shabbat shalom 19.04.12

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Linda Whittaker <olsvig2000@yahoo.com>
To: Linda Olsvig-Whittaker <linda.whittaker@npa.org.il>; Linda Whittaker <olsvig200@yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 4:08 AM
Subject: shabbat shalom 19.04.12

Hi everyone,

Thursday afternoon.  I wasn't feeling well this morning, with a sore throat and diarrhea, so I called in sick.  But after a few hours I dragged myself down to the mall to get some throat lozenges and a couple other errands.  Still feeling rotten, I was at the gate to our village when something happened that made my day.

A white car started riding my butt on the way up the steep climb to the older part of the village.  Speed limit here is 30 km/hr and I was going exactly 30, but this guy had roared up behind me going about twice that, and then was tailgating me to get past.  I finally had enough and when we got to a narrow part of the road, I stopped my car and got out. 

I was expecting the usual pimply teenager, since it is mostly local teens and conscripts who drive like a bat out of hell around here, but no, it was a middle aged officer with hardware all over his shoulder.  I can never tell the difference between lewie colonel and colonel, but he was something like that.

Oh boy, God loves me today – nothing I like better than reaming out a soldier.  So while the colonel sat there and turned purple, I calmly and politely explained that

"You were speeding, soldier.  Har Gilo is not a military camp but a village with children, lots of children.  And dogs and cats.  Lots of dogs and cats.  You know, sir, I always worry that a soldier speeding might hit one of them.   I have 14 cats you see.  And three dogs.  I walk the dogs on a leash so they are safe, but I worry about the cats.  And we have women pushing baby carriages.  You can drive how you like in an army camp but in a village the speed limit is 30 km/hr.  I was going 30 km/hr.  You are going to go 30 km/hr too.  It's required of everybody…."

The madder he got the slower and more politely I talked to him.  While he was just chewing his beard and going yeah, yeah, I understand - I could tell he wanted to kill me.  I just love situations like that.  After about five minutes, I let him go with a warning, then drove ahead of him all the way to my house, which is next to the military area, so he never did pass me, and was probably pissing down his leg in fury…..I felt SO much better when I got home.  I am not a nice person.  Just ask the colonel.

Other than that, the week has mostly been pretty quiet.  We had all been on Passover holiday for a week so it was hard to settle back to work.  Most people didn't; there are meetings and events like Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), then more holidays next week, and basically nobody got geared up.  I tried, but couldn't get in gear either….and then got a virus.  Oh well, better now than when I'm really going full tilt.

The weather is mad.  We have "hamsin" (the desert dust storms with high heat and dust), followed by cold fronts from Europe with more dust storms.  This will continue for a while, first soaring heat and then back to clouds and cold and maybe rain.  First I have the air conditioner set in the office to cool and then to heat….

But it is still very beautiful outside with lots of flowers, and even the battered lawn in front of the officer's offices, where the all the dogs pee, is a carpet of beautiful yellow, blue and white flowers.   Maybe dog pee is good for them.  I would like to find a field of flowers where I'm more comfortable about lying down in it, however…..

Shabbat shalom,

Linda

shabbat shalom 12.04.12

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Linda Whittaker <olsvig2000@yahoo.com>
To: olsvig2000@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 5:27 AM
Subject: shabbat shalom 12.04.12

