|
|
We saw Hateful Eight in 70mm splendor in a packed and enthusiastic theater last night. Totally worth seeing. The three hours went by quickly. But it was less ambitious, and less cinematic, than his recent work. In fact, it is basically a stage play. It’s as if Tarantino was given license to take one of his set pieces — say the phenomenal thirty minute German tavern scene (about the scene) in Inglorious Basterds — and blow it out to three hours, although to be fair it’s actually two or three of those set pieces.
The characters are colorful and well-etched. I loved watching the actors act, as in every Tarantino film. The dialogue is Tarantinesque, although not as memorable as his very best. The violence is explosive and over the top. (“Is it a spoiler to say that there’s violence in a Tarantino film?”Is it a spoiler to say that there’s violence in a Tarantino film?)
But it’s also a genre film in a very unexpected genre for Tarantino. I’d say what genre but I think that really might count as a spoiler. Let me put it like this: it’s as if you’re watching Pulp Fiction and realize that, what the heck?, it’s really a version of Emma. (And that was definitely not a spoiler for either film.) It’s sort of cool that Tarantino did this, but also a bit confining for him. At more than 3 hours and in 70mm Cinerama, this is in some ways a small film.
While seeing the “Cinerama” banner took me back, oh, fifty years, I can’t say that what he went through — and what he forced theaters to go through — to show it in 70mm was worth it. There are a couple of shots that that had me think “Nice 70mm!” but had I not known that it was in 70mm, I simply would have said, “Nice shot!.” There were a few shots where the color was especially rich and beautiful, but, again, I wouldn’t have attributed that to anything except excellent digital cinematography had I not known any better. On the other hand, I also can’t see any real difference between an ordinary Mac screen and a Retina display. I’m glad Quentin got to do it his way, and I hope it makes him happy.
“Then there’s the question of what it’s about”Then there’s the question of what it’s about. Race and racism? Legal justice and frontier justice? Yes, I think so. But it doesn’t have easy lessons. Tarantino is totally a non-didactic filmmaker, unlike, say, Spielberg. He’s got his values, he’s got his characters, he puts them together, one of them will discourse on an unexpected cultural theory, one person’s brain matter is probably going to end up in someone else’s face, and that’s about it.
Why would we expect there to be more? For two reasons. First, the movie-making is so superbly crafted. We are completely in his thrall. That’s the experience of art. Second, the violence is so extreme that we want it to be justified by significance.
But violence serves the role of humor in Tarantino’s films. I’m not saying it’s funny, although it often is, and last night’s enthusiastic audience burst out in laughter at some of it. Me too. Tarantino uses violence not just to advance the plot, and not, I believe to show us the true effects of violence, for he skimps entirely on the effect violence has on its survivors. Rather, the “violence like a sudden joke snaps the audience out of the comfort that narrative flow provides”violence like a sudden joke snaps the audience out of the comfort that narrative flow provides.
Which is to say that I don’t think Hateful Eight is rigorously about anything, except perhaps the everyday chaos engendered when people who are unalike have to share a space, or, in this case, share a movie — except in this case, the chaos is amplified by people with guns and their own loose-triggered codes of behavior.
TL;DR: Worth seeing because Tarantino.
Categories: culture, reviews Tagged with: movies • reviews • tarantino Date: December 28th, 2015 dw
I’ve updated a 2009 utility that lets you embed your end notes in the text you’re typing. The utility, Footnoter, extracts the endnotes, leaves a footnote number, and compiles a list of the endnotes with numbers and links. It now works with Markdown as well as with HTML; I use Markdown for most of what I write these days.
In other words, let’s say you type this in a document you’re creating with Markdown:
I write using Markdown. ((See John Gruber’s Daring Fireball for more.)) Markdown lets you embed formatting codes into plain text that are then rendered into formatted HTML, Word, etc.((The Marked app adds a viewer with export capabilities. It’s on sale for $9.99 right now.)), enabling me to focus purely on what I’m saying. It also lets me keep my fingers on the keyboard.
If you paste this text into Footnoter and tell it you want Markdown output, it will treat the comments between the double parentheses as endnotes. It will remove those comments from the body of the text, leaving the Markdown code for an endnote number, and will compile a list of endnotes with the proper references back to their endnote numbers. That is, it does what you would expect. At least with my limited testing.
