The tooth that my dentist said had to be pulled is really beginning to bother me a lot.  I remember when your regular dentist would do root canals and pull teeth.  Now I have to go to a specialist who is really backed up.  They wanted to give me an appointment in January but I begged hard for one sooner.  I have been waiting three weeks and go almost two more till it comes out. 

I cooked a marvelous dinner for guests Saturday night, but it turned out I can’t chew meat.  The only meat I seem able to chew is chopped meat or ground lamb.  Tonight I’m making bulghur casserole that I should be able to eat, with Swiss chard cooked in olive oil, garlic and a little lemon or vinegar at the end, as I

decide at the time.  But I have to be very careful what I eat.  Last night, the veggies were a little too firm and my tooth really lit up.

Tonight is supposed to be our coldest night in months.  Most of the plants I want to try to save – rosemary, chives, lemon verbena and a few ornamentals – are safely inside, although we never know how long they will survive. This week, we lost all our basil I’d potted.  It seemed to be fine and then it died Monday night. 

I finished a revision of the first third of my new book THE HOUR OF MY DEATH.  I’m waiting a few of days.  It’s printed out, about 99 pages.  Then tomorrow or the weekend, I’ll read through it to make further cuts and additions and general editing.  I think reading through it in hard copy will show me things I haven’t observed on line.  In the meantime, I’ve written three poems on a variety of subjects – loving, mass shootings, repression.  I haven’t been able to write about the war in Israel and Gaza.  I just can’t.  It upsets me too much.

The wave of antisemitism is overwhelming and frightening. As if any of us here are involved in decisions of Netanyahu.  I have been a member of J Street for many years and we have tried to get Israel to implement a two-state system and have opposed settlers kicking Palestinians off land.  But that doesn’t matter. We’re all considered guilty in the eyes of haters. Why aren’t Buddhists hated for what is happening in Myanmar?

We’re white so does that make us guilty of what white supremacists say and do?  Or Trump?  And the people who rejoice in the massacre that Hamas carried out in farming villages make me sick. I just can’t talk about it with anybody but Woody.  I grew up, my childhood tainted and violent from antisemitism and now here it is out in the open again, plastered everyplace. 

At times, I’m sorry I didn’t stay dead last year on October 23rd.  But I try to take comfort in Woody, our cats, our land.  I try.  These are terrible times. So much pain, so much death, so much hatred.  It makes me literally sick.