Shabbat Shalom - Jerusalem

shabbat shalom 26.01.11

2012-01-26T09:30:00.001+03:00

FROM: Linda Whittaker

Thursday, January 26, 2012 9:30 AM

Hi everyone,

Continuing adventures of the blind tomcat. You may remember that while I was in Ein Gedi, my blind tom Chuchu bust an abscess caused by a blocked salivary gland, from which he is now healed. Yesterday I called him in at night (he comes when called) and this time he didn't come. So I went looking and found poor Chuchu stuck up a tall pine tree a few houses down. A normal cat would eventually work his way back down the tree but since Chuchu is blind, he had no idea what to do, or how to move. I tried a ladder (me in my pyjamas) but it was too short.

I went to my neighbor who has a longer ladder, but he was in the shower. His wife said she would tell him but suggested Chuchu could figure his way down anyway. I decided to go to bed, but couldn't sleep. About midnight, I padded out again to see if Chuchu was still up the tree, but he was on the ground and ran to me. Spent the night curled up next to me and was still under the blankets when I went to work. I met my neighbor outside by the cars and he told me that after his shower he had gone out and gotten the cat down on his own. Chuchu was indeed stuck and would have been up that tree until he fell off or someone rescued him. I owe my neighbor a big basked of fruit on this upcoming Tu B'Shvat, that's for sure!

Life is never boring when you have animals. It rained and rained all this week and I was mopping the floors after little pawprints every day. The dog run became a swamp again ; had to lay down gravel. That in itself was a challenge. Normally my gardener does this but he won't be doing such work for a while. Rami caught a thief in his house when he came back from work last week, beat the crap out of the thief, and fractured his own right arm in the process. His brain is 20 but his bones are 65, and this time the bones paid for it. So he got the factory to load the sacks of gravel in his car and I unloaded them at my end. Now my own back hurts.....but the dog run is clean and dry again.

Beyond that, not much to report. It has been a very quiet week, which I tried as much as possible to put into writing a grant proposal and a final report on the 4-year EBONE project. I'm plodding along, will get it done in time, but it really is slogging. I got the hard copy of our little book two days ago, which looks nice. (The Dutch do a great job with printing ; not a surprise since they've been publishing books almost since Gutenberg.)

Well, winter is past the midpoint, the days are getting longer, and February will mark the first hints of spring. I've had enough winter, thanks. So far, no snow but the rain has sure been depressing, as desperately as we need it. One part of me approves the long soaking rains ; the other part is trying to get laundry to dry. Not to mention my aching bones....Compared to those of you in most of North America, I cannot complain but I'm Mediterranean now and I want to see the sun!

shabbat shalom,
Linda
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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 16.12.11

2011-12-18T03:05:00.001+03:00

http://bit.ly/tNjm0R

FROM:

Linda Whittaker

Thursday, December 15, 2011 8:58 PM

Hi everyone,

Both Christmas and Hanukka approach (they overlap this year) so there is a sense of expectency here, even though Hanukka is a much more low-key holiday than Christmas. Both serve similar purposes - we are weary of the cold and dark days and winter depression, and longing for light and cheerfulness. Sol invictus! the sun will return and the days start getting longer in another week. Meanwhile we light candles and prepare sweet and sugary treats for the holiday, whichever we celebrate. (I'll go to anybody's party; I do both.)

This is a time when I remember childhood Christmases with the decorated tree and the presents under it. The Everest Restaurant, near my village, is run by Catholic Arabs and they have a beautifully decorated tree in their main dining hall, anticipating holiday parties of local Christian Arabs. The owner, a friend, smiled when I came by and wandered over to the tree whimpering to myself.....I miss the tree and tinsel. I must stop by on Christmas Day and wish them a sweet holiday.

Speaking of childhood, a letter from my sister was a reminder that you really can't go home again. She had passed through the old neighborhood for the first time in many years, on her way to a sale at the department store where our mother had worked as a clerk for decades. The store itself was going out of business. Our high school had been torn down, although our sturdy 1920's era red brick elementary school was still standing. Our old home was standing too, although there had been a drug bust there and the garden was now gravel and dirt with a pickup parked on it. Sic transit gloria mundi - if you can say that about a slum.

I've lived in Jerusalem now longer than anywhere else I've lived in my life, so I guess now that the old childhood home is dust and drug busts, Al Quds is the only home I've got in this world. Could be worse, I guess - Jerusalem is one heck of a mailing address. Just seems odd to think this is home because I am so used to think of being temporary everywhere I've been. This looks permanent.

What else. The weather is cold but dry and clear, not unpleasant. Forget that story about shepherds keeping watch on the hills at night in December. Those shepherds are huddled up in huts drinking tea and the sheep are in shelters at night. It's highly unlikely that Jesus was born in December, but nobody in those days paid much attention to birth days and the real date is unknown. The autumn seems to fit the story better, but early Christians made a match between the winter solstace rebirth of the sun and the birth of the Son in early Christian centuries, so there it has stayed. From the practical and inspirational viewpoints, that makes good sense even though it's an historical myth.

Myth or not, I enjoy Christmas and all the associated traditions, so this Christmas eve I inivited a few friends, both Christian and Jewish, to my home for roast turkey. Christmas Day I will go to the Old City to hear the morning service in the German Lutheran Church, then go to the spa for the afternoon, and to my own congregation in the evening for the Hanukka party. That's Jerusalem, all right.

This is also the runup to our January international workshop at Ein Gedi, which I am organizing. Which means I'm doing everything from the agenda to the meal menus to organizing transportation to confirming registration to preparing my own lectures....What can I say; thank God I'm sober; this would be impossible otherwise. Among those coming to the workshop are my former director from the 1980's (my worst drinking days) who saw both my decline and recovery, and a Czech colleague with whom I spent a sabbatical in 1989, my worst period of alcoholism. I still remember sneaking into his house in the early morning to steal some beer because I had the shakes. It's memories like that which help keep me from drinking today.....and it will be a pleasure to welcome him to our conference as a sober, respected member of our scientific community. That is the greatest blessing I ever got.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 08.04.11

2011-04-08T18:30:00.000+03:00

Thu, April 7, 2011 9:22:48 PM

shabbat shalom 08.04.11

From:	Linda Whittaker
To:	Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker
Cc:	Elhanan ben-Avraham ; Rahamin Babette ; Ann-Marie Bentley ; linda blog ; Annie Cox ; Jean Davies

Hi everyone,

This has been an odd week. On Sunday I went to the funeral of Professor Zev Naveh, a dear old friend who has been like a foster father to me for 30 years. He died on last week at the age of 91. Jewish funerals are supposed to take place 24 hrs after death but the sabbath intervened, and Zev wasn't buried until Sunday afternoon.

I took the train to Haifa and a bus to Technion, where I met a colleague who was driving out to the kibbutz for the funeral. Gal-Ed is a lovely little kibbutz in the Menashe Hills, south of Mt. Carmel, and Zev was buried in a spot fitting for a landscape ecologist like himself, overlooking Tabor oak savannah. All the Old Guard were there, veteran kibbutzniks and some of the grand old ecologists I have known since I first came to Israel, most of them not much younger than Zev. It was a hardy generation, and I'm not very surprised to see so many 80+ field biologists still standing upright without a cane, and mentally and physically active.

Zev had been married and deeply in love with his wife Ziona for more than 60 years. None of us can imagine the one without the other, yet here was Ziona left alone at last and looking very tiny and frail. I doubt she will survive another year without Zev. She was shaking so hard at the gravesite that I put an arm around her to keep her from falling in.

Another long train ride home; it took me all day but a duty I had to observe. I will go up again during Passover week to visit the family, while the children (the grey-haired children; now I do feel old) before they return to America. One of Zev's sorrows is that both his son and daughter left for America and never came back, but he lived to see his grandchildren come home to Israel.

I stayed quietly at work all week although the rest of my department went on a 2-day excursion. I just couldn't face a road trip with twenty people while I'm still mourning Zev. So it was totally quiet in the office and in fact I got a lot of work done. My experience has been that work is the best therapy for sorrow, and it was true this time as well. Unlike most people, I don't want to be around other people when I'm grieving; I just want to bury myself in the computer. It passes; now I am fine.

Yesterday there was an ecological conference at Hebrew University. It is a memorial conference held every year, for a scientist who was to some extent an ancestor of mine. I inherited her database system when I joined the Nature and Pwas arks Authority. Like me, she not a computer specialist, but a biologist. She had worked on birds in the Arctic and just about evercy kind of animal while with our conservation organization, a good zoologist. But she had quarreled with the administration and left rather suddenly, which is how I got the job. Moving over to Hebrew University, she built the database for their biological collections and did some rather interesting work in paleontology. So like me, she was more a dabbler in many fields rather than an expert in one. She died rather young, at 60, of cancer; quite a shock at the University, where she had been quite popular. I knew her a little bit, and she was indeed a nice person. Stubborn, though, and prone to resentments; I can see how the explosion at our organization may have happened.

Anyway, it was a lovely spring day and the lovely university gardens were in full bloom. They had planted the central road with a row of Angels Trumpet trees, and this was the first time I had seen them in bloom:

(not from the university)

Those flowers are amazing, about 15 inches long. cascading in a mass like a floral fountain. The effect of a long row of trees of them is stunning.

The conference was a grab bag of uneven quality but some talks were interesting. Of more importance, it brought out the old veterans again, this time of HUJI academics, and even some from as far away as the Negev. So the coffee breaks and lunch were deliberately quite long, to give people a chance to catch up. I did as well. Grey haired myself, I'm now moving into the "alte kaka" category of veteran academics who know you but can't quite place your name.

So it was a nostalgic week. I was glad to see so many of the old trees in the academic forest are still standing, and so many still fit and active. I heartily miss the Israel I knew when I was first in the country; the liberal and optimistic Israel of the Labor Party, with its European values and its scientific bent. It had problems too, major ones, but was not yet bitter and vengeful like the Israel of today. The people I saw this week were the remains of the Israel that I loved in the 1980's. They do have heirs; I suppose I am one of them. I saw others, younger than me, at the funeral and the conference, but they don't have the cocky self assurance of the old guard. These liberal, educated, humanistic, constructive, hopeful young people are in the minority now, and they know it. On the other hand, they are our hope for the future, so now I have to do my best to strengthen them.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 31.03.11, farewell to Zev

2011-03-31T12:07:00.001+03:00

Thu, March 31, 2011 12:07:35 PM

shabbat shalom 31.03.11, farewell to Zev

From:	Linda Whittaker
To:	Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Hi everyone.

I lost one of my best friends today. He was 91; I had known him for more than 30 years. Professor Zev Naveh had been a friend of my husband before I ever knew either one of them; they had done research together on Mt. Carmel. I met Zev on one of his regular visits to Cornell when I was just a lowly graduate student. Later, when my husband died of cancer, Zev arranged for me to come for a postdoctoral year with him at Technion.

Zev was a diminutive bundle of energy, barely five feet tall and very round, with a shock of grey hair, short neck and glasses….hardly looking the heroic type. But he belonged to a legendary generation and sometimes was heroic. He was a child refugee from Europe in 1939, sent by his Jewish parents on a kinder transport to Palestine. All his relatives would later perish in the Holocaust.

Zev was placed at Kibbutz Galed near Mt. Carmel, the same kibbutz where he will be buried on Sunday. There he spent years herding sheep. He told me he also learned both English and Hebrew by practicing on the sheep….at some point decided to look at grazing as a rangeland scientist instead of a shepherd, and persuaded the kibbutz to send him to university.

The War of Independence interrupted that, and Zev fought with the Hagana. He was among the soldiers who defended Mt. Scopus when the Jordanians overran the university and hospital, and was again a lucky survivor. Later he went back to university and finished a biology degree focused on rangeland.

He married, started a family in a one-room apartment in Tivon, got a master’s degree, and was sent by Golda Meir to Africa to teach the Masai how to graze their cattle. The bemused Masai taught Zev instead and a good relationship developed there. Zev came back with some of his preconceptions rattled, and went on to become one of Israel’s first ecologists, and one of our best. He was one of the founders of landscape ecology as a distinct discipline, and wrote one of the fundamental textbooks on the subject.

Zev has been honored all over the world. It’s been my rare honor to be told by his family that I was his closest professional friend.

Last week I went to Haifa and had lunch with Zev and Ziona, not realizing this would be our last visit. On Sunday he had a heart attack, and declined from that point. Today, I got a phone call from the family; Zev had died two hours earlier. He had been lucid and talking to the very end, and then simply went to sleep. Ten minutes later he was dead.

I’m grieving, but of course it’s mostly feeling sorry for me. Zev had a magnificent life and a good death. When I first came to Israel, I thought the country was full of people like Zev, sturdy and courageous pioneers, living simply with a strong liberal, humanistic ethic. Maybe they were common at one time but that generation has passed, and Zev was one of the last. I’m not only mourning Zev, but the loss of an Israel that was and will never be again. It’s a real loss

Shabbat shalom,

Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 25.03.11

2011-03-25T04:05:00.001+03:00

Thu, March 24, 2011 9:58:36 PM

shabbat shalom 25.03.11

From:	Linda Whittaker
To:	Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Hi everyone,

It's been an eventful week here in Israel. Focused on my own work, the big events passed on the edge of my radar screen but I was more aware of them than usual. We've had an escalating ping pong with Gaza and terrorists since the Itamar murders last week. Israel retaliated on that, Gaza sent Grad missiles, some of which landed as far away as Beersheva, Israel retaliated on that hitting 4 civilians accidentally in Gaza, and two days ago a terrorist bomb went off at a bus station in Jerusalem killing one person (a British national) and wounding 39 others, the first such attack in four years. Nevertheless the Jerusalem marathon is being run today and life goes on. Since both sides are determined to get in the last word, I expect this will escalate for a while until Israel really whomps the crap out of Gaza and the international community sits on our heads to cut it out. That's the repeat pattern.

Ah, Spring in the Middle East, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of mayhem. That's the problem here, too many young men running around. Seriously. Studies have shown that when the population has more than 25% males under 30, all hell breaks loose, anywhere in the world. I could have vouched for that thirty years ago in college. So the weather warms up, the testosterone rises, and here we go again.....No end in sight either, since both sides here breed like rabbits.

I shake my head over the annual March Madness, and turn my attention back to my work. Our EBONE project has been running for 36 months now and I'm reporting on it. Time to start wrapping things up. I'm planning an international workshop in Ein Gedi for next year, which hopefully will draw a lot of European visitors. (Deliberately for Ein Gedi, deliberately for January. In midwinter the testosterone levels in the Middle East are at a minimum while the local guys focus on keeping their balls from freezing, and the balmy environment in Ein Gedi mellows out everybody. It's about the safest time to be in Israel.

It's the peak of the spring season and the landscape is lovely as ever. I travelled to Haifa by train yesterday, and was refreshed by the flower-filled scenery. Galilee is especially beautiful a this time of year. It was pouring rain, even a flurry of hail, but we desperately need rain so this was welcome, however uncomfortable. I spent the morning at a conservation conference at University of Haifa, and then went to visit a very old friend, Prof. Zev Naveh. This was the man who arranged for me to come to Israel on a postdoc after the death of my husband, mainly to get me out of Cornell for a while. I don't think he expected me to stay for 30 years.....

Zev is 91 now, and very fragile but despite surviving a stroke, his mind is as clear as ever. Slower though, and not as aggressive. He used to have long lists of things I must do, ready and waiting when I visit, and we would have to argue them out. No lists any more. Yep, he is slowing down. Either that or I've done everything he can imagine.

The weather is clearing at last, and next week promises to be fair. I'm glad of that since most of next week I have to run around the country. Attending a conference in Ariel (Samaria), then teaching at Meggido on using a new computer service. (Meggido, or Armageddon! I never dreamed I'd be teaching computer services at Armageddon, but now that it is our northern district headquarters, I'm there quite often.) Happy to be there too; Megiddo is an amazing place for an archeology buff.

Must get moving; the sun is out and I have to hang laundry.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 18.03.11

2011-03-18T08:33:00.001+03:00

Fri, March 18, 2011 8:33:36 AM

shabbat shalom 18.03.11

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

Hi everyone,

I was hoping for a peaceful weekend after the stresses of the week, and indeed was snoring away contentedly when I was wakened at about 3 am this morning by the unmistakable mewling of newborn baby kittens in my wardrobe. (We usually don't have closets in this country; instead we have large free-standing pieces of furniture designed to store clothing, called an "aron" in Hebrew, literally an ark.) Well, this ark had a mother cat and three kittens. She is a wild cat that comes for food and obviously decided my bedroom is just the place for her kittens. She looked at me calmly while I picked up her little bundles of joy and took a look at them.

I had thought that might happen and had resolved to drown the babies as soon as they were born, but when I held these tiny squirming fur-balls in my hands, so weak and trusting, I didn't have the heart to do it. So cursing mildly in a few languages, I pulled out the soiled sheets, got the new family a decent cat basket, closed the wardrobe door on them and sighed. I've seen enough about death this week; it's not a time to drown kittens. But MOM has some surgery scheduled at the vet at the nearest possible date!

This is the Purim season in Israel. Purim is the Feast of Esther, when the Book of Esther is recited. It usually falls around Mardi Gras, and like Mardi Gras, is a holiday when people wear costumes and drink themselves silly. Both holidays are rooted in ancient pagan spring festivals, notably the Saturnalia, when master and slaves changed places, and no questions were asked about where people spent their days - or nights. Purim isn't quite a Saturnalia but there sure is some serious drinking going on, bottles even passed around in the synagogues, and the local AA's get worried. There will be meetings around the clock over Purim here in Jerusalem, and the AA's also organize a safe, sober Purim party for members and friends, with no alcohol. It used to bother me a lot in early sobriety; now I just go and enjoy until I get itchy and then I leave. My early radar system is fairly reliable these days, and I know when the booze is going to get me nervous.

Purim is a bittersweet time in Israel. In the past we had a lot of bombings around this time, when the weather improved and people were out on the streets for the first time in months. This week was no exception. There were brutal murders in the remote West Bank settlement of Itamar, where two terrorists broke in and slashed the throats of a mother, father, and three children as they slept in their beds. Although this was quickly upstaged in the news by the earthquake and related events in Japan, the world was briefly horrified. Now we may have a little tsunami of our own, as settlers retaliate. And the beat goes on.....

Like everyone else, we are glued to the news coming out of Japan, not least because my congregation has a sister congregation in Sendai. As my pastor noted in his weekly newsletter:

"We have very dear brothers and sisters in Japan and we must lift them up before
the Lord and ask Him to protect and save our brothers and all of Japan from any
harm or damage. We ask you to pray for the family of Pastor Tokio Tanaka and
his family members who are still unaccounted for. Their church was by the
seashore and located at the hard-hit area. Please pray for he and his family and
his church. Pastor Tokio Tanaka was actually praying for the salvation of Israel and the Jewish people for seventy years.

