shabbat shalom 30.06.07

Hi everyone,

It's been an amazingly calm week for a change. It's been hot in Jerusalem (in the high 80's by Fahrenheit scale, around 30 in Centigrade) but on the top of Mt. Gilo, where I live, we always have a few degrees cooler and at least a little breeze. (This compensates for snow and gale force winds in January.) I have delighted in breakfast and supper outdoors in the garden. During these months, the house is just to hold my stuff and to sleep, and real life is in the garden. Most Israelis life in apartments, so I feel very lucky to have my cottage and the fresh air, rather than being cooped up in a stone box.

My car is behaving itself while I start the search for its replacement. Since the head gasket was replaced, it's run better than it did for years. Or maybe it is trying to ingratiate itself with me so I keep it? Tomorrow I visit the Mazda dealer, and I am starting to look at 2nd hand cars in rental agencies, who sell theirs after a couple years. This search will take months, I think, and meanwhile everyone will get his ears full of my car shopping…

My health situation is improving also. The diagnosis from the hematologist was "autoimmune gastritis" (another autoimmune disorder to add to my collection along with Hashimoto's and early onset arthritis). The therapy he prescribed of vitamin B12 and iron is the best western medicine can do. It treats the symptoms, not the cause (which is a rather confused immune system). Meanwhile, the symptoms are better. My hemoglobin went from 10 to 12 (on a scale where 12-16 is normal, and 6 is dead). The blood cells are large, which means young, which means my bone marrow woke up and got to work.

Meanwhile, my eastern medical therapist (acupuncture, Chinese herbals) who treats my arthritis is now prepared to tackle my basic immune system problems. Unlike western medicine, eastern medicine does have normatives for the immune system. My regular family doctor is fully supportive and in the loop on this. He admits western medicine is clueless about treating immune system problems and only relieves symptoms. He also studied acupuncture and has his own suggestions, so I'm trying to get these two guys to talk to each other and agree on a combined East/West program for me. Fascinating. I wish it were someone else, but even so it's fascinating.

Good thing the health stuff is getting sorted at last. I am off to Holland next weekend for the annual IALE (International Association for Landscape Ecology) congress. Travel is hard enough without being chronically tired and dizzy. Holland is old familiar territory for me, though, and I have many friends where I will be going, both in the profession and out. University of Wageningen, which hosts the congress, has provided me with master's students for years, and I have studied biostatistics there myself. If I think in English and German at the same time and cross my eyes, I can just about make out Dutch.

Wageningen is a pretty little medieval university town centered on an old church near the Rhine, cobbled streets and everyone on bicycles. I love it dearly and am happy just to be going there; a sense of "homecoming". The congress is drawing many of my good friends and we will have a week together to catch up with each other as well as the subject of landscape ecology itself. At the moment, I've submitted a grant proposal with some scientists from there, and with luck we may get the project funded, giving me another four years of linkage to this sweet little town. I hope so!

After feeling lonely and sick and depressed for much of the winter and spring, it is encouraging to start the chatter with friends I will meet in Holland. I got a dinner invitation from the president of the IALE society, a colleague with whom I collaborate, and had to turn it down because I'm committed to friends in anther Dutch town for the weekend. So he moved it to lunch with his family instead! Another old friend and colleague is taking me out to see his research area, work on which I based my own scenario modeling research here in Israel. Another is bringing me good English cheddar from her home in Cumbria, and I am bringing her rosewater from Jerusalem. I still have former students in Wageningen, now on research appointments, and will have to catch up with them. The warmth comes across in all these emails and I am perking up in anticipation of it all. So I need my strength for that week in Holland!

After that, I have a few days in Copenhagen visiting the GBIF secretariat (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). I will stay with a colleague on the project and have a look around Copenhagen as well as get familiar with the GBIF operations. On such trips it is hard to sort work and pleasure because they overlap so much. I just need to be careful to get enough rest and not get sick while traveling, which was a common problem in the past.

The other concern is care for my 12 cats and 3 dogs. The dogs are okay when I am gone, but the cats experience a lot of emotional stress, and usually some of them get sick. I guess they think I died when I don't turn up after a couple days, and they get very upset, lose weight, and shed hair. I'm lucky if it isn't worse than that. I have two twin brothers, sons of friends of mine in Holland, looking after the critters on this trip but it is never the same as my being home. Apart from the expense of travel, this is my main reluctance to go anywhere; the poor babies go into mourning. Hercules, the diabetic cat, will return to Ra'anana for more insulin stabilization so he's not a problem, but I have an FIV cat that bears watching and needs daily care.

That's about it for now. Next weekend I'll pack and the weekend after that I'm away from home so messages will be shorter.

Shabbat shalom,
Linda