Hi everyone,
The Sukkot holidays are nearly over (although I'm in the middle of a 4-day weekend). One pleasure of the season is the vocal music festival in Abu Gosh, an Arab town in the corridor between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, hosted by the Monastery of the Ark, also called the Kiryat Yearim Church.
It's a very old church (Byzantine foundations) rebuilt several times. (Some of you may remember Kiryat Yearim from the Bible, as a place where the Ark rested after the Philistines returned it to the Israelites and before King David moved it onto Jerusalem. For some time it was kept in the home of a Gentile, after one of King David's aides died after touching it. Guess he wanted to guinea-pig it before taking the darn thing home to Jerusalem. Smart guy.)
Anyway, contrary to expectations, the music festival in Abu Gosh is not about debkhas and other traditional Arab music, but classical, mostly liturgical vocal music. Top soloists and choirs come from all over the world to join local choirs in performances of classic vocal music from Bach, Haydn, Mozart and even local composers like Naomi Shemer. We got the famous Stuttgart Choir this year. There are also samplings of ethnic and medieval music as well. It goes on all week, usually four time slots from noon until 7 pm, both in the Kiryat Yearim church and in the Crusader Church down in the center of town. It has all the trimmings of a music festival, with crafts and recordings on sale, picnics, tables with beverages and snacks between concerts, and usually both performers and audience turn up at various Arab restaurants around town to eat kebab or humous. High culture meets ethnic food; "Bach and humous" is a nickname for the festivals. I love it and traditionally go with a friend of mine from the university to at least one concert in the Passover season and one at Sukkot. It's usually the high point of both holidays as far as I am concerned.
This year a group from my congregation also went down to the Negev on a 4-day holiday during Sukkot. We went to the area of Maktesh Ramon, and staye in Mitzpe Ramon. All this is familiar country since I lived in the area for ten years before moving to Jerusalem, but I had not been down that way for the last several years. Most of it is limestone desert and steppe, gentle hills and valleys, but the Maktesh is like Israel's version of the Grand Canyon, an erode anticline with sandstone and volcanic layers as well. I had done vegetation studies in the Maktesh for three years, so being back as a tourist was a little weird. Same for the hills where I had done some of my first ecological work in Israel.
Surprisingly, the guides and game wardens all knew me, either by reputation or from earlier encounters. It was touching to be remembered as the botanist down there. Sometimes I wonder whether I had any impact on conservation in this country, and times like that reassure me that it was worth the trouble. Fortunately the plant names popped back into my head after a decade not in use, because people did want to know the species and it would have been embarrassing if I didn't remember.
I had loved the Negev when I lived there, and being back there reminded me of the sweetness of an early desert morning when the partridges and ibex come close and you can sit with your book and morning coffee while nature comes to you. I had forgotten what it is like to live in a place where you can just walk out the door and keep walking all day in nature. Of course I took it for granted then, but here in the Jerusalem area, you can't go far without encountering a barbed wire fence and restrictions due to security, not to mention the urban barriers. I'm not a city person and would go mad living in Jerusalem itself, but even Har Gilo, a small settlement, is surrounded by a barbed wire fence which is less than ten minutes walk in any direction. There is a claustrophobic feeling. In the Negev, the air feels free, and I could feel myself expand.
Ah well, one has to make choices. The Negev is very isolated, and cities provide communities for every taste, so most naturalists have some kind of urban base even if they don't like urban living. We're a funny bunch, naturalists--we want both the open landscape and the intellectual challenge, and they don't often go together. So we are constantly going back and forth between society and nature, and not entirely happy for long in either.
What else. My health is very good now. The long rest with all these holidays has helped. I feel energetic and my stomach doesn't bother me now, only a few symptoms from the iron supplements and I seem to get adapted to them. I'm dreading the gastroscopy in a couple weeks, but less worried about what it will find. As one friend pointed out to me, a person with stomach cancer has unexplained weight loss and that sure ain't my problem. So the worst news is unlikely, and the gastroscopy is needed to confirm the autoimmune gastritis we already know I have. Celiac disease is also suspected, so of course I may be saying farewell to bread and cake, but that too is more an inconvenience than a real problem. So I've calmed down about it.
Next weekend I'm in Galilee, some field work where the Jordan River empties into Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) at Betecha. It is sure nice to be out and around again. I have a good person to take care of my animals when I travel, and when I have the Mazda next month it will make driving around the country so much easier. After a difficult year, things are looking better. (My only sorrow at the moment is that one of my cats died of FIV while I was in the Negev, but this was coming for some time and I knew it. He got good medical care but nothing could be done at the end.) I hope this coming year will be better than the last, which was rather hard on me, what with health problems and all.
shabbat shalom,
Linda
The Sukkot holidays are nearly over (although I'm in the middle of a 4-day weekend). One pleasure of the season is the vocal music festival in Abu Gosh, an Arab town in the corridor between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, hosted by the Monastery of the Ark, also called the Kiryat Yearim Church.