"I also ask you to pray for Pastor Takashi Yokoyama who lived in Sendai and had businesses in Sendai.
I believe that he is alive, but we don't know much about his house, his
businesses and his family.

"The least that we can do is lift all of Japan before
the Lord in prayer and just relay on God to prove and show His mercy and grace
to all of Japan. We pray for the authorities to have the wisdom how to
shut-down the nuclear plants in Fukushima. We pray and ask God to
find solutions for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who's lives where cast
into limbo from the minute that the earthquake and Tusnami struck. We pray for
those who grieve in for their lost and dead relatives in Japan. We pray for
those who are searching for survivors and those who are working in the nuclear
plants to be protected from any harm. We pray for our brothers and sisters in
Tokyo for both protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit to know how to witness and comfort their
friends and relatives with the Good News God and Yeshua the Messiah."

With sister congregations scatted around the world from Finland to Korea to Brazil, we often connect faces and names with world events far away from Israel. This is especially true for Japan, where Christians have been so lovingly supportive of Israel over the decades, sometimes when it seemed like everyone else had turned their backs on us. Japanese visitors come here every year by the thousands, and many end up visiting our congregation, young people working as volunteers especially. I think we feel a debt of friendship and support, to give back to the Japanese people some of the help and love they gave us over the years. When the first effects of this disaster are over, there will still be years of recovery, and that is when strong people like the Japanese are likely to despair. We Israelis will have to stand by them in support for years to come, even as they have supported us. I think we are prepared to do that. We just have to learn how.

This week was the first fine spring weather, and I couldn't stand sitting indoors any longer. On Tuesday I drove down to En Fescha oasis, near Qumran, along with a friend who works as a nurse and also doesn't get out very much. The staff were expecting me, I was in the Nature and Parks Authority uniform, and was simply given a key to the gate for the restricted third of the nature reserve and turned loose to prowl. I haven't been out like that, for ages.

My friend was a little bit afraid to be in the bush but there is nothing in the oasis to hurt you except quicksand and I wasn't going in those areas. My nose started twitching and I was in field biologist mode within a few minutes; even my friend knew enough to stop chatting and start watching. I've been working on En Feshcha more than a decade and will continue monitoring it, so I was alert to changes and taking some pictures of the more interesting developments. We walked around for a couple hours and then went to Qumran for lunch. My friend confessed such work was too lonely for her, but when I saw her today, she also told me she had not had any problems with depression (a nagging difficulty she has) since we were in the field. I told her to keep getting out, it is therapeutic.

This is quite true by the way. I have a Dutch friend, a forester, that I essentially cured of his depression by dragging him around in the field in Israel for two weeks in spring. He had been unable to work full days for two years before he came here and when he went home he was able to do regular work with no further problems. When I visited him in Holland, his boss asked me what on earth I had done to cure him. When I told her that I had just dragged the guy all over the desert, she grinned and asked if she could send some more of her staff!

I also notice a day in the field does me a world of good and I feel better today than I have in months. This means it will be very important to keep on doing field work if I am not to go completely rotten with office work. I can't do the kind of day I did twenty years ago, but I can get out there and do something. And will.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 11.02.11

2011-02-11T10:19:00.001+03:00

Fri, February 11, 2011 10:19:44 AM

shabbat shalom 11.02.11

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

Hi everyone,

Sitting here on my computer after dinner, I got the news 5 minutes ago that Egyptian president Mubarak stepped down today and handed his powers to the Egyptian military, which promises to guide the country to a more democratic government. There is jubiliation in the central Taher Square as tens of thousands rejoice in victory.

I'm astonished. Pleased and astonished; for once I called it wrong and am very glad. The Egyptians have managed a bloodless revolution, in a region which has a tradition for bloodbaths when revolts occur. Of course here in Israel we are not sure what this means for us, and will worry. But beyond doubt this is what the Egyptian people want and they have a right to guide their own destiny. It does help that they have a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, El Baredeih, as one of the leaders. (I don't know if he earned it then, but he sure as hell earned it now.) Well, I for one wish them good luck, as a neighbor who would like to be a friend.

I remember how I wept when the Russians staged much the same kind of revolution, defending their parliament building against Soviet tanks, and how the soldiers surrendered to the people. (I particularly remember the television image of one elderly fat Russian woman clambering up a tank with a purse in one hand, shaking her finger at a totally bewildered Russian soldier on top....) And I remember the half year I lived in Prague after the Velvet Revolution, as the Czechs came to grips with the novel problems of running their country as a democracy. I can only wish the Egyptians as much success as the Czechs, and pray for them all.

Well, that's on the international scene, even if it is next door. At home, we are still focused on surviving winter. It's been rainining steadily, finally clearing a bit today. I put out three loads of laundry to dry, and another three tomorrow. With 14 cats and 3 dogs, I go through a lot of towels and sheets and washcloths rather quickly, and really needed to do laundry. Also to clean the floors from the mud that little paws track into the house. (Forget carpeting when you have critters; these floors have to be mopped and mopped and mopped.)

I was sick for two weeks with a cold; first a head cold and finally diarrhea, the usual path a virus takes through my system. It's ending now, especially if the sun is coming out for a while. Even some of my cats are coughing and sneezing. And many people I know are still quite sick from flulike congestion. It's not much of a winter compared to some, but we sure manage to make the most of it as far as getting sick is concerned.

We cancelled our field work due to the weather and will have to pick it up again starting next week. With a foggy head, I haven't been able to do really serious work, but hope to do so next week. This weekend is for resting.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 04.02.11

2011-02-03T21:58:00.005+03:00

Thu, February 3, 2011 9:58:59 PM

shabbat shalom 04.02.11

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

Hi everyone,

Well the rains have come, and contrary to the usual pattern, the Middle East is blowing up in bad weather. (We usually wait for spring.) There are two rainy seasons (with different biblical words in Hebrew for the "early" and the "late" rains). The early rains are monsoonal, sweeping up from the south as sudden violent storms. Then we have a lull in January with deceptively warm temperatures and sunny skies. Then February hits with long frontal rains mostly coming from the north and lasting for days, sometimes turning to snow in high elevations like Jerusalem. We are now in the last third of winter and this week has seen a lot of rain. Thank God for that since we are always in water deficit, but it is cold and miserable indoors and out
.

Well, we DID pray for rain, and we got it. And per usual we are not prepared for it. These stone houses are good for keeping cool in summer but like medieval castles, they are cold in winter.

I went down to Beersheva on a working trip at the university and was astonished to see the Negev Desert also getting heavy rain. We shivered in our meeting and I shivered all the way home, quite drenched from waiting at the train platform. Even on the train I felt a cold coming and called in to say I would not join our division on its trip to inspect the Mt. Carmel fire area the next day. Glad I laid low, too - the report when I saw the folks yesterday was of cold and high winds. I'd have pneumonia if I had gone. Instead I huddled at home with both the air conditioner heating and a woodstove going, and slept 9 hours each for two nights running. That fended off what could have been nasty.

Speaking of nasty, we are watching the situation in Egypt with some anxiety. The protesters have a case, of course. Mubarrak has to go; he's been president for 30 years already, for pete's sake. And it's the usual corrupt, oppressive Middle Eastern government, not unlike Syria or Iraq or Lebanon. That's the way things are run in this part of the world.

Israelis don't lose a whole lot of sleep over the oppression of Arabs in their home countries ("let them poison each other" could be a national motto here) but we do worry what the consequences will be for us. (That's a variant on "Is it good for the Jews?" which is the other national motto.) Egypt is Sunni and moderate; the protesters have a strong element of the outlawed Shiite Moslem Brotherhood, and if they come to power, oy va voy. Another Iran. So we are hoping for a controlled meltdown rather than a nuclear explosion. Alas, historically in the Middle East the pattern is for an explosive rebellion against an oppresive dictatorship, followed by another oppressive dictatorship.

Seems like authoritarian government is the only kind that enables these Middle Eastern countries to function. Democracy? Forget it; they couldn't handle it if it was handed to them on a platter. To much tribal rivalry, for one thing. And a basic disrespect of civil order, for another. And an inability to control emotion by reason for a third. That all leads to chaos, and only a strong hand keeps that under control. Heck, the Romans knew that, and Israel's been as guilty as everyone else in the area, if you look at our history. A democratic Israel is an anomaly in space and time, which may not last very long. Maybe we should invite back the British Empire. Or the Ottomans.

Not much more to mention. I'm laying low and trying to stay warm, while getting some writing done. I'm having a good exchange with colleagues. Even the chief scientist, who has given me so much trouble in the past, is treating me with respect now. (Maybe because I am bailing him out with some of my grant money when he miscalculated a subcontract and went seriously over his own budget. Mony tak, as the Norwegians say.

So, my readers who are suffering from snow up to the eyes probably are not too sympathetic about winter rain, but consider living in a stone house with no central heating, guys. I was never this cold indoors in Minnesota. This is the month to hunker down, make warm soups and stews, light the wood-stove, and wish the Egyptians luck.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

If I am not for myself, for whom shall I be?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
--Akiva

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Note: Used Email time above, upper right, when posted. ~Peter

http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 28.01.11

2011-01-28T06:12:00.003+03:00

Fri, January 28, 2011 6:12:55 AM

shabbat shalom 28.01.11

...

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

Hi everyone,

Here it is, the dead of winter, and I have the windows thrown open to air out and warm the house. It's about 18oC outside (uh, something like 60oF maybe) and the sun is shining. I just took a nap in the sun on the back porch. Times like this, I remember why I am in Israel and not Minnesota.....

It's odd weather even though we usually have a kindly lull in January between the monsoonal rains of autumn and the European northern frontal rains of spring. January can often be dry and warm, followed by lots of rain or snow in February. So I see the neighbors, both Arab and Jew, scrounging for extra firewood just in case we have to batten down the hatches next month.

I'm basking in the mild weather now, though, and feeling better than I did in two months. The move to the new office space is mostly over and we are settled in again. I'm getting out to do a bit of field work. I'm sitting with the researchers at Hebrew University that we contracted for remote sensing work, and determining which work they did is most useful. It's more like back to normal life again, and I'm grateful for normal routine for a while.

Israel in general keeps the nose to the grindstone in January and February, when the weather outdoors does not encourage either play or war. (Yes, these things are weather driven, in case you didn't notice.) We just slog along through these two months, often with a bout of flu to lay us low, and usually do not have extra energy for much beyond routine. Then the spring sun starts warming our bones at the end of February and we perk up a bit. Start thinking about passover, hikes, summer vacation even. Or labor union strikes, or raising the ping pong level with Gaza. All signs of spring.

I didn't get in the field this week but will be on Mt. Carmel next week so the office time was useful. Lots of writing to do. I'm happy to get back to being an ecologist (just got a paper accepted for publication this week on bird distribution patterns!) and getting away from being a database technician. The future gets a little more clear; as I divest from database development, I can pick up with conservation informatics, monitoring, survey methods, etc. Nice way to end a career in the next eight years or so.

Not much more to mention. Our AA meeting in central Jerusalem got kicked out of its nest this week. After 30 years in the same location, the group had to relocate because the building was sold and the owners are relocating also. In the process, the Jerusalem Shalom Group has sprouted new groups. While the Shalom Group will move to the Musrara neighborhood community center, a new group has begun in Shamai Street and another one on Shai Agron, in a synagogue. So maybe the shakeup is good for us. We will have to start intergroup structure which we never had before, being just one group on several meeting days.

I decided the Shai Agron group is most convenient to my home and needs some veteran support, so I'm shifting from the Shalom Group to the Shai Agron group. That means I will give up the treasurer's position. Shalom Group wasn't so happy about that because I had put the accounts in order and we started to show a healthy positive balance while I did this service. So I agreed to carry on the treasurer's job another three months until they vote in a suitable replacement. (Really, in a city of Jews, they want the goy to manage the money???) One nice thing: since you NEVER get a compliment in Israel, the closest you get is the loud protest when you stop doing what you are doing. So, I was complimented today.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 21.01.11

2011-01-21T08:41:00.003+03:00

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

shabbat shalom 21.01.11

...

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

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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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 07.01.11

2011-01-07T07:33:00.005+03:00

Fri, January 7, 2011 7:33:48 AM

shabbat shalom 07.01.11

...

From:	Linda Whittaker ~olsvig2000@yahoo.com~ ... View Contact
To:	Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Hi everyone,

The clouds are gathering and we are getting our second real rainfall of the winter here in Jerusalem. It's a drought winter so we are all hoping this is a good rainfall; we need it desperately. So, even though the weather makes my joints ache, I hope we get a good hard rain - and then back to blue skies and warmth. How I survived Minnesota winters is beyond me today......

It's flu season here in Israel too. Radio news announced hospitals are at 200% capacity as the weak and elderly succumb to viruses. It hit me as well this week but I kept on going....although I did take cold tablets to get through a three hour staff meeting. I forgot that antihistamines make me sleepy, and ended fast asleep during someone's powerpoint presentation. That wouldn't be so bad, but I was snoring! Old age creepeth up on me, alas. (Although I remember falling asleep in class a lot when I was young too, especially in genetics and organic chemistry. And a plant taxonomy prof in grad school was the best cure for insomnia I have ever encountered; he conked me out within a quarter hour in a class that started at 10 am....) Anyway, my staff meeting nap did me good and amused my colleagues....the speaker was probably mortified though.

Field season begins. I was in the Negev on Tuesday to inspect a study site at Be'eri (try Google Earth if you don't know that place). It's a beautiful little steppe reserve, right on the Gaza border. Quite peaceful when the missiles are not flying. The western Negev has its own charm; it is rolling agricultural country of big fields and open horizons, growing wheat and other field crops, and a lot of hothouses now too. Big sky country a little bit like Minnesota or the prarie states, but with a more impoverished population. It was a settlement area for new immigrants who really didn't have a background in farming and became a welfare area, but it has potential to be really prosperous and beautiful someday. The deep soils and gentle hills are a bit of a change when I am used to the mountainous terrain around Jerusalem.

So, I like that spot and wonder if I can persuade some student to join us on work there. I wouldn't mind a week on the kibbutz doing field work in the reserve myself, and missiles from Gaza don't faze me after surviving 18 months of shooting around Har Gilo in 2002-2003.

Next week I go on to visit the second of the five sites we think to use for pilot studies. The next one is Samar sand dune reserve, way down south next to Yotvata, a bit north of Eilat. My colleague and I are getting too old for the long drive, so we will fly down, and return the same day. It turns out to be about the same cost as two nights in a hotel, so it's cost effective. I look forward to seeing a bit of desert sand dunes, which are in fact my favorite Israeli habitat. I worked on them for a decade in the south, and it's one landscape where I can't hurt myself if I trip!

Other news.....I had to put another cat down today, with kidney failure. That's three for the year. It's hard, but I recognize that kidney failure is basically incurable and is usually what kills cats in the end. My first set of cats that I acquired when I moved to Jerusalem are now well over ten years old and age is taking several of them. I expect to lose more in the coming year as chronic illness takes them. It's part of life, and they had a pretty good run of it in my house, so I don't feel too bad about it. Mainly I have to be alert that they avoid suffering. It is rather a relief not to have to fuss with infusions and medications for a while until the next one goes down....I've resolved not to take on board more cats in replacement. I've still got a dozen of them and don't want to have so many when I retire because caring for them gets expensive with the food and vet bills. Two or three cats and no dogs would be just fine, compared to the current three dogs and dozen cats.

I guess that is about all the news. Dead of winter, this is the season to huddle down, eat hearty soups and watch old movies, and catch up on backlogged work in the office. Soon enough the spring season begins here, usually in mid-February, when we start again with field work and the first flowers appear.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 30.12.10

2010-12-30T10:16:00.003+03:00

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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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 23.12.10

2010-12-23T09:51:00.001+03:00

Thu, December 23, 2010 9:51:10 AM

shabbat shalom 23.12.10

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

Hi everyone,

Christmas Eve approaches (at least the Western one ; Greek Orthodox Christmas is in January). I get a little bit nostalgic this time of year, start singing Christmas carols to myself and get all choked up, ending with a squeak and a sniffle. I miss the smell of spruce and cinnamon, that indescribable pungent mix of odors that can only mean Christmastime.  Christmas is pretty sparse on the ground in Israel, of course, and even in the Christian Arab sector, Christmas is only a faint imitation of that full blooded northern Europe Yule with its lights and its wassail and, ah, the TREE. Okay, it's the pagan winter solstice festival. Big fat hairy deal. I want my winter solstice festival. Vats of mead and sacrificial virgins are optional but I want that tree, and candles, and Christmas cake. Centuries of Viking ancestors are stirring in my blood and opening one eye, getting restless. Must do something about it.

Oddly enough, my coworkers like Christmas festivities too. Being Jewish, they have to take it on the sly. So my annual office party is officially the "Winter Holiday Party" but it has a tree and lights and treats, and about 60 people turn up, not one being Christian but myself. And not a crumb is left afterward, either. So the fascination is obviously visceral and not even cultural. The days are short and dreary here now too, and we crave light, fat, and sugar. I wasn't going to do the Christmas party this year because we moved office, but got nudniked by so many people about when it would be, that I gave up and will throw a party here on 2 January.

Before that, if things work out, I'm holding another party for a whole village.   The idea of having a get together at Everest Hotel on 30 January for the people of Arab Walaja and Jewish Har Gilo goes ahead despite some lurches.   But the latest development is that eight villagers are in jail after demonstrating yesterday against the containment wall being built around their village, see http://uruknet.info/?p=m73163&fb=1 and http://ramallahonline.com/2010/12/mazin-and-7-others-arrested-today-at-al-walaja/) Apparantly all hell broke loose in Walaja yesterday, but not a peep in the Israeli news.....There will be a demonstration at Walaja tomorrow morning. Things are definitely heating up.   I can't help thinking they did the right thing: a nonviolent protest is exactly what they need to do, and it should be all over the media. It may be that my party is cancelled, but I'm cheering for them from the sideline. I talked to the village committee there and we will just have to see how things shape up.

Well, what news tops that....not much really. On Tuesday I joined my colleagues for a long trip to northwestern Galilee , to view the situation with water management. We visited one of my favorite reserves, little En Afeq, a wetland reserve where I had half a dozen students do their M.Sc. theses over the last fifteen years. It is now managed by a good friend, Giselle Hassan , who as a Christian Arab and a woman, is a most unusual nature reserve manager in Israel . I've published articles with her, and know she is very able. It was great to poke around and see what she and her team have been doing there since my last student finished his field work.

Then we were off to Nahal Kziv (http ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahal_Kziv), a deep and beautiful canyon which runs from Mt. Meron to the sea near Achziv. It is rich in vegetation, including maples which we don't often see in this country, and lots of water. The cliffs are full of caves which housed people over the centuries, and our excursion ended near Montfort Castle , a Crusader fort. It's a very romantic place and of course full of hikers. Although it was a very tiring trip, I am glad I saw a part of the country which is unfamiliar to me.

