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The seven days of creation meet the first week of the Trump administration

1/29/2017

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But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart . . .
            Exodus 7:3 
​

Events flow naturally from the ambitions and conflicts of a human being. The unfolding of events is always according to the motives of the human beings through whom God’s will is done without their realizing it . . . Pharaoh conducted himself in conformity with his own motives and his own Godless view of his status.
              adapted from Rabbi Moshe Greenberg (1928-2010)


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The First Week according to Genesis:

Day 1:  Out of chaos, God created light and dark. Day and night. And it was good.

Day 2:  Then the heavenly vault of sky and the celestial rains were separated from the water on the earth.
 

Day 3:  Next, God made dry land and the seas and He liked it a lot. So he created vegetables and fruit trees and all sorts of sprouting plants and God said,
Well, this is darn good.

Day 4: Now, God set the sun and moon in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night and He added stars to wish on and months to bless and years to celebrate
and He determined the rhythm of the universe and all this, too, was good.

Day 5: Then there were fish and birds and sea monsters and  creatures breathing life, creeping and increasing and filling the waters and the skies and the whole earth and Wow. It was good.

Day 6: 
And the earth brought forth cattle and lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and God said, This is good and then He created man and woman in His image
and He said, This is very good.
​
   

Day 7: Then, His work of creation finished, God stopped His labors,
blessed the seventh day and called it the holy Shabbat, a day of renewal and rest.




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The First Week according to Donald J. Trump: 

(Immediately after the Friday swearing in): Now all was chaos and desolation when Trump turned out the lights on ObamaCare. “It’s gotta go. Repeal and replace with something terrific.” Before leaving the Oval Office for the inaugural balls, Trump said, “Thank you, it's a great day.” Not just good. Great.

Day 1: Trump turned day into night. Surrounded by men, DJT  reinstated the global gag rule, reversing progress on family planning and reproductive health, denying women in poor countries regular access to prenatal care, legal, safe and affordable contraception and abortion. Trump smiled at his handiwork and said, “I like kids. I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds, and she’ll take care of the kids. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.” 

Day 2. Next, ignoring the sacredness of water and earth, Donald Trump signed executive orders advancing the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. "I want it built,” Trump said, “but I want a piece of the profits. That’s how we're going to make our country rich again,” said this man who holds stock in the company doing the construction. Is this good? You tell me.

Day 3: Then DJT ordered a wall be built on the dry land. "I will build a great wall - and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me - and I'll build them very inexpensively.
I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." And the vegetables and fruit trees and sprouting plants on the land said, “Did this guy just fall off a turnip truck?”   


Day 4: DJT did not sign any orders today. Instead, he basked in his alt universe, where the sun, moon and stars revolve around him. "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's, like, incredible." 

Day 5: Then Trump saw monsters, brown creatures breathing and filling the whole earth and he said, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” So he barred the door to
keep the monsters out. “I do have a big heart,” Trump said. “We’re going to take care of everybody.”


Day 6. And Federal judges slapped DJT on his small, germaphobic hands and ruled that men and women NOT created in his image were worthy of protection. And the protesters at airports across the land shouted, “This is good. Actually, this is very good.”

Day 7. For Donald Trump, is anything blessed or holy? Does he ever need rest and renewal? Who knows. So, let us close the last day of his first week with this Trump tweet, excerpted from the Saturday, January 28, 2017, edition of the Burrard Street Journal:
      
        Following Justin Trudeau’s thinly veiled condemnation of  Trump’s new Muslim ban on social media, DJT tweeted at Trudeau to “stop wasting so much time on Facebook. I mean don’t you have a country to run or something?” Trump asked, labelling the Canadian Prime Minister a “social media whore”.
       
“He’s constantly online, 24/7. He’s obsessed,” Trump continued, suggesting the PM should seek psychiatric help for his addiction.
       
Trump claims Trudeau’s “embarrassing” attempts to “get likes” is all the more pathetic given he has so few followers compared to Trump:
       “As of 3 a.m. last night, Trudeau only had 3,735,257 followers on Facebook compared to my 19,359,401. Sad.”


Frigging unbelievable, right? Right.

The Burrard Street Journal, quoted above, is a Canadian satiric news website based in Vancouver, BC. All articles are fictitious. Alternative facts. Lies. 


You could have fooled me . . . 

 

                             copyright Ozzie Nogg 2017






 














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Wise women, then and now

1/23/2017

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In ancient times, the crone was healer, teacher, way-shower, knower of mysteries. 
In ancient societies, women's wisdom held healing power, 
and crone wisdom was the most potent of all. 
For nearly thirty thousand years, old women were strong, powerful sources of wisdom. 
Crones were respected and honored in their communities.


Today, Crone consciousness is on the rise. 
We will not become invisible, trivialized, or shamed by a society obsessed with youth and terrified of aging.
 We respect the crones who preceded us and pass on our wisdom to those who will follow. 

We tell our sacred stories, 
we name our blessings and challenges, 
the truths and the treasures of our lives, 
sharing the harvest of our life experience. 
We claim our place as elders in our families and communities.
We are honored to be known as crones.

