Daily thoughts

Today's installment to a local radio host:

Let's start with the obvious, Gender Affirmation involves giving people with mental problems strong doses of hormones, chopping off their body parts, sterilizing them, and making them medical patients for the rest of their shortened lives.

Governor Lamont wants to make this a constitutional right in Connecticut.

He is on the wrong side of history. Enclosed are parts of three documents demonstrating why:

1. The Amicus Brief of the State of Georgia in Skrmetti.
2. The WPATH files, making the case that “gender affirmation” is an activist movement that bears no relationship to care, or medicine, or science.
3. The Summary and Recommendations of the Cass Report, the United Kingdom review that lead to the closing of the Tavistock child gender clinic and the banning of puberty blocking mis-treatment in the UK.

These are the tip of the iceberg. This is part of a movement that has its sites set on your new grandchild. Read “The Queering of the American Child: How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids,” by Logan Lancing and James Lindsay.

I have a little more on my transisrael.org page, my face for shutting this down in Israel, but the information on this scandal is coming in floods right now.

I am, of course, willing to talk, but if you prefer another voice, you might want to reach out to Jennifer Lahl, the new USA Director of Genspect.

Shalom Amit:

I saw your recent interviow on ILTV, and agree that we have not waged a war, that we never actually acknowledged that our war is with Gaza and not Hamas. It breaks my heart to think that my children's children will have to deal with the next iteration of this hell.

But I write you now on another issue, which is that we have another war raging, this an ideological one, that is also taking our children. I have been e-mailing your knesset address, but you have yet to respond.

Israel has come this far because we finally threw off Mapai, elected Begin, and started on the road away from Socialism, culminating in our current powerful economic state ushered in by Netanyahu and the Likud.

But some cancers never die. Marx has been warmed over, truth turned on its head, and confusion is being sown anew. I speak of Queer ideology, seeping into our schools, our hospitals, our Kupot, and our children.

I write you because my son thinks he is trans. He is one of a growing cohort, children/young adults who are being turned into permanent medical patients instead of having their psychological conditions addressed. I don't know if this child will ever have a child of his own.

But the lie is uncovered. The organization that calls itself the World Professional Association for Transgender Health has been revealed to be peddling an unsupported ideology. The British are curtailing the practice.

There is more on all of this at https://transisrael.org/. I will get more of the Hebrew materials on there shortly.

We can not let this go forth. I don't know if it is easier to stop this or Hamas, but both are eating our children.

Please help me stop this.

It is still about to what I will say no.

Rabbi Cohen was good today. I sponsored kiddush, he acknowledged it as a bracha to the new administration, which is about as political as he could possibly get.

I went to mom's for a few games with Dahlia, and mom. I came back in time to row five kilometers, which was less than I had thought about rowing today, but more than what I could come up with on other days.

I must have slept violently last night. I woke this morning and the edge of my blanket was still on the bed, but nothing else was.

I am afraid today will not turn out well. I do hope I am wrong. I was listening to Amit HaLevi interviewed on ILTV about the deal. He made a point I had forgotten about: this is not how one conducts war. I am on record for saying we are at war against Gaza and its people, not just Hamas. Amit reminded me that war is not conducted with aid and negotiation. Further, we have had actions, but no war. War would have looked like the water and electric shut down. We would have been able to see where there was electric, and would have known the source. We would have had the "people" of Gaza in real fear for their lives, and possibly more willing to provide intelligence to end this. We would not be trading terrorists for an unknown.

There is no win here, unless there is something that goes on in the background that we have no idea about, but even that, I don't see it.

I pray there is not, but expect that there will only be more heartache.

May the next few hours prove me wrong.

It has been a tough week for me, though when I was chatting with Uri, I got that it was full of good stuff too. I was not 100% on Shabbat, so I blew off synagogue. Dahlia cleared me for Saturday night to come play. I didn't do the covid test until later, but it was negative.

Monday, I had an ambassadors meeting. I finally got the mailing labels. As a premium member, I am entitled to a printout a year. It's only taken three requests to get to this one. I am also entitled to a few blog posts, so we'll get those organized as well. I spent too much time working up that list.

