Rising to Battle

The room smelled of the dust of recently worked rock. Aminadav stood and greeted the evaluator whom he'd known and worked with many times over the years. A light kiss on the cheek was proper and reassured  Ilana that all was well between them. They argued often about her interpretations. Aminadav preferred to take her analyses in and come up with this own solutions, but he could rarely prevent her from adding her "summaries". It annoyed him. It annoyed her that it annoyed him. It was part of her training to end with a summary. "Why didn't he know that?" She decided that he was simply flirting with her in his way and avoided solving it.

"We are in great danger, I'm afraid", he confided. "Let me hear the recording again please", she needed to check some words and intonations she missed.  "He is sending a hostile reply very soon", she summarized. "He probably decided  that you have already launched your forces, and means to damage your position." Thank you Ilana, I did not need your conclusions, just your view of his temperament." "He fears making an error and embarrassing himself in front of his staff", she added. "The direction of his message of greeting was not to us but more "through and to his staff" she said. "In addition there was real personal fear of failing his mission in his voice, especially the pause between "now"  and "please".  "Here his thoughts were all about standing in front of a court martial, the room the countenances of the judges, the advocates. It is doubtful that he prepared these thoughts, he wouldn't have had time." Aminadav thanked her and wondered how he missed that. He agreed with her and thought again. He heard the same thing, but somehow did not fully understand it. These girls are carefully trained to be totally objective. He didn't have that.  It took a while to develop. "Well, we might as well launch if they've already countered for it..."Start Perfect Hit and prepare for a level 5 shock."  His men immediately went into action. Ilana saw this coming too and wondered if it would affect her hearing. She would protect her ears. "Please G-d protect my ears",  she thought and covered her ears with her shock helmet, sat and waited. 

Colonization

Moving In

Commander Evron of the upper central fringe sector (UCFS) was no sooner inside and seated by a night illuminated periscotropic area model control panel than he saw the current weakness and ordered the correction loud and clear and without panic. "Hard missiles coming in from destroyers on the Caspian Sea. Neutralize everything and send them a thank you."   "What a welcome - eh?" Amminadav Evron sat back in his seat. drank his hot coffee and relaxed a bit. This day had just begun.

"It was always the same", he thought. "Shoot first and ask questions later- imbeciles. They don't have any idea what they're up against". Commander Evron considered what he would do if confronted with a sudden unannounced mass landing of what could be hostile troops. Each time he thought about it, he came to the same conclusion. "Investigate, improve your cover, your defense posture. If they've going to attack, they're going to attack., like a bird of prey landing on a nearby tree on a hill. Dig in, hide,  keep watching what it does, prepare some kind of defense or flight plan."  "Not these guys, they scream their location and send projectiles. So foolish, and yet so common. They will pay for this. They will pay with their servitude if they are lucky and their lives if they are not." Commander Evron was naturally upset at the immediate attack. Two or three minutes and he could possibly have lost their position, all the fighters, himself, the whole base. Well, the "thank yous" he sent out would suffice for revenge. All their launch sites would be demolished, along with their control and communication systems. "You can't send out a  particle without giving information about the sender to the receiver."  The "hostile reply" system they used, was based on that principle. It analyzed the source(s) of antagonism, located them and destroyed them.  

"What now Commander?" Captain Bar Adiyna asked despite the fact that they had all been through repeated briefings on each stage of the establishment process in detail.  Amminadav smiled. "it's all work now. Every step is work from here on out. We are all of us slaves to the Monarchy." He laughed and smiled wryly.

     They had to clean up pockets of resistance now. Tens of thousands of persons across the planet simply wouldn't abandon their ways. Many wouldn't attend meetings to discuss this. "Look he would say, I don't really want to be here either...and he would pause and look around. I would rather be elsewhere doing something else. I would rather have my own private villa on my own private island where it was warm and fruit grew and all I had to do was pick it." This usually brought a flutter of interesting sounds. There is Law in the Galaxy. It is good Law. It provides for each of us, our families and the common good. We obey it. You must learn it and obey it too. Right now, you have no real choice. Later you can vote and amend the Law. That's just how it is."  And there would be a long silence.

