shabbat shalom 05.05.07

Hi everyone,

I'm sitting here shaking the grit out of my bra while writing this. Went for a walk with my dog after dinner, and a northern front moved in. We had hamsin (shirav) conditions today, temperatures soared to 35oC, the dry air of Saudi Arabia sitting on us. Typical end of spring weather. While walking the dog, I noticed a black front from the northwest moving fast, and the pine trees beginning to thrash around me, dust devils swirling up and racing across the landscape. Then rain, and then the weather settled down.

I orignated in the American Midwest where people brag about their extreme weather, and this would be the season for tornadoes and downblasts (vertical storms that knock down forests). Compared to Minnesota, the weather in Israel is so boring that even a front moving through is something interesting. Hamsin comes as close to tornado weather as it gets around here. Soon we will settle down to day after day of cloudless blue skies and temperatures ranging from 25oC to 40oC, just steady slow roasting for six months. Funny thing is, after a quarter century here, I kinda like the harsh dry summer. It cleanses things, purges all the bacteria and fungi, leaves the house and the air with the peculiar metallic taste of rocks in your mouth.

It's been an interesting week. We got our EU grant proposal done (2.2 million euro) and submitted it on Tuesday. I was still coming down from that Wednesday, had to attend and in one case lead a meeting in that still slightly woundup state of mind. Back to normal now, however, with a lot of plugging away to do. I hope we get that grant. Not only does it give me a chance to work with the big guns in my field in Europe, but I get to join the jet set again. I like my house in Israel, but it is really important to do a reality check overseas from time to time to keep from going crazy here. One thing the proposal already accomplished--for a while, my colleagues are looking at me with respect. It won't last, but it's nice to see what that looks like before they sink back to normal.

Lots of office work to do, but I begin to gear up for travel in July to a landscape ecology conference in the Netherlands and onward to Copenhagen to see the folks running the global biodiversity information facility there (www.gbif.org) which is a project I'm also involved with as the Israeli data source.

Gosh, in spite of everything, it seems like I've come out with a busy and satisfying professional life at last. At 53, I have one more major goal to fill before I can retire with an easy mind, and that is to set this country on a decent conservation monitoring program. If we get this EU grant, we will have a good shot at doing that. It runs four years, which gives us a jump start. More importantly, it has captured the minds of several of my colleagues. We need to do this as a group or it won't fly; this is one thing I can't do as the Lone Ranger, which is my preferred style. Getting too old to play Lone Ranger any more, I guess.

That's it for now. Looks like a quiet weekend ahead, which is fine with me.

shabbat shalom,
Linda