It's a very old church (Byzantine foundations) rebuilt several times. (Some of you may remember Kiryat Yearim from the Bible, as a place where the Ark rested after the Philistines returned it to the Israelites and before King David moved it onto Jerusalem. For some time it was kept in the home of a Gentile, after one of King David's aides died after touching it. Guess he wanted to guinea-pig it before taking the darn thing home to Jerusalem. Smart guy.)
Anyway, contrary to expectations, the music festival in Abu Gosh is not about debkhas and other traditional Arab music, but classical, mostly liturgical vocal music. Top soloists and choirs come from all over the world to join local choirs in performances of classic vocal music from Bach, Haydn, Mozart and even local composers like Naomi Shemer. We got the famous Stuttgart Choir this year. There are also samplings of ethnic and medieval music as well. It goes on all week, usually four time slots from noon until 7 pm, both in the Kiryat Yearim church and in the Crusader Church down in the center of town. It has all the trimmings of a music festival, with crafts and recordings on sale, picnics, tables with beverages and snacks between concerts, and usually both performers and audience turn up at various Arab restaurants around town to eat kebab or humous. High culture meets ethnic food; "Bach and humous" is a nickname for the festivals. I love it and traditionally go with a friend of mine from the university to at least one concert in the Passover season and one at Sukkot. It's usually the high point of both holidays as far as I am concerned.
This year a group from my congregation also went down to the Negev on a 4-day holiday during Sukkot. We went to the area of Maktesh Ramon, and staye in Mitzpe Ramon. All this is familiar country since I lived in the area for ten years before moving to Jerusalem, but I had not been down that way for the last several years. Most of it is limestone desert and steppe, gentle hills and valleys, but the Maktesh is like Israel's version of the Grand Canyon, an erode anticline with sandstone and volcanic layers as well. I had done vegetation studies in the Maktesh for three years, so being back as a tourist was a little weird. Same for the hills where I had done some of my first ecological work in Israel.
Surprisingly, the guides and game wardens all knew me, either by reputation or from earlier encounters. It was touching to be remembered as the botanist down there. Sometimes I wonder whether I had any impact on conservation in this country, and times like that reassure me that it was worth the trouble. Fortunately the plant names popped back into my head after a decade not in use, because people did want to know the species and it would have been embarrassing if I didn't remember.
I had loved the Negev when I lived there, and being back there reminded me of the sweetness of an early desert morning when the partridges and ibex come close and you can sit with your book and morning coffee while nature comes to you. I had forgotten what it is like to live in a place where you can just walk out the door and keep walking all day in nature. Of course I took it for granted then, but here in the Jerusalem area, you can't go far without encountering a barbed wire fence and restrictions due to security, not to mention the urban barriers. I'm not a city person and would go mad living in Jerusalem itself, but even Har Gilo, a small settlement, is surrounded by a barbed wire fence which is less than ten minutes walk in any direction. There is a claustrophobic feeling. In the Negev, the air feels free, and I could feel myself expand.
Ah well, one has to make choices. The Negev is very isolated, and cities provide communities for every taste, so most naturalists have some kind of urban base even if they don't like urban living. We're a funny bunch, naturalists--we want both the open landscape and the intellectual challenge, and they don't often go together. So we are constantly going back and forth between society and nature, and not entirely happy for long in either.
What else. My health is very good now. The long rest with all these holidays has helped. I feel energetic and my stomach doesn't bother me now, only a few symptoms from the iron supplements and I seem to get adapted to them. I'm dreading the gastroscopy in a couple weeks, but less worried about what it will find. As one friend pointed out to me, a person with stomach cancer has unexplained weight loss and that sure ain't my problem. So the worst news is unlikely, and the gastroscopy is needed to confirm the autoimmune gastritis we already know I have. Celiac disease is also suspected, so of course I may be saying farewell to bread and cake, but that too is more an inconvenience than a real problem. So I've calmed down about it.
Next weekend I'm in Galilee, some field work where the Jordan River empties into Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) at Betecha. It is sure nice to be out and around again. I have a good person to take care of my animals when I travel, and when I have the Mazda next month it will make driving around the country so much easier. After a difficult year, things are looking better. (My only sorrow at the moment is that one of my cats died of FIV while I was in the Negev, but this was coming for some time and I knew it. He got good medical care but nothing could be done at the end.) I hope this coming year will be better than the last, which was rather hard on me, what with health problems and all.
shabbat shalom,
Linda
1 comment:
Hola Doctor Linda~ I am glad to read that things are going well for you. I can see that your blog is becoming more of a consistent blog that could be publishable for a book in the future. I pray that your health holds up. You seem like such a lovely intelligent lady. The Lord works in very mysterious ways at times,
~Blessings for Good Health!
~Love, Peter S. Lopez
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