Hi everyone, It's Thursday, but feels like Friday because the country is gearing down for the last day of Passover, a formal holiday like the first day.  That means all businesses closed early today and will be closed tomorrow, but at sunset tomorrow there will be a major scramble because - everybody can eat bread again!!!  Remember, Passover is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, so for about a week now most Jews have been eating souvenir, matzo, matzo.  Matzo and cheese, matzo brye (dipped in egg and fried), pulverized and used like flour for cakes and cookies, etc.  The stuff has the taste, texture and nutritional value of corrugated cardboard, but 100 calories per slice, and has an effect on the digestive system that is the opposite of prunes....It's not called the "bread of affliction" for nothing, as any Jew can tell you. I dodged it, of course.  God doesn't require a humble Gentile like me to cork my colon for a week, so I had bread in the freezer.  There's a lot of things I'm spared by virtue of not being Jewish, but not having to eat matzo is probably of the aspects I appreciate the most....The only pity is that with a week of holiday, all the tasty street food is not out there, like falafel and burekas.  Oh, probably just as well. I've enjoyed this week off work.  My first task was to put away the winter clothing, get out the summer clothing (the procedure is reversed in Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles in the autumn); I then cleaned the shed out back, washed out the dog houses (all had an impressive deposit of loessial soil).  I took my car to the local Arab garage to get the year's accumulation of dents fixed, and then (God laughs) I no sooner got it home than I backed it into a garbage dumpster and got another scrape on the perfect, shiny backside.  Gotta put in some sensors in the back end; can't back up worth squat, since my one-eyed vision can't judge distance. Yesterday I went with a friend to the Ela Valley, where we climed Lupine Hill (Givat HaTermosim) where Saul's Israelites faced off with the Philistines on the opposite hill.  It was crowded with hikers, but then everything in Israel is crowded with hikers during these intermediate days of Passover.  I did see some of the last lupines, and a beautiful view. Next we went to the Everest for lunch.  The Everest Hotel is adjacent to my village and is my local restaurant.  Right now they are making additions to the hotel, including a beautiful mosaic wall on the side of a new souvenier shop where they will sell things from Bethlehem and Hebron.  The mosaic was made by an expert from Hebron.  The owner pointed out to me the image of Mt. Everest on it was taken from a poster I brought back for him from Nepal, which is now proudly hanging in the hotel.  That's nice! Today I met with my sponsee (61 days, you can imagine how jumpy she is), then an AA meeting, then off with my little wheeled shopping cart to the great Mahane Yehuda open air market.  I had gone for strawberries and salads, but the fresh garlic is now on sale, and I got three kilo of it.  Ever see fresh garlic?  It comes with a long "tail", the stem of the plant, and can be braided to hang on the wall to dry.  But most of these bulbs I will use now, to make roasted garlic for tomorrow's dinner.  (You drizzle olive oil over the cut top of the garlic bulb, bake it, and then squeeze the garlic toes like little tubes of toothpaste to get the soft roasted garlic out onto bread, or in this case, matzo.  (I'll save mine for baugettes, like it's supposed to be eaten....) So Passover comes to a close tomorrow, and on Saturday everyone scrambles to get some bread at last.  I'll be back at work on Sunday.  It's been a very nice holiday, beautiful weather, but I'm starting to get just a little bit bored and it is time to get back to work.  If I had another week, I'd start on renovations in my house but the holiday is too short for that and too long just to sit around.  shabbat shalom, Linda

shabbat shalom 05.04.12

From: Linda Whittaker <olsvig2000@yahoo.com>

To: linda.whittaker@npa.org.il
Sent: Thursday, April 5, 2012 3:32 AM
Subject: Fw: shabbat shalom 05.04.12