Well, Christmas is coming and I'll take some time out.   The YMCA does a caroling service on Christmas Eve, and I have friends coming for Christmas dinner on the 25th, for which I have been hoarding a ham that I handcarried back from Prague last September. I think it's at least ten years since I last had baked ham......which will be balanced with having burekas, tomatoes and cucumbers for Christmas breakfast!

Looks like it is going to be an interesting holiday season...will try to make the most of it without getting arrested. Just goes to prove that being alone during the holidays does not necessarily equal boring or depressed!

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 16.12.10

2010-12-16T02:30:00.002+03:00

Thu, December 16, 2010 2:30:48 AM

shabbat shalom 16.12.10

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

Hi everyone,

Whew, what a week. Quite apart from moving the office (which is still in boxes, awaiting the carpenter to put up shelves and bookcases), we also had a monumental storm in Israel on Sunday night. It started with howling winds all Sunday, blowing soil particles into every possible crevice inside and outside homes. I was sweeping constantly since Saturday. Then the real storm hit as a northern front rolled in with hurricane force, tossing garden chairs and tables in the air, overturning pots, knocking off roofing tiles, downing trees, and making our home shudder and vibrate all night. My critters were all cowering from the howling and shaking, and I saw some cats come into the kitchen via the cat flap that I had never seen before.....everyone hunkered down like it was a military attack.

When I got up at 4 am, the wind had stopped, and the village was covered in snow. During the night, the dust storm had changed to a rainstorm which turned to snow as the temperatures plunged from 22oC to 0oC. I was grateful that we had electricity still, and my air conditioner was heating the house, even though it had to do frequent defrosting. The snow melted quickly as temperatures warmed again and precipitation went back to rain again. By 10 am it was melted, but we were all cold, miserable, and a bit shell shocked. I located those cats who had taken shelter outdoors and fed them, and came to work. I was lucky; didn't lose any tiles from the roof, only a bit of structural damage. We have such storms maybe once every 2-3 years, so we have to prepare for them.

It's been hard getting back to routine work again as we try to settle down in our new offices, but as long as my computer is hooked up, I can do quite a lot. I finally got things more or less arranged as I like, and I am able to look out the window as I am working on the computer. I got a small window this time but it looks out over open country, across Jerusalem to Nebi Samuel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Samuel)

A very pretty view, which is something I haven't had for 16 years. So I am content. Now it is a matter of settling back down to work.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 10.12.10

2010-12-10T21:36:00.001+03:00

Fri, December 10, 2010 9:36:45 AM

shabbat shalom 10.12.10

...

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

Hi everyone,

Uffff, I'm tired. We had to move the department from one office to another this week. The usual Israeli mess: we were notified on Sunday to start moving NOW (no scheduling ahead of course). No boxes. The idea was to schlep all our gear down in great wheeled cages (like in the post office) and put directly in shelves, desks, and closets. Only problem was that most of the shelves, desks and closets had not been built yet.

I had decided the situation was insane, and can't move without shelves at the destination, so I was sitting tight until Tuesday, when the maintenance crew came to my office and had hysterics all over my carpet. I just kept pointing out that I can't move until there is someplace to go. They finally coughed up about 50 packing boxes for me, crying and moaning all the time about the painters coming in on Sunday.....

So on Wednesday my two technicians and I began to pack up the shop. We worked like dogs on Wednesday and Thursday, and finally got the boxes all down in our new offices. No furniture yet. That is supposed to come on Sunday. Same day as the painters in the old offices. Talk about precision planning.

I used to work with a South African scientist in my Negev Days. He was sharp, pungent and impatient with stupidity. Periodically he would throw his hands up in the air and shout that Israelis "could not organize a f**k in a brothel". That is the perfect expression for how this last week went.

I'm standing by to be amused again next week. The carpenter measured my wall to make floor to ceiling cabinets to hold my gear. I wanted one whole wall. Thinking back I don't believe he took into account that the door has to open too, on that side. I'm fully expecting him to realize that when he comes with the cabinet pieces and has to assemble them. And then I should learn some very useful Hebrew.

The rains are coming at last. It's supposed to pour buckets from tonight until Tuesday. We haven't gotten any real rain since last March so the country is now in emergency mode. Seriously. The hospitals have put their emergency wards on alert, and there are warnings on the news about road conditions, flooding, etc. Three days of rain, and you would think it was the blizzard of '36. Still, our guys forget how to drive in the rain from one year to the next, so these preparations are no doubt wise.

I hope to just spend shabbat indoors snug by the fire and relax. On Sunday I will have to get up at 4 am to get to a monitoring conference starting at 8 am. It's important though; we have serious work to do after the terrible fire on Mt. Carmel.

Other news. A few of us met in Har Gilo and agreed to organize a get-together with our Arab neighbors in Walaja. We will hold it at the Everest, which is "neutral" ground and trouble-free for everyone to reach. I have no idea where this will go, but it is long past the time that Har Gilo and Walaja should get together with all the problems both of us have with the security fences and being walled off.

What surprises me is how many people at Har Gilo have told me this is a great idea, they want to take part, and that I'm very brave for doing this. Brave? For organizing coffee and cake? The only one really pissed off is our village administrative secretary (this is a guy assigned to us by the regional council.) He doesn't even live here and hasn't even worked for us very long so he doesn't have a feel for the history of Har Gilo. I won't lose sleep over that.

Finally, the big event of the last week of course was the Carmel Fire, a huge and devastating fire that burned a large part of the natural area of Mt. Carmel and killed 42 people. We didn't have adequate firefighting power to control this blaze, and if it were not for the help we got from neighbors like Cyprus, Greece, Turkey (yes, Turkey!) and Russia, it would probably still be burning.

But if there is any good to come of this disaster, it is that the Turks are talking to us again. They were cursing us to the skies last summer after the flotilla affair, but their rapid response to our need here has perhaps given Israel the way to climb out of the tree we got stuck in. The Turks want an apology for last summer's conflict, and now we owe them a favor, so it will be much easier to give one. The Greeks were returning a favor; last year we came to their help in terrible wildfires. The Cypriots and the British teams who flew from there were simply being gallant. In fact they were all gallant and flew like WWI aces for two days. It was wonderful to see them.

Now that the fires are out, comes the work of the conservation biologists, and I'm involved in that. Carmel was anyway going to be one of my pilot studies for monitoring by remote sensing and suddenly this has gotten a lot more interesting. Sunday I am off to a meeting of monitoring people and later I will inspect Carmel to figure out how to do our monitoring.

Funny how things come full circle. Maybe 30 years ago I did my doctoral work on post-fire succession in pine forest, from Minnesota to Cape Cod. I spent a lot of time in burned forests, got to know the firefighters and the foresters very well. I haven't touched the subject since, but now at the end of my career it's back to pine forests and smoke jumpers, halfway around the world from the jack pine forests of Minnesota. Closing the circle, as it were.

shabbat shalom,

Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 18.11.10

2010-11-18T01:11:00.001+03:00

Thu, November 18, 2010 1:11:45 AM

shabbat shalom 18.11.10

...

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

Hi everyone,

This has been a week of sticking to my desk, keeping low, while dealing with a head cold. I had company for dinner on Saturday night and an hour after they left, I felt my head swell up like an allergic reaction. Which I seldom have. Nope, it was a virus and it beat me up for a couple days. Talked to a few people around here who had the same thing; nasty bug that sweeps through real fast but fortunately leaves fast too.

So all I could do was mope at my office and go to bed early. Fortunately there was a loto do. My new network User Interface was done and we put it on the system on Monday. This interface taps three different databases at the same time to do union queries. It's a neat trick I learned working on an earlier European project, BioCASE (www.biocase.org) which later evolved into the much-admired GBIF (www.gbif.org) which is integrating many thousands of databases. So this interface is minor league but new for my organization. I'm pleased, and it is out in beta form now for staffers to test. So far, it works.

Next item, the 50-page report summarizing 2.5 years of my team's work on EBONE. I've been writing that for weeks, did the final polish, sent it off for review. It's one helluva lot of work to summarize, and we aren't done yet. This year will be mostly analysis, which means mostly me. And I need to publish some of this stuff.

Unfortunately the head cold caused me to miss the boat, literally, on a department excursion to see a new research vessel used for marine research. I heard about it, though. It's a sexy beast which can cruise the whole Mediterranean, equipped with wet and dry labs, all kinds of sampling equipment, full crew and can accommodate up to 14 researchers. Heavily subsidized, it only costs 600 usd per day to rent for research. Sounds wonderful, and if I get that Mediterranean monitoring grant, I'm going to book it for a fishing trip.

The other thing I had to work out was my workplan for 2011-2012. This is interesting because I'm phasing out of database management and back into ecology. The Computer Services department should take responsibility for my database work in two years, so I'm preparing to hand that over, and get more into monitoring, informatics, scenario modeling and other far more interesting stuff. I was hired in 1994 as a database manager and indeed have gotten my fill of that. So the next few years mean more field work, more statistics. That should keep me interested until retirement, especially since it seems likely that the cooperation with Holland will continue.

On other fronts: my CRF cat is slowly declining but I try to slow the decline. Took him to the vet yesterday because he had trouble eating. Did some repair work on his mouth (bad teeth) and got some very soft catfood used for recovery patients, which he likes and eats. I suppose at some point I'll have to put him down but I want him happy and comfortable until then. One thing I discovered is that he LIKES the cat carrier. When I took him home he refused to get out of it. I realized he feels warm and safe in there, especially since other cats may bother him. So I made it nice and soft, and it is parked next to my bed, where he feels maximally secure. Poor old guy, he's only 11 years old, but he got FIV as a kitten and had health problems all his life. So he's doing all right, considering.

Final item. Thanksgiving approaches. Here the American immigrants and expats celebrate it on Friday night next week. I'm lining up a fresh turkey from Beit Jala, and collecting the other necessaries. Canned cra,nberry sauce doesn't exist here, at least this year. So I'm making it from dried cranberries, which is not terribly complicated. Likewise pumpkin pie filling doesn't come in a can here; you start with the pumpkin.....Same will be true of Christmas fruitcake. We bake our own. It's nicer in some ways, just takes planning.

So, I start preparing Thanksgiving dinner this weekend. First I will have to check to see that my oven works!

shabbat shalom

Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 28.10.10

2010-10-28T02:50:00.000+03:00

Thu, October 28, 2010 2:50:13 AM

shabbat shalom 28.10.10

...

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

Hi everyone,

Autumn has really come now; we are expecting rain tonight. Aside from a few sprinkles, we haven't any since last April, as is typical of the eastern Mediterranean. Right now it is "hamsin", hot and dry and dusty, but the weather is supposed to swing around tonight and get cold and wet....

It's been a long week. My family doctor put me on antibiotics a week ago for treatment of cellulitis. By then it was painful, like a sunburn. The antibiotics slowed me down a bit, with diarrhea as a side effect, so I cancelled my planned trip to Haifa to take part in a conference, and just stayed in the office working on a long report. Uff, a dreary week of writing and running to the bathroom, and going to bed early because it all left me rather tired. This is passing, however. Two more days on antibiotics and I'm done.

I did go to a conference at Hebrew University to hear a student talk about his thesis work on biodiversity patterns. It was really nice to see a student, who is a student of a student of my late husband, using the mathematical tools we developed in the 1970's, as ordinary data analysis procedures. I introduced the ordination and numerical classification methods to Israel which are now widespread and commonplace; it has taken a couple decades but now these methods are used everywhere. If I did nothing else in this country, that was a contribution. So when I see Canoco or RDA or Twinspan in scientific use by students here, I just grin and make a mental tick on my life list. Usually they don't even know I was the one to introduce these methods here; too much time has gone by now. But I know.

I also got to a peace activitists' workshop organized by IPCRI. That was just a little down the road from my home, in Talitha Kumi (Beit Jala). About 100 Israelis and Palestinians got together, including half a dozen from Gaza, only God knows how they managed to arrive. Lots of sessions. I was impressed by the use of the internet to keep in contact despite all political efforts to stop connections. Facebook, skype, blogging....all are incredibly subversive. The only way to block them is to block Internet altogether, and that isn't happening. However, our Gazan friends did beg us to not mention their names, not take pictures of them and not put them on the Internet because Hamas will check and then they could be killed. It is hard to imagine what they live under....and they really want to get rid of Hamas. They hate it. And they don't hate us. That alone made attendance at the workshop worthwhile. People at war tend to demonize and dehumanize the other side; when we are face to face and eating at the same table, that doesn't work any more. I've learned that over and over, in all kinds of different contexts and with many kinds of people.

Meanwhile, I try to get my tired old brain to focus on synthesizing all the work my team has done in the last two years on the EBONE project, and make a coherent summary of it. We were rather busy; three students completed M.Sc. theses as part of our work, and we have two subcontracts on special aspects (remote sensing and data management) so the work is rather wide-ranging. I'm just on the factual reporting now, but I do need to make a synthesis of what we found. I guess it is good that I'm required to do this because I'd sure never do it voluntarily. With much grunting and groaning I've got 27 pages of text and God knows how many graphs, tables and figures, but at least it is roughed out now and I can start polishing and synthesizing.

Other news items: my cats are doing rather okay at the moment, although I had to put a poor stray cat down. Renal failure, per usual. I have a house-cat with chronic renal failure as well, but he eats his special food and seems to be doing okay for now. Or at least he eats his food if I sit in front of him and watch him eat and talk to him; otherwise he doesn't eat. This is a new one for me but other cat lovers tell me they experienced finicky cats who only eat when they have company.....

My friend Rebeka has a handful at the moment also. Her friend flew in from America in rather bad health, and hasn't stirred from her house in two days. Just gets up to eat a little and goes back to bed. Rebeka is getting worried. The woman flew in without travel health insurance, has diabetes and a stent in her heart, and and is over 70 years old. It's another one of those cases where a devout Christian has decided to visit the Holy Land and, unlike going to France or Italy, has failed to take the proper precautions for travel in a foreign land because "God will provide". Poor God, he has to substitute for Thomas Cook, the public health service, social security, and the police all at the same time. As might be expected, people who come here with that approach, especially if older and less robust, are often headed for a very hard fall on their noses. It's %%%%% because in other circumstances these are often intelligent, practical people. They just leave their brains at Ben Gurion Airport, and we residents of the Holy Land have to clean up the consequences. Why do they do that???

So, Rebeka has noted down the local ambulance number just in case, and is girding herself for a serious face to face talk with her old friend and house guest. I don't envy her. Messy business, especially if the old friend has a heart attack or diabetic coma on her watch, and no health insurance!

Guess there isn't much more to mention here. We slide into the monotony of early winter, usually grateful for routine after all the disruptions of summer and the High Holy Days. I'm a little peeved because some thief made off with half my woodpile, but our local cop thinks she knows the culprit and is on the case. Fortunately I have an air conditioner this year (hurray) and am no longer dependent on my wood-stove to keep me warm. It will just be used for adding a bit of cheer on the weekends, but I'd still like my woodpile back. The joys of country living.....

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 15.10.10

2010-10-15T21:52:00.002+03:00

shabbat shalom 15.10.10

...

From:	Linda Whittaker
To:	Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Hi everyone,

Just a short note, not much to mention this week. I'm just getting back into the groove of routine work again. It is nice to be in a quiet, reasonably neat home and a quiet routine at work. I have a long report to write, and am trying to buckle down to it; rather hard to get focused after so many weeks bouncing around. Until the end of the year, it looks like I have a lot of writing to do.

I'm paying the penalty for being away from home now. When I travel, it is rather common that my cats and dogs get sick, and right now I have several that needed vet care, total bill about 2500 shekels, or 700 dollars. One cat and one dog had a hematoma of the ear, which meant cutting the ear open and stitching it up again, antibiotics, etc. I also had another cat with severe dental problems, decayed and abscessed teeth. (This is a stray cat I've been feeding, but they always move in when they have problems.) She had a whole bunch of teeth pulled yesterday and has a sore jaw today; I had to give her some milk with a syringe because she didn't want to move her mouth. Hopefully that passes.

Weather is alternately warm and cool, as winter approaches. It's "shirav" today but tomorrow I will pull out the winter clothing. For now, I think I will pull out some loose summer cottons; it will be too hot otherwise.

Speaking of winter, one of my neighbors is going for a nifty solution to heating: geothermal power. There is a company drilling by his house. This company installs geothermal power on an individual house basis; first time I ever heard of that. It looks like a good deal; about 10,000 dollars to do the drilling, and then free hot water and electricity generation forever. Israel sits on the edge of the Great African Rift (that's our Arava/Dead Sea/Jordan River Valley, which continues up through Lebanon, Syria and Turkey). So we have lots of tectonic activitity and hot springs down in the Rift, but I didn't know it could be accessed from a place like Har Gilo. I'm very curious about this. Hope it works, since it's clean and renewable energy.

Not much else and I have to get running with errands.

shabbat shalom,
Linda
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 08.10.10

2010-10-08T09:13:00.003+03:00

shabbat shalom 08.10.10
Linda Whittaker

To:Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~ Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com
Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~ Email: linda.whittaker@npa.org.il

Hi everyone,

Whew, finally settled back home after two weeks in Sweden. There has been a big change in the weather
here; it was 30oC when I left, and it's less than 20oC right now. Moving from cooling to heating very shortly,
and the forecast is for rain tonight. The first rain since April, so autumn has begun in earnest. I finally got
unpacked, got the house in order, doctored the critters that needed doctoring, passed through my office to
see what brush-fires had started, and did some grocery shopping, among other chores. At this point I just
thank God I don't have to do any more international traveling for a year, and only plan on day trips until then.
Getting old for this; if I had a spouse or maid service it wouldn't be so bad but putting order in the house
after a long absence is a major pain in the posterior. Sweden was interesting, although I don't feel particularly
inclined to make another trip to Stockholm.

Too quiet, grey, expensive and boring. But such as it was, here are some pictures.

The public transport system is outstanding in Sweden. Clean, efficient, on time and relatively cheap. In
Stockholm, the public buses run on bio-fuels (I would guess that means byproducts of the timber industry,
which is huge there.)

The air is remarkably clean and fresh compared to other port cities I know, although I understand that a
century ago it was really horrible. Something like a third of all Swedes own a boat, and are out on the
water either in the sea or on lakes (the country is littered with lakes almost every kilometer). Everything
from kayaks to schooners is out on the water on the weekend.

Stockholm is actually built on an archipelago, like Venice. And also like Venice, the outer islands provide
a shelter for the harbor and main body of the city. At one time the outer islands were very poor and
deserted, when boats had to get to central Stockholm by oar or sail. This all changed in the 1800's when
steamboats became available, and suddenly the outer islands became easily accessible by ferry. During
the Victorian era, wealthy families built summer homes on the islands, many still in use, so a cruise in the
outer islands now is a delightful survey of late nineteenth century gingerbread houses with huge windows
and pergolas (not the sort of thing you would want in a Swedish winter, but great for their "white nights"
of summer).

