Madiba

Our beloved Madiba has gone to the realm of his ancestors from where I hope he will continue to guide us.
His departure was not unexpected, in fact, it was more than timely, and even so, I feel bereft. What I feel is diminished, but so so grateful that he was such a strong part of my life.
There is nothing I can add to what has been said and written, and to what will continue to be said and written about Mandela. I want to write about his impact on me, from a totally personal and subjective view.  I cannot write this without honoring my parents.
My parents were born in South Africa. They raised us, their children, to be aware of the injustices of apartheid. Our eyes were opened from a young, tender, and impressionable age, and dictated all the future choices we made in our lives.
My parents belonged to a party called the Liberal Party, and their motto was "one man one vote." The party eventually has to disband when it became illegal for a party to represent people of every color that make up South Africa.My father was a lawyer, and at the dinner table he would quote from the speech Mandela gave in his defense at the Rivonia Trial. We listened to the trial on the radio and read about it in the Rand Daily Mail. Of course it became illegal for the media to quote or to read from anything written by Mandela. He became a non being, and if it weren't for my parents, I would have been quite unaware of him, or what he stood for. My dad also gave me the book "Let My People Go" by Chief Albert Luthuli. He told me about the African National Congress, then everything was banned - it was illegal to have these books or to read from them.  The fear of what the Government could do permeated our lives. Later, much later, I met Luthuli's daughter in Atlanta, but that is another story.
My parents met Mandela, and Oliver Thambo. They were both very impressed by Mandela, by his stature, intelligence, and compassion.
These were the people I heard about at the dinner table and in my home. I was made to understand that their struggle was for every South African, no matter their colour.
Eventually I chose to leave South Africa. Not too long after that my whole family left. One leaves one's country through choice, or because one has to flee, but it is there ones' roots remain no matter how hard we tried to uproot ourselves, and so we avidly followed the ongoing unfolding story of South Africa.
Madiba led the country through change and all South Africans felt better in the world, no longer pariahs. His influence spread over the entire planet. Indeed, we are all connected, over space and time. This is what his passing has made so clear to me, the eternal lesson. We are all interconnected. One man's death diminishes us all.
May we continue to live up to his legacy and to honour him and his teachings wherever we are in the world.

Vindication (sort of)

This ordeal sort of resolved just before I turned into a raving lunatic, gnashing my teeth, wailing, and tearing out my hair. It ended with me encamped in the Apple store on 4th Street in Berkeley refusing to ever leave again until my problems were sorted out - my tech problems, that is. In the end the smiling blue T-shirted genii won out!
My issues and problems  have been resolved for the most part although the battery is still being depleted swiftly on the iPhone. I have turned off every possible thing that may use too much battery time, short of turning off the phone itself and never using it!
Vindication sort of arrived when I read an article in the economics section of The New York Times in which the writer implied that Apple may be using planned obsolescence in the iPhones. Then this morning I heard someone on NPR talking about the battery problems many users are experiencing with the new upgrade. So …. not just me, but this has been such a lesson in the amount of time we spend with our technology, and how dependent we are on it.
We have made a pact with the devil folks, and there ain't no turning back.

