| 8 Kislev 5770 |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|03:55 pm] |
Granted the book isn't finished; I think it will finish around 60,000 words if nothing special comes up. That makes it the shortest Aristotle novel, but to be honest, not a lot happens in it. I accomplished more than I thought I was going to accomplish, but book 5 is more meditative. I put off the upcoming action plotlines in favor of a minor existential crisis following Aristotle's life-changing surgery in book 4. If the first book gets published and it gets made into a series, book 5 might not appear, or might simply be spread over other books. I think I should have time to finish it; the Greek people are still fighting over what the plot of book 2 should be and Katie still hasn't gotten back to me about Aristotle Vampire, which will need another revision, probably the last before it's submitted to publishers in 2010. I'm juggling these three writing projects at the moment. Fortunately Pride and Prejudice book 3 isn't out until February 2010, which means they won't make an offer on book 4 of that series until they see sales of that, so that's shelved for now.
And I don't just label books "1" or "2" to confuse you guys when talking about different series; I do it because I usually hate their titles. |
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| 6 Kislev 5770 |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|08:25 pm] |
Conference call tomorrow with the various companies behind the Greek books to sort out the mess that is book 2. If I knew I was going to have to write the plot myself, I might not have taken the job. Still, $$$.
In an email to the Greek people explaining why their plot doesn't work:
"Having Ashleigh have a backhanded comment that amounts to, "You're contradicting your essential character background for some reason" is not going to fix it, just band-aid it. To my knowledge, Casey's motivations haven't changed from stupid-good to stupid-evil."
Dialogue from Aristotle Book 5:
Alex: "You used to be cool. Don’t you know you used to be cool?”
Aristotle: “Don’t be ridiculous. I was never cool." |
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| 30 Cheshvan 5770 |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|09:34 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cold | ] |
In other news, I finally finished The Selfish Gene thanks to my "newly-bought books must be immediately read" rule. What I don't understand is how this book would turn anyone atheist, as it apparently did to a lot of people. |
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| NaNoWriMo! |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|07:15 pm] |
I'm back in New York, STILL recovering from this bronchitis/flu thing that has kept me down for two weeks now. Argh.
I signed up for NaNoWriMo. I don't particularly have any novel ideas that don't involve Aristotle and are full-formed, but I like the program. Also, all of my books are in a holding pattern, as Sourcebooks is waiting from sales of book 3 (out in February) to decide whether they want to buy more books in the series, Aristotle Vampire is being reviewed by various people before a final revision, and Harlequin is way behind on sending me the outline for the second Greek book. Once I start a new novel, of course, the Greek book outline will come in and I'll have to start working on that, so not totally getting me NaNo hopes up, but we'll see.
If I did send you a copy of Aristotle Vampire because you said you might review it, please try to get back to me by the end of November. "I didn't have time or want to finish it but this is what I have to say ..." is acceptable. Anything is acceptable. Thank you.
In other news, I will be in Israel for two weeks starting December 29th. My parents gave me a flight because a distant relative is getting bar mitzvahed and I'm representing the American side of the family. Aside from the first Shabbos in January I will probably be in the Jerusalem area at Alter and Naomi's house if anyone wants to hang out.
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| 14 Tishrei 5770 |
[Oct. 2nd, 2009|05:56 pm] |
Rushing to get ready for Succot because I just spent the last 10 hours playing yesterday's bargain bin purchase, FFXII. It's not really that good, but like all video games, it's addictive. Last night I beat Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (the game) in about 6 hours. Actually if I finish both of these by Thursday I can return them for a full refund at Gamestop, but together they were both like $17 so I'm not really rushing to save money here.
Obviously being in a holding position between various books (waiting for feedback or the editor to send revision notes) is a good time for me to play video games. It's the only time for me to play video games and also make a sort-of living.
The last FF game I played was X-2, which I never finished, and that was back in 2006. I got towards the final battle and got bored. FFXII is way better, but it's lame for all of the reasons FF games are lame: cliched kingdom drama, overly complicated/outright ridiculous costume design, the insipid brat protagonist, and the fact that everyone has a really, really good haircut, which bothers me more now that the graphics are better. This is why I think Final Fantasy VII was the best game (among other reasons): it was blocky enough that the characters looked cute and you accepted that you couldn't see their features, which it turns out look lame in better graphics. Boy, FFXII really went all-out with the overly-complex armor design. Now that I've worn armor a number of times, I can say that with even more confidence.
