Taking Your Camera on the Road

We had a great weekend in Eilat, and Brent played with tons of birds. But it was a weekend – week – about cats. We spent Friday night with friend in Beersheva, and their new adult cat addition to the family, whom I guess I had named the week before on a visit, Lady, slept with us all night. A partial siamese, manx, and whatever mutt mixture that turned her into the softest and silkiest cat I’ve felt in a long time. Brent had plans to get up early in the morning and photograph one of the nearby craters, but the moment Lady climbed onto his chest, his breathing changed and he became the bed snuggler. She snuggled against him and between us all night and he was in smiling heaven.

Of course he didn’t go out in the morning. I was up for several hours before he finally got out of bed – Lady wanted out to go to the bathroom and eat.

In Kibutz Lotan, we were immediately greeted by the head-butting, desperate for attention and loving, Darwin. He had been fixed by the locals and one ear was clipped, fairly severely, as a signal that he was a fixed cat. Adopted as a kitten by Brent’s bird guide, Darwin was without “daddy” for 7 months a year while the guide flew to Canada and Ecuador on bird guiding jobs for the past few years. So Darwin was fairly ignored and was totally and completely desperate for loving.

He raced across the parking lot and head butted Brent in the legs full tilt. Rubby rubby. Brent came him cuddles, but the cat went totally nuts for it, almost slobbering with the attention. He followed us back and forth to the car and then moved into the room with us. Darwin was so desperate for love, he would throw himself at you, slam into the nearest body part, be it leg, thigh, stomach, or face, and then slide down and roll over, presenting his tummy for scrubbing. He would stretch out, legs fully extended, arms up in the begging position, kneading the air, head back, great sighs and purrs rolling up and out from deep in his throat.

We couldn’t resist him. Brent especially. Laid down and the bed, got the “cat-in-the-face” routine and then massaged the tummy for ages until they both napped.

I checked with the guide to see if there would be any jealousy if Darwin stayed with us, and he said no no, like he couldn’t be bothered. No wonder the poor thing is deprived. He did warn us that he would keep us up all night, doing cat things like jumping on top of things and making lots of noise. I looked at the belly up lover kitty and told him that I didn’t believe it. He said, you wait. I told him we’d let him out if he bothered us in the night.

Darwin was glued to us all night long. Not a noise, not a fuss, nothing. So glad for human contact, he was a limpet. The only time he moved was when Brent and I got up to go to the bathroom in the night and then slammed us into a cuddle the moment we got back in bed. I woke up to find him on his back, wedged between our two pillows, Brent and my hands wrapped around him. He was in glory.

Darwin didn’t stray too far from us the whole three days. We fed him left overs and water, but he could find food elsewhere. Because I can’t stand the cooking at the kibbutz, I did bring some baked chicken to eat for breakfast and dinner and put it in the little fridge in the small kitchen in our room. The first morning, I went for a long walk through the desert and came back to take a shower. The door was open to let the cool morning air flow in until the heat came up. In the shower, I heard a crash, opened the sliding door and found the orange tom had opened up the fridge and pulled out the chicken. I dashed out and shooed him away. Then cleaned things up and put the piece of chicken he had been eating on top of the high toilet tank, since I didn’t want to go to the door naked and dripping to close it.

I quickly finished my shower and got dressed and took the piece of chicken outside. I walked far from the room and fed it to the other cats, ignoring the orange tom. I didn’t want to reward his bad behavior. When I got back to the room, he was sitting on top of the toilet tank looking for the chicken I’d put up there. They’re just too smart.

Brent could hardly stand to leave Darwin behind, but we pulled ourselves away.

Back at home, I’d been sorta minding a young new mama cat in our garden (not the park – under the building garden). She and her four kittens were there, and all came screaming to see me, though I noticed that they were scattered around the area rather than all together. She’d moved them from the box with a towel in it that I’d set up for her and into which she and the kittens (after I moved them) had lived for the first four or five days of their life. I moved the box over to the new location and put the four kittens inside and they went right to sleep. I saw the mother go into the box and decided they were okay for the night.

The next day, I found she had separated them again. Not far, but far enough. I was a little worried that she was trying to abandon them, but I wasn’t sure which ones were the abandoned ones. Long story short, that night, after I’d driven way up north to the Galilee to get meat from our fav butcher shop with Maureen, I came home to find that two of them were definitely being shoved aside. Both had lost lots of weight, were dehydrated, and I was sure one of them wouldn’t even last the night.

I brought them upstairs and Brent mixed an emergency food recipe off a vet site on the Internet for newborn kittens, and we went to work feeding them and trying to rehydrate them. I was up every two hours in the night, doing my best. Brent set up a small box and we warmed rice bags and hot water bottles to keep them warm. I called the vet first thing in the morning and just as I turned into the vet’s driveway in the car, the bad one convulsed and died. I raced in with the box but there was nothing to do.

I left the black and white (of course) one there all day for the vet to take care of and when they gave me the go ahead, I picked her up in the evening, Thursday night. All through the night, every two hours, I was up feeding, though Brent took the first two shifts. He stayed home from work on Friday (for other reasons – birds). I took the little kitten back to the vet in the morning for more fluids, and she finally passed the first test, according to the vet, of survival. Yes, it’s a girl.

She is now almost two weeks old (as of tomorrow I think), eyes still closed but starting to slowly open. She has some minor and typical infection in her eyes, but I clean them all the time and she is now on antibiotics. We are feeding her every three hours, and she cries on cue about then, which gives us a little more sleep time. I go to bed early and Brent takes the first one or two feedings and I wake up in the night and do the 3am and 6am feedings and then I’m her feeder during the day. She loves being held to our chests, feeling the warmth and our heart beat. Puts her out instantaneously.

We don’t have a name, as we’re still not sure if she will survive but hopes are high. She is eating and sleeping, but she is pooping good, though still runny, and peeing fine, all good signs. Like all the animals in my family, she will earn her name soon enough. Right now, she is “kittancheek” which is Hebrew for “little one” or “little thing”, something people call their children or something cute and small. “Kittan” is small, and appropriate, but we’ll see.

She is sleeping in the box next to me, lying on the hot water bottle covered with a towel, and sighs a little squeak once in a while of contentment. So we’ll see if this little one makes it and we will have a new addition to our family.

Tel Aviv, Israel

A friend of mine, Ida, has given me some strange plants to put in my garden. We don’t know what they are but we find them around Tel Aviv. Ida told me that she never planted them, they just “fell out of the sky” into her window plant boxes and started growing. They are fairly prolific and survive the winter and the dread heat of summer without any problems. They grow tall and spindly and form these little buds or flower things at the top, which we call “alien babies” from the “alien plant”, which fall off and drop into the soil. There they take root without much help and begin to grow and make more alien babies.

Trying to figure out what they were, I asked all my friends, showing them the plants and pictures of the plants. They don’t know. I sent an email to my mother-in-law, Lynda Kay, who is brilliant at plants, and this is her response (via her husband):

“Mom says that from the pictures it appears to be a florabundus israeliacitinis alienasticanicus, otherwise known throughout the world as an “alien Israeli flower”. If not, then it must be something else. Why don’t you put it on the web page and see if someone can identify it there? Other than that, we don’t know.”

We loved the answer. So we’re stuck not knowing what these things are. Do you know? If you know the names of these things and anything about their needs or habits, please let me know and make sure the message says “I recognize the alien plant life” so I don’t think you are spamming me about UFOs.

Tel Aviv, Israel

I’ve been cleaning up a bit since I have the snorkels and sniffles and can’t concentrate for very long, and this blog may be indecipherable by the time I finish it, and I’ve found a stack of newspapers left over from Christmas.

Now, you may find it odd that I have a stack of newspapers left over from Christmas and it’s March, but I also have my Christmas tree up – let me correct that. I still have my Christmas tree DOWN in the living room. We had a tiny wind storm this weekend but it was still amazingly warm and I had the windows open. Forgot about the little handmade artificial tree we have and it blew over into the leather chair next to it, and it tilts there, upside down, looking pitiful, half its decorations tipped off into the seat of the chair. Even though we live in a small apartment, and the wall I stare at in my office is on the other side of where the tree is, not more than two meters away, I just haven’t been in there to right the tree for the past four days. Been whipped with a cold, stuffy nose, slight fever, and the snorkels. I’ll get to it. Just a fine detail in the long list of things out of control in my life over the past few months. Blame it on this damn web site.

Okay, the newspapers. I told you I was easily distracted and scattered. So I’m cleaning things up in my office and decide to tackle the shit piled sky high next to my bed. You know the kind of pile I mean. It’s the “I’ll get to it” pile. The “I’ll climb in bed early, a warm bag of rice at my toes, snuggled down and catch up on my reading and sorting” kinda pile. Warm bag of rice, you ask? Yes, it’s actually ingenious and ages old. The technique not just the bag. The bag? Oh, yes, it’s about three years old. We took one of the tacky pillow cases that came with the apartment (I replaced all the rest of them – horrible girly-cute things) and put a pound or two of heavy duty brown nasty rice in it. Knotted the pillow case so the stuff wouldn’t fall out and every night when it is cold, we nuke the thing (microwave it – for you proper speakers – which sounds like “fer yer pop-per sneakers” when I say it now with a snuffed up nose) for 2-3 minutes (no water!). Tuck it into the bottom of the bed and OOOOOOOOhhhhhhh, aaahahahahah, oooooooo warm toes! Comfort. Safe. Snuggles. Best thing about winter!

Rice Bed Warmers
Here are some recipes for making your own rice bed warmers:

• Sewing.org’s Rice Bags
• Cancer Lynx: Rice Bags Bring Comfort
• Cancer Lynx: Rice Bag Instructions and Tips
• Quilters – How To Make Rice Bag instructions
• Rice Bag instructions and tips for use, including tips for babies
• Diamond Threadworks: Organic Microwave Heating Bag Instructions for using corn or rice

So back to the pile. Yes, the pile. Taken to bed with the sniffles after failing to get through my pile of junk and email on my desk (and you wonder why I haven’t responded so quickly), I decided to go through some of the pile. This is where I finally get to the part about the newspapers from Christmas.

I have incredibly thoughtful friends and family who know how starved we are for news and bits from home. My friend, Jo, always goes out of her way to send us a little of Seattle. Smoked fish (I’m allergic, Brent loves it), clam chowder, canned clams, Seattle or Washington State Calendars, and other little bits of Elliot Bay – we love every piece. My mom always puts in a bit of home for me, but my dad loves to put in things from home that he thinks I would like but actually tell more about him than home. One year he sent me a small and lovely picture book of the San Juan Islands and included a note on one of the pages of a light house point that said, “This is where your dad hit his head on a rock.” That’s it. Nothing else. Like I’m supposed to know the story about the rock hitting head. I know the story of the sister trying to chop the finger of the dad off. I know the story of the selling cigarettes to Indians when he was 12 story. I know the beating from his dad when he took the boat out into the middle of the bay when told not to untie the boat from the dock story (my father got a really, really long rope – so the boat was still tied to the dock while still out in the middle of the bay – a point my grandfather didn’t get until after the beating). I know many stories, but somehow I missed the rock hitting head story. But I have the book with the note to remind me of all the stories about my dad that I still don’t know or have forgotten. So many stories, only so much life.