For Markdown, that means the above text gets turned into this:
I write using Markdown.[^fn2] Markdown lets you embed formatting codes into plain text that are then rendered into formatted HTML, Word, etc.[^fn3], enabling me to focus purely on what I’m saying. It also lets me keep my fingers on the keyboard.
[^fn2]:See John Gruber’s Daring Fireball for more.
[^fn3]:The Marked app adds a viewer with export capabilities. It’s on sale for $9.99 right now.
Don’t be freaked out. That’s what endnotes look like in Markdown. When you run them through a parser, they’ll have appropriately numbered superscripts. (Footnoter generates arbitrary unique Markdown labels for endnotes; they start with “fn” and then have numbers appended sequentially. Those numbers have nothing to do with the number the parser will assign to the endnote itself. Also, yes, it’s a little bug that Footnoter starts with fn2 instead of fn1. Non-critical. I’m working on it. [Minutes later]: Fixed it. I think.)
The same thing happens if you are writing HTML except the markup that’s generated is more like this:
I write using Markdown.<span class=’fn_in_text’><a name=’fn2′><a href=#fnend2>2</a><</span> Markdown lets you embed formatting codes into plain text that are then rendered into formatted HTML, Word, etc.<span class=’fn_in_text’><a name=’fn3′><a href=#fnend3>3</a></span>, enabling me to focus purely on what I’m saying. It also lets me keep my fingers on the keyboard.
And that gets rendered in a browser as this:
I write using Markdown.2 Markdown lets you embed formatting codes into plain text that are then rendered into formatted HTML, Word, etc.3, enabling me to focus purely on what I’m saying. It also lets me keep my fingers on the keyboard.
There are a number of options, including setting the delimiters for endnotes and, for HTML, which endnote number to begin with. By default it removes the space before an endnote, so you can put a space between the word where the superscript should be and your delimiters, making your text easier to read when you’re working on it.
Also, if you work on a text, run it through Footnoter, work on it some more and add more endnotes, Footnoter should detect that and begin its arbitrary numbering of Markdown endnotes above where you left off. That means you can run it through more than once and it should still work.
Should.
Note: This code is from 2009. I’ve learned some stuff since then, including that jQuery makes life easier. When I added the Markdown option yesterday, I didn’t bother cleaning up the old code. It is particularly hideous. You can gape at its uglinesss at github.
PS: Yes, I really should have named it “Endnoter.”
Categories: misc Tagged with: endnotes • markdown • programming • utilities Date: December 27th, 2015 dw
Aug. 1
What a majestic creature! The wings beating like giant sails!
And not bald. Not even a comb-over, haha. Downy white feathers covering that majestic skull.
The beak does sort of look like a big nose, though.
Aug. 2
Again this morning! I’d say within 15 mins of yesterday’s fly-by. A little higher up and more toward the center of the lake, but still majestic even from further away. I’d probably have to be like a mile away before I mistook it for a pigeon.
Winky barked as it soared past, although Winky barks at anything he finds interesting, and he’s blessed with an all-day curiosity.
Did you know that all clouds look like bones?
Aug. 3
It looked at me! Oh my, let me record the time exactly! It’s now 7:27, so it was probably at 7:24!
Ok, I’ve caught my breath. He flew by just a little past the Jurgenson’s raft, so that’s maybe 50 or 200 feet from me. Flapping those big wings. Looking straight ahead. And then as I leapt up from my chair, he definitely turned his head and looked right at me!
And not a little passing glance. He was studying me, taking my measure, judging my character. And I looked back at him. Resolute but with kindness. I wasn’t going to look away until he did, which took about maybe four seconds, or two to be scientific about it (I just timed four seconds on the ol’ Timex, and they take longer than you’d think). But your life can change in two seconds. How long is the first sight that love can happen in? It can’t be more than a second or two or it would be second sight, or maybe third.
My eagle and I definitely made a connection. Till death do us part! Well, Labor Day.
[More]
Aug. 4
Two sightings today! Both were on the far side of the lake, but I still had the presence of mind to shout “Eagle!!!!” both times. I’m pretending it’s to let my neighbors know, but really I figure if I shout “Eagle!!!!” every time he passes, he’ll learn that that’s his name. Eventually he should come when I summon him.
Not that I want my eagle to do tricks. I just want him to know that I appreciate him as the majestic free creature that he is.
He inspired a nation. The least I can do is shout his name!
Winky agrees.
Aug. 5
7:10am and there’s Mr. Eagle again, and this time so close that I could see something squirming in his claws. Mr. Eagle doesn’t ask. He takes what is his, which is anything he can see.
