The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for September 2006

Ahmadinejad Says That Zionists Are Not Jews

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Just a quick comment here.

The Washington Post has a transcript of Ahmadinejad’s news conference. It would be easy to call the man names, to say that he is a certified wack job, but it would create issues. In particular it is a huge mistake to view the man as being crazy.

He is very deliberate in his approach. If you ignore the statements that are downright controversial it would be easy to minimize the danger he represents. Take a look at this:

“Many governments and groups that had no role in World War II, regretfully, are impacted by the consequences of World War II.”

Every situation in the world is impacted by the past and it is simply foolish to pretend that we can ignore the things that took place. We cannot say that situation xyz was the responsibility of our grandparents or great grandparents and pretend that we do not have to deal with the outcome. We do.

The question is to what extent. Life is often complex and things are complicated. But I don’t want to get bogged down by this. Let’s move on to his comment about Zionists.

“These Zionists, I want to tell you, are not Jews. That’s the biggest deception we’ve ever faced.

Zionists are Zionists, period. They are not Jews, they are not Christians, and they are not Muslims. They are a power group, a power party. And we oppose oppression and the aggression that any party that seeks pure power, raw power goes after.”

This is a very dangerous statement. What he is attempting to do here is dehumanize the people he calls Zionists. The nazis did the same thing and we all know what path that led down. It would be a mistake not to point out his actions and to make it clear that he is being watched very carefully.

Let’s not forget that he said on a number of occasions that he would like to see Israel wiped off o the map. Don’t be fooled by the words of a snake.

Jumping on Jameel’s Coat tails

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Ok, Jameel has compiled an end of the year review of his blog. And now it seems I am inspired to try and follow suit.

I make no promises as my time is restricted and I probably have close to a thousand posts to run through. Seriously, it is around that, give or take a hundred.

For those who are wondering in the 2.5 years that I have been blogging I have constructed more than 4,000 posts. Not all of them are still in existence as some have been removed for various reasons.

However, the majority are still up there. So we will see if old Jack can come up with the time and energy to take on this project.

Grandpa, Dad and I

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In the prior post The Pain In My Grandfather’s Eyes I spent a few minutes reminiscing about my grandfather and an experience that I shared with him. This post should in theory be a little bit different, hopefully I won’t muck it up too badly.

Growing up I didn’t know anyone with the same last name. It wasn’t until I got to be teenager that I even came across someone with the same name and we couldn’t figure out any sort of relationship.

My grandfather was one of five but his only brother never married and never had any kids. My father’s younger brother died twelve years ago. He didn’t have any children either. So for those of you keeping score that made me the keeper of the line, a responsibility that is now being passed on down to my son.

While I consider myself to have been very close with all of my grandparents, it was a little different with my grandfather. In part it is the shared name. In part it was because I remember the time after my grandmother died and before he got remarried. In part it is just because of the nature of how things work.

My father and his father were very close and I was very close with both of them. It is easy for me to see how they both impacted me. I have habits that I can attribute to both of them. Physically I am much bigger than my grandfather was, in that I more closely take after my father. But aspects of my temperment are far closer to my grandfather than my father.

I am a blend, a mutt. And should my other grandfather read this he should know that I definitely have my share of his traits as well. And you know grandpa that I don’t say things like that just to say them.

Anyway…With the new year approaching I naturally have been thinking about what has happened and where I have been. And I find that I miss my grandfather more than ever. I miss the friendship that we had developed.

We were always close, but after I became a father our relationship changed. As I came to understand what it meant to be the sole source of income and to understand the awesome challenge of raising children it grew deeper.

I miss having him around to bullshit with. I miss just sitting in the living room with him and my father. Sometimes the three of us would say nothing, just stare off into space or drift off into sleep in our recliners. The silence was never awkward. It was natural.

I miss the road trips that the three of us would take, the trips to Dodger games, movies and more. I miss the secure feeling that I got just knowing that if I had a problem I could call either one of them.

Back in that crazy summer of ’04 I spoke with him about what it would be like after he was gone. He smiled and told me that I shouldn’t worry about it. I told him that I didn’t, but that I would miss having him around.

He smiled again and told me that even though his own father had died close to thirty years earlier he still missed being able to speak with him. And then he said that I would just figure it out.

And that my friends is in some respects the quintessential summation of our philosophy for living. Life isn’t fair and it isn’t always easy. Get over it and figure it out.

I have to print that out and give it to my kids. In another 20 years or so they’ll really appreciate it.

The new year is coming and I can feel the chill of his absence but the memories warm my soul. Time for this old man to run.

Lailah tov from LA.

The Pain In My Grandfather’s Eyes

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It feels like forever since my grandfather passed away. I think that in part this is because he started to slip away long before his soul left his body.

Some people claim that his mind had started to go and at just short of 92 it is not totally unreasonable. I disagree with this. His mental faculties were intact, but his emotional capacity to deal with a body that no longer functioned as he wanted to was worn down.

Though we try to outrun the coming darkness there is a time in which we cannot maintain the pace and slowly the sun begins to set. In some respects it was like watching a row of dominos collapse. First his legs began to give him trouble and after a while he needed a cane to help him get around.

That worked for a while and then his pelvis gave out, there was a fracture and a stay at a rehab facility. There were various hospital stays for odds and ends. Things that never would have slowed him down suddenly turned into issues and led to other issues.

This is how it went. He would face some sort of medical challenge and slowly but surely he would overcome it. And each time he would come back home I would see that the fire in his eyes still burned, but the truth was that sometimes it was dimmer than before.

My grandfather was fiercely independent and I know without question that if his body had held up better his will to live would have kept him around longer. It is selfish of me to say that, but it is true.

As his body went, he retreated into memories of happier times. He became less responsive. It began to be more of a challenge to get him to talk. I worked on it. I tried to get him to tell me those stories that I loved so much. It didn’t matter that I had heard them a thousand times, I never got tired of them.

I can tell many of them, virtually word for word, but they lack the authenticity that he gave them. There are many to choose from but some stand out from the others. One in particular struck me.

It was the summer of 2004. The summer in which my father nearly died. For that reason alone it is a summer that I will never forget, but in regards to this particular story here is the relevance.

My grandfather was telling me stories about the Chicago of his youth. Interspersed were tales of his time with the carnival and of winters in New Orleans. At one point he changed gears and told me of a disagreement that he had had with his father.

The details of the disagreement aren’t important to this story. What really struck me was the hitch in his voice and the pain in his eyes as he told me this story. He remembered feeling ashamed that he had disappointed his father more than seventy years earlier.

So much time had passed, but sometimes the pain we experience doesn’t always go away. For a brief moment I could see the young man that my grandfather had been. For a moment I was able to relate to him in a way that I had never had before. For a moment the pain in my grandfather’s eyes took me back in time and then it was gone.

And now, so is he.