Road hazards

It was a bad week in Israel for two families and two equines.
The Jerusalem Post reports that a man was killed and two of his family were badly injured when his car struck a horse at Mei Ami Junction in Wadi Ara, and a motorcyclist died after colliding with a donkey near Ma'ale Adumim. Condolences to these families.
It makes you wonder . . . .
This is an old picture of me playing with a jenny during my visit to Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land. Lucy Fensom, SHADH's founder and dedicated hard-working director, rescues abused or abandoned equines and gives them a better life at her donkey sanctuary. It is a recognized charity in England and the USA, in case you'd like to donate or maybe even "adopt" a donkey.

You can find other critters, hopefully happier posts, at our weekend meme, Camera-Critters.

Sunrise over the Holy City

Welcome to the Jerusalem Hills sky I chose for SkyWatch Friday, a fun group of bloggers who come together every weekend to share and compare skies. You are welcome to visit the others or to join in.
This was the hazy sky as seen from my second bus at 6:10 a.m. Don't you love the driver's bouquet of faux flowers on the dashboard? The archaeological excavation where I'm working all of August is seen behind the middle of the lamppost. Here I get off the bus and start the slow trek upward. The sun was rising by then.
There she is! A glorious sun shining on a still quite empty highway, rising over the skyline of Jerusalem. It is worth getting up at 4:30 every morning to see such as this!

Canaanite cemetery

Welcome to our bloggers' ABC Wednesday, today featuring words beginning with letter C.

In connection to the excavations where I've been working for a few months, we have already talked about cranes, our container storeroom, a cat, and a cow's tooth.
Today we add a cheerful element of the workplace:

CAMARADERIE!

Issa, Abu Kamal, Abu Samer, and Yusef--four of my thirty workmates.

"C" is also for CANAANITE vessels in a burial CAVE.
Here Rahed has just discovered some Middle Bronze Age pottery quite high up in his cave.

By the end of the day (Monday) he had discovered ten (!) jugs in that one little area.

Before we removed them, our director, archaeologist Zvi, used the big camera to shoot the official photo of the finds.

The Canaanites lived in the land more than 4,000 years ago.

A crane's tiny but essential load

. Part of the fun of my current dig is watching the crane next to us building a tall apartment complex. But this afternoon I saw the crane lower its heavy chains right in the middle of the construction company's container-offices across the street. Someone filled up the two plastic bottles with cold water and the crane operator raised them. If you click on the photo you can see the bottles dangling.

  Then the brave and thirsty man climbed out of his cabin and reached out to pull the bottles in. All this about twelve stories up.

Another dig, another dollar

Today we started a new salvage dig, not far from where we dug two weeks ago.
Before any new building goes up, the land has to be investigated to see if there are any antiquities below surface worth saving.

Our two areas are where the men are and one up one level, behind that old tower.

This time we must wear green vests and hardhats so the construction workers and the crane operator will hopefully remember we are down there.

The container containing all our equipment arrived at 6:30 this morning.
One of the 30-some workers planted the flag of the Reshut HaAtikot, the Israel Antiquities Authority.
All of the men are Arabs, so I tactfully did not photograph the young man putting up the flag of Israel.

In the foreground is the black netting that was being set up to give us some semi-shade from the hot sun.

I'll let you know what we find. You never know!

Dove of Peace waiting in the wings

. The dove of Peace seeks an opening, searches for a window of opportunity.

 

Animal lovers--fly to Misty Dawn's Camera-Critters meme, enter and see. .

Detective work

The City Daily Photo bloggers are having all the fun today. Their theme for August 1st is METAL. Although not a member of the CDP (since I can't restrain myself from publishing more than the recommended ONE photo a day), I want to play too.
So here is a photo of a dig where I volunteered a few years ago. Appropriate to the theme day, no?

"Metal? We wish. . . !"