There's a really funny walkthorough. A quote:
"Note: I can't believe I worked so hard for a college degree so that I could someday write about a lizard/pig/hume fight. Sometimes I wonder why I do this." And now to dress up for tonight even though the majority of the night I will be bundled up in five layers to eat in the succah. Good Shabbos!
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| 13 Tishrei 5770 |
[Sep. 30th, 2009|10:09 pm] |
Time to get the manuscript out to people who requested them. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stormsdotter , I need your address.
Anyone else who wants in on looking at Aristotle Vampire, please email me. I have enough people on grammar that I really only need an opinion on the material. And please, no more hard copies. It's a novel. It's not easy to print and ship. Anyone who reads it and says something will get an acknowledgment in the book, if there is one. Email dj_clawson at yahoo dot com!
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| 27 Elul 5769 |
[Sep. 15th, 2009|09:12 pm] |
Getting ready for the big move to my new apartment. It's only a block away, but it's still a lot of books to move. We have a mover for the big stuff but there's a LOT of little stuff.
I think I'm mostly done with this revision of Aristotle Vampire. I tried, on recommendation, taking the vampire society stuff out and focusing entirely on Aristotle and Alex, but there wasn't enough to hold up the book. It would be like Twilight if there was no book past the baseball scene, but hopefully not as crappy. This revision cleans some stuff up and adds a lot of Aristotle's backstory, which is mostly historical. I had to make some choices in terms of timeline and reasons for events (the sources for Aristotle's life are sketchy at best) but I think I was pretty informed. My understanding of philosophy is still pretty inferior and needs some work but that just wasn't going to make it in this revision.
I need people to read this manuscript. Seriously. My agent is not going to be hard enough on me. If you're willing to read it and give comments, or at least promise to do so and then have some things to do that prevent it, email me at dj_clawson at yahoo dot com. It's 114,000 words, which is about a 350/400 page novel. I think it reads quickly, as it's heavy on the dialogue. Also if you're either a computer science major or a philosophy major (or postdoc or whatever), that would be helpful.
Reviewing it will earn you an acknowledgment in the book if it's published.
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| Art! |
[Sep. 3rd, 2009|06:37 pm] |
New manuscript art:
I came back from Pennsic with some new ideas for techniques to speed up the process. I moved from acryclic to watercolor, which is for the most part easier but in some cases I'm struggling with, and I now have a process to get the art onto paper: I print out the original art and trace the outline, then scan the outline in, fix it up in photoshop, put a piece of parchment paper in the printer and print out the outline, then fill in. It's still time-consuming but not nearly as much as drawing the whole thing out based on what I see with my eyes. The results are pretty good - they look like the originals to some extent.
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| 27 Av 5769 |
[Aug. 16th, 2009|07:37 pm] |
You know that mysterious exhaustion I complain about from time to time? It's back. I think it's the heat combined with the real estate market (we signed a lease on Friday afternoon for a new apartment, two blocks from my old one) that stressed my body out, as nothing has ever shown up on blood tests, but G-ddamn do I hate it. My writing is at a complete halt. I'm behind on my reading. My general decision making abilities are poor. Should I audit the philosophy course this fall at City College, or should I just write the damn Aristotle revision and be done with it?
On the other hand, my new lexapro is giving me some awesome, interesting dreams. Which is good, if you're sleeping 20 hours a day.
Done bitching now. |
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| Pennsic Wrap-Up (18 Av 5759) |
[Aug. 7th, 2009|05:32 pm] |
So here are the ways Pennsic was radically different for me this year:
(1) I went up on Sunday and stayed until Thursday, making it only three actual full days at Pennsic.
(2) I fought two out of the three days. (Normally I fight once)
(3) I stayed in a hotel.
The hotel was totally worth it, though I don't think I could afford much more than 4 nights unless someone was sharing the bill. Door-to-door it was 30 minutes, but 5 minutes of that was finding parking at Pennsic and 10 was walking from the overflow parking lot to the Drachenwald camp, which I admit is not terribly far from parking in the first place. The disadvantage was I missed out on the night stuff, as by 5 pm I was utterly exhausted and even with a nap I only made it until about 7 pm, then had to head home. Also for fighting days I had to wake up extra early to get there in time, but the second day was just a long day of battles so I made it later, and just in time to wait around 45 minutes for the next round to start because the last round ended as I walked to the field. Of course, the year that I stay in the hotel is the year that it's only in the 80's, not the 90's/100's, and it doesn't rain the whole time I'm there, but damn did it rain beforehand and the mud was smelly. The first week was apparently hell, second week great in terms of weather. I COULD camp again, but I would definitely go with the hotel if I could afford it. I just miss flushing bathrooms and clean tubs that much.
