The return

We've been back in Israel for a week now - and despite promises, we still don't have internet at home, so I am writing this from my parents-in-laws', where we are spending the weekend. 

The flight home was not an easy experience. It began shortly after my previous post, when A burst into the bathroom just as I was undressing for a shower, and threw up all over the floor. Luckily, he managed to miss the wall-to-wall carpeting on the rest of the upper floor, but it took me over an hour to clean up. He was still not himself when we left in the morning, had no breakfast, and almost passed out in the line for security, as it was very hot and crowded there. The TSA people were very nice and let him take his half-full water bottle through. By the time we reached JFK, A was fine. All was well until after supper was served, at which point S turned to me and said: "I don't feel so well." He spent the reset of the flight shaking and retching over a big plastic bag. The cabin attendants were very nice - they brought him lemon to chew on and a hot towel - butthat didn't help after a while. He slept very fitfully, and I slept even less, feeling as if I was once more travelling with a baby. 

When we arrived at Ben-Gurion airport, late on Saturday afternoon, a new wrinkle emerged, in that one of the suitcases did not arrive. Fortunately, it was not the carry-on trolley that ADC had checked at the gate at JFK (thus sneaking in an extra suitcase without being fined), which contained clean pajamas and a change of clothing for the next day; unfortunately, it was the suitcase containing all my clothes plus stuff for my siblings. (It eventually reached us in Jerusalem at 9 p.m. on Monday, so it could have been much worse.) After that delay, we continued to my parents' house, where we were reunited with my side of the family, plus with my phone - which my mother found on Friday, less than 24 hours before we arrived. 

We spent Sunday resting and recuperating (Y and N came over in the evening), then on Monday ADC rented a car and the two of us went up to Jerusalem, leaving A and S with their grandparents. They stayed in Kfar Saba until Wednesday, then took the train down to Omer, where we are now, while we cleaned and unpacked the apartment. We had rented our apartment with one room - the children's - closed off, where we stored most of our stuff. After arrival on Moday afternoon, ADC and spent nearly two hours walking around the flat and planning changes, which will be the subject of a separate post, as they come to pass. Apparently our tenant had left the house quite filthy, so R, our regular cleaning lady, who had cleaned for him for a while until his sexual harassment(!) became too much, had already cleaned most of it. We still had a few surprises: a connection for cable TV through one wall, a bidet attachment to the toilet pipe in our en suite (both without even asking for our permission), and condom wrappers - though thankfully no used ones - in a drawer in the bedroom. As soon as I could, I began doing laundry ...

On Tuesday R arrived, and finished cleaning the house. I cleaned alongside her, and we made good progress on unpacking, as well. She had some hair-raising tales about the tenant, whose ex-wife (he got a divorce over the course of the year, and apparently the reason he rented the flat was because he needed a place to live quite urgently) was someone she had been to school with. He will definitely not be seeing all of his security deposit from us ...

By Thursday we finished all the unpacking except for things that either belong to the boys, who asked us not to unpack their things yet, or require the proposed changes to occur before we can find space for them. That being said, with a bit of rearrangement and willingness to discard things, we have managed to find space for almost everything that was on top of the kitchen cupboards. We don't want to have anything out there anymore, as they get full of dust and grease, and it makes the kitchen feel more cramped than it actually is. It is such a relief to be back in our own kitchen, though. Not only is there so much more space than we had in Takoma Park, everything is the right height, we have all our tools AND there is a dishwasher again!! It's been working overtime, as I wanted to wash all the utensils before using them again ...

On Wednesday evening we went to the Machane Yehuda market, where we met many of our shopkeeper friends, who were all amazed that the year had gone by so quickly. We ate at a very nice Lebanese restaurant called Manou Bashouk ("Someone in the Market"), run by a couple from France - he's originally from Beirut and cooks like his mother did, and she's of North African origin, so that there is excellent couscous on the menu, too. Interestingly, there are vegetarian options for almost all the meat main dishes, which is great for me. We didn't do much shopping, just a bag of figs and a new draining board. We returned for a proper shop on Thursday morning, and when I finished decanting the different kinds of rice and lentils into glass jars, the kitchen started really looking like home again. 

On Friday we set off first thing to buy furniture at Ikea in Rishon Letzion. ADC was very loath to go there, but his sister E persuaded him that for a storage solution on the closed-off balcony, it made sense to go there. We ended up getting two metre's worth of three-drawer Nordli units, a Ställ unit for shoes, and a few other odds and ends, in about two hours - but I am never going there again, and certainly not with ADC. I hate being rushed when shopping, and while Ikea is not my favourite, they do have some very practical and functional ideas, that I would have liked to have had time to look at and think about, but couldn't, because ADC was determined to spend as little time as possible there. Anyway, the main thing is that on Sunday we will be able to finalise the arrangement of the living room, as the balcony extension will be organised. 

After Ikea we continued to Omer, where we have been relaxing ever since, despite the blips of the coninuing phone saga. That, too, is worthy of a post of its own ... Despite the irritations and inconveniences, we are very close to being organised and it is so good to come home, to be back somewhere where you know and understand how things function. 

From Takoma Park to Friday Harbor

I last posted while we were waiting for the shippers to arrive. They arrived within the time slot they had promised and were done - inventorying, sealing and some re-packing - in under an hour. A few days later, we were told that the shipment had been containerised and came within 5 cubic feet of the estimate, so no need to adjust the payment. All that was left for us to do in Takoma Park was to have the house cleaned, on the 8th, and to sample restaurants we had not got around to previously, since the house was completely empty - anything M and D had left, was taken by our next-door neighbours. All of that was highly successful: both Middle Eastern Cuisine, where we had supper, and Mark's Kitchen, where we had brunch, were excellent, and the cleaners left the house spotless. I think that the kitchen sinks were cleaner than they had been when we arrived!

