Quill, Bee Eater and Acorn Art

We went to the Jerusalem Botanical Garden today. It is a little bit of the poor cousin to the Zoo. It has a similar layout, being stretched out in the bed of a wadi but it seems to have had a harder time attracting donors. Rhinos are a sexier sell than succulents. Apparently, everybody wants their name on an elephant (or will settle for a tapir) but you didn't see a lot of signs saying "the Peter and Florence Rosenblatt Walnut Tree." The place looked frizzled and neglected. There were a lot of birds and apparently nearby is the Jerusalem Bird Observatory station. I saw a pair of bee-eaters which are very pretty little birds (the males, the females are pretty plain Jane). They look like hummingbirds. I even saw one grab a bug. We also saw jays of some description and maybe a hoopoe, Israel's recently elected national bird (didn't get a good look). Benjamin found a porcupine quill which is pretty cool. Ariela drew faces on acorns. I was on the lookout for a cinnamon tree. There is a cinnamon tree in a garden in Jerusalem in this book we read to Benjy and I am longing to see one, but if the JBG has one I didn't find it. I did see a walnut and pistachio (neither are bearing fruit right now).
And I know I promised I was done, but I saw it. The BAD PLANT, the Colossal Scotch Hogbroom.
Here is a picture of me with the final thing ready to spray evil poison and the horribly phallic shoot at the left. I forgot my protective eyewear at home so I couldn't pull it up. It turns out it is the flower of an agave (those big aloe-y looking things). I don't know if it shoots toxic acid but I did get a nasty poke from the agaves themselves.
Benjy has been singing Tree Hugger by Antsy Pants from the Juno soundtrack ("In the sea there was a fish, a fish that had a secret wish..."). I think we may have to record it. I have visions of translating it into Hebrew, maybe getting somebody to do it into Arabic and then singing it with lots of kids. Doves will fly over head. Peace will break out all over.
Tonight is Rosh Hashanah. I feel like I should be cooking and cleaning like a crazy person but we are invited out for every meal! Booyakasha! Have a happy 5769 everybody (to paraphraze Prince we're gonna party like it's Tishsat!!!).

The Burning Bush: Final Chapter

From my mother re: the very bad plant and I promise this will be the last of my meanderings about the evil plant.

"Your imagination/memory mixed two stories of botanical menace. Now
that I think about it, you were exposed to a lot of herbicidal
depravity in your youth Here in the Pacific Northwest we struggle
with controlling both hogweed and scotch broom. See
http://www.efn.org/~ipmpa/Noxbroom.html for the scotch broom
shooting it's seed . I did spend a quiet August afternoon by the
Fraser in the middle of an exploding the broom seed patch.
Impressive."

So clearly what we are dealing with here in the Holy Land is Titanic Hogbroom, the evil step-sister or primal ancestor or the mother of all exploding, poisonous plants.

In other news, I survived my first experience driving in Israel. More Israelis have been killed in traffic accidents than in war or terrorist attacks. We rented a car and drove to Netanya. It was great and the boys had to be surgically removed from the water at the end of each day. It was bath water temperature, and really clear, not like Canadian beaches where you hear the yelps of flash frozen bathers like seagulls. Benjy's Hebrew will soon outstrip mine. Lev is evenhandedly resistant to Arabic and Hebrew, though he knows the word for apple in Hebrew.

Finally, as Rosh Hashanah is approaching and for those of you who enjoy Magic: the Gathering a guy named Alex has put together some mock cards on a biblical theme. They are very good. Over and out.

Evil Plant Identified. We Ask "Is Phil Collins Responsible?!"

From Amy re: the evil plants "I am trying to figure out how to post on the blog but haven't got
there yet. Meanwhile ...it's hogweed
also known as heracleum mantegazzianum.

From wikipedia
In 1971, the rock band Genesis included a song entitled "The Return
of the Giant Hogweed" on their album Nursery Cryme, a tale of
botanical menace and herbicidal depravity.

Sounds like your kind of thing!!!"

Thanks so much and no problem about the posting. The Deep Bath is full service operation.

