Saturday, August 31, 2024

I Remember

I remember a life in Tahiti.

I remember being a teenager in Tahiti.

It's a good memory.

Je me souviens d'une vie à Tahiti.

Je me souviens d'avoir été adolescente à Tahiti.

C'est un bon souvenir.

Te haamana'o nei au i te hoê oraraa i Tahiti.

Te haamana'o nei au i to ' u taurearearaa i Tahiti.

E haamana'oraa maitai te reira.

Friday, August 23, 2024

Monday, August 19, 2024

Sunday, August 18, 2024

Friday, August 16, 2024

A Few of Sandy's Recipes

Translation: Crock Pot Chicken with Orange Sauce

Put in pot: garlic, little oil + salt

chicken dredged in flour

1 can mushrooms with juice

1/2 Cup orange Tang

Layer ingredients in crock pot

or baking dish in above order.

Cover and bake in 350 degree oven

for 1 hour or cook in crock pot

Sandy, in our kitchen in Atlántida. Photo courtesy of Nancy Baker.

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Fragments

Walks on the beach,

nights by the fire,

the pictures you painted,

the words that you spoke,

the towels that you chose,

handmade birthday cards,

the last earrings you wore,

your wedding band

on my right hand--

I'm not talking about

a sample of your ashes,

though I have that too,

but all these things

are fragments of you.

Parque del Plata, Uruguay,

August 14, 2024

Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Friday, August 9, 2024

Sunday, August 4, 2024

The Sheep Who Have Strayed from the House of Israel

בארצות הגוים אל תלכו ובערי השמרונים אל תבואו׃

לכו לצאן אשר נדחו מבית ישראל׃

Mt. 10:5,6 (in Shem Tob's Hebrew Matthew)

"To the lands of the Gentiles do not go and into the cities of the Samaritans do not enter. Go to the sheep who have strayed from the house of Israel." (Translation by Professor George Howard.)

Who are those "sheep who have strayed?" My friend Yakov told me that he thought I was one of them. But how could this be? Yakov well knew that, in spite of certain genetics on my father's side, I had been raised as a Catholic. Apparently, it's more complicated than that. Apparently, "the sheep who have strayed" is a category whose boundaries are wider than this life. So my friend Yakov thought.

So Yakov held an extraordinary opinion, He was also an extraordinary person. Reb Yakov Leib HaKohain (the poet L. G. Corey) could have been just another gay poet hanging out in Sausalito. Instead, he reached back into his ancestry and became who he really was: Yakov Leib. This was no distortion of the truth; it was a revelation of the truth. The Leib name was ancestral, as were the kohanim. He was not a Rabbi (he used "Reb" much as an honorary "Col." has been used in the South), but he would have made a good one, had his life followed a different path.

L. G. Corey was not bound by the circumstances of his birth. Apparently, the world does not get to tell us who we are. Apparently we have to search deep inside and decide it for ourselves.

Like Yakov, I write poetry. Like Yakov, I have studied (and even practiced) different religious traditions. Like Yakov, my deep-rooted spiritual home is Judaism. Like Yakov, I will tell the world who I am.

Donald Jacobson Traxler

Saturday, August 3, 2024

Aging Project XCIX (c)

Aging Project XCIX

Aging Project XCIX 81.88 years

The weather here in Uruguay has been so strange that we really don't know how to dress for it. Bear in mind that August in the Southern Hemisphere is equivalent to Northern February. We should be freezing our butts off (which I've tried to indicate by the "gorro" on my head), but yesterday, instead, I was sunbathing. I must say, I much prefer the latter. It seems to me that, as we age, we tolerate cold less well. I'm guessing that this is due to poorer circulation.

Friday, August 2, 2024

Sunbathing in Winter

I live in the Southern Hemisphere. Southern August is equivalent to Northern February. But this is no ordinary winter, here in Uruguay. We normally get a "veranillo" (Indian summer) in July. But this one started in June, was on-and-off through July, and now is still going strong in August. When I got up this morning, the temperature outside was 68F/20C. A few hours later, it was 78F/27C. In the afternoon it reached a high of 64F/28C. Everyone is talking about how abnormal and unpredictable this winter is. Yesterday I took the bus into Atlántida for some shopping, and all the young people were wearing shorts and tank tops, things they would normally wear in the summer (which starts in November/December here.

The culprit seems to be strong winds (today 24-33 mph) from the North, from Paraguay and interior Brazil. Now we know why indigenous people in those areas traditionally wear very few clothes. Centuries or millennia of experience have taught them what works best. As a naturist/nudist, I have learned it for myself, avoiding the rashes that I get from high temperatures combined with high humidity.

Anyway, this was a rare opportunity to get some sunbathing in, so of course I did. It was very pleasant and relaxing.

Thursday, August 1, 2024

Psalm 92:13-14 Justus ut palma florebit

Psalm 92 (listed as 91 in the Vulgate and LXX)

13 Justus ut palma florebit

sicut cedrus Libani multiplicabitur [in domo Domini.]

Actually, "in domo Domini" should be part of verse 14. How can I know this?

I can know it because of the importance of parallelism in all Semitic literature, especially poetry.

Let's take a look at the Hebrew:

צַדִּיק כַּתָמָר יִפְרָח

כְּאֶרֶז בַלְבָנוֹן יִשְׂגֶּה׃

שְׁתוּלִים בְּבֵית יְהָוה

בְּחַצְרוֹת אֱלֹהֵינוּ יַפְרִיחוּ׃

Here I have shown the two half-verses of verse 13, followed by the two half-verses of verse 14. In each of the two cases, the two half-verses form a parallelism. But that is only true as long as "in the house of the Lord" is part of verse 14. Here is the translation, from my JPS Tanakh:

13 The righteous bloom like a date-palm;

they thrive like a cedar in Lebanon;

14 planted in the house of the Lord,

they flourish in the courts of our God.

In verse 13, bloom/palm is perfectly mirrored by thrive/cedar. In verse 14, planted/in the house of the Lord is mirrored by flourish/in the courts of our God. Thus, verse 13 contains a parallelism, as does verse 14. But the parallelism in verse 14 is disrupted if you move the phrase "in the house of the Lord" into verse 13, as was done in the Vulgate.

And that's how I know that the versification in the Vulgate is wrong.

Donald Traxler's Poetry