Early in the morning, when I left home, the hot, dusty wind gave me a shock. My eyes were smarting, and my car was covered. My neighbor had just put her wipers on, and the dust had turned to mud, so i wiped off the car before I washed the windows. By the time I left work, the wind had died down, and you could see the skyline, but the car was covered again. Just a little reminder from the desert.
You know all that stuff comes from Tunisia, Libya and other Arab countries. We’re lucky they don’t ask for the sand back.
Sharav – the hot wind blows through the sinuses and makes everyone think they’ve got the swine flu. Even my dog is wheezing more than usual. Tomorrow will be even worse – the hottest I remember- and it is hard to tell if what is going on around here is a fata morgana as a result of the weather or just the usual madness. For example, we got three new ministers today but we still don’t have a minister of health. What with the swine flu at our door it really seems like that would be a good idea. Here’s another example: We’re giving the town of Rajar ‘back’ to Lebanon, even though belonged originally to Syria. What? Maybe I’ll just take a pill and go to sleep and hope that tomorrow is a bit more sane.
This friday, 8/5/09 at 8:30 there is going to be a walkathon in memory of Benji Hillman, who was killed in he second Lebanon war. the tickets are 100 NIS for grownups and 50 NIS for students. All the money is going to building a warm house for lone soldiers (חיילים בודדים). you can register at www.benjihillman.org
Even though I didn’t participate in either of the two May Day parades in the city my heart remains with them. “You cardiac socialist,” the little voice inside me says, “Believing in socialism doesn’t do a single thing for the people.” “Yes,” i answer, “but it got me out of bed this morning.”
Yes, it got me out of bed, and even out to Pappa’s for lunch, where i sat on the balcony far away from the crowd. I don’t have swine flu but why sneeze on people’s pizzas. No-one seemed worried about the media-inspired-swine-flu anyway. We’ve got enough to worry about.
Like the Dead Sea. Why aren’t we working with the Jordanians to dig a canal to the Red Sea so that the Dead Sea doesn’t dry up? I’m sure we could do it without harming the environment if we worked at it. There ARE programs to prevent this like this one: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=5362300.
Of course one of the reasons there is a problem is that we use too much water from the Sea of Galillee and have therefore dammed it up. But maybe we could change. We have been trying to institute some water saving programs in our home – like saving bath/shower water for flushing the toilet. I’d love to get more instructions about this. It’s clear everyone would want to help out if they could.
Let me elaborate on yesterday’s post. Pigs don’t fare well in the major religions here, but the stories behind yesterday’s post are not “religious.” Egypt’s pig raisers are Copts, so there is a political connection to the religious opportunity to destroy pigs. And although the assistant minister of health in Israel was trying to lower the fear rate by ‘neutralizing’ the name, Mexico became insulted by our change of name, so we’re stuck with Swine.