Some observations:
- Drachenwald is an excellent camp to stay with, especially when the king and queen bother to come (Pennsic is not a Drachenwald event so their presence is not required). It's very laid-back, it's full of knights to hide behind in combat who are also not jerks just because they're knights, and you can score invites to all kinds of royal parties if you want to. They aren't much fun but the food is excellent, even the snacks. Top shelf stuff. There's perhaps not the same sense of community because every year is mostly a different crowd except Duke Matthew, Duke Sven, and his wife, but they're good people and they're about drinking, fighting, and having a good time. Not a bad crowd to be with.
- If you are setting out to formation on the field thinking, "Wow, I can barely move in my armor. I've really over-armored that section, which isn't even required to be covered," then you have just guaranteed you will be hit in that specific spot - really, really hard.
- In related news, I have an awesome bruise I am totally proud of, even if it prevents me from having heavy things in my left pocket.
- What is the deal with saris? I don't remember so many women in traditional Indian dress. I admit the bedouin look is SO last year, but I just don't remember that many saris. Maybe they were expecting hotter weather and discovered eBay. And amber necklances. Everyone was selling them and everyone was buying them. This ends my Pennsic fashion report.
- It's been two years since my last Pennsic and the vendors were a little stripped down. A few were missing, most had branched out into secondhand armor like gauntlets and legs where they're really a clothing shop, and some of the fancier stores that had like a house or something for their store this time just had a regular tent. One guy's tent became a sun shelter, with no walls. Of all these people, only one (the sword guy I buy from every year) admitted that sales were "abysmal." One sign was that unlike most years, where the big sword places are competing to see who's selling the best Paul Chen for the lowest money, very few even had their folded steel out, much less prominently displayed. Many vendors were also selling their tents/pavilions, but started seeing this in Pennsic 2007 so it wasn't a huge surprise. People were also selling their wooden shower walls (as evidenced in my photographs). Armor sales seemed pretty good, though, or at least everyone was talking about what their first piece of armor was going to be when I walked by a store and trying on stuff. Even I traded in my arms for shorter ones and bought a new shield.
- Less classes this year. I didn't attend any, and when I actually had time to do so, none were offered that I wanted to attend. Or maybe I'm wrong about this, but it SEEMED like there were less classes this year.
- Cariadoc sells hello to Ma'ale Giborim, specifically Alter and Naomi. Mostly because I preemptively said "hi" back.
- Next year: Woods battle, unless they leave it to Thursday again. It's now the only battle I haven't done, mostly because it's a huge battle that you have to ride a truck to and it's the battle where most people get hurt other than the bridge battle. If it's on a Monday or Tuesday I'll definitely try to do it. Next year they're moving it to another area of woods that's larger, so it will be new turf for everyone. Battles I've done: river, gate, bridge, town, fort, and field. Also this year they made the decision to put two battles on Monday when everyone's fresh and no war-points battles on Wednesday so everyone could rest, which seemed like a bad idea but worked out in practice. That is, provided the weather works out and a day doesn't get cancelled due to lightening or heat, which didn't happen this year. This year was my first field battle (and my first "river'" battle which is just a glorified bridge battle). They look amazing when you watch them, but in actuality you live for about 15 seconds, so I wouldn't say they're my favorite. The town battle, where the haybales dictated roads and we had to defend an area with a relic for war points, was definitely my favorite. Everyone had endless resurrects and being a "town" sufficiently broke up the tendency for it to turn into a bridge battle meat grinder, so you basically get the most fighting for your time. I think I fought a solid 30 minutes at the town battle two years ago, as opposed to the river battle that was mostly waiting behind other people until they pushed back and died on top of you, and the field battle where death was near-instantaneous.
- Coin belts will never stop being annoying.
- Blue gatorade will never stop being weird, even if it tastes okay. |
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| 17 Av 5769 |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|10:55 pm] |
All of my Pennsic 2009 photos are up here.