Here's a picture that accompanies this warning from the Massachusetts Poisonous Plants Media Outreach & Education Page

"Hogweed is a public health hazard. Its clear, watery sap has toxins that cause photo-dermatitis. Skin contact followed by exposure to sunlight produces painful, burning blisters that may develop into purplish or blackened scars. Contact with the eyes can cause temporary or permanent blindness." (my emphasis)

Holy smokes! Did I say it was an evil plant?! Somebody tell that man to get away from that thing! It doesn't say anything on the Mass. Evil Plants Department page about it exploding which, while not technically about poison, you would think "it explodes" is important information for people going out to pull this stuff up. But, Mother, I seem to remember you telling me about them exploding. Am I imagining that?

Anyway I am not sure that the plants I saw pointing menacingly at the Old City are heracleum mantegazzianum. They sure look similar but the ones in Jerusalem are way gianter. The ones I saw are like Monster Ultra Giant Hogweed (recorded by Yes, on their album Menacing Sprouts). But the Mass. Poison Plant People do say that its origins are in CENTRAL ASIA (cue the scary music).

What Dafuk?!

Sorry I haven't posted as much as I might have the last little while. I have been playing Battalion: Nemesis a little obsessively in the evenings when I usually blog. The boys are doing well in school. Benjy is taking a lot of extra pull-out Hebrew classes which makes his days less boring and his Hebrew is flying ahead by leaps and bounds.

I had a sort of weird experience the other day which I think is indicative of a frightening condition of my brain. I have lived with this oddity most of life but got such a stark example of it that it came into focus as never before. To wit, I think my imagination overpowers my other brain functions sometimes to the point that it actually makes me dumber. I hear people talk about the pliability of memory, like in witnesses to crime for example and I always think “Yeah its true. Other people do have such terrible memories.”

Ariela and I have been watching an Israeli TV show – Ad Hahatunah (Until the Wedding) -- on the computer. The excuse is that we are practising our Hebrew, though any non-Hebrew speakers out there, I'm sure you can tune in and get about 75% from context and the good looking Israeli people in their ridiculously nice homes will carry the other 25% for you. Anyway, we came across a good piece of Israeli slang the other night when the traitorous, ethereal Ayah, says to loyal and dogged Ran “ha-im atah dafuk?!” Dafuk basically means stupid so the previous example might mean “What are you? Stupid?” (It comes from the root meaning 'knock' or 'bang' so it might be translated, “Were you banged on the head as a child?!” It is especially fun for English speakers because it sounds like something Joe Pesci might say. “Da-fuk? What d'ya t'ink? You t'ink I'm da-fuk?! Fugettaboutit.”)

I felt good that I recognized the word. I decided later to look it up because I wanted to know where it came from. I was surprised to see that it was not dafuk as I had always thought but it was actually dafuch. Not a big difference but enough that it surprised me. Shortly afterwards, I mentioned this to a Hebrew speaker who said categorically that it was dafuk. But I politely stuck to my guns. After all, I had just looked it up not two days before. I had even been surprised because it was contrary to what I expected to find in the dictionary. I was convinced – I mean 100% certain, like “Yeah-That's-The-Guy-I-Saw-Him-Pull-The-Trigger” certain -- and that this Hebrew speaker was wrong. Later I went to the dictionary to check and somebody had changed the letters in the dictionary back so that now it said DAFUK!!! The point is that either there are malicious gnomes that screw around with my Hebrew-English dictionary just to make learning the language harder (a possibility I haven't ruled out) or my imagination renders the rest of my brain – the parts that control memory, good judgment, probably fine motor control as well -- it renders them, well, dafuk.