Not Yet

It aint over til it's over

Cyber HELL

I know the particular hell I have been going through for the last couple of weeks is a hell that is probably unique to the first world, but I live in the first world and these problems that I will now describe have been excruciatingly exasperating and real to me.
I wonder how much of my entire life span is spent trying to solve technological problems. A substantial portion, I am afraid.
My most recent round of unproductive time began when I downloaded Apple's latest operating system - 7.0.2 or whatever it is. I tried to make an appointment on my iPhone's calendar and it didn't work as it had worked on the previous version. I scribbled my appointment on a piece of paper, stuffed it into my purse,  and continued on my way to work out at the local YMCA. The receptionist and I commiserated about our technological ineptitudes, then she asked to look at my phone to see whether she could figure it out. The two of us stood gazing blankly at the little screen waiting for something miraculous to occur when we pressed buttons - some miracle like an appointment appearing on the appropriate day at the appropriate time. It didn't happen, and we both shrugged despondently. At that moment a young personal trainer appeared - she said that she too, was not familiar with the new system, but could she take a look at my phone - she looked at the screen with an unfurrowed brow, touched something and there it was - perfect. She showed me what she did and all seemed fine. Until I returned home - both my iPad and my iPhone's batteries were completely depleted. Dark blank screens. This had never before happened, and never in the space of two hours. I charged both my devices. When I removed the charger, I could visibly see the battery being depleted as I stared at the screen - 100% and going down, very fast, even though I had not even used the damned devices.
I turned of bluetooth, face time, I disabled location services - I basically turned off everything there was to turn off, and still, the batteries went down down down in an alarmingly short time.
I called apl-care and a young man (I presume he was a young man) explained how to get rid of open apps, by sliding them upward on the screen (different than before.) He assured me this would help - it did not. Basically I could use both devices while they were being charged, which made no practical sense. I do not walk around with electric chargers on my being.
I called apl-care again. This time a young woman informed me that they had many people reporting problems with this new system, luckily for me the new upgrade 7.0.3, had just come out and it addressed all these problems. I should download the brand new upgrade, and wait for 24 hours to see if things were better. If not, I should call back again, and she gave me a case number.
Maybe it it pointless, but I will add at this juncture, that these phone calls take a long time. Nothing is shorter than an hour.
I waited 24 hours, down went the batteries, maybe even faster than before - I called and after trouble shooting, turning off apps, adding apps, enabling and disabling everything that could be enabled and disabled, the young man gave me another case number but this time said I should take my devices into the Apple store.
I made an appointment at the genius bar, and the young pleasant genius did everything I had done many times, by now. He then performed a diagnostics tests and looked at the results on his device, and informed me I had a software problem, not hardware. They would have to totally clean out my devices and then restore them as new. So, he did this with my iPad - again, this appointment took a couple of hours. He told me to take my iPad back home and manually restore everything, and I did this. Again, this does not happen in an instant, and I had dinner to prepare. He also told me to perform the same cleaning out procedure  on my phone but first I was to upload photos that were just on my phone to my laptop, and then clean out the phone. Well, the next day when I connected the phone to iTunes it did not recognize my phone at all. On to my landline again, I called apl-care and the man who answered told me it was really lucky I had got him on the phone because he can help me solve this problem. Again, painstakingly, we went through every single procedure I had done before. We then checked my USB ports (I knew they were fine) and my cable, and as far as I know, everything single application and everything I had ever stored on my computer for the past 20 years. He was devastated - nothing was wrong with the phone except for this battery problem and still iTunes was not recognizing my device. He then put me through to his supervisor (I sat through several Beatles' songs). She - a she, and I went through all these procedures yet again. She then made another appointment for me at the Apple store. She apologized profusely and thanked me for my patience and understanding, and gave me a case number and a direct line to call her should I need.
Two days later I went back to the Apple store and a very pleasant blue-haired young lady and myself went through everything again, including the diagnostics test. Apparently some people had incipient software problems that came to light with this new operating system. Whatever, my phone was again cleaned out and restored - photos are back on, apps are running, and for the last two hours the phone has held its charge.
I am just NOT going to hook it up to my laptop to see whether iTunes recognizes it or not.
I am now trying to catch up with the rest of my life that was put on hold -
In other words, I hope I am emerging from my cyber hell somewhat intact and retaining at least some shreds of sanity so that I can continue functioning in the first world.

Desert Sands

The flurries of the snow globe have been replaced by desert sands. In Israel it is difficult to even imagine snow, but the flurries continue, with possibility a gradual settling down, but as yet, no clear visibility!
Despite fears of an attack on Syria and global repercussions, it proved to be a truly wonderful time in Israel. We had a glorious family reunion with cousins/sisters from South Africa, and together we travelled over Israel. it is such fun to experience it as a tourist, albeit, for me, a tourist with deep and entrenched roots.
It is 40 years since the Yom Kipur War - that terrible war that changed our lives forever. I went to the kibbutz, and spent time with my abiding friends. After 40 years I see how the pen of time has etched its markings on myself and those around me. It is as if that invisible, but constant presence of the  pen has etched deeper lines into peoples' faces, it has carved out hollows and lessened the angularities and planes of our faces and bodies. It has sketched a different color into our hair and removed the hair of some, and yet the essential being of everyone I know and love remains constant, just with some superimpositions! In fact, it is how things should be, ever changing, and yet built on a firm foundation.
And now I have returned to face whatever is here. Yesterday when I visited the program at work one of the little boys sank his sharp razor like little teeth into my right forearm, puncturing my flesh and drawing blood. I can only hope that this is not a foreshadowing of what the future holds!

The Snow Globe continues

I am still floating around, waiting to make sense of whatever these big changes are. At the same time I am seeing new kids, and getting ready to say goodbye to two 'old' ones who will soon be turning three! That is alway hard, when I have been with them for almost three years. I have been privy to most of their lives, and have watched them grow and change. I also get to know the families really well and have shared many special moments with them, and then, goodbye!  (A repetitive pattern in my life as well)

Just after the new year, I leave for Israel. I leave on a Friday so I will travel, hopefully, with 'normal' folks who will not be up to pray at different times during the flight. (Read my blog entry: Strange Flights.)

Of course the situation in the Middle East leaves much to be desired! I can only pray for a good family reunion.

So ... more later, maybe from Israel, maybe not

Snow Globe

I feel as if I am in a snow globe and some unseen hand has shaken it up, and I float around, without gravity, without a center - upside down, on my side, head up, head down. The flakes surround me and I cannot see any horizon. I cannot see any settling of these flakes, and each moment, each day, brings a renewed shaking.
This is, for me, a time of many changes, on the personal and professional level. the only thing I am able to do, at this time, is to honor the process, as difficult as it is.
It is for this reason, that I have not written new posts. All my psychic energy is taken up with momentum caused by the shaking of the globe - from time to time I experience gratitude, in spending time with friends, in the enjoyment of books, in walks in nature, in the rebuilding of my physical strength and the healing of my hand.
And so I drift and float, and hope for glimpses of clarity until the flakes eventually settle.