Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Cats of Thornwood

Cats of Thornwood

A few years after we settled in Palo Alto… Susanne, a friend of Orit, told us that a friend of hers had a cat who just gave birth to a litter of kitties and offered us one… To our surprise she brought two cats asking us to keep one for a couple of days… because she was going away for the week-end… but clearly she had forgotten about the kitty because she showed up two weeks later to pick up “her” cat… by then the little kitties were so happy together that we refused to give her one… We then named the kitties Tofu and Kudzu and set up a basket for them to sleep in our garage…

Even though they were brothers the kitties developed their own personalities… they both loved to cuddle with the kids in front of television… Kudzu loved rubbing his head under whoever’s hand… as if to say rub my head… I love it when you do that… outdoors Kudzu would go and find a leaf that looked like a hockey stick put it in his mouth and run with it as fast as he could… he had disappeared for a while… maybe he went to Canada and played hockey… or maybe he went to Hollywood and act in the movies… Gal thought she saw him on UCLA campus…
Tofu on the other hand was into soccer… we had an apple tree in our back yard and when spring came and some small apples fell from the tree Tofu was there playing with the apples like a soccer player…

One day a couple of years later… one of my neighbors… three houses down… informed me that Kudzu showed up in his doorstep… and they kinda adopted him… I saw Kudzu sporadically but he always escaped when I called him… Until I was informed that Kudzu had a lump growing in the back of his head… so I took him to the Vet… we found out that he had a tumor growing… without any pain said the Vet… but if it grows again the cat will have lots of pain… and should be put to sleep…
Kudzu lived for a few months… with the same routine… living at the neighbor’s… then one day I found Kudzu in the basket… which was there since they were baby kitties… at first I thought it was Tofu and I said “Tofu what are you doing in the basket…“ Kudzu looked up at me and meeawd to me… I then saw that his tumor grew so much that it was hurting him… He had simply come home to die… we took him to the Vet… and buried him in our back yard… and even though he was covered with a cloth… Tofu was there …and stayed close by for days… It looked like he had lost the spark of life…

Then Sharon brought home a black kitty… which we called Calvin… he was a very dynamic little kitty… always jumping on Tofu as if to say…come on bro… let’s play… and slowly Tofu found his spark for life again…

A friend of Sharon, Jenny W had received a kitty for her birthday… but her mother refused it… so I was asked to keep it… I accepted on condition that Sharon takes responsibility for it… she was called Kimmy by Mrs. Williams… our next door neighbor and animal lover…
It turned out that Kimmy fell in love with Paddington a big cat living one house down from the Williams’… but Calvin too was in love with Kimmy… and periodically he got into fights with Paddington… some of these fights were very rough and I had to take Calvin to the Vet for antibiotic shots…

Tofu was loosing weight so we brought him to the Vet and found out that he had Thyroid… and needed to take a pill every day… Luckily Mrs. Williams volunteered to do it… We called various Pharmacies to compare prices and found one… so I brought the prescription… They entered the data in their computer…
First name Tofu
Last name Adam
Sex Male
Date of birth Cat
I told the pharmacist… Cats have nine lives… which one do you want…

Tofu lived a few more years… then on a Xmas day Gal found Tofu dead in the garage… so we buried him next to his brother Kudzu…

Monday, November 3, 2008

Calvin

Calvin

Calvin and the stupid drugs

If someone is to take credit for coining the term “Drugs are Stupid” it is most certainly Calvin… It was me who stupidly laid alone in bed… reaching for my pipe in the drawer of my night stand… looking for nirvana…
As soon as Calvin smelled the dope he would close the night stand drawer and say “Drugs are stupid… stop it”… but the stupid was me who refused to listen to my beloved Calvin…

Eventually… I moved and Calvin escaped away… I hope he found a decent home to live in… As my daughter Sharon says… he is such a loving cat that he most certainly found a family to adopt him…

Yes Calvin was my cat… and he was using his tail to push closed the night stand drawer… It was me…the human being (?) who was too stupid to realize that Calvin loved me and was trying to give me a message…

A message I was too stupid to realize…

Drugs are Stupid

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Nationalism and Economics

Nationalism and Economics

“Nationalism belongs to a soccer field…” I’ve been saying this for years, and I still believe it, vehemently… other than in a soccer field, or any kind of sports arena, the concept of rooting for national team, or its flag should be limited to the sporting event…
Having lived around (in seven countries on four continents)… gave me a cosmopolitan upbringing, which in turn made me view the world as a whole, as opposed to a multitude of, sometimes bellicose, nations.
Now, having said that… what does all this have to do with Economics…
Looking or listening to the various pundits it appears that we continue sliding into a recession (everyone is afraid to use the “D” word), and all we could come up is giving money to the banks so they can “lend it” to tax paying citizens… who will be further in debt to the banks…
It sounds like what we have is a banking problem… and it appears that it is the bankers who created these problems… while enriching themselves…
Then why do we have to be the ones that suffer… In the meantime let us “Play Ball”


Friends 6

Friends 6


Gunnar J… I saw Gunnar recently, he had come to the Bay Area for his son’s wedding… both my daughters say that he looks like Popeye…. He is a very jovial person… and I always enjoyed our periodic lunches at The Fish Market…. He currently alternates between Paris and Southern Sweden… Where he is growing grapes for his wine making… Wine in Sweden… sounds like cows in Berkeley…. Moooo…


Karina A… Karina is Gal’s best friend… They are inseparable since elementary school… when Karina’s mom gave her daughter Caviar for snack… while Gal’s mom gave her Pate and Spanacopita… a bit different from the peanut butter and jelly sandwich the other kids had…
Today Karina has two kids… a daughter Jette who is the same age than Dahlia… and a son Sirrus who is one year younger… when I see them playing together it reminds me of their mothers playing together for hours… She is another daughter to me…
I love you Karina


Bisser D… Before meeting Bisser, my knowledge of Eastern Europe was very limited… I had been to Yugoslavia once for three days… and spent a weekend in Budapest… I was ignorant on Eastern European business practices… Bisser is Bulgarian…when I had a chance to visit that country I was struck by the lack of products for sale in the shops… the poverty in the heart of Europe was striking…
Bisser epitomizes the Eastern European businessman… charming, autocratic, hard working and a lust for power and the control of power…