                  Bayla Bower



We are a Concentration of Crones.
Creaky cranky aged women sages 
who’ve been around the 
block 
and know what side our 
heads 
are battered on.


We are a Conflagration of Crones,
our hair on fire with rage.
A consternation of wise women.
A confluence of cunning Sybils
ready to storm the Tower
lay siege to halls of power 
ready to bite the hand that feeds us 
bull shit.


We are a Commiseration of Crones
marching with daughters
and granddaughters 
in pussy hats.
We hate fat cats 
and in our bones 
we know all God’s chillun need shoes.


We are the Wise Woman of Abel.
The Wise Woman of Tekoa.
We are Jael. 
Abigail.
Deborah.
We are Bella Abzug.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
We are a Congregation of Crones. 

Bless us, Master of the Universe,
with understanding hearts.  
May we face the future with courage 
and walk together
with our daughter and sons
towards justice and peace. 

Please.

                  copyright Ozzie Nogg 2017











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From Genesis to Exodus. From Obama to What Comes Next. I’m afraid to watch . . .  

1/16/2017

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Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God,
men of truth,
those who hate dishonest gain;
and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds,
of fifties and of tens.

           Book of Exodus




*

Last week I wrote about the glass half full 
and building our houses and chopping our wood 
and growing our gardens and staying up-beat and P*O*S*I*T*I*V*E 
even when we’re wallowing in shit in this 
BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS 
yada yada yada.


Today, not so much.
Today gloom reigns.
Rains, even.

Today the weather is dreadful, an ice storm looms,
my fitful sleep is alive with faces of the dead.
Today I see soiled sheets shorts shirts I don’t want to launder 
and dirty dishes I don’t want to scrub
and the empty package of Oreo Doublestuffeds I ate 
in one sitting
thus my jeans don’t fit
and I see my aging face.
Damn. Rats. Aargh. Blechhh. Feh.


So, yes. 
I could blame my blahs on bad weather and housework and wrinkles
and other ordinary woes,

but let’s get real. 
Since Tuesday, November 8, 2016,
my gut’s been in a knot,
not because of ordinary everyday regular shit.   
Uh-uh.
By the pricking of my thumbs 
I know something wicked this way comes.

Something bigly.  


Yesterday in shul we read the final chapter of the Book of Genesis.
Next Shabbat we begin the Book of Exodus.
Today I see this progression as the eerie segue from the past eight years
to whatever the hell comes next.
Sort of like unicorns morphing into monsters under the bed. 



Consider this. The words bless or blessing are found eighty-eight times in the Book of Genesis. Which means bless and blessing are the most frequently occurring words in Genesis (except for God and God’s name), and there is no other book of the Bible in which the words bless and blessing occur more often. Eight years ago President Barack Obama represented (to me, at least) the promise of a new beginning for our country, for the world, for the whole damn universe, actually. A beginning filled with promise and warm fuzzies and red licorice jump ropes and rainbow flags and health care in every pot and buckets of blessings. BLESSINGS up the gazoo. And (to continue the Bible/Barack analogy) when we arrived yesterday at the end of Genesis (and on Friday at the end of Obama’s term), the Israelites (read: Americans) are safe and secure and each of Jacob’s twelve sons, plus two of his grandsons, have been blessed which, (again by my Bible/Barack reckoning) means we’ve ALL been blessed during the past eight years so put that in your smipe and poke it.  



But open the Book of Exodus, brothers and sisters, and ZAP. The story races from the positive to the negative. Here comes ole man persecution and slavery! Enter stage right the oppressive tyrant! Watch out for the hardened hearts! Run from the plagues! Does any of this sound familiar, people? Does any of this smack of the America we live in today, folks? In the bible story we escaped with our lives and made it to the Promised Land, but it took forty frigging years fer crissake and at my age I can’t wait that long for another Moses with a magic staff to lead us in the right direction and I’m too old to march with other women wearing a knitted pink pussy hat and I’m too tired to phone my congressman or petition my representative and I’ve almost given up on any network ever throwing open the windows and yelling
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.


The best I can do is go to the movies on Inauguration Day,
not listen to one word of his speech,
not watch his parade or his balls
(oh, you know what I mean)
and remind everyone within earshot
that Proverbs teaches
When the righteous are in authority,
the people rejoice.
But when a wicked man rules,
the people groan.  







Call me stiff-necked. A sore loser. A snowflake. That’s fine.

Thanks for wading through this rant.

I feel better now.
Might even sneak a peek at Melania’s Inaugural outfits . . .


                                                                  copyright Ozzie Nogg 2017

​

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Joseph’s Cup leads our Heroine to uncharacteristic  optimism re: the Best of all Possible Worlds and gardens.

1/8/2017

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     Dr. Pangloss:
     
It's understood in
     
This best of all possible worlds
     
All's for the good in
     
This best of all possible worlds!

     Candide: 
     Objection! What about war?