Once again, I am really tired. This time from driving. I realized I made such good time on Sunday because there wasn't any construction, whereas today I passed about 10 "construction zones" that slowed down my trip. I made up the time in other segments of the route 80 drive, but it was still long, mostly because I was in pain in my shoulder and my right leg, at times making it hard to drive. I took a lot of breaks to shake out my leg. I didn't go back to camp today before leaving, as the hotel was on the way home, and I really finished up last night. I forgot how much fun Midnight Madness is and what a big deal it is. You run into pretty much everyone you've been looking for during the rest of Pennsic.
Observations about Pennsic to come.
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| It is late and I am tired. (15 Tammuz 5769) |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|12:43 am] |
Pennsic Day 4. Final day at Pennsic. I'm leaving straight from the hotel tomorrow, as it is on the way home and I'm done at Pennsic. Had a great time. I forgot how much fun Midnight Madness is and spent more money than I expected, but still way, way less than usual. There just wasn't that much stuff I needed other than books, and those are way cheaper online. There was no fighting today (they doubled-up on Monday and gave fighters a war-point break today) other than pick-up battles and I was too sore to move for the first half of the day, much less fight. I found an East Kingdom marshal who said he would get the papers going to reaffirm my authorization, which renews if I've fought in the last year (which I now have). I may have to go to a fighter practice in Osgard (Brooklyn), but hopefully I will be spared that, as I would totally stress out about it because I'm a terrible fighter. In Europe, apparently, the paperwork is done over email and everyone just trusts everyone else, but in America you need two marshals to sign the form, and either watch you fight or hear from someone that you've fought well (meaning, safely) recently. Drachenwald will vouch for me.
Pictures tomorrow. |
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| Pennsic, Day 3 (14 Av 5769) |
[Aug. 4th, 2009|10:18 pm] |
I fought again today, in my first field battle, or first set of three of them. I'd forgotten how quickly they go in comparison to other battles. I was alive for maybe 40 seconds of actual combat and an additional minute for a hold. It was Allies (us) vs. East/Mid-Realm, and we were horribly outnumbered. I took a faceshot so hard it sent me backwards, flat on my back like an idiot. Needless to say, it was awesome.
Tomorrow is my last day at Pennsic, driving home Thursday. I'm not fighting tomorrow so I can actually do some other stuff, and also because I'm pretty much beat (and bruised, in a place on my leg I was thinking was over-armored not five minutes before). I'm not so into the other parts of Pennsic and I don't want to get really hammered, so I'm trying to console myself that there's not much left for me to do, otherwise Pennsic would be over too soon.
More pictures.
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| Pennsic, Day 2 (14 Av 5769) |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|08:26 pm] |
Day 1 of war week, and they had a river battle followed by a gate battle. As to what these battles are, in short, they keep renaming the infamous "bridge battle" and moving the hay bales to demarcate water/land around so we don't think, "Oh G-d, another bridge battle." The bridge battle is known as the "meat grinder" for a good reason. You stand around on the grass between the hay bales for an hour, waiting for the guys in front of you to die, then you're shoved into a wall of spears and crushed on all sides before the marshal calls hold and you climb out of the pile of dead bodies and smashed shields. The variations (river, gate) widen the land range between bales and/or increase the amount, leading to less of a clusterfuck most of the time, except for those few moments where it is a clusterfuck and you can't move because you're squashed between 5 guys on your own team.
Needless to say, it was awesome anyway. I lasted two of the three river battles before developing "shield arm" and leaving the field. That's when your shield, which is really too heavy for you anyway but that's why it's protective, takes some hard enough blows that the arm behind the shield is soar and bruised and it hurts to move it for a little while.
I bought a new shield. It's way, way less protective, but it's also way lighter and I'm wearing more than the required armor anyway and then some, and if I'm going to get injured by my own shield, what good is it anyway? The new shield is plastic, and cost $25, which is the most I've spent on anything except gate fees. Pennsic is a great place to shop until you realize almost everything sold there can be bought on the internet for cheaper nowadays, except for some obscure hobbyist items and historical paraphenalia. I mean, I COULD jump right into the complex methods of medieval dyes on parchment by buying all the items to be crushed into dyes and the accompanying oils to make them liquid, or I could just stick to acrylics until I know what I'm doing. Pennsic vendors think marking books down $2 off cover is a good offer, which at this point is just laughable. The good buys are in people's junk bins.
