, he’s a dog, he probably just didn’t feel well).

But then I had a thought. What about the royal eunuchs who worked the palaces in days gone by? Perhaps there might still be a bright future for Monty serving in the court of a golden retriever or a greyhound. In some cases, less could very well be more.

Tags:

RIMBY

January 31, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: education, Environment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

In all its glory...my local recycling cage.

Exciting news on my block, sort of IMBY, or RIMBY, instead of NIMBY: After numerous calls over the years to the iriya, the municipality, we finally have a plastic bottle/disc case/battery recycling cage just down the street, smack next to the newspaper recycling bin. This is exciting because while I live in a neighborhood that should, in theory, have many recycling cages because of a population that is happy to recycle, we haven’t had that many, and the one that is closest to us is quite a few blocks away and not really on the way to anything.

That’s meant schlepping bottles in the car, on the stroller, on the way to this or that, and having a stockpile of them in the house at all times. And I can finally get rid of the batteries that have been piling up in my front closet for months because I can never find battery recycling anywhere.

In fact, I’ve been so frustrated about the state of recycling in my neighborhood that I recently wrote a piece about it for JTA, which was just published the other day. You can read it here, and one interesting fact is the following:

“According to Chagit Hoshen, the marketing manager of ELA Recycling, the nonprofit organization that handles recycling collection countrywide, an average of 41 percent of plastic bottles were recycled in 2011. Once the recycling rate reaches 50 percent, the organization says it will build a factory for the production of plastic bottles containing 40 percent recycled raw materials.”

At the same time, at least in my city of Jerusalem, many people still don’t recycle, and I often see neighbors simply throwing out their plastic bottles with the trash, just like they think nothing of tossing garbage out their car windows or sweeping the dirty water gathered from washing the floor out their front door. Of course, that’s not everyone, and there are many Israelis, both native-born and immigrants who take their recycling seriously and will gather their bottles, their cardboard and their tin cans and compost and deposit it in community gardens, community bins and other recycling centers.

In any case, it’s a start and one that I’m excited to begin using.

Tags: ,

Eretz Nehederet takes on Birthright

January 30, 2012 by · 8 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Travel, tv 

Eretz Nehederet actors portraying American-Jewish participants of a Birthright trip in ecstacy over learning they're going to visit Yad Vashem.

The increasingly blurry relationship between Israel and American Jews continues to be a subject for discussion, criticism and parody.

Only a few months ago, there was the controversy over the video campaign by the Ministry of Absorption to convince expatriate Israelis to come home. Whether due to lack of understanding by the makers of the videos (claim critics) or over sensitivity by those offended by the videos (claim advocates), the results proved that we don’t really see each other in the same we see ourselves.

That’s why it’s good for someone to come along once in a while and flatten the playing field by being so offensive that you can’t help but laugh. And that someone this time is Eretz Nehederet, the irreverent Channel 2 comedy/satire series poking fun at current events, national leaders, and in this case of the premiere of its ninth season last week, the Birthright/Taglit program.

As Haaretz put it, “In a rare jab at visiting Diaspora Jews, Israel’s premier satirical television show, Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), took on Taglit-Birthright Israel during its Monday night season premier.”

The skit in question follows a Birthright group as they travel by bus through the country accompanied by an Israeli guide.
You’ve got all the Diaspora Jewish stereotypes, as seen through Israeli eyes – the Jewish American Princesses, the partying, vulgar frat boys and the drug and the sex-addled South American participants.

Cynical to the nth degree, the skit – conducted in a mixture of Hebrew and English -manages to make fun of American Jewish allegiance to Israel, Birthright’s use of Holocaust guilt to encourage the participants to hit up their parents for contributions, and the cocky Israeli mentality as portrayed by the tour guide whose bravado gets him blown up by a land mine.

The skit (available here at least temporarily) loses steam half way through, but it’s still worth searching for in Hebrew on YouTube for its first few minutes for the setup, which provides some of the sharpest parody the show has created.

If American Jewish-Israeli ties were tenuous before this, I shudder to think where they’ll go after the sensitive American Jewish community views this.

Tags:

Nostalgia Sunday – Cinema Savion saved!

January 29, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, design, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

The best sort of mayor, it is said, is one who can keep real estate developers under control. Look at some of the architectural monstrosities surrounding us and one has to conclude that modern Israel has had very bad luck with city management. Some lovely buildings have been torn down with the occasional commemorative plaque or, worse yet, commemorative structure erected as an afterthought.

