Children in War

Thank God for the cease fire in Gaza, but I can't stop thinking about what is happening to the children on both sides. In my mind, Hamas and the Israeli army are in league to create suffering. Who is right or who did what first doesn't matter in the face of what these kids are facing.

There was a heartbreaking Associated Press article about the psychological toll of the war that said in part:

Psychologists say Israel's three-week offensive inflicted more severe trauma than previous conflicts in Gaza because civilians in the crowded sliver of territory had no place to run. A wartime study among hundreds of Gaza children showed a rise in nightmares, bed-wetting and other signs of trauma, said psychologist Fadel Abu Hein…The Palestinian Center for Human Rights counted 280 children among 1,285 dead and said one in four of the 4,000 wounded was a minor.

UNICEF says on their Web site: 

As terrifying as the daily danger is, what makes it worse for children is that there is no escape. There are no bomb shelters, and the borders are closed. UNICEF reports a new phenomenon of children so shocked that they are unable to speak.

“Nowhere is safe for children and their families in Gaza at the moment,” said UNICEF Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Patricia McPhillips. “There needs to be an end to hostilities so we can truck in urgently required water, medicine and other life-saving assistance for children. And until the fighting ends, safe spaces must be created in Gaza so we can deliver our pre-positioned supplies.”

Happy Lunar New Year

I couldn’t have been happier to see the end of the Year of the Rat and the beginning of the Year of the Ox. Especially when the Rat got into the helicopter and left Washington! So Welcome Bull/Ox/Biffalo/Bufallo/Bison.

The whole world seems to have gotten into the spirit. Wells Fargo in Half Moon Bay thoughtfully left red envelopes out on the counter, and the sun is out flooding the house with that strange slanty winter light.

The New Year’s energy must have infected me unconsciously – I spent the weekend cleaning the house. Really cleaning: I made Young pull out the washer and dryer so I could clean under them. I made Matthew scrub his carpet. I went to the florist and dropped a bunch of money on flowers that I arranged on the porch in the big copper vessel Tammy gave me, and all over the house.

My excuse was that the appraiser was coming to appraise the house again, for the same refinancing, but this time as a multifamily dwelling. Evidently the overwrought and banking-crisis-traumatized loan reviewers saw that Young’s studio over the garage is legally an apartment, though we’ve never rented it out.

Even the appraiser, the same courtly gentleman who did the first appraisal, thought it was insanity, since the house is zoned R-1, residential, but as he said – they are the customers. This tweaked me a bit, as I thought of myself as the customer, but he had a point. I was getting a bit overwrought and banking-crisis-traumatized myself.

And then I thought about all the people who are enmeshed in this insanity with their lives on the line, as Zorba said, “the full catastrophe,” and felt ashamed. And no appraiser was going to look behind the washer or even up in Matt’s loft, anyway.

The impetus for the refi (beside the fact that the rate is approximately 50% of that on our first home mortgage in 1978 Olympia) was the remodel we impulsively started by pulling down the wall between the kitchen and living room back in September.

Besides, its cold, and I really want to put a gas heating stove. Last month we ran the electric heat full blast, partly because we visitors, and the bill was astronomical.