HOPES AND REALITIES

     People have asked me, along the way, of how and why it is that I start in one place and end up somewhere else. The answer is very technical and complicated. I dunno! It is of the same category of my kid's answer when she was little and asked to try new foods. The response was automatic: "I don't want it, I don't like it; it's yucky." Sometimes things are just because they are and I guess this is just the way it rolls off my fingers onto the keyboard. It just is. So happy reading and follow the trail to the end. I do try to leave with something interesting or funny.
     Ata chai baseret - you are living in a movie. Such is the slang phrase used by Israelis towards one who speaks unrealistically. And yet, the entire history of Israel has been one of living in a movie, one  filled with the disasters of reality and one filled with the unrealistic hopes of a people.
     Hope is an elusive feeling. It is not tangible, yet when a battered and emaciated concentration camp inmate told a son or daughter to survive and tell the tale, that hope was almost tangible in its desperateness and yet also in its belief that there would come such a time, for even in the midst of the horror there was hope.
     In bad situations all over the world there is hope and that is why there is still resistance going on in Syria, in Somalia and the Sudan, why there are immigrants almost literally moving the planet, why there is a growing interest in people to work an election campaign, why the national anthem of Israel is called The Hope and speaks only of a longing, a yearning, not war nor of bullets nor of revenge. And on a smaller scale, there is hope for sanity about abortion, about political differences, about religion and way down the line there is hope right here in CV that one day soon there will come a reckoning and we will get back on track.
     This week Israel is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the rescue at Entebbe, a feat which electrified the world, a rescue which shattered another attempt to segregate Jews, ready them for the killing. all at the hands of an insane dictator, German!!! terrorists and the precursor to Islamic terrorism in the form of "Palestinian" terrorism, as if one can separate one from the other.
     And there was hope yesterday at the heartbreaking funeral of Hallel, may her memory be for a blessing, a 13 year old girl slain in her sleep, in her bed, by one raised to kill, to hate, to destroy, one whose mother!!!! praised his deeds. And the United States? What did they say? And the world? What did they say Absolutely nothing! Finally John Kirby reluctantly admitted that the child, Hallel, was an American citizen so I guess she rated a mention then, but did I hear Obama say, "Oh, this could have been another daughter of mine" - nope. In fact, I only heard one statement from a Trump campaign worker. That was it and meanwhile the voice of the mother, crying, had her hopes that her Hallel, her child, her heart, would be taken directly to sit by the side of her G-d who she addressed as Abba, Father. She pleaded that all the women throughout Jewish history would welcome her child, be her mothers now, for she could do no more for Hallel. Hope. It takes different forms, does it not?
     And now we segue to our home, here in CV in Southern Florida, a section of real estate that is facing challenges of our own making. We have polluted the water so, with nutrients, with minerals, with overdevelopment, that we are now faced with  "drowning" under a tide of algae, a disaster with seemingly no answer for even when it dies, the algae is a disaster and while it lives, it continues to add odor and irritants into the air, impeding respiration, causing skin infections and yet we have sat here doing nothing for years, for years! just biding our time till it got too big for all of us. And yet we must have hope, for if not - where will our homes be?
     What we should have done was rip that stuff out immediately upon its presentation instead of ignoring it, making believe we did not see it. When the fact that algae was harmful to one's health came out David Israel sat there on stage and denied it, called it a rumor, nonsense, and if you do not believe me, then go listen to the DA where he made that statement. Well, poo - poo it or not - the problem is here. And yet, again we do nothing and have our priorities screwed up. Why are we talking of giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to CSI so that we can spend millions of dollars for a Broadband system we do not need as we already have it here in the Village available for any who wish to use it - and we need each and every one of those dollars to get rid of this problem, to fund research for help. We need to turn off the water from the County immediately! This should have been done long ago, as soon as the consequences of it were clear and that is many, many moons ago. So the water got lower. So what? Eventually the rains would come along and fill it up. Been here when that happened and we all survived - and so did the waterways. But not now.
     But we must have hope that when we put our minds to it, when we recognize our true priorities, when we stop wasting money on things we do not need, when we realize that right now the two priorities of our Village are post Millennium and the algae of our waterways, then our realities will mesh with our hope. When we realize that UCO and WPRF have not been doing us any favors here, then there will be hope. When the Levys realize that their cash cow is in trouble, maybe there will be help and hope. When the County Commissioners realize that this overdevelopment is bad for the County and will affect them as well, even in their fancy neighborhoods, then maybe we will have hope. When the County and Water Management realize that development of a small city, a dense city, on the last piece of greenery around here will adversely affect the Village in its control over the water, then maybe we will have hope. Whatcha' think, David? Time for you to go and let some fresh air and new eyes look at our problems? Maybe then we can look forward with hope! Maybe then we can fix our realities. Same old gets tired and causes great harm. Put on your thinking cap and be honest with yourself. You and your buddies have done us great harm. At least help make it better by doing the right thing. Hope - elusive, but almost always there.
     Just came back from the DA which was useless as usual as there was no quorum but very interesting from another point. Many politicians, many who had never been here, so it made for interesting listening. The other concerned the typical stupidity and pettiness of David and crew. I went up to correct the misspelling of my name and that of Gerry, no fuss, done as is usually done, and John Hess had to open his mouth and say it was petty. Well, screw you, John. Did you get your doggie biscuit treat from David for saying that? And then David, as usual, like the baby he is, thinks the world revolves around him and says that he has been accused on the "Internet' of having caused the algae. No, David, you think you are the center of everything and can be a god, but sorry, all that was said is that you allowed the situation HERE in the Village to get out of hand by ignoring it for so long. As for the rest of Florida, sorry, but other people had their say in this, not you. You count for nothing there, so calm the big ego down. As for the Internet that you seem to dread so much, seems funny for a guy who wants to spend millions of our bucks on it and by the way, think the readership is more than 200,000 million by now? Interesting thought.