--- On Thu, 4/5/12, לינדה וויטיקר linda whittaker <linda.whittaker@npa.org.il> wrote: From: לינדה וויטיקר linda whittaker <linda.whittaker@npa.org.il> Subject: shabbat shalom 05.04.12 To: "'Linda Whittaker'" <olsvig2000@yahoo.com> Date: Thursday, April 5, 2012, 1:16 PM Hi everyone,   Thursday afternoon it normally gets quiet around the office as staff workers take a half day off work to do chores and errands or just go do something fun for the weekend.  (Remember in Israel the weekend is Friday and Saturday; while Sunday is a normal working day.)  With the Passover meal coming tomorrow night, nearly everyone emptied out of the office by noon today, so I'm pretty much alone here until I also slip out to run errands.  You could shoot cannon down the hall on this floor and not hit anyone right now.   I had to finish up the financial reporting on our four years in EBONE, which took a couple days of accounting work in our office.  Since our time invested in the project translated to a financial contribution from my organization, this turned out to be quite a lot of money.  I don't know how much reimbursement we will see, but for sure we put in a lot more than we needed to do.  It doesn't really matter; we worked on this project for our own reasons and got a lot more out of it than we planned.   In fact I got a lovely compliment from Y. Shkedy, our chief scientist.  It read in part   Dear Linda, You have managed to run the project to its end, accomplishing much more than we planned. All thanks to you, and your ability to make us all work. The results deserve the efforts.   Bravo!   On behalf of all the EBONE team I thank you.   Sincerely, Shkedy   Well, my goodness! This was the same guy who was trying to fire me some five years ago…..we have indeed come a long way and he's learned to respect me and my work.  This is to a good advantage.  I had a talk with Shkedy about the next years, and we agreed I will focus on inventory and monitoring.     By the end of this year, all my computer work, at least the database management part of it for which I was originally hired, will be outsourced to a company called "TevaSave", which is taking over all the computational work for our organization.  While I have my doubts about their ability to handle it, they must take on board all the fifteen or so databases I manage, and do it by the end of the year or face paying a whopping financial penalty.  So they will do it whether they can or not, I think.   The means that no later than January 2013, I will be 95% free to chart my own course for the next three years.  I have established a working group to chart a rational monitoring program for our organization, and we have selected five pilot studies to do it.  That's enough to start.  It will not be complete when I retire in three years but it will definitely keep me occupied.   Also keeping me occupied will be a new AA sponsee.  She's about my age, and acts as office manager for one of the most right wing extremist political parties in Israel .  I was aghast to learn that, but apart from being a self-admitted fascist, she's intelligent, tough and funny.  (A fascist with a sense of humor???)  We met a couple times already, and she's indeed going to be a handful, but at least is not a weepy, wimpy person begging to be told what to do.  I just give advice, I don't steer her life.  She'd probably kill me if I ever tried….a lot like me in many ways.   Spring is here, time to clean the house, put away the winter clothing, and bring out the summer clothing.  I've gone from woolen socks to sandals as the daytime temperature soared from 15oC to 28oC (imperial system folks, go figure it out).  Throw open the windows, clean the garden.  Our spring is beautiful, but brief, and this is the peak of it now, with flowers everywhere.  Little wild irises are blooming even in the cracks of the pavement in my village.  This coming week of holiday, I should take time among the spring cleaning activities to at least go out to see the flowers somewhere in nature.   As the years go by, I find myself hating winter, as arthritis sets in and it takes determination just to get out of bed.  As the temperature warms, life comes back into my operating systems and with it, also energy to do extra things.  The days are light until 7 pm now, and long walks are possible with the dogs when I get home.   Much needed too.  My diet suffered during late winter and I will have to focus on salads and long walks all summer to make up for it.  I'm still losing weight but not as fast as my dietician had hoped.  We have some medical tests to do; she suspects the new formula thyroxin we get these days is not as good for me as the old one had been, and it simply is not being absorbed as well.  This is fine with me; more thyroxin in the system is an easy way to lose weight!!!   I guess that is about all for now.  Happy Passover, happy Easter.   Linda     Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il   Or send mail to my alternate address:  olsvig2000@yahoo.com   Dr. Linda Olsvig-Whittaker Science and Conservation Division Israel Nature and Parks Authority 3 Am Ve Olamo Street, Givat Shaul Jerusalem 95463, Israel Telephone: +972-2-5005444; Fax +972-2-5014861; mobile phone +972-526-693-794   Data service: < http://ww2.bgbm.org/natureinfo > INPA website: <www.parks.org.il> EBONE website: www.ebone.wur.nl

shabbat shalom 22.03.12

FROM:

• Linda Whittaker

TO:

