melodyssister | Entries tagged with academia

The past ten days have been incredibly full. It was ADC's birthday, I got a lot of work (and paperwork) done, I visited the Old City in a dust storm, we have refurbished the kitchen somewhat, and preparations for Rosh Hashana are underway.

ADC's birthday was last Thursday. Like last year, I bought him a cake, as he does not believe I can make fancy birthday cakes. I totally agree! At the same time as buying the cake, I also bought a salad spinner. Since A and S have decided that they do eat lettuce, we have been eating salads rather than cut up vegetables, and ADC has been complaining for a while that we need to buy a salad spinner. My first stop was at a branch of a fairly fancy houseware store, where the salesgirl really didn't want to sell me anything. I remembered seeing a new kitchenware store just by the Machane Yehuda market, and continued there. Happily, although it was mostly accessories for baking, they did have a salad spinner - nicer and cheaper than the one I'd seen before. The salesperson took me around the corner to their other shop in order to wrap the box - and the other shop sells Arcosteel pots and pans, has a knife sharpening service; in short, it is the kind of shop that ADC loves. Telling him about it was an extra present, and he has been using the salad spinner almost daily, too.

This week's work: reviewing an article (that required checking translations of a text, and I had suggestions for improvement, so it was worth it), submitting the final version of an article of my own (and being invited to give a talk on the same topic to a general audience - that will no doubt be a post of its own), paperwork for the Israeli income tax authorities for 2014, paperwork for getting our lift released from customs (hopefully next week, immediately after Rosh Hashana), and editing a first draft of a grant proposal. I also officially finished working as a research assistent for one of my PhD supervisors, as his grant ended, and began negotiations to begin working for another professor who has just received a grant.

For the past few days, since the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israel has been suffering from an unusually violent dust storm, coming from the north (Syria), rather than the south (Jordan/Saudi Arabia) or west (Egypt) as they usually do. Jerusalem was particularly hard hit, as it is on the edge of the desert, and on Tuesday there was almost no visibility, with outside games cancelled at schools and dozens of people with asthma etc. needing medical treatment. Unfortunately for them, that was the day

eumelia and her good friend

verasteine came to see Jerusalem.

eumelia said she hadn't been to the Old City since high school, and this was

verasteine's first visit; I am so sorry it was in such poor conditions!! We climbed up the bell tower of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Christian Quarter, one of the highest points in the city. On a good day, you can see to the Dead Sea; on a normal day, you can see to Mt Scopus; that day we could barely see the city walls. The nice guard refused to take our money, and we continued to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was surprisingly not busy. I guess anyone who could was staying indoors. We then continued to a viewpoint of the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock. I have never seen the Dome so un-shiny, and it was quite eerie to see it against a flat white background, instead of seeing the Mount of Olives behind it.

The house was quite dusty, as we had left the windows open when we went to bed on Monday, so it was a good thing that the carpenter was due to arrive on Wednesday. Unlike

teddyradiator, I have neither done my own renovations not provided a photojournal, so you will just have to take my word for it that my kitchen is now much more spacious and organized. Admittedly, I can't reach the top shelf of the new pantry, but that is why I have a very tall husband and two sons who are on their way to being as tall. I have found myself just standing and staring at the pans that now hang from hooks and are easily accessible, instead of being stacked and hidden away in a drawer.

Finally, Rosh Hashana is on its way, starting tomorrow at sundown. ADC has been trying to make profiteroles for years, and as a trial run, we invited my sister J and her family for brunch today and fed them highly successful ones (finally!). We are going to ADC's family for Rosh Hashana, and I hope the batches he makes for them are as good.

May all my f-list have a happy and healthy New Year! שנה טובה ומתוקה!

It is scarily easy to fall out of the habit of blogging once I'm home ... I would try another SED for September, except that the month is chopped up by the High Holydays, and I will be away from my laptop quite often. I'll try for twice a week posting and see how that goes.