A foretaste

Israel is in the middle of her dry season. It usually lasts from around April until October. Normally the sky is cloudless and not a drop of rain falls. The last rain even has its own name in Hebrew: malkosh. And yoreh is the first rain in the autumn. That's how important they are.
But yesterday we were treated to a cooler day ("only" 28 C), a breeze, and a skyful of gray clouds! YAY!
This photo shows the situation at 8:00 a.m. as seen from my village, facing west, looking down into the Valley of Soreq. That's an electric power station marring the wooded Jerusalem Hills.

I can hardly wait for the yoreh. . . .
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There are over 300 skies to choose from over at SkyWatch Friday. Pop over and enjoy or better yet, join the fun and contribute your own sky photo.

Tarring and feathering

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last night addressed the nation, reminded us of all his accomplishments while in office, and announced that he will resign. The police investigation into his alleged financial scandals is in full swing, and this is not good for public morale and is not easy on Olmert, I'm sure. I think he preferred this comparatively dignified way to exit political life; better than going out tarred and feathered.
Olmert's planned departure also spares us the national humiliation of a possible situation of having a prime minister indicted while in office.

The rest you can read about in the media or in the many Israeli and Jewish political blogs.

If you should ever want to hear or see the latest Israeli news in your own language, reported from Jerusalem, just go to http://iba.org.il/media/ and click on Foreign Languages.

More surprises while wandering

Today was going to be my Shuk Machaneh Yehuda market day (after my aborted attempt last Sunday). Again it didn't happen. Where I usually transfer to the second bus there is a Mister Zoll supermarket. I noticed the sale signs in the window: tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, red bell peppers, and onions @ 39 agorot per kilo! That's like 11 cents or 0.07 Euro per kilo. Wednesday only, and with the purchase of at least 150 shekels of groceries. At the market these vegetables cost several times more than this. OK, so forget the shuk today!

So, suddenly having two extra hours before my bus back to the village, I whipped out the camera and went roaming inside the green garden neighborhood of Beit Hakerem.
Again delightful surprises!
Like this man contemplating his head.
And not one, but three, different spots where residents had left their old books outside, hoping passersby would adopt some. I took Cry, the Beloved Country, a 1968 edition printed in Malta.
Don't tell anyone, but I get a lot of my clothes in this same manner. It's so much fun.
Then there was this lovely synagogue which I had to shoot through a locked gate.
This is new too. Apparently the Jerusalem Municipality (see the lion symbol?) is trying to beautify the utility boxes by pasting big photographs on them.

A bevy of Bs

Bagels in the Holy City.
Bright balconies of an old guesthouse in Tiberias.

Basalt church and basalt rocks on the seashore of the receding Sea of Galilee.

Blogger behind bars? Bwahaha, no, it is just the cloister of the . . .

Benedictine Monastery in Tabgha.

Balancing bear in the Biblical Zoo, Jerusalem.

Boy (my beloved) on a burnished bear at the Biblical Zoo.

Braille. Click to make this bigger and see that the third sign in this forest picnic place is in braille!

Bucks, aka billy goats, at a goat cheese dairy farm in the Jerusalem Hills.

Big bales (in Hebrew balot) are the way to transport material in construction and archaeology.

Just-baked bread for the HaMotsi bread blessing on our Jewish Shabbat evening.

And for the Christians, the Blessed Sacrament for the Feast of the Multiplication of Fishes and Loaves. On the ancient mosaic floor of the church at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee.

To see what other bloggers are offering up for the letter B this ABC Wednesday please visit http://wednesdayabc.blogspot.com/ or http://mrsnesbittsplace.blogspot.com/.

A sign of the times

On Sunday I gave in to the thrill of exploration and just followed my nose. It led me to this mysterious fence just a few blocks from Jerusalem's Central Bus Terminal.
Inspired by this guy's example I did even better and found an open gate. Pieces of a crane were scattered on the ground and you already know my fascination with cranes from a previous post.
There is a man back there painting them green. I didn't let him see me because he would have thrown me out of the forbidden-entry site. My first time to see a crane up close and I was shocked how thin and fragile it looked.
Digging of the deep foundation for Mishkenot HaUma was about to begin. This prime location makes the project and future apartments some of the most expensive in the whole country.
In 1988 I went back to college to take the 2-year program in Translation Studies at Bar-Ilan University and then worked as an editor and Hebrew-English translator. So these three signs in Translationese made me smile. Each one sounds awkward (not to mention ostentatious).
Hebrew was most economical with only four words.
English needed five.
And French a whopping seven words.

