shabbat shalom 04.02.10

Thu, February 4, 2010 4:54:19 AM
From: Linda Whittaker ~ Email: olsvig2000@yahoo.com

Hi everyone,

Outside there is rain, hail and some snow flurries; Jerusalem got a bit of winter after all. I was beginning to wonder if we would. Fortunately there is only one day of it.....Seems funny to think I went through months of snow in Minnesota and upstate New York without any major hassle. Here, a hint of snow sends us scurrying to stock up supplies like we are going to be cut off from civilization for weeks.... If any snow sticks to the ground, we simply don't travel. This is especially true for my mountaintop home which is much higher than Jerusalem. If anyone gets snowed in around here, it is us. So I keep checking with the village secretary to make sure I can get home before things close down. Sheesh, you would think we are in the high Rockies or something....

The woodstove is a blessing now; nothing else quite gets rid of the cold and damp as well. I have just enough firewood to squeak through the tail end of winter, and have a heap drying for next year beside the woodpile, free wood which will need cutting. This is the month we rediscover why we still keep wool clothing when fleece is available. No idea why the major difference in warmth but I'm wearing a ratty old English wool pullover I got at a flea market in London, and wool socks from Holland, and nothing else will do for a day like today. During the rest of the year, it is hard to remember how cold these stone buildings will get for a month in the winter, but we sure know it now. I'm making a note to go shopping in Sweden and the Netherlands next year, when I stop by there in October. Can't get the cold weather gear here that they will have, and cheap too.

This was a week of gradually resurfacing to the human race after a month of misery in January. Between three weeks of a virus, and nine (count them!) visits to the garage with car trouble, January was a dead waste. I don't want another month like that for a long time to come.

This are picking up now, however. My Dutch student, now coming back as a volunteer in our EBONE project, is in the country and I have to get him started on work in the Negev Desert. We have a training exercise by the Dead Sea (oh yummy, warmth) this coming week, and late this month I will spend a few days in the Avdat station in the Negev Highlands to get him started on field sampling. We have another Dutch student coming later in the spring for field work on the wetland En Afeq, so I need to go up there (it's between Haifa and Akko) to start laying groundwork for him as well. After two months cooped up in the office and home, I've got a serious case of cabin fever, but this should get me out of it.

There's no better cure for the winter blues than the door into summer called the Dead Sea. Even the air is healing; it is loaded with salts and bromide (which has a calming influence); the location 450 m below sea level means the air is rich in oxygen and it is also bone dry. Just sitting and breathing Dead Sea air in winter is pure delight. Usually I'm down there for a few days ever winter; didn't manage it this time and must be sure to do it next winter. That prevents or cures these winter colds.

Spring is on its way, though. The almond trees are in full bloom. I'm seeing Bellevalia (a geophyte a bit like a hyacinth) in bloom and in the sunny spots we have the little yellow daisies called Senecio desfontanei (sorry folks, I only know the Latin on these things and they probably don't have an English name anyway). A few red anemones are scattered around the fields near my house, and I expect on the foothills they are blooming all over the place. We got a good rain which will bring out the plants this year, so there will be work to do....

That's about it. My cold and car kept me from paying attention to very much. It was hard enough to focus on work, and I basically dropped out of everything else for the last month. If we had gone to war, I'd have barely noticed it.

We did have Italy's Prime Minister, Bellisconi, paying us a visit now. Israel and Italy have warm relations and it is a happy visit. (These two countries very much alike, by the way, both in culture and temperment.) Bellisconi is particularly welcome as an old friend of Israel. I learned that friendship goes back before he was born; his pregnant mother saved a Jewish woman from the Nazis during WWII. Jews have long memories, and that is remembered. He got a kashrut certificate on his butt when he was born, as far as Israelis are concerned.

I guess that is about all from me for now. Hopefully the spring will bring more lively news.

shabbat shalom,
Linda
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