Plants attack the Holy City and Tolerant Cemetery

This is a little assignment for my mother, a further consideration of the flora of Jerusalem in addition to being a standard blog entry. (She has been a good resource, having sent me the sending me the link for the Jerusalem Botanical Garden) As I was walking through the park on the way to Lev's daycare today, we saw what Lev calls the alien plants which is a very good description of them since they look like something you'd see on Mars. These are two giant (probably 5 – 6 meters or fifteen to twenty feet?) high things that look sort of like giant caraway pants, the central stalk probably six or eight inches in diameter, with a thin upreaching crown. They are in the amidst of aloes that are themselves as tall as my head. Now – and this is where you come in, AMY -- these giant alien plants remind me of the brief glimpse I had of some weeds I saw at your co-op, which if I am not mistaken you told me are highly invasive, EXPLODE when you try to cut them and spew some kind of CORROSIVE ACID? Am I crazy? Do I remember aright? I am deeply concerned. Of course in Israel/Palestine one is always worried that the end of the world will come at the end of a warhead. People are probably not sufficiently attuned to the possibility that plants may be working to destroy us. I am not kidding when I say that these things -- which dwarf the ones I saw in Vancouver -- are aimed right at the heart of the Old City. I will try to get a picture, but mother I would be grateful if you would corroborate about those weird plants you guys had out by the rail-road tracks.

And in other strange Jerusalem news I walked through the Mamilla cemetery yesterday. Of course, I didn't know it was the Mamilla cemetery because there is no way to figure that out from anything so pedestrian as a sign. It's not really indicated on our maps of the city either. And you sort of can't figure out that its a cemetery either unless you really poke around. It is part garbage can, with trash swirling everywhere and part archaeological ruin. If you really take a look and stroll between the high weeds then you start to see that the old stones vaguely look like grave markers. Almost none have inscriptions that I could spot. There is one pretty mausoleum that has stood up to time.

Mamilla was a mixed Arab and Jewish neighbourhood until independence and the war when it was largely abandoned by both groups and shelled heavily, standing as it did on the border between the two halves of the city. The whole area lay largely underdeveloped, poor and run down after that. Now it is one of the hottest sights for development in the real estate hungry city. I think I read that an apprtment in Mamilla sold for 9 million dollars recently.

One of the last undeveloped spots is the old Muslim cemetery which I had stumbled on. Part of it was excavated in 1964 to build Independence Park and at that time there was some kind of permission given by Muslim religious authorities for development and even back in the Mandate period it seems that the Mufti of Jerusalem had said the cemetery had lost its sanctity although all of this is of course in dispute now. Why in dispute? Because the Simon Weisenthal foundation was given the green light by the city to develop on part of the remaining un-excavated land to build a Frank Gehry-designed Museum of Tolerance there. The museum plan is on hold while everybody has a kick at the can about the cemetery's status as Muslim holy site and/or area of archaeological significance. While the museum has stuck to its guns, mustering all sorts of arguments why it is okay for them to build there, I am guessing that somebody at Tolerance HQ was taken out back and given a good spanking, if not for the bad PR, at least for the millions and millions of dollars they have lost waiting for the whole thing to go through.

Meanwhile the cemetery is a weed-farm in the middle of the city. It is, according to one web site, a big spot for gay men to cruise. The waaqf which is responsible for Muslim religious sites in Jerusalem says that it is not allowed to operate in Western Jerusalem so they can't do anything to care for it. I have to say I kind of like it the way it is, a complete derelict surprise in the middle of the busy high-rising city, though I suppose leaving it as it is would satisfy nobody, not land hungry developers, not curious archeologists, not angry Palestinian protesters. No one except me.