Some of the silliest examples: Talitakumi in front of Jerusalem’s HaMashbir LeZarchan, a strangely out of place wall-and-clock structure intended to replicate the front of a girl’s school that was razed to make room for the department store. The gate leading to Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv was thrown up by sentimental, well-meaning people in recognition of the original structure, demolished to make way for the Kolbo Shalom. And does anybody know that the Gan HaIr mall and residential complex was named for the municipal zoological garden that once stood there?

The most unsung of all are the movie houses, most of them shuttered for decades, fall deeper and deeper into disrepair until they are destroyed to make room for malls, tall buildings and parking lots. No one remembers Tel Aviv’s majestic Mugrabi Cinema or Jerusalem’s historic Edison.

Nonetheless, a small victory was achieved a little over a week ago when high-rise developers were forced to change a plan to tear down Bay Yam’s historic Savion Cinema. The victory belongs to a local activist group of Bat Yam residents, artists and the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites who objected to the demolition and proposed a synthesis of old and new structures.

In its heyday, Bat Yam boasted six movie houses. The Savion Cinema was built in 1957 and — in line with the global trend – closed in the 1980s. “However it remained an architectural icon because of its facade which was characterized by a weave of concrete block units,” states The Marker.

Icon or not, the building was in bad shape. Its most recent tenant: a dollar store in what was once the movie-house’s lobby.

According to The Marker, the design for a 25-story tower by architect Ilan Pivko, will be modified in accordance with preservation plan for the building. The building — a luxury residence and prestigious office space — is a flagship project for the Bat Yam municipality which wants to develop the run-down neighborhoods adjacent to Jaffa. The preservation plan calls for the street-facing facade to remain intact.

One look at Pivko’s work and its clear that adapting his design to the new guidelines goes against his post-modernist grain. He does not favor keeping the facade as is and suggests a modular solution instead. “One can reconstruct, dismantle or in some other way create an interior element within the structure.” How Pivko handles this challenge remains to be seen… he has done this sort of thing before… but if he wanted to do it with the Savion, he would have worked it into the original design…

Hmmm… one gets the feeling that this issue isn’t over just yet.

Whether or not the Savion Cinema facade remains on the street level or whether, in the end, Pivko’s lobby will simply feature a bold construction of recycled concrete filigree, the real significance of the decision is a precedent set in curbing real estate developers’ ability to destroy old structures without recognizing their historic value. Hopefully, that means recognition not just in the form of an incidental plaque, statue or clock, but as part of the planning, putting real thought into paying homage to what came before.

The Savion Cinema photos were taken by architect Sharon Raz who is a one-man documentary powerhouse with a particular interest in Israel’s old cinemas. See his Disappearing Architecture and Disappearing Cinemas sites as well as his Natush blog for more photos and information.

Tags:

The sandwich generation

January 29, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

From Julie Winokur's documentary, The Sandwich Generation

More helpful information about couplehood, parenthood and general adulthood from BGU, otherwise known as Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. A new study from the university’s business and management department, done in cooperation with professors from Portland State University, has examined the relationship between job burnout and couple burnout among working couples in the sandwiched generation, those couples who care for both children and aging parents.

Using responses from a questionnaire, the researchers found significant differences in burnout type, gender and country. That is, job burnout was higher than couple burnout — happy to hear that, women were more burned out than men (not surprising, given that women tend to carry the home and children burden more heavily), and Americans were more burned out than Israelis (that could be due to the fact that families live closer to one another around here, offering more support across siblings than in the U.S.).

The study also found that if jobs are more stressful, couple burnout is more aggravated and vice versa. And the researchers were surprised to find that job and couple burnout among sandwiched couples was relatively low compared to the general population. Meaning that the sandwich element was not as significant a factor as expected, probably because couples — in their focus group meetings — found that while there was a significant emotional factor in caring for aging parents, it still brought them closer together, working together to help care for both children and parents.

“I arrived at an age that I define as midlife. I am 49, and I think that the difficulty with parents is that you are at the point, how to say it…that the best part is behind us…and the future that awaits us, especially when you look at parents, well, it’s not too heartening…When you see this insulting old age, it is actually very difficult.”

Couples’ caring for aging parents together has had a positive effect on their marriage and therefore reduced couple burnout: “I think that it strengthens the marriage when both partners support each other and go to visit the parents together…It gives me a good feeling when I go with my wife to visit her parents, and she feels good when she comes with me to visit my parents.”

It all seems to make sense, and helps to know that even if you’re in that situation, you may be doing better than you think you are. Does that make sense?

Tags: , , ,

Page 1 of 912345...Last »

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Sitemap