So I have great presents from my wonderful friends and family, and many of them are very kind to us and send us our gifts wrapped in newspaper from home. My Seattle friends and family send me stuff in the Everett Herald and Seattle PI or Times, and Brent’s family sends stuff in the Tulsa World and Dallas papers. I save all of them and carefully read all the minutiae that you all in the states let obsess your lives.

These little bits and pieces of news tell me so much about life back in the states. Sure, the articles may be three (okay now 6) months old, but I love them. Dependent upon the news from home in little snips on the radio and Internet, this once a year news feast is such a delight to me. This year, having such a depressing Christmas in a country where Christmas is a work day and non-event, we kinda whisked through the holiday and I didn’t have my savored newspaper read the day after Christmas, a kind of non-traditional tradition for me. But I had it this weekend.

I read about who shot who and for what stupid reasons that could possibly justify someone shooting someone. I read about the battles with citizens and public utilities, arguing over who will pay for what and why one state gave all their water to another state only to have that state not pay the first state back and now the first state’s citizens have to pay 10 times the rate they paid last year and no one asked them if their state could even sell water to another state – but they still have to pay for the decision. I read about whining over the sales tax (learn to live with 18% and we’ll really talk!) and the high cost of food. I read about how so many people who work full-time are still able to qualify for welfare. I read about sports teams trading people left and right, like they are shooting craps in Nevada, playing with their lives which talking about the “fun” of sports. The “fun” of sports is showcased with angry or sad faces and threatening fists in huge color or black and white photos. I see people hurting when big business destroys futures by playing with retirement funds and personal investments. I see big business giving up on Americans as they move their companies overseas so they can make more money, while trusting that Americans are always going to have the kind of income from jobs they are being laid off from that will pay for their product in the future. I don’t know how, but I can only read what is in black and white in the newspaper.

One fascinating piece was an expose in the Tulsa World dated December 14, 2003. Titled “How detectives cuffed the Green River Killer”, I was delighted to finally get some of the “insider” information I had been longing for since hearing on the Internet radio (NPR) about the capture of the Green River Killer. Having grown up haunted by this murdering monster, it was of very special interest. Through the wrinkled and slightly torn newspaper page, I poured over every word.

The Associated Press story explained how King County Sheriff’s detective Randy Mullinax started working on the Green River Killer Task Force in 1984 after 14 women had been found dead south of Seattle over the past year and a half. On September 11, 2001, a day that shall live in infamy, the day held even more meaning to Mullinax. Coping with the horror of the events on the opposite side of the country, and fielding calls and tips on possible terrorist activities in Seattle as the country panicked, he got another call, related to domestic terrorism: the Green River Killer.

Sheriff Dave Reichert called Mullinax to tell him that they had taken advantage of the new technological advances in DNA research and had retested a 14 year old saliva sample found on three of the earliest victims. It matched the main suspect the Task Force had considered but could never find evidence to link him to the crime.

Gary Ridgway had been seen and identified by the boyfriend of one of the victims, but the polygraph claimed Ridgway was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know anything about the crimes. According to the police reports, Ridgway was very careful not to leave any evidence and if he was scratched by any of the victims, he would cut and clean their nails to remove any skin evidence. If he left any tire tracks, which is easy to do in the wet Pacific Northwest, he would buy new tires or switch vehicles. The police searched his home and had him bite on a piece of gauze to get a saliva sample, but this was inconclusive at the time.

Reading along, transported back in time to a time and place where women were terrified to go out alone or at night, I had begun to teach self defense to women with Alternatives to Fear. The classes were sold out and packed to the rafters as women were desperate to learn about defending themselves. Over the years, as the bodies continued to be found but the news faded to inside the newspaper, we grew accustomed to living with a serial murderer in our midst. The number of dead kept rising, once reaching 42 murders attributed to the Green River Killer, if I remember right. Over time, some of these were solved and the numbers dropped and raised and dropped and raised, but never was there news of a capture, or even a leading suspect. Just bodies of prostitutes and young women lost to the night and the darkness of bars and sex trades.

One shocker, to me and to the veterans remaining on the Task Force, happened when they ran Ridgway’s name through the police computer to get a current address and contact information. They found an arrest for soliciting a prostitute. Stunned that they hadn’t had that piece of information back in 1984 or 1985 which might have connected Ridgway more firmly in their mind as a suspect, they were even more stunned to find that the arrest had happened only two weeks BEFORE. Not 14 years ago, but two weeks ago. Mullinax realized that Ridgway was still messing with prostitutes after all these years of semi-quiet.

Who knows how smart Ridgway had become in hiding his victims. With all the detailed news coming out over the years about the efforts and evidence found by the Green River Killer Task Force, I’m sure he switched methods. Who knows how many women, uncounted by society, are out there, buried deep and unfound.

On the next page I found an incredibly relevant article to today’s news. As Iraqi interim leaders sign the first document in a long step towards self-rule, the Tulsa World reported back in December on the debate Afghans underwent to get their new constitution together. The Iraqis think they got problems. Over 500 representatives in Afghanistan had to work out their constitution. The faced similar problems of the role women play within the country, the role Islam plays in the government and laws, and power sharing between everyone who wants a piece of the power and control over a country. Iraq only has 25 people to play the constitution game. But they do have rockets, grenades and missiles coming at them from every direction to stop the game, which does put a little more pressure on the players. [I did love the news that the signing ceremony featured children’s groups performing from the different areas of Iraq – great subjects for target practice, folks!]

The newspaper article spoke of how the Afghanistan constitution should be an example for Iraq, where the US administrators are under even more pressure from confusing and arguing elements who haven’t even started to draft a constitution of any form, interim or otherwise. The timetable set at that time was for “elections to choose delegates for drafting an Iraqi constitution in early 2005”, allowing two years from the fall of Saddam to achieve some form of stability. Isn’t it interesting that only a few weeks later the pressure from foreign governments, from within the US itself, and from within Iraq, pushed the US’s timetable up by a year? Shows you what a little pressure can do, but it also speaks to other, more ugly things still worth considering. Like how big a mess is the US going to make of all of this.

The article goes on to list the articles and issues the constitution, when in its final form, must tackle. Which language will be official? They speak two main languages, so why don’t they do like Israel did and make three languages the official languages of the country, though only two are seriously practiced: Hebrew and Arabic (English is the third)? One down. The national anthem? Oh, really, who cares. Pick one. This is a detail in the running of a country. I think the involvement of women in any country, and especially in their government, says a lot for a country. The more women the more stable and long lasting the government, trust me.

One of the more surprising issues is the issue of providing a free higher education to those who wish it. I would not have thought Afghanistan would be so enlightened since the US makes their college grads who get loans for their education to be still paying them off when they are 45 years old. But I also think about friends and co-workers of Brent who came from Middle Eastern countries which did provide a higher education for free, paid for by the government. Upon graduation, many of these newly educated brilliant minds were told by the government where they were to work and how they were to serve the government in repayment for their higher education. When they protested their posting, or argued with the government, many were threatened or given a very civilized choice: do the job or have a free, one-way ticket for you and maybe your immediate family (but often not) to get out of the country. Right now in Afghanistan, there are so many jobs wide open for people with a higher education like engineers, architects, planners, and medical professionals of all kinds, I don’t see people complaining about their positions, but in the future, would this be an option like in other Middle Eastern countries?

Still, I like the idea they are proposing. It’s the long term effects that interest me, too.

Then I saw the weather page and got really depressed. On December 14, while Israel was still suffering the drought of summer (we never had a fall and if we did, it lasted 20 minutes – and I’m still waiting for winter. The hot bag of rice is a panacea and bluff that it is cold outside when it really isn’t.), Tulsa was having 22F/-5C to 55F/12F lows and highs while I was suffering 86F/30C. Not fair. Not fair.

New England was expecting a “potent storm” to drop heavy snow, sleet and coastal rain, possibly accumulating to a food or more in the Appalachians. The Cascades in Washington State, my home, were expecting snow falls, too. I was expecting a sunburn and skin cancer. Oh, bother.

Okay, so some of the news from home isn’t so nice to read about.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Sometimes I like to share some of the bits and pieces I find in the news from Israel. Some of it is witty and bizarre, while others are more serious. All of it together presents some pieces to the puzzle that is Israel.

Before coming here, we read about what to expect in Israel. One book, Culture Shock Israel, talked about the “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” policy of reaction to terrorism. Once a terrorist technique has been tried, Israel works overtime to find ways to stop it from being repeated. When it comes to creativity to resisting, catching, and defeating terrorism, Israel is the master.

Recently new plans are being put into place to frisk bus passengers before they get onto a bus. This will be time consuming and inconvenient, but most Israelis agree it is better to be safer than sorry later. Since September 2000, 164 people have been killed and about 800 wounded in 21 bus bombings. Public buses have more than 900 security guards riding buses, and some guards and bus drivers have given their lives to stop suicide bombers from boarding. Even this couldn’t prevent attacks. The Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews have donated USD $7 million for a project to make riding the bus in Jerusalem safer by frisking bus riders. In another government project, lockable metal turnstiles are being tested on several buses in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to see if this may make a difference.

But the idea that is gaining the most attention, and seen as the cheapest solution of all might get some laughs, but it is a serious suggestion. Israeli officials are looking into the possibility of hanging bags of pig lard – that’s right, pig fat – inside buses. Why? Oh, please, ask me why! The reason is that while pigs are not kosher in Israel, a Jew can touch a pig. They just can’t eat them. Muslims, on the other hand, can’t touch or eat pig. It is truly an “abomination” to them. Suicide bombers are brainwashed through their fanatic recruiters, supporters, families, and twisted view of religion to believe that if they die while killing Jews, they will go to heaven and have dozens of virgins waiting for them. The virgin concept is so bizarre, and how anyone believes it is beyond me, but let’s not go there. Anyway, they must be “clean” and uncontaminated in their death in order to get to heaven. If one micro-splat of pig fat was to touch them, they would be unclean and not get their reward of virgins in heaven, and in fact, probably not even get to heaven. Israel is seriously looking into the psychological fear factor of pig fat on buses to keep the suicide bombers away. Honestly. Desperate people do desperate things…

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So many times the world’s media uses the phrase “the cycle of violence in the Middle East”. Tit for tat. They strike, Israel strikes, they strike back, Israel strikes back, and the world goes ’round. What the world’s media doesn’t realize that it isn’t tit for tat. There is no clear cycle of violence. What is clear is that if Israel does anything, Israelis die because terrorists strike back. But Israel doesn’t always strike back. “Restrained response” is the catch word of this Intifada, which unfortunately allows too much freedom, in my opinion, for the Palestinians and others to continue their acts of violence.

