After talking it over a lot with family and friends over the course of last week, I decided against hanging a replacement rainbow flag in my window. One of the main reasons for hanging the first one was to test the neighborhood in which I live, and the results of that experiment are definitely in. So one of my main reasons for hanging a new one would be as an act of defiance, a pacifistic sort of revenge. And I don't really believe in the nobility of that sort of sentiment after I've calmed down sufficiently.

Well, Thanksgiving dinner turned out as grandly as anyone could have hoped. The apartment was filled with all the Pearsons and Siegels lucky enough to be in Israel at the moment, not to mention a dozen or two of Seth and Rachel's closest friends. The food was an excellent array of all the Thanksgiving essentials, and we all got appropriately stuffed.

For the second year running, the Israeli contingent of the Pearson clan is converging upon Jerusalem to celebrate Seth's birthday and all the other things for which we are thankful. Not the least reason to give thanks is for the way our ranks have swelled with Jonathan and plenty of Siegels. I'm done with work and the turkey's in the oven, so I've got some time to write now.

This week I performed an experiment, and tonight I got my first observable results. Early this week, I hung the rainbow flag that I had bought at the pride rally in one of my windows. I thought half-jokingly to myself, "OK, now let's see how long it takes before the mob with torches and pitchforks descends upon the scene." And this evening, just as I was setting up to make havdalah after Shabbos, I heard a snapping sound from the window. As I opened up the window and poked my head outside, I saw a man aged somewhere between very late teens to late twenties scampering along the very narrow ledge that runs along the outer walls of my second-story apartment. I screamed at him in Hebrew, "What are you doing!?" Then I dashed to my front door to chase after him. Having to unlock the door slowed me down enough that he had a big headstart. I yelled, "Thief! Thief!" in Hebrew as he got away. I'm certain that I could have given much more effort into pursuit, but I think my gut held me back to avoid the violence that would have been almost inevitable had I actually caught up to him.

So at the last minute, the parade was changed into a rally, due to a compromise made between the organizers of the event and the parties who opposed it in the name of religion. I'm a little ambivalent about this change of format. On the one hand, I can understand the disappointment of those who felt that the event lost some of its significance by being confined to the Givat Ram campus stadium instead of proclaiming a message of tolerance in the public spaces. But on the other hand, I understand how pride parades have a solid history of expressing a carnival atmosphere beyond the bounds of propriety and at the expense of any valid social message. In any case, I'm happy with how the rally actually turned out.

This Friday, the Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance Parade will finally take place, after much unfortunate delay. I'm heading up to Jerusalem tomorrow to participate and see for myself what the whole tremendous fuss is all about. I have a couple friends who won't be marching because they don't believe it will send the right message nor advance the gay political platform, I have a friend who's not marching because he's a bit apathetic and figures he's seen it all before, and I've got a couple friends who actively discouraged me from going on the grounds of immodesty. I strongly doubt that the predictions that the parade will be nothing but a wild spectacle of gratuitous lewdness are anything more than the incitant exaggerations of hate-mongers. After all, the weather in Jerusalem these days isn't exactly conducive to dressing in thong bikinis and loose-mesh tank tops.

This past Saturday night, lots of local Tzfatim came to warm the home of Elana Schachter, one of our newest residents in the Artists' Colony neighborhood. I know Elana back from when I was living in Nachlaot in Jerusalem. I lent her one of my favorite sci-fi anthologies as a housewarming gift, and she returned the favor by lending me a collection of Jewish fantasy and occult stories. Rebecca and Avraham brought along Ashira, who derived great glee from feeding crackers to Elana's smooth-haired collie, Bright. Ashira thought it especially funny whenever Bright would lick my nose. Lots of familiar faces were around, as well as a few new characters to meet. The climax of the party was when Moshe Tov, Eliyahu, and Dovid sung a rousing (if slightly off-key) round of "Elana, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Kabbalists", sung to the tune of Willie Nelson's "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys", to which Elana could only reply, "Too late. Way too late." The evening wound down with the remaining attendees flipping through photographs of various quilts that Elana has made.

Last night I had an interesting dream. I dreamt that I was visiting Rebecca's house to play with Ashira, but Becca had another younger baby there for me play with. He had jet black hair and eyes and faintly olive skin and gorgeous expressive lips. There was a healthy glow about him, despite the fact that his small body gave the impression of fragility. I swung him around in my arms and tossed his head back as he squealed with delight. But then I noticed that his heartbeat felt unnaturally fast, so I switched to less energetic kinds of play for fear of the poor boy's health. Soon after, I was talking to Rebecca again, who explained to me that the baby is an orphan, and his unusually fast heartbeat is actually normal for him due to a congenital anomaly which caused him to be born with two hearts. Since each heart beats independently, it seems like he has twice as many heartbeats as you'd expect. Becca then revealed to me that he could be weaned very soon and that he would be eligible for me to adopt. My heart melted right there on the spot. I had fallen in love with him in the short time I'd spent with him, and couldn't resist the thought of taking him home and giving him all he needed. But I then said to Rebecca that I had serious reservations about the tremendous practical difficulties involved with raising a child before I'd found a partner. I wasn't sure that I was up to the tremendous task of single parenthood. The last moment of the dream was me thinking to myself that despite the difficulty, I couldn't pass up an opportunity like this for my sake or for the boy's sake.