shabbat shalom 06,07,07

Hi everyone,

This may be the last post for a couple weeks. I am off to Holland early on Sunday morning, for a conference, and then to Copenhagen to visit with a data sharing project (okay, and to play around a couple days also). Closed my office, suspended the newspaper delivery, arranged for a cat and dog sitter for the next two weeks, and now I have to finish packing.

It will be "Old Home Week" in Holland, where the conference is in the little town of Wageningen, where I have spent a lot of time over the last fifteen years or so. It is the location of one of Holland's great universities, U. of Wageningen, one of the world centers for plant ecology, land management and landscape ecology. I've spent monthlong visits there catching up on developments in my field (data management iin ecology and conservation) and supervised half a dozen M.Sc. students from there over the last ten years or so. I have lots of friends and colleagues in Wageningen that I haven't seen for some years, so it will be really nice.

July notwithstanding, it's cold in Holland. The last two weeks were steady rain, and the next two weeks are predicted the same. Temperature ranges 15-18oC, so it's like winter. I sadly took out my winter clothing to pack. Almost guarranteed I will come back with a virus, but not much to do about that.....Just stocked up with Echinacea and will try to stay dry....Times like that, I remember why I'm living in the Jerusalem area....

I was sick at the beginning of the week also, with a kind of stomach flu. Much better now, fortunately. Still getting adjusted to all these treatments for my anemia, but there is a steady improvement. This week I got the Chinese herbal medicine prescribed by my acupunture therapist (who is actually an Israeli trained in Korea and China as a certified practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine).

This whole busines ot TCM is really interesting. The prescription I got is called "Fang feng tong sheng san" (and yes, it is on the internet, so I looked it up). Seems to be the Chinese answer to aspirin; it's used for all kinds of problems, but in general is a "normative" for digestive and endocrine problems. The traditional practitioners don't express it that way, of course--it's all about "wind" and "chi" but in a few sites that gets translated to understandable western terms. It's a stimulant and a normative, cleans the blood of toxins, also supposed to help with things like diabetes and overweight problems. There's about 15 different plant ingredients in it, ranging from ginger and licorice on one end to things like peony on the other. Well, if it's been in use 800 years, it must help some people. Chinese are smart people and wouldn't continue with it if it wasn't useful, whatever the theory of how it works. And in fact, I do feel better. My swings to extreme fatigue, shakiness, and dizziness seem to be greatly reduced, and it did clear up my diarrhea right away. So I'm definitely happy with my 800-year-old formula, since nothing Western seemed to help a lot with that.

Another thing got cleared up this week. I've been car shopping and at least now it is clear what I will get this autumn. Definitely a Mazda, but the new ones are too expensive. In this country we have Lantis and 323, which stopped production in 2004. Prices of discontinued models tend to nosedive, even though they may still be very good cars. (No idea why, since parts for repair are always available.) So while 2005 Mazda 3 will cost about 90,000 ILS (about 21,000 US dollars), a 2004 Lantis or 323--which seems to me an equally good car--is going for 50,000 to 60,000 ILS, a third less. For me, that makes the choice a no-brainer. I'll keep a car until it is too old to trust, so there is still at least a decade of life in a 2004 Lantis. It is a price I can afford without hurting, so I seem to have this sorted out.

Other news, it seems to be "go" for Greece during Sukkot. About 15 of us from our congregation will go for five days to Athens, Corinth and the area of the Peleponese on a study tour focused on St. Paul's travels and work in this area. Our pastor, trained as an archeologist, will lead us and of course I've been there before, with a wish list of things I want to see on the archeological side as well. Amazingly, after several trips to Athens, I have never been to the National Museum there, which is world famous. The Plains of Marathon, the Oracle of Delphi, Mycenea, and Epidoros are on my hit list as well as the Field of Mars. Looks like a beautiful trip and now I'm glad I initiated the idea to do it.

Work is fairly quiet now, which makes travel easier. I have my three student technicians chugging away on database grunt work while I am gone. I was pleased to see our data on the international GBIF system's new portal, which means that in a couple weeks we should be able to get dot maps on the web. That is cool, and I plan to demonstrate that when I get back.

Seems to be all for now. Lots of small stuff to do this weekend before I go to the airport. I hate to rush, so I am packing my suitcase today.

shabbat shalom,
Linda