But now, something new: "We already have our law, G-d spoke to us through Moses, we will not allow any force other than G-d himself to change even a word of it." 

"Well, you'll be very happy to know," and a very broad smile broke Amminadav's  otherwise overtired and serious face, "that this Law is based on the very Law of Moses that you speak of. We are a battalion of Fighters from Markab" ,  and he left it there for them to digest.

The reply was long in coming since there really was no "Jewish, Christian, or Muslim" civilization outside of the Earth. "We are not aware of any such civilization." , came the reply. "In any case, we follow no laws of anyone except G-d almightly, and that is how it is." , mocking Aminadav's ultimatum.  "That's fine with me",  Aminadav answered and nodded approvingly. Something special and undefined passed through the hall, something not totally unlike the angel that stayed Abraham's hand from the sacrifice of his son Isaac thought Yehoseph, the Rabbi who had spoke in defiance to Aminadav's ultimatum. Now, suddenly, it became clear to Yehoseph the meaning of Abraham's giving up his son as a sacrifice to G-d - that his son, Isaac was not his own, but G-d's creation and that he had to leave go of Isaac to return to his creator that he be blessed and duplicated in various forms and that all the people of Israel were now the brothers and sisters of Isaac from the same source exactly, a very special people not only born of the devotion of Abraham to his G-d, where he shared in the special relationship of the creator to Isaac apart from the reality of the flesh.

What Yehoseph did not know what that his thoughts were travelling to Aminadav almost as clearly as if he'd been speaking aloud. "These people so want to believe in a continual miracle that defines their lives that they reshape every event that happens as a support for that belief",  Aminadav thought, and  breathed in and breathed out and replied: "Do as you wish then. If there's a conflict with our plans, we'll let you know. " Yehoseph bowed his head slightly in agreement. "He seems to have understood me very well", he thought.

Intelligence Arrives

Ilana enjoyed the voyage to the Earth as she did nearly every time she had the opportunity to travel the "hydroturn"  as it was called for the motion perception associated with the screaming fast, almost dreamlike, almost static, almost the speed of thought itself, movement across space. It felt like dancing through water. The only problem with it was the expense. The energy cost rose exponentially with the mass transported. Another very minor problem was that it induced a memory lapse that filled in over time but tended to blur recent memories to the point of exhausting persons from making an effort to recall their embarkation points and the thoughts surrounding their exits. A few days and all that filled in. Ilana was used to this and had developed a routine that circumvented all that tiring thought. She slept! When Aminadav called in to welcome her, he could only reach her messaging machine. "Ilana is sleeping now, please leave your message and she'll contact you as soon as she wakes." He smiled, he loved her - everyone did. He was glad that she had arrived and had activated her messaging machine.

It was morning and "Arabian Coffee" was brewing on the "Skitcher", a funny name given to an automatic heater, possibly after an ordinary crewman named Skitch who, it is said, constantly burned himself preparing food. Ilana smelled the coffee and stirred. "Oh, I wish we didn't have so much scheduled for today", she spoke out loud, even though she was alone in the room. The phone went off again, "ding - Ilana, it's me again', Aminadav's voice, yes, Commander Evron, so friendly, don't ever make the mistake of not carrying out his every wish, spoken or otherwise! "Yes, Commander, here I am", as politely as she could. "We have a meeting in about an hour", which meant to be sure and be there five to ten minutes early, "will we be having the pleasure of your company?" "Of course - I'll be early, I'm looking forward to it", she replied. She hated him at times, but it was the demands of the job. She'd been through this so many times before. They  needed her for her "thought evaluations", and she wondered how much the Commander knew already about her own state of mind. "Good, see you - click". She evaluated this quickly - "he's in trouble already!"

Catchin' Up

Catchin' up.

