November 3, 2015
what a day. if only i could
I am one of those who falls apart in a sandstorm. So I'm barely functioning these days. Plus I've been paralyzed by the fact that the Russian plane must have been downed by a bomb. Isis. They're next door and making a racket.
November 5, 2015 How to dress - soon the rains will come this morning and bring down all the mud. whatever you wear will be covered in wet dust. and i have to go to Ichilov. I've been hoping to get one day of rest and clean air - need it badly - but the needs of children and grandchildren come first in my heart. and my heart leads my body whenever it can. Have I written about the cats? The ongoing neutering of cats has been a source of great comfort to me in the past years. It isn't entirely successful because it a limited to small areas at a time, and as soon as there are no fertile male cats in one neighborhood cats from other areas move in. Anyway there was a proposal to exile the cats instead of neutering them that raised a great outcry. It saves the budget but the reason given was that neutering is inhumane and we cannot be inhumane. Humane behavior is one of our main discussion. Even a cooking-explorer show the other night Gidi and Aharoni watched Ethiopian cows crushing the wheat and Gidi fixed on one of the cows that was getting whipped because she was trying to eat the wheat. Aharoni noted that their jaws had been tied so they wouldn't eat and the bible forbids this as inhumane. of course these kinds of observations extend to people. Footage of one of the most recent stabbings show a wounded woman of 80 on the ground while men running after the perpetrator step over her. The fear of losing a sense of humanity in the face of inhumane behavior permeates our discussions. November 6, 2015 Because we came too late for the memorial ceremony (I am more than a bit of a mess at the moment) we looked around at the graves. what characterizes almost all of them is that the space between the birth day and the death day is very short. it is a cemetery of 18 year olds. After that we stopped at a nursery to buy dirt and replant the mint and basil in our window.
An amazing review of our book on galapagos here.
November 7, 2015
Shabbat. today was the first day this week that we weren't stuck in our car in traffic jams, or in our homes in rainstorms or duststorms. The sky is blue, the weather clear and warm. It was wonderful to be outside. For a moment i considered going to Jerusalem, to sit in a sidewalk cafe and demonstrate my identification with the poor shopowners who are suffering financially because of the terrorism. Then I thought - wait - i can't put the grandchildren in such danger. But I'm neurotic about kids.
