shabbat shalom 30.07.10

From: Linda Whittaker ~ olsvig2000@yahoo.com
To: Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~ Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il>;
Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~ olsvig2000@yahoo.com
Fri, July 30, 2010 10:34:41 AM

Hi everyone,

July draws to a close and the dog days of August set in. Jerusalem is actually nice this time of year. The weather is moderate (seldom over 35oC at midday) and the air is dry here on the desert edge. I find it more comfortable than most of Europe this time of year, unless you are in the Alps or Scandinavia. The city has emptied out as Israelis take their summer vacations elsewhere, and the school vacation began in mid-July, so the traffic is tolerable. I can get to work in half an hour, which is a little more than half the time it takes me in the rest of the year.

The last few weeks of number crunching and thinking have paid off; I think I broke the back of our problem of connecting biodiversity to habitat. In fact, the methods are quite simple; it just needed a different way of looking at the question. As I have bounced my ideas off senior ecologists in the country, they got quite excited about it, and now I am being dragged into workshops and conferences by people who ignored me for fifteen years. (I won't take it seriously, but the problem solving, I take seriously.) This approach feels right, and I will lay it before our EBONE project when we have our annual meeting in Sweden in September. Nice to know I can still squeeze a few creative ideas out of my tired old brain, which doesn't do much creative thinking any more.

Now that I see the way forward, our group can relax a bit. But I have one person sweating out field mapping in the northern Negev right now (it's hot as hell there) and my Dutch student is beginning to overheat. He started off doing full days of data analysis just like he did field work, and found the number crunching is harder. So he's working a half day, going home to rest, and looking at it in the evening. I think he was surprised that it's more tiring than field mapping in an Israeli swamp in summer, but it doesn't surprise me. I do this for a living and sometimes it does feel like going through a wringer.

The student is off to Petra right now on a weekend holiday (also to renew his visa). Ugh, that's also like the mouth of hell; it's supposed to be 40oC there today and tomorrow. He's young, he will manage, I hope. Petra is lovely, but I don't think I would be there this time of year unless I slept all day and was out and about at night.

I went up to the Carmel yesterday to hear one of our grad students lecture, and spent the day going back and forth by train. It was maybe a little silly to spend the whole day traveling to hear a lecture, but I wanted time off too. I sleep well on trains and slept most of the way to Galilee, which was refreshing. There will be more travel in the coming week, to Ramle, to Beersheva......and the Israel Museum finally reopened after three years of renovation, so I will spend some time there as well. August doesn't look bad.

The exercise and diet are paying off now. I've lost 2.5 kilo (5 pounds) since June and am stronger and more energetic. The walking is giving me more stamina, which I can tell when climbing hills and stairs. Gotta keep going; there is a long way to go but am definitely pointed in the right direction. Half an hour of walking every day is exactly what I need and it doesn't demand much in time or effort. Anyway, I have to walk the dogs.

That's about it. Summer is good here. Lots of work, lots of play. I plan to enjoy August unless fate has other plans.

shabbat shalom,
Linda
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