Shabbat shalom 28.12.06

ìéðãä ååéèé÷ø linda whittaker <linda.whittaker@npa.org.il> wrote:

Oops, forgot the subject line! Like I said, my brain doesn't work in midwinter….

Linda

From: ìéðãä ååéèé÷ø linda whittaker
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 3:40 PM
To: olsvig2000@yahoo.com
Subject:

Hi everyone,

We got a "White Christmas" here after all, or pretty close to it. The snow started falling yesterday (Wednesday afternoon) and within a couple hours Jerusalem was covered with the stuff. I live several hundred meters higher at Har Gilo so I scrambled for home in early afternoon, just in time, since the road became very slippery at the final leg to our settlement gate. It snowed and snowed. I got the woodstove going well, which was handy since we had no water and I had to melt snow to get water to flush the toilet. Later in the evening the electricity went off as well, so I had my bread and cheese by candlelight, next to the fire. Romantic, but chilly. The next morning was drop dead gorgeous, with a clear blue sky and snow like icing on all the branches. Here's a picture of me at my village, all bundled up with a down vest I had made up for me in Nepal while I was there last year, warm and snug.

Christmas week has been fairly nice. I have been recovering from an infected foot, on antibiotics, so was rather groggy on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Managed to get to a carol service at the YMCA on Christmas Eve, which was sweet although not the gala event it had been in some years. Not so much money these days, I guess. Christmas Day was a quiet day at home in the morning, a visit to the Israel Museum in the afternoon, and dinner with a friend in Sheikh Jarra in the evening. I didn't feel like doing much, but the Palestinian bistro had a big decorated tree, a woodburning stove crackling away, and waiters in red caps, Santa style. It was cute, and nice.

I'm grateful for a lot of things right now. Noticed the fridge wasn't working on Monday and called a repairman to come on Tuesday, but he suggested I check the plug first (which was loose) so I saved a hefty bill. The cats pulled some keys off my laptop on Tuesday (the week has been like that) and I took it for repair on Wednesday. The repairman was able to find some old keys and spared me the cost of replacing the whole keyboard. My foot, which was too swollen to wear shoes last week, responded well to antibiotics and I am out of pain now and able to wear winter boots, fortunately. In all, my guardian angel must have been working overtime to keep me from getting in serious trouble this week, since I seem to have slipped past it by the skin of my teeth. I've been saying "Thanks, God!" with far more frequency than usual.

In this quiet time of year, I'm trying to get a paper written, and otherwise the pace of work is very slow. No big projects on the horizon and the moment, and the little ones are simmering. My brain seems a little sluggish, which is probably the weather. I've never been very intelligent in midwinter.

So, with this snowfall, our winter season is officially started and it will probably be a couple months of rain and gloomy weather, if not snow again. Time to bundle up, take Vitamin C, get lots of rest, avoid people who sneeze or have runny noses, and just trudge along until the sun comes back. It sounds funny saying this about winter in the Middle East after living in Minnesota and upstate New York, but there the houses are of wood and brick, and have central heating. Here they are of stone and concrete, and central heating, if available, is limited. (Some of us find it less expensive to stay late at work where we have free heating rather than go home and have to crank up the various heating devices!)

Yet the season does have its special beauty. For one thing, it is too cold and miserable for bickering and fighting, which means it is quiet in my area. Also, one can enjoy being outside in the middle of the day rather than hiding from the sun. Dawn comes late and sunset comes early so we get to enjoy the sky, and the winter clouds make it more interesting than the sky in the rainless six months from spring to autumn. Finally, with my phlegmatic winter brain, it is really nice to plant my boots on the skirt of the woodstove, stare into the fire through the isinglass window of the stove and go into a meditative state in the evening. (My Arab neighbors can do that at the drop of a hat. It's spooky. They can just sit and stare into space for hours, quite comfortable, without fidgets like a Westerner, and God alone knows where their minds have gone on vacation. In the East, it's called meditation, but the Arabs don't know that. They do recognize it as an altered state of mind.)

So I'm planning on hunkering down like a Beduin staring into my fire tonight and let my brain have a vacation. It's good for the soul, I understand.

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 National Parks Protection Authority

3 Am Ve Olamo Street, Givat Shaul

Jerusalem 95463, Israel

Telephone: +972-2-5005444; Fax +972-2-6529232

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

INNPPA website: www.parks.org.il