What the world media also doesn’t realize is how Israel protects Arabs within its borders as well as Jews and non-Jews. To Israel, protection of their varied citizens is crucial. Two Jewish men were arrested in Haifa recently as part of an underground Jewish group (though they are saying they acted alone – ha!) who want to retaliate against the Arabs and Palestinians. This group has been working to target Arab-Israeli Knesset members and prominent citizens as well as mosques inside of Israel. Sharon has ordered increased security for the Arab-Israeli Knesset members. More than 30 homemade bombs, hand grenades, handmade pistols, and even a mortar was found in the home of these two men. According to the investigators, the Jewish men planted nine bombs against Arab targets over the past three years, with only a few exploding and the rest discovered and defused. One successful attack was at a mosque in Haifa’s mixed Arab-Jewish district where three people were wounded. Another was in the car of a Knesset member’s wife, and she escaped with minor wounds. Jewish people and groups “friendly” with Arabs were also targeted. The security fence and Israeli security teams protecting the borders between the Palestinian areas and Israel do more than just stop terrorists from sneaking in, they also stop Israelis from sneaking out for personal vendettas and retaliation. More investigations are ongoing and Israel is determined to stop such violent attacks, says the security officials.

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Water is a big deal in the Middle. A former occupier of Israel and much of the Middle East has signed a water deal with Israel to supply their drinking water for the next two decades. See, you never know who will be your enemy one year and your friend the next. Israel will buy 50 million cubic meters of water a year from Turkey, equaling about 3% of the total annual drinking water required in Israel. The water will come from Turkey’s Manavgat River, and is expected to be higher than the cost of desalinated water which is about 60 US cents a cubic meter. Still, Israel not only needs the water, they need the economic ties business with Turkey can bring.

Now, the strange thing about this is that this negotiation has been going on for five years. Huh? That’s right. See, Israel top export is weapons and defense technology, and Turkey wants some. Israel wants the business to keep Israel’s economy going, but Turkey wants income from their dealings with Israel, so they have constantly used the threat of canceling the other deals unless Israel agrees to the water deal. Israel may end up paying two to four times the price of water they can make in their own country in order to reap the benefits of military and commercial contracts. Ah, the joy of international governments doing business with each other. While the government and corporations in Israel will reap the benefits of increased business, the citizens of the country will have to pay massive increases in their water bills to pay for the imported water. And the world goes ’round.

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On the lighter side of the news, the Israeli ice skating duo of Alexandera and Roman Zaretsky have moved into eighth place out of 28 teams in the International Skating Union World Junior Figure Skating Championships in the Hague, Netherlands. The brother-sister team are being touted as the pair to watch in the future, wanting to follow in the footsteps of Galit Chait and Sergey Sakhovsky who won the bronze medal at the 2002 World Championships in Nagano, Japan, for Israel. Both siblings were born in Russia and came to Israel as children, but they spend most of the year in Delaware at an ice training facility there. The “internationalness” of sports is at play even in Israel.

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If you are looking for some hot property, look no further than Jerusalem. After several years of a depressed property market, foreigners are buying up apartments and property in Jerusalem like crazy, taking advantage of the low market rates. Prices are 20-30% lower than in 1998. Many of those shopping are Diaspora Jews who want to keep a connection with Israel but not move to the country, though some admit they might, when things improve. The majority of the buyers are from the UK, with some from France and the US.

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Will financial wonders ever cease? The UK has announced that they are willing to finance the “unification of the Palestinian security forces if the Palestinian Authority (PA) agrees to create a central command.” The Swiss government is already paying the PA police and security forces and have been for years – those these efforts have come under fire recently. I’ll get to this uproar in a minute. The UK has spent more than USD $18 million for the PA’s negotiating support team over the past five years and now they want to help the PA put together a central security force, though all of this money is in debate when it was discovered that money the UK money was helping to pay for the case against the security fence in the Hague, a court case the UK opposed from the beginning. Confused? I think they are. Arafat claims that the PA security force is unified, under his command, even though no one can tell.

In fact, the mayor of Nazareth (Nabalus) has resigned in protest against the lack of security provided by the PA and the lack of commitment to even attempt any rule of law in the city. One of the largest West Bank cities, Nazareth is rife with gangs and crime, including the murders of 32 people in the past few months between rival gangs. The PA blames Israel, but the mayor, Ghassan Shakah, denied that, placing the total blame on the PA. “The main issue was that the PA failed to tackle any of the problems in the city…this is not related to the occupation. There are many crimes and offences in the city that have nothing to do with the occupation. None of these crimes was dealt with.” He claims that the PA doesn’t want to fulfill their duties as a responsible government towards their largest city.

With the UK’s offer and their continuance to pay for security and support in the PA, Arafat and his cronies had a fit when the Swiss declared that all future payments to security officers had to be made as direct deposits to the bank account of the employees, bypassing the government. More and more countries who have long supported the PA and Palestinian movement against Israel, often through the disguise of humanitarian effort, are seriously questioning the long-known fact that Arafat and a lot of PA administrators have been sucking the cash flow dry for decades. They kept pouring money in and now they are seeing the reality of where their money is going. These countries are trying to force accountability and it is seriously ticking off Arafat and his crew. Go ahead – once again ask me why?

Why, you ask? First, many of the PA’s so called security officers are actually part of Arafat’s terrorism network. By signing up for a bank account, after being paid cash for years, they have to be accountable and recognizable. If they are involved in terrorism or a crime, they can be traced through their bank account information. Second, having been paid cash for years, they now have to account for their income and report it for taxes and so on. Third, the Palestinian Authority must now account for the money, since the records for payment will now be held in the bank and they have to check with the banks to make sure their employees are paid, and they aren’t very good at counting in the PA government, having only deal with cash for yeras. Fourth, Arafat’s wife has been living the high life in Paris with a multi-room suite and full staff in attendance and collecting over a million US dollars every month as an “allowance” and that may soon end as the Bank of France has frozen the account and is investigating money laundering charges. After all, where would the wife of a man kept under military “confinement” for the past two and a half years in Ramallah, representing some of the most economically depressed people in the world, get a million dollars a month? Her husband, of course. And where would he get it? Hmmmm. The bigger question not being asked: what is she doing with that million a month, every month? That would buy a lot of shoes. Money doesn’t fall from the skies, you know, but for the Palestinian Authority, the skies have delivered a lot of money for decades, so they kept expecting it would continue. Interesting stuff, huh?

In an attempt to “get some of the money”, a federal judge in New York has turned down the PA’s legal defense strategy motion in a $500 million terrorism lawsuit. Brought by families of terrorism victims against the PA, PLO and top PA officials, the Palestinian Authority claims they are a sovereign state therefore it cannot be granted immunity. In the 62 page decision, Judge Marrero denied the motion to dismiss the suit on the grounds of sovereign immunity because the PA “is not a foreign state under the Antiterrorism Act of 1991 – which grants nations immunity from prosecution provided they are not state sponsors of terror”. The PA is also not a member of the UN, and “has never been fully recognized as a sovereign state”, and it doesn’t meet two of the four basic four criteria for statehood: “it does not control its own population and territory, nor does it have the capacity to engage in foreign relations.” This is one of many failed attempts by the PA, PLO and others to have these cases dismissed. In July, the court ordered Hamas to pay USD $116 million in damages for sponsoring a 1996 terrorist attack. This current case against the PA, PLO, Arafat and other PA officials concerns the terrorist murder of Aharon Ellis in Hadera in January 2002 during a bat mitzvah party in which a former PA policeman opened fire, killing six. The success of these recent legal actions is encouraging more victims of terrorism to step forward with their claims against those who commit terror.

~*~

Sensitivity about the Holocaust and other historical crimes against Jews throughout history is a must in Israel. Unfortunately, two Russian immigrants missed the boat on this one. In their advertising campaign for the Israeli Bank Hapoalim, they used the slogan “to each what he deserves”, a Prussian Protestant 18th century saying representing the Protestant belief in “providential reward in this world for effort”. Unfortunately, it was also the saying over the door at the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald that greeted prisoners and Holocaust victims as they entered, beginning their punishment. The ad agency claims the “generational gap” was the excuse but Holocaust victims are not amused, claiming it is “blasphemy”. Ouch.

~*~

Oh, one more piece of political news. In a court decision this week, a judge has ruled that Sharon’s term of office is up in November 2007. Normally the elected prime minister’s term of office is five years, but no one has held the full five-year term of office since…well, Begin. That’s a long time. For want of a unified government and all the strange loop holes and 28 different political parties in Israel, they have the semblence of a stable government but chaos in the office of the prime minister. Sharon has been in office since 2001 and technically, he should be out in 2006, but he was re-elected in an emergency vote in 2002, so the court has determined that his term will be up, legally, in 2007, which is five years from 2002. Well, a lot of people are not happy as they expected him out in 2005, or 2006 at the latest, so now there are lawsuits popping up all over the place to change the ruling. My opinion…just wait. Since no one has lasted for the full term since 1983, be patient. Something will screw it up again very soon and we’ll be off to the elections again.

~*~

While studying engineering in Israel, two young men met and discovered they had something in common: how to create a “four-wheel drive wheelchair”, and they want a piece of the USD $600 million market in the US and Europe for power wheelchairs. Currently, the few powered wheelchairs which climb stairs can only do so with the passenger facing downwards, no matter which way they are headed. This new wheelchair called the Galileo means going in any direction over any terrain in the direction you want to go. Using a track and wheel combination not much different than what a tank uses, the Galileo will let users go through sand on the beach, snow, ice, and up and down stairs. The inventive track wheel design isn’t limited to wheelchairs. It is also being used to create highly mobile autonomous robots which can be equipped with cameras and detection sensor equipment. They are also working on a “porter system” for transporting heavy weights up and down stairs like boxes or an elderly person and farm equipment that can traverse difficult terrain. They are looking for investors, so check out their web site if you have a million or two to spare.

~*~

Oh, there is plenty of other news going on, but a lot of it is grim. Economy sucks, people are out of work everywhere, there are more homeless and transients visible on the streets than ever in the history of the country, holiday activities are dialed way back to avoid terrorism interests, people of sick of being in a war they can’t win and don’t know how to fight, and there is little optimism, though a lot of jokes, going around. Oh, I’m talking about life in Israel not the United States, though it did sound like I was talking about the US. Sorry. Any simularities are unintentional.

Lorelle
Tel Aviv, Isarel

The news has been bad all day. Maybe as many as 150 dead in terrorist attacks against the celebrations of the first Shiite parade and festivities honoring Ashura (Ashoura) after a 30 year moratorium, the most important holy day on the Shiite Muslim calendar. In Pakistan, about 40 more are dead in another attack during their celebrations. What a way to honor such a holy day for millions of people.

Yet, the day itself is in honor of murder. Ashoura or Ashura is important for several reasons, among them, it honors the murder of Imam Hussein, grandson of Muhammad, the prophet. He was killed along with 72 other fighters in what is referred to as a one-sided battle – an uprising to defeat the “tyrannical rule of a powerful Sunni”, Caliph Yazid, in about 680 AD. The massacre was in the town now known as Karbala. According to Muslim experts, Imam Hussein refused to allow Muslims to be dominated by what he claimed was a “corrupt authority”. For many Muslims, this struggle against tyranny is a symbol for freedom fighters, or terrorists, whichever name is cast upon them.

This is also the month of Muharram, according to the Islamic calendar, one of four sacred months in the year. During this month, they honor the Prophet emigration from Mecca to Medina, which is considered the beginning of the Muslim calendar. Ashura is also considered the day that God saved Moses and the Jews from the bondage of Egypt, and Muslims are supposed to pray for the Jews and honor the descendants of those who escaped tyranny in Egypt, lending even more importance to the day and the symbolism being combined with the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in his attempt to reject “bondage” and tyranny.