One of the first things I remember seeing that I hadn't yet noticed after six years abroad was how very quickly things happen here. Now, truthfully, not everything that's happened here in the US since about 1968 has been truly great. Some things have. I keep waiting for the movie to end all movies about the moon landing to come out and all I've seen is Apollo 13 - or "a near total failure that didn't really prove anything anyhow." Not fair in my book. The Lunar Landing was an intensely important and difficult achievement. This all occurred during the "Vietnam War" and extremely hostile and continual and well publicized criticism of our country as some sort of evil place that never could and never would do anyone any good - sort of like Israel right now. We were the bad people we had slaves and were racists, war mongers and otherwise ignorant people. The Jews were slaves in Egypt you know. The whole story is in the bible. Of the four years I lived in Israel, I never heard one person say that any of his problems stemmed from slavery in Egypt. The attitude in Israel was that the people themselves were ultimately responsible for their fate and that's life. And, in fact, that's how it is. So, vicious forces seem to have aligned against the good ol' USA in ways not so flattering to us.

So, we had a general falling out and away from our very fine and very deserved patriotism, pride in our country, loyalty to our own here. I noticed that too. I also noticed very heavy suppression of white people here in our cities. It's still going on and I'm sure most of you are familiar with the effects though many persons might not have experienced times when there was a full and unembarrassed pride in our country.

In 1974 when I came back here from England, there were convenience stores that stayed open until late at night and then all night long. The music was pretty good too. The ice cream was never better and I spent most of my time drinking coffee - which is especially good here- and eating ice cream which is a special case of happy that is unknown elsewhere and taken for granted here.

I enlisted in the US Army, remarried and eventually changed my major in college and became a science teacher. It took a long time and was very difficult. It was very much an "against the current" swim.

I've seen the widespread development and use of personal electronic information processing systems, cell phones, and the internet. I worked on this stuff. I was a technician for RCA and worked on one of the Apollo cameras. I also worked for Univac (now Unisys) on the development of third generation random access computer memories. It's very satisfying to see this particular thing take hold. Sure beats the bad PR from Vietnam and all the slavery.

An appreciable number of our people found some sort of comfort from drugs. I didn't know any, but I did witness some use of marijuana and odd laughter here and there. I think this was also blown way out of proportion by the media.

All in all, I'd say that these past few decades have seen enormous and significant change including a near doubling of population and somehow the "Americanization"  of new tens of millions of persons who've at least learned the basics here, including, "people are all different, but we are all human beings" and "we are much stronger as a nation united than as scattered people." This is who and why we are as far as I can tell.

Blowing Up The Berlin Wall

Blowing up the Berlin Wall

I do not want this to be misunderstood. It is important to understand that we are a great nation and have stood up to and fought against some very bad enemies. Many great Americans have perished defending our country from real evil -  crazy people.  This is no joke so don't view it the wrong way. When you're in the army, you're in the army. You do what you're told - what's expected of you - and everybody else in the army is your brother in arms (sisters in arms as well.)

Sure, you have to think for yourself. Of course you do. We are a free country, still, and aim toward freedom for the individual and self-determinism. I kid you not - the guys in the service in this country are self-determined to as large a degree as possible if you're actually on active duty. That's the way we are - simple as that.

We learn that growing up - "He'll kill you if you say that", and he will, and he does!

Dodge city all over the place. You get used to it.

We don't even need wars - we kill each other every day! We're Americans. I love this country of course and I am very patriotic! I make no secret of that.

I had spent about six years abroad and I had forgotten how great it was here. After I got back, I spent about ten hours a day eating ice cream and drinking coffee, chewing gum and smiling. I had been in Israel four years and then in England and Scotland for two years. It was great to be back home, but I was disappointed to find out how badly we were doing in Vietnam. I decided that Vietnam was a no-win situation. No way to win there at all. I wanted us to have a win out there, so I decided to enlist in the army, get a couple of the guys together, go over to Germany and blow up the Berlin Wall. I'm not kidding. I was gung ho! You have to be there.

