&c

Thoughts and experiences from Passover peregrinations:

1. There needs to be a slow klezmer version of the Doctor Who theme song.

2. Whenever I tell people I am researching doctor-patient communication, the listener always says, "Oh, yeah, that's a big problem" - which is intenresting in itself, that answer. What are people's experiences, and how does this affect their impression of doctors in general? I'm sure that's been looked into, but there's certainly some rich opinion-making going on there.

3. I still can't get Goethe.

4. Today is the anniversary of Hart Crane's death. His last words were not "Goodbye, everyone." He did not speak before jumping.



5. I need the haggadah done by this Israeli comics artist.

I Am Forbidden

In this morning's Publishers Lunch, the following "new deal" is included as a tidbit:

[...] Anouk Markovits's I AM FORBIDDEN, an English-language debut which takes the reader inside the world of the Satmar, the most insular and fundamentalist of Hasidic sects.

Assiduous (just now!) Googling reveals that Markovits is a novelist. No other information is available as we go to press quickly hit the Publish button.

A poem published in the first issue of Happiness Pony

Pomme
Tell you what
I’ll divulge:
off the edge of this paper
there’s a huge
orchard. Apples.
If you don’t eat
them, they’ll
still grow.
If you do,
your belly’s full.
All the same
something’s
sustained.

Yiddish companion poem here.

Shaken up

I was at my local mincha minyan (afternoon prayer group) today. Someone said, "Did you hear there was another earthquake in Japan today?" Said one of the rabbis, "Well, until they let those boys out..."

"Those boys," of course, being some mules in black coats who are currently in jail in Japan. (Other rabbis have spoken in public as obscenely as our local one did.)

Then another coreligionist of mine said, "Well, the Ran says that evil will be done in the place of those that did it."

"For that, thousands of  Japanese had to die?" I said.

I don't understand how people can say these things.

Eau du Dove

My work is going all to pieces: pieces of Sutzkever's "Ode to the Dove," that is. Part 1 appeared in InTranslation, and part 2 in Words Without Borders. Part 3 is now out in qarrtsiluni.