Fresh Food Every Day

Green onion, yellow onion, hot red pepper, tomato, eggplant, and just off screen olive oil, cabbage, and puy black lentils. Maybe a little heavy on the "breath fresheners," but my kind of food!

A Tropical Bird

This is from a series of birds that my wife Janet drew about 25 years ago for a showing in Hawaii.

Hezikaiah's Tunnel Inscription in Proto-Hebrew Letters

This the famous Siloam Inscription found in Hezekiah's Tunnel, down by the City of David. The tunnel goes from the Spring of Gihon to the Pool of Siloam (Shiloah/Shilo'akh) to provide water for Jerusalem during the coming battle with Sennacherib and the Assyrians. It is 533 meter long, and is slightly but consistenly graded to flow down from source to pool. This excavation from around 700 BCE in the reign of Hezekiah.

Note well the alphabet used: Yes, it is the Hebrew alphabet, but no, it doesn't look like the lettering on the kosher butcher's shop. It is the alphabet that King David wrote with, and read. It is very primitive looking. Next time you play around with some digital version of the Hebrew Scriptures in English, or in some other language, don't forget what the first "edition" looked like!

Translation:

... the tunnel ... and this is the story of the tunnel while ...
the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut? ... the voice of a man ...
called to his counterpart, (for) there was ZADA [straightness] in the rock, on the right ... and on the day of the
tunnel (being finished) the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed
water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100?
cubits was the height over the head of the stonecutters ...

Mount of Olives from Silwan

This is a photo I took of the Mount of Olives from a slightly different angle than one usually sees, from the villiage of Silwan. Silwan is, now, mostly Arab, but the name itself is a corruption of the ancient Hebrew place-name Shilo'akh, known to the west as Shiloah, with the final guttural tossed in the gutter of pronunciation mutation. Now, that isn't the end of it, as this place-name has yet another version well-known in the west, but usually applied to the healing waters anciently at the well-visited spring: Siloam. The final 'm' came from the Greek, I think.

Silwan/Shilo'akh/Shiloah/Siloam is also home to the archaeological dig Ir Dahveed, aka City of David. This area was actually inside the walls of Jerusalem at one time, and a strong minority archaeological opinion says this may have been the temple site, and not the temple site a few hunded meters away.

Plotting a Course, and Coarsely Plotting

My trusty rusty dividers set atop a map of Israel, the Galilee-Golan region specifically in view. Yes, this picture is out of focus. But so is the political situation. Everybody's got their dividers out yet again, and have turned their wits to further carving up the Land of Israel.

Jordan, Trans-Jordanian Palestine, that is, Palestine on the "other" (east) side of the river Jordan, is an independent state which incudes the vast majority of Palestine, and most of who's citizens are what the modern, post-PLO world calls Palestinians. Of course part of Palestine has reverted back to its ancient and proper name of Israel. Historically there is no conflict about the geography intended by the two names: Renaming the Jewish homeland "Palestine" was a mean-spirited act done by the victorious Romans after the last ancient Jewish revolt. (Almost last--but that's another story.)

Camel Crossing

In truth, I'd worry a lot more about a lot of other things crossing in front of me on the road than camels. I think the roads authority puts these signs up for tourists.

Sure beats:

WARNING! ROADSIDE CHARGES MAY BE INCURRED!

Highland Bagpipes

This is a pencil drawing of my old Wm Sinclair & Son Highland bagpipes, done by my wife. The backdrop is Royal Stuart tartan.

I waited four years for this fine, hand-made set after ordering them in person from Mr William Sinclair in his workshop in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland. Mr Sinclair is the second generation to make quality Highland pipes, after his father William, who began in the 1930s. His son Alistair, the third generation, is currently carrying on the family business. I am not certain if his son Ewan is in the business. That would make four generations of maintaining quality in what is now quite a competitive market.

You would think that my set would be the only one in Israel. However, there is another set of Sinclair pipes, made by William Sinclair senior back in the 1930s, owned by a very fine sabra piper of my good acquaintance. A top Jewish player who is a friend of ours, and who visits Israel often also plays old Sinclair pipes, which used to belong to a career pipe-major in the Scots Guards Regiment (a Scottish contribution to the British Army). We all three came by our Sinclair pipes quite independently of each other.