The happiest hours I spent in Sweden either on a boat or in the forest. The forest is true boreal, with
reindeer lichen, mosses and mushrooms under endless conifer forests, with moose and wolves and all
sorts of groovy critters like that.

I was surprised to learn that moose are common in Sweden, the same species as in Minnesota. No
wonder the Scandinavians settled in Minnesota; it looks just like the Olde Countrie.

But in the city I was rather at a loss. Saw a couple museums (including one devoted to piggy banks, of
all things). But one can only spend so much time walking around, and by four in the afternoon I was tired,
my feet hurt and I didn't feel like spending money on either shopping or a nice restaurant. Stockholm is
geared to people with an income about three times what I earn, and the prices of things made me gasp.
So I parceled out my kroner very carefully, and I guess to good effect since I still had some left when I
came home.

I was amused to watch the people at the airport. In Stockholm, they all looked identically "dressed for
success" in grey suits, ladies in black leggings and fashionable sweaters or coats, all with their little grey
carry-on suitcases going tikky tikky behind them, all very cool and elegant. I then flew to Prague as my
transit airport, changed to El Al and life got real again. After the Swedes, the Israelis looked like a bunch
of refugees, all sweatsuits and rumpled clothing, loaded with bags, even carrying sacks of sandwiches and
bottles of water in their knapsacks. (I didn't see any knapsacks at Stockholm, how weird....) They sounded
like refugees too; at security an argument broke out between a Russian-accented Hebrew speaker and a
security guard, that carried on in three languages and high decibels, with the surrounding travelers lending
their advice to both sides.....now would a Swede ever argue loudly with a security guard? I doubt it.
Anyway, I grinned; already I was "home".

And glad of it too. On the way, Czech Air mislaid one of my bags, but the El Al security staff have to check
all transit bags when the transit passenger goes through security, so two of them went chasing down my
errant suitcase and found it, swearing about the Czechs in the process.... At least this way I knew all my
stuff would get to Tel Aviv along with me. Even better, since the flight was overbooked, not a spare seat,
they bumped me up to business class where I thoroughly enjoyed being fed and pampered and petting,
feeling sorry for the peasants squeezed in economy class....
After security got my luggage sorted, the rest was smooth all the way home.

Of course my animals panic when I go on a trip, get sick, and cause havoc in the house, so I had to spend
a day sorting that out. The blind cats in particular wouldn't let me out of their "sight" and followed me
around all the time. One poor cat had a hemotoma of the ear, swollen up like a balloon, and had to have
surgery today. He's groggy but he's be okay. My CRF cat is thinner, but still eating, so I need to figure out
a diet to put some weight on him. And the rest were just sort of normal, but really glad to see me home;
now they are all piling on the bed for touch and reassurance.

I guess that is about all to mention. It was sorta nice to go, and even better to come home to the crazy
Middle East. Truth to tell, I was bored in Sweden, and I'm never bored in Israel!

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 25.09.10 Stockholm

2010-09-25T18:47:00.012+03:00

Fri, September 24, 2010 10:40:28 PM

shabbat shalom 25.09.10 Stockholm

...

From:	Linda Whittaker Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com
To:	olsvig2000@yahoo.com; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker Email: Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il

Hi everyone,

Here I am at last.....the trip was a bit rough but all ended well. The airport terminal in Tel Aviv was jammed even at 5 am with people traveling abroad on the Sukkot holiday, and the lines were long. But I got to my transfer in Amsterdam without trouble, and then the fun started. The flight to Stockholm was an hour late and they changed the gate, so I had to race from one end to the öther of this huge airpot. I made the flight, but my checked luggage did not, and I arrived in Stockholm without my suitcase......AAARGH.

Fortunately as a seasoned traveler I learned to put all important stuff in my carryon, including medications and an extra set of underwear. I needed it, but faced the prospect of some days with no clothing, so at 7 pm with no sleep 11 pm the last night, I went shopping.....dont ever want to do that again.

Spent a sleepless night and came down very sad, asking the receptionis if there was any news from the airport....He just smiled, went to the back room and wheeled out my suitcase, which KLM had delivered in the middle of the night. You could have knocked me down with a feather.....Now I am tired but very relieved.

Have not seen much yet but Stockholm is a classical European city with broad avenues and big shops....I am sure there is more that I will see later. The drive from the airport an hour away was interesting, despite my distress. Lakes and forests and red barns with lots of white trim....looking SO much like Minnesota. I felt weird, like I have been there before....will probably feel more so as time goes by.

Anyway, I am safe and settled now, going on to join the Swedish Friends this afternoon, and back online sometime Monday evening when I get to Vasteras.

shabbat shalom

Linda

________________________________________________________
Pixs via Google posted PSLopez

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 17.09.10 Erev Yom Kippur

2010-09-17T21:19:00.003+03:00

Thu, September 16, 2010 9:19:08 PM

shabbat shalom 17.09.10 Erev Yom Kippur

...

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

Hi everyone,

This Friday night is special; this year shabbat and Yom Kippur coincide. Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) is one of the most eerie holidays in Israel. All traffic ceases by sunset.

~Picture

All broadcasting (television, radio) stops for 25 hours. All shops, restaurants, places of entertainment, etc. are closed. Kids roller blade on the highways. A large percentage of the Jewish population engages in a 25-hour fast and the synagogues are full of people dressed in white, with the lengthy prayers asking forgiveness, beginning with the "Kol Nidre" prayer absolving everyone from vows, promises, and commitments made in the past year. (This prayer was created in the days when Christians were forcing Jews to convert and subjecting them to torture and threat until they did. It permitted Jews to convert falsely and be forgiven the deception. Otherwise this would be a sin punishable by death, as in Islam.)

I've participated in the Yom Kippur fast and services in the past, but found that fasting makes me irritable (leading to more sins than I'd clear that day) and the endless prayers are mind-numbing. I'm sure most people who do this get a lot out of it but I emerged asking myself "why"? Especially when the next day everybody is back at the same stuff for which they had to beg forgiveness; fat lot of good it did. (I have the same problem with confession and absolution; six centuries of Lutheranism in my family left their mark, I guess. Catholics would understand Yom Kippur a lot better than I do.) Still, even if I don't "get it", this is a beautiful and impressive observance. Everyone wears white (symbol of purity) and abstains from leather shoes or other apparal, no jewelry (again, the link with Muslim custom on haj is striking; Judaism is much closer to Islam than it is to Christianity). People eat a light meal before the fast, and end it 25 hours later with another light meal; it's not smart to stuff your face either going into or leaving even a one day fast. That doesn't keep people from jamming the supermarkets as if provisioning for a siege.

I'm flying to Sweden a week after Yom Kippur, so I will use this quiet day to put my gear in order and pack. I'll be gone three weeks, an unusually long trip stopping in the Netherlands and Belgium as well. Up north, it is cold and wet in all those countries, so I have to take care to pack appropriate gear when the warm weather here would cause me to estimate wrong. I also got myself a notebook computer for this trip (conferences at both ends so I need it). I got tired of waiting for my office to grind through the paperwork and anyway the IBM laptop I'll get from them weighs a ton and is quite expensive, not really the thing I should toss in a backpack and risk damage or theft. The litte Usus Eee I got fits my needs fine; weighs a kilo, fits in a backpack, and does all I will need while traveling. It will be nice to have this chirpy companion on my travel. (It is so nice that one of my colleagues took one look at it and promptly ordered exactly the same model.)

Project work is going full tilt and I'm juggling remote sensing, digital mapping, statistical analysis of biodiversity data, reporting....it's coming together and at this point at least most of my guys have a clear idea where we are going. We aim to establish a biodiversity monitoring network in Israel, modeled on and linked to a similar system in Europe. The way we lay it out is becoming more clear. It's definitely a team effort and will take years, but we will come out of the current project knowing how to move forward. That's great, it's what I set out to do. If I can have this network in place by the time I retire in six years, I can sign off feeling content.

That means work is consuming right now, and only from time to time I stick up my periscope to see what else is going on. Ten days on holiday in the Netherlands will be great even though there is illness in the family where I will stay, and at least two of those days will be tied up in working meetings. I might drop into Utrecht to attend the international AA meeting there (which was held in the tiny living room of a retired Dutch army colonel the last time I was there). I wonder if he is still alive; that was sixteen years ago. He endeared himself to me as much for his efforts helping the Hagana in Israel's pre-state days as for his AA work - as a young officer he was sent as part of a Dutch investigative team to see how the British were treating the Holocaust refugees, and these Dutch Gentiles promptly joined the Jewish underground. They were stealing from the British and passing it to the Hagana; their crowning achievement was stealing a jeep. Always did like the Dutch......so practical.

That's about all to mention here. I'll fire of another newsletter before I fly, but I trust with the bitty computer I can stay connected until I return home 15 October.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 10.09.10

2010-09-10T21:42:00.003+03:00

Thu, September 9, 2010 9:42:19 PM

shabbat shalom 10.09.10

...

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

Hi everyone,

It's the second day of Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year, which gives us a long weekend from Wednesday night until Sunday morning. Four days to sleep late, which for me is until 6 am. It's a big help.

We had the New Year's service at the congregation yesterday. It was nice, but 3 hours of liturgy is more than I can stand. I ended with a splitting headache and went home to a sandwich and ibuprofen. Now I remember why I don't do shabbat service anymore.... A crowded room and hours of chanting.....it's not for me.

The festive meal the night before was nice. Jewish custom includes a "seder" of fruits and vegetables, which are all part of blessings which are puns on the Hebrew name of the food. It's traditionally a dairy meal with fish (a symbol of fertility in this as in many other cultures). Pomegranates, another symbol of fertility, are part of the meal as well.

It may seem a funny time to have a new year if you don't know the mediterranean, but here it makes a lot of sense and probably was the norm in ancient times. The long, rainless summer is coming to an end, and the farmers are preparing for the winter rains. The tree fruits are harvested and the grapes are becoming wine (there are wine festivals all over Greece at this time). So the earth is stirring and coming to life again as the mists and shortening days awaken the first of the autumn flowers. Nature wakes up from its five month sleep and people sensitive to nature are very aware of this. So a celebration of a new yearly cycle makes a lot of sense. Judaism adopted many earlier pagan holidays and customs and gave them monotheistic rationales, but the roots are much older, and fit the landscape in which we live here.

It happens that this year Ramadan ends at exactly the same time as the Jewish New Year so our Moslem neighbors have celebrated Eid al Fitr, the biggest holiday of the Moslem calendar, involving feasts and gift giving. The Moslems follow a strict lunar calendar so their holidays move all around the year, so it won't coincide like this for a long time.

The coincidence of Eid al Fitr (basically the Moslem Christmas) and the commemoration of 9/11 led to a peculiar crisis. Just when Moslem feelings are very high at the holiday, a crackpot pastor in Florida decides to celebrate 9/11 by burning a pile of Qurans. This has led to an international flap and travel warnings for Americans overseas. We are getting bulletins on every Israeli news broadcast that Americans should lie low and avoid going in Moslem areas (like the Old City), since the likelihood of getting hurt or killed is rather good. And of course we can all spot an American a mile off, so there is not much chance of going incognito. Kind of a bummer for the Americans who came here to enjoy the High Holy Days and have to hide in their hotel rooms instead, but I guess it beats getting stabbed. The Americans seem helpless to deal with this jerk, when it seems like a good beating would resolve the whole problem. Didn't Kennedy hire the Mafia for things like this?

As for me, I'm busy during this holiday. In two weeks I leave for Sweden and have to put my affairs in order since it will be a long trip, nearly a month. I will attend a conference, then visit friends in Holland, then attend another conference in Brussels. Not too happy about being away from home for so long, especially with a sick cat. My poor old ginger tom, Fatty, is suffering chronic renal failure and fading away. I got him to eat but he is losing weight and I doubt will survive very long. It's the fate of old cats, especially those who lived with FIV for years, as he has.

My laptop is also dying and each time I get it started may be the last. I'm still negotating wth my workplace t get another one. Here is where working for the government is a pain in the ass; there is a laptop already set aside for me, but some bloody committee has to meet to approve it, and they haven't met for two months and are not scheduled to meet in the future either. Three people on that committee; it could be resolved with a couple phone calls. My boss says the department head should make the calls; the department head says my boss should make the calls, and I'm ready to murder both of them. My usual end response is to say "aw, screw it" and go buy my own laptop, but I've subsidized our outfit for 15 years doing things like that and am getting tired of it too. So right now I'm just yelling at everyone concerned and seeing if that helps. Honestly, how did we ever win the Six Day War operating like this??

Sounds like I need a long trip to the North Woods anyway. Sweden will be wonderful; I haven't seen a real autumn for a long time. One where leaves turn color, I mean. I'm starting the trip by joining a Swedish Quaker retreat for a couple days......hope they can tolerate this fireball from the Middle East.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 03.09.10

2010-09-02T21:41:00.004+03:00

Thu, September 2, 2010 9:41:11 PM

shabbat shalom 03.09.10

...

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

Hi everyone,

This has been a busy week. I spent three days of it in the Negev, in my old desert home at Sede Boqer, attending an international conference.

It has been sixteen years since I lived in beautiful Sede Boqer with its view over the Wilderness of Zin. In those days we were in a pioneering situation, small and isolated, with the kibbutz and local Beduin as our nearest neighbors, and a total population of 400 in our own settlement. We started the Institute for Desert Research from scratch, living in caravans, scrounging and building equipment from the scrap heaps of the kibbutz, building our own laboratories. It was a great adventure and I was priviledged to be part of it.

But those days are past, and the Institute is three times the size it was when I left Sede Boqer, with modern buildings and laboratories, and new dormitories for an international group of graduate students coming from all continents, especially the arid lands of China and Africa, but also including some Americans and Europeans. Germans were taking part in the work there since the beginning, and German students are still common there today, doing ecological, hydrological and agricultural research. Entire new neighborhoods of villas have sprung up, build in ecologically sound designs with architecture reminding me of the adobe villages of North Africa or New Mexico. It is a pleasant place but not the wild adventure it was when I started there. I'm still the lucky one.

The conference (on long term ecological studies) was about 60 scientists, coming everywhere from Scotland to Jordan. In fact there were two Jordanian scientists at the meeting, one of them a delightful tall, blond, blue-eyed Arab Christian whose family originally came from Nablus. Looked more French than Arab; that would be the Crusader blood, I guess. (There are blue-eyed Arabs in Jordan and Galilee, no doubt offspring of Crusader women taken into the harems of conquering Moslems 800 years ago.....just one more dash to the rich ethnic mixture that is called Palestinian.)

I was glad to connect with two of my EBONE colleagues, one from England and the other from Slovakia. We are working on issues of biodiversity measurement and I wanted their ideas. In fact I presented my own ideas on measuring biodiversity at the meeting, and although the lecture time was short, I got a lot of supportive feedback to keep going the way I am going; it seems to be the right track to solving a tough problem. The English EBONE partner is also head of the international ILTER program and able to push some things forward internationally. He threw out his own proposal for a cooperation, and both the Jordanians and my own working group on Avdat signed up for it. (Okay, I frogmarched the site manager of Avdat to sign up, so he got even by signing my name first.) That's a little sticky because the Jordanians are easier about cooperating with universities than the Israeli government, so we will have to officially switch around, but on the personal level, the cooperation looks good.

We went on a field trip to the desert watershed where I began my Israeli field work in 1981.....memories of clambering over those rocks when I was nearly 30 years younger. It looks almost the same; only a trained eye can see the changes, but like everything else in this country, it's gotten drier over the years. Fewer snails, for one thing, and fewer isopods (a good indcator of soil moisture). The 40+ years of data on that hillside will be useful as we try to anticipate the future in a region that is getting less rain and warmer temperatures. I did my little part, but the whole body of observations was done by a couple dozen scientists and scores of graduate students over the years, some of them now full professors too.

I like the Negev. The smell of the desert at dawn (we were out at 5:30 am to avoid the heat) is special: a mixture of rock dust and aromatic shrubs, clean and astringent. The sun burns away any kind of rot, and leaves the earth clean. It's a demanding life to be a desert rat, but it has compensations.

I hitched a ride north again after the conference, and stopped en route to see my former student, now a bio-statistician at Ben Gurion University. He's helping us with some analysis of classification methods. It goes forward, despite the fact that he travels today for America (Columbus, Ohio! to work on a project at OSU) and I leave soon for Sweden. How on earth did we manage before email and skype...... Sergei will be in Ohio and our remote sensing scientist in Brisbane, but the cooperation goes forward smoothly.....

Back home on Wednesday night, and my Dutch M.Sc. student left for Holland on Thursday night, so we had some busy time on Thursday morning. A friend of my sister, an Arab American, is in Palestine for two weeks and came over to my office with a parcel from my sister: Fritos and Reese's peanut butter cups (decadent luxuries of the past), two wildly colorful Hawaiian shirts and some lens cleaning cloths. (Yeah, these are the things I miss from the Olde Countrie.) In thanks, I took her and my grad student on an evening in Jerusalem. We prowled the Mahane Yehuda market, where my student bought piles of spices to take home. Then we had dinner in a simple Kurdish restaurant, with mujjaderah and stuffed vegetbles, until we were stuffed ourselves. Waddling back to the center of Jerusalem, coffee in a Tunisian bakery, a stroll down Ben Yehuda Street. Here a Russian playing classical violin, there a North African Jew playing traditional Sephardic airs on an electric oud. I got a small gift that the visitor could take back to my sister, and then dropped her at the walls of the Old City to get an Arab bus back to Ramallah, and dropped my student where he would spend a few hours before his shuttle to the airport.

So all alone again, and catching my breath before leaping off to Sweden, Holland and Belgium at the end of this month. A few quiet weeks will be welcome, in fact, but I think work is going forward quite nicely now, and work is consuming 80% of my waking time, so it sure as hell better be going forward.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 27.08.10 (repost)

2010-08-27T06:42:00.001+03:00

shabbat shalom 27.08.10 (repost)

...

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

(sorry, that didn't look so good. I'll try again)

Hi everyone,

Summer draws to a close here in Israel. After a week of Saharan heat, we have the first days of autumn, with mist and fog in the morning and decidedly cooler weather.

Something shifts; maybe it is the quality of the light. Visitors can't tell the difference but residents all sense it. The squill will bloom soon, a tall stalk of plain white flowers from a big fleshy rosette, the first flowers of autumn. Madonna lily and Sternbergia (a big crocus-type flower) soon after.

