January 11, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-10

Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...

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Into the Memory Crypt

I tell my Hebrew teacher about seeing Wings of Desire. In speaking about it, I find German words popping up within my Hebrew sentences. Maybe a bucket in my head marked "Not English" holds everything in any other language.

It's been some fifty years since I studied German in high school. The syntax sticks with me. I'm reminded of something from Mark Twain's "The Awful German Language,"¹ and go looking for it. The sentence that I seem to remember isn't there.

(Later, I find it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: "Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth."²)

Other sentences from my beginning German pop up unbidden from my memory. "Ist Jochen zu Hause?" "Ich trinke Limonade gern!" And I've probably gotten them wrong. Umlauts are required when you least expect them.

Typing those sentences, I flash on the memory of a friend who was in my class, who used to quote those sentences as punch lines to jokes that I no longer recall. He died suddenly during the school year, possibly a suicide. We were never told exactly what happened. We were members of the Chess Club. For some reason, it merged with the Military Tactical Strategies Club. I was the treasurer. He was the president. When he died, I succeeded him. The club quickly broke up. I didn't know anything about being a president. Or a treasurer. Or about military strategy and tactics. And I was never any good at chess.

On a whim, I google his name. A lot of other people have it. I wonder which of them he would have grown up to be.

The Story on the Journalists

The story on the two journalists killed in an airstrike on their car across the border keeps shifting. At first, we were told that they had been in a car along with a terrorist who was operating a drone.³ Then, our Army spokesperson said that they were operating the drone themselves, as part of their reporting.⁴ Now we hear that they were both card-carrying members of terrorist groups.⁵

Lessons Learned

The Army is proceeding with their investigation into what went wrong in the lead-up to the war. In a characteristically excellent Op-Ed in the New York Times, Zeynep Tufekci looks at America's National Transportation and Safety Board as a model for how this kind of thing can be done well. (The link has no paywall.)⁶ A key factor is that the NTSB doesn't directly look to prosecute whoever was responsible. The important thing is to learn precisely what happened, so they can keep it from happening again.

I heard a story somewhere sometime in the past few decades: A recent hire for a small business made a decision that didn't work out. It cost them a lot to fix. He went into the boss's office and tendered his resignation. The boss tore it up. "It just cost us thousands of dollars for you to learn how this stuff works. You think we're just going to throw away that investment?"

On many of the best work teams I've been in, large projects are quickly followed by "Lessons Learned" sessions. We would examine and talk through what worked well and what didn't. (My friend Matt Davis, whose LinkedIn lists his title as "Learning from Incidents Specialist," is probably the expert in these kinds of things.)⁷

Hometown Pride

A new survey by our Central Bureau of Statistics looks at the quality of life in eighteen cities here. My town ranks as fifth. Yay.⁸ It says that we're first in "resident satisfation" among the large cities.⁹ Our median income is quite good. Mine isn't nearly that high, but I'm a single guy in a small apartment on the less fancy side of town, so I'm not complaining.

On the other hand, our cost of living is quite high. According to an official auditor's report, food is 51% more expensive here than the average in Europe.¹⁰ And the survey was done before the war.

Much of it was due to importers' massive profit margins. And imported items might get even more expensive, since companies are getting cold feet about sending their ships here via the Red Sea, where the Houthis are shooting at them.¹¹

The city has announced some new cool projects. What Google Translate calls a "multipurpose functional ninja facility"¹² is opening near the shore, in the rich part of town. It sounds like it has a lot of significant equipment. I have no idea what they're describing. A relative who is into fitness now lives a short walk from there, so I'll probably hear more.

The city is also opening a "Pride House" for the LGBTQ+ community in our Industrial Zone¹³ (which is no longer industrial but hosts a lot of the high-tech businesses). They announced it at the "LGBT in Battle" conference at the Cinematheque. The city's CEO says (according to Google Translate):

"The Pride House will be a safe space for companies and community members and together we will create various activities and experiences. Social events, enrichment lectures and classes, counseling in a variety of relevant fields such as health, adoption, parenting, proud youth, third age and more."

The Twins, Again

A lot has been happening with respect to the LGBTQ+ community in the Army and in the courts.¹⁴ The same nabobs who have been shouting down people at cabinet meetings, threatening anyone they can with anything they can, and generally trying to make life miserable for anyone but their core extremists, have been fighting these rights, too.

But the High Court has now told one of them, who somehow became our National Security Minister, that he can't give orders to police forces, no matter what his title is.¹⁵

And a respected advocacy group has released a report saying that the Finance Ministry, led by the other troublemaker, poses a “frontal attack on the environment and the public.”¹⁶

Hmm. I thought there wasn't much to talk about today. I haven't even gotten to the music stories. I would tell you to tune in to MTV News, but they don't exist anymore. Oops.

Halfway Through Desire

At the end of the day, I head out of work and go straight home. I get there before the rainstorms start.

I eat a quick supper, then sit down to watch Wings of Desire again. It's even better when I know what the voices are saying. I get about halfway through, then stop to finish writing this. It's after midnight now, but the weekend's coming. Maybe I'll catch the rest of it then.

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Here’s an archive of past newsletters.

You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.

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L'hitraot.