Shmingegge

"You have to laugh..." my Mom would say.

Her name was "Shmingegge" - that was what everyone in my mother's family callled her. My father also called her Shmingegge. Her name was also Pauline. There is no information about the name "Shmingegge". There is information about the word "shmegegge", but that is neither here nor there. Yiddish in our house, in our family, was something from the "old country" - from somewhere far away and forgotten, like the language of nursery rhymes and stories that people heard and repeated and changed and the changes repeated till they sort of caught on for a certain style or sound - like "five and dime" or "c'mon will ya" - something like that. No one really was an authority on this language - you had to ask what it meant and then take it or leave it - whatever you got for an answer, It had a sort of secret code password associated with it like "Joe sent me" - and you either got in the door or you didn't - it took a lot of street savvy to get around in those days - you just didn't question these things. Her name is not as important as that everybody called her that. What was more important about Pauline was who she was and how she made a living.
Pauline wore outlandish clothing - flowered robes. She wore hats indoors - in her apartment. She was a strange person. My father forbid my mother to go see her and especially not to bring me along, Pauline used a rectangular magnifying glass to read with - a large rectangular magnifying glass with a long handle. She would hold it up to objects and read the labels on them. Her entire kitchen table was covered with bottles and boxes of stuff - perfumes and band-aids, deodorants and fountain pens, toothpaste, soap, nail polish - all kinds of stuff all crowded together - things that made no sense being together - shoe polish, mercurochrome (they used to use that for disinfecting cuts), cotton swab packages, lipsticks - things that you would find, perhaps on the shelves of drugstores or other shops. In fact, that's probably exactly where Pauline found these things see? Are you getting the picture? - because I never did - I was about ten years old and all I knew was that Pauline would talk with my mom and look at things with her magnifying glass and after a while my mom would take home a zillion ball point pens and lipsticks and stuff like it was Christmas or something - she would even give a lot of this stuff to her friends and family!!
My dad would get really mad at my mom for this. "What if you get caught" - he said. "You're not allowed to do that, don't ever go there again!" It was years - years and years - before I really understood what Shmingegge did for a living. G-d bless her - she might be alive today - she would probably be one hundred and five years old! The whole family knew her - they all went to see her from time to time. There were always plenty of ball point pens and deodorants and toothpaste around, I'll tell you that. To this day, I feel that it's improper somehow that I have to pay for a ball point pen! Pauline never charged for these things! - well probably not that much I guess.

Money

Plotnik's Furniture store was located on East 117th street and had the same location for over 80 years, but it had changed it's name quite a few times to suit the styles of the different Plotnik's as they became the new owners. The current owner called it "Snooks". He felt it fit the neighborhood and the times and sounded like a comfortable sofa. It was also the nickname of his girlfriend.
"Look Mitch", Bob Plotnik was grooving in a new salesman, "what are these people doing here? Do they just come in from the street to walk around and look at the chairs, are they tired, do they need to sit down?" - and without time to even think about this - "No - of course not - they're here because they need a piece of furniture - maybe a sofa - maybe a mattress - maybe a kitchen table. We don't care what they think they need - We know better than they do what they need. A "one" or a "two" or a "three" - that's what they need."

Valentymbs

                                                               Valentymbs

There was a candy store on the way to school when I lived in Camden, New Jersey, you stop in there with your pennies and look up through  glass at the candies on display in trays and make your selections. Gosh that was good. I'm sure most of you have similar memories. Kids like candy.

But, there was no "Valentymbs" in Camden - at least not in second grade - I don't know why, but the candy was really good anyway. "Valentymbs" (rhymes with Valentines) didn't really start until  the third grade when we moved to West Philadelphia.  Now, you have to understand the association of Valentines Day with candy to an eight year old. This is obviously the importance of that holiday - like Halloween - that's what it's about - see? Nothing complicated here. This little story is a true story - absolutely true - about little eight year old people.

I had a little girl friend - I won't mention her name - but she "liked" me. Liking someone was something that happened sometimes. Some girls liked boys - it was hardly ever true that some boys liked girls - boys just didn't do that - well not then -  not in West Philly for sure . That all changed later!     

Anyway - "liking" was a formal thing  - it was an accepted fact - like - "he's a good second baseman."  Now you also had friends that you liked , but that was different. That's as far as "liking" people  really went. Now, I was new in West Philly and I had to be shown around . I had to pick up on a lot of stuff that I'd missed not growing  up there - like playing second base.  There's a lot to learn when you're a kid.                

Our teacher explained that tomorrow was Valentines day and that we each would have to buy Valentines cards and give them to the person we liked.  Well, no one understood this. There was a lot of talk about this, among other things was the fact that you could buy about a hundred little cards for a nickel or something at the candy store (certainly West Philly had a candy store too) and "you should  give cards to all your friends".  

Well, it was Valentymbs Day and I had to make a lot of important choices. I started writing the names of my closest friends on the envelopes and signing my name on all the "Be My Valentine" cards. I doubt that they have those little cards around any more. Things were more special and "magical" in those days. Things just happened somehow. 

I didn't want to slight anyone. Kids are very sensitive - they bounce back from just about anything, stay friends no matter what - but still, they're sensitive

So there it was, all the kids in the class got a card from me. Black, white, boys and girls - they were all my Valentymbs. Boy, you should have seen the pile of cards on my desk that I received when I got back from delivering my own Valentymbs. I was president of my class for every sememster except one all through sixth grade. This is true. I was the male lead of our graduation show and my little girl friend was the girl - boy could she sing - my own voice was cracking - every one laughed including me. Boy was she pretty - gosh - as pretty as a chocolate bar!       

Tel Graeta

                                                                     Tel Graeta

It seemed like an endless chain of tunnels and Ilana worried that they had lost their way and were going in circles. "Don't worry, we'll be there soon",  Aminadav was leading them up to the surface along one of the carefully constructed escape routes that served as a "last resort" method to exit the base enclosure. "We were down over 150 feet, we could have withstood a direct hit."

The tunnels had been hastily cut through fused layers of earth and foam, formed from molten magma-like material, all engineered against shock, heat, and radiation. The small party rose through the last stairway and outer port. For all the careful ventilation below, it was still very special to breath in fresh surface air. It was good to feel the sun on your face. Aminadav looked across the crater to the Israeli side and remembered his home at Tel Graeta.

Among his first memories, were the precious moments his spent at his bedroom window looking out across the fields of Tel Graeta,  a  small farming community within a larger region of technical facilities and  defense manufacture. Both of his parents worked as scientists and engineers. His uncle owned and kept the farm where they all lived. Aminadav recalled the smell of the animals and the dust from the fields, the grass and the sounds of the birds, the hum of the generator plant a few miles to the south.

He looked at them looking at him and smiled. "Can't I have a few seconds for myself", and laughed.

The Threat Passes

The threat came and went. There were near misses and no great damage to their facility. Aminadav 
smiled at the captain of the defense domain. "Thank you Mordechai for your fine preparations." 
Mordechai smiled in return. "We expected a heavier force",  and questioned, "has Perfect Hit struck a 
target?"  "Indeed it has", answered  Aminadav.  "There is no enemy left within our range", as if he were 
asking for more sweet to his hot drink. This was his specialty, his pride. He spoke like a chess master of 
the early days when he has forced his opponent into an impossible situation through sheer familiarity, 
and recognition of patterns  within the game , simple rules to follow, do your homework and you succeed, 
matter of fact. Mordechai liked this about him and so did most of his command

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!"