Linda Whittaker Hi everyone,
At long last I'm emerging after 18 days with a very bad cold. Must be age; I cannot remember having a virus so long before. Perhaps it was even longer; my journal notes a couple weeks of depression and not feeling energetic; most likely that was the onset of whatever I had when I started coughing and sneezing. Toddled off to my acupuncture therapist yesterday, and after looking at my tongue (Chinese medics seem to read an amazing amount from your tongue), he stuck pins in my face and throat in a most alarming fashion. Alarming or not, that seems to have done the trick; I'm off the antihistamines today and not hacking my brains out into my tissue. He told me to come earlier the next time and I won't have to suffer so much. Gee, a cure for the common cold.
In spite of sounding like a terminal-stage TB patient, I managed not to miss a day of work. Finished writing an article on global climate change and marine conservation (not that I'm an expert in either, but am a quick study), and to my surprise the editor likes it. Golly. Maybe I'll take up quantum mechanics next.
Actually, my real business gets going now. We have field work to do mapping habitats in the Negev Desert next week, part of our European EBONE project (www.ebone.wur.nl) and have been making preparations to take a team of six botanists down there for a week at least. I also bopped over to Ramat HaNadiv, where we will do our Mediterranean sampling in March. It's been the site of a couple workshops we held on these mapping methods, but I've always been to busy to have a good look at the beautiful gardens. This time I took my friend Susanna Nassar , and we strolled around before heading home. Susanna is friendly type and had already tapped an old South African gardener by the time I got done with my meetings. Mr. Sydney was very happy to show us around and it was certainly a lot more fun to see the garden with someone who worked on it, rather than official guides. He was happy to have a lady on each arm too, I think. I must look up Mr. Sydney when we return in March; I believe he is a pensioner who volunteers there, and really loves the place. Small wonder, it is very beautiful.
The formal gardens are only a tenth of the whole estate set aside for the Rothschilds. (Baron Edmond de Rothschild is buried there with his wife in a rather awesome Art Deco mausoleum that looks like a tomb fit for Darth Vader.) The rest of the estate is a tangle of maquis and forest, with an old Roman palace and a few other interesting archeological sites. The Rothschilds support ecological research on the estate, so we have the oddity of a very good scientific program going in the one private park in the country. Really, wouldn't you like YOUR work to be supported by the Rothschilds?? I'm not proud; I'm more than happy to piggy-back on their work (if one pardons this expression in connection with the famous Jewish family….).
I had been away from the office the day before national elections, so I unwittingly came to work on time, with my sack lunch – and nobody was here. Oh yeah, national elections are a secular holiday…..Not being a citizen, but a permanent resident, I can't vote in those elections. So I went to the grocery store, did some work on my car, and went home. Didn't try to track it; the electoral process in Israel is very democratic and even more so, Byzantine. One centrist party won a majority but can't form a government because all the other political parties hate it. So it looks like a losing party will form a coalition with some lunatic fringe elements. (We have scads of little parties in these elections, so as soon as one of the big parties comes out a winner, the small fry proceed to hold it for ransom, each one with its set of demands, to form a coalition that is a real majority.) I understand even Obama can't understand what the heck is going on over here; congratulating us on our elections, whatever they may mean.
Sometimes I begin to think a confederation with the Palestinians and Jordanians would make more sense. Then we would have King Abdullah as head of state and HE could sort it out. Jordanian kings seem okay; I could go with one of those. Especially Abdullah, the son of a British colonel's daughter, who looks more English that Prince Charles. He'd make a good king for Israel , I think. Better than Netanyahu, anyway. And some of the others in this election scare me; one is a Jewish fascist, if you can imagine that…..and he heads the third largest party….
One good thing came out of the elections: the cat shelter where I volunteer is happily collecting election banners to use as windscreens on the shelter buildings. I promise to take pictures next time I'm down there. Fitting use for election banners.
I guess that is all for here. I've been laying low for the last couple weeks as this illness sapped me, and the high point of the day has been crawling into bed with three dogs, a dozen cats and a big fat book on the Middle Ages. That bedtime hour is remarkably healing.
Shabbat shalom,
Linda
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