• olsvig2000@yahoo.com
• linda.whittaker@npa.org.il  

Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:48 AM

Hi everyone, It’s Thursday, nearing the end of my long journey here in Europe, with only a lecture this afternoon ahead of me in the professional agenda.  It’s time to start wrapping up.  I have been kindly received here in the Netherlands and reconnected with many old friends. It’s been four years since I was last in Holland so things have changed.  The Dutch are worried about the financial situation in Europe, some of them almost panicked…. seems strange for such a solid, phlegmatic people but they take money very seriously and don’t like situations where they cannot plan.  The young people are worried about their jobs. I have two friends, husband and wife, ecologists working for the Dutch Ministry of Defense, who now have three children and a small house with a big mortgage.  They are quite scared.  Others who have not yet found jobs in their professions have snapped up whatever they could get.  The Forestry Service is privatized without a decent business plan for how they will manage to make ends meet and the people there are exasperated about it, understandably.  Strange to see the Dutch in this state of mind, but I expect they will find their feet and work their way out of the mire, as they always do. I’ve had a swarm of professional meetings, at the University, in the Forestry Service (the closest counterpart to my organization), with Alterra and just yesterday at the Biodiversity Center in Leiden.  My head spins, but I have located a couple people who may work with us in what I hope to be doing during the next few years, developing an inventory and monitoring program for our nature reserves. I’ve had plenty of time to rest, deliberately sleeping 8-10 hours per night, and am quite rested although a bit of a virus is taking a poke at me.  As long as I’m rested, I’ll be able to manage.  Sunday morning, I’ll be heading back to Israel by way of a long train ride and then a flight home from Brussels Airport.  I was glad to go, but I will be glad to be home too.  I miss the animals. Fortunately until now there has been no more illness among my cats although we just had a scare with some diarrhea, not sure from which one.  The pet sitter is keeping a sharp eye for any recurrence of the deadly virus which killed two of my cats before I left; if anybody gets sick, he will take the cat to the vet immediately.  Not taking chances. Today the weather is beautiful and since my lecture is in late afternoon, I will get on the bicycle and go see something outdoors.  Still wobbly on the bike, but it gets better and I really should use it just to work off all the bread and cheese I am eating.  (It will be good to get back to the Israeli diet; this has been a nice change but is not so good for me.) Not much more to add for now; perhaps I’ll add a bit after the lecture when I have met my old students again. Shabbat shalom, Linda

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shabbat shalom 15.03.12

FROM:

• Linda Whittaker

TO:

• olsvig2000@yahoo.com
• linda.whittaker@npa.org.il  

Message flagged

Thursday, March 15, 2012 12:16 PM

Hi everyone, Here I sit in Willemshoeve, the old Dutch farmhouse in Wageningen where I have a room for the next month.  It has been a beautiful day, clear sky, the crocuses and forsythia in bloom, early spring with the sun shining and people out on their bicycles.  You never saw so many people on bicycles elsewhere in Europe; the street bike should be the symbol of Holland, not the tulip.  Everybody with legs has got one.  The Dutch bike is a special design.  Given the flat landscape and the daily ordinary use of the bike by adults, it is a sturdy frame, simple gears (usually three), and the rider sits upright as if in a chair, not crouched over like with racing bikes.  The handlebars are wide, like on a kid’s bicycle, and the whole frame is rock solid, built to take a rider in the saddle, a passenger on the carrier over the back wheel, and maybe a little kid in the basket in front.  I’ve seen whole families riding one bike here. The Dutch love their bikes and most streets have bicycle lanes so that everyone can travel safely.  Even in rainy weather they are biking; a lot of people don’t even bother to own a car; a bike is perfectly sufficient for them.  Bicycle racks everywhere, and the bikes usually lock with a key underneath the saddle. So of course I had to get a bike right away, it is the only way to move around easily here, and with a bike you are able to go anywhere.  I had not been in the saddle for six years, so my first trial rides around the B&B, wobbling like a drunk, sent the old folks roaring with laughter….but the balance eventually came back.  I’ve only taken one tumble so far and that is because I cannot judge distance at night and plowed right into my companion after dinner, ending up in a heap of wheels and waving legs.  No damage though;  Dutch are as tough as the bikes. I’ve seen some old friends, checked out Wageningen to see what has changed without my permission since I last prowled around here, and in general planted my bottom into Dutch living as if I had never left.  Wageningen is a second home to me, and I don’t ever want to lose the connection again.  Letting it slide four years….. Spent the afternoon down near the Rhine, where two of my former students and their three children have a little home in the water meadows, in a place that was once inhabited by brickmakers in the 1920’s.  A little tenement house but a big garden and that suits them. I spent last night at dinner with an old friend and his wife, soon to retire from his professorship and move to Greece.  We’ve been friends twenty years or more; I look at him and realize hell, we’ve gotten old.  He was young when I first met him….. Tomorrow I got to Zutphen to see my friends the Cohens, my age (58) but both are retired now due to physical and mental handicaps.  They would still be working in America or Israel; here they are pensioned off and live safely and comfortably in subsidized housing.  It’s neatly kept and comfortable; I will stay overnight there before coming home, and have never felt their home was poor.  Holland takes care of its own, that’s for sure – although that is getting harder in today’s  economic climate. This just got interrupted as another  old friend burst in to see if I am really in Holland.  Pieter Kettner  is a retired professor and both he and his wife Rita are Quakers.   I attended Quaker meetings for worship with them here, and they were pleased as can be when I finally became a member of the Society of Friends.  The Bennekom Meeting here in Holland is also a kind of second home, but on Sunday we will go to the Hague for a BIG Quaker meeting (maybe twenty people, which is huge for a meeting for worship) followed by a visit to the museum and a Bach concert.  After that, the next week gets busy.  I was not sure I would connect so much with people but it is going quite well.  One day will be spent with Staatsbosbeheer (the Dutch forestry and nature conservation service) and one day in Leiden at the National Biodiversity Center, and three days here meeting with scientists and students, lecturing, networking.  What looked like a risky venture a month ago looks like a solid trip now and my guess is I will barely get a day off at the end before flying home.  This venture seems to have worked. Shabbat shalom, Linda