If you'd like to invest in a condominium here, LOL, complete with a "Parisian avenue" inside for upscale shopping, watch the Yair company's short video. And tell me what you think of it, the truth!

A Zen moment

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A funny thing happened on my way to the Machane Yehuda shuk this morning. Instead of transferring to my usual second bus I decided to walk in the general direction of the shuk (market).
And all manner of surprises were around, waiting to be discovered!
Three hours later I realized it was time to catch my infrequent bus back to my village. I came home with tons of photos but zero fruits and vegetables.

But look at this! Jerusalem's Gan Sacher park has a bonsho, a Japanese Zen Buddhist temple bell!

There are 108 little chubchiks around the top. And in Japan, Hawaii, etc. the bonsho is struck 108 times on New Year's Eve to eradicate the 108 "Buddhist sins," the blind desires one has created throughout the year. (Or so I learn now via the Internet.)

The plaque under the bell reads:

"The bonsho has been placed here as a symbol of lasting peace over the City of Jerusalem. The concept of the bell was welcomed by the late Prime Minister of Israel Mr. Yizhak Rabin. The project was made possible by the donations of people whose names are listed in the scroll beneath the Bonsho, represented by Mr. Pikihiro Madarame, presented to the City of Jerusalem and accepted by the Mayor M.K. Ehud Olmert. April 1996."

Click on the photo above to read the famous verse from Psalms: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love thee."

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Striking the bonsho is associated with striking against evil. I wonder, then, why we have no wooden beam suspended next to this bell.

In the background is the old neighborhood of Nachlaot, beyond which is the shuk.

Yes, I came home hungry but filled with satisfaction that our Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were open to the lovely meaning of the bonsho and were gracious enough to accept the beautiful bell.
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Danger lurking in the night

What prowls in our dark woods?

Lara the Cat: "Uh-oh, is that a jackal I just heard?!" Jack the Jackal: "You bet your sweet life it is, tasty morsel!"

Enjoy bloggers' weekly animal postings

at http://camera-critters.blogspot.com/ every Sunday.

Stonemason in a monastery courtyard

Cutting stone (LOTS of it) the modern way.

The shrill grating sound was grating on my nerves even for the few minutes it took me to walk through this monastery courtyard.
How do these guys stand it all day?
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The Australian connection

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Wait, I can explain. . . why this is not exactly a Jerusalem photo!

My daughter the engineer (whom I recently acknowledged here) has the heart of a poet, the hands of a violinist, and the eye of a photographer. NAOMI took this photo from the ferry as she and my young grandson were returning to Circular Quay a few weeks ago. The white "sails" of the Sydney Opera House against the stormy winter sky were perfect for SkyWatch, I thought; and Naomi agreed.
Judah Ha-Levi was a Jewish physician, poet, and philosopher born in Spain about 1085. His most famous line, about his longing for Zion, is "My heart is in the East, and I am at the ends of the West." Sometimes when I get to missing Naomi and my son-in-law and my two Australian-born grandsons, I feel like my heart is in the South while I am way up North.

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To see the new dedicated website for all the hundreds of

SkyWatch participants click here.

Barack Obama to the Western Wall

Photo: AP - Associated Press

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Israel has been hosting Senator Obama. At 4:30 this morning he made a surprise visit to the Western Wall for some quiet prayer.

Obama followed Jewish tradition and wrote a little note to God and squeezed it in between the stones. What do you reckon he requested? .

BTW, his name sounds quite good here. Barak was a prophet in the Bible. And the Hebrew word barak means lightning.