Majestical.
Aug. 6
Wikipedia is our friend. And here’s something fun I found out: Mr. Eagle is really Ms. Eagle!! Leave it to Nature to get it right and to make women bigger and stronger than men. Take that, Bob! I have to say it was all I could do not to laugh when you applied your “guns” to open a jar of gherkins for me, just assuming that I couldn’t do it myself, except I had ALREADY opened it, so it flew out of your hands and now your “Salad? That’s what my food eats” sweatshirt smells of gherkins FOREVER.
That’s something else my eagle and I have in common.
Aug. 7
My dear friend Wikipedia (how do you make a smiley face on this tablet???) tells me that eagles often prefer carrion to live animals. Something else we have in common!!
Yes, it seems a little gross, but Nature is never wrong: it’s more efficient to pick up a snack just lying there than to have to chase down a moose or figure out the angle of refraction (thank you Miss McNair!) to nab a perch out of the lake.
Note to self: Does refraction have anything to do with fracking? This is why we have two weeks off: so a curious mind can indulge itself! I’m off to the Internet!
Aug. 9
The eagle visited again this morning. Same time, same Bat channel. (If you’re reading this and you’re not me, first, thanks! But you’re probably not old enough to remember the old TV Batman. Yes, it was awfully dumb, but on purpose. And I have to say that Adam West in his spandex was rather majestic.)
Anyway, my little experiment didn’t work. I left a plate with about a half pound of Bob’s raw hamburger meat out for Ms. Eagle. I couldn’t tell if she saw it, but she’s got those eagle eyes, right? So she must have seen it.
Maybe she was already full, or maybe she just doesn’t like to try new things. Remember how long it took for me to try quinoa because it looks like tadpole embryos? Sure, it turns out it tastes terrible, but I could have found that out years ago.
Aug. 10
As a proper amateur scientist, which I guess is what I am since I’m definitely not a professional scientist – I wish – anyway, as an amateur scientist, I should report on the result of this morning’s experiment:
I shaped the hamburger into what I think was a quite realistic statue of a bunny. From a safe distance – our porch – I waited for Ms. Eagle to fly by. Which she did! She was pretty far away, maybe about a third of the way across the lake, but she was up pretty high which should have let her see quite a lot on the ground (thank you Wikipedia!). So we can assume she saw my meat bunny. But she did not swoop in and carry it away.
She did give a loud Caw though, perhaps as a thank you for the effort. As a scientist, I can’t be sure about that, though.
Aug. 11
Once again Ms. Eagle paid no attention to the Little Miss Bunny Burger, even though it’s holding up pretty well given that it’s a bunch of hamburger left out on a dock. If anything, it’s become even more carrion-y than it was yesterday.
Aug. 12
Ok, no more experiments. Just building our bond. In any case, Winky ate the bunny when I wasn’t looking. Bad Winky! (Except he’s sooooo cute, even when he has a tummy ache.)
But now for the big news: I called Ms. Eagle’s name this morning at 7:10am and at 7:14am she showed up!!!! Winky actually sounded the alarm, with his yipping going from the high pitched one he uses when he sees a squirrel or a cloud or the ground to the more “manly” yap – men should be so cute! – for when the event has more significance in his doggy world.
I looked Ms. Eagle straight in the eye. She didn’t turn her head, but I think I was in her field of view, so she wouldn’t have to. And you can call me crazy, but she dipped her wings when she passed me. Maybe that’s where air force pilots got the idea.
Aug. 13
Again! At 7:00am exactly I called out “Eagle! Eagle!” but this time trying to make it sound more like her Caw! Caw! because I know how hard it can be to understand someone with an accent. By 7:15am, she was winging majestically by.
It’s awesome to have this sort of bond. It’s a little like being Gandalph or the Wicked Witch of the West (East?) or Harry Truman and being able to summon winged creatures just by saying their name.
Not that I’d ever ask Ms. Eagle to “take out” my enemies. I don’t have enemies, although a few of the neighbors have asked me to stop shouting “Eagle!” so early in the morning. As for Winky, hey, pardon me for having a dog who finds the world fascinating. It wouldn’t kill your children to pick up a book. you know.
Aug. 14
My eagle didn’t show up this morning. Maybe she was sleeping in, because I saw her later this afternoon down over the Goldsmith’s place, and then disappearing over their hill.