To honor this most holy of days, there are parades, prayers in the mosques, singing, dancing, and even displays of sword play, reliving the battle Hussein fought theatrically. In some cases, many Shiites honor the day with self-flagellation, though it is frowned upon as “unofficial”. But for all, fasting for one or both of the two day celebration is traditional, as with most holy days in Islam.

The month of Muharram is honored by good deeds and an adherence to non-violence, according to the Qur’an (Koran): “engaging in battle is regarded as unlawful, except in defense against aggression or in retaliation for violations by enemy forces.” So, it is Islamic law that there be no fighting. No killing. But then again, who pays attention to details.

Okay, let’s get it straight. I’m not a Muslim or an expert in any way, shape or form. I got this information from web pages, especially Belief.net which is a fascinating multi-religious informational center with open discussions and lots of resources. What I am about to say may sound like religious bashing, but it is only one perspective spoken by an outsider who still believes in some of her rights to free speech.

Now that the hold harmless and lack-of-liability speech is over, what kind of crock is going on in the Middle East today? Folks, this month is your second most holy time of the year and you are forbidden to be fighting and blowing people up…okay, unless in self-defense. Ah, the loop hole. I get it. Always a loop hole.

But you are killing your own people!

Ah, here comes the other loop hole and the main topic of interest that I would like to address in this confusing issue.

For months now, people have been getting killed in Iraq, a country that should be doing the “do a little dance, make a little love – we’re free tonight” dance. After the first PR move by a few Iraqis who pushed over the statue of Saddam Hussein on international television, probably at the instigation of the US soldiers, there hasn’t been any dancing in the streets. A few yellings and anti-welcome protests, but no cheering, support groups, posters, marches, parties, or even a festival to say “thank you for relieving us from the tyrant!” Holidays and festivals that have been forbidden for more than twenty years are free to happen, and open to all. And at this time, during this particular holiday, couldn’t they reach somewhere into their black hearts and say “hey, the US just saved us from the tyrant who kept us living in fear – a corrupt, evil, tyrannical tyrant” – don’t they see the similarity?

Of course not! They’ve replaced one tyrant with another, as far as most of them are concerned. Besides, it’s the fault of the US that there are terrorist attacks in Iraq. Right? It isn’t Iraqis attacking Iraqis, after all. It’s foreigners attacking Iraqis. It’s the fault of the US that these attacks continue. It is the fault of the US that the borders around Iraq isn’t more secure and protected, stopping these foreigners from coming into the country bringing weapons and violence with them. It’s all the fault of America.

Did I miss something in the translation here? I just want to make sure I get this right. In fact, according to the Iraqi Shiite cleric Sistani, he totally blames US for failing to secure borders.

I’ve been living in a state of terrorism for almost four years now. I feel I have a right – okay, an opinion – about this particular topic. This I know well. Terrorists don’t “come” from somewhere else. And they don’t come alone. They might be from across the border, but they didn’t get familiar with locations, key points, places, and times to do their evil deeds by growing up and living all by their little selves with their little families hundreds or thousands of miles away. They ain’t walking around going “who should I blow up today in this strange and foreign country.” They get help. Suicide bombers and bomb planters don’t walk into their local WalMart and buy a bomb off the shelves. In fact, most people don’t even know how to make a bomb other than mixing ammonia and bleach together or lighting some gasoline in a bottle. The kind of bombs they are using come with an education. People who make the bombs are educated on how to make them, and the people who deliver the bombs to the suicide bombers and bomb planters know how to behave around the bombs and treat them nice and outfit the bombers so they will explode along with the bombs. And the suicide bombers themselves have to be educated on how to do the blowing up, and how not to blow themselves up too soon or too late. All of this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. People help attackers and bombers.

And what is this shit about Iraqis not killing Iraqis? Are you all a bunch of compassionate, supportive, and community loving souls working together for the benefit of everyone involved? Hell, no! Shiites hate Ba’aths who all hate Kurds and those lowly Marsh Arabs who just want to return to their little spot of swamp and be left alone. Everybody hates everybody and everybody has an opinion and their opinion is different from the others and they have the facts, history, and violence to back it up. And the beating goes on. I’m so sick of all this “Iraqis don’t kill Iraqis” crap. Be real.

Just as in Afghanistan where Afghans killed Afghans under Taliban control, each pushing and shoving for his piece of the control pie not caring if they were killing or punishing their own friends, families and neighbors, Iraqis kill Iraqis to get control in their fashion. It’s the tribal mentality at work. Iraqis, look at your former leader and the leaders you’ve had in the past. Hussein killed his people. You all supported and continued to support whatever evil policy he took to kill other Iraqis. He whipped you all up to believe that the Kurds deserved killing. He grabbed Marsh Arabs and destroyed their traditions and lifestyle and made them practically slaves, and you all looked down on them. Shiites were prosecuted frequently as the Ba’aths took more and more control. Saddam made you hate your fellow Iraqi when it pleased him to control you. There are a lot of Iraqis who hate other Iraqis not because they are Iraqis but because they come with subtitles based on beliefs and geographic location. Use whatever excuse you want, it’s the truth and you all know it. Patriotism be damned. You are just looking for someone else to blame.

On a day when you celebrate the martyrdom of a Hussein, you have dozens of new martyrs who died in vane for a cause unknown, but probably called freedom fighting against tyranny. This was no honorable battle in which these martyrs died. They weren’t armed. They weren’t prepared. They were completely defenseless, reveling in their holiest celebrations. And they were struck down by pigs. Brutal, faceless, cold blooded pigs who are probably dancing in their streets, wherever their dark, evil alleys maybe. Their justification is probably religious, a twisted way of honoring the holiday and honoring a martyr who lost the fight. Maybe they wanted to “win” in his honor when he couldn’t.

I pray Iraqis see the light. I do hope they see what brutality was done today. I hope they see the truth behind that brutality. On one of the holiest days in one of the holiest months, where non-violence is the rule of Islamic law, I hope they see that foreigners and the US are not to blame for this. In fact, stop blaming. Imam Hussein, in my imagination culled from the information I read, stood tall and went up against all the odds to defend his beliefs, right or wrong. He went forward with a sword – but in today’s world, the word is the sword. Stand tall and fight against all who do you wrong. Work together to be one people, united by a unified belief system that says violence is not a solution – it is only a procrastination of the truth. Mohammed proclaimed this as one of four months of peace. In a land where violence rules the cultural traditions of the people, Mohammed knew that peace had to be forced upon his people from time to time, to remind them of what they really should be fighting for. If others don’t honor it, let those who truly serve their God honor it, in spite of those who defy the Prophet.

See the hypocrisy in the evil doers action and stand firm for peace. Obey the law and do not retaliate. Research. Find the evil among you which permits these actions to continue. Let everyone become a spy for the good of all of Iraq, turning in those who dare to use violence for their cause. They are the ones who are defying God’s laws. And let the defenseless dead become the true martyrs – honoring their lives with peace and not war.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Would someone out there please check the calendar for me. I know there is a screw up somewhere. Talk to the calendar administration folks covering calendar and seasonal activity in Israel for me, okay. Something is terribly wrong here.

I know it is the first of March. March. Rushes in like a lion or something like that. Right? Well, here in Israel it is July and I would like to officially file a protest.

It began on Friday and continued to get worse all through the weekend. I thought for sure it was global warming on my doorstep yesterday when the Ben Gurion Airport weather monitor gave the temperature at nine in the morning at 28C (freaking hot in Fahrenheit!). The news predicted it would pass 31C but I’m sure it was hotter in many places, like outside my window.

Yes, the shurav is here. Isn’t it a bit early? I hate these hot wave spells in February. It’s really been an incredibly warm winter with only a few days of minor cool. People are still freaked out that I am going barefoot in sandals, but folks, it’s t-shirt weather in January. Oh, I miss cold. I actually had the heat on in the apartment for 20 minutes so far this winter. That was because someone who visited us for 20 minutes had thin skin. It wasn’t on at all last year except to test to see if it worked after they spent half the summer repairing my air conditioning unit. I want to turn on the air conditioner right now.

The trisseem (shutters) are closed up tight and I’m sitting in the dark with all the southern exposure windows shut tight. Brent says it is like a dungeon in here and I need to have my desk lamp on all day long, but that is the only way to avoid the heat and keep my sanity. I wish there was somewhere else in this small apartment to put my office. Of course the only place for a polar bear like me is next to the huge southern windows.

Enough with my constant whining about heat, but after four years of eternal heat – I want some COLD!

– – – – – – – –

For the past few weeks Tel Aviv and much of Israel has been covered from head to toe, from billboard to bus banner with bright white signs and posters featuring bright red bikini panties, juice red strawberries, and shiny red hearts combined with the word “Kotex”. That’s right, the old Kotex of our childhood is making a major comeback and Israel is a prime target. They’ve completely revamped their style, packaging, and ad campaign to be fun and cute. So I fell for it and bought a pack of the new Kotex tampons.

They look clean and fun on the outside, the box all white with red and black print and designs. I opened it up and the tampons are similar to the OB-insert-it-yourself-no-applicator type, which is nice because it minimizes the trash from sanitary products. Each tampon is wrapped tightly in a twist-off plastic wrapper which is clear with bright red strawberries or hearts on each one. Mine came with equal quantities of strawberries and hearts. I laughed at the silliness of them and grabbed a handful and tossed them on the counter by the door to put in my purse for going out later. My friend Maureen came by and noticed them. “Are they candies?” I looked again. They certainly looked like candy, all red and white little plastic wrapped candies. Then I thought about the consequences of having something that looked like candy in the bathroom around children. Could you imagine what would happen if a small child managed to swallow one of those? Yikes!

Maureen told me about her son, when he was very young, finding a stash of tampons in the bathroom. She came home from a quick run to the store to find a row of colorful bottles in the front window, each one a different shape and hosting different colored liquids, and each one filled with an expanded tampon. A bit panicked and confused, she came in and asked him about the bottles. He explained he had found them and read that these things could absorb 10 times its weight in fluids. So he did an experiment and filled each bottle with a different fluid: cooking oil, water, mayonnaise, etc. Then he put one in each bottle to test how much they would absorb. He never asked what they were really for, and Maureen didn’t have the heart to explain their true purpose right then, but did wonder what the neighbors thought seeing all these tampons in a bottle lined up on the front window sill. Obviously, his brilliance was spotted early in life.

Showing these candy tampon packages to Brent that evening, he laughed and agreed they looked like candy. How strange. Then I showed him the instruction MANUAL that came with the package. It appears deceptively small but actually hosts 13 different languages including English, Czech, Russian, Ukranian, Hebrew, Arabic, French, and Greek. As with all over-translated instructions, the English is hysterical.

The first instruction is to wash your hands. Brent and I laughed about that. “Be sure to wash before and after touching!” he warned. Sure it’s a good thing to do, but the simplicity of it cracked us up. The second instruction began with “Pull the withdrawal cord so it hangs down. Check that the strings are knotted together and firmly attached.” Okay, first: the “withdrawal cord”? Brent laughed. “Well, they have to call it something!”

“Yeah, but withdrawal cord? Why not just ‘string’ or ‘cord’? Why call it withdrawal cord?”

“Makes it sound more important and official that way,” Brent is used to funny names for the simplest of things in the aircraft repair business. A rivet is called a “high lock”.

