shabbat shalom 21.01.11

Fri, January 21, 2011 8:41:33 AM

shabbat shalom 21.01.11

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From:	Linda Whittaker     ... View Contact
To:	Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker Olsvig-Whittaker

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Hi everyone, Happy Tu B'Shvat, the Jewish New Year of the Trees.  We just passed this holiday yesterday, with the exchange of dried frutis and nuts, and tree planting ceremonies all over the country.  In ancient times this was the tax date for production from orchards.  In modern times it also was picked up to celebrate reforestation of the Land.  It's a very nice agricultural holiday. I was on Mt. Carmel for Tu B'Shvat, very appropriate given the concern with reforestation there after this summer's awful wildfires.  But my central interest was not the wildfires.  I was working with the local biologists and managers on developing a long term monitoring plan for Mt. Carmel based on the EBONE project work.  I think it may fly nicely on Mt. Carmel, an area too large and complex for any kind of monitoring on less than the landscape level.  We can do it, and it can be fun.  I have to write upworkplan. It is very nice to get back into the field again after such a long absence (more than ten years).  I was a little afraid that my "field sense" had gone, but it doesn't seem the case.  I can still suss the landscape and figure out the patterns and processes that form the landscape.  It's a gift I've always had and it isn't going away, I guess.  It's something funny about the way my brain works, but I can look at a landscape and break it into elements in a puzzle, and how they fit together.  Any landscape.  It worked in New Jersey and it worked in the African savanna and it worked it the desert.  It's like other people can read music. Just came from interviewing three Palestinain high school students who had applied to Cornell University for undergraduate studies.  Cornell asks me to do this every year, as their one alumni (alumna?) in Israel who can and will do the interviews with the West Bank students from Ramallah's Friends (Quaker) School.  Every year I get a bunch of them. The first year I asked where they had applied besides Cornell, and the answers were like Stanford, MIT, Harvard....and I laughed inwardly thinking they were shooting a bit high.  And they all got accepted at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.  Then I realized the Friends School was producing firstrate students.  Since then, I've taken these kids seriously.  Most come from professional families (doctors, lawyers, engineers) with experience living abroad, often with relatives in American schools.  They are fluent in English, articulate, well educated, and idealistic.  They see themselves as the generation that will build Palestine, and are thinking in those terms.  God, I hope they are right. So I met with three of them today and the father of one who drove them over, and we chatted over mezza and shishlik at the Everest.  They were nervous at first but we ended up swapping stories and jokes, and it went very well.  Experiencies like that keep me from getting too depressed over the crazies and the stupids who sometimes seem to be running the world, or at least my part of it. We are in the grip of winter but we have a few sunny days now and the warmth feels good for my bones.  While I was sitting with my sandwich at Mt. Carmel, I was able to watch bees on the lavender blossoms, and two African sunbirds feeding on the nectar of the redbud trees in blossom.  Some butterflies were hovering over the flowering shrubs also, lttle yellow ones of some kind.  Just a hint of spring.  No annuals in bloom yet on Carmel but I saw some on the coastal plain. Later will be a riot of wildflowers, but for right now, the first little dandelions are a treat. I made a big pot of kubbe soup yesterday, hungry for the greens that go into the broth but also curious how hard it is to make this tasty Kurdish soup.  Not hard at all.  The kubbe (meat filled dumplings) can be bought frozen here, and the tangy lemon and chard soup is very simple.  I crave the greens, and when my cats are nibbling on grass outside, I understand them.  We are all looking for the door into summer now. shabbat shalom, Linda

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