Well, the army likes that kind of stuff you know. Don't get me wrong and I asked you not to get me wrong - the army is all about winning wars and battles and going through it - you know - rite of passage - beat the heck out of the enemy and have a beer and tell stories to your grandchildren. That's what it is guys - it's simple. Today, they lock you up for thinking bad thoughts about others. The real problem here is that it's wrong to beat the heck out of good people - very wrong in fact - and that's what just about tore our country apart over Vietnam. You have to understand that what you're trying to do is give the young people a chance to prove their loyalty to our country despite real risks by defending our values, and includes helping others in trouble. We seem to be losing at that today. You have to be able to take sides, resolve any doubts about who your friends are. Yet young people are punished today for asserting most forms of patriotism. Older people are punished for displaying their patriotism as well. See - we are failing here at exactly what we were all trying to succeed at - join the ranks of American Heroes. That's not easy my friends, but I had a plan.

Here I was on my way to the field artillery, young, inspired - a fire in my eyes and my sights on Berlin and its infamous wall. This is true. You laugh, but you would have come along - I'm sure. Certainly, it you've read this far down!

I would get a chance to preview this situation at company headquarters in Basic Training. There were a few desks in the office and, of course, "Top" himself. "Top" is what the top sergeant is called in the army. He's a well known character - burly, knuckles dragging on the floor, all arms and chest. Top is in charge. He's in charge of the army. He does everything. He's been in the service forever. Everywhere. His bed is a foxhole. He survives on C - rations. He likes C -  rations. Don't make any mistakes - Top would give his life for you or any other soldier if needed - he would not hesitate either. He knew that, you knew that - and so you followed his orders.

On the inside of a door hung a poster that read: "This Is Your Enemy". Underneath was a picture of a Russian soldier with an AK - 47 automatic rifle. I looked at this picture and I saw this Russian farmer that was probably drafted into the army. This was my enemy waiting for me in Berlin. I looked at Top and I looked back at the poster. Now who was really my friend. Top looked at me. I'm sure he would have charged right into hell, right along side of me if it came to that. "You get to know things about people as you get closer to killing them." Ideas started coming at me. The army knows about killing - it knows about people and survival. I started having doubts about my goal...Top looked at me. "Let's go". We had to go over my paperwork for AIT (advanced training)...

Another Way to Negotiate

Another way to Negotiate

After reviewing a recent video about how to properly negotiate for a house in Israel, I recalled my own negotiations - many years ago when things were a bit different.

I had attended a learning center in the north of Israel with my brother. We didn't speak any Hebrew and, of course, this was necessary to get around, albeit many Israelis had a good working knowledge of English. We studied along with many other immigrants from many different countries, England, Australia, South Aftrica, Ireland, Canada - these were the "Anglo Saxons". Others were the "Orientals" from Morocco. Algeria, Iraq, India - basically North Africa and The Middle East - also Europe and South America. The Orientals spoke French and Arabic and the Middle Eastern people spoke some French, but mostly Arabic and the South Americans spoke Spanish and Portuguese of course and the Europeans all the languages they speak. It was interesting to observe the different customs and ways among the different groups. I befriended many of the Moroccans and learned quite a bit of French while I was studying there as well as Hebrew. They made fun of us Americans - our accents - it was funny to see how others see us.  Arabic is not that different from Hebrew - not as different as English at all. The music in Morocco is very similar to what you'd hear on the radio in Israel. We didn't get the Beatles or Elvis - we got Farid Al Atash and Oumkeltoum. These were like the Beatles all across the Middle Eastern world.

I got fairly close with these people - all the people there, but especially the North Africans. I learned a lot of French and I got an inside track on how to get by in a country that was two thirds North African. I  also learned about living within strict socialist regimes. After all, people get by in most any kind of social system you can imagine. It is vital to know how though!

This is not a story about comparative socio- economics, it is a true story and a funny story about what you'd probably do yourself in a situation like the one I found myself in.   

I was living in a dormitory with my Israeli wife and my first child, my son, Avi, who  had been born and was only a few months old. The one bedroom apartment was very small and not really a good place to live for a student with a family. So I went to the Jewish Agency office and prepared to present my case for a new apartment. According to the Law of Israel, each new immigrant has a right to a home there. What kind of home depends on his needs and his work status as well as his own resources.

