mazeldon – Snip, Burn, Solder Blog

Your introduction to the Crypto-Jews of the American Southwest

Some readers are thrown by a reference in my latest story to the protagonist, home inspector and minor-TV celebrity Sadie Espinoza, who describes getting bullied in high school, noting that:

Jewish Espinozas weren’t remotely “wetbacks.” They weren’t even “immigrants”: they’d been in New Mexico—where her dad and his brother grew up—since before it was “New Mexico.” The only thing calling her “wetback” did was make it clear how stupid those girls were, like a house cat strutting around thinking it caught a snake when all it had was a shitty old lizard tail.

Some folks are confused because they had an American public school primary education east of the Mississippi (as I did), and thus don’t know that Santa Fe is the oldest state capitol in the US, having been establish 150 years before the country was founded.

A much greater portion of readers are confused because they think of all Jews as European shtetl folk who came here in the late 19th and early 20th C (as mine did), and thus know nothing about the extremely long history of Jews in the New World (short version: we’ve always been here, and you’ve never liked us).

Anyway, if you’re curious about any of this, the graphic novel El Illuminado is a good introduction to Crypto-Jews and the impact the Inquisition had on world Jewry. Maybe more importantly, it’s really fair in how it illustrates the divisions and discomforts within and among Jews of different traditions/colors/descents, as well as the way that even established, assimilated, respected, modern, “White” Jews often find themselves alienated no matter where they try to stand or sit.

Offered Without Additional Commentary

Highway Gothic (and its “Eldritch Serif” variant)

“Highway Gothic” is the informal name of the sans-serif typeface you see on American road signs:

Ice street signs showing the corner of Buckingham and Manchester

It’s formally known as the Standard Alphabets For Traffic Control Devices or the FHWA Series fonts. It was originally designed just after WWII, and optimized over time for legibility at a distance while traveling at high speeds.

I sorta love Highway Gothic. In part, that’s because I sort of love basic, sturdy industrial design; I’m the one guy who sorta loves the low-rent Brutalism of poured-concrete parking structures. But a big part of my love of that arises from the unintentional aesthetics that arise, for example, from the decay of that concrete smoothing to nubby rubble and rebar, or the way you can often see the grain of the plywood forms used to pour those Brutalist slabs.

Which brings us to why I have an especially tender spot for Highway Gothic:

I live in Michigan, where harsh weather and a poorly funded road maintenance program conspire to create an organically emergent “Eldritch Serif” variant of this sans-serif typeface. Here are a few choice examples from around town, where nature chose to add spidery tails and flourishes where man had specifically shaved them away, giving the letters subtle little horns and roots. The remind me of the tagin—little decorative flourishes or “crowns”—added to Hebrew letters in sacred texts, and signs of unrevealed truths; they are letters that are written, but we don’t yet know how to read.

We put up street signs; enthalpy and entropy add further signs of unrevealed truths buried in them. It takes brutal corners and straight lines, and grows roots and branches and tentacles from them.

The “Eldritch serif” variant of Highway Gothic is sort of my favorite thing, especially in the cold and gloom of Michigan winter.

Weathered street sign for Eisenhower street.

This is an especially gnarly one:

Weathered street sign show S. Main street to the right, and Ann Arbor-Saline road to the left

We’ve Always Been Here, and You’ve Never Liked Us: Exploring Michigan’s First Jewish Burial Ground

It’s my town’s bicentennial year, and the local library graciously granted me the opportunity to write about The Old Jewish Burial Ground here—which was, in fact, the first Jewish cemetery in the state, despite being a fair distance from the Detroit Metro Area (which is where most Michigan Jews have lived).

SPOILER ALERT: the old Jewish burial ground is mostly underneath a big university building that was built in the 1930s, long after that first Jewish community had mysteriously left entirely of their own free will and not for any unpleasant or embarrassing reasons.

An advertisement with the headline "OPPOSITION TO JEWS," which ran in every issue of the Michigan Argus newspaper (Ann Arbor, MI) from fall 1851 through spring 1852. — *An advertisement that ran in the local Ann Arbor newspaper (spring 1852)*

Kudos to the library, who agreed to go forward on this endeavor, even though the working title I pitched it under was “We’ve Always Been Here, and You’ve Never Liked Us.”