The last part of the instruction about checking the strings really had me laughing. “So they want you to be the quality control officer for them? ‘Hey, check to see if we made this right, okay!’ Honestly!”

Another series of instructions had me on the floor with giggles. “Now find a comfortable position for insertion…inserting as far as possible…if the tampon can no longer be felt, it has been inserted correctly.” Right, how about a comfortable position laying on the floor laughing? Or twisting about in a tiny toilet stall designed for children? That was funny enough, but the idea of pushing it in until you can’t feel it any more – if you are pushing it in with your finger on it, what happens to make you lose contact? “If you are pushing on it and suddenly can’t feel it, where does it go?”

“It gets sucked in by the great vagina sucking monster,” Brent wisely informed me.

You can tell we had a good time with this. I then noticed a very strange comment in the warning: Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) is an extremely rare, but serious disease that can occur in men, women and children, sometimes resulting in death. Some cases of TSS have been associated with the use of tampons.

Okay, I’m just ignorant on this one. I know about TSS. It was the fear of the 1980s when tampons great to overwhelming popularity and young active women would stuff a couple up there to make sure they could go about their activities without the inconvenience of stopping and changing tampons every hour or two, and occasionally one would get lost up there and become infected and gross. It only happened in a few rare cases, but the age of litigation that we currently live in continues to put warnings on products about things which only happen to two people. But I didn’t know that men used tampons. Did you? I’d say that warning definitely implies that some men can get TSS if they use tampons wrongly. Am I missing something?

So we had a lot of laughs about this, as you can tell. Oh, Hey Kotex! I will admit that your ad campaign is delightfully refreshing, even if the darn things look like candy. As for their use…well, your instructions say that “they are designed to expand gently widthways, conforming to your body to give you complete protection.” Mine leaked. And hurt, and were awkward to use. I still have a half a box so I’ll give them another try next month, but so far, I’m only impressed with the ad campaign and not the actual product. Such is life in the world of manmade stuff.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Would someone out there please check the calendar for me. I know there is a screw up somewhere. Talk to the calendar administration folks covering calendar and seasonal activity in Israel for me, okay. Something is terribly wrong here.
I know it is the first of March. March. Rushes in like a lion or something like that. Right? Well, here in Israel it is July and I would like to officially file a protest.
It began on Friday and continued to get worse all through the weekend. I thought for sure it was global warming on my doorstep yesterday when the Ben Gurion Airport weather monitor gave the temperature at nine in the morning at 28C (freaking hot in Fahrenheit!). The news predicted it would pass 31C but I’m sure it was hotter in many places, like outside my window.
Yes, the shurav is here. Isn’t it a bit early? I hate these hot wave spells in February. It’s really been an incredibly warm winter with only a few days of minor cool. People are still freaked out that I am going barefoot in sandals, but folks, it’s t-shirt weather in January. Oh, I miss cold. I actually had the heat on in the apartment for 20 minutes so far this winter. That was because someone who visited us for 20 minutes had thin skin. It wasn’t on at all last year except to test to see if it worked after they spent half the summer repairing my air conditioning unit. I want to turn on the air conditioner right now.
The trisseem (shutters) are closed up tight and I’m sitting in the dark with all the southern exposure windows shut tight. Brent says it is like a dungeon in here and I need to have my desk lamp on all day long, but that is the only way to avoid the heat and keep my sanity. I wish there was somewhere else in this small apartment to put my office. Of course the only place for a polar bear like me is next to the huge southern windows.
Enough with my constant whining about heat, but after four years of eternal heat – I want some COLD!
– – – – – – – –
For the past few weeks Tel Aviv and much of Israel has been covered from head to toe, from billboard to bus banner with bright white signs and posters featuring bright red bikini panties, juice red strawberries, and shiny red hearts combined with the word “Kotex”. That’s right, the old Kotex of our childhood is making a major comeback and Israel is a prime target. They’ve completely revamped their style, packaging, and ad campaign to be fun and cute. So I fell for it and bought a pack of the new Kotex tampons.
They look clean and fun on the outside, the box all white with red and black print and designs. I opened it up and the tampons are similar to the OB-insert-it-yourself-no-applicator type, which is nice because it minimizes the trash from sanitary products. Each tampon is wrapped tightly in a twist-off plastic wrapper which is clear with bright red strawberries or hearts on each one. Mine came with equal quantities of strawberries and hearts. I laughed at the silliness of them and grabbed a handful and tossed them on the counter by the door to put in my purse for going out later. My friend Maureen came by and noticed them. “Are they candies?” I looked again. They certainly looked like candy, all red and white little plastic wrapped candies. Then I thought about the consequences of having something that looked like candy in the bathroom around children. Could you imagine what would happen if a small child managed to swallow one of those? Yikes!
Maureen told me about her son, when he was very young, finding a stash of tampons in the bathroom. She came home from a quick run to the store to find a row of colorful bottles in the front window, each one a different shape and hosting different colored liquids, and each one filled with an expanded tampon. A bit panicked and confused, she came in and asked him about the bottles. He explained he had found them and read that these things could absorb 10 times its weight in fluids. So he did an experiment and filled each bottle with a different fluid: cooking oil, water, mayonnaise, etc. Then he put one in each bottle to test how much they would absorb. He never asked what they were really for, and Maureen didn’t have the heart to explain their true purpose right then, but did wonder what the neighbors thought seeing all these tampons in a bottle lined up on the front window sill. Obviously, his brilliance was spotted early in life.
Showing these candy tampon packages to Brent that evening, he laughed and agreed they looked like candy. How strange. Then I showed him the instruction MANUAL that came with the package. It appears deceptively small but actually hosts 13 different languages including English, Czech, Russian, Ukranian, Hebrew, Arabic, French, and Greek. As with all over-translated instructions, the English is hysterical.
The first instruction is to wash your hands. Brent and I laughed about that. “Be sure to wash before and after touching!” he warned. Sure it’s a good thing to do, but the simplicity of it cracked us up. The second instruction began with “Pull the withdrawal cord so it hangs down. Check that the strings are knotted together and firmly attached.” Okay, first: the “withdrawal cord”? Brent laughed. “Well, they have to call it something!”
“Yeah, but withdrawal cord? Why not just ‘string’ or ‘cord’? Why call it withdrawal cord?”
“Makes it sound more important and official that way,” Brent is used to funny names for the simplest of things in the aircraft repair business. A rivet is called a “high lock”.
The last part of the instruction about checking the strings really had me laughing. “So they want you to be the quality control officer for them? ‘Hey, check to see if we made this right, okay!’ Honestly!”
Another series of instructions had me on the floor with giggles. “Now find a comfortable position for insertion…inserting as far as possible…if the tampon can no longer be felt, it has been inserted correctly.” Right, how about a comfortable position laying on the floor laughing? Or twisting about in a tiny toilet stall designed for children? That was funny enough, but the idea of pushing it in until you can’t feel it any more – if you are pushing it in with your finger on it, what happens to make you lose contact? “If you are pushing on it and suddenly can’t feel it, where does it go?”
“It gets sucked in by the great vagina sucking monster,” Brent wisely informed me.
You can tell we had a good time with this. I then noticed a very strange comment in the warning: Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) is an extremely rare, but serious disease that can occur in men, women and children, sometimes resulting in death. Some cases of TSS have been associated with the use of tampons.
Okay, I’m just ignorant on this one. I know about TSS. It was the fear of the 1980s when tampons great to overwhelming popularity and young active women would stuff a couple up there to make sure they could go about their activities without the inconvenience of stopping and changing tampons every hour or two, and occasionally one would get lost up there and become infected and gross. It only happened in a few rare cases, but the age of litigation that we currently live in continues to put warnings on products about things which only happen to two people. But I didn’t know that men used tampons. Did you? I’d say that warning definitely implies that some men can get TSS if they use tampons wrongly. Am I missing something?
So we had a lot of laughs about this, as you can tell. Oh, Hey Kotex! I will admit that your ad campaign is delightfully refreshing, even if the darn things look like candy. As for their use…well, your instructions say that “they are designed to expand gently widthways, conforming to your body to give you complete protection.” Mine leaked. And hurt, and were awkward to use. I still have a half a box so I’ll give them another try next month, but so far, I’m only impressed with the ad campaign and not the actual product. Such is life in the world of manmade stuff.
Tel Aviv, Israel

The media is amazing. I am constantly surprised at their determination to tie two or more completely unrelated things together in order to sensationalize. It isn’t the tabloid news I’m talking about. I’m also talking about major media networks and associations, ones we trust to bring us uncensored and quality news stories…ha! Bull poop!

The latest in my never-ending source of media amusement is the suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem this morning. Currently the number of dead is seven, but at least ten more are in critical condition with little hope of survival. More than 60 others were wounded. Arafat’s Fatah (Al Aksa Brigade) has proudly claimed responsibilty.

The suicide bombing happened on a bus leaving a fairly rich neighborhood in Jerusalem and happened very near the conference hotel and center where a bunch of Jewish Americans are meeting, and near the Prime Minister and President’s official residences, though they often spend little time actually living there any more.

We’ve all been expecting this. Israel has resumed it’s targeted assassinations against extremists and terrorists and have been moderately successful. This was in response to more suicide bombings, attempted and successful. Actually, more in response to the successful ones. Two weeks ago, another suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem killing 12 and wounding dozens. As Israel moved back into the territories to spoil the terrorist fun, the troupes were attacked and fought back in two different situations, and some of the attackers were killed.

Combined with the recent pressure on Arafat to dig into his finances and the decision to stop all cash payments to the Palestinian Authority by most of the European Union in exchange for automatic bank deposits instead, and the United States stopping their funding of the Palestinian Authority after three US citizens and humanitarian aid workers were murdered by terrorists in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority has refused to track down the killers (though they did put on a show trial against some men who had nothing to do with it and the US was not fooled), Arafat has been in a rage. On February 11, he is reported to have ordered Hamas, Fatah and Arafat’s other terrorist groups to begin an all-out assault on Israel. We’ve all been waiting. Israel has caught many of those attempting, but one got through and more Israelis have died and more Palestinians will die in return.

The media twist? They are blaming the suicide bombing on the security fence. What? That’s right. In the same sentence as they report the suicide bombing of the bus they mention the fence. Why?

Well, first of all, the security fence will be in the news a lot soon because a hearing over the fence is about to play out in the Hague beginning tomorrow. Many Arab countries have been given permission to testify about the security fence in the court while most of Israel’s views, wishes, and legal rights have been completely stifled. Israel has been so frustrated fighting this, it announced that it won’t even appear or participate, though they probably will as time goes on.

It’s all such a joke.

Bush, in his infinite lack of wisdom and foresight about anything foreign, has whined about stopping the security fence. The EU has complained about the fence. Sharon has made his point very clear. No terrorism, no fence. Terrorism=fence. It think that’s pretty clear. Israel is spending massive amounts of money to provide security check points all along the border areas, outside of every town and village within the Palestinain Territories. What harm will a fence do? It will cut down on the manpower needed to patrol these areas, and stop the easy access terrorists have. Sure, it will divide up property, but the Palestinians want their own land, and this is a way of getting a border put in. Land is lost to both sides, especially since the land Israel is giving up belongs to them anyway. Before that it belonged to Jordan. Before that, the English controlled it. Before that, the Turks controlled it. Want me to keep going? Everyone has owned a piece of this place at one time or another.

