HAPPY THANKSGIVEN

My gorgeous amazing Chilean-born friend and former neighbor in Atlanta is a five-year survivor of ovarian cancer. Today, at age 72, she updates me (from across town) in her signature Spanglish, which I adore —

I have been worry about my healt. My last test show somethink that could be serious, so I will have to get another one (Pet CT) in a few weeks more, until then I am not going to be sure if I have metastasis and probably a new treatment. I am very concern and nervous. I miss you, I love you. HAPPY THANKSGIVEN.

Curiously, my friend's misspelled valediction bears a profound message: THANKSGIVEN. Or, giving thanks for what has already been given.

Just days before this most glorious of American holiday traditions — giving thanks in a national, coordinated way across the ridiculous artificial divides we humans create, I celebrate my friend and her attitude of gratitude. And, I celebrate all life by giving thanks for all that has been given. (Celebrating this all business, admittedly, can be mighty challenging, often requiring a perspective informed by a few dozen millennia...).

So, what are you THANKSGIVEN for?

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Update. I am humbly thanksgiven for security guards... who do save lives (while too often sacrificing their own). Here's why.

Thanksgiving Day, we fourteen celebrants around Janet's and Brian's table took turns sharing memories of Thanksgivings past. My memory was of last year, in Tel Aviv, where, days before Thanksgiving, our hostess rode the train (choo-choo, not subway) to a farm where she purchased a freshly killed turkey. She then boarded the train back to Tel Aviv, though not before security guards (not only at airports in Israel...) demanded to know, why the bird?

It is not beyond imagination that a twisted mind would seek to detonate a bomb-stuffed turkey, blowing up self, bird, train passengers, and more. A non-cheery thought, especially on Thanksgiving, though we guests found the security check report entertaining. Where death, really annihilation, is a constant threat, you develop a taste for gallows humor and find laughter value in turkeys questioned at the border between a railroad station and just steps before entering it.

first snow in vienna this morning

On Nov 11, 2007, at 1:57 PM, Stefan Schaden wrote:

great amber pin!!! :)) go and see copenhagen (if you did not)!! wonderful city, modern, progressive. so interesting your cosmopolite family!! i can easily imagine living there! [...SNIP...]

first snow in vienna this morning, by now everthing is gone, but you have pics attached.

shavua tov!
stefan

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On Nov 11, 2007, at 5:39 PM, Tamar Orvell wrote:

After I visit you in Vienna (this year?) and when you move to Copenhagen, I will visit there, too. Your snow report reminds me of snows we trudged through together in Jerusalem. Yet right now, even seeing the word, snow, chills me, bundled up inside my Atlanta, home, wearing Sherry's down jacket over the fashion ensemble (layers, head-to-toe) I designed to adapt to my ten winters in Boston and two in Jerusalem.

So, I am not undone that my furnace awaits the HVAC and appliance genius, Richard Missouri, to light the pilot, change the filter, and do whatever else might need doing since his visit last spring. I'm OK waiting my turn as he works through a backlog of house calls... though I advise all guests to visit during sunny hours and even then, to dress appropriately.

Neshikot, me

About the amber pin. In Stefan's previous email, he wrote, "We are on the way to Denmark on Sunday," to which I replied, "I have a magnificent amber pin my maternal grandfather gave my grandmother when they lived in Copenhagen." The photo features the pin (on Ute's amazing Nepalese necklace) and my fabulous, brilliant cousin Anat in her parents home in Jerusalem's Pisgat Ze-ev neighborhood.

About Stefan. Though Stefan, who guest-blogged on Stefan's urgent message, writes, "interesting your cosmopolite family! I remind this member of my family: Bloodlines; yes, that is one way to be family. Marriage confers family status, too. And then, there is family of choice: the one we populate with people we claim and who claim us.

About Jerusalem snows we trudged through...











and watched transform into down quilts,
blanketing roofs, balconies, and wrought-iron work.











This last photo, snapped in a central-heat-free residence, captures my signature layered look. I am probably wondering, what about Stefan's pate? Will it freeze off?