The first leg of our journey was uneventful, apart from two suitcases being overweight. In the end, we underestimated what we had left to pack, and everything was a very tight squeeze indeed. We bought another small suitcase in Seattle - which added the excitement of taking the Monorail to our day there - but we really should have bought it already in DC. Not only would that have saved us $50 in overweight fees, Washington State has a 9.5% sales tax!! The only place we could easily find suitcases was at Nordstrom Rack, where the prices were higher than ADC had paid for a large suitcase in DC. Nothing to do about that now, and another suitcase had made things more comfortable. 

Our day in Seattle was lovely. We woke up early, of course, and after breakfast made our way to the Chihuly Glass and Gardens Museum. After walking into Takoma Park mid-morning in the humidity and heat the day before, what Seattle considered to be a heatwave felt like perfect weather to us. ADC and I had been very unimpressed by the Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem installation at the Tower of David in 1998 (it was hugely successful, with over a million visitors, but I don't think I've met anyone who actually thought it looked good), so we were eager to see what the glass sculptures looked like on their home ground. And they were magnificent. Some pieces were better than others, but they all "worked" much more than they had in Jerusalem. I have come to the conclusion that the Tower of David was not green enough. All the other installations outside of museums have been much further north than Jerusalem (Finland, Venice, Kew Gardens), in places with much more water - much more like Seattle, in fact. I think that the lack of green, the different light and the dust in Jerusalem, were what subverted the installation. Anyway, we all enjoyed the museum very much. A took a lot of pictures, and S is convinced that Chihuly is a genius. We spent about an hour and a half in a rather small museum before going on to the EMP, possibly the strangest-looking building I've ever been in. 

We spent most of the rest of the day at the EMP, which stands for Experience Music Project. The museum began as a collection of rock memorabilia, but has now expanded to all kinds of popular culture. We spent the morning at three exhibitions: First, we went to the special exhibition of costumes from the Star Wars trilogies. It was amazing to see the costume designer and her team of 60-100 people at work making all the varied costumes. So many different materials and skills were involved! It was rather funny to see a video of Natalie Portman enthusing about her exotic dresses while wearing a plaid shirt, too. And of course there were the costumes themselves, with swatches of the materials to feel, which was great. We then continued to an exhibition on science fiction and another on fantasy, where again we saw many props and costumes from movies. The children were particularly excited to see costumes from The Princess Bride. I feel that there was a typo in the note about David Bowie's costume from Labyrinth, which says "the legendary David Bowie in Jareth the Goblin King's costume" rather than "David Bowie in the legendary Jareth the Goblin King costume."

After lunch (hot dogs in the park - with a vegetarian option! The West Coast is clearly much better at catering to vegetarians), we went to the music side of the EMP, where we saw exhibitions on Jimi Hendrix, the development of the electric guitar and ended the day with learning to play drums and a jam session. After a brief detour to buy a suitcase, we met ADC's first cousin once removed, JG, for supper. He took us to a Cajun restaurant, although none of us ended up ordering things that were specifically Cajun. JG struck me as being something of a combination of my father-in-law and his older brother, although not as tall. He was very enthusiastic about Friday Harbor, and very unenthusiastic about Chihuly. 

On Friday we got up at the crack of dawn, missing breakfast, in order to be at the pier by 6:45 in order to catch the 7:45 Victoria Clipper to Friday Harbor (a catamaran that goes between Seattle and Friday Harbor once a day, and to Victoria in British Columbia several times a day). The idea had been to have the best view of seabirds and possibly whales, and to get to Friday Harbor fairly early from a conveniently central location. However, it was not to be. The clipper was cancelled due to mechanical problems (they had sent out an e-mail to that effect at 6:15, but considering that the shuttle had been canceled on Thursday as well, I think that they could have made the announcement earlier). We received a full refund, of course, and coupons for coffee, and they paid for a taxi to the Seattle convention centre, where we could get the 11:30 shuttle to Anacortes, where we could take the 2:00 p.m. ferry to Friday Harbor, arriving at 3:00 rather than at 11:00, as planned. We waited until the luggage storage opened, and then improved our mood by going to Pike Place market, where we bought excellent build-your-own sandwiches to eat on the way to the ferry. We arrived at the convention centre about half an hour before the shuttle was due to arrive, assuming that it would arrive early so as to allow luggage to be loaded. Wrong! It arrived 40 minutes late, with not a word of explanation or apology. When we discovered that we had to move to another minibus to actually get to the Anacortes ferry terminal, it was clear that we were not going to make the 2 o'clock boat - and the next one was at 4:45, arriving at Friday Harbor after six - seven hours and much irritation later. At that point, however, our luck began to change. As the ferry had been having its own problems, the 2:50 ferry to Sidney, BC, was making an unscheduled stop at Friday Harbor, and we were able to embark almost immediately. The voyage was very pleasant, we had a good enough view, and we got a taxi immediately as we walked off the dock. We were at Friday Harbor Labs before the office closed.

Once we arrived at FHL, we were able to book supper at the dining hall before we went to unpack at our cabin. The cabin is great. We were surprised at first to realise that there was no air conditioning, but since then we have realised that heatings and fans are all you need. The kitchen is about triple the size of the one we had in Takoma Park, with a table that seats 4-6 which is where we will be eating most of the time. The crockery, cutlery, pots and pans are a bit random, but sufficient. The children each have a single bed, and the pressure in the shower is good. In short, we have all we need. 

Once we had settled in, we went to the social hour and ate popcorn and met people. I am proud to say that I was able to ask people about their work and carry on an intelligent conversation, understanding almost everything (or at least, the words were familiar and I have a vague idea of what they mean). We had supper at the dining hall and then breakfast yesterday. We were advised that the best meal of the week is Sunday brunch, and we duly registered for that (which is why I am writing this in the morning rather than the evening, as we are still waiting for brunch).