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shabbat shalom 08.03.12

FROM:

• Linda Whittaker

TO:

• Linda Olsvig-Whittaker  
• Linda Olsvig-Whittaker Olsvig-Whittaker

Message flagged

Thursday, March 8, 2012 7:44 AM

Hi everyone,

Tonight is the first night of Purim (Feast of Esther, celebrated a lot like Mardi Gras).  There are parties all over with people dressed up in costumes.  I’m not going; I woke up with a horrible case of diarrhea and stomach cramps this morning and barely made it to work without an “accident”.   Took Lomotil and drank black tea all morning so at least now I’m corked and hope that tomorrow the aches and pains will have passed.  At the moment even my forearms ache!!

This has been a horrid week generally.  Two of my little kitties less than a year old died from “something” that looks a lot like pan leukanemia (cat distemper).  It was horrible, as if they had swallowed poison and died with a great deal of pain.  I rushed the second one to the vet when he started diarrhea but it was too late; he was dead two hours later.

I got vaccine for the youngsters, assume my blind cats were vaccinated before I got them and the older ones should be immune.  Not much else I can do.  I spent the afternoon scrubbing the floors with bleach; it will be important to keep the house clean until this episode passes.

I leave for Brussels on Saturday night, so tomorrow I pack.  I’ve been setting aside what I want and just need to sort through it.  The two weeks in Belgium and the Netherlands got very busy at last and I have a full appointment book.  But I won’t have to get up at 4:30 am like I do here!

That’s about all, and actually the virus has me too weak to write very much.  I’ll try to write when I get to Brussels.

Shabbat shalom

Linda

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shabbat shalom 01.03.12

Hi everyone,

Snow is forecast for tonight on the higher peaks of the Judean Mountains (that's me, Har Gilo is 1,000 meters, overlooking Jerusalem) so I closed up the office and scurried for home at 3 pm before it got dark.  Even so, the fog had rolled in and it was like driving through the downside of a forest fire; could hardly see the road.  We had four days of rain so far and it is supposed to continue with rain and/or snow until Monday.  No big news for many of you, but we are definitely not used to this kind of weather. 

Those of us on the SW face of our village, myself and neighbors, benefit in summer from a sea breeze from the Mediterranean.  Today we have the downside, water saturated concrete walls that are streaming water inside the house and leaking like sieves.  I had to mop the tiles in the SW corner of the house, most annoying.  The cats and dogs are all snug in the house, except for one feral Canaani that refuses to come inside.  She looks like a drowned rat but will not voluntarily enter a house.  This is a not really domesticated local breed of pariah dog, and she has her own notions……

I'm simmering chicken stock to make kubbeh soup; it's a kind of Kurdish dumpling soup loved all over the Middle East, with meat-stuffed fat semolina dumplings.  The first step is to make stock, then add vegetables to the stock like celery, chard and turnips, and finally the dumplings.  The best place to have this soup is in the open air stalls of the Mahane Yehuda market where a couple places dish out Turkish and Kurdish specialties from giant pots, but my homemade kubbeh soup could pass inspection with a Turk, I think.

Only a week before I'm off to Europe and this is the stage where overseas trips finally start to feel real.  It's a long trip, two weeks, and I dread leaving the critters but at least the worst of winter will be past and they will manage better than in the last month.  I'll be first in Brussels for the last meeting of the EBONE project (after four years), then on to the Netherlands for ten days to renew both personal and professional connections. I already have dinner invitations and meetings at Staatsbosbeheer (their equivalent of our organization) and will lecture at Wageningen University in an effort to find some more graduate students to work with us here.  That part of the Netherlands is far south and east of Amsterdam, and really Dutch.  I've been going there for decades now, and it feels a little bit like going home for a visit….