Now that the accountability disclaimer is up, what have I been up to in the last two weeks? Slowly but surely, the house has taken shape. The Ikea drawers and shoe closet have been constructed (thanks to ADC and the boys); the dining room chairs have been re-upholstered in dark red basketweave (thanks to my sister-in-law E and the boys), replacing or rather re-covering Very Stained Beige (I didn't realise quite how awful it had been until we went to ADC's cousins for lunch this past Saturday, and their chairs had that same upholstery as we had had); we've bought new carpets and sent an old Turkish rug for cleaning and mending; we've bought a car (or rather leased one); all the boxes have been unpacked apart for two containing large kitchenware, which is waiting for the new kitchen cupboards (due sometime next week, I hope); I've made dentist and doctor appointments (just check-ups). Our lift is due to arrive at Ashdod port any day now, so - taking all the non-working days in September into account - the house should reach its more or less final shape by the end of the month.

ADC has gone back to work completely, and I've also been working quite a lot. I finished translating an article, really not in my field and really poorly written, yesterday and today I had much more fun editing an entry for the Encyclopedia of Islam, third edition, and then finalising an entry I had written myself. I don't think that there are that many editors who also write the same kind of things that they edit, and I am glad to polish my USP from time to time.

A and S had their first day of school today. Both returned to the schools they had attended before the year in America, and it seems so far that the transition is going very smoothly. Since getting back to Jerusalem both have been spending a great deal of time with friends, including sleepovers - making up for a year apart. Hard to tell yet what re-adjusting to school in Israel will be like, and I'm much more concerned about A, who has to get used to being back in a competitive environment where everyone is clever and wants to study.

It has been so nice to sleep in my own bed with my own sheets again. Last Friday we had TB over for supper, and I could see how happy ADC was to be cooking in his own kitchen again. I love my dishwasher!! The week before we had a family event, another bar mitzvah, so I got to see all my cousins - everyone is back from the US now, and as someone said, now that the older children are heading into high school and then the army, nobody is planning to leave for a while.

Woohoo! I have just finished uploaded edited versions of the nine articles I had to read while at FHL, and send a summary of my comments to my co-editors. That was a marathon ten days, during which I edited another article (I'll be paid for that one, though), but now I'm done! ADC also finished writing his article, up to and including figure legends an acknowledgements, so tomorrow our holiday can really start.

Not that this hasn't been a partial holiday, anyway, of course. On Saturday we took the bus to Limekiln Park, aka Whale Watch Park, where we had a very enjoyable time hiking. We almost missed seeing orcas, as they were not in the vicinity most of the time, and in fact we only saw a few in the distance just before we had to leave the lighthouse viewing spot in order to catch the last bus. ADC was rather disappointed, as the potential was much greater than the actuality turned out, but the rest of us were thrilled anyway. We also saw a golden eagle while we were hiking, which was almost as impressive.

We followed up the whale theme by going to the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor yesterday (Tuesday). It was almost as much of a trek to get there as it was to the park, on the other side of the island, because we made the bad mistake of ordering sandwiches to go from a coffee shop, rather than the deli, in town. I've never had to wait 50 minutes for sandwiches before, and not been offered any kind of recompense or apology, not even a glass of water while we waited. The staff was overwhelmed by the lunch crowd (which struck us as being probably normal for the height of tourist season), and the single woman making the sandwiches was clearly not a professional: not only did she mix up orders (part of the reason for the delay), but she was incredibly slow and inefficient. I think that even S, who spends part of his time on another planet, could have worked faster. Adding insult to injury, when we mentioned how long we had been waiting to the staff, one of the women said "We're not a restaurant" - well, if you can't cope with a "to go" option, why offer it? And in the end, neither the sandwiches nor the cookies we bought were very good.

The Whale Museum was not what I expected. It was smaller than I thought it would be, a bit over-didactic and had almost nothing on the relations between humans and whales throughout history. I was expecting a museum with much more about whaling, but apparently that was never a major industry here, only further north, in Canada and Alaska. The in-depth studies and genealogical charts of the pods of the southern resident orcas were interesting, though, even though I felt that the anthropomorphism was a bit much: yes, whales are clearly intelligent, but they are not human.