Yesterday (Saturday) was largely spent shopping. We walked into the town of Friday Harbor - which is significantly further away than we had understood, 45 minutes rather than 20 minutes - and shopped both at the grocery store and at the farmers' market. The market is all local, and there was far less fruit available than we are used to, only berries - but they were some of the best raspberries and strawberries we've ever eaten. We planned well in having brought along a cooler bag and two shopping baskets, as we needed all of that as well as our backpacks to carry everything home. Of course, once we got back we realised we had forgotten some vital items, like serviettes, but the plan today is to go back into town after brunch today, to explore the town itself and visit an art fair. 

After lunch and a rest, the boys went back to the dining hall to play ping-pong, and ADC and I walked around FHL, identifying the trees (there weren't many birds around). We found ten different species in the short distance from our cabin to the Whiteley Centre where ADC has office space to the actual labs themselves. As we approached the labs, we met one of the people teaching there, who invited us to come and see the sea creatures. The boys turned up just then, and we had a very interesting half hour looking at the weird and wonderful invertebrates being studied. On one of the benches I saw a copy of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, a particularly appropriate choice given the amount of time he spent investigating marine invertebrates with Theo. 

ADC then went to play pool with the boys, while I continued knitting. I may want to complete this cardigan as soon as possible and actually wear it - it is currently 15C outside, at 9:30 a.m. I am very glad that I insisted that we all bring two sets of long clothes, rather than shipping all the winter clothes. 

Israel and Philadelphia

It's difficult to believe that two weeks ago I was sitting in J's kitchen translating SR's bar mitzvah sermon, and her and LR's speeches. As we have a very cultural weekend planned (AwesomeCon followed by Fauré's Requiem on Saturday, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on Sunday), I have to finish writing this letter today!

So, as everyone knows, A, S and I had a very action-packed week in Israel between May 10-16, while ADC spent part of that time visiting colleagues in Arizona with whom he has a BSF grant. We managed to see a lot of people, but not everyone we would have liked to, and most people we did not get to see enough of, for my part particularly not enough of my siblings J and R (I think I saw more of my brother-and sister-in-law than I did of them). It was lovely seeing my uncle and aunt from South Africa and my cosin from London, their son, too, and I'm sorry we only overlapped for 36 hours or so. 

A and S's favourite day was Tuesday, which we spent in Jerusalem, each one of us seeing friends separately. I think that this week has actually made them  more eager to come home: seeing all their old friends really emphasised the extent to which they have made acquaintances rather than friends in Takoma Park. I think the day I enjoyed most was Thursday, when I spent the morning at Tel Aviv University meeting friends and the early afternoon seeing eumelia s flat and having lunch with her at a very pleasant café down the road, before she took the three boys to see Avengers: Age of Ultron, which they all enjoyed thoroughly. ADC and I are very grateful to her for doing so, otherwise we would have had to take the boys to see it, and we would rather do other things on our weekends.... The bar mitzvah itself, of course, was in a class of itself. I was highly impressed with SR's reading from the Torah, and J and LR's speeches thoroughly embarrassed him, as is the custom. 

The trip home was much less traumatic than the cancellation of the Amtrak line between New York and Philadelphia following the derailment would have suggested; after spending close to an hour on the phone to America, we were able to be rerouted to Baltimore, and ADC came to pick us up. By the time he went to Princeton to give a talk last Thursday, the train was running as normal again.

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and we went on what is probably our last out of town trip before we leave Takoma Park in July. We spent Saturday at Gettysburg, and Sunday and Monday in Philadelphia. It took quite a long time to get to Gettysburg, and even longer to get from there to Philadelphia; about half the day was spent driving. The national battlefield site is very interesting and informative, with a film (narrated, of course, by Morgan Freeman), a nineteenth-century cyclorama and an excellent museum at the visitor centre, and the most authentic living history we've seen yet in the US (ADC questions whether we've seen any other living history; the RenFest in October certainly doesn't count). As we are so close to the solstice and so far north, despite arriving in Philadelphia close to 8 p.m., it was still light, which was very nice as we wandered around looking for a restaurant bear our hotel. We ended up at an Indonesian place, adding to the list of cuisines we are sampling here. Each of us thought that he had chosen the best choice of the dishes.

Saturday was our only full day in Philadelphia, and we were extremely thorough in our explorations, returning to the hotel nearly 13 hours after setting out in the morning. We didn't get to see the Liberty Bell, as the queue was incredible, but we did go to the National Museum of American Jewish History, Independence Hall, Reading Terminal Market, and the Delaware River Waterfront. At the NMAJH, we started with a temporary exhibition of Richard Avedon portraits, many of which came from the Israel Museum's collection. I found the permanent collection more interesting, though, especially the sections on the development of Reform Judaism and the post-WWII move to suburbia. Like the Tenement Museum in New York, a lot of the museum was a walk through ADC's family history. The Tenement Museum was a more intense experience, focussing as it did on only one of the times and places covered by the NMAJH. A particularly interesting aspect for me was the historiography: the presence of Yiddish, for example, alongside Hebrew in many cases, and the total absence of the non-Ashkenazi experience in the historical introduction, apart from the mass aliyah to Israel. At the same time, there was both a great emphasis on Jewish involvement in civil rights and feminism (neither of which would have happened, it looked like, without the Jews) and an acknowledgement that Jews today are both Republicans and Democrats. 

