About 20 years ago I wrote an occasional column for the Australian Jewish News. Do you know how long ago that was? It was so long ago, email wasn't invented. I did have a computer though, and a printer, so I would print out the hard copy and take it to the AJN office myself.
It was about the stuff that is now so common place, it's a total yawn, unless it's really, really well done. About life and things that happened and my philosophies and my family and my experiences as a mother and wife- a lot like this blog actually.
After a few years, a new editor came who knew not Joseph, and some of my hand-delivered columns just kind of disappeared. And I got the hint. I also was doing a bit of what I laughingly call 'stand-up'. Yes, it involved being funny in front of an audience with a microphone in my hand; but it was always for some sort of Jewish benefit or charity or something, and of course I never got paid or anything like that. And my children mock me when I say 'When I did stand-up yada yada' so I don't seriously think I really did stand-up comedy. Even though I was. Standing up. In front of an audience. With a mike. Being funny. I have no pretensions.
Anyway, it turned out that all the stuff I was writing to service this non-stand-up I was doing meant that I couldn't really publish any of it because then, everyone would know what I was going to say, and then they would be bored, and maybe heckle, and, I don't know, maybe I would have said something spontaneously angry, who knows, or worse, said something stupid and boring. So I didn't try to publish any of my possibly humorous observations of life.
And then, well, things happened in my life which I won't go into, and it was like suddenly my sense of humour just disappeared. Poof. There was nothing there. So it was a career that spanned but a few years. In the city of Melbourne. For the Jews, mainly. Lucky I was only an amateur, and that my real training is in Medicine, hey?
But right from the beginning, right from the first by-line in the AJN, I realized that I had made a colossal mistake. I had not published anonymously. I had not taken a nom-de-plume.
Because when you put anything out there, and you put your name to it, then everything you say is meticulously examined by everyone who knows you and every member of your extended family, and everyone has something to say about it. This is incredibly inhibiting to the creative spirit. It is like walking around while constantly looking over your shoulder; you can't see the path ahead. You live in a mild state of paranoia. You have to have the skin of a rhinoceros. And on top of everything, Melbourne is a shtetl, so that even people who don't know you know someone who might know you.
Once my name was out there, I represented my family, my kids, my shul, my kids' schools, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox women, etc etc etc and I had to watch every word that I wrote and said for fear of bringing it all into disrepute.
It's not just a matter of being thin-skinned; I'm not THAT delicate. It's like the superheroes' secret identity; the anonymity protects others. Who then have to bear the brunt of someone's reaction to something I said or wrote. And the other thing is that I have to live in this town. And the comments can be wearing.
SO. History is now repeating itself, as it will for those who have not learned the lessons of history. I did not publish this blog anonymously- though I don't know if I could have anyway- and here we go again. People getting upset. People getting offended. People basically projecting their own crap on what I write, and getting offended over that too. People making negative comments to my friends and family. And you know what? Screw it. Maybe Joan Rivers could deal with that, and more, times a million, but I can't, and I'm no Joan Rivers.
This is the 100th published post on my Doctor Booba blog, and right now I think it will be the last one.
So long from the Booba, nice knowing you, my faithful 17 followers. It looks like Melbourne hasn't grown much in the last 20 years.
I might write again if the demon possesses me, but for now, peace, out.
Tuesday 27 August 2013
Sunday 25 August 2013
RULES OF THE KOSHER KITCHEN
In case you have been wondering where I've been (as if) over the last few weeks, I've been upsetting people and having to take down posts. I've been feeling a bit beleaguered.
My most recent effort was my comment on My Kosher Kitchen Rules (MKKR), a program based on the TV show My Kitchen Rules (duh), which I have never watched, but I do believe that it is quite popular. I've never watched Masterchef either but I get the gist of it.