My Dutch graduate student is finishing up his work and preparing to return to Holland after four months here in Israel. It's been quite an adventure for him, mapping a nature reserve in Galilee, sharing accommodations with a prostitute while in the field, and then living with the Bedouin in a tent when he couldn't take the @@*!%@ any more, and developing a serious leg infection. His two months in Jerusalem with me were luxury after the field work. Right now he is sleeping somewhere on the beach of the Sea of Galilee, a short holiday before he goes home.

My quiet, almost boring month of slogging away on work comes to an end also. I go to the Negev for an international conference on ecological research, give a paper, come back and start preparing for a long trip to Europe, including Sweden, Holland and Belgium. I fly 24 September and return 15 October. It's been years since I have been away from home for so long, and I'm not entirely happy about it, but it can't be changed.

Worries at home. One of my favorite cats, and old ginger male, is beginning to experience kidney failure. It's what usually kills the old cats, and he has had health problems for years. He's a beautiful, mellow old cat I've raised since I found him a half-blind kitten in my garden, and it will be hard to lose him. I'm trying to get him to eat the special cat food for renal problems, but he doesn't have much appetite, and I doubt he will live until I go to Europe. Well, it is the nature of having cats; few live beyond a dozen years, especially the sick and handicapped ones I tend to adopt. I try to keep them happy while they are alive.....This one is spending most of his time sleeping in a basket, and so he will end his days.

My laptop died as well, after six years. This time I approached my workplace about providing me with one, since data management is after all my job. I've been subsidizing them for years by using my own laptop, car, phone, etc. when most people of my rank have all this provided. Well, my boss was embarrassed enough to push for it, and hopefully next week I have a new laptop from work. Otherwise I will have to get a cheap one on installment payments.

Beyond these normal experiences of living, things are very good. Our EBONE project has taken fire, and the various members of my team are very involved and excited about it now. We have taken the lead in most modules in which we are involved. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems like we come up with ideas and pursue them fairly unhindered, while the Europeans have a mountain of regulations to slow them down. I've gotten my head into developing indices of biodiversity, and writing up the last two years of work in the Negev site where we have done both mapping and biodiversity work. It's time for another article, and this beats just writing reports.

My summer of dieting has paid off, losing 3 kilo (still seven to go). While it's nice to find all my clothing is loose on me now, it is better to feel more alert again. I was getting quite sluggish, and needed to exercise after neglecting this for nearly a year. Slim and sexy is way beyond me, but I'll happily settle for sturdy and healthy.

Not much more to mention here. Israel empties out during August and the flap about the Turkish flotilla died down, as we knew it would. Back to interminable peace talks.

Meanwhile I do it my own way; tomorrow I go down to the Christian Arab Hope School with a load of donated medicines for the Greek Orthodox pharmacy, which provides free medicines for the poor in Bethlehem. The headmaster is a friend of mine and also on the board for the pharmacy, which is a kind of charity. These are small things but they add up.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 20.08.10

2010-08-22T19:59:00.000+03:00

Hi Everyone,

Scorching hot "hamsin" weather here in Jerusalem. It was 40oC (104oF) yesterday and will be the same or hotter today. We are setting records for August in Jerusalem. (Global warming? The weathermen say the Mediterranean is unusually warm and not buffering our searing heat as it usually does.) I pity the Moslems; this is the Holy Month of Ramadan when they cannot eat or drink during the daytime. Eating, ok, but no water in this heat? That's dangerous. But if they do it in Mecca, I guess they can do it here.....

As for me, I finally caved in and started using the air conditioner, partly because I became worried about my animals. I can sweat, they can't. So I'm keeping the setting at 27oC (82oF) which is quite comfortable for all of us without unneeded use of the machine. My Dutch student has been working 12 hour days in the lab, mainly because there he has A/C and he only has a fan at home! One way to get work done.

These are the August doldrums. I got my desk cleared and preparations made for the international conference at the end of the month. So now with a clear conscience I can take a day off work and go browse the renewed Israel museum with a clear conscience. I've nipped in there for a couple quick visits and it is stunning, and huge. I'm a member so I can go as often as I want, free of charge, and plan to take it in slowly and completely. That's impossible in one day, so I decided to do it in three, corresponding to its wings: archeology, Judaica, and art. If I get saturated, I'll stop and pick it up again where I left off when I visit the next time. It's one of the great museums of the world, and now it is really amazing.

Work is progressing well. I'm getting a lot of positive feedback on my ideas about analyzing biodiversity related to habitat. We needed a breakthrough in EBONE, and this might be it. So I will be presenting it several times in the next six weeks and develop it with feedback ideas. My one good idea for the year, perhaps.

Pets are doing fairly well. I had noticed that my old ginger tom, Fatty, was steadily losing weight over the last several months and finally took him to the vet to find out what is the problem. Kidneys. Poor fella, kidneys always kill the cat in the end; they tend to have weak kidneys for their high meat diet. Not much we can do; he's on a special cat food for kidney problems now, and fortunately seems to like it. We are not sure if he will get better but at least we can slow the decline. He's had several health problems in the last couple years, including diabetes from which he seems to have recovered. The underlying problem is probably FIV, as with many of the cats I adopted from the street. He's eleven years old, which is getting old for a cat, and probably will not get much older, but I will do what I can for him. He's a favorite cat, always sweet natured and loving. I'll hate to lose him when he dies, but that is what happens when you have cats. It's better that I outlive them, because I hate to think of their fates if I die first.

shabbat shalom
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 06.08.10

2010-08-11T05:40:00.000+03:00

From:	Linda Whittaker
To:	Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Hi everyone,

August in the Middle East; we are now in the classic, endless days of August when the temperature climbs to the mid 30's (I guess around 100 F) every day and we have endless, blazing sun, with no rain until November. I suffered in this when I first came, but now I like it; my arthritis is no problem and housekeeping is easy. After 30 years in Israel, my bones have adapted to the dust and heat, and it is cold and rain that make me sick. Pretty funny after living the first 27 years in a wet northern climate in the United States. The boy has turned over at least 4 times since then and I don't have a cell left that remembers upstate New York.

The proof of this was taking Monday off work and going to Ramle, down on the coastal plain.

Ramle was the regional capital for more than 1,000 years, from the Umayad to the Mamluk Turks (roughly 700-1800 AD), on the crossroads of two major caravn routes. It's an impoverished town now, full of crime, but it had its glory days and traces are still there from the magnificence it had in the Middle Ages. Today it is known for its great suq, or bazaar, in the middle of town. It also has an amazing diversity of working-class people: Moslems, Jews and Christians, Arabs, Russians, Indian Jews, Bulgarians, Ethiopians, Spanish speaking Jews, French speaking Jews, Turkish Jews.....just about everything except English-speaking Jews.....Near the suq it is possible to find a stall selling Turkish boreks next to an Indian grocery store selling Bollywood DVD's on the side, and next to that a ladies clothing store that sells fashionable Moslem chadors. (That's just one street, and I stopped in all three.) I've been prowling Ramle for a couple years now, and the more I see it, the more fascinate I become. It reminds me more of places like Kathmandu more than Tel Aviv, nearby. So when I tire of Jeruslaem and modern professional life, I take the train down an hour to Ramle and dive into the bazaar, shop, eat at an Indian restaurant, and poke around. It's like a quick trip to North Africa or Pakistan.....

I did have business there this time. The Ministry of Environment has an office in the Government Building there (right at the bus station, 10 stories high, and insulated from the swirling multicultural masses below as much as if it were in north Tel Aviv. Totally not part of Ramle, and few of the people there know anything about the town in which they work....) They had a database question, and I helped them out. An hour's work, and okay, I spent nearly a day in Ramle on the excuse of having to be there for work.....pleading guilty. I promised the next time they needed my help, we would all go to lunch at the Maharajah next to the suq.......I have to come from Jerusalem to introduce them to their town?

It was hot though. I clocked the temperature in Jerusalem at 36 C when I returned at 16:30, which means it was at least that hot in Ramle when I was wanering aroun the casbah....it wasn't too bad though. I stayed in the shade and drank plenty of the special Ramle lemonade (they crush the whole lemon and filter the extract, it's more bitter than the regular lemonade). Chai masala perked me up after lunch; otherwise I would have fallen asleep after a big Indian lunch. In all, a delightful day.

The rest of the week was work. I have to present a lecture at a conference at the end of the month, and hate doing these things at the last minute, so I got it together now. Doing graphics instead of math; my boss advised to keep it very simple....I have to get the hang of doing conceptual sketches to get complex ideas across.

Other news: I adopted a second blind cat. I babysat this one a few weeks ago and had him at the vet to try to save his eyes, no luck. But he got proper medical care, and then his owner returned from Russia. In the end she couldn't cope (an artsy craftsy sensitive type who does puppeting for a living); too complicated for her. I watched her try to find a home for this guy and finally took pity on the situation. He's cute and friendly, and quite blind, but not deaf like my white cat Homer. He'll be fine. But I don't need more cats!

Not much else to mention. I take it easy on this hot weekend; our hamsin weather will go through the next week. Get up early, sleep in the midday heat. It's not bad at all if you go with it, rather than fight it.

shabbat shalom
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 30.07.10

2010-08-05T06:10:00.000+03:00

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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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 16.07.10 via Dr. Linda Whittaker

2010-07-16T21:55:00.002+03:00

shabbat shalom 16.07.10

...

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

	P4210002.JPG (591KB) View Image

Hi everyone,

End of a long, hot, quiet week in Jerusalem. The "hamsin" broke a couple days ago and we had a cool European front move in with more moisture and lower temperatures. The last two mornings I woke to heavy fog in the valleys below my mountaintop cottage, a pretty sight with peaks marching down to the sea and soft grey mist concealing the valleys in between them, with an occasional minaret or house poking up through the clouds. My cats spend the early part of the night outside, but I wake to find them curled up around me as the night got cold and they came in to warm up.

The next month will be a quiet slog through lots of data. I am trying to make sense of the patterns in species distributions from our spring work in the desert, connecting biodiversity with habitat types. It gives me a chance to go back to the old work we did at Cornell with beta diversity (species turnover in the landscape). "Whittaker's beta diversity index" originated in 1960 but I find it still in use, even an item in wikipedia on it. In these matters, my late husband and mentor R.H. Whittaker formed my brain and it is probably the most precious inheritance I have from him. Now it is time to pass it on to the next generation.....

It's nostalgic in a way to return to the subjects that occupied me as a graduate student, and still not quite resolved! Now I'll tackle beta and gamma diversity with Rob Jongman at Wageningen, in the Netherlands. It's fitting, since the torch passed to Wageningen when Bob Whittaker died in 1980, and they developed the work further for another twenty years. Rob Jongman is one of the best; I have three copies of his book on "Multivariate Analysis in Landscape and Community Ecology" because my students keep walking off with them. We will meet in Sweden in September and already have a jam session planned when I am on vacation in the Netherlands in October.

It's fitting to come full circle like this at the end of a long career, back to the subjects I studied as a young ecologist, after a lot of detours here and there. It's also gratifying to get notes of appreciation from the leadership on the project for our hard work here on the subject. The EBONE project stands or falls on its ability to link habitat with biodiversity, and the biodiversity work was stalled and stuck for two years. We may have made a breakthrough, and they know it. Feels very nice to make that breakthrough with ordination and "Whittaker's Beta index", and nice to know I still have the knack to figure out how to solve scientific problems in a creative way. Government work didn't numb my brain, but these outside project sure keep it from becoming so.

As you can imagine, I spent the last week in a somewhat dreamlike state as my brain came to grips with this biodiversity work. Scientific problems like this go into the subconscious and cook steadily, meanwhile the rest of me is wandering around like the village idiot until the computation is finished and the subconscious spits out its results. They know this at work; when I am pacing the halls it means I am working on something and they leave me alone....I look at people as I pass and I look right through them. You wouldn't believe how that spooks the secretaries, who usually have little more on their minds than what to make for lunch or whether their bra strap matches their nail polish. I've had the same boss for 17 years, and he has seen this process before; watches it with some amused interest, waiting for my inner computer to burp.

So there isn't much to report from the past week; if we had a war raging I wouldn't have noticed it very much as I was bumping around and thinking. We didn't have a war; Israel seems to go on with the aftermath of the flotilla fiasco with commissions of enquiry poking into the question of who screwed up. The usual, it seems, inadequate planning, just dived in with the faith that we could improvise on the spot, same as usual. Didn't work, and the Turks had us for lunch. (The Turks are methodical as Germans and of course planned the whole gambit well in advance. You have to admire that even if it left us covered with the feces that hit the fan. If the tables had been turned and we had sprung a trap like that, we'd be crowing from the rooftops.)

Bulldozers go on relentlessly around my house from 6:30 until nightfall, building the 'security fence' that winds around us and loops around neighboring Waledjah, making the landscape look like a plate of spaghetti. Here the security value is questionable. This is simply marking turf for Israel when the final land allocation between Israel and Palestine is made. Jerusalem wants to incorporate Har Gilo and everything in between, so this is the usual "facts on the ground" process in action. Jerusalem has to expand and has probed for the weakest oppositon; Waledjah is very, very weak, so they move in like jackals on an abandoned calf. It's the brutal way of the Middle East; the strong eat the weak, usually belly first.

One has to adjust to this way of life. The Middle East is home to the world's most ancient civilizations, yet is savage and brutal. People speak of justice but also devour each other, and only the strong can withstand the aggression. It's always been this way; mercy is a European idea that never really took root here even though the three monotheistic religions that originated here make a big deal out of being compassionate even as God/Allah/Yahweh is compassionate. Maybe the religions emphasized it because it is so lacking in normal life. Even now, if you show kindness or compassion, it is perceived as weakness and you are considered a sucker........

How do I cope with it? Well, I seem as tough as anyone here, and can face off the aggressions that hit me. I have an intimidating presence which gives me freedom to be kind without being seen as weak. I don't know how long that will keep up in old age, but I'm really grateful for the dragon lady reputation which has saved me quite a lot of hassle.

Meanwhile, the sun shines, the grapes are ripening in the vines, the melons are at their peak, and the evenings are pleasant even when the days are hot. The land itself is very pleasant, even when the people are not. So it is time to enjoy the land.

shabbat shalom
Linda

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shabbat shalom 14.05.10

2010-05-14T06:52:00.006+03:00

Fri, May 14, 2010 6:52:49 AM

...

From:
...View Contact

To:

Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ;
Linda Olsvig-Whittaker Olsvig-Whittaker

Hi everyone,

We have another "hamsin" rolling in and I'm sitting in a closed house until the temperture drops towards evening. It gets hotter in spring than in summer here, when the hamsin air blasts from Saudi Arabia send our temperatures and tempers soaring during 1-3 day interludes from hell. This one is scheduled to grow through the weekend, peak on Sunday, and break on Monday. By Sunday, we will all have to tread carefully. The hot, electrically charged air makes people nervous and gives them headaches. Under traditional law in this part of the world, murders committed during hamsin are judged more leniently as being rather understandable.....

I came close to it myself yesterday. Scheduled to have dinner with a friend (a red headed Irish friend), I saw her emails getting more erratic and irritable as the hamsin rolled in. By Thursday morning they were in capital letters and I chickened out of the dinner engagement. She's furious, of course, but it probably is better than what would have happened if we had met. We may not have much weather in this part of the world, but it is important to pay attention to what we have.....

Wednesday was sweet, however. It was before the hamsin, and lovely cool spring weather. My botanist colleague and I drove north to En Afeq Nature Reserve, where I have started a new Dutch graduate student on his M.Sc. thesis. It's a place where I have done a lot of field work myself, and set a few grad students on projects over the years, a wetlands created in the Middle Ages by a clever watermill canal system built by Crusaders. The old Templar watermill still stands, which had provided flour to the people of Acre a thousand years ago.

We had a lovely day at the nature reserve, also getting reacquainted with the plants, and I left the student there. He seemed happy enough although I got a report that he's hiding in the air conditioning right now......not yet adapted to our tropical summers. He will be by the time his work is done.

Actually, we picked that day to go north as a way of fleeing Jerusalem Day. It's the day marking the reunification of Jerusalem in the 1967 war (the Six Day War), and has become a day for nationalistic marches which choke the core of the city, making traffic impossible. It has also become a flash-point for fights and riots between Orthodox and secular, or Jews and Arabs (who see little to celebrate on this day). All in all it's become about as much fun as a Likud convention, with a lot of the same atmosphere. I try to get out of town each year when it happens, and avoid the mess. Of course the "reunification" remains more in theory than in practice, with East Jerusalem being Arab, still with dirt roads and inadequate infrastructure, while West Jerusalem has developed, and most West Jerusalemites would be afraid to walk in the Arab neighborhoods by themselves. That's typical for the Middle East, however, where the Platonic ideal still remains more real than reality.

Not much more to mention. I'm quietly working. Next week is Shavuot (Pentecost) and another small holiday, the one bringing up the rear of the spring parade of them here in Israel. It's one of my favorites, another true agricultural holiday (celebrating the spring cereal harvest) with a later overlay of religion (giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai) which got more important in the Diaspora when spring cereal harvests made little sense in Russia and Poland. There was still enough racial memory of the true reason for the holiday to make the traditional reading for the day the Book of Ruth, which is a pastoral romance if there ever was one. Between the harvest themes and the pretty story of Ruth and Boaz, it's my kind of holiday, sweet and full of good food.

My celebration on Shavuot will be to take in a concert in the Abu Gosh Festival series, with its unique mix of classical music and Arabic meals, something I've been doing for many years now. It wouldn't be Shavuot without Bach and hummus.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 01.05.10

2010-05-09T22:20:00.000+03:00

Hi Everyone,

It's been a busy week. My Dutch student, the one who spent the last two months in the Negev collecting field data for my EBONE project, spent the last few days in Jerusalem with me before completing the assignment and flying home to Amsterdam yesterday. We had to go over the data, check for errors, make plans for analysis during the summer. He did a great job, and apparently enjoyed himself in the desert too. I've arranged for him to have a "volunteer" status in the Dutch institution where our project is based, so that he can continue to participate while he is looking for a real job. In my experience, it is good to have a foot in the door in order to hear about job possibilities and something may turn up for him from this contact too.

We had oddly cool weather for the end of April, even some rain yesterday. It's not unknown to have rain at the end of April but it is unusual. It's been a long spring with good rainfall patterns (with us, it's the timing as well as the total amount that matters) so I am expecting a good cereal harvest this spring and a good olive harvest in the fall. Nice change after so many years of drought, even though the total rainfall this year is below average.

Yesterday I went to the Old City to meet two visitng Quakers from England. They were a physician and his wife, both in their high 70's but still fairly fit and alert. The wife was from a Jewish family and had relatives in Haifa; she was a Quaker by choice and a nurse by training, met her husband fifty years ago in the hospital wards. They had moved to rural Lancaster-shire and set up six health care clinics over the years. Passing from Haifa to Ramallah, they stopped to see me in Jerusalem, and continued on, hand-carrying funds for Palestinian Quakers in Ramallah. Good way to stay active in old age: be a subversive!