After we finished at the museum, we had just enough time for a cheesesteak before going to Independence Hall. Everyone approved of the cheesesteak (even the vegan one I ate), as one should always try local foods, and it was the right thing at the right time. Independence Hall was a guided tour of a small building, with a very enthusiastic guide with great voice projection. I must say that I remain resolutely Old World-centric in what really interests me in history ... We continued from Independence Hall to Reading Street Market. We had begun our day there, as it was right across the road from our hotel, and the boys were enchanted by Mueller's chocolate, which featured various body parts made from chocolate. They desperately wanted to buy a heart or a kidney as an afternoon snack, but these were quite large and correspondingly expensive, so we forced them to make do with a nose each - which seemed like quite a lot of chocolate, in any case!

We then decided to take advantage of Philadelphia's street art, and explored the city centre further by way of walking the abridged version of the Mural Mile. S took pictures of the murals, which were almost invariably on the walls of building that abutted parking lots - I don't think I've seen so many parking lots in such a small space! The murals themselves wee fascinating, and we spent much longer than the suggested 30 minutes looking at them and discussing what we were seeing. By the time we finished, it was past 6 p.m. and we were all starting to droop. We had supper at an excellent Italian restaurant, Giorgio on Pine, where our waitress was Italian and supper was still going strong when we left, just before eight - unusual for American restaurants, which often close for the night by eight. We finished the day by walking to the Delaware River Waterfront, mainly so as not to retire to the hotel too early. When we got to Penn's Landing, we were startled to see a Cold War submarine next to a floating fish restaurant. 

On Monday, we spent the entire day at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We walked there from our hotel, down Benjamin Franklin Parkway and looked at all the flags, in vague alphabetical order (except for the flags of Poland, next to a statue in memory of Copernicus, and of Israel, next to a Holocaust memorial from 1964). At the museum, ADC declined to take pictures of the boys by the statue of Rocky, as he doesn't like taking that kind of picture - and in his defence, there was quite a long line of people waiting to take that same picture ... We were too early for what looks like a very good exhibition of the Impressionists, but enjoyed looking at the Museum's own collection of that school. We stuck to nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, this time. A was very keen to see the Surrealists and Marcel Duchamp's urinal, while S was happy to see a Roy Lichtenstein. Both of them spent the last hour or so at the arms and armour hall by themselves, while Ariel and I looked at decorative art and rooms from English stately homes that had been transferred piecemeal in the 1920s and 1930s. I have to admit to being slightly underwhelmed by the PMA. Admittedly, the National Gallery and the Met are in a class by themselves, but I think that there was more art that spoke to me, personally, at the MFA in Boston. But maybe I was just tired after Saturday ... 

Last Friday, the 22nd, A's entire year, the 8th grade class of 2015, went to Six Flags. He had a lot of fun, going on a roller coaster and dodgem cars, playing games at an arcade and eating pizza. Very sweetly, he bought fudge and brought it home for all of us. The same day, S had Authors' Tea at school: parents were invited to class to hear the children read poems or short prose pieces they had written. About half way through, juice and cookies were served. S read an alliterative alphabetical poem about superheroes. Apart from him, the best pieces, I thought, were an extract from a description of a baseball game from the ball's point of view, and a poem entitled "Divorce" in which one of the girls reflected on how life was in face better after her parents' divorce - everyone was much happier, and shhe had double the family. Almost all the children read something and some of them read two pieces. As usual with this age, the difference between boys and girls is immense. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the boys are still children, and the girls - at least some of them - are becoming introspective, mature.

As a result of the Authors' Tea, I have decided to sign up for a poem of the day by e-mail. I was surprised to see how much choice there is. Should I go for a classic daily poem, or a contemporary one? When does contemporary start? Does anyone have a recommendation? 

SED 17 - back in the USA

I was a bit too optimistic at the end of my last post - while I had a reasonable flight, sleeping quite a lot and almost finishing my book, S had a rather bad one: he threw up twice, after overeating at the bar-mitzvah. The first time was in the aisle, and the stewardesses sprinkled a clumping material (similar to kitty litter, I should think) and asked my help cleaning up. The second time was after he drank some water - he just spat that up all over himself ... I felt very sorry for him, but when we were about to disembark, and he couldn't find his cell phone, I did get upset. I couldn't understand how he could have lost such a thing, and we spent quite a while during our connection at Newark filling in an online form to report its loss.

Apart from that hiccup, landing went smoothly. As always, my J-1 visa raised queries from the immigration officer, but I was able to convince him that medieval medicine was actually effective (quite a few modern cough medicines, both over the counter and prescription drugs, are based on the same materia medica) and also customized to individuals (a very brief description of the ideal of Galenic practice, I know).

We arrived at BWI at 9:30 a.m., still on Israel time, i.e. 4:30 p.m., having set out from my parents' house at 8:30 the previous evening. When we got home and unpacked, Shaul's cell phone was discovered in a side pocket of his backpack - a pocket that I had not realised was there. So, all's well that end's well, but I'm still confiscating his phone for a week, so that he learns to be more careful with his things.

It's now 8:30 in the evening, and the boys have been in bed for an hour. I deliberately had them shower as  soon as we got home so that they could go to bed quickly in the eveing. In the afternoon we watched Kurasawa's The Hidden Fortress, apparently one of George Lucas' inspirations for the original Star Wars. We'll listen to the interview with Lucas tomorrow, as despite the thrilling story and set-piece duels, the boys nearly fell asleep watching the movie, and absolutely did so while Ariel made supper.

I shall go to bed shortly myself ... tomorrow normal life resumes.