I had been prepped for this meeting because, in actual fact, it depended largely on "favors" (bribes) offered to the officials as well as any connections one might have I had been told . This had been explained to me by my Polish friends who were used to this approach in life. My Moroccan friends had offered a completely different slant about getting ahead in Israel. "The rusty hinge gets the oil - "squawk  as loud as you can - jump up and down and threaten as many people as possible, and their families." In America we don't do things this way at all. We are reasonable.

I explained my situation to the agent, how tight the dormitory was and how it was not a good place for a new baby. Also, I had a house coming to me by Law. He smiled a broad "Polish bribe smile" at me, I swear I could see him working this out. "There's nothing wrong with the dormitory - this is your house." He smiled and probably was waiting for me to offer him some kind of "favor" that my Polish friends had warned me about. I didn't know exactly what to do, but each second I was getting hotter and hotter and - finally I started calling him some real classic things that I had learned from my Polish and Moroccan friends - and I still don't know where I got the strength, but I started picking up all the furniture in the office and throwing it out the window - first floor - broke the glass too. He left the office to call the police and I just kept jumping up and down and throwing stuff out the window. I was really mad at the hopeless bureaucracy and frustrated by my own inability to make anything happen.

The police arrived shortly and took me downtown where I waited for the young magistrate to hear my side of the story. Israel is different in more ways than one it turns out. "What happened", he asked me as I explained to him how the response to my very real difficulty had upset me and "what would you have done?" He said "I would have done the same thing", and started to laugh and he kept laughing and added, "Don't do it again, it will be alright." The Moroccans were right. Another Israeli had a friend who was a journalist and advised me to tell him my story which would have been published in an English Language newspaper, but it never got that far.

What do you know, the Jewish Agency decided to award me a beautiful brand new three bedroom apartment about half an hour's drive from the University.

I had learned how to negotiate in the Middle East. It's an art. Don't forget, this was all conducted in the Hebrew Language with a few borrowed curse words from Polish and Arabic. It was a full validation of everything I had learned. I was extremely proud.   

Nine Twenty Two

Nine Twenty Two

"Nine Twenty Two"  was a banquet hall located at 922 North Broad Street in Philadelphia, probably for the better part of a century. It was called "Nine Twenty Two" by those who worked there and most everybody associated with it, including my father and myself. It was around the corner from "Fourteen Hundred", which was another catering hall situated at 1400 West Girard Avenue. My dad was the head waiter at Fourteen Hundred and I started  working there as a "wine waiter" at age seventeen.

It was a wedding and my dad had just finished showing me how to wrap the wine bottle in a cloth napkin and how to properly hold and pour it. There was a commotion at the top of the stairs where the guests entered . The father of the bride had fallen down the steps. He died. The wedding celebration continued. After all, all the guests were just arriving, the food was cooked and ready, the bar and tables were set, the band was there and the music already playing. This is a true story. No one will believe it anyway and I doubt that many will read it. Far too few people read anymore. I have not embellished it in any way.

Fourteen hundred was the seediest place you could imagine. It was leftover from the prohibition era. Someone had stored it in an old trunk in an attic. It was dusty, moldy, and yet somehow, like an old restaurant or resort,  still managed to hold onto a mysterious charm that had become the memories of so many thousands of guests. One of the partners of the catering business that ran Fourteen Hundred as well as Nine Twenty Two and several hotels in town, had owned at least one "speakeasy" back in the thirties I was told. They had bootlegged whiskey, made their own and whatever else they could get away with. When I got out of the army about twenty years later I saw him on South Street and called his name. He must have been ninety at the time. He smiled a broad warm smile and came and gave me a hug. He asked how I was doing. No one did this any more, but he did. No one else greeted me after the army, just him and his partner.  The other partner for whom the business was named had been in the Normandy Invasion. He was a ranger. He gave me a job in a restaurant he had when I got home and needed a job. He was still in the business,  He was a gambler.  The story was that he used to take the money the customer paid  from the "job", and bet it at the track. If he won everyone would get paid. A "job" was what any catered affair was called. A wedding, confirmation, bar - mitzvah, convention or whatever event was being celebrated. There were two unions in Philadelphia, the kosher union and the Italian union. I was in both. You get to know a lot about people when they're drunk. Italians drink beer at their weddings as opposed to hard liquor. I have no idea why. 