A sign displayed by anti-Jewish protestors outside a synagogue in Ann Arbor, MI (spring 2024) — *A sign displayed by anti-Jewish protestors outside a synagogue in Ann Arbor, MI (summer 2024)*

Sketch of the Week: Flowers or Lil Arbus Boy? (October 11–13, 2024)

You get a two-fer this week:

A pair of pencil sketches on a single piece of paper. Top sketch is of some red daisies in a pot on a small table. In front of the flowers are two low, rectangular plastic baskets.

The lower sketch is a skinny little by in a rigid, grotesque posture holding a toy grenade. It is clearly based on the Diane Arbus black-and-white photograph "Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962"

My son voted for the upper sketch, noting “holy heck I love the shadows on the flowers.” The model for this was a little table near the entrance of the Unitarian church where my congregation held Kol Nidrei service on Oct 11. I’m on our Safety Committee, and so had a shift watching the front door. Thankfully, it was an extremely boring shift, hence the sketch.

The lower sketch is based on Diane Arbus’s “Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962.” The sketch maybe looks pretty odd if you aren’t familiar with the reference. (Otto noted, “He’s adorable but I confess the angle of the head is kinda confusing me.” Then, after seeing the original, added “Pfff okay he just looks like that” and “Is that a grenade!?”)

Here’s my photo of a reproduction of Arbus’s original photo (which, stated like that, begins to sorta feel like I’m making a cheap Duchamp joke):

A picture of a reproduction of Diane Arbus's photography "Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962"

Sketch of the Week: Rabbi at the Bimah (October 3, 2024)

Just a quick, loose sketch I did of our rabbi at the bimah while she was leading Rosh Hashanah services. (Our particular rabbi trained as a cantor before being ordained, and happens to play harp; harp isn’t a standard part of Jewish services.)

My son voted this sketch of the week because “I really like the curves on the harp. All the geometry in that one is very beautiful.” (I spent most of last week working on faces, which I’m terrible at; weak as it is, this is the best sketch of the lot 🤷‍♀️)

Sketch of the Week: Young Dali (Sept 9, 2024)

My best sketch from Week #37-2024 is this one of a young Salvador Dali:

Pencil sketch of a young Salvador Dali with slicked-back hair, a pencil mustache, and patented Dali Crazy-Eyes (tm)

My reference for the sketch was this picture of Dali and Man Ray I stumbled across on the Library of Congress website:

A picture of Salvador Dali and Man Ray, both giving Crazy Eyes. This picture was probably taken at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse exhibition in Paris by Carl Van Vechten on June 16, 1934.

Until I saw this photograph, it never dawned on me that Man Ray might be Jewish (which he was), nor that he was American-born (I thought he was French, because he was most famous for the work he did while living in France), nor that he thought of himself as a painter (I knew him for his photography). 🤦‍♀️

For the record, the Young Dali sketch narrowly beat out this space captain from Friday, September 13. She is taking no shit, folks:

A pencil sketch of a space captain aiming her blaster off screen to the right. Leave her ship!

I should not have read Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (a zero-stars review)

(I do a fair bit of reading, which I track over on Goodreads. Trying to move some of that value over here, prior to the inevitable enshitification.)

This book was notorious when I was a kid for being so extreme and gruesome. Straight talk: it’s not that gruesome. Yes, there are graphic depictions of torture and sexual violence that are basically in the ballpark of stuff happening in conflict zones right now. That this really happens to real people is gruesome and outrageous; that some guy typed it up in 1989 feels trite.

Anyway, what really is truly extreme and gruesome in this book is its absolute moral cowardice. Ketchum sets up an interesting premise–not the sex torture of the orphaned girl next door, but the narrator’s (David’s) complicity, how he lets awfulness roll forward despite liking this girl, despite being a “good guy” and “All-American Kid” (echoes of King’s “Apt Pupil” there).

That premise is interesting, because it matches the vast majority of us: we’re good people, and we let bad things happen all over the world all the time.

