I'm grateful for: warm rooms; a mostly thorough bath; my loving family.

I promise to stop talking about the news. Soon. I hope really soon. But for today, I counted two rockets and seven mortars. That I know of. That's just today. The NYT headline read 'Israel Kills 4 Arabs.' That's it. It is NOT 'all the news that's fit to print' is all I'm saying.

The news here is grossly biased. You can read news with a very heavy slant to the right, news with a very heavy slant to the left, and the news of the wacko fringe. Usually the left wacko fringe, but not necessarily. It amazes me that any of the news agencies manage to pretend with a straight face that they are unbiased.

One difference is that here in Israel, no one (except perhaps some recent American olim) *expects* the news to be unbiased or objective. So I read one news agency at which anyone (and everyone) who isn't Jewish and commits any sort of crime at all is a 'terrorist,' and another agency at which even the man who straps on a bomb vest and walks into a mall and blows himself up ISN'T a 'terrorist.' And I try and take the pieces and put together a coherent picture of what is actually happening outside of my little community. I don't need a newspaper inside my little community. One reason I really love it here.

When my body isn't working as well as I would like, or when my life gets turned upside down and there is absolutely nothing else I *can* do, I read the news. Too much news apparently. It is horrid to know that people are out there spreading horrid stories about you, your community, or your country. Horrid slanted, biased, sometimes evil stories -- and that hundreds, thousands or millions of people are BELIEVING those stories. Even worse, whether or not they read the stories themselves, they are affected by the headlines. At an unconscious level. *sigh* It can't be fixed (by me), and I certainly didn't cause it. So I hope one day to just be able to turn it over to Hashem and stop worrying about it. I seriously doubt my writing about it here in my diary, even assuming the largest readership I can imagine, will actually make any sort of of a difference. I may be able to change the world - who knows? - but not likely about this. I want to be able to let it go. I do let it go, for days, weeks even.

Then I'm back here in bed, with nothing better to do than to read the news. And I burst out all over. I suppose the answer for me has to be more prayer. 'Cause I sure can't turn things over to Hashem if I'm not even praying. Or something like that. It's all hard.

I'm listening to the washer and dryer running.

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06