shabbat shalom 07.03.09

----- Forwarded Message ----

From: Linda Whittaker <olsvig2000@yahoo.com>
To: Linda Olsvig-Whittaker <Linda.Whittaker@npa.org.il>
Sent: Friday, March 6, 2009 9:50:03 PM
Subject: shabbat shalom 07.03.09

Hi everyone, I'm a little late getting this out. Yesterday was a beautiful, warm spring day and like most other Jerusalemites, I was out enjoying the weather. It was warm enough to have dinner on the patio last evening, for the first time since October. People were in a good mood and I noticed it from the unusual courtesy I received from usually surly Israelis. Even my normally grumpy neighbor said good morning, a sign that the messiah is near. This was a routine week sandwiched between two field weeks. Back from the desert, but I go to the north tomorrow for another round of field surveys. It is less intimidating now that we've done this once already and know what to expect. We will stay at a camp belonging to my organization, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, on Mt. Carmel, where I will be in a sleeping bag for the first time in something like ten years.... It rained heavily most of the last week. The rain is most welcome in our parched land, especially after so many drought year that the Sea of Galilee is two meters below its "red line" minimum. This could get interesting, since the Sea of Galilee has salt springs at the bottom which have saturated the lower levels of the lake with salt. Like many deep tropical lakes, the Sea of Gailee is "meromictic", e.g. it doesn't turn over in spring and fall like most temperate zone lakes. So the bottom salt layers have been stable for many thousands of years. But if the top layers are siphoned off, there is a danger that storms or high winds could cause the lake to mix, making our main water reserve too salty for use for centuries to come. The red line is the estimated danger line from models of lake dyanamics. So we are in the "maybe the lake could turn over" levels now. We are playing "chicken" with our main water source, caught between rising water demands and fear of losing the water supply. I'm waiting with grim humor to hear the morning newscaster say "oops" after some big storm like we had last week...... Consequences? Collapse of the State of Israel, I should imagine. Wouldn't be the first nation to go down over an environmental disaster like that Mayans, Old Pueblo, the civilizations of China's Takla Makan Desert all collapsed due to drought and declining water sources. Lots more examples; those are just the fancy ones. Nor do I expect this situation to improve, at least in my lifetime. Israel has one of the highest birthrates in the developed world, and is not likely to change anytime soon. This is bumping into the consequences of global climatic change. We are getting dry years, and on average they will continue dry into the forseeable future. We are calling them drought years, but in fact these will be normal years for the rest of the century at least. Get used to it. The normal response is emigration and I'm seeing that; higher class Israelis are very mobile and will relocate for better jobs, leaving the poor and uneducated behind. Ah well, the food is good, the climate is mild, medical care is good and inexpensive, and it's an interesting place to live for a person who has a taste for culture and history, so I'll stay put. I figure that I will probably die before the situation really gets grim. It's the kids that I pity, especially the ones who get an education that doesn't give them the tools to get a job elsewhere and emigrate. Thank God I didn't have any to worry about. Well, so much for the downside. This week I joined an organic food cooperative that sells vegetabes, cheese and eggs from Palestinian farmers in Wadi Fukhin, not far from my home. Got my first box on Thursday, with cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, tomotoes, parsley, scallions, and some kind of green I can't yet identify. Time to pull out the cookbooks. I'm not a big consumer of vegetables (joining this coop was a way to force myself to get better at that), and grew up not even knowing how to cook fresh veggies. So all this is still rather new. How many things can one do with cabbage, for example? Actually I made a "cabbage roll casserole" last night (same ingredients without stuffing the cabbage, just chopping it and putting it at the bottom of the dish) which came out very well. Next challenge = 101 ways to make cauliflower. The green are no problem; jut chop them and put them in an omelette, or what the Italians call a frittata. Next major culinary adventure: I found a waffle iron for sale yesterday. Wow, I have owned one for 25 years. They are rare here. It was expensive but I nabbed it. After I finish this letter, I'm making sourdough waffles.....a new use to keep my sourdough culture going. That's all for now except to report I finally managed to get hooked by an online war game. Not "Dungeons and Dragons" but a war game called "Travian" (see www.travian.com). I'm a "Teuton", which means I make my living raiding the "Gauls" and the "Romans" while trying not to get my ass whipped by the Romans in particuar. Well, I always wanted to be a Viking...here I am. shabbat shalom, Linda