(As an aside, we are entirely too interested in food. I mean, I am very interested on a personal level, and I think we need to get back to basics and stop eating crap because we are all too fat and more so are kids. I have never seen so many obese children in my life; just look at a school letting out at hometime. Back in the day, I was The Fat Kid in my class for most of my school life. OK, small school, but still, maybe 2% of the kids were fat. Now 20%-30% are properly fat, not talking about so-called 'puppy fat'. And my mother was fat and my brother was fat, and clearly there was some tendency there. Now I see, not only fat kids with fat parents, but even with slim parents. The culprits are convenience foods and snacks and excessive screen time as well as parental paranoia about letting children walk to school, and it's a toxic mix. And let me tell you, it's all very habit-forming, the non-hungry eating of energy-dense foods, and the unwillingness to get up and move your fat butt. It takes huge effort to change these habits once a child has learned this sort of behaviour. (Believe me, I know from bitter personal experience.) And you have to be very delicate about it because, along with skyrocketing obesity, we see the flip-side; eating disorders, aka anorexia and bulimia and all sorts of shades of disordered eating. Anyway, now pizza has inserted itself into our culture, not as a special treat but as a legitimate meal on a weekday. If you're going to give your kid pizza for dinner, for G-d's sake, at least put out a range of cut-up fresh veggies on a platter, with some hummus or tahini dip or something if you have to, and also learn how to make your own pizza, which is NOT a big deal.
This post is turning into something else entirely. The whole thing is a digression.
What I really wanted to say was that the cultural obsession with food and sport makes me think of the decline of the Roman Empire, bread and circuses and all that.)
OK, back to MKKR. I can't comment on what my post was because people will get upset all over again, and then I'll have to take it down again yada yada. I will say, I think there was an over-reaction to my spoiler, and I won't apologise because nobody actually contacted me to complain, they merely threatened another person who was involved. Guys, if you have something to say to me, please just say it to me, OK? Then we can talk. I will also say the old maxim: ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY. More than one person has told me that they looked at the MKKR website only because of my blog post, by the way. So I hope you all unknotted your knickers. Because now, I will critique.
I have watched the You-Tube programs - intro, Episodes 1,2&3- and I'm happy to say I think that it's very well done. It's lots of fun to watch. The production values are good. The characters are all entertaining. I would like to hear more of David Trakhtman because clearly he really knows what he is talking about (and I am in 100% agreement that bok choy and strawberries do NOT go together!). And YES, back to basics, we need to know how to minimise our use of processed food, how to cook fresh from simple, natural ingredients. For the sake of our health and our families' health.
MKKR is a fun program and it's for a good cause and you should have a look at it.
What, were you expecting some sort of vitriol from Doctor Booba? Sorry to disappoint. That's not the Booba's style. Enjoy! That's the main rule of the kosher kitchen. Which rules. Just enjoy.
My most recent effort was my comment on My Kosher Kitchen Rules (MKKR), a program based on the TV show My Kitchen Rules (duh), which I have never watched, but I do believe that it is quite popular. I've never watched Masterchef either but I get the gist of it.
(As an aside, we are entirely too interested in food. I mean, I am very interested on a personal level, and I think we need to get back to basics and stop eating crap because we are all too fat and more so are kids. I have never seen so many obese children in my life; just look at a school letting out at hometime. Back in the day, I was The Fat Kid in my class for most of my school life. OK, small school, but still, maybe 2% of the kids were fat. Now 20%-30% are properly fat, not talking about so-called 'puppy fat'. And my mother was fat and my brother was fat, and clearly there was some tendency there. Now I see, not only fat kids with fat parents, but even with slim parents. The culprits are convenience foods and snacks and excessive screen time as well as parental paranoia about letting children walk to school, and it's a toxic mix. And let me tell you, it's all very habit-forming, the non-hungry eating of energy-dense foods, and the unwillingness to get up and move your fat butt. It takes huge effort to change these habits once a child has learned this sort of behaviour. (Believe me, I know from bitter personal experience.) And you have to be very delicate about it because, along with skyrocketing obesity, we see the flip-side; eating disorders, aka anorexia and bulimia and all sorts of shades of disordered eating. Anyway, now pizza has inserted itself into our culture, not as a special treat but as a legitimate meal on a weekday. If you're going to give your kid pizza for dinner, for G-d's sake, at least put out a range of cut-up fresh veggies on a platter, with some hummus or tahini dip or something if you have to, and also learn how to make your own pizza, which is NOT a big deal.