The Art of Shakshukah

I went to Tmol Shilshom today, a Jerusalem cafe and literary hangout. They have a picture on the wall of Yehudah Amichai reading, books along the walls, beautiful old tables. I hadn't eaten anything so I ordered shakshukah, pached eggs in tomato sauce, with eggplant and goatcheese, spicy, for breakfast. The waitress put a paper placemat down on the table and I looked at it and laughed. It had a short story on it by Etgar Keret. It said that it was written specially for Tmol Shilshom. I love Etgar Keret, having read a collection in English called the Nimrod Flipout, a gift from my gis, Menachem. It was the quest for Etgar Keret that had lead to my conversation with opinionated owner of Jordan Books (another post). Anyway, Keret's stories are especially suited for placemats mostly because they are so short, microfiction they are sometimes called. My shakshouka came when I was about a third of the way through the story (a story about, it turns out, a man named Etgar and his mother who owns a restaurant). I told the waitress that I was sorry to put shakshukah on literature, and she promised me that I could have another placemat when I was done. The shakshoukah was fantastic but of course it is messy and it got all over Etgar Keret's story.
I took the opportunity to tell the waitress, in my broken Hebrew, the story that I heard Etgar Keret tell about the experience of writing his first story. He wrote it during his army service in a bunker under the ground when he was all alone for forty eight hours with nothing to do but sit at a computer. When he emerged he had leave so he took the story and went to his brother's appartment. It was six in the morning so his brother was just waking up and maybe wasn;t too thrilled to see Etgar, but he agreed to come down and meet him, because he needed to walk his dog. Etgar showed his brother the story. His brother read it and said. "Hey, Etgar, this is really quite good. Do you have another copy."
"Yeah" said Etgar.
"Great," said his brother who leaned over and picked up a smoking dog turd with the story and threw it in the garbage.
"So you see," I told the waitress, "I feel bad about messing up his art."
"But he knew exactly what it was for when he wrote it," she said.
Good point.

Here's the author pic from the menu.
Can't find an artist credit.

Jerusalem: City of Peace

I like working in the apartment. Its cheaper than buying a coffee out and right now with the heat still up there its nice not to have to schlep a laptop around. The apartment is cool and peaceful. Until 10:00. Then, everyday, the daycare across the alley has, as a regular programmed activity, Screaming in the Yard for about an hour or an hour and a half. This is what I hear. Mind you I am sure the daycare teachers need to get outside or they would go crazy. The teachers sound very patient. I know after just an hour of it my nerves are shredded.

Fauna and a Flower Question

A week or so ago I mentioned the various flowers that were blooming around our part of Jerusalem. I really like this one (photo courtesy of Ariela) but don't know it's name. PLEASE HELP.
Now for the wild fauna rundown; ferule cats which look very hard and thoughtful, doves and magpies (I think, big crow-like critters with white and grey and black) lizards -- big and small -- a fat spider on a stone wall that looked like a diminutive tarantula which freaked out Ariela (and me if we are being honest). The Eisenberg girls found a dead snake in the park which they showed me on a stick and then returned to its natural habitat. They promised to keep me updated on its progress. There are many little dogs and a few big shaggy ones that are suffering in the heat, as am I. And so off to the deep bath. J

Kosher Bra and books.

Ariela went shopping for a bra on Yafo street. She said she found little bra shop where "all the ladies were four x four and 70 years old." The store had a teudat kashrut (kosher certification) posted on the wall. Anyway. She bought a bra, which she says does everything you want a bra to do, though it is, as you would expect workman-like. But it is kosher which is the important thing.
In other news, I found a nice bookstore while wandering the other day. What I liked about it is that the owner tells customers what they should buy. I came in and asked for Etgar Keret. He said he didn't have any, but what I really should be reading was A.B. Yehoshua's short stories. I told him what I liked about Etgar Keret was that his stories were so short. He got that. I said I also liked that they were funny. That lead to a discussion about how in Israel what's funny is actually sad and how Noel Coward doesn't work in Israel, because nobody wants bedroom farce, here, they want sad, uncomfortable comedy. At that point, a young Israeli guy came in and asked for the "Curious incident of the dog at midnight". The owner got it for him, he looked it over and said he didn't think it was for him. "Recommend me something," said the guy, which, as somebody who once worked in a bookstore, I can tell you is a pretty tricky proposition. "What did you read and like?" asked the owner which is not a bad way to get some information but when the guy told him what he had read and liked the bookstore owner told him "You should stop reading that stuff. Here try this," and handed him Yesh Yaladim Zigzag (Sideways Kids? sorry not sure the English title) by David Grossman. "Nah," said the young guy. The bookstore owner tried a few more, but nothing doing. "Funny," I said. "I'm from abroad and I want Israeli writers. He's from Israel, he wants foreign writers."
"That's because he doesn't think an Israeli can write about life," said the store keeper. "That's right," said the young Israel guy. I think he might have ended up with something by ג'ון גרישם (that's the author of the Pelican Brief et. al.). In the end, I bought "In the Alleys" by Dudu Busi on the recommendation of my friend, the store owner, with the strong literary tastes. An added bonus; they are short. I'll give a full review in three or four months when I've read one or two (I'm still working Iris Leal).
Finally, I have been enjoying the animations of Ruth Selwyn a.k.a. Lizzie the Lezzie, who is -- in addition to being a very funny character -- an Israeli. This video is Lizzie's rave review of being gay/lesbian in the Holy Land, sort of homosexual hasbarah (that's propogranda). It is definitely PG-13 and since this is a family blog I'm not posting the video but follow the link and enjoy.