SED 16 - SR's bar-mitzvah

his entry is written at Ben-Gurion airport, on our way back to the USA, and uploaded after reaching Takoma Park again. This has been a whirlwind week, which culminated in SR's bar-mitzvah. I spent yesterday morning translating the speeches to English, for the benefit of the family members coming from South Africa and England. The celebrations began with supper at J's house, with the immediate family on both sides - a total of 21 people, many of whom are observant and therefore all kinds of things could or could not be done. J became progressively more frazzled beneath her calm facade over the 24 hours, and I think it is a very good thing indeed that she is taking tomorrow off work.

eumelia and I shared a room, and stayed up very late talking. This was a good thing for me, as she went home immediately after lunch today, and I was very glad of the extra time with her. The bar-mitzvah itself was lovely. SR is very musical and loves performing (he is the pianist in the local Conservatorium's classical trio), and read almost all of the weekly Torah portion, not just the maftir (final section) and haftarah (reading from the Prophets) that most boys do. I was given the honour of being called up for a section of the Torah reading together with A and S, and we received a very long section indeed. After the reading, SR gave a short sermon and then was bombarded with sweets. A was sorry that this was the first time he could not participate in the children's mad rush to gather the sweets, as he had his own bar-mitzvah last year.

After the service ended, there was food. Then there was lunch. Then my mother, my sister and my niece all gave speeches that embarrased SR to a greater or lesser degree. Then we went home and rested a bit (I confirmed that my mother was not being charged twice for the change in tickets and packed), then went back to J for tea and ate more. 

Now we are at the airport. We were able to change tickets at check in, and the boys are now sitting togeter on both legs of the the flight. I must say that I am impressed with United's customer service.

A more academic post

Chag sameach! I hope you all had a lovely Seder. We were at the Ps, where the usual chaos was "enhanced" by an extra dog: another retriever, visiting from Boston with GP's family. The was at least one dog under the table at any time. It was strange to have a Seder which was read almost entirely in English, after so many years of everyone being able to follow the original text. And we skipped a lot more than we do at home, except for singing Echad Mi Yode'a twice, once in English with a weird tune. 

The past couple of weeks have involved a lot of travel for me, some of which was on domestic flights where there is not enough elbow room to knit, so I have finished two books which I read purely for enjoyment: Evolutionary History by Edmund Russell, and A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Evolutionary History was one of a bunch of books that ADC received from Cambridge University Press as payment for reviewing a proposal for them, and he read it first. In a way, the point of the book is to take the ideas of books like Guns, Germs, and Steel and show how evolutionary biology can help understand historical processes. One of the major case studies is a new interpretation of the Industrial Revolution, where the emphasis moves from English exceptionalism and ingenuity, to the importance of the evolution of cotton - both before and after domestication - in the New World. It turns out that New World cotton has a different genotype from Old World varieties, enabling extra-long staples, or threads, that can be woven by machine without breaking. In other worlds, New World cotton had to arrive in Lancashire in order for it to be worth anyones while to invent the machines that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. A Discovery of Witches was quite different. It is paranormal fantasy, set in a world that is identical to ours except that in addition to humans, there are three races of "creatures" - witches, daemons and vampires. The author, like her heroine, is a historian of science, specialising in the early modern period (that, in retrospect, is why her name was familiar), and the first scene takes place in the Bodleian Library, consulting a 17th-century alchemical manuscript.

On March 20th it snowed, for the last time this winter. Despite that, next day we went to the National Arboretum. Very little was actually in bloom yet, apart from crocuses and snowdrops, but we still managed to spend a long time there, enjoying the first warm sunny day in a very long time. We were all very impressed by the extensive bonsai collection, some of which - presents from the Japanese government - are hundreds of years old. My favourite, though, was a pear tree, which was blossoming. You could smell the pear blossoms as soon as you entered that part of the display, and it took a while to realise where the scent was coming from. As well as the usual Japanese trees, as you can imagine there were also native American trees that had been trained into bonsai. The bald cypress (complete with knees) that we had seen full size in the South Carolina swamps in December was very cute!

I have also had my second sewing lesson, in which I learned to make pyjama shorts (which most of you saw me wearing to clean the house). It was a very simple pattern, and I was surprised at how easy it was to sew a more-or-less straight line even over longer distances. I imagine that this feeling was very much influenced by the fact that the previous night, I had cannibalised one pair of S's tracksuit bottoms to make knee patches for another - which involved sewing two pieces of knit fabric (much stretchier and less stable than the woven material I'd used in my previous lesson) AND having to scrunch each pant leg beyond the needle, so as to actually be able to access the knees! The result is not something that I would wear out of the house, but S seems very pleased. 

The next day I set off to Conway, South Carolina, where I participated in a colloquium on Coastal Carolina University on disease and society throughout the ages. I spoke for 20 minutes on the image of the pharmacist in medieval Egypt according to non-medical sources (this was basically a section of my dissertation, so I really did not have to prepare very much, apart for looking for images for my PowerPoint). Another speaker discussed the day of thanksgiving in February 1872 celebrating the Prince of Wales' recovery from typhoid, and what that can teach us about the construction of disease and the construction of empire at that time, while the last one spoke on her experiences as a medical anthropologist working in Sierra Leone during the outbreak of Ebola last summer and after she returned to the USA. I learned a lot from both talks and my own one seemed to fascinate the audience (I think my accent did too - most people once again assumed I was British). Coastal Carolina was formerly a two-year college and is now reinventing itself as a four-year university, including graduate programs, with the help of which they hope to increase enrolment by 50% over the next five years. A very different world from the research universities I've been to up to now. The conversation at dinner was fascinating: I was the only non-South Carolinan, as the other speakers were from the College of Charleston  and CCU, respectively. A lot of time was spent on the local sailing options, and whether it was was better to own a boat or to belong to a club and have use of one when you wanted. invited by Eliza Glaze, a thoroughly nice person whom I met last July at the Leeds conference. I hope I will be able to host Eliza in Jerusalem some day. Not only did she fully fund the trip, she also sent S a box of comics abandoned by her teenage son when he left for college, and is planning to send us a box of South Carolina delicacies to make up, as she put it, for missing a trip to Charleston. As I had an almost absurd amount of free time, I took advantage of the spa packages offered by my hotel, and had a facial and head/arms/foot massage in the morning before I gave my talk. It was a nice surprise to be told that I clearly take care of my skin, seeing as I haven't had a facial in ten years or so, and especially after all the teenage years of being scolded for having oily skin and blackheads. 

