shabbat shalom 30.12.10

Thu, December 30, 2010 10:16:58 AM
shabbat shalom 30.12.10

Linda Olsvig-Whittaker  ~Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com

Hi everyone,

Thursday afternoon (the end of our working week here in Israel) and the office has completely emptied out.....I wonder where all our staff goes on these days!  We just had a "yom iyyun" (one day information conference) yesterday in Herzliya, where INPA (Israel Nature and Parks Authority) staff gave reports all day in two parallel sessions.   Protecting endangered species, problems with invasive species, conservation of wetlands, information management, etc. were on the agenda.  I was content to curl up in a corner with my knitting and watch the parade go by; my Hebrew will never be good enough for public speaking.  My work got mentioned a lot, though - as a data analyst, I'm the ghost in the music.  Also, I was proud to see an Arab woman colleague, Giselle Hussan, report on work in her reserve, En Afeq.  Giselle is the only woman manager of a nature reserve in Israel, Arab or Jewish.  She's smart and charming, and as an Arab Christian from Nazareth, she speaks fluent Hebrew.  I've published work with her and like her very much; I'm proud to see her addressing hundreds of biologists and conservationists on our work.  Once in a while, we get it right.

And the bigwigs were there.  This time the conference was open to the public and care was taken to invite key players.  There were so many heavyweights at the front rows that the auditorium must have sagged.  And of course there were, as always, the courtiers who hovered around them; and it was fun to see who was a courtier in hover mode.  I know my own share of heavyweights, although in my case it comes from knowing some of them before they got grey hair.  It was nice to see a couple of them again, that I don't see too often.

This week had its ups and downs.  First, our get-together of people from Walaja and Har Gilo at the Everest, originally scheduled for this evening, had to be cancelled.  Last week, the Walaja people staged a non-violent protest against the enclosure wall going up around their village, and eight got hauled off to jail, two got severely beaten.  They are terribly upset.  They told me this is not a good time to meet with "settlers" (e.g. Har Gilo people) and I guess they are right.  It would kinds throw into question their new-found political stand.  I wish them well; we will try later.

Second, a friend of mine, Nechama, is back in hospital again.  She had surgery for ovarian cancer two weeks ago but the surgery tore her intestine.  So now she will be back in hospital for two weeks on IV, not eating, in the hope that the intestine will heal.  If not, they will have to cut out the bad section and stitch her up again.  She's getting really tired of sutures too.

I was starting to feel a bit wiped out by all this after our move to the new office, so I declared a 2-day personal holiday on Monday and Tuesday, which was devoted to museums.  I'm a member of the Israel Museum and slowly absorbing all the new material they have since the 3-year closure for renovation and their new opening in July.  It was a great museum before; now it is magnificent, a world in itself.  I still haven't seen it all.  Tuesday was given to the Fine Arts Museum in Tel Aviv; I took the train down with an artist friend and his wife, and just listened to his running monologue as we passed the exhibits.  He hadn't seen the place either, so I think we all had fun.

My own work is going slowly right now; I have to write a couple papers and am psyching myself up to do it.  Moving the office didn't help any with that, but the time has now come to bite the bullet and start writing.  Also we start with new field work; I'm taking on board the Carmel as a pilot project to monitor changes in biodiversity after the terrible fire.  I'll be up there next week poking around.  back to being a biologist again.  It's about time.

Still waiting to hear the outcome of a very large grant proposal which is supposed to be decided this month.  If I get it, I've got 2 million euro and a commitment to develop a marine database network for the Mediterranean.  If I don't get it, I stick to dry land and go on with my habitat monitoring work.  Frankly, I'm not sure if I want this project or not; at my age it gets hard to do a major shift in gears that this would require.  Well, we'll see what happens.

shabbat shalom,
Linda
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