 I need to touch base with Holland, where a lot of the inspiration for my work started.  As EBONE is ending, my boss is retiring this year, and my database work is being outsourced, I feel a little bit lost.  I still have three years before retirement, time to do one more good project.  So, I'm picking inventory and monitoring in nature reserves, something we are supposed to do and don't do.  We've talked about it for a decade, but nothing got organized. 

I've started a working group to address this, and one reason for the visit in Holland is to restore my network of contacts for consultation.  We will need to do reality checks as we go along, and Staatsbosbeheer is way ahead of us. Alterra is another place I will touch base; it's the largest environmental consulting company in the world, and it is based in Wageningen.  It is so big that the university's Department of Nature Conservation sits inside its building in a really weird arrangement that I haven't figured out yet.

So I just have to stay healthy and avoid catching a cold in the week before I fly.  That's not so easy in this weather.  One of my neighbors got deathly sick with mastitis and didn't even know what it was…..and end of winter colds are all over the place.  Eat garlic, take vitamin C and avoid people….nothing else I can do!

Shabbat shalom,

Linda

Linda

shabbat shalom 23.02.12

shabbat shalom 23.02.12

FROM: Linda Whittaker


Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:52 AM

Hi everyone,


Yep, winter is still with us here in Har Gilo, and the cats are still seeking warm spots to sleep.  (They seem to favor the parts of the bed where I was a few minutes earlier, I think.....):



Even so, the sun has been out for the last three days (when I was running one load of laundry after another and putting it on the lines outside....)  Rain is supposed to return tomorrow but it seems the back of winter is broken; we won't have a weekend like the last one, when we had SNOW.  Not much, but enough to make the ground white and the dogs want to sleep indoors.


I haven't gotten out all week, although it's been tempting.  This afternoon the Botanical Garden is having a festive afternoon with a tour of the garden and a lecture by one of the garden scholars on her work in Africa - in English, which is unusual.  So I'm leaving work early and going there to pick up some sun and enjoy the flowers.


Otherwise I've had my nose to the computer all week.  It's only two weeks before I leave for Brussels and then the Netherlands, so I am trying to get my lectures in order.  I also got a manuscript back from review and will have to do serious revisions, so I'm gearing up for that as well.  An academic life, which is funny since we're government and don't need to do that kind of thing.  I guess that means I do want it.


One of my AA friends who blew up at me back in December turned up with an apology and an archeology book (Professor Father Murphy O'Connor's Oxford Archeological Guide to the Holy Land, a damn expensive book !) by way of apology.  Well, she knew the sure way to soften me up; I've got that book here in the office now.  No explanation of what the heck she was doing ranting at me, but she's a red headed Irish woman and maybe that's reason enough.....Bribery works very well on me.....


The new cat that my vet coaxed me into adopting, Tuli, is working out at last.  I picked her up from the vet last week and she hissed and sulked in her carrier all that weekend, refusing to eat.  On Sunday I gave up and was taking her back to the vet when she decided to get friendly and head butted me all the way to the vet.  Maybe she saw the writing on the wall?  So now she's eating like a horse, and remains friendly, but I still  have a lot of scar tissue on my hands that needs to heal from her claw slashes.  She doesn't bite but she sure has a wicked backhand.  (I put on leather gloves and that really frustrated her those first days.....)  How come I always get the problem child???


The end of winter is always depressing for me here; I hate winter (pretty funny considering where I spent my time in America) and cannot wait for spring.  But the almond tree beside my house has been reminding me that it is spring already, with its lovely cherry blossom-like flowers, and the cyclamens are now coming out, our local equivalent of violets.  The grass is growing, the dogs are eating grass, sure signs of spring.





And then of course I'm going to Holland which will probably kick me right back to winter weather.....despite that, I'm really looking forward to seeing friends I haven't seen in too many years.  From now on I plan to get to Holland once a year; I miss it too much.  It's like a second homeland.


shabbat shalom,
Linda

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shabbat shalom 16.02.12 2

shabbat shalom 16.02.12 2

FROM:

• Linda Whittaker

TO:

• Linda Olsvig-Whittaker  
• olsvig2000@yahoo.com

Thursday, February 16, 2012 5:22 AM

Hi everyone,

Winter returned with a howl today after some balmy early spring days this week in Israel .  Right now the rain is pounding and we got some hail; the last gasp of winter, while almond trees are already in full bloom.  The last gasp is noteworthy though; the weatherman predicts snow on Saturday; if we get it I'll be snowbound on Sunday morning since our village at 1,000 meters elevation always gets it if any snow falls in the Judean Mountains . 

