Sunset

The seasons have changed and the weather here in the sea-side Israeli village of Herzliya Pituah is gorgeous. The Herzliya beach is just north of Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean Sea, and just across from Europe. Lately we've been trotting down to the beach (it's a 12-minute walk) to watch the sun go down and escape from the day's hassles.

The other evening, as I watched the sun sink below the horizon and darkness spread, I said, in all innocence, that the sun was setting on Europe. A little voice in my head said "that's a political statement". It was Doobie. So I drew the cartoon and put him into it. Doobie was a wonderful, scruffy little dog who grew up with my children and grew old with me during the early "empty nest" years. He passed on many years ago but he is still with me.

Have a great weekend.

Food Prices (1980)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done 30 years ago in 1980.

Israel is a small country surrounded by markets that boycott our products and that won't sell us theirs. We are largely tied to the seasonal harvests in our own country as to what's in our vegetable shops and on sale in our open air markets. Thirty years ago we had a strawberry crisis.

Which was the reason for today's Golden Oldie.

The Sacrifice Part Two

I decided to do a follow-up to Friday's Obama and the sacrifice of Isaac cartoon.

As reported by Ben Smith at Politico:

New York Senator Chuck Schumer harshly criticized the Obama Administration's attempts to exert pressure on Israel today, making him the highest-ranking Democrat to object to Obama's policies in such blunt terms. "Schumer dramatically sharpened his tone on the politically conservative Jewish Nachum Segal Show today, calling the White House stance to date "counter-productive" and describing his own threat to "blast" the Administration had the State Department not backed down from its "terrible" tough talk toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Schumer, a hawkish ally of Israel since his days as a Brooklyn Congressman, described "a battle going on inside the administration" over Middle East policy.

"This has to stop," he said of the administration's policy of publicly pressuring Israel to end construction in Jerusalem.

"I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk," Schumer told

Segal. "Palestinians don’t really believe in a state of Israel. They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there.-more"

* * * So should I do a third cartoon and make it a series on Obama's attempt to sacrifice Israel? Your thoughts?

Aliya (1995)

Today's Golden Oldie is from April 1995.

Everyone still seems afraid to promote Aliya.

Everyone except a group called Nefesh B'Nefesh. You can contact them by phone:
in North America: 1-866-4-ALIYAH
in the United Kingdom: 0800-075-7200
or for info if you're in Israel: 02-659-5800.

Reach them online at: Nefesh B'Nefesh.
Tell 'em Dry Bones sent you.

Changing Times

What's even worse is that now I'm forgetting how to spell.

I type in Microsoft Word, not paying too much attention to the keys I hit or to my spelling ...and Word fixes everything as I go. Yikes!!! Is it happening to you too.

Or should I say 2 U 2 ?

Imposed Solution

Is Obama preparing to sacrifice Israel? Is he planning to impose a "solution"? According to Joel Mowbray in the Washington Times:

"Evidence is mounting that President Obama will unveil a new Middle East peace plan in the coming months. While a desire for peace is indeed admirable, such a move should be welcomed only by the enemies of America.

Not only would such an attempt inevitably fail, but it would directly harm U.S. security by shifting our national focus away from very real - and far more dangerous - threats in the region.

Nearly two weeks ago, the New York Times and The Washington Post reported on the same day about a high-level meeting two weeks beforehand in which National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones had lobbied Mr. Obama to craft an American peace plan. Last Monday, J-Street, a left-wing Jewish group with close ties to the White House, ran a full-page ad in the New York Times urging Mr. Obama to impose "concrete plans for a two-state solution."

Mr. Obama himself further signaled something was in the works by stating at the close of a news conference last Tuesday that resolving the Middle East conflict was "a vital national security interest of the United States." Likely at the prodding of White House officials, the New York Times ran a front-page story two days later suggesting that an Obama peace plan could be drafted over the next few months and introduced this fall." -more

Oklahoma City (1995)

Today's Golden Oldie is from April 1995.

Three days ago, April 19 2010, was Yom HaZikaron when we in Israel were having our Memorial Day to remember our fallen soldiers and victims of terror. In the U.S. it was marked as the 15th anniversary of the "Oklahoma City Bombing". The bombing was an attack on the Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, who detonated an explosive-filled truck parked in front of the building. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The Oklahoma City Bombing killed 168, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people.

The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.

Grounded

Volcanoes wiped out the dinosaurs? Wasn't it a giant asteroid crashing into planet Earth you say? Consider the following, from May 2009 in the Daily Mail:

Bang goes that theory: Dinosaur extinction due to volcano NOT asteroid

"The dinosaurs were wiped out by volcanoes that erupted in India about sixty five million years ago, according to new research.

For the last thirty years scientists have believed a giant meteorite that struck Chicxulub in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula was responsible for the mass extinction of species, including T Rex and its cousins.

But now Professor Gerta Keller says fossilized traces of plants and animals dug out of low lying hills at El Penon in northeastern Mexico show this event happened 300,000 years after the dinosaurs disappeared." Read more

62

I wrote this last night, on the eve of Yom HaZikaron, our Remembrance Day for Israeli Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism. The siren sounded and the country stood in silence and in remembrance of the price that others paid for our independence.

Today, Monday, folks will be visiting cemeteries. A painful and sombre day. Tonight at sundown, Yom HaZikaron will end and the celebration of Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day begins.