Maybe eagles have weekends, but not every seven days because what would an eagle know about weeks?
Aug. 15
No eagle today, even though I summoned it every half hour. And Winky was doing his doggy Caw-ing just about non-stop. What a good boy!
Aug. 18
I hope Ms. Eagle is ok! Three days and no visits, despite a lot of summoning.
If she were one of my human friends, I’d say she was angry or jealous. But eagles are too majestic for that sort of pettiness.
Aug. 25
I saw Ms. Eagle way off over the Goldsmith’s hill. She circled once and I thought she might be coming over, but no. Still, I caught her eye and she looked away. I’m hoping it was just some dust and I didn’t do something wrong.
I’ve upped my calling of her name to every four minutes Thank you, tablet timer!
Winky seems to find this very exciting. I sometimes think he’s smarter than my neighbors. I can hear them watching Real Housewives of Atlanta. Really?? That’s by far the dumbest of them all. Even Winky has the good sense to walk out of the room when I turn it on.
Aug. 27
I’m confused.
Ms. Eagle chose a tree next to our dock to eat her breakfast on. I stood underneath and applauded, and Winky practically climbed the tree with excitement.
She wouldn’t have dropped the animal’s entrails onto me if she weren’t comfortable with me, like eating with your hands at a picnic without feeling you first have to get anyone’s permission, even though I have to keep telling Bob that potato salad isn’t finger food.
But Ms. Eagle really shook my confidence when right before her last bite she looked me straight in the eye, and dropped the last piece she didn’t want. Bunny ears.
Was she going Gordon Ramsay on me for not offering food that was “fresh, local, and puhfectly seasoned, freak me”? Was my bunny meat statue an insult somehow, as if she couldn’t tell the difference between it and real bunny carrion? I already I had to tell Bob that I’d had to throw out his ground beef because Winky got it into, although I left out the part about my sculpting it and leaving it on the dock.
Is Ms. Eagle angry at me? Worse, does she hold me contempt for loving her?? I really thought eagles soared above that.
Aug. 29
It doesn’t bother me that the eagle has decided to nest over at the Goldsmith’s place. They don’t even mow their lawn – Jacqui insists that everyone call it a “meadow ” – so there’s more wildlife there, and definitely more carrion if the laws of probability mean anything at all.
But it does bother me that she doesn’t even fly over this side of the lake any more. I know she can hear me on the dock Caw-ing because when I ran into Jacqui at the farmer’s market she told me that she can hear me just fine, all day long. And the eagle with her 20/gazillion eyesight certainly can tell that this time the bunny is very very real, and every day becomes more carrion-y.
Aug. 31
The eagle has made it pretty clear what’s going on. That’s fine.
You can’t say I haven’t given it every opportunity to give me at least a gesture that there’s anything left of our relationship. I don’t know how long I waved that very carrion-y rabbit over my head, but my arms sure got tired. But the next morning – yesterday – I’d duct-taped the rabbit’s remains to our sprinkler so that it waved back and forth all day, and – bonus! – sprayed rabbit-scented water up into the air and out into the lake.
And yes, onto Bob and the neighbors. So? If they don’t like the smell, they can stay indoors and watch Steve Harvey make his dirty little jokes on Family Feud. But I’ll tell you who is outdoors loving nature, all day, with the most open and honest heart on the planet! And watching him run up to the sprinkler yapping and then run away from it yipping is inspiring.
Sept. 1
I am as over the eagle as summer is over with all of us.
But I promise you this: The Goldensons may have abandoned my eagle for the city, but I’m not going anywhere until I find Winky.
Socrates: The Extra Parmesanides
The unexamined pizza is probably still worth eating.
St. Augustine: Deep Dish Confessions
The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed.
The mind commands itself and meets resistance.
The body commands pizza and it arrives within thirty minutes or it’s free. [“…ut servirem domino deo meo”]
Nietzsche: Thus Spake ‘Za-thruster, the Pizza Delivery Guy
The pizza that does not kill me makes me stronger.
If you gaze into a pizza, the pizza stares back at you. If you’re tripping balls.
Martin Heidegger: Being and Slices
“Dasein’s Being is always Being-toward-Pizza. Pizza stands before us as an ex-static project that discloses that which is Dasein’s ownmost, for no one can eat your pizza for you.”