The whole media seems to be changing their tune from the security fence being a bad idea to the security fence is the reason behind the Intifada. Wait, wasn’t the reason behind the almost four year old Intifada Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount or Al Aksa Mosque in the fall of 2000? Or could it really have been the fact that Arafat had been planning this Intifada since he failed to win support at the Camp David talks earlier in 2000? Oh, no, says the media. It’s because of the fence.

Right. Saudi Arabia is now building a huge security barrier along its border with Yemen to keep out the terrorists flowing back and forth there. The UN is supposed to (and doesn’t do a good job) patrol and protect the security barrier between Israel and Lebanon and no one is whining about that. What about the great barrier between the US and Mexico? The US authorities patrol that heavily, collecting up what illegal immigrants they can and returning them to Mexico on a daily basis, while Mexico officials merely watch. While the border between the US and Canada is fairly open, and in fact unseen in many parts of the border, at key places there are security fences and a “no man’s land” between the two sides. Growing up in Seattle, I crossed that no man’s land many times heading up to visit Vancouver and other great areas up north. No one is complaining about that!

Borders keep the unwanted out and they keep the wanted in. During the Vietnam war, the US patrols watched the borders to keep US citizens inside the country and not avoiding the war draft. Borders in Europe have been known to keep their citizens from fleeing when their government wanted to control them, too. It works both ways.

Countries build borders. That is what they do. If they didn’t, it would be really hard to tell where one starts and the other finishes. So why would the Palestinians be so against the security fence. After all, they actually have no right to the land they are on, and if they want to go back to the “green line” of 1967, they would be Jordan and not whatever they are now. But Jordan refused to take back the land, which left Israel stuck with it.

In an attempt to make peace, they offered the land through a series of agreements called the Olso Peace Accords. If Arafat and his minions had concentrated on turning their area into a country, giving their citizens the right of citizens, instead of constantly turning to violence as an answer to something that doesn’t seem to have a question, Israel would be a very different place. But it isn’t. And since Arafat and the Palestinian terrorist groups don’t want to play nice, Israel is saying that if you want it so bad, we’re going to build a border around you and then you can play in your own sand box. Stay out of ours.

Over and over I keep returning to the sand box theory. When children are playing, and the sand box was a great playing area when I was growing up, only the kids who played well together could play in the sand box. Those who didn’t play nice had to leave the box. Either the other children would push him out or the teachers or parents would move in and order the transgressor to sit and watch, from outside the box. You don’t play nice, get out of the box. Hey, Bush told Saddam he had to get out of the sand box and when he didn’t, Bush pushed him out. There is a lot of pushing people into or out of sand boxes in the world. Israel isn’t alone.

For several years before our arrival here, and for our first year here, in general, everyone played nice. Since the Palestinians couldn’t seem to get a lot of business going in their areas, over 80% of working age Palestinians had jobs inside of the Israel border. They took Israeli money back home to buy their washing machines, televisions, computers, and toys for their children. While a good majority of the workers were admittedly working on construction and agriculture, a lot of them had nice jobs in tourism and shops, and many kinds of businesses. In fact, if I remember my facts right, about 90% of the tourism industry jobs were held by Palestinians. Tourism took a blow not just because of the lack of tourists, but also because of the lack of employees to keep it going. It was a double blow. When the television shows the suffering of Palestinians, they are showing the fact that these people helped to create and support a situation that makes it impossible for them to work, so of course they have no money. Did any of these workers flood the streets complaining to Arafat that his continued support and encouragement of terrorism was hurting their employment record and income? Not a chance. Arafat and his minions make sure to keep quiet anyone who goes against him and his agenda.

So after several years of massive terrorism, Israel is building a fence. It’s about time. So what has the fence got to do with the terrorism? Not a thing. No terrorism, no fence.
So they want to blame Israel for where they are putting the fence. Hey, when you put up walls, everyone is hurt and everyone is protected one way or another. One of Brent’s co-workers, Danny, is struggling with the issue of having a home on the “wrong” side of the soon arriving fence. Coping with the high cost of living in Israel, his family took advantage, as did many, of the good tax breaks and low prices of land near the green line. Now his family home will be inside the wall, separated from Israel. They are trying to sell it, but the price of the house is not even close to the remaining value they owe on the mortgage. What is it like to sell a house that is worth even less than what you paid for it 15 years ago? The government isn’t helping and they encouraged them to move there in the first place. So they are selling at a loss they cannot afford, left with a huge mortgage and the rent or mortgage on the house they will buy to replace it. And they can’t sell their house because no one wants it. They might just have to abandon it when the fence is finished, losing this major family asset. Sure, the same thing is played out on the other side with Palestinian families caught on the Israeli side of the wall. This is what happens when borders are made.

Israel began this morning to dismantle an 8 km part of the wall they put up east of West Bank village of Baqa al Sharkiya Sunday and rebuild it along Green Line outside Israeli village of Baka al Gharbiyeh. This is seen by Israelis that the border is flexible. If you bring enough pressure and facts to bear, it can be changed. The workers beginning the dismantling were greeted at nine this morning with the news of another suicide bombing in Jerusalem…I’m sure they weren’t too happy about taking down the fence.

But the point of my whining blog is not to spout on about who is right or who is wrong, it is to figure out what is wrong with the media that they can’t leave the horror of another terrorism attack against civilians alone. Isn’t that bad enough? They have to bring in an immaterial subject like the security fence as if to justify the terrorist behavior. That is no different than finding it acceptable that the terrorists who attacked the Trade Center watched too much violence on television as children.

What?

Millions upon millions of people grow up watching too much violence on television, and they don’t fly planes into buildings. There is no connection and the fence has nothing to do with the terrorism. There were terrorist attacks in Israel before the fence, during the fence, and there will be terrorism after the fence until those who support and encourage the terrorism are taught that there is nothing to be gained by using violence.

That is the real key to all of this. We keep rewarding the terrorist though agreements, money, peace accords, land, rights, and publicity, which teaches them that violence wins. What is the world doing to stop that lesson?

Tel Aviv, Israel

Just when you think you are safe, your mother gets into the thrill of Instant Messaging once she understands that she can chat for AGES and it will appear on your screen, waiting for you. She can chat all day while I sleep and I can answer her back while she sleeps, owing to the 10 hour time difference. Here is one of our long recent chats, discussing all things wise, wonderful, and world changing…[Note: “Brother” is the name of her cat. I’ll tell you why in another blog someday.]

Never give out your password or credit card number in an instant message conversation.

Ramona says:

It is almost 11. I am ready for bed. I had my teeth cleaned today, bought a light weight down comforter, as Robert loves the down and we have a real heavy one, bought some wonderful new towels, got some neat stuff at a thrift shop, and had dinner with R at Arnies.

Ramona says:

I have to have someone plaster and paint when the place here is dried out and I asked around for recommendations. My new housekeeper said that Nana has a wonderful builder who does everything for her and she swears by him. Julia called Nana and got his name and number: Carl Larson! So I guess he is still kicking. I called him and he is coming over tomorrow. I totally trust him to do the

Ramona says:

work. I would like to open a slider or big winder to the back in that den, but then there is no wall for bed or couch. I want to talk to him about that. Yet I know it doesn’t make much sense to spend extra on this house when we will probably move before long. Lord how I hate to start looking. I can’t imagine finding anything I would like.

Ramona says:

Going to bed. LOVE

Lorelle says:

Hey, back from grocery shopping and trying to fix some lunch. Isn’t that while about Carl? He built your whole house and suffered through the battles with architects, city planning departments and disguntled neighbors and survived to come back to haunt you. Wonderful! He will definitely be great for you cuz he knows you and how you work…you’ll make him crazy again.

Lorelle says:

About the downstairs bedroom. If you put a slider in to the outdoors on the back window – oh, heck, open up the whole deck window and back to the outside, that would be AWESOME with a strong corner support – bet it could be done – you can open out that whole corner. At the top of your hill, if you go up the looping road past the

Lorelle says:

water treatment/container, and then turn up by the railing o the left, at the top there is a wonderful looking atrium greenhouse effect that would be cool for you to have created there. Something like that but with windows that opened up totally so it could be open to the garden and closed up for winter. I bet you would get just enough light from the east to provide a little warmth in there on

Lorelle says:

cool mornings. That would be awesome. With the extra room, or if you just put a slider in the original wall, you can float a small couch that makes into a bed in the middle, facing the garden or the deck. One or two small comfy chairs with a small table and you might move your tea ceremony and games into that room away from the corner by the stove. You could even put another stove in there.

Lorelle says:

That would be a dream room!

Lorelle says:

An atrium window like you have in your bathroom in the lower bathroom would also be great, but that might be stretching it.

Lorelle says:

As for the future, think about this. Making that room more a part of the lower floor could make that the room you spend more time in than upstairs, saving Robert all the trips up and down the stairs. What a wonderful party area with the front room and that room all stretched together with the kitchen as a center point. I like it.

Lorelle says:

You’ve got the whole thing torn up anyway, go for the fun of it all. And then your garden would have more “value” since you would be paying attention to it. Right now, it’s a hidden treasure that is rarely seen and rarely enjoyed. Make it part of the house.

Lorelle says:

So much for my two cents. Open it up!!!!!!!! I’m bigger than you so if we’re calling for a democratic vote, I win! I’ve always hated how that room is shut off from the rest of the house and the garden is so hidden. I would have reversed your whole downstairs to put the kitchen and living space on the back of the house going into the garden and the bedroom and bathroom where the stove is.

Lorelle says:

Much better!

Lorelle says:

Just got off the chat with my friend, Sabiha, and she and Ruth and I are planning to go to Akko (with a stop to visit the caves like we did) on Sunday. Ruth has never been to Akko. That is like saying you have never been to Vancouver, or Mt. Vernon or something. Strange. Anyway, we’ll have lunch in the place you and I ate at and do all that. We might stop by the Bahia Gardens in Haifa,

Lorelle says:

but that might wait as the weather is planning to be gloriously wet. We’ll see.

Lorelle says:

We’ll stop by Ikea on our way up to pick up curtain rods for Ruth’s new curtains. You wouldn’t believe how GORGEOUS this fabric is that Maureen and I found. Totally gorgeous. Antiquey gold radiant peach all textured and wrinkly (vertical wrinkles) like something weathly and rich, with a sheer peach neutral underneath. We’re going to run it from floor to ceiling for height. I might snip off

Lorelle says:

a bit and mail it to you. I have a package I’m sending out to you next week, if I can get to the post office. It’s been ready to go for three weeks, but I’ve been working long hours and not out at reasonable business hours.

Lorelle says:

Anyway…later. To work.

Ramona says:

Hello, I will consider the opening, but also keep strongly considering a move to a rambler or two story. Not so much for the stairs, although that matters, but for the lack of floor space in general. There isn’t room for a large dining room table, always have to eat off laps if we have more than four. And putting a board on and going thru all that is a bother. And we would like more of everything

Ramona says:

The problem is location, location and view. But I haven’t looked around. I really don’t want to built out at Sunnyside. That lot sits so low behind the road that drainage and cars going over the bank are a constant problem. Plus the soil is so bad from draining other peoples land thru it and down. And it was always a rock pile. It sits there and one would think with land scare builders would look

Ramona says:

me up through the tax records but I have only had two calls in all these years.