This post is turning into something else entirely. The whole thing is a digression.
What I really wanted to say was that the cultural obsession with food and sport makes me think of the decline of the Roman Empire, bread and circuses and all that.)
OK, back to MKKR. I can't comment on what my post was because people will get upset all over again, and then I'll have to take it down again yada yada. I will say, I think there was an over-reaction to my spoiler, and I won't apologise because nobody actually contacted me to complain, they merely threatened another person who was involved. Guys, if you have something to say to me, please just say it to me, OK? Then we can talk. I will also say the old maxim: ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY. More than one person has told me that they looked at the MKKR website only because of my blog post, by the way. So I hope you all unknotted your knickers. Because now, I will critique.
I have watched the You-Tube programs - intro, Episodes 1,2&3- and I'm happy to say I think that it's very well done. It's lots of fun to watch. The production values are good. The characters are all entertaining. I would like to hear more of David Trakhtman because clearly he really knows what he is talking about (and I am in 100% agreement that bok choy and strawberries do NOT go together!). And YES, back to basics, we need to know how to minimise our use of processed food, how to cook fresh from simple, natural ingredients. For the sake of our health and our families' health.
MKKR is a fun program and it's for a good cause and you should have a look at it.
What, were you expecting some sort of vitriol from Doctor Booba? Sorry to disappoint. That's not the Booba's style. Enjoy! That's the main rule of the kosher kitchen. Which rules. Just enjoy.
BAD GRANNY?
I did a terrible thing last week. I violated the sacred trust of Booba-dom. I said I would come to Grandparents' Day at the kinder to watch my 4 year-old granddaughter do stuff, sitting with her at little tables, jostling the other adults, and fingerpainting and making collage cardboard picture frames (for the photo of the two of us taken by the teacher- I've been to a lot of these.). Last Wednesday, 9.30am till 10.45, as usual. But this time, work got in the way and I just wasn't able to make it. It was also too late to ask anybody else; you see, my husband works and my mother-in-law, who would have filled in, was ill.
I confided in a fellow medico at work; I made a clean breast (sorry) of my sin. And she, mother of 3 young children, said to me:
'Do you know how many times my parents came to these things at my kids' school? ZERO. Not once. They were working. Life is full of many kinds of disappointments and this is just a little one. It will make your granddaughter able to face worse disappointment later in life.'
I said, 'That sounds like the Nietzschian school of child raising: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I don't know about that, she's only 4.'
'She'll get over it.'
'But will I?'
So it turns out that she was the ONLY ONE who had nobody there with her. Her cousin had 4 grandparents. FOUR. Doesn't anybody work? I work part-time and I've been able to attend - until now-unless I've been overseas (VISITING OTHER GRANDCHILDREN I might add). My husband works long hours but has in some cases been able to attend. Of course, when things are on public holidays, there is a far better chance that the dads and granddads can attend; but this was mid-week on a normal work day. So the assumption is that the Grandmas are all unemployed, and clearly the assumption is correct.
Well, it's been like ripples in a pond. It's the butterfly wing flap that causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. After the first text message, I apologized and thought that that was the end of it. But it seems that someone at the kinder made a rather snide remark concerning my daughter-in-law's priorities and that she didn't care enough about her child to remember to tell me. Apart from the fact that this is absolutely untrue in all respects, and very mean and rude, and very unprofessional of the person to say this to someone I know (surely everyone knows each other in that group, so it is only to be expected that whatever anyone says will get back to me), I mean, GIVE ME A BREAK. This is yet another chapter of the Mommy Wars, isn't it? This need to feel that one's own parenting is so much better than another's, as if there is a brass ring that the mommies are trying to grab. As if there is some mythic scale of perfection that only the select few can achieve, and anything less than this makes you beneath contempt as a parent.
I also detect a little schadenfreud there too, where the perceived failure of a mommy makes the other mommies feel better about their own lack of perfection.
Well, ladies, I've got news. Perfection and control are illusions. There is no such thing in child-rearing. And if there was, I mean if there really was a perfect mother out there, who never got angry or never got hassled or never forgot to get the kids' clothes ready the night before, or was feeling sick, or gave her kids mac and cheese for dinner 3 nights in a row, or whatever- then what sort of namby-pamby kids would that mother have? Or kids eaten by anxiety anytime something doesn't go to plan. Or kids who fly into a rage when they don't get what they think is their perfect right.
