blog, my life in tel aviv,

The anemones are out.  Usually they bloom at the end of February or the beginning of March.  And everyone drives down to the south to see them.  But now the weather is almost summery and we’re in lockdown and the times are wrong and keeps changing : We are expecting rain on the day the quarantine is supposed to end.  That will keep most of us close to home.

But most people don’t believe that the quarantine will end, or that anything will really change with the elections.  There is a sense of relinquishing hope, of .. maybe… despair.  After that great anticipation of the vaccinations, we discover that all our ambivalence about the innoculations was in vain – that we thought and thought and thought about what to do and now we are largely vaccinated and there is a new strain to which perhaps we’re not immune.

 

 

 

 

february 1, 2021 – flowers and weather Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv, ,

Even though we have the highest percentage of vaccinated people (close to 3/8ths of the population as of today), we are also suffering a high percentage of deaths from corona, and a lot of younger people infected.   The big problem is the situation of the hospitals, suffering terribly from budgetary problems.  A friend suggested we turn the hospitals into yeshivas and that way the funding problem would be solved.  But seriously folks – this situation can’t go on.  For years we’ve seen the halls of the wards crowded with beds filled with seriously ill patients and the medical staff fighting to accomodate every one.  it couldn’t continue like this, and after almost a year of this I’m sure we’ll have many more deaths just because there aren’t enough nurses to keep an eye on those monitors that can totally change in seconds.

Somehow I was thinking of this today while I sat with a friend in the warm sun and watched the beautiful flowers and vegetables on the window sill.  Tonight there will be a storm and I wonder which plants will suffer, which survive.  It is my job to keep watch and try to protect them.

And to add to this strange combination of thoughts – I watched the Palestinian workers building a luxurious house down the street, and have learned since there are tens of thousands of workers who cross the border daily – not only to build houses, but also to work in hospitals.  They are rarely tested and the vaccinations haven’t yet arrived there.

This train of thought may seem to you to be only the musings of a poet, but I see it as essential to a politician as well…

january 27, 2021 – before a storm Read Post »