shabbat shalom 12.06.09

Hi everyone, This was a quiet week, to get sorted out in the office and at home. I was very tired after last week and next week will be very busy again, so this was a welcome lull. My EBONE project is going well, but now we come to the point of assessing ourselves and planning the next stage. I have a lot of thinking to do as the manager of our part of the project, and have to discipline myself to listen to people and take their advice when it is good. Not easy when you are as bull headed as I am! At home, the new little brown dog went to the vet and got spayed, vaccinated, defleaed, dewormed, and so on. Very dejected when I picked her up from the vet, but she is settling down down. She has a name, "Fuchsi" and is slowly becoming domestic although I have yet to persuade her to set her paw in the house. It will take time - and probably cold weather - before she does that. I also took the "Turkish Van" cat, Alifa, to the vet for blood tests. She is in worse shape than we thought. Kidneys function poorly, and the liver is affected as well. She is very anemic. My vet thinks she doesn't have very long to live but we will do what we can to give her good quality of life meanwhile. She got an iron injection and steroids to stimulate the manufacture of blood cells, and I continue with the saline infusions to help her kidney functions. She doesn't act sick, eats well, and is showing interest in the world around her, in fact better than when I got her two weeks ago. So while she has this quality of life, it's fine If she stops eating and becomes listless, there is nothing more to do and I'll take her in to be euthanized. She suffered so much on the street that I think she deserves as many good days as possible now. This is a lesson on how human neglect kills. The neighborhood where she dragged around for months is not a poor neighborhood and there was a vet nearby. People knew her story, that she was dumped when a family broke up. But they just watched her deteriorate when they could have taken her to the vet or the local SPCA; she is completely tame and domestic, no problem to pick her up. People just chose to watch her suffer rather than help, too indifferent to be bothered. If some kind soul had rescued her months ago, she would not be dying now. But there were no kind souls. Ah, people are bastards, most of them. In half a century of living, I find less than 10% will stir themselves to help a stranger, whether man or beast. Most would just watch you die, and complain about having to step over your body. There are a few crazies, all too few, that are motivated to help others. Most of them are pretty eccentric types. "Normal" means selfish and indifferent. God save us from normal people. The summer is here now in Israel. It is surprisingly nice up here in Jerusalem, with its dry mountain air. From now until September, though, I will try to avoid the lowlands around Tel Aviv and Haifa, where it gets unpleasantly sticky. For once we are not in a war situation so people are preoccupied with their summer activities. Not traveling overseas so much (although Israelis will spend their last shekel on a trip to Europe and be content to go into debt after that). There seem to be more local activities this year in compensation. I know more Israelis are going to our parks and nature reserves, we guess instead of holidays abroad. Money is tight but not the Wiemar Republic disaster we feared. We may even be coming out of it slowly. So let's hope for some slow, lazy, peaceful, modest weeks of summer to recharge our batteries. I feel very tired myself and need an act of will to do anything out of my routine. Don't really need downtime, just routine time. Looks like that is what is coming up, too. shabbat shalom, Linda