I managed to stay awake and about today even after fighting, but now I pretty much can't move. There's 5 field battles tomorrow, and if there's no thunder I'd really like to do one of them, but how I feel when I wake up will determine that. I felt somewhat sad as I was driving back to the hotel at 7 that I would be missing all of the night activities (i.e. parties and bardics), but not all that sad. I have A/C and a bath tub. And this internet. Some years, it's just the way to go.
New photos are up. Check my previous post to a link to the set. |
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| Pennsic! (13 Av 5769) |
[Aug. 2nd, 2009|10:42 pm] |
I am at Pennsic, or more specifically, a hotel near Pennsic. Totally worth it. Door-to-door it's about twenty minutes, maybe more when you consider walking from the parking lot.
Duke Matthew said to me, "You picked the right year for a hotel." And he's right. It's very, very muddy from all the rain, and the mud smells. Badly. I am really, really happy to be here anyway. Drachenwald is fielding 24 fighters this year! And we normally field like 6. I don't know what's up. A lot of them have never been to Pennsic before.
Click here for photos. Will probably be updated throughout the week.
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| 8 Av 5759 |
[Jul. 29th, 2009|01:17 pm] |
I'm definitely going to give Aristotle Vampire another go. Not revising the draft I have now, but removing all the vampire society stuff so there's only maybe a couple dozen vampires in the world and they're only characters if Aristotle needs to interact with them for some reason, so the entire focus is on Aristotle and Alex. This may be too narrow and plot-less, but it's worth trying.
The weather report for Pennsic says rain and/or thunderstorms pretty much every day, though it's an extended forecast (not leaving until Sunday) so that doesn't mean anything, but we have been having thunderstorms pretty much every day for the last month it seems like, so that's a bad indicator. Rain isn't as much a problem as thunder, which will end a battle immediately because we're all in a field with metal helmets. I remember last time I was at Pennsic, I fought on the first day, and on the second day, it was raining lightly when they started the battle. About 5 minutes in, there was a rumble of thunder, and from my campsite at Drachenwald I could hear the cannon go off to signal the end of combat.
I will be pretty angry if I get up there and combat gets called off for all three days, but we'll see. Monday is a river battle (which seems to be a modified bridge battle, the battle where they have the most injuries other than the woods battle, which is at least more fun) followed by a gate battle. I like gate battles. They're like general combat, but with smaller fields of action than the field battle, which is 1000 people just running into each other as hard and fast as they possibly can. Tuesday is a field battle. I'm fighting on Monday unless thunder prevents it.
Actually I am angry in general, mostly at the sleeping problems I've been having and the extreme, unexplained exhaustion I've been dealing with the past month. We ran all kinds of bloodwork and everyone decided nothing was wrong and I was just stressed. Look, I work at home at a dream job of writing for a living. I'm not under a lot of stress. Yes, writing can be stressful, especially the Greek books (still on hold while the companies figure things out), but I want a better explanation. I also don't want to start cholesterol medicine, but it's time to do it. My cholesterol has always been high but my cardiologist has always let me off because my stomach ailments have taken priority (and no, it's not diet related, because my cholesterol doesn't drop when I'm not eating anything). Now I'm turning 28, and I feel that it's time, despite the fact that everyone in those lipitor commercials is in their 50s and 60's. Then again, their opening line usually is, "I didn't believe I could have a heart attack at 50" so maybe they're not the best people to go with, plus they're actors on behalf of an expensive drug. I just don't want to be on more drugs. I'm already on a lot of drugs and some of them are causing me problems that they should be fixing (sleep, anxiety). But heart disease is in the family, and I've ignored my mom's rants long enough. It's time to bite the bullet on this cardiology thing.
People my age - you guys all have cardiologists, 2 gastroenterologists, gynecologists, internists, psychiatrists, and ENT guys that all have to confer on everything because your medicine is so complicated, right? RIGHT? |
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| Philosophical Discussion - and Vampires (27 Tamuz 5769) |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|06:35 pm] |
My armor's gone home (my dad swung by to pick it up) for Pennsic, which means I can't work on it much before leaving as I'll be in NYC through Tisha B'av, but that's the way it is. I may resort to using my old arms (read: armor for elbows) as I'm not quite sure how to correctly pad and tie the new ones, but I have new legs (read: padding for knees and upper thighs) that are much lighter and actually fit me, so that'll be good. I bought them 2 years ago at Pennsic, but just haven't worn them yet.