Most of the week I've been racing to get the final report for our EBONE project done, but I finished and sent it to Holland yesterday.  It concludes four years of work on the project.....strange to think of not having EBONE going on.  It's been such a constant that I even put it in my signature file as

the EBONE website: www.ebone.wur.nl , and I've watched our scientists grow and develop as a team during these four years under my leadership.  I've developed grey hair while doing it too!

Monday was a day off from writing, though.  I had to go to a lawyer in Tel Aviv to dissolve an NGO, where I had been on the steering committee some ten years ago.  This was just a small formality, and one of the steering committee members arranged for his lawyer to handle it.  What he didn't tell me was that the law office was on the 24th floor of the Azrieli Round Tower in central Tel Aviv.  When I got there, I gasped at the stunning view of the city and the harbor.\

The photos don't do it justice; from the 24th floor the city is very beautiful, a white Mediterranean city on the sea.  The lawyer got my signature notarized quickly, and I suppose was a little amused at the hick from Jerusalem; he took time to point out some highlights of the landscape like the old Templar settlement (the red roofs here) and a 200 year old winery that was being restored.....I have never seen Tel Aviv from that angle and it was a real pleasure.

Likewise the train ride down to Tel Aviv and back was enchanting, as it traveled through nature reserves and farmlands.  The almonds were in full bloom in the mountains, and the red anemones were blooming merrily on the coastal plain.  I must get out to the hills on the first nice weekend after this storm; the mountain wildflowers should start blooming now and I've been cooped up enough.  The train to Jerusalem still goes by the old Turkish route from the coastal plain, forty minutes climbing up the deep Sorek canyon from Beit Shemesh, on a narrow path between the stream and the cliffs above.  It's dramatic but slow; soon another route will open on the other side of the city by way of Bab el Wad and Modain, a faster trip but not as beautiful.  I'm enjoying the slow train while it still runs.

I had left Jerusalem early and forgotten that Monday is the flea market at the Jerusalem train station.  I came back to find it in full swing, with pitchmen crying everything from spices to clothing to Middle Eastern music at the top of their lungs.  So of course I had to check that out on my way home....got a meat grinder, bath towels and assortment of large jars of spices all for 180 ILS, or fifty dollars. It was a fun day.

Not much more to add; I'm mentally regrouping as the last of my major duties to EBONE is finished.  I still have to prepare a short lecture for Brussels and a long one for Wageningen University next month when I'm in Europe , summarizing our work in the first, and headhunting for more graduate students in the second.  We continue with the habitat mapping venture, with five pilot studies around the country, so I welcome more Dutch students doing their thesis work with us here.  I think they call this 'trawling"......

Not much more to mention.  I just want to get home safely in this heavy rain (Israelis always forget how to drive in winter) and curl up by the fire for the weekend, and maybe for Sunday too if we get snowed in.

shabbat shalom,
Linda

 

 

Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il

 

Or send mail to my alternate address:  olsvig2000@yahoo.com

 

Dr. Linda Olsvig-Whittaker

Science and Conservation Division

Israel Nature and Parks Authority

3 Am Ve Olamo Street, Givat Shaul

Jerusalem 95463, Israel

Telephone: +972-2-5005444; Fax +972-2-5014861;

mobile phone +972-526-693-794

 

Data service: < http://ww2.bgbm.org/natureinfo >

INPA website: <www.parks.org.il>

EBONE website: www.ebone.wur.nl

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

shabbat shalom 09.02.12

Hi everyone,


Second day of a general labor strike here in Israel.  These things can get quite impressive. The Tel Aviv airport (our main one) has been shut down until noon both days.  Banks are closed and I'm expecting bank machines to run dry any minute.  No garbage collection.  Trains stopped.  No school (except special education).  Universities shut down.  Government offices and services closed.  Right now it feels like a holiday but it could get grim if this extends into next week.