Bonus for Librarians: Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Pizza Science
-
Pizzas are for use
-
For every eater, his pizza
-
For every pizza, its eater
-
Our warming oven saves time for the eater
-
Our pizzas are totally organic
Isaac Asimov: Three Rules of Pizzas
Suggested by Andromeda Yelton (@ThatAndromeda). Thanks!
-
A pizza may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
-
A pizza must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
-
A pizza must do ABSOLUTE NOTHING to protect its own existence as long as such lack of protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Categories: humor, philosophy Tagged with: pizza Date: December 21st, 2015 dw
OCLC has posted an excellent report based on a recent conference, looking at how libraries can participate in the life of users, rather than thinking about the user’s life within the library.
I like this a lot. I’ve been talking about it in terms of libraries now being able to participate in the appropriation of culture that traditionally has occurred in private discussions outside the library: The user borrows a book, takes it home, and talks about it with her friends, etc. It is in those conversations that the reader makes the work her own.
Now that many of those conversations occur online, the library has the opportunity to offer services that facilitate these conversations, learn from them, and contribute to the act of cultural appropriation. That’s a big change and a big opportunity. (I’d say it’s huge, but I can’t use that word without hearing it in Trump’s voice, not to mention envisioning the shape of his mouth when he says it. So, nope, that word’s gone.)
One of the points of talking about libraries in the life of the user–Lorcan Dempsey‘s phrase from 1973 (I am a Lorcan fan) [LATER: In the comments below Merrilee Proffitt points out that the report says that while Lorcan popularized the phrase, it was coined by Douglas Zweizig. Sorry!] –is that user lives are much bigger than their lives in libraries. The library’s services therefore should not be confined to the relatively limited range of things that users do in libraries. In fact, users’ lives are so big and varied and unpredictable that libraries on their own can’t possible provide every service or address every opportunity for engaging in their users’ many acts of cultural appropriation.
Therefore, libraries ought to be adopting open platforms, i.e., public-facing APIs that let anyone with an idea build a new service or integrate into their own sites or apps the ideas being generated by networks of library users. Open platforms are ideal where needs and opportunities are unpredictable. Outside of cats trapped in physicists’ boxes, there is no more unpredictable domain than how people are going to make sense of their culture together.
Therefore: Open platforms for libraries!
Categories: future, libraries Tagged with: libraries • platforms Date: December 17th, 2015 dw
My role on the Net is going through a large swing: from explaining why the Internet is different, important, and (overall) good, to reminding us―especially college-age kids―how different and difficult so many things were before the Net existed.
For example, I gave an informal talk at Tufts last week and a few weeks ago at Emerson College. In both of them, and in the discussions afterwards, I did the Old Man thing of talking about how things were in the pre-Net days. For instance, it used to be that you’d read a newspaper article, have questions and want to know more, and there was no place you could go. You got whatever was in that rectangle of information and that’s all. Shocking! Outrageous!
The two roles are not unrelated: explaining what’s different about the Net and why we should overall be grateful and optimistic about the opportunities it has opened up. But what’s surprising to me is summed up by the comment by one of the Emerson students after the event was officially over: He thanked me for saying positive things about the Net since “All we ever hear is how dangerous it is.”
So, there’s still work to do. Hope over fear. Hope over fear.
Categories: cluetrain, culture, free culture Tagged with: cluetrain • gratitude • optimism Date: December 13th, 2015 dw
TripAdvisor is being wonky about letting me write a review for a restaurant it doesn’t have listed; it has me stuck in a loop, insisting that I confirm that it is in an unlisted city, which it is not. Anyway, here’s the review I would have posted there.
A local resident recommended Surya Mahal (Shop No A, 179, MI Road) as the pure vegetarian place he goes with his family. It is indeed a family restaurant, down to paper placemats with absolutely terrible jokes on them.
But the food was just so good.
The menu includes Chinese and Italian, as well as Indian. We had the King’s Tali: little dishes of malai kofta, paneer butter masala, vegetable pulao (rice), some type of dal, and a raita (spiced yogurt) plus papadam, bread (we got roti) and two gulab jamuns. One tali served both of us.
Everything was exceptionally delicious: richly flavored, nicely textured. We ate all of everything and left satisfied in every direction. I’m no expert on Indian food, but I’m going to stand by what I just said.
Plus the children running around were adorable.
The owner (or so we assumed) was very helpful and enthusiastic. He honored our counter-cultural request that the food not be very hot in the peppery sense; one of us is a wimp.