The Greek thing is on hold while the 3 companies involved sort out the revisions they want me to make based on the season 3 premiere (or not), so I've been working hard at the other Greek thing, Aristotle Vampire. The long story short: I decided to rewrite it, only to discover that the new text wasn't necessarily better than the old text, and frustrated with my writing abilities, I used the text I wrote 6 months ago. The difference now is that Alex the grad student has seens from his perspective much earlier, even if they're typical, non-supernatural grad student scenes. It's tempting to mirror his life to Alexander the Great's as much as possible, which is not very possible as he's an intellectual and does not go on to conquer the world (...yet). All of this involves a lot of research, particularly into Aristotle's writing, which one author described as "like eating dry hay." I think that's a pretty apt description of most of his existing work, though the published material still around in Roman times was apparently awesome. Cicero described Aristotle's writing as reading from "a river of gold" so he must have had text we don't have, but know existed.
It's actually fairly easy to mix Aristotle's philosophy with vampirism.
Only humans can reason.
All vampires can reason.
-> Therefore, all vampires are human.
By using Aristotle's theology (what little of it we have), it's pretty obvious how he would arrive at the conclusin that he is not soulless or damned. The soul is the essence or a person, or the personality of a person, to oversummarize De Anima, and vampires have personalities (if anything, they have personalities similar to the ones they had as humans, altered by their change in living situation), so they must have souls. Vampires also have to be alive because they meet all the requirements of life - they have self-motion and self-awareness, their bodies develop and decay (to some extent, as they still shed skin and hair over time), etc etc. As to the gods, from the works we have Aristotle was a big fan of the idea of a universal G-d who runs the universe without any concern or involvement in it - in fact, He has no thought beyond his task of making the stars move around the earth (whoops!). So, not a lot of worry there.
The remaining question is moral relativism, something the real Aristotle wasn't a fan of. The real Aristotle wrote in what remains of his Ethics that some things are always good and some things are always bad. Philosophy is always good, murder is always bad. However Aristotle was not afraid to revise his opinions, as he did many times over the course of his life, and one would say that if you were to become a creature that needed to murder to survive, a bit like a soldier constantly in battle but worse, he could say, "Okay, scratch that on the murdering bit, it's obvious I need it for continual existence so it can't be bad." As far as I've read into Aristotle's work, I've never found a place were he found one species good and one species bad. The only judgment calls he makes are on men, and that's based on their actions relative to his own moral positions or their necessities (he gives examples for how to be a good tyrant, if one must be a good tyrant, even though he didn't like tyranny). If I'm way off here someone stop me; I didn't take philosophy in college, just read a little in high school. The intricacies of his philosophies rarely come up in specific relation to his written works as we have them, but I did try to build the character around Aristotle's general method of reasoning his way in or out of any situation, which is how he comes to like Alex, who's able to intellectually engage him whereas the vampire community looks down on him for being weird and obsessive and too old (he's sixty-two).
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| 25 Tamuz 5769 |
[Jul. 17th, 2009|01:53 pm] |
There's probably something inherently unhealthy about a community that feels the need to riot every summer despite not being under any terrible oppression to complain about.
The haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) community in Jerusalem is rioting again. Last summer it was over the gay pride parade I think; either way Jerusalem Post informs me that the police see some rioting every summer, large or small, and some burning of things in Me'a Sha'arim and Geula, two super-haredi neighborhoods where most of the anti-Zionist hold-outs in the Orthodox community live, plus a lot of normal haredim who will sell you really inexpensive clothing and books. I used to shop there a lot.
When I mean they're not oppressed, I mean to say, they are not oppressed by anything not of their own making. Mea Shaarim is regularly referred to as a "ghetto" by the secular press, and it looks a lot like you might imagine a ghetto, teaming with religious life by cramped and with everyone living below the poverty level. Most haredim in that area live on state subsidies, don't work because they feel that if they learn Torah all day G-d will take care of their problems (via state subsidies from the evil Zionist state), and don't go to the army like the rest of the Israeli population so they contribute nothing to their own defense. Actually massive money does flow into the community from the super-wealthy haredim living and working hard abroad (I hate to say it, but usually in the diamond industry), but it's never quite enough, especially when everyone tries to have as many children as possible.