I wanted to do a cartoon to show how short a time 62 years really is. I wondered if I'd be able to write out every year in a cartoon. It turned out that I could do it as a border and still have room for Mr. Shuldig and his dog Doobie!

Israel at 62

Sunday evening will usher in Yom HaZikaron, our Remembrance Day for Israeli Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism. Then, Monday evening, Yom HaZikaron ends and the celebration of Israel's Independence Day begins. We'll be going up to Jerusalem for a party with old friends. All that's left for me to do now is to hang up the big new Israeli flag we just bought.

3 Day Weekend (1983)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done on a Friday in 1983. It was the Friday before Shabbat, which was followed by Yom HaZikaron on Sunday, which was followed by Yom HaAtzmaut on Monday. This weekend would have been the same, except for the fact that in 2004 it was decided that when Yom HaAtzmaut falls on a Monday, the festival is postponed to Tuesday. And so this time we don't get the three day weekend we had back in 1983.

Another difference is that I can no longer remember when I thought that 35 seemed old.

Yikes.

Dribble

The initial dangerous clash between Israel and the Obama administration has become ongoing posturing by both Bibi Netanyahu and Washington. It has taken on the quality of a game . . . with us as the guys in the stands.

In today's cartoon, Mr. Shuldig comments on the "news" as if he were a disinterested spectator. The punch line is his realisation that he (and all the rest of us) cannot take comfort in pretending that we are just watching a basketball game.

On the other hand maybe we can?
:-)

Food (1995)

Today's Golden Oldie is from April 1995.

I wasn't in a very political mood today so I thought I'd just pick a Golden Oldie from 15 years ago this month.

In the first panel Mr. Shuldig is eating matzah. In the last panel he's in flower-covered bathing trunks, in the water at the beach, eating a pita.

A little-appreciated yet critical quality in producing cartoons is, of course, the proper use of sound effects. In this case the "crunch crunch" of the matzah eating and the softer, muffled "munch munch" associated with working your way through a pita.

And you thought this stuff was easy!

Yom HaShoah 2010

Today is Yom HaShoah, and the threat of genocidal antisemitism seems more real today than it has in many years. * * * According to the Jewish Virtual Library:

"The full name of the day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust is “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah”— literally the "Day of (remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism." It is marked on the 27th day in the month of Nisan — a week after the seventh day of Passover, and a week before Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers). It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The date was selected by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) on April 12, 1951. The full name became formal in a law that was enacted by the Knesset on August 19, 1953. Although the date was established by the Israeli government, it has become a day commemorated by Jewish communities and individuals worldwide." -more

Breaking it Off

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch:

"I have been a supporter of President Obama and went to Florida for him, urged Jews all over the country to vote for him saying that he would be just as good as John McCain on the security of Israel. I don't think it's true anymore...

...I believe that the Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please Muslim nations," Koch said. "We'll know when I'm right or wrong." -more

* * * Your thoughts?

Modern Sales Pitch

Back in the "Old Days" there was a book and a futuristic concept that fascinated a generation. The book was called "Understanding Media". It was written by Marshall McLuhan and was published in 1964.

McLuhan became the Media Guru of the sixties and a household name because of his futuristic concept that "The Medium is the Message". He taught us that the experience of reading a book was inherently different from seeing a movie which was totally different from watching TV or from reading a newspaper, in fact, postulated McLuhan, the message was not as important as the type of media that carries it. Wow! Far Out!

* * * So here we are in the future. In the 21st century! And the message seems to now be the message?? ...and it can be carried by any form of media?

I watch TV on my Net Book, I listen to the radio on my mobile, and I occasionally make phone calls on my Desk Top. More importantly, I can read a newspaper on my computer, I can read it on my telephone, or I can read it in print on newsprint paper. Now that we live in the future, McLuhan's once-futuristic concept is out of date.

Yup. The message is now the message, but they keep teasing us with newer and newer media!?! I Pad? Enough already!

Your thoughts?

Keep Looking

The Guardian:
March 29, 2010:

"Since April 1960 the astronomer Frank Drake and his colleagues in Seti, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, have been listening for signals from those other, so-far invisible planets that surely must be orbiting those stars that are strewn across 100,000 light years of space.

And what have they heard? The random fizz and splutter of the accidental noise from pulsars and quasars, from hot gas and cold dust and exploding stars: otherwise, nothing. The sound of extraterrestrial life is the sound of silence . . .

. . .Is there silence because extraterrestrials simply do not exist? Are the conditions for the emergence of life so far-fetched, so ludicrously improbable that it happened only once, on one planet orbiting one star in just one galaxy during the whole 13.7-billion-year lifetime of the universe? Or is the universe humming with life, but humming so quietly that we cannot hear it?

If the first proposition is true, then humanity has a lonely responsibility, first not to destroy itself in an ecological or thermonuclear catastrophe, then to outlive its parent sun, and colonise the galaxy. If the second proposition is true, where is everybody?" - more

Survivors

We live our lives and they tell us what's going on, and we believe them. And then the future comes along and once it's history it's easy to see what really happened.

So I thought about how current events might look from the perspective of one possible future (hopefully a future that America and the West will somehow manage to avoid).

How Was Yours ?

Our Passover seder was lovely this year. The younger grandchildren are getting taller and the older grandchildren seem to be getting ...even older?

This year's batch of home made "Genuine DryBones Horseraddish" was a big hit. Vintage!! In fact, if we had any left, and if fresh horseraddish could be stored, I'd store a few jars. If we had any left.

So how was your seder?