school crossing and raucous meditation

The boys are both having a bit of a tough time in school right now, which makes me sad so I have been on the lookout for things to lighten my mood. Here are two things that have struck me as vaguely hysterical.
There are signs all up over Benjy's school about school crossing safety (including one that says "Don't let your kids cross alone before they are 9 years old." I am 38 and I am scared to cross by myself here.) I can see why they have all the signs. Drivers are pretty crazy here, though they definitely respect the crosswalks more than back in Montreal. Anyway, there are kid crossing guards just like when I was in school. They wear bright yellow pinnies and because there are traffic islands, so two kids do each lane of traffic there seem to be twenty-five crossing guards at a crosswalk. I don't know if this just an Efrata-school thing or if it is being replicated all over the country. The kids who were crossing guards when I was a boy just had these little hand-held stop signs but the Israeli kids' stop signs are on broom handles that are longer than them like they are going to joust with them. The most striking thing, though, is that as part of their traffic control system they have obviously been taught before putting down their giant, long stop signs to give drivers the Israeli "wait a second" gesture which is made by putting the thumb, forefinger and middle finger together, facing up and waving the hand thus poised at the wrist. North Americans make fun of how infuriating that sign is (especially when when accompanied as is often the case by a a tooth sucking sound) but I believe that nobody can possibly like to be on the receiving end of this gesture of unsurpassed rudeness, and my guess is that it is probably responsible for nine out of ten homicides committed in Israel. Anyway the kids look very cute and silly doing it with such stagy earnestness. By the end of the year I am sure they will be doing it with the offhand, contemptuous flair that has driven so many people stark raving crazy.
Funny thing number two. I went to a Jewish meditation class tonight. I was early and was standing outside the building on Karen HaYesod street. The building next door is the national labour court building. There was a group of guys gathering around and it gradually swelled to a large throng of what I learned were dock workers from Haifa and Ashdod. While many of the guys looked like your average Israeli, there were enough hard nuts that it could have been mistaken for an open casting call for the Israeli version of the Sopranos. The port workers were angry about something that the Labour Minister had done or not done and were staging a very raucous demo. (When I say angry, I mean only officially. They were mostly smiling, chatting on cell-phones and happily milling about with occasional time-outs to scream angry slogans. I watched as a few guys very kindly made sure to help an old lady in a walker get through the packed crowd on the side-walk).
Anyway, the meditation was punctuated by the savage throated mob howling for the blood of the labour minister and the wailing of air horns. The person leading the meditation tried valliantly to incorporate the experience into his guiding - "sometimes we experience noise, or anger or aggression in our lives and we have to just be with the experience" or some anodyne therapy-speak to the point where I had to really bear down to avoid laughing and further contributing to the downhill slide.

Bougvanalia?!