     Dr. Pangloss:
     War!
     Though war may seem a bloody curse
     It is a blessing in reverse
     When canon roar
     Both rich and poor
     By danger are united!
     (Till every wrong is righted!)
      
'Tis war makes equal -- as it were -- The noble and the commoner
Thus war improves relations!
Once one dismisses t
he rest of all possible worlds
One finds that this is the best of all possible worlds.
                                                    
Candide:
If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?

    
                                                                             from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, 
                                                                                         based on Voltaire’s novella by the same name



*
One day our Heroine read in a dog-eared book of fables
that the silver cup 

Joseph planted in his baby brother Benjamin’s sack of grain
was actually a silver bowl 
that Joseph filled with water 
magic amulets 
chunks of gold and precious stones
to thus divine the future.

This narrative set our Heroine wondering . . . 

Did Joseph foresee 
​
his own bones plucked from the Nile
years later 
and carried by Moses to the Promised Land?

Did Joseph foresee our Heroine the morning she slid from 
that sac of water 
into Gemini’s mutable air
her brain immediately wandering off-topic
(the need to suckle Momma’s milk)

her train of thought sidetracked from the teat
to Socrates drinking hemlock
bikers drinking beer 
peering into their glasses asking 
Is this fucking thing half-full or half-empty?

And did Joseph hear our Heroine 
(her positive and negative poles alternating)
answer: 
The glass is half-full.
Of shit.

          But for what purpose was this world created then? asked Candide. 
        To drive us mad, replied Martin.
        What a pessimist you are, said Candide.
        That's because I've lived, said Martin.

Ah. This logic is worthy of the Talmud,
thought our Heroine.
Poppa would approve.
Her poppa who, siding with Hillel and Shammai,
agreed that since life is filled with travail
it is better for man not to have been created.
However. 
Here we are.
And since there may be a pony buried in the dung 
let’s keep digging,
treat our fellows justly  
and walk gently on the earth. 

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Oi, From where comes my sudden optimism?
our Heroine asked herself.
She who drank, exclusively,
​from the half-empty glass.


      Optimism, said Cacambo. What is that? 

      
Alas, replied Candide. It is the obstinacy of        maintaining that everything is best when it is worst. 
     So let us try,
     Before we die,
     To make some sense of life.
     We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
     We'll do the best we know.
     We'll build our house and chop our wood
     And make our garden grow.
  
​  

    And to grow, our gardens need shit.

​                                                                                            copyright 2017 Ozzie Nogg





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New Year's Day and Torah portion MiKetz: Time to consider dreams and the hope that good years will follow lean years.

1/1/2017

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New Year's Day. A fresh start.
A new chapter in life waiting to be written.
New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved.
Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery.
Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand.
Only dreams give birth to change. 

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers.
But above all, the world needs dreamers who do. 

                     Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance


Genesis 41:1- 41:46
On New Years Eve, after mirrored disco balls had fallen in each time zone, our Heroine fell asleep and dreamed of seven skinny women wearing yoga pants and Tefillin,
and seven fat loaves of flat bread spread with melted cheese. And the seven skinny women ate the seven fat loaves and thus could barely rise up from the table to pose
in downward-facing dog, nor discuss whether God created dogs on the sixth day,
let alone whether God even existed. Then, in the dream, Osnat, daughter of Potipherah, priest of North Dakota, loaded her Chevy with quantities of wild rice, like the sands of the sea, and traveled through the land of Egypt, hearing, all the while, Orene prophesying, You live until you die unless you’re killed. And our Heroine awoke from the dream perplexed, for our Rabbis have said, A dream uninterpreted is like an unread letter. It will be fulfilled even if one is not aware, but our Heroine was not keen on driving through Egypt, since there was a famine in the land which meant no Cherries Jubilee. 



Genesis 42:1- 42:2 
When Jakob Rothkowitz saw there was little food in Dvinsk, Latvia, he said to his son, Markus, Depart this place so you may live and not die. Whereupon the lad high-tailed it to
the Goldeneh Medina, became Mark Rothko, painted with coats of many colors and earned bags of money. But then, overfed, the painter began to speak of spiritual emptiness, the symbolism of dreams. His work grew dark. The bright red, yellow, orange coats turned to deep blue, green, gray and black until, adding seven years of plenty to seven years of shriveled ears, he created Fourteen Black Paintings, and those who looked upon the work broke down in tears and were perplexed. As, apparently, was the painter’s wife who, one New Year’s Day, walked out of his life prompting a depressed Mark Rothko nee Markus Rothkowitz to announce, The God who made the world simply went away and forgot he had done so.


Genesis 1967–1975

Peter Gabriel, the lead singer of the British Rock group, Genesis,
from 1967 until he left the band in 1975, 
included the song, Fourteen Paintings, in his 1992 solo album, Us.
The lyrics were inspired by the Fourteen Black Paintings of Mark Rothko: 

     
     From the pain come the dream
     From the dream come the vision
     From the vision come the people
     From the people come the power
     From this power come the change



What more need be said as we enter 2017?

Let's go for it, people.

                                                                copyright 2017 Ozzie Nogg






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