shabbat shalom 04.04.08

Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 21:35:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Linda Whittaker" Email:olsvig2000@yahoo.com
Subject: shabbat shalom 04.04.08
To: "Linda Olsvig-Whittaker" Email: Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il

Hi everyone,

Quick one this morning, I have a zillion things to do. It is spring here in the Jerusalem area with Passover starting in two weeks. I'm not here for the Passover week but have caught the usual bug. Judaism has two biggie holidays, the Festival of Spring Cleaning (Passover) and the Festival of Autumn Preparation for Winter (Sukkot, Feast of Tabernacles). Both are preceded by a flurry of household activity.

In preparation for Sukkot, people start putting away the summer clothing, pulling out the winter clothing, checking the house and garden for mechanical problems before the winter rains arrive. In spring, the koshering of the house (removing all leaven) is the trigger for a mammoth cleaning operation which probaby prevented plague in Jewish houses in the Middle Ages. Everything gets scrubbed down. I even know families that get down on hands and knees and pick the grit out from between the floor tiles with a toothpick. And that is not considered weird here.

I'm a slob. Not dirty so much as accumulating junk a normal person throws away. (It runs in the family; my uncle was known to come back from the landfill with more junk than he TOOK to the landfill. All my aunt could do was quarrantine him in the garage.)

But in all the stores now there are super sales on cleanining aids (two Dranos for the price of one, etc.) and I'd probably buy dog poop if the sale spin was good enough. So here I am with all these cleaning aids.....maybe sort through the kitchen cupboards anyway, and then wander off.

The weather is nutty right now, hot one day (short sleeved weather) and cold the next (need a coat). Good weather to get sick, and I cannot afford it. I'm off to Holland in two weeks (dafka the evening of the Passover meal, I'm somewhere between Zurich and Amsterdam.)

I complained earlier of dizzy spells. Set myself a program of brisk walking half an hour every day, and that seems to be clearing up. Circulation problems most likely, havin been a couch potoato in the worst of the winter stormy weather. Walking, like love, covers a multitude of sins and is probably the best possible exercise. We were evolved to do a lot of it, and we don't anymore.

My European project is off and running. I sent one of my team members to Bratislava two days ago for a first meeting of the remote sensing (satellite mapping) working group. Actually that group is based in England, but Slovakia is cheaper and better weather this time of year. We can meet just about anywhere we want in Europe.

But the big startup meetin is in the Netherlands. Probably not the biggest tourist destination in Europe (except for marijuana smokers--it's legal there) but I have a lot of friends and some former students there. I'll spend three days at our meetings and then a week on holiday, stayin with friends in Zutphen and hopefully getting to some of the quaint old towns of the Dutch Golden Age (Deft, Leiden, Maastricht).

This week was mostly quiet work for me. Lots to do before travel, writing, analysis, computer work. I'm reasonably content despite one secretary who is after my behind for reasons I cannot fathom. Always there is someone, it's just a fact of life. I used to get annoyed; now I just shrug and avoid her.

Not much more to mention. One of my cats had surgery; gingivitis is a common problem with cats and rather than use steroids to control it (which themselves ultimately kill the cat), the better fix is to remove the teeth. That sounds drastic, but except for their canines, cats don't use their teeth for much. Two days after having all his teeth pulled, this cat was back to eating normally. Cats amaze me.

It's very pretty here now; the redbuds are all in blossom and we have a lot of them locally. My tulips are in full bloom, which is end of the winter flowerin season. My gardener comes today and we have to think about what to plant for summer. This is a drought year and we need to conserve water. (I'm afraid there never will again be a time when Israel is not short of water. Even now it seems obscene to use drinking-quality water for the garden. I should use recycled water for that, but the technology isn't here yet.)

shabbat shalom,
Linda

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