Tuesday, I caucused with the gun people. But I was stupid. Their regular food person wasn't there, so I told Dave Bicknell I'd bring some nosh along. I stopped at Costco on the way up there. I only bought stuff I would otherwise eat. There was one guy who just loved the pickles. The apples and oranges each had a taker. The box of truffles went. The chips and salsa were not worth bringing. Some dried mango went. My issue was the rest of the box of ms.

Some were eaten, but most of the box remained. I had those with me at the office yesterday. I ate most of those. I'd made it to 238 this week. I am over 240 again.

I am sponsoring kiddush at my morning minyan this week. It is in honor of the upcoming inauguration. I think they'll maybe let me get away with that. I wanted to do the same at Young Israel. I was told instead that there are already two sponsors, and anyway, they don't do political.

I am still on rowing track, and actually caught up to my team. I don't like taking the average down on a challenge; I got over the average Wednesday night. I rowed 35 kilometers, in intervals of a thousand. It was a push, but doable.

Dance last night was all boys: we worked on technique in Rhumba. Actually, it was mostly latin timing. You always land on the toe; you never have two heels on the floor at the same time. It's a four count, though maybe 2/2 time.

I missed two parties Wednesday night. I ended up playing cards with mom instead.

I heard that Cesar and Alex might want to skip the wedding; so I suggested an alternate list for Yakov to invite. Despite what mom says, I still have not directly received an invite.

I did color and cut my hair. I need to fix it a little more, but I can't really see the back; so that will just have to wait until I have someone else here.

I should have known the provided solution would work better than an edited one. The only thing I did was replace a comma, but it made everything come out wrong. Instead of using a comma as a separator, I used a |. I figured a document with lots of commas would have problems in a comma separated values file. What I did not get was that such a file ignores the commas between quotation marks. So I spent an hour trying to clean up a download to make it right before I said to myself “I bet this would work better if I just used the default values,” and it did. Lani, I have download of all of your changemymind posts. I haven't figured out how to download my comments. The original can still be found at theherzes.com/changemymind.xyz. I got started down this whole rabbit hole because I didn't renew Ilan.monster, and only after figured out that the changemymind content was appearing there, but that was only an alias, which I figured out after a gasp on thinking I might have deleted two years of your work. So I fixed where the website was pointing, and backed up the content.

This after running through some old content of mine trying to prune the garbage on my computer. I am not good at that. I found stuff that made me sad. This an attempt at a poem from a writing group I was in 15 years ago:

For Michelle

by David R. Herz, March 24, 2009

You cry.
You think I don’t act sonly.
So what?

Maybe I am pissed,
maybe I resent my brothers,
maybe I felt alone,
maybe I still do.
So what?

If I have become independent,
it is what you taught me.
If I keep to myself,
it is my prerogative.
Again, so what?

I will grow,
and I will grow wiser,
I will come to know
who you have been for me,
And if I don’t agree with your ways,
at least I will respect them.

I’m on my own path now,
and though it seems to take me away,
and the roads are full of danger,
it is also said that all paths lead home.

So, stay the course,
be there for me.
Perhaps I have not yet learned
that strength is fleeting,
that a heart should not be walled in,
that a shoulder, your shoulder,
is the one that I will need to cry on.
That’s what.

So, stay the course,
be there for me.
Perhaps I have not yet learned
that strength is fleeting,
that my independence only hides insecurity.
You never can know when I will need
your shoulder to cry on.
That’s what.

maybe not now, maybe it will take a while

And that was easy to write then, and I hope it helped Michelle, but it still hurts to be cut off by your children.

And I took a break to eat and to reorganize in the basement: it's just more af a mess.

And the year is still without a solid plan, but I am taking the coaching, Joyner's that is, a little bit anyway. I tend to go to his is a different model, but the point is to adapt rather than dismiss.

And it is past my bed time, and I have committed for tomorrow's minyan, so I will end this here.

Maybe I should end on a positive note: I saw 241 on the scale today. I also have truck bed full of firewood. My sisters and I are all still happy to sit down with my mom to play a game.