Archive for April, 2006
Mouse meet Mouse
Posted by: | CommentsWe haven’t seen any mice since the pasta box incident last week, but by a happy (or rather unhappy) coincidence, our friends Simon and Heidi are moving into a pet-unfriendly apartment and needed to find a new home for their cat Mouse.
Mouse arrived on Tuesday. A pet psychiatrist would have a field day. Mouse is a rescue cat and Simon and Heidi were not her first owners. On the first evening when I sat on the floor and petted her she took a swipe at my face and cat-punched me in the glasses. Fair enough, I thought, she just wants to be left alone.
But the past couple of days have been like living with a feline Jekyll and Hyde. If I sit on the sofa Mouse curls up in a ball next to me. If I sit at the table to eat she lays next to me. And when I sit down to work she hops up onto my desk and sits in front of my keyboard.
But woe betide me if I try to walk across the apartment. She runs in between my legs, hisses, and hits me with her paw. Even cooking is difficult as she hisses and hits me as I move from work surface to fridge to table.
I’m hoping she will calm down given a few more days. She’s already far less tetchy than she was on Tuesday. Her stay is supposed to be temporary until Heidi’s brother moves into a new place in May/June but I can easily see Sofie and I getting attached to her.
On the flip side my eyes have been itching the past few nights, no doubt due to Mouse’s fine cat hairs. But what fine hairs they are!
(Long range photograph of Mouse taken because she gives me the evil eye when I point the camera at her.)
Marfa
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We came across this as we were driving through Texas, heading from Marfa to El Paso to fly home from our holiday.
Marfa was the last stop on our holiday. It’s a tiny town (pop. 2,000) in West Texas, renowned as something of a minimalist art Mecca. The artist Donald Judd moved to Marfa in the early 1970s and installed his artwork in various aircraft hangars at the former Fort Russell. Today, Fort Russell is the site of the Chinati Foundation where tourists, mainly from New York and San Francisco judging by our group, are given a guided tour of the works of Judd and other minimalist artists like Dan Flavin.
Fellow Brit Felix Salmon, who I later found out visited Chinati the day after us, has some great photos here.
We spent the night in Marfa’s El Paisano hotel which is still trading off its fame as having been the impromptu headquarters for the filming of the James Dean movie Giant. One of our guide books said Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson had stayed there. The other said the cast and crew stayed there but the famous trio stayed out of town. We had fun in the bar talking to a group of bikers who had ridden up from South Texas and listening to two musicians from Austin playing folk and country music.
The next day’s drive along Highway 90 from Marfa towards El Paso was stunning. Endless land, endless sky, and an endless, flat, straight road which for miles ran parallel with the railway line. In the middle of nowhere we came across this.
Prada Marfa is a sculpture by Michael Emigreen and Ingar Dragset. Much as I enjoyed all the art we saw in Houston and all the art we saw at Chinati, Prada Marfa, sitting in the middle of the desert, had the most impact. You can find out more about it here.
Texas Holiday 2006: The End.
UPDATE: While working on a separate story I came across this great photograph of Judd’s boxes.
When is a tragedy humorous?
Posted by: | CommentsBen Baruch is not impressed with a Jewish response to an Iranian newspaper’s anti-Semitic cartoon contest.
When is a tragedy humorous? Never. We just laugh to hide our fear and shame.
One Headline, Two Photographs
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I was intrigued by the BBC World Service’s top story this morning which was accompanied by this image.
What, I thought, could the story be? The answer was Israel ‘will not strike at Hamas.’ But why choose to illustrate the story with a photograph of an armed Israeli soldier practically taking aim at three, stone-throwing boys?
I know that the Tel Aviv suicide bombing is yesterday’s news, but I don’t see what stone-throwing boys has to do with a suicide attack that killed nine people and with Israel’s possible retaliation for it.
The juxtaposition was enhanced when I opened the New York Times to the following picture on its front page. Now judge the impact of the headline Israel ‘will not strike at Hamas.’
UPDATE: RELATED
The international governing body for soccer [FIFA] condemned the Jewish state, and announced that it was considering possible action over the Israeli air strike last week on the Gaza soccer field that had been used for terrorist training exercises. The field, which had also reportedly served as a missile launching pad, was empty at the time; the strike itself came in response to the continuing barrage of Qassam rocket attacks directed at Israeli towns and villages.
[...]As FIFA meets in the next few days to decide what action to take against Israel, the double standards involved could not be more obvious. Up to now FIFA, which sees itself as a purely sporting body, has gone out of its way to avoid politics, and has refrained from criticizing even the most appalling human-rights abuses connected to soccer players and stadiums.
When Saddam Hussein’s son Uday had Iraqi soccer players tortured in 1997 after they failed to qualify for the 1998 FIFA World Cup Finals in France, FIFA remained silent. Uday, who was chairman of the Iraqi soccer association, had star players tortured again in 1998. And in 2000, following a quarterfinal defeat in the Asia Cup, three Iraqi players were whipped and beaten for three days by Uday’s bodyguards. The torture took place at the Iraqi Olympic Committee headquarters, but FIFA said nothing.
Again, FIFA simply looked the other way while the Taliban used U.N.-funded soccer fields to slaughter and flog hundreds of innocent people who had supposedly violated sharia law in front of crowds of thousands chanting “God is great.” (Afghan soccer coach Habib Ullahniazi said that as many as 30 people were executed in the middle of the field during the intermissions of a single soccer match at Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium.)
[...]Meanwhile FIFA (and other sporting bodies) continually turn a blind eye to boycotts of Israeli sportsmen.
In February, Tal Ben Haim  the Israeli national soccer team captain, who plays his club soccer for the English Premiership team Bolton Wanderers  was banned from joining his Bolton teammates for their training matches in Dubai. FIFA pointedly ignored this. So did Bolton despite the fact that the team claims to be among the leaders of the campaign to “Kick racism out of football” in the U.K.
Only last week, another English club, West Ham, left their two Israeli players, Yossi Benayoun and Yaniv Katan, at home when they went to Dubai. FIFA naturally had nothing to say.
(Tom Gross Via Clive Davis)
Recently published stories
Posted by: | CommentsHolding History in the Palm of His Hand (New York Times, April 16, 2006)
Therapy for Humble Abodes (Metro, April 14, 2006)
Joe’s NYC (Metro, April 7, 2006)
