Work all day - party all night (except, of course, for the times you had to go fight 700 crazed turkeys at 3 AM). And while our work has so far failed to bring us to the promised land of financial security and stability, the partying part has worked out really fine. Twice a year - on new year's eve and on Purim (like Halloween, only with historical significance)- the kibbutz dining room turns into a magical wonderland of music and color, as craggy-faced gadashnikim twirl bright-eyed shepherd girls around to the sounds of Madonna's latest masterpiece.

Actually, the color is usually black, because today's youngsters are content to cover the whole shabang with plastic sheets lifted from our factory. But occasionally we outdo ourselves- like the immortal Purim of 1990! Yes, the Iraqi Scuds have been raining down for weeks, the world was coming to an end, and for two weeks we slaved - headed by mad genius Miki Trooper - to reconstruct our dining room into "The Ruins of Tel-Aviv" - complete with rubble, twisted steel and atomic mushrooms in the background. And then - a few days before Purim, General Schwarzkopf rolled into Iraq, Saddam rolled over and made like Rover, and - Voile! our war-torn Tel-Aviv turned into Baghdad, and we had our most cathartic Purim since Hapoel Tel-Aviv won it's last national title.

And then there are the special events - "Opening the Summer" by the swimming pool, "Summer's End concert" at the pub, "Ushering the Winter In" at the Laundry... The posters for all these events are done now days by the pros - like young Ben Schwartz at the Nutels graphic Studio; but I do miss working my butt off for days and nights to create absolutely redundant epic creations for some long-forgotten festival or other. The above retouched poster is a good example - originally 55/37 cm. in size, it was created during two very long nights of crazed labor, set off by one pleading look from Orit Maftzir, the woman and the legend.