All things considered, I could understand their need to riot: summer is hot, most of them don't have air conditioning, they have no major outlets of entertainment, and they have to wear black, wool clothing in multiple layers. Given that situation I would feel like punching someone, too. Or setting something on fire.
The current rioting is over social services arresting a mother of a 3-year-old child who weighed 15 pounds and was severely malnourished and taking the child. According to police reports, the mother likely has Munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy, as there's not a lot of other reasons for a mother to starve her 3-year-old to near death. This of course started huge rioting against the state for intruding on a family matter, though really it's just a continuation of previous rioting about a parking lot that stays open on Shabbos (owned and run by gentiles) which the various haredi counsels had previous approved, and then it got hot and everyone changed their minds.
When Jerusalem Post reports on this sort of thing, as usual, the comments are more interesting than the article, which is still pretty interesting because it's Israel and they have real journalism over there. For people who claim not to use the internet, there's a lot of haredi posters angrily cursing out the Zionist state. Then there's the secular posters, sometimes going as far as to suggest they deport a bunch of people hostile to the state, but best of all are the haredim who are not in those neighborhoods (or are and just posting anonymously), who think the whole thing is embarassing, people who throw rocks at policeman on Shabbos should not be representative of the religious community, and yes, really, there are reasonable haredim out there, but they don't make the papers.
While the issue seems cultural, I think it's mainly economic. Haredim in the United States and Europe who work and encounter secular society (or any society different from their own) on a daily basis may be hot in the summer, but they have air conditioning and they look less likely to break into a spontaneous brawl on the subway than that unshaven guy who's always talking to himself and wearing sweatpants. Within the communities there are some riots, usually over who's rabbi is better, but they're sporadic and contained within the community, and mostly by adolescents with no afterschool programs (because school usually goes until dinnertime or much later if the school serves dinner) and no outlet for their typical adolescent need to do things. In the summer, the wealthier haredim have bungalows in the Catskills or send their kids to summer camp.
In a community were a large percentage doesn't work but does something that doesn't earn money (studying/praying), it's very important to keep the earners/learners balance in check, so that there's enough money to go around. If the learners produce a lot of children, the equation can quickly fall out of balance, and since there's no checks on it, it always does. Contrast this to India and East Asia, where various monastic communities are supported entirely by their local population or sometimes money from abroad. Monks don't work (except in cases where they actually do to support themselves), but they don't reproduce either, so you always know how many monks there are. In China, because they're supported by the state and often mistrusted by the state, monks are restricted to certain numbers and people entering the monastery often have to undergo rigorous examinations and evaluations to see if that life is right for them. And, in Buddhism, you can leave the monastery, which is sometimes frowned upon and sometimes not, if there's something else that you feel you need to do. That doesn't mean they always get the system right (Asian history is littered with stories of rioting monks, or even armies of monks who fought other armies of monks for monastic control), but I think it's a better model than a Torah-study-induced welfare state.
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| I'm ashamed to ask... |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|02:52 pm] |
...but is anyone going to Transformers Saturday night/Sunday in NYC? Because I am tempted, and would feel lame going alone, and yet, I'm not racing to it. |
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| 4 Tamuz 5769 |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|09:54 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  happy | ] |
In the news, mine and otherwise:
1) I'm done with jury duty! I sat in the New York Supreme court waiting room for two days and they never called my name. Actually they only called 30 names the first day and none the next. Since the judge decides what cases go to trial that day in the morning, they let us go at 12:30pm each day. Way more organized and pleasant than serving in Newark. And on the way home, I stumbled onto a kosher vegetarian Chinese restaurant in Chinatown that was awesome.
2) Michael Jackson died today, leaving many, many reporters debating how to show respect for the dead and not give into the urge to point out that he's been mainly known for the last 15 years for creepy face surgery and multiple allegations of child molestation. Oh, and occasional anti-Semitic barrages. You know what? Good riddance.
3) I think the mystery as to what this statue I picked up in India has been mostly solved. It's a very bizarre carving of Angida, an Indian-Buddhist budai who, according to Wikipedia, " was a talented Indian snake catcher whose aim was to catch venomous snakes to prevent them from biting passers-by." Why he has a Franz-Joseph style beard remains a mystery to everyone.
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