Total cost, including a large bottle of mineral water, was under 500 Rs. ― about US$7.00.
One night when we woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep (thanks to the lag of jets), I was thinking how, in my limited experience, almost all northern Indian food comes in lots of sauce or is a sauce itself. The following doggerel popped into my head:
Put on your galoshes
‘Cause everything sloshes.
Except the banan-
a, which is second to naan.
I had a third verse as well, but I eventually fell asleep and forgot it.
Just as well.
Categories: reviews, travel Tagged with: india Date: December 7th, 2015 dw
My wife and I are in Ahmedabad where there was a library conference put on by the Indian Institute of Management. It ended on Friday. We had Saturday plus this morning to see what we could of this very large city.
Friday night was our first day without sleeping pills, and we hardly slept at all — up for the night at 1:30am. Since I was already sick, having caught Ann’s cold, and being a self-pitying weakling, I just wanted to stay in bed and sleep. Which is pretty much what I did for the morning and early afternoon.
At 3pm we set out to walk to the walled city. We figured we’d go to a beautiful Hindu temple there (Swaminaryan Mandir) , and then walk 15 mins to the only Jewish synagogue in the entire region, Magen Abraham.
It is about a 4 mile walk to the Hindu temple, but it took us over three hours because Ahmedabad has blown past the infrastructure for walking. “ Chaotic traffic and people busy with their lives”It is difficult to describe how overwhelming it is. We walked along main roads with sidewalks made impassable by parked motorcycles. We walked through some very poor neighborhoods, where people smiled at us elderly Americans, and called out “Hallo.” Mainly, though, we walked along streets filled with chaotic traffic and people busy with their lives.
And don’t get me started on the traffic. Huge streets with cars, tuktuks, motorcycles, bikes, carts, and anything else that is capable of movement, all without traffic lights Horns replace lanes. The balletics required to make a right turn on a major street with no regulation other than norms and horns are astounding. Crossing a street requires stepping into a lane with the confidence that the oncoming traffic will split around you. Hesitate and you have become a random vector and far more likely to be hit. It is terrifying. Why 40% of the population hasn’t been killed in traffic accidents is one of today’s modern mysteries. “Why 40% of the population of Ahmedabad hasn’t been killed in traffic accidents is one of today’s modern mysteries. ”
Since we couldn’t figure out the algorithm, we went with an heuristic: wait for a local to cross and follow her.
After maybe 2.5 hours, we crossed the Nehru Bridge of the huge river. That side of the river took the other side up a notch. All the way to eleven. More people. More traffic. And an outdoor market that went on for at least a mile, and branched out for acres and acres more on either side. The streets were nearly impassable except by walking in and amongst the crazy traffic.
These are not tourist markets. No geegaws. Just endless shops and carts, crushed together in disregard of every human sense organ.“endless shops and carts, crushed together in disregard of every human sense organ.”
By this time we’d given up on finding the Hindu temple and worked instead on finding the synagogue.
Unfortunately, the street the synagogue is on — Bawa Latif — is unmarked, and apparently unknown by the locals. After many inquiries, all politely responded to, we got into a tuktuk as soon as shabbos was over. The driver pretended he knew where he was going. After more wending through market streets, this time as the bodies with inertia on their side, and after several stops where he asked other drivers where the street was, he dropped us off at the street … except that it was an indoor market, not a street. (I believe that the gate it is immediately next to is Teen Darwaja.) We wandered forlornly looking for a synagogue amongst the stands selling food, clothing, and anything brightly covered.
Ultimately, a Muslim working one of the tables said he knew where the synagogue is, and he walked us to it. We would never ever have found it. Never. Ever. He expressed his commitment to religions respecting one another. We thanked him profusely — I said that helping strangers was so important, and he clasped my shoulders, which was touching in both senses — and we entered the synagogue. “a Muslim working one of the tables said he knew where the synagogue was… ”
It is a place of simple worship. In this, it reminded me of my wife’s synagogue in Boston. I sat silently through the end of sabbath ritual. Afterward, the president of the synagogue chatted us up, and his point of pride was that within a few blocks were five different houses of worship: Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Jain. Even given India’s religious tolerance, nowhere else are the houses of worship that close together, he said.
 
We took a tuktuk home — the best dollar I ever spent.
The walk this afternoon was difficult, uncertain, and at times — crosswalks! — terrifying. But we will never forget it.
Categories: misc Date: December 6th, 2015 dw
|