Ramona says:

Any way, I just got up again thanks to Brother who won’t let me get much past nine or so. Am going to get something to eat and read the paper and be back.

Lorelle says:

Hey, are you there? I missed you by just a couple minutes. I just got back from downstairs at Naomi’s. Put in a wireless computer card so she can hook to our internet for free.

Lorelle says:

With her barely working for pay and Leslie in England for the year, it’s tough financially. She’s supposed to be on hiatus working on a play, but she is actually working at two theatres and teaching to make ends meet. Since she spends so little time on the Internet, we thought she would enjoy being off a straight connecting, saving about $25 to $50 a month here in Israel, and connecting wirelessly to us. When we leave, she should be able to connect to our neighbor who we connect with when there is something wrong with our system. This wireless stuff is amazing!

Lorelle says:

Her mother’s estate is still tied up in the courts. It should be out soon. It was set up not to go into probate or anything, but the banks froze the accounts about a week or so after her death, catching Naomi by serious surprise. She had no idea, since her mother planned this very thoroughly with her, that the banks would just do this on a whim. Her mother had written down and gone through everything, making sure that Naomi or the family didn’t pay for the funeral and burial and all the odds and ends costs associated with death and dying in a hospital. Now Naomi had to pay all of this out of her own pocket, and file court papers and go through

Lorelle says:

a lot of junk to get it opened again, even though she was co-signer on the account. Her mother had it set up so it was a shared account. Ain’t that suckie.

Lorelle says:

I don’t know how American banks are, but here in Israel, they want want want want, and keep keep keep. Sad stuff.

Lorelle says:

Anyway, she has internet and she comes back from her week vacation with Leslie in London tomorrow.

Lorelle says:

Do you want to move further out of the city or stay within Everett?

Lorelle says:

You could always tear the place down and build it right out to the garden, and then put in a rooftop garden with Jacuzzi and all on the roof with a view.

Lorelle says:

Why do you need more room?

Lorelle says:

You could easily put in an elevator on the back stair wall and turn the top floor into a working space and have all the living space in the main room if you opened up that bedroom. You have plenty of STUFF, so get rid of some of it. I’d turn the whole upstairs into a library, take out the bar and all that stuff (a small sink for water would be nice but not essential) and make it a huge working

Lorelle says:

office space up there. Get rid of the TV and put in two desks with a screen or something, or lots of plants. Get rid of all the clothing and put all the computer shit in the closet with wireless network and a computer server (your desktop and get you a new laptop, too. Then turn the first floor into the huge dream garden room. What an entertainment center that would be.

Lorelle says:

Summer parties would just move into the garden area. At night it would be lovely with candles or torches, small lights along the stones and deck. No separation between house and garden. And people wouldn’t have to go into your bedroom bathroom to go to the toilet during a party, a pain by the way.

Lorelle says:

Oh, dreaming and thinking for you.

Lorelle says:

I’m going to work for just a few more minutes as it is just past 10 at night and I have another early morning. Going to Ida’s for a massage. This Traeger method is really amazing over time. The first time it felt so strange, but now I really depend upon it to unlock my joints. I have a lot of pain over the past few months in my right hip and down my leg. Found I was

Lorelle says:

sitting with my legs crossed or crossed and pulled way back under my chair, resting on one toe with a lot of straining pressure on the knee. So my knee hurts and it hurts and pulls all the way to my hip.

Lorelle says:

Pretty dumb stuff, but I figured it out. I have a foot rest but I forget to use it. I will sit on my leg, too, which is just as bad. I now have a pillow on the foot rest to lift it up higher, but I need to do something else. I wanted to go away this weekend, but I’m so close to done on the web page, so we’ll stay in.

Lorelle says:

Brent can help me figure something out for my legs then.

Lorelle says:

So I’m going to work and hang for another 20 minutes or so if you come on and then back to bed….I’ll dream of totally redesigning your house.

Lorelle says:

Oh, they have some absolutely amazing tables now that are really simple and nice and they are small in general and then swing and move to open up to huge. We saw a lovely glass one that looked plain until you looked really closely that opened up to sit something like 10 or 12 people but when small was enough for four or six, bigger than yours but not that much bigger.

Lorelle says:

The room now would accommodate a larger table, with folding chairs in storage, if it shrank.

Lorelle says:

So that’s what I’ll dream about tonight…..

Lorelle says:

Okay, it is 11pm and I’m off to bed, totally exhausted. Love love love love love love love loveyououououououo

Ramona says:

I imagine you are sound asleep now. At least I hope so. My you paint a pretty picture about the house. Actually that room won’t even allow the couch to open up if it faces toward the bathroom. I forget the size, maybe ten x twelve or so. And I doubt I could build on as I think I maxed out the allowable footprint. Besides, this house is slowly slipping down the hill. That isn’t a joke. That year

Ramona says:

we had such a long wet season I dipped about 1 ½ inches and had to redo doors. Anyway it is kind of fun to go into a new place. Just imagining – not high on priority now, But a window at least in that back wall would be nice. But another security issue. But then so is the glass door.

Ramona says:

Love and hugs

Ramona says:

interestingly the drain for the upstairs bath runs right down the wall in the den (news after Carl Larson’s visit) and so without rerouting it – $900 if Carl does it and hours if Robert does it – so that means that a slider of any normal size and placement would not fit. So best guess is to put in two high windows (high enough to let couch back fit under, or a bed. I think that would be pretty

Ramona says:

nice. I thought about the floating couch but the room is too small. It would make a big difference just to be able to look out the back, except nobody goes in there. Except for the kids no one uses it. And at a party, well I have few parties and you can’t see anything at night anyway. I agree that a big door/slider would be great. Could be french doors opening out but then the room becomes a hall

Ramona says:

I don’t know, wish Mary Lu was here. Even Carl said, “Where is she when we need her, she would help with the decision in a minute”

Ramona says:

Well, R should be heading home shortly for dinner. I have everything ready to start cooking. Love and hugs

Ramona says:

ramona invited you to start Solitaire Showdown, which requires the latest version of MSN Messenger. You can download the latest version at http://g.msn.com/5meen_us/122.

Ramona says:

I just clicked on the solitaire to see what it was. It says you are using an old version of messenger. Update my love

Ramona says:

Dona wants to know if you received books she sent.

Lorelle says:

Up early with some diarrhea. Tired. Only a few hours of sleep. Last couple of days have been really stressful so I think that’s my problem.

Lorelle says:

Didn’t Dona get my email? I’ll have to check and resend. The books were wonderful. Maybe I’ll call her.

Ramona says:

She left some time today – she said Wednesday – to visit a friend, Judy, in Florida I think

Lorelle says:

I know I’m tired and worn out but this web page thing takes up every moment. I wish I could explain how much I enjoy doing it. Really do. It makes me feel so productive and useful, something I needed right now. Working on articles thrill me more than the book, which is why I drag my feet so much about the books.

Lorelle says:

Oh, you’re there!

Ramona says:

Yep I am here

Ramona says:

I am washed out, though. Trying to get my desk cleared off so I can write bills tomorrow

Lorelle says:

I might have to run to the toilet in a few minutes, so forgive me. It’s not as bad as yesterday.

Ramona says:

Robert is studying his course. Thank G he has all day and evening Friday, all Saturday and Sunday and he is done.

Ramona says:

I have had the runs, too. Not so much today

Lorelle says:

Brent paid bills night before last which started a bit of a whine that got me really upset, and that sets off my digestive system…it’s just a normal thing that happens every so often. It sets things off, but it isn’t the money, it’s always something else.

Lorelle says:

I found out that the something else is job related, as usual.

Lorelle says:

Seems that his boss, a guy he really adores but can’t stand to work with, has been taken out of the job loop because he is too slow and they are running way behind. Brent is nervous about his job security waiting for the dust to settle with all the changes.

Ramona says:

Robert is miserable in his job right now, but I think that has been going on for awhile. He is too smart for the managers to deal with.

Lorelle says:

This caused Brent a lot of stress and uncertainty for two days (bill paying days) until he figured out that it actually was for the better and the new guy in charge is one of his best buds there. Really supportive and fighting to keep Brent around. That’s nice and he felt so much better last night, he spoiled me terrible to make up for the night of whining ugh before.

Lorelle says:

Typical. Smart men with ignorant bosses.

Lorelle says:

So why do you have the runs.

Ramona says:

Perhaps getting off the meds for my back pain that constipated me?

Lorelle says:

Could be. Meds are ugh.

Lorelle says:

Maureen had the runs for a day a couple days ago so I told her it was contagious.

Lorelle says:

She has been going through some strange stuff with anemia and then both of us on that horrible augmentum antibiotic from the cat bites (still have funny keloids (scars) that are bumps on my thumb and it aches deep in the joint, it was really deep – and she is still healing from her worse wounds) = so she started scoring her poops.

Lorelle says:

I know you hate this but it is really funny. For her, it is a measurement of satisfaction. 1-10 scale with 10 being a perfectly satisfying, no pain, no pressure poop. I told this to Brent while I was glued to the toilet the other night and he told me that we needed to change it

Ramona says:

Mercy!! Old Brother rules the house here. Robert is to get up at 6 a.m. and I am to get up at 9 a.m. and we are to go to bed by ten or he starts in meowing. I am sure you still miss your monster cat.

Lorelle says:

to the Sieger Scale (her last name) like the Ricter Scale with a 0-10 scale with 5 as a perfect poop and 0 to 1 as runs and 10 as constipation.

Lorelle says:

Maureen said hers was based upon satisfaction and I told her that Brent’s was based upon quality.

Lorelle says:

Too funny!

Ramona says:

I haven’t had a perfect poop for years

Ramona says:

Do you get a picture with my message?

Lorelle says:

At 70 years old, Maureen could outpace YOU and ME and a few others put together. She does pilates two to four times a week, walks the equivalent from your house to the Lowes or the highway on Pacific and back three times a week with me (thought not as much lately due to poop problems for both of us) and usually has appointments for lunch and dinner every day with friends, book club, hikes, and so many things I can hardly keep up.

Lorelle says:

Picture?

Lorelle says:

In email or this program?

Ramona says:

Here – Robert is in bed now. I’m still on the computer working and he’s snoring beside me as I type to you on his laptop.

Lorelle says:

But mother, you are now married to a perfect poop.

Lorelle says:

HE HE HE HE HEH

Ramona says:

Oh Funny

Lorelle says:

No pic.

Ramona says:

There is a little box to the right inside the messenger thing right next to the Send that has a choice of picture displays but although I clicked on it evidently it doesn’t perform

Ramona says:

Well, I shall let you get to work and I shall give it up in a minute or two. Love and hugs

Lorelle says:

to toilet!

Ramona says:

OK enjoy

Lorelle says:

On Brent’s scale it was a 2 – on Maureens a 1

Lorelle says:

No enjoying

Lorelle says:

Sorry about the delay. Well, time for you to be in bed and time for me to get to work. Go to sleep mother!

Ramona says:

I be good girl and go to sleep, in a few minutes. Miss you terrible. Luv luv luv luv luv luv and hugs!