They were all crooks and gamblers and everything else that went with that life style. There wasn't one of them that would think twice to risk his life for you. They were all WWII vets. I used to like being part of it, even if it was just as a young "apprentice". I liked the way the call girls at the hotels smiled at me and treated me like crew. We worked a lot of hotels too. I liked the music. I met Red Rodney at Fourteen Hundred. I'll never forget that dusty old stage and Red and his trumpet. My dad told me, "That's Red Rodney." He was a jazz great.  I got to know all the bartenders too, and most of the hotels in downtown Philly. Don't think that's not an advantage. 

One day after I had been teaching in Philly for about five years or so, I passed 922 driving up broad street. The whole block was being razed, including 1400. You could see the stairway that led down to the basement where the food was prepared. There was a little office under the staircase where they used to play cards. You'd see them with their thirty eights in their holsters, smoking cigars just like in the movies. Some very high up city detectives as well. Don't tell anybody. They were always at it down there. Drinking and laughing and playing very serious card games for very serious money.One of the owner's brother's was machine gunned to death in Miami. He owed someone money. Not such a nice guy really. I didn't grieve. May he rest in peace. 

The whole thing was being razed. An entire era was being eaten up and chewed down by a hungry bulldozer. I watched it. It was more than a friend of mine. It was something very special that I can't quite define...

The West Philadelphia Regional Track Meet

This is a totally true story.

It was the Philadelphia Regional Elementary School Track Championships. This was very serious business for us guys. It meant, among other things, that we would be competing against our arch rival. The Mann School. The Mann School was located up the hill in Wynnefield, which, in those days, and probably today as well, was a much more affluent neighborhood than our own in West Philadelphia, which didn't have much of anything, not even a name: perhaps, "down there".  No, our socks didn't match and we smelled kind of funny, but, goodness, we were tough. No one messed with us. OK, we had less, but we played hard. Get the picture? And here we were. Showtime was just around the corner. We'd show them alright!

We decided to train for the event. The heel of my right foot still bears the scars of the training. Gosh. don't ever practice broad jumping on a sidewalk. Never do that! Well, it would heal well enough to compete in the hundred yard dash. Each day at recess and even after school, we'd be there racing and jumping and coaching and offering advice, like a band of young Indian braves whooping and jumping before a raid. It was exciting I tell you! We had strategies. Who ever heard of a strategy for running!?

As the day approached, our enthusiasm mounted. We did not yet know who would win the big race. We had many fast runners. I was among them. The fifth grade Olympics of West Philadelphia was about to happen. Who would get the gold? As I recall, they actually gave out ribbons. We didn't get any, but that's the heart and soul of this story anyway.

As the participants lined up for the big race, you couldn't hear yourself think for all the shouting, as all the kids started cheering out of their minds with excitement. I remember the shouts and the screaming and I remember thinking which of us would win and be the hero of Heston Elementary School. And then it happened. The heats were  timed. The girls' heats began. Out of the blue, mind you, literally from out of nowhere, with the wind itself, shot Beverly. I'm not kidding you. She flew. Beverly was a tall thin black girl whose legs reached up to her neck. She was a gazelle. No one knew, certainly none of us guys, but this was to be her day. I never saw a stride like hers on anybody, not even today, not even the real Olympics. "Wham, swish, whoosh", she swallowed up the school yard, like a hungry wildcat after a rabbit. 

That girl, that long legged girl who owned one dress and wore it every day to school and to the track meet as well. knocked the heck out of all of us. God Bless Beverly!