After the museum, ADC went back to work, while the boys and I wandered around window shopping. We went into a place called Island Studios, selling arts and crafts made by locals. I was shocked to see ruffle scarves, made with the kind of yarn I had to match in the yarn shop here and which costs about $6 per ball, for sale for over $40!!

The boys have taken up geocaching with a vengeance: today they spent all afternoon wandering round town by themselves, looking for caches. They had a false start,as after they got to town A discovered his batteries had run out. When they arrived home, S discovered that his hat (which he had been wearing) was missing. He borrowed A's spare and they set off again, and found two caches and S's hat (it was next to the hutch where you could buy eggs on the honour system). Lucky boy!

This has been an incredibly productive week - ADC even finished the first draft of his article, and only has the figures and drawings to do, so coming to Friday Harbor has been very worthwhile for him, and I have gone through half of the articles for the special issue on medicine that I am co-editing. While the two of us have been at work, the boys have done a lot of exploring and holiday homework: A has made a lot of progress catching up on geometry, while S has listened to an audiobook of White Fang (an abridged version, by OxfordOwl) and written a new ending of over 600 words. This was his summer homework from his school in Israel, so I'm pleased that's done.

What else have we been up to? Last Sunday we walked back into town and explored what was there apart form the market and supermarket. We went down to the harbour itself and watched people setting off on a whale watch ($70-100 a person, I think we'll begin by seeing what we can see from land. Tomorrow we are going to a park semi-officially known as Whale Watch Park), before locating the San Juan Transit station, from which we would take the bus that goes to that park (the blue route) or to the alpaca farm (the green route), where I had been planning to buy yarn for myself and

eumelia, until we walked out of an ice cream shop and I saw a sign out of the corner of my eye: Island Wools. As you can imagine, as soon as I finished my ice-cream I went inside, and immediately became overwhelmed. The young woman behind the counter was very welcoming, and showed me the alpaca yarn she had: not from the farm on San Juan Island, but from the next one. The yarn was a bit disappointing to me, as it was much thicker than I really wanted - alpaca is really warm, so not that useful in Israel, and I was planning to use it together with another yarn, a ribbon yarn in a wine colour. As soon as she said that there was a range of yarns that were hand-dyed in the shop, I knew that that was what I wanted. I must say that everyone else was very understanding of me - not to say enabling; S found a pattern for a Robin Hoodie, and tried to convince me to knit his next Purim costume. However, the lack of space in our suitcases (to say nothing of the prices; that alpaca yarn was $34 for 100 gm) forced me to decide that I could only buy one skein. The colours available were all so gorgeous that it was clear that I would have to come back with a ball of the ribbon yarn in order to match the colours.

Monday was a quiet day, as we were a bit exhausted from walking back and forth twice in two days, but on Tuesday the boys and I had a lot of fun: first of all, after a safety review on the docks, we were allowed to look at plankton that ADC had helped collect with the invertebrate embryology course. It was really fascinating, seeing all the tiny shiny balls that are actually real animals. After lunch, we walked into town, and while I went back to the yarn shop with the ball I wanted to match, the boys went geocaching. I will let A tell you all about that, and just say that buying yarn was even more fun than just looking.

eumelia also decided that she preferred colourful fingering-weight yarn to thicker alpaca, and I bought six mini-balls for her, and one large hank for myself, in a colour called Black Cherry. With excellent timing, the boys arrived just as I had decided what I wanted, and they were able to watch the hank being wound into a centre-pull ball. Not only did they enjoy watching that, they were relieved to hear that now they would not have to help me do the winding by hand :-) On the way home, we went past a second-hand bookshop that claimed to have 50,000 books and a computerised catalogue. Interestingly, the boys were not that keen - they preferred the new book shop we had gone to on Sunday. I think they lack the formative experience of second-hand bookshops being the only way to get books in English at a reasonable price. We are planning to visit what is supposed to be the biggest second-hand bookshop in North America, Powell's in Portland, on our road trip, so maybe that will help change their minds.

