RedOvechkin1917

 This will be a short review, because this recent book was a real dud. I just finished "Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma" by Tirzah Firestone. I have become interested in learning about intergenerational Jewish trauma but the author just spends more or less the entire book waxing about liberal zionism, so it really ruined what was a promising premise for the book.  I want to learn about how descendants of Holocaust survivors might carry trauma in their bodies and lives, but this book spends most of its time talking about how the Israeli occupation is bad, but on the other hand, what are we supposed to do, surrender to terrorists? She literally says the separation wall is ugly, but in some places it is aesthetic. THANK YOU, NEXT. Anyway, Jews are clearly a pretty traumatized people, but it definitely does not justify the horrific crimes of Zionism. I do like to think about what Jewish life and Jewish communal life would be like in the present were it...

  "Curse the mind that mounts the clouds / in search of mythical things and only mystical things, / mystical things / cry for the soul that will not face / the body as an equal place / and I never learned to touch for real / down, down, down, where the iguanas feel." -- "Iguana Song," by Judy Mayham This is a poem used as an epigraph in the book I just finished, "Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma" by Peter A. Levine (1997). The book documents the way that trauma and traumatic events are stored in the body, and the way the emotions from trauma live in the body in long-lasting ways. I guess it's a bit like "The Body Keeps The Score" but less problematic because it's not all about U.S. soldiers (I haven't read the latter book, to be fair, and also the author does get quoted in this book a few times.) I picked up the book because Tommy Caldwell posted it on his instagram page, and it spoke to me because ... I liked the tigers on the front ...

  When I was in middle school, my favorite night of the week was Sunday night. That's when The Simpsons aired on TV, and after the Fox cartoon line up was Sunday night football. I remember how excited I would get sitting on the couch in my basement. Usually, I could only watch the first half of the Sunday Night Football Game, after which my parents insisted that I go to bed so I could get a good night sleep before school the next day.  Maybe when I was in eighth grade or so, I remember my Dad coming downstairs and teasing me for being in front of the TV again watching football. The exact phrase he said was "oh, a little football for a change?," which was sarcastic, because I watched a lot of football. I also remember how my middle brother would tease me for watching football. If we were at a restaurant and there was a TV showing a football game, he would make fun of me and give me a hard time if I watched it. Or maybe even specifically keep me from sitting somewhere where...

 Inspired by a friend's goals for 2025 ... Be nicer to myself Connect more with my inner child and my childhood sense of joy Identify voices in my head that are harmful and not helpful and learn to listen to them less Be less harsh with myself I feel like I have a tendency to be very harsh with myself. It sounds like: "no screen time! Don't use fossil fuels ever! Don't watch sports! Don't eat candy! Don't do online shopping. Bike everywhere!" But this year I'm reflecting on how those harsh attitudes, even if they come from understanable places, are recipes for burnout. I'm telling myself ... it's okay to order takeout. It's okay to spend a day in bed. It's okay to scroll on twitter for a while. It's okay to ... fail to stop a genocide (well, this one I struggle with, but I am trying to set more realistic expectations for myself as to my powers in this regard. I am not Aaron Bushnell. I am not Che Guevara. I just want to set realisti...