Read: shabbat shalom 18.10.07

Posted by Peter S. Lopez + News Links Added to Blog:
http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

Linda Whittaker <olsvig2000@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

This has been a rather busy week. I had a gastroscopy on Sunday morning, which was quite an experience. Fortunately the "camera down to the stomach and back" was only five minutes, during which I was heavily sedated, so it was unpleasant but not terrifying. (In fact the whole world was beautiful for about two hours after I got the sedative. I can see where these drugs can get addictive....it's been a long time since I was that content with the world......) The report was as expected, atrophy of the mucosal lining as one woud expect with autoimmune gastritis, but nothing worse than that, no malignancy or anything. Just confirms the earlier diagnosis. My family doctor is confident that I am in good health no; everything else looks okay. Whew, that will be the first time all year that we can say that.

Monday, I was surprised to get an invitation to attend a ceremony at the residence of the European Union representative in Israel (see below). Of 600 proposals submitted in my field, only 60 were funde, and only 6 of those had Israeli participation. Hence the award for my grant. But uff, a diplomatic garden party! I haven't got a thing to wear, and I'm not the "dress for success" type even if I had it. Ah well, I'll just throw on one of my Nepalese sharwal and kurta sets and done some heavy Tibetan silver jewelry; if I can't look like a CEO at least I'll look exotic, and be comfortable. Here's the invitation. Pretty cool, eh?

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H.E. Mr. Ramiro Cibrian Uzal, Ambassador, Head of the Delegation

of the European Commission to the State of Israel.

and

Mr. Marcel Shaton, General Manager

of the Israel Directorate for the Framework Programme

of the European Union

in Research and Technological Development

have the pleasure to invite

Dr . Linda Whittaker

to the award ceremony to honour the most outstanding 2007 Israeli projects in
the "EU 7^th Framework Programme for Research & Technological Development"

You will be awarded with a "HAMSA" for your successful project in 2007

If you are unable to attend, please inform us who will represent your company

on Thursday, October 25^th, 2007 at 18:30

_____________________________________________

"Represent my company" indeed.....

After that, life got more normal again. I have a new computer, a dual processor, very powerful. Had to reload all my software on it and work out the bugs, but it seems fine now. Zips along well.

One amusing surprise--the guy who sold me my new car, the Mazda, turned up at my office door in the uniform of our conservation organization. He had just been re-hired as driver for our director general. I can take some credit for that, as a go-between and encouraging him to apply. He's a nice guy, and this means I'll have "online help" as I get used to the Mazda!

Not much to mention beyond that. We got our first rain of the autumn (the first since last March) and true to form, the electricity promptly went down in my village. Dinner by candlelight, just me and the cats, how romantic. I discovered today that my phone line is also kaput, probaby also due to the thunderstorm since several neighbors have the same problem. Winter rains come as an eternal surprise to Israeli utility services.

Also true to form, I finally got my gardener to tackle some repair around the garden, painting the shed and pergola. (He has extra time since this is a Jewish shmitta year, and observant Jews are letting their gardens rest at minimum this year.) I figured he could use the money, but when I came home this evening to the most godawful mess in the yard, I regretted asking him to do it. Like a lot of Middle Easterners, he's got the gift of gab, but two left thumbs. I knew that and would never have him do repair work, but how much skill does it take to paint a shed? Everything he could do wrong, he did. Sigh. I'll just have to untangle it tomorrow.

I don't blame him; most people in this region are, uh, "manually challenged". We need to find a lost tribe of hillbilly Jews in Appalachia and bring them to Israel; hillbillys can fix or build just about anything short of a nuclear reactor, and even that would just take them a bit longer....Seriously, if being a klutz is genetic in the people of the Near East, how the heck did they invent the first civilizations???

I remember some work my archeologist stepson and his wife were doing in Syria, living in a farming village while trying to interpret excavation resuts of ancient villages by observing life in a modern one. My stepdaughter in law (??), a child psychologist before she turned to archeology, had certain toys with her that were used to test children's development stages. The result? The six year old children could figure out infant toys; the ten year old children could figure out toys meant for six year olds, but it took grandma to figure out the toys for the ten year olds.

Now, the whole village was not retarded, so the scientists were puzzled. More observation--children in the village did not play ith toys, but with other people. They never developed the manual dextarity of a Western child, but oh boy were they good at social interactions, way ahead of a Western kid their age.

My stepson and his wife finally concluded that the people living in modern Syrian villages were mentally very different from the ancient Mesopotamian villagers. The ancient people apparantly were much more skillful with their hands, and better buiders. So much for the use of modern villages to interpret remains of ancient villages, and the end of THAT study.

shabbat shalom,

Linda

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