There's no such thing as a perfect mother. Or a perfect grandmother. There is the 'Good enough' mother and grandmother, and human. There's only life and the challenges it throws at us. Sometimes we catch the ball and sometimes we drop the ball. And maybe my doctor friend hit the nail on the head with her slightly harsh take on life and its disappointments.
So the kid has forgotten about it and moved on, but the mommies are still sniping and seething; if not about this, then something else.
What will it take for mommies to quit this behaviour? A little understanding. The expression is Melamed Zchus, see the good side first, show some compassion. After all, sooner or later YOU will be needing someone else's understanding and compassion.
Chodesh Ellul. Not that I particularly want to be preachy about it all, but Jeez, lay off of each other! And me. Seriously.
Ksiva ve chasima tova.
I confided in a fellow medico at work; I made a clean breast (sorry) of my sin. And she, mother of 3 young children, said to me:
'Do you know how many times my parents came to these things at my kids' school? ZERO. Not once. They were working. Life is full of many kinds of disappointments and this is just a little one. It will make your granddaughter able to face worse disappointment later in life.'
I said, 'That sounds like the Nietzschian school of child raising: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I don't know about that, she's only 4.'
'She'll get over it.'
'But will I?'
So it turns out that she was the ONLY ONE who had nobody there with her. Her cousin had 4 grandparents. FOUR. Doesn't anybody work? I work part-time and I've been able to attend - until now-unless I've been overseas (VISITING OTHER GRANDCHILDREN I might add). My husband works long hours but has in some cases been able to attend. Of course, when things are on public holidays, there is a far better chance that the dads and granddads can attend; but this was mid-week on a normal work day. So the assumption is that the Grandmas are all unemployed, and clearly the assumption is correct.
Well, it's been like ripples in a pond. It's the butterfly wing flap that causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. After the first text message, I apologized and thought that that was the end of it. But it seems that someone at the kinder made a rather snide remark concerning my daughter-in-law's priorities and that she didn't care enough about her child to remember to tell me. Apart from the fact that this is absolutely untrue in all respects, and very mean and rude, and very unprofessional of the person to say this to someone I know (surely everyone knows each other in that group, so it is only to be expected that whatever anyone says will get back to me), I mean, GIVE ME A BREAK. This is yet another chapter of the Mommy Wars, isn't it? This need to feel that one's own parenting is so much better than another's, as if there is a brass ring that the mommies are trying to grab. As if there is some mythic scale of perfection that only the select few can achieve, and anything less than this makes you beneath contempt as a parent.
I also detect a little schadenfreud there too, where the perceived failure of a mommy makes the other mommies feel better about their own lack of perfection.
Well, ladies, I've got news. Perfection and control are illusions. There is no such thing in child-rearing. And if there was, I mean if there really was a perfect mother out there, who never got angry or never got hassled or never forgot to get the kids' clothes ready the night before, or was feeling sick, or gave her kids mac and cheese for dinner 3 nights in a row, or whatever- then what sort of namby-pamby kids would that mother have? Or kids eaten by anxiety anytime something doesn't go to plan. Or kids who fly into a rage when they don't get what they think is their perfect right.
There's no such thing as a perfect mother. Or a perfect grandmother. There is the 'Good enough' mother and grandmother, and human. There's only life and the challenges it throws at us. Sometimes we catch the ball and sometimes we drop the ball. And maybe my doctor friend hit the nail on the head with her slightly harsh take on life and its disappointments.
So the kid has forgotten about it and moved on, but the mommies are still sniping and seething; if not about this, then something else.
What will it take for mommies to quit this behaviour? A little understanding. The expression is Melamed Zchus, see the good side first, show some compassion. After all, sooner or later YOU will be needing someone else's understanding and compassion.
Chodesh Ellul. Not that I particularly want to be preachy about it all, but Jeez, lay off of each other! And me. Seriously.
Ksiva ve chasima tova.
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