The problem is that Ketchum pulls the punch. Inexplicably, he attempts to transform David into a hero in the final act–despite the fact that there’s no set-up for it, and Ketchum seems entirely incapable of pulling it off. That might be fine; it could still be a solid three-star book if David tried to play the hero, then faceplanted (as he does in the novel, as he must, because the situation is so hopeless), and Megan (the victim of these outrages and everyone’s leer, readers included) had poured her fury and rage out on him.

Instead Ketchum paints this kid–this coward, this bystander, this rapist-by-proxy and torture fanboy–as the hero, and forces Meg to be his forgiving damsel.

And it just makes me want to fucking vomit. It’s a mediocre book that’s only shocking if you’ve never read a newspaper’s international headlines. It’s an advertisement for never holding anyone accountable for anything–save for the victims; “What was she doing alone with those boys? What did she expect, dressing like that” and so on and so forth ad nauseam, ad infinitum, world without end, amen 🤮

Antisemitism in Ann Arbor, MI (July 7, 2024)

I’m mostly posting this for archival/documentary purposes. But I’m also posting this because I think that the “Is anti-Zionism antisemitic?” argument is stupid; you can go to these protests and demonstrations yourself, or look at comprehensive coverage, and decide for yourself if what you see is primarily motivated by a love of the Palestinian people or a loathing of Jews.

I captured all of these video at the weekly protest held outside Beth Israel Congregation each Saturday, during morning Shabbat services. This protest has been held mostly weekly for the last couple decades, and has been mostly the same throughout that period. The pictures show all of the signs that were on display that day. Some have been the same for years (I’ve lived less than one mile from this site for 20+ years), others are relatively new. I think only “Jews Bomb Hospitals” and possibly “Jews Bomb Churches” are new since the pogrom of October 7 and intensified bombings of Gaza. The entire video of my stroll past the demonstration is included at the bottom, for those curious.

a man holding a sign reading "No More Wars for Israel" outside a synagogue in Ann Arbor, MI

I never spoke a word to these men, nor was I wearing anything inflammatory. I had on a plain black shirt and this hat, which I wear basically everywhere:

A fairly beat-down green brimmed baseball cap with four buttons on it. The buttons show: 1) a "love" hand in rainbow colors, 2) the text "BLACK LIVES MATTER", 3) a peace symbol, and 4) a stylized Jewish star and the text "Secret Jewish Space Lasers Corps: Mazel Tough"

I wouldn’t rule out that these two protestors knew I was a Jew: the “Jewish Space Lasers” button on my hat is pretty legible (folks have complimented me on it) and, besides, I’m active in Jewish communal life here, and it’s just not that big of a community.

I mention this because near the beginning of the video you can hear the mustachioed protestor begin by talking about dead Palestinians (reasonable, at a nominally pro-Palestine demo) and then abruptly switching gears to talk about the “fact” that gas chambers never existed. I don’t know why he jumped topics like that, although I’d been warned that these two men (who both wear GoPros) would try to goad me into a fight. A portion of their signs are clearly intended to offend, and especially to offend Jews–like the families with small children who were arriving to attend religious services as I arrived.

“the only thing in life that’s really worth having is good skill”—Jerry Seinfeld

I do not endorse Seinfeld or Seinfeld (no deeply held conviction or ideological bone to pick there; he just never particularly worked for me, as a comedian or writer), but I do wholeheartedly endorse both the above sentiment, and reading the entire op-ed it came from (here’s a gift link 🎁🔗 ):

“Opinion: The life secret Jerry Seinfeld learned from Esquire“[*]

The takeways summarized in the op-ed are good and worth your time, and the core message is a fundamental truth:

Dedicating yourself to the mastery of a craft—against all odds and despite all distractions and obstacles—is the only path along which there is relief.

Along these same lines—delving into and reflecting on what it means to dedicate yourself to craft—I likewise wholeheartedly endorse this documentary (noting that, over the last decade I’ve revised my opinion on it in at least one important detail: although I still love the documentary, I no longer even mildly like any of these comics).

[*] I also don’t endorse Esquire—again, it never really worked for me is all. I do endorse the Washington Post, though. I read a lot of news reporting from a lot of sources, and there’s is consistently the most even-handed and makes the most honest attempt at being honest and accurate, in my humble.