I met them in the Gloria Hotel, a beautifully restored and maintained traditional casbah building with the low arches and thick stone walls typical of the Old City and probably a thousand years old. Typical Crusader construction.

You don't see this kind of building too often, and certainly not this well maintained; most are shops and warehouses in the casbah. I was enchanted to prowl around. The furniture was exquisite Damascus inlay (mother of pearl). The building is massive with stone walls several feet thick, built to last another thousand years. (After 27 years in the Middle East, I have developed a certain nervousness about flimsy wooden houses, and especially wooden floors. Stone is the only material fit for a real house....)

Beyond this, not much else to mention. As the weather warms, I feel better and my activity level goes up. One thing sure from this; it is going to be necessary to install some decent heating in my house for the coming winter. I'm getting too old to be chilled for several months and electric space heaters are not sufficient, while my wood-stove is only effective if it can run for several hours. I will be checking into air conditioning for heating, which I understand is the most efficient and cost-effective system these days. (Summer cooling is not needed in this cottage at 1,000 meters.) Electric makes sense in this country, where fossil fuels are expensive.

Our holiday season is almost over. Lag B'Omer is tonight, and is a nightmare for homeowners and foresters. The kids light bonfires all over the country and steal wood wherever they can. Wildfires get started too. I already bribed the local kids with spare wood to leave my woodpile alone, but they will make off with construction materials, furniture, whatever they can. By tomorrow morning the whole country will stink like the aftermath of a forest fire. Pet owners also worry; there has been a frightening trend of kids thowing cats and dogs onto the bonfires for fun. (I shudder and my hands itch for the chance to throw a kid on the fire if I caught him doing that.) Fortunately there is little chance it will happen in my village; I'm not the only one here who would cheerfully murder an animal abuser. As you can tell, I don't like Lag B'Omer. Forecast is for cool weather and rain, so maybe we are lucky this year.

After that, Jerusalem Day, which celebrates the "reunification" of Jerusalem. It used to be a joyous event. These days the fanatics have taken it over as a means of demonstrating Jewish dominance in the city, marching deliberately into Arab neighborhoods where they are resented. I haven't seen an effort to bring Arabs into the celebration. So in the end it has become a matter of pissing to mark the turf. This I don't need either. So that's another holiday I ignore as much as possible, except to try to avoid the way it screws up traffic patterns.

Ah well, Sukkot is coming in April too. Sukkot, or Pentecost, primarily marks the end of the spring harvest season when farmers would bring their first harvest to the Temple as an offering. It acquired collateral importance over the centuries as the date of the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, and for Christians, the arrival of the Holy Spirit on early Christians. So all these themes are in play on Sukkot here. The food emphasizes the harvest and dairy products (this is also the time of kids, calves, and lambs,when dairy production is at a peak). The Book of Ruth, a pastoral romance, is read in the synagogues during the night. Protestant Christians dance around in all kinds of interesting gauzy costumes, ecstasizing (or whatever the verb should be).

It also marks the spring Abu Gosh music festival, and I will celebrate Sukkot by attending a concert of Rossini's Festive Mass in this odd Arab village which holds week-long classical music festivals. I've done it every year for more than a decade and now it is a tradition. At least it is an innocent, non-aggressive, relaxing and healthy way to celebrate a spring festival, which is getting to be rarer all the time in this part of the world. So I plan to stick with it.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

shabbat shalom 06.05.10

2010-05-06T10:24:00.003+03:00

Thu, May 6, 2010 10:24:16 AM
From: Linda Whittaker ~Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com

Hi everyone,

Uff, I'm tired. My new graduate student, Adriaan, flew in from the Netherlands early this morning. I gave him some extra time to sleep a bit, and then we went into downtown Jerusalem. He's never been in the country before, so I had him in tow for a brief orientation excursion. We went to the Mahane Yehuda open air market, which is one of the big open air markets that Turks call "suq", Arabs call "bazaar", and North Africans call "casbah". It's very traditional here but there isn't really anything like it in Europe or North America. There are rows of stone buildings with tables set in front of them loaded with fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, bread, religous items, candy, sweets, household goods, spices, and clothing, all mixed up together, with the vendors shouting their prices in hot competition with each other (usually related to each other too). Dispersed among this are stalls selling falafel, shwarma (doner kebab), juice, sahlep, and some with big pots of Turkish style stews for quick meals eaten standing up. The noise, smells, and swirl of colors are truly Oriental, of dubious sanitation, and absolutely delicious.

So the Dutchman padded after me with a market cart (I never saw one of those in America; it's a vertically oriented fabric carrier rather like a laundry basket on wheels) shlepping my purchases and I waded through the suq, which is one of my favorite places in Jerusalem. We revelled in the spices (he'd never seen or tasted za'atar or sumak before) and stopped at a falafel stand for pita stuffed with falafel and salads. He never had that before either. His eyes were big as saucers.

I guided us back to the car by deliberatey winding through the alleys and courtyards of Nahalot, one of the earlier settlements outside the Jerusalem walls, fortlike houses arranged in squares facing communal courtyards, a regular warren of traditional Jews and now young secular people moving into the tiny houses as well. Every corner there is a surprise, from the loud disputations coming from the open windows of the yeshivas (they are studying the Bible but it sounds more like fighting....), here an Ethiopian restaurant tucked into a tiny courtyard, there a tinsmith still making watering cans by hand.....I think it made him dizzy to see so many strange things in such a short time span. He's having a wonderful time.

I took the day off work to do this and will have to catch up next week. Things are buzzing again too. We still have conferences coming up, and I have to finish my share of writing a paper for publication; gotta get Adriaan started on field work, things are happening in EBONE. I sent two people to Romania this week, one for field training, and the other to represent us at a semi-annual meeting of the project in Bucharest. No time to go myself, and I'll have to represent us in Sweden anyway, next September.

The project is falling into place and we begin to have a clear idea of how we want to wrap this up. We are cooking on all four burners now, at least here with my team in Israel, and still have two years to go. I'm supposed to lead, and it is all I can do to keep up now.

Still getting tired more than I should, and arranged for a general physical checkup to see what may be causing the fatigue. The answer is probably "aging" but better be sure. Most likely it's the pernicious anemia I developed in the last two years, which is a real pain in the butt, but I'm stuck with it.

Other than that not much to complain about. The weather is exquisite now, warm enough for sandals but cool in the evenings. The heaters are off, the mosquito repellents are on, and my garden is beautiful. I'm having friends over for shish kebab tomorrow to welcome this student. Real Middle Eastern food. It's the season for it.

shabbat shalom,
Linda
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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 23.04.10

2010-04-23T20:54:00.001+03:00

Thu, April 22, 2010 8:54:35 PM
...
From: Linda Whittaker ~Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com

Hi everyone,

My gosh, a busy week. We had two holidays (Remembrance of Israel's Fallen Soldiers, followed by Israel Independence Day) and then I was off to the Negev for two days. Just got home and got a bit settled.

With so much going on, I stayed home for Independence Day. It was a rare chance to just putter around the house. A couple friends came over and we had a late lunch together, but I didn't go out; every public place was crowded and I didn't feel like dealing with crowds. Maybe next year.

Another of my friends was in deep financial distress; she has to move and didn't have the money to do it; she didn't even have bus fare. So I am selling another gold coin and loaning her the money. Not much choice, she is a pensioner with limited income; tried for a loan and the banks just laughed at her. She had given up in despair.....well, it seems to me that helping an old woman in distress is the sort of thing a Christian ought to do, and this is a friend also. If I can't walk the walk, I'd better shut up on the theology, eh?

This second year of the world recession seems to have a special bite because people of modest means have used up their limited reserves and are now in bad shape. I got bit a little myself, although I have reserves here and there. The grasshoppers who fiddled through the boom years are now shivering in the cold....and those who have always been simply poor, like the gardener and the cleaning lady, never did have a buffer. Most people like that have to turn to family for help, and without family they are truly screwed.

So I bailed out a couple friends and am glad I did; now it's my responsiblity to make sure I keep those buffers to my own income so I am in a position to help others and not need help myself. So I will have to be careful. But at least it looks okay for now.

Off to the Negev; my student finishes his field work tomorrow and goes back to Holland at the end of the month. He did very well. I basically threw him into the desert with no previous experience, and he had to learn both species and methods of sampling them. He did, with a little help, and produced good results. He also learned to love the desert in the process. (It's easy in the spring; try July and August....)

I was two days down there, the first out in the field looking for lizards, and the second looking at the data. It was nice to be back in Sede Boqer, where I had lived for ten years before joining my current organization. I still have friends down there and had to see them, but the best part was sticking my face in the desert landscape again. Not sure when I will get another chance so I made the most of it. Amazingly, at the end of April, it is still blooming well; many areas were covered with the little yellow and white daisies which are common there, and many other species were in bloom. The lizards were hopping and we had fun spotting them. Desert warblers were singing. We found some big fat green scorpions, and some interesting ancient ruins. The desert experience.....

With all the disruptions caused by travel and holidays, I now have quite a backlog of work in the office and hope to spend some time just catching up. That's fine. We all know the feeling after a vacation, that getting back to routine can be a treat.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 15.04.09

2010-04-15T10:26:00.002+03:00

From: Linda Whittaker Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com
To: Linda Olsvig-Whittaker Email: Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il
Thu, April 15, 2010 10:26:16 AM

Hi everyone,

It's the post-Passover holiday season in Israel, with commemoration of the Holocaust this week, and next week Remembrance Day for Israel's fallen soldiers, immediately followed by Israel Independence Day. (That is always a gut-wrenching transition from mourning to rejoicing in a few hours, but it always drives home the fact that Israeli nationhood came with a heavy price.)

Holocaust Remembrance Day (or more correctly Remembrance Day for Heroes and Martyrs of the Shoah) is another very traumatic day. Our director had been in the habit of bringing us all to Ya VaShem, which I find too difficult to bear. It literally makes me sick in less than an hour. But in the last couple years the orientation has changed. Last year was a trip to Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz founded by Holocaust survivors. This year it was to Givat Haviva, the Kibbutz Artzi Federation learning center.

Rooted in HaShomer HaZair, the Zionist Young Guards, Kibbutz Artzi is the most socialist of the kibbutz streams, and has the socialist traits of optimism and humanist values, which makes the Holocaust museum much more tolerable. It's more about life, both in the ghetto and in the camps, and emphasizes courage and cooperation, as you would expect from socialists. There is still much darkness, but there are always at least little points of light in the darkness to give inspiration rather than despair. They even had us singing Yiddish songs of the old times.....I think they are right. Remember the past in a way that guides you to make the present and future better, not to be a masochist. I always liked Kibbutz Artzi; in another time I would have been tempted to join them.....

At home, my cats are doing well. Homer, the blind and deaf cat, has fully recovered his healthy pink color rather than the jaundice he had, and is eating like a horse, and is active again I have to watch that he doesn't get out of the house. I have another ratbag of an old street tomcat who came to me very sick, and has spent the last two weeks sleeping in a basket in the back room. He's better too, although I have seldom seen such a beat up old cat. Don't know whether he will live or die, but if he dies, at least it will be in comfort on a soft fleece blanket in a safe room. That's better than most street cats get.

With spring at its peak, I have become a bit lazy. For months I was sick and never comfortable, so I worked but not efficiently. Now I can work efficiently, which leaves me with spare time in which I am simply enjoying life. My garden is pleasant and I can take my breakfast and supper there again (and will, until it gets cool again in November). Roses are in bloom and there is also the sweet and sour smell of the maquis shrubs in bloom around my house, with their yellow legume flowers. The lemon tree in the kitchen garden is full of ripe fruit. The orange and strawberry seasons are past, and the melon season is just beginning. The late spring flowers like wild hollyhock are in full bloom on the roadsides, tall pink spears with their palm-sized blossoms. The sun is warming and not yet harsh. It's a beautiful time of year well designed for being lazy and comfortable - unless you are a farmer!

Now is the "Counting of the Omer", the fifty days between Passover and Shavuot (Pentecost), when the first of the grain harvest was offered in the temple. We still follow the seasons here, and the barley and wheat are steadily ripening and turning golden in the fields. Shavuot is in May, and brings the spring festivals to an end. In my case, that will include a concert in Abu Gosh, more or less traditional by now.

Let's see, what else is worth mentioning....former Jeruslaem mayor Lupolianski was just arrested by our police for taking some 3 million shekels in bribes. I was a bit gleeful about this because the guy is literally a thug; he made threatening phone calls to my pastor's wife in his youth and didn't seem to get any more honest over time. Hope they nail him to the wall and leave him there. The last mayor, Olmert, is also under investigation for financial misdeeds. The current one seems like Mr. Clean; let's hope. Jerusalem is one of the poorest cities in Israel, and graft sure doesn't help.

My Dutch student David Jobse finished most of his field sampling and will be going back to Holland at the end of the month. Meanwhile I have to make another trip to the Negev to see the last of his field work. After that, there will be all summer to work up the findings. I also have another Dutch student coming, this time to work in the north. These graduate students (both on M.Sc. studies) do a lot to brighten my work. Unless we go to war again, I am hoping I will have a steady supply of them coming from Holland. They do good work and seem to like it here.

Guess that's all for tonight.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabat shalom 09.04.10

2010-04-11T20:19:00.001+03:00

http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2010/04/shabat-shalom-090410.html

Short URL ~ http://bit.ly/dy0jFo

shabat shalom 09.04.10

...

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

Hi Everyone,

The Passover holiday week ended on Monday and we all went back to work on Tuesday.....a little hard to adjust after lazing around for so many days, but I found I felt better when working. Make a note of that for retirement.

Steroids and antibiotic did the trick for my little blind cat Homer, who turned the corner on his kidney infection and has regained appetite and strength.

That is a big relief. It's amazing how a 3 kg ball of fur can mess up your life when it develops health problems. This time, I expect Homer used a couple of his nine lives. However, he's now well enough to steal food from other cats' dishes and try to get outdoors (forbidden since he is both blind and deaf), so he's at least acting like a normal cat again. He's on a lowfat diet for the next two months as his liver recovers, but otherwise no special medical care.

I have a brief slow period at work, and found myself dangerously close to getting bored until I got an email from Europe informing me that the Society for Conservation Biology has put me in charge of their Ad Hoc Committee on conservation in the Mediterranean, and now I have to pull the group together and formulate a workplan. So much for being bored. My own fault, I had nudged on this in the last SCB congress in Prague, and all the folks from Spain, Italy, and Greece say yeah, good idea. So we submitted a proposal and it got approved. Well..... It's fair. My thinking in the last few decades really has focused on the Mediterranean, which is a region I love. We have problems in common as well as a shared history and culture, and the environmental problems are interesting. This should keep me occupied for a long time to come, especially if that grant proposal with the Sicilians to establish a pan-Med marine monitoring system gets funded by the EU.

I've got one grad student in the field at Avdat (Negev Desert Highlands) finishing his sampling on reptile and beetle diversity for our EBONE project, and another one coming from Holland next month to start habitat mapping in a wetland reserve up north, so in two weeks life will get back to its usual business. Meanwhile, this is a time to breath, read and reflect, and I don't get so many of those.

Yesterday I went to the funeral of a colleague who had died of cancer. She was a bit older than me, and had built the database I manage now, but left our organization some twenty years ago, before I arrived. I didn't know her well, but we moved in the same groups. It's always sobering to bury people my own age. According to Jewish custom, the body is buried within 24 hours of death, so the burial is a hurried affair and not the formal matter most Christians know. The formalities occur during the mourning period and setting the gravestone 30 days later. Also, inside the Land of Israel, the Jews bury the body without a coffin so that it can return to the holy soil. (Outside Israel, they use coffins, and sometimes ship the body here for burial.) So we carry a bier with the body just shrouded in cloth. It's interesting.

I met some people there whom I don't see too often so these hasty burials are often a chance to get reacquainted. One of them was my old boss from the Negev, who had been the woman's supervisor for her doctoral degree. He's had to bury several of his students over the years. He gave the eulogy, a reminder to me that the bond between professor and grad student is often a relationship that lasts a lifetime. These are our academic "children" and it is indeed hard for parents to bury children, when it should be the other way around.

Another person was a botanist who helped me a lot when I first came to Israel in 1981-1982. In later years, he did some interesting projects, including working as part of the authentication team on the Shroud of Turin.

http://www.shroud.com/history.htm

(In brief, his studies as a botanist of the plant remains on the Shroud showed that the plant species were native to Israel and specifically the Jerusalem area.) He's Jewish of course, but he's convinced the Shroud is authentic, and was the cloth in which Jesus of Nazareth was buried. I have no idea how he connects the dots on that, and am curious. So, I've invited him to give a lectura at our congregation as a Friday seminar, and will invite some archeologists as well. This should be very fun.

Not much more to mention, but I guess that is interesting enough.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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shabbat shalom 03.04.10

2010-04-05T18:05:00.002+03:00

http://bit.ly/cJVnTJ

Fri, April 2, 2010 10:03:32 PM
From: Linda Whittaker ~Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com
To: Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~Alternate Email: Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com

Hi everyone,

Today is Holy Saturday, one of the more interesting Easter celebrations in the Greek Orthodox calendar. (This year the Western and Greek calendars coincide, so Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Rite Christians all celebrate holidays on the same days this year.) In the ceremony of the Holy Fire, the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem proceeds to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, enters the Holy Sepulcher, prays, and emerges proclaiming that the tomb is empty, with a torch in his hand which the faithful believe was just ignited by sacred fire descending on the Sepulcher from Heaven. The church is packed with believers holding large candles and lanterns, and there is a mad dash to light these from the Holy Fire. Faithful believers put the fire in little glass lamps which they take back to their homes and churches in Greece, the Balkans, and all over the world, where it is treasured in the coming year, until the fire is extinguished on Good Friday of the following year.

This is a high point of the Greek Orthodox year. When I first saw it many years ago, I thought the whole thing was very barbaric; gongs booming, masses of black-clad people surging around, incense, smoke pouring out of the church, the excitement and hysteria. All very Eastern and alien to the West. Over the years, I've come to understand that isn't the point. Yes, it's ancient and alien. And most likely the patriarch flicked his Bic to light that torch and the whole ceremony is a fake. But the feelings are not fake. I've come to understand that the factual truth is not important in religion; it is the feelings which matter. The Holy Fire has power to heal because people believe it, not because it factually descended from Heaven. Religions are full of sacred play-acting like that; it reaches a level in the human mind that rational intellect can never reach. Bread and wine become flesh and blood if it works for you; baptism is just another bath if you don't feel it. All these outwards forms have to do with an "inner truth" which is not scientific or factual, but a different kind of truth, a psychological one. For this reason, science and religion are two realms which can barely meet, and certainly cannot refute each other. Don't even try.