I got back from South Carolina to a terrifying cold snap, and to ADC's cousin from San Francisco and his family - none of whom had really sufficiently warm clothes. Fortunately I could lend LC a scarf, but the others had to shiver (well, mainly JC - the little boys seemed quite happy). The main thing we did with them was go out to St Michaels, an almost self-consciously quaint village on the far side of the Chesapeake Bay, which involved crossing the local Bay Bridge. A and S had fun riding in the rented van, while LC enjoyed riding with us, without any children. St Michaels was rather reminiscent of Zichron, with the same kind of boutique-y shops and restaurants. We had crepes and hot chocolate for lunch, after a freezing walk (it was about 10 degrees, and windy) through the town to the old harbour. After lunch the weather warmed up considerably - mainly because the wind had dropped - and we walked in another direction, admiring the nineteenth-century houses. Owning a house like that is a full-time hobby, I should think. Many of them looked as I would imagine the houses in Anne of Green Gables would have looked, except with electricity instead of gaslight. 

I didn't really get to spend much time with JC and LC this time, as I was away for so much of the time there were here, but it was clear that the four boys picked up from where they left off at Thanksgiving, and no doubt will do the same in August, when we get to San Francisco, the same way they picked up where they left off with GG and AG just before we left Israel. I should add that we now have firmer plans for the summer: ADC got approval for two weeks at Friday Harbor Labs, from July 10-24, and we are flying back to Israel on August 7 - so we have two weeks to get down to San Francisco and spend time there. 

The busy week continued with a fascinating seminar at Johns Hopkins on the matatu minibuses of Nairobi on Monday, and finally, my talk on Galen at Rutgers on Tuesday (it was postponed from January due to snow). My talk, which I had been a bot worried about, as I had no idea what to expect from the audience, was very well received. The Q&A afterwards was very different from The Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton: most of the audience were Europeanists, and I was forced to admit that not only was everything after 1500 rather fuzzy, so was everything west and north of Istanbul (except for Spain). I had decided not to stay over in New Brunswick, and got home at 11:00 at night, having made by that time significant progress on my cardigan. 

All that academia was great fun, but rather exhausting, which is why I did not write this letter on Wednesday and send it out before Pesach. Since then, I've been dividing my time between cleaning the house and completing the editing of a dissertation that had to be submitted immediately after Pesach. Since I will be away most of next week, and in any case my client needed time to reread everything, ask questions, and print it out, that took up most of my time the last few days. The dissertation was very interesting, on the sacred stones of Jerusalem in the Crusader period from an art-historical point of view. It is nice having a non-university client from time to time, as I finished that on Thursday and have already been paid!

Cross-posting from LiveJournal, 6 January 2015: Winter break in the South

So we set off on the morning of Christmas eve, heading south. Since our previous trip to Durham, NC, had been a very traumatic traffic jam, we decided to avoid the I-95 as much as possible and instead start properly with a visit to an 18th century plantation, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (on the previous weekend, we prepared mentally by watching Gone With The Wind. A and S had no idea what to expect, and enjoyed it - although one of their comments about The South was that nobody had accents like in GWTW. Understandable, considering the actors ). Monticello is at the top of a hill, and was shrouded in mist, so we basically ignored the grounds. We took a guided tour of the first storey, which was very interesting. Jefferson designed the house himself, and there were all kinds of gadgets and great ideas there - like a revolving book stand that could hold five books. I wish every research library had that as standard issue on the desk, it would be really useful! The octagonal rooms with beds and closets in recessed niches were also very space saving. In addition to the exhibits of furniture in the main part of the house, there was an exhibition with interpretation of the slave quarters. Apparently skilled slaves were able to earn money by selling the labour of their free time - whether this was made objects, tailoring or produce from their gardens - to the Jefferson family or from getting tips from guests. I had no idea that this practice existed. We walked back from the house down to the visitor centre, stopping at the family burial plot, still in use, on the way. There was lots of the same names repeating themselves, and a headstone that has been waiting for over thirty years for a widow to be buried beside her husband.

We arrived in Durham only half an hour later than our expected time, rather than the three hours of our previous trip. However, this time our traumatic experience was totally losing internet connection after leaving Monticello, getting lost in a place called Chase City because the GPS on my phone is not sufficiently accurate, and only resuming connection with the outside world just before reaching Durham. We had noticed that whenever we were in rural Virginia we landed to lose connection on returning to the car after a hike, and SG explained to us why this was: our provider, T-Mobile, simply didn't cover Virginia, the Carolinas and Tennessee outside the interstates and large cities! Well, at least we know what's happening now, and can prepare for it. On Christmas day we went for a toddler-friendly hike, and then to see a movie and eat Far Eastern food. The movie was Big Hero Six, which was very enjoyable but apparently has very little connection to the comics, and the Far Eastern food was not Chinese, as is more traditional, but a Japanese hibachi grill, where the (Indonesian) chef puts on a performance of grilling the (mediocre) food.

Next day we truly set off for the unknown, driving almost due west towards the Smoky Mountains and Tennessee. ADC prepared a "Southern playlist" of over three hours for us to listen to, without any actual country music, apart from a few Robbie Robinson songs (although The Band is probably more rock than country). We noticed the differences between the original and Joan Baez renderings of "The Night The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," and suddenly the lyrics made much more sense - of course it would be Sherman's cavalry, and not Stonewall Jackson's, that tore up the train tracks around Richmond (see more on that below). We headed for Asheville, a place that we had not previously been aware of, but highly recommended by ADC's cousin. This turned out to be a lovely little town that had not undergone development due to a the city's lack of money in the 60s and 70s, thus preserving a lot of Gilded Age and Art Deco building (a similar process occurred in Savannah), from the period when the town was an artistic centre with lots of sanatoria. We took a self-guided walking tour, which was included a pamphlet with details, and also additional signage, explaining, for example, that this was the house in which O. Henry had stayed during his rest cure there, and that the building opposite had previously been owned by a Jewish tailor who became famous for sponsoring scholarships to the local college for boys from poor families, not sending bills during the Depression and so on. We also bought fudge there.

