Affliction

We had our seder Monday night -- a nice one, even though the Other Liberal Professor* and Her Minions could not attend. Three of our friends came down from Fayetteville, one bearing some very nice KFP wine, and we had shipped in some KFP matzo and cookies of affliction and such from New York, because, as I am sure I have mentioned, probably sixty times, one cannot get Jew food in Pork Smith (mr. delagar has taken to saying that there are only two things one can buy in Pork Smith, pork and bibles, which does not, may I mention, delight his students? but I am afraid our recent failure to find even Non-KFP matzo in the local stores -- we could always at least get *that* -- had embittered him), so we had that and a nice brisket and matzo ball soup, which is mr. delagar's speciality, both, and mr. delagar complained again about my passover plate (which I got from a chatline friend -- remember chatlines? they were previous to blogs?) about seven years ago -- I didn't have one and we were in Idaho then which was worse than Pork Smith as far as getting Jewish stuff and she had three because she had just gotten married, so she shipped me a spare, which I thought was so decent of her but mr. delagar thinks it's ugly, and, he says, hard to read. [I like it, may I nterject.] So go buy another one, I say. Where? He demands. Pork Smith?

We also lack a matzo cover. Sigh.

Anyway, despite all this sad affliction, it was, as I said, a fine seder. The food was not as grim as seder food often is, the haggadah reading went well, the wine was nice, it is true I had been rejected by the good agent just that afternoon, but hey, that is better than being a slave in Egypt, is it not? And it is not like I didn't expect to be rejected. And she wrote me a nice *letter* of rejection. So maybe I drank a little too much of the excellent wine. But not that much too much. And someone had to drink the Other Liberal Professor's share.

During the seder you're meant to discuss who is being oppressed around the world -- what oppression you know about, what you think you can do to relieve that oppression. The kid wanted me to sing a Billy Bragg song. However, I had not had that much wine. We discussed oppression as we knew it. Yes, the patriarchy was mentioned. mr. delagar refrained from wincing. The kid brought up women in Afghanistan, whom she had apparently been studying in school. The abuse of animals was brought up, I believe by Zelda. mr. delagar tried to scoff at this one, claiming that until humans were taken care of we shouldn't spend time fretting over pigs and chickens, but half the table rose against him. I pointed out this was the same argument made by certain male leftists about women's rights -- that they would worry about getting women equality when (male) humans were safe and secure worldwide; Zelda made the point that abusers often began their abuse by torturing animals, and escalated to humans; I added that people couldn't work in those slaughterhouses and factory farms, witnessing and participating in the largescale abuse of animals, without it dehumanizing and damaging them; our friend from Fayetteville, a world traveller, said that Norway (I think he said Norway) has very strict laws about how animals have to be treated on farms and in slaughterhouses and that they have one of the lowest crime rates and domestic abuse rates in the world. mr. delagar retreated and said he was all for animals being treated humanely and in fact he would like to become a vegan now except he could not do without milk in his coffee and what about George Bush? Wasn't he an oppressive son of a pig?

After that we drank more wine.




*The Other Liberal Professor is truly being afflicted. Y'all should keep her in your thoughts.