shabbat shalom 03.07.09

Hi Everyone,

It's been a hot summer week with a lot of work, that went by in a kind of blur. I'm grateful for the weekend, even though I have to volunteer at the cat shelter tomorrow. The "hamsin" weather finally broke and cool northern air moved in, so the weekend will be pleasant. We got to 35oC at midweek, a foretaste of real summer weather in about a month.

First the Turkish Van report. Alifa is still hanging in there but getting extremely thin. Today I pick up a new medicine, a hormone which will stimulate her to make more red blood cells. It's human medicine, and rather experimental in cats, but worth a try. She will hopefully also be stimulated to eat. This kitty is a fighter; she was supposed to be dead by now. Yet she still hops down from her sofa to greet me when I come in the room, every time. I will do what I can for her. As long as she is not apparently suffering, I will not euthanize her. It's hard to watch her decline but at least she is not on the street and she is in good hands. I've had practice at tending sick cats...

This week we were slogging away on development of a database system. I've assembled a team and we are making modifications in the old databases prior to migration to SQL-Server. The goal is to have a new system in place by the end of July, with the potential to develop further. Database work is a headache but I've been wanting to do this for 10 years. Never any money around to do it until my European grants started kicking in some dough.

My Dutch student plugs away on analysis of plant and bird data from our Carmel LTER site at Ramat HaNadiv. He is getting results. He works hard. My new Dutch technician turned out to have some extra skills I didn't anticipate, in landscape corridor analysis. I just pulled him into a project connecting nature reserves between Ramat Menashe and Carmel, using his skills to help us plan a chain of protected areas. He's happy to be useful, and also working very hard. (That seems to be typical with the Dutch - point them in the right direction and just turn them loose. They work like Calvanists even if they are Jewish.

Which reminds me, attendance at Sunday service was sparse with the pastor overseas. Just the hard core. That's the way I like it, however, and the teaching was pretty good. If you want to schmooze, our Sabbath service is the place, but if you want to study, the Sunday service is the place to be. We only have a fifth the attendance at Sunday that we have on Shabbat, which is a good indication of the breakdown between shmoozers and students....Anyway, I hate crowds so I'm not complaining.

We had a cute flap here in Israel which amused me this week. There was a leak that President Sarkozy of France asked Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel to puleez get rid of right wing (fascist) Foreign Minister Lieberman and put somebody like Zippi Livne back in the Foreign Ministry. This leak came from the Foreign Ministry itself. The media here were gleeful. The Prime Minister (and I would suppose Lieberman) are furious. Private conversations between heads of state are not supposed to be leaked (so that they can speak frnakly) but it does look like the Foreign Ministry hates its boss and is out to get his tuchus out of there. Of course that won't happen now because it would look like bowing to foreign pressure (God forbid), so he's more secure than ever. Sounds like somebody might slip some rat poison in his coffee at the MFA office however. He better hire a taster. Hee hee. Well, he is a Russian, so this kind of thing is probably not going to bother him....

I had my own flap at work. I put some boxes in the landing of the emergency fire escape. Bad timing; we got a new landlord who came around on inspection. Our handyman, a Kurd, was taking him around and nervous as H**L, so when he found the boxes, he went into fits. I got dragged from my office and screamed at, and screamed back. My poor Dutch student was surrounded by yelling Israelis doing their national sport. Finally I stomped off and later the handyman came to apologize (gee that's rare). But I have to get rid of the boxes, which are full of ecological journals I cannot house anymore. 30 year runs on some of them. I offered them to Hebrew University, but if they don't want the journals, I will send them to Birzeit, which does need journals. My office is tyring to figure out which is worse, keeping journals in boxes in the stairwell, or giving them to Palestinians. I'm having a giggle listening to them sweat out that one. Anyway most of the journals are my personal ones, so they don't have much say....but "dog in the manger" applies here.

That's about it. I have errands to run this morning, tuna salad to make this afternoon, and hopefully a good rest before cleaning up after 700 cats tomorrow.

shabbat shalom,
Linda


If I am not for myself, for whom shall I be? If I am only for myself, what am I? --Akiva
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