We reached Chattanooga on Friday night, and stayed in a hotel off the I-75, which was convenient for getting supper when exhausted, since it was in the middle of a strip mall. Next day we had breakfast at a Waffle Shack, where the boys were very happy to eat a large waffle and bacon. It was due to rain, so we went as quickly as possible to the Tennessee Valley Railway Museum, to catch the first tourist train. I had been expecting a steam train, but even a vintage diesel train is good. While we were waiting for the train to set off, we saw a freight train coming down the currently used tracks, with some ZIM containers. At the time, ADC thought that the train freight must be coming from the Gulf of Mexico, but in Savannah, when we realised that that is the biggest port on the East Coast, it seemed more likely that the train was on its way to or from Savannah. The train trip was about 20 minutes in either direction, and seeing the engine being turned around was definitely a highlight. After the train, we went to the Chattanooga Aquarium, one of the biggest in the South, which has two sections - River World and Ocean World. We decided to start at River World, and go to Ocean World if we had time/energy to do so, since we had not been to a fresh water aquarium before. The River World was extremely well done, showing the journey of the Tennessee River from the Smoky Mountains, where there are cold fast flowing streams, and ending in the sluggish warm waters of the Mississipi Delta, and all the animal, plant and economic life along its banks. As well as some very big fish indeed, there was a section with birds and otters, several species of snakes and on the entrance floor, a really beautiful special exhibition on sea horses (not fresh water aquaria, in this case!). We all enjoyed it very much, and we have clearly infected the children with the idea that you go through a museum slowly, reading everything there is to read and looking at everything there is to look at, as by the time we finished River World, there was neither time nor energy to visit Ocean World. We did spend another half an hour or so walking along the river banks, where we saw a touristy paddle boat, and read signs about Chattanooga's role in the Civil War. At one place, we saw the excavated remains of an iron furnace, the biggest and most technologically advanced in the antebellum South, which broke down in the winter of 1861/2, and was never used again.

That evening we ate the meal that was, for ADC and the boys, the culinary highlight of our trip: barbecued ribs at Famous Dave's, across the I-75 from our hotel. This being a Saturday night, we had to wait for a while before getting a table, but it was worth the wait. There were six different barbecue sauces on the table, a long menu of different kinds of meat and some interesting sides, including pineapple steaks, which I enjoyed very much. A was particularly happy, as both broccoli and asparagus featured as side dishes; Shas expanded his in-depth study of cheeseburgers to an equally in-depth study of mashed potatoes, which can usually be substituted for fries.

Sunday was our longest day of driving, following in Sherman's footsteps from Chattanooga to Savannah. On the way, we took a short break at Warner Robins Museum of Aviation in central Georgia. As we got out of the car there, we  realised we were in a different climate zone: it was much warmer and more humid than it had been in the mountains. Georgia seems to be like Tel Aviv in the winter, and now I understand why "the snow was deep in Virginia" was so significant to Scarlett's beaux - they were used to something very different. Warner Robins Airforce Base is one of the biggest bases in the US, but the aviation museum there is not the main one: the Air Force has another, larger one in Patterson, Ohio. I talked briefly to the volunteer who was explaining about the museum's layout and handing out maps and a list of the aircraft on view, and he was thrilled to know that a family from Israel was visiting his museum. He had previously worked in DC himself, and said that the Patterson museum was not too far away, just about eight hours driving, something you could do on a weekend. The museum itself was quite different from both the IAF museum at Hatzerim and Duxford. Even though many of the same wars appear both there and at Duxford, the American point of view is quite different, with much more emphasis on the Pacific theatre in WWII, naturally, and of course the post-WWII wars were different. More than that, unlike Hatzerim and Duxford, which both seem to have the attitude "if you're here already, you're interested, here's the plane," at Warner Robins all the major planes had little diorama-like additions of either pilots or parachutists or mechanics, presumably to bring the exhibit to life for laypeople. We didn't have time to do the museum justice, skipping entire sections so that we could spend more time looking at actual planes. I will say that I would have preferred the opposite, but it is true that the exhibitions can be seen elsewhere in one way or another, while there is nothing like the impact of standing close to a jet fighter.

We reached Savannah before sundown, but the weather was so grey that it made very little difference. After checking in at our hotel - no longer in a strip mall, but on the edge of historic Savannah - we went down to the river and wandered around, soaking up atmosphere before having supper. This was the fanciest restaurant of our trip, and in the end, the most disappointing. We left feeling that we had eaten well (I was very happy to have the opportunity to try collard greens, normally prepared with bacon, as they had a vegetarian option), but paid too much for what we had actually got. A major conclusion of this trip is that chains are not necessarily the devil's own work in America, so long as you are careful not to go to the absolutely plasticky places like Chik-Fil-A.