That said, I've enjoyed my Passover holiday very much, an entire week off work. Most of it I spent resting and catching up on work around the house: putting away the winter clothing, getting out the summer clothing, doing chores I put off all winter. I made one excursion, to the Eretz Israel Museum in Ramat Gan, just north of Tel Aviv. I seldom get to Tel Aviv on a day when things are open, which is a pity. While Jerusalem is academic, governmental and religioius, a city of institutions, the coastal plain has normal, western cities where people are more interested in having fun and making money than they are in pursuing grand goals of knowledge, power and eternal truth. In addition, most restaurants in Jerusalem are kosher; most on the coastal plain are not.

So I felt a breath of fresh air when I stepped off the train. Life is more simple in Tel Aviv.

The museum is about material culture, the use of metals, glass, ceramics, fabrics - all the craft work that people have done in Canaan from prehistory to modern times. It's a museum about "stuff", which I find delightful as a spin-off from archeology, one of my favorite subjects. There is even a pavilion devoted to the development of the postal system here, from the Egyptian pharonic couriers to modern Israeli stamps. There is a coin collection. There is an archaeological excavation on site of an ancient Philistine town. There are craftsmen making stuff using traditional methods for baskets, pottery, ironwork, etc.

The only flaw in this beautiful week has been that my blind and deaf cat, Homer, has been very sick. I came home from the Passover seder and found he had thrown up, which is common enough in cats, but he continued to throw up in the morning. I took his temperature, and it was very high, so I gave him Optalgin to bring it down. (You have to be careful which meds to give cats and dogs, who are allergic to some which work for people. Optalgin is safe.) After the first holiday of Passover, I took him to my vet, who found him very jaundiced, and diagnosed liver infection. He was put on antibiotics and fluids which I give every day, but didn't eat for four days. I was about to give up on him. But yesterday, after I had already made a decision to put him down on Sunday, he started to show interest in food. He is eating a little. A little is a lot better than nothing, so I am feeding him very soft food (it seems his throat hurts) and small amounts several times during the day. Let's hope.

Meanwhile it has been beautiful weather until today; I could sit in the garden every day. Sunday is Easter so I will have lunch with a Catholic friend, and the next day is the last day of Passover. Tuesday, back to work.

This has been a much needed rest, and a break from the stresses of winter to the easier life in summer. I slept 9 hours every day and feel almost normal again. Hopefully strength continues to increase; at least my cough of the last two months is gone.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2010/04/shabbat-shalom-030410.html http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2010/04/shabbat-shalom-030410.html
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shabbat shalom 26.03.10

2010-03-28T05:11:00.004+03:00

http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2010/03/shabbat-shalom-260310.html

Fri, March 26, 2010 4:22:21 AM
via Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Hi everyone,

It's the run up to Passover here in Israel; the seder is held on Monday night. Most people are busy getting the house cleaned (free of "hametz", e.g leavened goods, dust, anything that might be regarded as fermentation) and on a shopping spree for new linens, tableware, china and other things for this high feast of the Jewish year. Jerusalem is stuffed to the rafters with visitors. There are shiny big black cars on the roads that belong to the "twice a year" visitors (nobody who lives through our summers would have a black car, which would work well as a solar oven round about July), and these black cruisers often don't know where the heck they are going, so driving gets even more nervous than usual.

On Sunday my car actually got hit in the parking lot at Hebrew University while I was at a meeting. Fortunately the woman who did it came in and told me, was willing to pay for the damages. Bashed my front wheel well while trying to park; I still have no idea how she managed that. Got it fixed the next day, no fuss - after the last several months I am on a first name basis with most of the mechanics at the local Mazda garage.....

No sooner got myself sorted out from that than we had our annual "social event excursion" of my department. I hate these things and usually wriggle out of them, but couldn't this time. Actually the excursion itself sounded interesting: the Tower of David at Jaffa Gate, and then a walking tour of the historic buildings in the New City (the vying of the world powers at the time when the Ottoman Empire ruled here, and the English, French, Germans, Italians, Americans, and Russians were all trying to gain a foothold in advance of the empire breaking up.) But I don't like doing things under force, and this was one of those situations where you go or you offend the bosses. So I went dragging my heels, even though I love archeology and history as a hobby.

I wasn't the only one. Halfway through the walk through the exhibits at the Tower of David, I spotted one of our staff members sitting in a corner looking unhappy. I asked the problem and he said he had a headache. I offered acamol, but he wanted a cup of coffee. Okay, this was my window of opportunity, so I whisked him out of there and across the square to Christchurch, the English compound where they have an espresso bar and the best carrot cake in the Middle East. Within five minutes we were in the English garden, sitting under the wisteria with coffee and cake. ESCAPED.

Some other time I will do that walking tour on a voluntary basis.

It must be something in human nature (at least my nature) to hate doing even things we like if we are forced to do it. I've always been that way; even as a kid I would hate being sent to birthday parties (although I liked my own well enough). These social events held at work where you have to play nice to people because they will nail you later if you don't.....well, so far I managed to skip most of them, and that's fine. Does anyone actually enjoy them?

At least now we have a solid week of vacation. I was astonished to learn my office will be closed until the end of Passover (6 April). This is only the second year the organization has done it. I guess with so many people taking their holidays during Passover it didn't make sense to keep the offices open. Of course our nature reserves and parks will be extremely busy as hordes of Israelis and foreigners go on outings, so it's not like the whole organization shut down. I'm really grateful; been sick off and on since last November and need a good solid rest to get my energy back. Once Passover is finished, there will be a lot to do, but for now my main ambitions are to put away the winter clothes and get out the summer clothes, and get to the spa tomorrow.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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shabbat shalom 18.03.10

2010-03-18T20:22:00.002+03:00

Hi everyone,

I just got back from two days in the Negev Highlands. The rains were good, and there are flowers everywhere in the desert:

Most of these are the sweet and delicate little annuals that pop up after winter rains, bloom in a few weeks and vanish by the end of April. The little purple ones are a kind of annual geranium, and there are many kinds of Composites (daisy family), but the shrubs are in bloom as well.

I went down mainly to see how my student is doing with the biodiversity sampling in our project, and he is doing fine. But it was also a chance to catch up with old friends from the days when I lived at the field station at Sede Boqer, between 1984 and 1994. A lot are still there. The place has quadrupled in size and become a regular small town, almost, with several neighborhoods. The Institute for Desert Research has built several grand buildings, and those left from the time I helped to pioneer the institute are dwarfed if still standing.

Still, it doesn't look nearly as much fun as we had when we were just getting off the ground. In those days, we were a small band of mostly young people and a handful of crazy older people. We started with huts and caravans. Our laboratories were scrounged from the kibbutz scrap heaps. Half the time the electricity, water or telephone connections were down (and people waited for years to get telephones installed.) But every time we did something, it was a "first". The first international grants, the first international conferences. Everybody knew everyone else and his dog. It could be claustrophobic, in fact. But it was often a lot of fun, and we made our own fun. Now, it's "establishment". I'm amazed that my student has spent a month there and hardly knows anyone; it never would have happened in the pioneering years.

One of the first things I did was drag him around to some of the veterans so he knows them and they know him. It's important, since he has a greater diversity of work to do in the coming month. Second, I caught up with a handful of old friends. One took me to lunch, another couple had me over to dinner, and took me back as far as Beersheva in their Land Rover this morning.

But the oldest and dearest friend is the desert itself, and I took some time to walk alone along the canyon rim of Nahal Zin (the biblical Wilderness of Zin) and breathe in the clean, metallic air of the desert. It cleared my lungs of the persistent phlegm and cough I had during the last weeks, as I knew it would. The light was almost blinding; I have lost my "desert eyes" in the 15 years I've lived up in the Judean Mountains. Still, the plant names started popping into my mind as I walked and started reading the landscape, the tracks, the digging of various animals, noting the birds....the desert rat was still in the back of my brain and waking up. It was a little purification and did me good.

The dust of the "hamsin" and the heavy pollen count in Jerusalem was making a lot of people sick, but a northern front moved in and cleared the air. Good thing, now we have bright, clear weather for Passover. It's a little bit cool, but will warm up. Perfect weather for rolling up sleeves and tucking into the work of cleaning house, putting away the winter clothing, getting out the summer clothing.

What else to mention....I had to sell two gold Krugerrands I had inherited from my husband. I'd kept these for 30 years since his death, but the economic crash of 2009, devaluation of my pension and savings, plus heavy expenses in the winter, were putting my budget in a bad place. Rather than go into debt, I decided to sell these coins; after all we had bought them for such a time as this. Then came the question how to sell them?? This is not easy in Jerusalem. I asked at the bank, and they didn't know. They suggested jewelers. So I went to the main street and asked in several jewelry shops. Most didn't buy coins, just old jewelry. Those who did were not offering fair prices (Krugerrands have known standard international value). I was getting discouraged, but thought to ask in a money changer's kiosk. The kid at the desk had a customer who bought gold coins, so a connection was made, and the man, an old haredi jeweler, came over with a fat wad of bills and paid me the international value on the spot, and I promptly deposited the money in my bank account. All in all, a very Middle Eastern kind of experience. Now I know how it is done. I suppose there are gold exchanges, but nobody has an idea where....Hopefully I won't have to do this again, but at least I now know how.

I guess that is about all for now. I've been traveling all day and am tired so good night for now.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

shabbat shalom 12.03.10

2010-03-12T08:32:00.002+03:00

Hi Everyone,

The "hamsin" (also called "shirav", a desert wind from Saudi Arabia) has rolled in with its load of heat and dust.

Later in the spring this will finish the growing season, but for now it just makes us cough and our eyes water. I woke up with a sore throat from it, but I have to admit the rest of me is doing really well in this weather. It's the eternally repeating pattern of the Middle East: the cold and rainy winter gives way to a vigorous flush of spring growth accelerated by these warm spells, but burnt off in April by the desert wind. Then another long, rainless summer with clear blue skies until the clouds gather again in autumn (October or November) for the next winter rains. So it has always been.

Of course this is lots of fun just before Passover, when we have to clear all the dust from the house as part of getting rid of the "hametz" (leaven). Sometimes I think Judaism invented spring cleaning; I've never seen anyone else do it so fanatically. We do have people who get on their knees with toothpicks and clean out the dirt between the floor tiles. There will be furious activity during the next two weeks, dusting, washing, throwing out anything with yeast or flour in it (bread, pasta, etc.) I usually collect a large haul of cereal products to hand on to the Arab villagers I know. The only wheat products permitted in kosher homes during the Passover week are matzoh and products made from matzoh (which is baked in a special way to prevent any accidental introduction of leaven). No beer either, although wine is permitted during Passover week. I never really figured that out except that beer is made from fermented grain and wine from fermented fruit. Cheese is fermented also, and is permitted, so I guess it is just fermented grains.....There are differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardi practice also. Sephardic Jews permit rice and beans during Passover, Ashkenazim don't.

Jerusalem has filled up. During this season and during the High Holy Days in September, lots of foreign Jews flock to spend a month in their "vacation" apartments in Jerusalem. Often they have daughters of marriageable age in tow and a big part of the visit is arranging marriages. So everyone is on parade in their finest, the restaurants are full, the young ladies are on display, and deals are being negotiated in every corner of the city. That's fine with me except until they all leave, I can never find a place to park. Also, these bonzo big American cars are cruising around taking up two lanes in roads never designed for them, by drivers who don't really know where they are going. I'm cursing every big black sedan I encounter these days. This too shall pass, the migrants will go home and leave us natives here for the summer months, until they come again in September.

Joe Biden (American vice president) is in town these days also, just to add to the chaos. Everywhere he goes they close the roads. I had planned to go to the Old City to get a confirmation gift for my niece, but after the radio reports, I'm not going near there today. Altogether it is a time to sit under my own vine and fig tree.

Did have some fun during the week, however. This is also the conference season, and I went to Ramat HaNadiv (next to Mt. Carmel) for a conservation meeting; saw all my colleagues from around the country, went to an excellent lunch, pottered around in a warehouse shop for Moroccan goods. It's funny; Moroccans themselves drive me crazy but I love their food and their over-the-top artwork.

You can get dizzy just looking at their stuff; it makes rococo look restrained.

Yesterday I also had some fun. I'm apparently now on the Quaker hit list of people to see in the Middle East, and I'm getting a parade of visitors. Got a phone call from an English guy who was principle of the Friends School in Ramallah in the early part of the decade, now retired, passing through. So I met up with him before my Bible study with pastor Joe Shulam, and then just turned the two of them loose and listened. It was fun. Later the Quaker confessed to me he had been really nervous about coming over to the Jewish side of town and meeting with Israelis (from what they say in Ramallah you would think we are all bloodthirsty killers) and it was good to find out otherwise. Building bridges. First I have to build the bridges to the Quakers!

That's about it for now, I have to get chores done.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

shabbat shalom 05.03.10

2010-03-05T08:25:00.002+03:00

Hi everyone,

It's a beautiful spring here after the last rains.

I just got back yesterday night from the annual science conference (yom mada) of my organization, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. It is a time to hear what everyone has been doing. We have so many reports now that they are divided in three sessions: biology, education, and archeology. Since I usually already heard the biology, I stick with the archeology session. It was great to hear the report on the theater/odeon (they still debate which) that I helped to excavate in Apollonaris/Aphek. That's a fascinating place, and very conveniently our organization's second headquarters near Tel Aviv, so there are conveniences like food and bathroom and computers and phones. Aphek was the Egyptian governor's seat when the ancient Egyptians ruled this part of the world under Ramses II, and there is a palace belonging to the Egyptian governor, right next to the Roman cardo and theater, right next to the Crusader fort, and a huge Ottoman khan not far away. It's a feast for an archeology buff, and full of surprises even now. I busted my butt with a pickaxe clearing under the stage of that theater and so I was keenly interested in the report; what they figure out about the stage area will determine whether this was a theater or an odeon.

Apart from that, I visited with two old friends that I don't see very often. Uriel Safriel, who was my director for ten years in the Negev, gave a plenary lecture about biodiversity for the conference. I met with him later and we agreed we have to get together. I want to pick his brains on the diversity issues because he's been involved in various international projects on the subject, and I am just starting to take up the reins on the biodiversity part of our EBONE project. That's the part nobody wants to touch with a barge pole, as too difficult. So the buck stops here. I have a student doing field work for me in the desert right now, and will have to get in deeper when his data are ready. Uriel was always good as a sounding board, and he's fascinated by what we are doing, so it is time.

The other old friend is really old at 83, but Professor Naveh is still alert and working on books and articles despite surviving a stroke three years ago. After the conference, I went to his flat in a pensioner's apartment building with a magnificent view of Haifa bay and talked over tea and cake which his wife made for us. Zev and Ziona are insperable; and Zev would probably not be alive today without his wife. Still, they are happy, with grown grandchildren both here and America, and still travel to conferences to my amazement. Zev brought me to Israel in 1981 after my husband died, to continue the work he had been doing with us on mediterranean plant biodiversity. It amuses us both that I am still at it. He asks me if I don't regret coming to Israel, and I have to honestly say I don't. With all the ups and downs, it has been a fascinating 29 years here, and I never regretted it even once.

I'll stay with Zev and Ziona while I supervise another Dutch student coming to work at En Afek (that's not to be confused with the Aphek near Tel Aviv), a small nature reserve between Haifa and Akko where I've done a good bit of research on wetlands. I had four graduate students working there until 1999, before the second intifada, but war broke off the stream of grad students from Holland. Now that the students are coming back, I want to resurvey and see what changes the improved management has made.

One student in Avdat and one student in Afeq....it feels a little odd to revisit my past this way. It's good to reconnect with the people both in the Negev and the north. A way of winding things up before I retire, maybe.

As for me, health is returning. I noticed on the train home from Haifa that I wasn't exhausted, and today energy levels are better than yesterday. That was an awful two months but it seems to be passing. Good thing too, because these coming weeks are going to be very busy. I have another conference (on biodiversity) up on the Carmel, and a two day trip to the Negev to work with the student at Avdat, plus getting our new query interface for the biological data online, and a few other projects that have to be done.

There were some other things going on. We had the Purim party at my congregation. I came early to make a soup, but wasn't feeling well and went home to bed at 7 pm. It takes all my strength to deal with a crowd of people, and I can't do it when I'm not well. I understand they liked the "brain soup" (tomato soup with cauliflowers, looked like blood and brains) which fit the theme of "Jungle" for this year's costume party. I had a costume. Maybe next year. Slept ten hours, guess I was exhausted.

Tomorrow I get a visit from English Quakers who are mainly here for the Palestinian Quakers in Ramallah. They will stop one day with me too. I arranged a visit to the School of Hope, a Christian school for handicapped Arab children which is just down the hill from me It was started by Mennonites, so the director is already familiar with Quakers too. They are looking forward to the visit. Then I'll take them to Everest Hotel to see the view and have a good lunch.

Meanwhile, the rains have stopped and I have about five loads of laundry to hang outside to dry! Must get to work.

shabbat shalom,,
Linda

shabbat shalom 26.02.10

2010-02-25T21:28:00.000+03:00

Thu, February 25, 2010 9:28:16 PM
From:Linda Whittaker
To:Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ; Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Negev Desert18 Februari .jpg (514KB) View Image

Hi Everyone,

The rains have returned, and it is pouring outside right now. This is a blessing since the one big rain of the brief winter didn't bring us up to an average rainfall for the year yet. Now we are predicted to have rains until Monday, the long soaking kind, which will bump us over into a good rainfall year I think. (Timing is as important as amount here, and also the way it falls.)

I went down to the Negev this last week to get my Dutch student started on plant diversity work. He has already been wandering the hills there, learning the plant species, so we were able to get some work done. The desert is in bloom this year, a great contrast to last spring when not a green plant could be seen. Today it looks like this:

So, it is time for us botanists to be out and about, and indeed I will be away from the office a good bit in the coming month. Still a bit shaky after being sick all of January, but on the mend. Doing gentle field work in the spring sunshine is healing in itself.

This is chicken soup time, and I've got the crock pot going for a Friday soup dinner with a friend. Winter is passing but we can still catch colds from the erratic weather and it is a time to be watchful. I had planned on walking the Via Dolorosa with a Catholic friend today (this being Lent, there will be groups from all over the world doing the Via Dolorosa route today in spite of the rain.) Since I am still weak from my past illness, I've decided to give it a miss today, though.

We have Purim coming up, and I'm making another soup for the congregation's party. During the last two months, between my own illness and the breakdowns with my car, I haven't been much connected to them. Now is a time to restore that. A few people did keep track of me when I was sick and I'm grateful for their concern. Sometimes it seems like "out of sight, out of mind" and that gets depressing, but maybe with lest reason than I felt at the time.