How do you spell that word? Bougavanallia? Bouvanalia? Bougavanalia? According to some spell-check it is "bougainvillea". Anyway that stuff is in bloom all over Jerusalem. I have to say that I have always found boug.... a little on the tacky side myself, kind of ungepatchked (a word my spell-check has no problem with) but there is this tree on Beit Lechem street that has bougainvillea climbing all the way up it maybe twenty five feet and it is a mass of purple flowers which is really impressive. There is also something in flower that looks like blue phlox which is very pretty. I don't think it is phlox because it is a bush. The pomegranates are getting ripe which is cool because they look so unlikely and there is carob looking very turd-like under a lot of trees (also a lot of turds under trees. My boys enjoy yelling "watch out for the poop" as we walk along the streets). I see rhododendrons around but they must have flowered quite a bit earlier in the year and a lot of laurel bushes which are quite pretty in the white to pink range. I see lantana occasionally with its pretty and very delicate, tiny flowers and think of that crazy Australian movie which took its title from the name of the plant. And there are a lot of geraniums (gerania?). Again, not a plant I love back in Montreal but it can be quite pretty here and grows to ridiculous profusion. Ariela is of course taking lots of great pix so be sure to check them out.
Benjy is doing okay in school. Today he had to go early because the President (and former Prime Minister) of Israel Shimon Perez decided to come visit his school. Every year he goes to a school and visits at the start of the year and this year it was Efrata (while most people are not aware this was a s a direct result of Benjamin being in the school. The president has been hoping for an audience for a long time). Benjamin said he seemed "nice and old." he also remarked that "Peres seems willing to change his stripes and bend on points of grave importance if it will extend his political career." Oh wait, that was me. The sad thing is thatin today's political landscape Peres seems like a giant of integrity. I also took lev to the Y for his first day. The building dates back to the period of the British Mandate (1931) and is beautiful though it goes pretty heavy on the towers, arches and domes, like they got them by the job lot. The inside is filled with furniture made for people with gout, giant heavy wood and upholstered chairs that would take four men to move. It is funny how antiquated it seems for something less than a hundred years old. Anyway, I took Lev past the Henry VIII size dining tables and to a back stair case and up a floor to the daycare, then went and sat in the cafe and had coffee (no breakfast. Not only is the Three Arches cafe not kosher, but a friend who works at the Y told me they serve bacon at breakfast, which raised in my mind the interesting question of how and where exactly you get bacon in Jerusalem? Do they have a Christian butcher in Nazareth drive it in each morning or from some militantly secular kibbutz in Emeq Izrael? Is there a small farm somewhere in the Armenian quarter of the Old City?)
Lev definitely misses being at Over the Rainbow though everyone at the Y seems very sweet. He said that he talks to people but they don't listen which we tried to explain is because they don't speak English, but I think he may also have to do with being ill prepared for the rigours of life in the real world by two over-attentive parents. We played at the Lion Fountain near the Yamin Moshe windmill and then home. The city is less hot now and the walk is lovely, past that towering bouganvillea. We also passed the spot where a suicide bus bombing killed eight Israelis back in 2004. There is little stone grave marker there.
A friend told us the other day that when they came to Israel, whenever they saw an Arab man get on the bus, they always wondered if he was going to be the one who blew it up. It is interesting because this friend went on to say something along the lines of "All Arabs want to kill Jews. It is part of their nature." What I found so interesting is how the subjective feeling of mistrust (reasonable and legitimate mistrust) became projected out as a fact about the world. It was as if this friend had said "Because any Arab may want to kill me, therefore every Arab does want to kill me."
I should say that I report my conversations with people whose politics, whose view of people, I disagree with because I find it such an interesting and tangled part of being here but those ideas are certainly not universal and I meet sabras and new Israelis who hold views more akin to my own.
Finally, and mostly to end on something less dour, I just had my first falafel since being in Israel. The boys prefer pizza. As I think I mentioned in my email to some of you, Benjy likes that there is so much kosher food here, though he remains as picky as ever, and pizza is about the only thing we can reilably get him to eat out. Falafel is far too brown and crusty to make its way past his pristine lips, hence I have not had a chance to eat falafel (I should say that the Eisenbergs did feed me falafel a few days ago, but it was fresh falafel balls from the stand across the street, in their pitas, their humus. Very tasty but not the greasy, street eating experience that I was going for). Lev fell asleep in the stroller and I ate a very nice half pita at Ovadia's (I think. On Bet Lechem). French fries on top +. Limited selection of toppings - . Ambiance +++ (it was a tiny green shack, just what you want when you eat falafel). Overall Good. The felafel gestalt was definitely there.
Love to all. J