The highlight of the trip for me was our full day in Savannah. It was quite warm, but grey and drizzly: reasonable weather for walking around in, if  you have a good raincoat, which we all did. ADC had found an app for self-guided walking tours of Savannah, and laid out a route by combining sites from a number of tours, which according to the app should have taken us past something like 11 sites in 3 hours. Of course, it took us much longer than that, especially since as soon as we walked out of the hotel, I saw a sign for the market place and suggested going there first thing. It took us nearly two hours to get out. We stopped and sampled a sweet shop, a cookie shop, a salt shop and an art gallery specialising in local talent. We bought something at every place (actually, we left sweets and cookies for the evening, coming back before we went out for supper). We then meandered through the squares for which Savannah is famous, all of which have extensive plaques explaining the significance of the site, its name, famous people, etc. We also went into a bookshop and a peanut shop. Sadly, the peanuts were from Virginia, not from Georgia, so we refrained from buying even more food-related souvenirs. We saw the synagogue of the oldest Reform community in the South, which we thought was a church until we noticed the magen David, and Google Maps insisted that this was the right location, the fountain where the opening scene of Forrest Gump takes place, and visited a smelling garden, which was not doing so well, as it is winter, after all. And every single lamp post or bit of fence in the squares was decorated with red Christmas ribbon, and every tree was festooned (that really is the only word for it) with Spanish moss. We had a lovely, relaxing day, and if we ever have another sabbatical in the US, I think we could do worse than spending it in Savannah. I should go and read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, as it is supposed to be THE book about Savannah (I had always confused it with The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, thinking that that was the name of the movie based on the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but these are clearly two very different books and films).

From Savannah we started heading home. We spent the Tuesday basically driving through South Carolina and most of North Carolina, stopping at a nondescript town called Dunn, of which we saw only our hotel and a steakhouse (both on the I-85, not in the town proper), simply because driving all the way to Virginia was too far. We broke up the day by stopping at a nature reserve, Congaree National Park, which contains the largest tract of old growth hardwoods in the eastern US. This was another very different landscape: a swamp, where part of the boardwalk we had planned to use was washed out, requiring us to walk partly on very muddy paths. I did not have the right shoes, but both my boots and I survived. It was very quiet and beautiful there, with a few centimetres making a great difference in the ground coverage: bald cypresses poking up from muck were replaced by reeds as soon as the drainage improved. Going to and from Congaree was a glimpse into the backyard of America: trailer parks and little towns that time seemed to have forgotten, set among cotton fields. It was quite cold and there was nobody outside, so it was hard to know whether the people living in these rather depressing-looking places were black or white; some of them had a taste for Christmas kitsch the like of which we last saw when we were living in Cambridge.

On our last full day before heading home, we had planned to visit Petersburg Battle Site, which is actually a complex of sites, seeing as there was a thirty-mile front involved here; truly a dress rehearsal for WWI, this was the last line of defences before Richmond itself fell and the Confederacy dissolved. Like Chattanooga, this was a major railway junction, and Grant basically cut Richmond's supply lines by besieging Petersburg. We arrived to discover that we only had a couple of hours before the site closed early for New Year's Eve, at three rather than five, so we only got to see the Western Front site, which is where a company of Pennsylvania miners serving as engineers were able to dig a tunnel into the Southern trenches, undetected, and blew a hole into Petersburg's defences. Unfortunately, the Union soldiers were not properly informed of the plan, and rushed into the subsequent crater rather than around it, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (a very common occurrence on the Union side, we learned from Ken Burns' documentary, but less so for Grant). Among other things, we saw a reconstructed hut that four ordinary soldiers would have shared, about the size of the bathroom in Kfar Saba without the service balcony where the washing machine is. This impressed the boys very much, especially when Ariel pointed out how much better this was than being in a tent.

Our final stop was in Richmond, where we spent New Year's Eve and the morning of New Year's Day. It was very cold and a bit of a disappointment, really. There was no public First Night celebration the way there is in New York and Boston, apparently, and the first few restaurants we called were all fully booked. We stayed at a lovely historic inn, Linden Row, in the historic centre, so eventually we just walked out and looked for somewhere that was open. We found a very nice restaurant, that did New American cuisine, and I had my best meal of the trip. A and S were less enthusiastic. Anyway, we wandered around a bit after that and then just went back to the hotel because it was so cold. We played a rousing game of Citadels, and the boys stayed up till midnight. I was in the shower at the time, and did not manage to prevent them from waking ADC up when they counted down the last minute of 2014 ...

Next day, we once again wandered around a historic downtown, following something called the Richmond Liberty Trail. This is not like the Boston Freedom Trail, which is a path on the actual pavement, with lots of plaques, but a blue marker every few metres that indicates whether to continue straight or turn. Any plaques along the way are those that have already been set up, and not connected to the trail, as far as I could see. Everything was closed of course, but we had a look at the Confederate White House, now in the middle of a hospital complex. It is much smaller than the real White House, and somehow seems symbolic of a kind of parasitism that the Confederacy had vis-à-vis the Union. I wonder if I only feel that way because they lost? If the war had ended with a negotiated peace and the CSA still existed alongside the USA, I imagine their executive mansion would look less like a pale shadow of the real thing. What was very interesting was the Richmond Slave Trail, which connects to the Liberty Trail. This does have a lot of plaques, which are updated regularly, for example with new information following the excavation of the site of a hotel/slave auction site/jail now underneath the I-95 and a parking lot. It's very strange to see how a dig for 200 years ago is regarded as digging up a distant past; in Israel anything like that is salvage archaeology, no university digs up anything so late, because we can go back 3000 years so easily. It is much easier to do 3D computer generated reconstructions when you have insurance blueprints and daguerrotypes of the original buildings, though! We started walking back to the car, which we had parked outside the hotel as parking was free on New Year's Day, after we reached the Reconciliation Statue, copies of which stand in Liverpool and Benin, in memory of and apology for the triangular trade across the Atlantic. I had not realised before to what extent Richmond was a major centre of the slave trade: 40 thousand Africans arrived here annually before the British navy outlawed slaving.

Once again, we were not able to find a restaurant for lunch, so we decided to start home earlier than planned and eat on the I-95, which we did successfully. We will come back to Richmond, it's close enough that it can be a day trip, and now we have to start thinking about our visit to New York on January 17-20. Despite a less than great last day, all in all we had a wonderful time, and I think we made excellent use of the winter break.