shabbat shalom 21.08.09

Hi everyone, The clock is ticking and in ten days I'll be in Prague .  Of course Murphy's Laws were in effect, and what had been some quiet days suddenly got very busy: a project report, a new grant proposal due, stuff moving on our database systems, etc.  The new proposal, setting up a marine network for monitoring change in response to global climate change, is being done under the leadership of the regional government of Sicily, and I'm finding the lead partners have good minds.  I haven't met them face to face, but the dialogue over email has been a lot of fun.  I enjoy the creative side of science, and project conceptualization is about as creative as it gets.  Partners include Jordan, Egypt, Greece, Morocco, and Tunisia as well as Israel.  Hence the network would exend the length and breadth of the Mediterranean. I'm thinking to focus my later years on the Mediterranean region, close to home yet fascinating.  This is one way to do it.  The countries around the "Middle Sea" are the birthplace of Western civilization and each one is culturally rich in its own right.  I used to be fascinated when reading about the Mediterranean when I was in school, and sometimes it's like a dream come true to be working here where so many cultures were born and blossomed. Neolithic,  Israel, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, high Arabic culture, Renaissance Italy, the Spanish Empire and Moorish Spain are all crowded around the pond.  Add to that a beautiful, rugged landscape and it can be heaven on earth.  I never want to leave "Middle Earth", and probably won't. Still,  I find my mind rebelling against the work and wandering off rather frequently; definitely time for a vacation.  After the symposium in Prague , I'm headed to Karlovy Vary for a week of rest in the spa and forest…..autum in Central Europe.  Rain.  Leaves that turn color in the fall.  That seems strange now, and suitable for a vacation.  Meanwhile the whole world seems to be coming to Jerusalem.  The town center is crowded now with visitors, and the street life is lively.  Buskers, street musicians, all kinds of evangelists (Jewish and Christian) on the pedestrian street Ben Yehuda, along with lovers and people eating ice cream cones. It's quite a circus and a huge contrast to the deserted streets of the early part of this decade, when bombings scared everyone away.  There were times I was the only pedestrian on Ben Yehuda, and now you can sometimes barely get through the crowds. We still have our political problems, thought.  I had one bad scare this week.  My cleaning lady got booted off the settlement.  She is a Palestinian Arab and works inside our village under severe restrictions, like all our workers.  They cannot walk alone around the village, but must be met at the gate and brought by car where they are working.  The cleaning ladies have a hard time accepting that, especially after decades of relaxed conditions in our particular settlement.  Sure enough, she and her sister were finally caught walking from one house to their job on another.  Permits revoked on the spot. After much begging and pleading, we got them reinstated.  After all, where else would we find home help?  Nobody would come from Jerusalem to work there, with the few busses we have.  And nobody in the village does that kind of work.  We have a traditional relationship with the neighboring Arab villages and it served us for decades; nobody wants to change it except our government….So I was facing the prospect of doing all my own housework on top of a full time professional job.  I simply can't do it, so the house would quickly become a small slum, especially with my cats and dogs around…. This is probably a bizarre problem for American readers.  About the only analogy I can make is prisoners released to do work outside prison, and constantly under guard.  These ladies are not accused of crimes, but they fall into the same category as the men who work on construction sites.  We had a few bad experiences with the men attacking (not in my village but elsewhere) so new, tight rules were applied everywhere. The soldiers are gone from our village now.  We had a little military base of about 400 soldiers since 2000, the start of the intifada.  Recently a new, regular military base was built for them elsewhere (I am not sure where and have to find out) so just as they came in one day, they left in one day.  The buildings they used are empty now and I don't know their future.  It used to be a field school for the study of nature. I'm glad to see the soldiers go (they drove like maniacs and I was afraid they would kill one of my cats, or maybe a kid).  It isn't a good idea to billet soldiers in a civilian population.  But when they left, they abandoned a lot of cats and dogs they were feeding, and now these animals wander around looking lost.  And as I know myself, I will start feeding the starving critters and……The garbage level is down and they just can't forage for food…..In anticipation of this, I guess I will have to bring in my animal welfare people and get them off to a shelter or something. There was a funeral of a colleague's mother two days ago, and I brought my Dutch student along for the experience of a Jewish funeral.  An experience it was, too.  The deceased was the wife of a well known scientist, who died fairly young back in the 1970's.  In conservation work, those were the pioneering days in Israel , and many of the old guard came to pay their respects to the wife.  (Also in those days you didn't just know the colleague; you knew the whole family; the whole country was more intimate.)  I saw old scientists I hadn't seen in many years, stooped, scarred and grey, but still kicking.  People who wrote the books I studied when I first came to Israel 28 years ago.  I'm afraid the corpse played second fiddle at her own funeral; the real center of attention was the gathering of "eagles".  On the good side, she has a spectacular location now, on a hillside overlooking our coastal plain and away to the Mediterranean Sea .  I could go for that myself.  The student was fascinated with the oddities of Jewish custom (for example, we don't use coffins here, just shrouds) and the Orthodox ceremonies with chanting of prayers, etc.  Took my student to Abu Gosh after the funeral, where we got some labane, za'atar, and some very good baklawa (the traditional Middle Eastern pastry).  Feasted at home on the stuff.  Nothing better on a hot summer day than labane topped with olive oil and za'atar, and some good pita for dip, with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and olives.  Am I weird for attending a funeral and developing an appetite for dinner? Yesterday I was down in Tel Aviv for a meeting about research with the EU (another project simmering, this time to create a monitoring system for the Mediterranean Sea , in anticipation of global climate change).  We had all kinds of people there, from biotech to conservation.  I saw some familiar faces that I don't too often these days, including the Israeli head of FoE-ME (www.foeme.org), with whom I have collaborated in the past.  It was nice just to catch up and we did politely listen to the Europeans. Then off into the sweltering humidity of Tel Aviv in summer.  Ugh.  Funny, though – the older I get, the more the heat appeals to me.  It's not as bad as it was.  But I can't wander around half naked like those beautiful bronzed Tel Aviv girls.  I haven't had a body like that since 1971.  Male travelers swear these Israeli girls are among the most beautiful women on earth, and it is probably true.  They radiate health, sensuousness, humor and intelligence.  No wonder the foreign boys fall all over themselves when they get here. On that note, Shabbat shalom, Linda