Quakers are coming through in a couple weeks too and paying me a visit from England. I'll take them around our little corner of the West Bank, including a visit to the Hope School for handicapped children (http://www.hope-school.8k.com/) where I know the director and have been able to do the school a good turn now and then. We have in this tiny corner a good relationship between Arabs and Jews, maybe because a large percentage of the Arabs are Christians, and most of the Jews are secular. Left to ourselves, we could live together in peace, and manage to do business with each other despite the difficulties of many barriers. The Arab garage, grocery stores, dentist, restaurant, etc. all have signs in Hebrew as well as Arabic, and the local restaurant, the Everest, has always been a meeting place for Palestinians and Israelis, right on the border. The cafe on our army base is run by a Palestinian. That has to be unique.....So I figured letting the visitors see this will sober them a bit from all the ranting they hear in Europe.

March is the conference season here for some reason, and we have a whole lot of ecology and conservation meetings in the next three weeks. Our own annual science conference for the Nature and Parks Authority is next week at the University of Haifa (we don't have an auditorium of our own), which gives me a chance to slip away and see my old friend Professor Naveh and his wife during lunch. Zev Naveh is 8 years old and confined to a wheelchair, but still working on books, his mind as alert as ever. He was diagnosed with a tumor this year so I don't know how much longer he will be with us. He was the person who originally brought me to Israel as a post-doctoral student after my husband died, and has been a loyal friend for more than 30 years, so I owe him a lot.

Other conferences on biodiversity and on conservation in agricultural landscapes will be held in the Galilee and Negev, so I will be hopping the train a good bit for that. I also need to spend two more days with my Dutch student to supervise his work, and am preparing for another Dutch student to join us in May on work in the Galilee. After several months of confinement to home and office this is great! I just hope my health continues to improve, since I sure cannot afford another illness like the last one.

That's about all for now.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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shabbat shalom 18.02.10

2010-02-18T20:47:00.003+03:00

Hi Everyone,

The world starts to look a whole lot better here in Israel. It is spring, and the air is soft and warm. Where we were shivering in our homes two weeks ago, now everyone has their doors and windows flung open to welcome the fresh air after the winter months. It wasn't much of a winter, maybe six weeks worth, but we are never really prepared for rain and cold weather here. After a few weeks of the warm Mediterranean sun, we forget about it until the next time it comes around.

As for me, the spring is more then welcome. My health returns with the warm days. I went to see my doctor this morning and he confirmed the dizziness and ringing in my ears were from fluid in my ears which will just have to take its time getting out. This was no doubt caused by a month of severe "common cold", and the virus probably got into my ears with all the sinus congestion and nose blowing I did during January. That Norwegian blood must be thin as water now; I hate the very idea of cold weather. Well, no worries for many months and by next winter I plan to have an air conditioner at home!

On Monday, my Dutch former student and I went with my director to the Dead Sea. My director was going to teach us how to find snakes and lizards and I was going to teach the student vegetation sampling methods. It was WARM, about 28oC (uh, somewhere around 80oF, I guess) and the change in climate was a bit of a shock to the system. Still, we spent some hours out there in the desert and I must admit the next day I felt like my normal self again. Snake hunting wasn't a good idea; just are not that many snakes around. But lizards are another story; they were popping out all over the place. It occurred to me we ought to just focus on lizards. We get the numbers, and they are not poisonous, so I don't need to worry about shipping a student back to Holland in a box.... The student caught the vegetation sampling method quickly. The district biologist for the West Bank came to join the fun for a while, and then invited us over to En Fescha, my favorite desert oasis, for lunch with the park staff. (Everybody pulls out his lunch and shares, like they did in the Loaves and Fishes stories.)

Sure was great lying around by the water under the date palms and eating oranges.......

On Wednesday, another colleague and I went up to another wetlands, this time En Afeq, the headwaters of the Na'aman River. That is a coastal wetland where I also had students working on projects for more than fifteen years.

I've got another Dutch student coming for maybe 5 months of M.Sc. work with us at this little nature reserve. So we had to hammer out some details of accommodation and project description, but I also had a walk around for the first time in more than two years, to see the changes taking place here. They cleared out the old Crusader water canals (two flour mills were working a thousand years ago, one Hospitaler and the other Templar, fighting with each other of course, and using the river to grind flour for the Crusaders in Akko. So the wetland functions best when those ancient canals are clear and working.

We stopped at Kibbutz Yagur (at the foot of Mt. Carmel) to hit the giant greenhouse and nursery for some houseplants and just revel in acres of garden plants for sale. Yagur is one of the more successful kibbutzim, partly because they savvied onto the needs of urban dwellers in Haifa, who flock in during the weekends to shop and swim in the pools there. It's a nice place for a stop on the way back to Jerusalem.

At last I think I'm strong enough to get back to volunteer work at the animal shelter this weekend, so I am getting this out of the way early. Not much planned except that, but it is good to feel healthy enough to do physical work again. And it is very good to be able to appreciate our glorious spring.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

shabbat shalom 04.02.10

2010-02-07T05:32:00.000+03:00

Thu, February 4, 2010 4:54:19 AM
From: Linda Whittaker ~ Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com

Hi everyone,

Outside there is rain, hail and some snow flurries; Jerusalem got a bit of winter after all. I was beginning to wonder if we would. Fortunately there is only one day of it.....Seems funny to think I went through months of snow in Minnesota and upstate New York without any major hassle. Here, a hint of snow sends us scurrying to stock up supplies like we are going to be cut off from civilization for weeks.... If any snow sticks to the ground, we simply don't travel. This is especially true for my mountaintop home which is much higher than Jerusalem. If anyone gets snowed in around here, it is us. So I keep checking with the village secretary to make sure I can get home before things close down. Sheesh, you would think we are in the high Rockies or something....

The woodstove is a blessing now; nothing else quite gets rid of the cold and damp as well. I have just enough firewood to squeak through the tail end of winter, and have a heap drying for next year beside the woodpile, free wood which will need cutting. This is the month we rediscover why we still keep wool clothing when fleece is available. No idea why the major difference in warmth but I'm wearing a ratty old English wool pullover I got at a flea market in London, and wool socks from Holland, and nothing else will do for a day like today. During the rest of the year, it is hard to remember how cold these stone buildings will get for a month in the winter, but we sure know it now. I'm making a note to go shopping in Sweden and the Netherlands next year, when I stop by there in October. Can't get the cold weather gear here that they will have, and cheap too.

This was a week of gradually resurfacing to the human race after a month of misery in January. Between three weeks of a virus, and nine (count them!) visits to the garage with car trouble, January was a dead waste. I don't want another month like that for a long time to come.

This are picking up now, however. My Dutch student, now coming back as a volunteer in our EBONE project, is in the country and I have to get him started on work in the Negev Desert. We have a training exercise by the Dead Sea (oh yummy, warmth) this coming week, and late this month I will spend a few days in the Avdat station in the Negev Highlands to get him started on field sampling. We have another Dutch student coming later in the spring for field work on the wetland En Afeq, so I need to go up there (it's between Haifa and Akko) to start laying groundwork for him as well. After two months cooped up in the office and home, I've got a serious case of cabin fever, but this should get me out of it.

There's no better cure for the winter blues than the door into summer called the Dead Sea. Even the air is healing; it is loaded with salts and bromide (which has a calming influence); the location 450 m below sea level means the air is rich in oxygen and it is also bone dry. Just sitting and breathing Dead Sea air in winter is pure delight. Usually I'm down there for a few days ever winter; didn't manage it this time and must be sure to do it next winter. That prevents or cures these winter colds.

Spring is on its way, though. The almond trees are in full bloom. I'm seeing Bellevalia (a geophyte a bit like a hyacinth) in bloom and in the sunny spots we have the little yellow daisies called Senecio desfontanei (sorry folks, I only know the Latin on these things and they probably don't have an English name anyway). A few red anemones are scattered around the fields near my house, and I expect on the foothills they are blooming all over the place. We got a good rain which will bring out the plants this year, so there will be work to do....

That's about it. My cold and car kept me from paying attention to very much. It was hard enough to focus on work, and I basically dropped out of everything else for the last month. If we had gone to war, I'd have barely noticed it.

We did have Italy's Prime Minister, Bellisconi, paying us a visit now. Israel and Italy have warm relations and it is a happy visit. (These two countries very much alike, by the way, both in culture and temperment.) Bellisconi is particularly welcome as an old friend of Israel. I learned that friendship goes back before he was born; his pregnant mother saved a Jewish woman from the Nazis during WWII. Jews have long memories, and that is remembered. He got a kashrut certificate on his butt when he was born, as far as Israelis are concerned.

I guess that is about all from me for now. Hopefully the spring will bring more lively news.

shabbat shalom,
Linda
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shabbat shalom 28.01.10

2010-01-28T07:08:00.002+03:00

Thu, January 28, 2010 7:08:39 AM
From: Linda Whittaker ~olsvig2000@yahoo.com~
To: Linda Olsvig-Whittaker Olsvig-Whittaker ~olsvig2000@yahoo.com~;
Linda Olsvig-Whittaker ~Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il~

Hi everyone,

This has been a grey week. It rained for quite a few days and got quite cold. Although we need the rain, I still have a virus for three weeks now, coughing and sneezing, so it made me feel miserable and depressed. In addition I was anxious about my car. Just got it back last week after changing the catalytic converter for the second time in a month (and it really was reduced to powder inside), so I was afraid of another engine failure on the road.

Not wanting to break down in heavy morning traffic, I started getting on the road by 6:30 am and in the office by 7 am. This was good in many ways and I may keep doing it, but the idea was to be traveling at hours when the garage was available in case of breakdown. REALLY not fun; very stressful in fact.

However, so far my car has been okay and it has been two weeks since the last engine failure. I begin to think the buggers at the garage finally fixed it after two months of trying, and about half a dozen breakdowns since November. (It has gotten to the point that people who know me automatically ask "How's your car?" rather than "How are you?")

By Wednesday, I had enough of this. I was getting dizzy spells, either from stress or from the virus getting into my inner ears. So in late morning I just bagged it, told the secretary I'm taking the rest of the day off and will be back at work on Sunday. One of the smarter things I've done lately. With 30 days of accumulated vacation time, I can afford to take the time to rest and recover, but am usually too stubborn to do it. Just got done counselling a workaholic friend with pneumonia to take more time to rest than he thinks he needs, and then thought to myself "stupid, take your own advice". This long weekend is what the doctor would have prescribed, and I'm beginning to feel human again.

Which takes me back to my drinking days....how did I handle it then? I drank to relieve the discomfort and stress, and to energize myself. This was exactly the kind of situation where in the past I would have one of my periodic binges, to escape the misery and to keep on working. I didn't have sense enough to take care of my health and get enough rest. Even now, the decision to do that is not instinctive; I have to tell myself to do it after some reflection. It will probably never be instinctive, but training beats a blank, I guess.

Just to make life even more cheerful, today is International Holocaust Memorial Day and Israel of course is full of it. Some interesting points: our prime minister addressed the German Parliament - in Hebrew. Take that, Hermann Goering. Germany is one of the best friends Israel has these days, but even so we can't help rubbing it in sometimes. It's a complicated, but deep relationship, with both love and pain.

Sort of in honor of the occasion, I watched "The Pianist", about Jews in WWII Warsaw. Uff, not something to watch if you are feeling depressed and the weather outside is bleak. Having learned my lesson, I think tonight I will watch my DVD of "The Simpsons".

Hopefully my car continues to behave and I can gradually rejoin the human race again. This last month was a nightmare and I really felt isolated; afraid to visit or take part in any evening activities in town, and under constant stress. I had taken my car for granted and didn't realize how dependent I am on it. This is sobering because I don't like to drive and at some point in retirement would like to give that up. Either the bus service gets better out here or I better consider a move into town somewhere. Har Gilo is too isolated at present with only four buses per day, even though it is only ten minutes from Jerusalem by car.

Today was sunny and I was glad to have the daylight to walk around. The early flowers are blooming (I know them in Latin but that won't help you): small daisies, a wild hyacinth-like flower, and of course the almonds. This shabbat is Tu B'Shvat, the New Year of the Trees, and it is the traditional time for almonds to be in bloom. (Actually it was the tax year in ancient times so this is rather like celebrating 15 April, the American income tax deadline, as a spring holiday). The holiday is cute, though: modern Jewish National Fund reforestation events turned it into a nice celebration. People plant trees and eat fruit and nuts from trees; stuff like that. Well, this year I planted six rose bushes; does that count???

Guess that is all. Life is a little less bleak but I sure hope I don't have to do another month like this January for a long time to come. UFFFF!

shabbat shalom
Linda

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http://shabbat-shalom-jerusalem.blogspot.com/

shabbat shalom 21.01.10

2010-01-21T18:56:00.001+03:00

Hi everyone,

For many years Israel has suffered from a drought, but this week the weather went in the opposite direction and rained buckets:

(see attached pdf file)

That's the Negev Highlands, near Nahal Paran, the descent into Maktesh Ramon. 50 mm per year is the average there. They got it in one day. The whole Negev and Arava got flooded; the roads along the Dead Sea were closed and people drowned in the Arava Road. At this site, the truckers were rescued by helicopter.

Although most of the water from flash floods like this is lost to the sea, it will help to recharge our badly depleted water supply a bit. Many small rains are better than one big one, but we will have to see what the rest of the winter holds in store. At least for our field work in Avdat next month, we know we will have some plants, unlike last year and several years before that. This rain is an aberration (in fact the heaviest in Negev history) but is sure comes at a good time.

The storms have torn into my mountain as well. Power was down three times. I was grateful to have a wood-stove and candles. Most people were freezing, but the cats and dogs and I were all curled around a blazing fire in the stove....

I dreaded any attempt to drive in this, however. With my car engine dying unpredictably, I didn't want to think about sorting it out in a storm at night. So during this week I timed my travel to be going to work at dawn and on the way home well before dark. It works well, by the way; no road traffic. But sure enough the engine warning light went on again this week and I trudged back to the garage where at this point everyone knows me and even the security code to my car.....

With any luck, we may have found the last problem: a badly damaged catalytic converter. The ceramic inside was broken in bits, to the point that exhaust couldn't get through, and must have built back pressure on the engine......Well, that got replaced and I will have to see if the engine behaves for a week more before I am confident we fixed the recurring engine failure. I hope so. This was really getting to me, having the engne fail every week or two. I was getting afraid to drive my own car, and tense every time I got into it. Most unpleasant two months.

Not helped by having a cold either. I've been coughing and sneezing and taking cold tablets for two weeks. Could be worse; I know some swine flu cases here and that is really misery. But if I go down, who takes care of the critters? Can't afford it. So I've been working half days, using my vacation time to rest at home so a cold doesn't go to worse. It's been hard to focus at work anyway with a virus-fuzzed brain.

January is typically miserable in Israel; this year is no exception. But the almonds are in bloom and spring isn't far away now. I'm ready for the sun and the spring flowers....

My Dutch student returns in a couple weeks for three months of field work in the Negev, and we begin preparations. Work plan, accommodations, logistics. It will be nice to get to the desert, especially in a good rain year. I spent ten years as a desert ecologist down there and it feels a bit odd to be going back to my old stomping grounds....will I remember the plants? I do remember when I moved to Jerusalem, I'd get a cold every time I was here, and get over it every time I went back for a few days in the Negev. When these bones get too old and arthritic for Jersalem, maybe I'll move back to Arad or Beersheva in retirement....Even the summer heat doesn't seem as bad as it was when I was new to the desert.....

That's about it for now; lying low until this virus passes and the sun comes out again, by the wood-stove or in bed with a heating pad at my back.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

shabbat shalom 14.01.10

2010-01-14T20:27:00.003+03:00

Hi everyone,

Uff, this has been a hard week and it isn't over yet. I've been coping with a cold, so skipped the congregation on Sunday night and went home. Of course, Murphy was on duty, and the engine light on my car lit again on the way home. After four trips to the garage with engine problems in this past month, and a couple thousand dollars not fixing it, this sent me through the roof. The car didn't die on me this time, but I was nervous as a cat. So my neighbors kindly helped me shepherd the car to the garage again on Monday morning.

I've been in this garage so often since last November that I know everyone by first name and I know where they keep the toilet paper. It's truly ridiculous. At least after four times, they are not charging me for further parts and work. So far they changed the air intake manifold (once), the ignition cables (twice), the catalytic converter (once) and the alternator. I could have replaced the engine for what all that cost me, although the second set of ignition cables was on their money. The diagnosis this time was the catalytic converter (again) and now the garage is waiting for another Mazda to die so they can get a used part. This is on their money also. At least since it is now costing them rather than me, I trust they are working as hard as they can to fix the problem. Meanwhile I'm tooling around with an engine light on the dash which makes me nervous, but so far so good. Makes me wish for the past when all I worried about was my driving!! It's not the car's fault; the manager admitted the garage screwed up. Which is what I knew all along....

A head cold pretty much finished any other activities than visiting my friends at the garage. I wasn't working effectively but by Wednesday was burnt out. I stayed home and watched Star Trek movies, after sorting some things at the bank (related to the car repairs). A trip to the vet with another cat going blind (hopefully caught this one in time) pretty much topped off the wonderful week. There are times we all have when we want to crawl into a hole and stay there; this has been one for me. Which means it gets better, I hope.

Hearing my tale of woe, a comedian in my AA meeting observed that the difference between alcoholics and normal people is that when normal people have a car break down, they call a towing service. An AA calls Suicide Prevention. We all laughed ruefully. We do have a hard time dealing with "stuff". It's that tendency to obsess, I guess - it just spirals. Even after many years sober, it still happens, which is why we all recognized ourselves in that quip.

Hopefully I can put all this past me soon, although the bills will haunt me for a while. I had to use up my savings account and take out a loan to make sure my bank account is on the high size of zero at the end of the month. It will, but the budget will be tight for some months to come. I was quite surprised, actually, how much I can cut my expenses if I am careful. No luxuries, just essentials. That's probably too spartan for the long haul but will be okay for some months. Good thing I have a stockpile of DVD's to watch because I sure am not going out for entertainment for a long time to come!

And yet, I'm lucky. I so far have managed to keep my budget balanced. A lot of other people haven't and are deeply in debt, which is a horrible place to be. Let's hope things are better this year.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

Shabbat Shalom - Jerusalem

shabbat shalom 26.01.11

shabbat shalom 16.12.11

shabbat shalom 08.04.11

shabbat shalom 31.03.11, farewell to Zev

shabbat shalom 25.03.11

shabbat shalom 18.03.11

shabbat shalom 11.02.11

shabbat shalom 04.02.11

If I am not for myself, for whom shall I be?If I am only for myself, what am I?--Akiva

shabbat shalom 28.01.11

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shabbat shalom 17.09.10 Erev Yom Kippur

shabbat shalom 10.09.10

shabbat shalom 03.09.10

shabbat shalom 27.08.10 (repost)

shabbat shalom 20.08.10

shabbat shalom 06.08.10

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shabbat shalom 14.01.10

If I am not for myself, for whom shall I be?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
--Akiva