Lorelle
Online Conversation between Tel Aviv, Israel and Seattle, Washington

I am eternally fascinated by nature’s wonders. The evolution of an “eye” on the wing of a butterfly. The antics of ants as they scurry around their ant hill, determined to get to and from wherever they are going. Brent and I are obsessed with pikas, tiny marvelous creatures of the high mountain talus, who never hibernate and cleverly collect leaves and grasses to build a haystack during the summer to preserve food for year around. Even a slug fascinates me as it slowly moves, contemplating what thoughts it may have as it slimes its way across the sidewalk in search of plants. But the one creature that overwhelms, confuses, dazzles, and bewilders me will always be the species of homo sapiens.

What incredible creatures we are, and what endless creative ways we have of manipulating each other…let me get to the story. It’s a good one.

Located less than an hour south of Tel Aviv is a small kibbutz just outside of Rehovot. It is almost lost among the new towering office buildings and shopping malls, but if you look closely, it sits atop one of the few hills found west of the Judean Mountains. Today it goes by several names, Kibbutzim Hill and the Ayalon Institute, but most people know it now not for its name but for the legacy of participating in the survival of the state of Israel.

Some friends and I traveled there for a tour of this unique facility. When we arrived, we found a quiet community and typical kibbutz-style area. Some large communal service and administrative buildings were in the front, and edging outwards behind them were classrooms, workshops, and eventually some small cottage-style houses. The grounds were tailored with trees and flowers, obviously well cared for. Not knowing quite what to expect, we were herded into a small building behind the offices that was obviously a museum now. It was once an active laundry. Sitting at the sewing machine and over by the ancient laundry machines were flat black and white life-size photographs of workers wearing clothing styles and hair-dos from the early 1940s. A young man stepped forward to introduce himself and tell us about what we were about to see.

He began with a short history of what life was like as the Jewish residents and immigrants to the British ruled Palestine prepared themselves for the war they knew was coming between them, the British, and the Arabs. Even in the 1930s, they were preparing themselves for the future. World War II was on the horizon, and they knew Jews were fleeing Europe and needed somewhere to go, even though the British tried to stop the immigration. Even then they knew they had to arm themselves. They realized that access to weapons were not so much a problem as was the supply of bullets. An empty gun doesn’t remain a threat for very long. They needed to find a way to manufacture the bullets.

Our guide spoke of this desperate need for self-security and the need for creative planning and techniques to keep their efforts secret. Under British rule, if a Jew was caught with a weapon in his or her possession, it could mean imprisonment at the least, and death more often. In spite of all these risks, the Hagganah, the semi-legitimate security force, knew it had to do something rash.

He waved his hand around the small laundry room as I wondered how anyone could tolerate working in the extreme heat from the washing machines inside and the constant desert conditions outside. Miserable. And I wondered what a laundry had to do with the making of bullets. The young man spoke of the long hours, from early morning to late afternoon, they would work cleaning the clothing of the towns folk and the British soliders, no one ever knowing, even many of those who came to live on the kibbutz, that underneath this very hill lay a military secret.

He reached around the corner of a shelf and flipped a hidden switch. Before our eyes, and with the appropriate gasps, we watched a giant tarnished tin washing machine tub swing away from its cement foundation to reveal a door in the floor, going down.

This, he pointed down into the darkness down a metal ladder, was the hidden bullet factory. He explained how the chimney of the laundry vented the heat from the washing machines and also housed a second hidden chimney that allowed the air to flow into the underground factory. A second chimney was built into the chimney across the way in the bakery, visible through the windows of the laundry to the south. Most of the workers came in before the laundry opened and went underground and the laundry machine was swung closed, not to open until after the laundry closed in the evening before dinner. Once you went down, you stayed there all day for the laundry was the main visible income for the kibbutz.

The underground factory was so secret, many of those working in the laundry had no idea what was underneath them. He told us of one man whose wife suspected him of fooling around with another woman. He couldn’t tell her. She tried following him and when she lost track of him, she decided he was with the “other woman”. After a year of this, she divorced him. Still, he couldn’t tell her. Brothers couldn’t tell sisters, and mothers couldn’t tell their children. The workers in the underground factory were pledged to lead a secret life, separate from their “real lives” above ground. They had carefully crafted excuses to justify their “absence” and many in on the secret worked above ground in the agricultural production covering for their underground buddies. The risk was too great and only a chosen few could know as it would mean the death of all of them if they were caught.

We toured the rest of the facilities as our guide explained the history behind – or should I say “beneath” – the secret in the hill.

At the start of World War II, old machines for making bullets were purchased and sneaked into the country. The problem was finding a place to manufacture the bullets. After much debate, the Hagganah decided to build a secret underground facility inside the hill near Rehovot.

Why this hill? Well, the town of Rehovot was nearby, as were Arab villages. Next door was a huge British camp. What could be less likely to attract attention than a bullet manufacturing plant in the heart of the enemy?

The announcement came that a new kibbutz was to be built atop the hill to provide baking and commerical laundry services as well as basic agriculture to the surrounding communities and military camp. They found a determined and loyal group preparing to create a kibbutz elsewhere and convinced them to delay their plans in exchange for managing this special kibbutz near Rehovot. After much debate, they agreed, understanding that they would have to live under intense stress and danger for an unknown length of time for the security of the future nation.

Once the decision was made, things happened incredibly fast. Moving construction equipment to the top of the hill, they put up protective burlap and canvas barriers to shield the activity, claiming it was an attempt to suppress the noise of the construction and minimize the dust from the construction of the laundry and bakery. Within 22 days they dug a pit with bulldozers that was 8 meters deep, 8 meters across and 33 meters long. The walls and ceiling were made of concrete a half meter thick and contained insulation rooms into which they put mattress and insulation to prevent the sound of the machines from coming through. Atop all of this, they covered it with asphalt and a 3 1/2 meter high layer of dirt. Then they built a small laundry room over one end and a bakery over the other, with an open patio for hanging laundry to dry between the two buildings.

In an ingenious design, the laundry and the bakery served to not only camouflage the secret underground factory, but the laundry machines went on all day long, masking the noise from the machines underground, and the bakery worked during the night when the machines were not working so the heat from the ovens wouldn’t affect the underground workers.

The ten ton oven could be moved to provide a wide opening, but during the several years of operation, it was only opened three times to allow equipment to be transferred. It would take three hours to quietly roll the huge baking ovens to the side to access the factory below, and then three hours to roll it back in place. The risk of exposure during these openings was very great.

Working underground all day long under florescent lights and moderate ventilation took its toll on the 45 or so young men and women workers. The doctors of the Hagganah realized this early on and developed techniques to maintain the health and fitness of the workers. When you think of kibbutz members working on an agricultural farm, you don’t picture pale weak folks but husky, suntanned workers. They installed sun lamps with orders for the wokers to sit under them during their breaks. The doctors prescribed rich food, drinking lots of milk, castor oil, and a solid regime of vitamins and exercise. (In the historical notes, the former secret workers admitted to following the health regime to the letter – except for the castor oil!)

The work inside was hot and tiring, manufacturing 14,000 bullets a day at their peak. Men and women equally had to take their turn on the machines. But they did find that the men were a bit too clumsy and thick fingered to handle the dangerous hand filling and compression of the gunpowder into the bullets, so women were assigned this cautious task, working at incredible high speeds to keep up the pace to completion.

They even had a testing “range” under the laundry. Using a metal tube, they were able to suppress the sound of the test fired bullets, testing one every few batches, in effect creating one of the earliest “silencers” for guns. In total, it is estimated that the secret factory produced about 2.2 million bullets during its three year run.

The secret was so well kept, the tour guide explained, that only once was it discovered accidently by a laundry worker. The woman whose turn it was to supervise the laundry, locking the door and making sure the place was cleared for the underground workers to come and go, forgot to lock the door once. Another laundry worker returned to pick up something she had forgotten and found the door open. She went inside and was getting her things when the giant laundry machine swung aside and a head popped out from underneath. She screamed and fainted with shock. They weren’t sure what to do but eventually convinced her that she must have hit her head or something and was dreaming. It took some work but she never suspected and the secret was kept.

Each evening, before leaving the plant, everyone was inspected for bits of copper on their shoes, clothing and in their hair, careful not to allow a clue out.

The Palmachk, a “division” of the Hagganah which accepted violent action as a solution, was planning to blow up the train loaded with British soliders traveling from the British camp to Tel Aviv. The attack was to happen outside of Rehovot just after the soldiers boarded the train. The Hagganah did what they could to convince the Palmachk to change the location without revealing the bullet factory but to no avail. So they raced to the kibbutz and warned the secret workers to be ready. They rounded up white shirts for everyone and put Red Cross arm bands on, and waited by their vehicles. When the first sound of explosions were heard, they raced in their vehicles to the site of the wrecked train and pitched in to save as many soldiers and others as possible. Since they were working long hours doing humanitarian rescue, how could the British suspect them of being part of the attack? Once again, they slipped through without attracting attention to their activities.

Keeping the manufacture of the bullets secret was one thing, but getting them out of the kibbutz without getting caught took even more ingenious methods. First they used large milk tins with the bottom area sealed off to carry the bullets. But they were too heavy. It was too easy to tell which had bullets and which had milk. They tried all sorts of ideas until they finally came up with the most outrageous and unbelievable solution that worked the best.

A gas tanker truck came to the kibbutz once a day to fill the fuel tanks for the laundry, bakery, and agricultural machines. It usually arrived in the middle of the night when most people slept. They rigged a sealed steal box inside of the fuel tank with a secret access compartment underneath. They could easily slip the boxes of bullets into the compartment for the delivery, and copper and parts were brought back in upon arrival. Who would have ever suspected thousands of bullets stuffed inside the most dangerous place for explosives – a fuel tanker? Imagine the explosion if that truck had been hit?

This isn’t the stuff of movies and James Bond or Robert Ludlum. This is the stuff of creative and motivated people determined to succeed against overwhelming odds, and beating those odds by out-thinking their opponents and taking risks that wiser people would shy from.

In 1948, towards the end of the War of Independence, the secret was still kept, but the equipment was moved to a new larger and less secretive plant in Tel Aviv. In the summer of 1949, the kibbutz members who gave up their dreams to work in the factory were given their own kibbutz location, the prized spot along the sea that is now Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael.

Even though the factory was abandoned, the secret remained, coming into use from time to time as a security research or control facility for the government. Even in 1963, the secret was kept when the Weizman Institute used the hill above ground for some of their scientific research, never knowing what lay underneath. In 1987, the Ayalon Institute, or “secret in the hill” was declared a national site and made into a museum, and the story was finally able to be completely told.

Information about the Ayalon Institute Museum

To visit the museum, call ahead for reservations at 972-(0)8-940-6552. Be sure and get very specific instructions and a map faxed or emailed to you when you confirm your reservations.

• Gems in Israel: Ayalon Institute Museum
• March of the Living on Tour in Israel with Photos of the Museum
• Sites [in Israel] which tell the story of the building of Israel
• Up top: a (fake) kibbutz; 12 feet below: a bullet factory [Note: Article at the bottom of the page]
• Information about the history of the surrounding area of Ashkelon and Rehovot
• Hawaii Reporter Commentary on the Secret of the Hill

Tel Aviv, Israel