But the Labor Federation went on strike for a good cause this time: the outsourced workers.  Israel has one of the highest levels of outsourcing in the world, hiring people from external companies to do the work of regular employees at much lower salaries and no benefits.  I know, because I do it myself, and have technicians as both regular employees and outsourced employees.  I know the difference in what they get, and it makes me feel guilty.  I'm forced by my organization to do this but it isn't nice at all. 


In particular it is not nice because it affects the more vulnerable part of the population: cleaning staff, secretaries, K-12 teachers and people like that.  Mostly women, many new immigrants. They support families on a pittance, get no health insurance or social security investments while working this way.  Worse, companies are more likely to hire outsourced workers rather than regular employees because they are cheaper and do not have the protection of the unions.


The Labor Federation is pushing to get equal wages for equal work for the outsourced workers, which would really discourage companies and government authorities like mine from outsourcing.  This would mean most employees would be union members.  You can say, aha, the unions are protecting themselves.  Of course.  But they are also fighting for the rights of people who are not union members, and that's the most noble strike action I've seen here in years.  Fighting for the weak and vulnerable is what unions should do.  So I'm happy to go along despite inconvenience and maybe losing some work days. I support this strike action.


It's been a sad week in some ways, though.  I lost a second cat.  Zap, a rescue from the cat shelter where I volunteered some years back, finally succumbed to kidney failure and stopped eating.  I took him to the vet but he was too far gone, so I had him put down.  I know the drill, since most cats die of kidney failure if they live long enough, and he had nothing ahead of him but misery. 


Here's a picture of Zap in 2006, when I had just got him:





One summer day I arrived at the cat shelter and heard a loud wailing.  One cat in there was having hysterics.  I asked what was going on, and the staff told me they just got this cat who cannot stand other cats.  He'd been going nuts for days.  I took pity on him and took him home where at least he could go outside if he couldn't stand my other cats.  He had quite a history: the husband of his previous owner had thrown the cat over a balcony and broke the poor creature's hip.  Although the cat healed, it was agreed at the vet that it wasn't safe to send him home again, so he ended up at the shelter.  Well, he had six good years with me.  He was always a bit grumpy but he had his happy moments too (when he would stick out his tongue and purr).  He never learned to like any other cats but one:





Sadly, Gingy also succumbed to kidney failure as an FIV cat.  Both gone now.


So that was Monday, and on Tuesday I decided to take a day off and clear my head a little.  I went to the Bible Lands Museum, the little sister of the Israel Museum, focused on the lands surrounding Israel and strictly on archeology.  It's a real gem, this place, and twice as big as the last time I saw it.  I had expected to spend a couple hours there and ended up spending four, totally saturated.  It has become a respectable Museum of the Middle East and is very well done.  The Antiquities Authority is building right next to it, which means my paradise in retirement will be the museum campus.  I will volunteer there and spend my golden years putting together Chalcolithic pottery or some such task.


Which reminds me, I had an interview with our pension adviser and had a basic question about benefits if I retire at 62 versus 64.  The difference would be about 700 ILS per month (e.g.200 dollars), which is negligible.  So I have freedom to stay or go at 62, depending on the situation at work.  It's nice to have this kind of freedom, since 62 is only three years away, and a lot of changes are taking place at work.  I'm not sure I want to stay longer, but have a wait and see strategy right now.


Back at work on Wednesday, feeling rested and ready to pick up again.  Of course the strike had started and things were malfunctioning.  Worst, I had results of a critical lab test at the health clinic waiting for me on-line and was anxious to see the outcome, but the darn Internet service at work was not functioning right.  Finally I worked around it and downloaded my lab test.  One out of three occult blood tests had turned up positive last summer but my doctor and I had decided to wait and try again in six months to see if it was still positive, and this was the test.  I was sweating; having had one colonoscopy four years ago, I wasn't keen to do it again.  Nope, this one was negative.  Best news all week.  Uff, the joys of old age.


Well, today is better.  The sun is shining.  Just a hint of spring in the air here, although I understand the red anemones are blooming in the Negev.  


Spring will soon come again, the flowers will bloom and the sun will give some warmth.  I'm more than ready to lie on my stomach out on the grass in the sun and  smell the flowers, along with my cats.  It won't be long now.


shabbat shalom,
Linda