On Wednesday, the highlight of the day was the ice cream social at the dining hall, where you could have all the ice-cream you wanted, with all kinds of toppings, while on Thursday, the highlight was the farewell party for the invertebrate embryology course where ADC had given two talks. A helped grill (on a gas grill), and a good time was had by all. On Friday, we finally got on the water, and when for a brief practise row in the immediate vicinity of the labs, which are across the bay from the town of Friday Harbor. It was a bit nerve-racking at first, and S in the bow and me at the stern was the wrong way around for balance (and I got very wet from the rowers), but all in all, ADC and A gained enough confidence to row all the way across this morning. It is indeed quicker than walking, just under half an hour rather than slightly over 45 minutes.

We started a bit later than we had intended, so instead of beginning at the Whale Museum and continuing to the farmers' market, we started at the farmers' market, went to the San Juan Cheese Shop and ended up at the San Juan Island Museum of Art - the Whale Museum will have to wait for another day. I had wanted to go to the SJIMA from the moment I saw an advertisement for one of the exhibitions there: a photographer at the Whiteley Centre (where ADC has his fellowship now) had taken pictures of the invertebrates studied at FHL and printed them on blank backgrounds - they looked absolutely gorgeous. My favourite was the stalk jelly, which looked like something from a kaleidoscope. A liked the curly-headed spaghetti worm, which he believes proves the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. S's favourite was two starfishes touching each other, which he thought reminiscent of the Creation of Man from the Sistine Chapel. ADC refused to say which picture he liked best, claiming to be used to the animals.

After getting home, we went out again in the late afternoon, very kindly being lent a car by one of our neighbours, who is teaching at the marine invertebrates course, and drove off to explore some of the south coast of the island, via geocaching. We also took the time to watch the tide coming in, as high tide was at 5:45. I will now quote A on geocaching:
Geocaches are small caches hidden on trails in various places. The person hiding the cache opens a cache page on a geocaching website with the coordinates for the cache and a brief description of the cache and hints how to find it. If you want to go geocaching somewhere you search the websites for caches in that place and choose caches that look interesting and send their coordinates to your GPS. When you make sure the coordinates are on your GPS you can go to the place you are going geocaching and start looking for the cache. The caches are usually small boxes hidden somewhere not obvious but findable after a search. Once you find the cache you open it and see what’s inside. Common things found in caches are marbles, stickers and travel bugs*. In every cache there are a few pieces of paper for writing your name and the date you found the cache. Once you sign the cache you leave something in the cache and take one of the things in side of the cache. When you get back home you log your visit and write you found the cache (or didn’t).
*Travel bugs are small discs with a code you move from place to place and write on the website where it was moved and then you can track its trip.

My personal experience of geocaching is very fun and extremely fulfilling. it’s a very enjoyable extra to add to every hike. It was very exciting to find my first geocache with Shaul. While Mummy was in her knitting shop S and I went to look for an interesting geocache called “Quick Trail!”. We followed the directions in the description and what the GPS said was the right direction (it’s not a GPS like waze but a GPS for geocaching and tracking where you went and it has a compass and stuff) until we reached the middle of a short trail between two streets. After about 20 minutes of searching and S trying to persuade me the cache wasn’t there we found it between the bushes next to a broken cinder block (like the description said). When we opened the cache we signed our names, took a marble and put in a travel bug from a previous cache we didn’t actually find but just asked the people at the reception counter after looking for it outside and they pulled it out from under the table, so that’s not a real find after looking. S and I were very happy after finding “Quick Trail!” and kept talking about it until the end of the day.

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 d 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 second 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.

..the last week with any sort of routine for a while, I think, since the second week of camp was cancelled on Tuesday. A and S were very disappointed, as they were looking forward to a marine biology camp - but I guess not enough people felt like paying that price for four days of camp. They thoroughly enjoyed Japanese art camp, though, coming home today not only with manga booklets they had prepared themselves, but with papier-mâché Noh masks, origami animals, kimono designs and durga(sp?) heads. They also experienced a sushi workshop, and are now prepared to eat some kinds of vegetarian sushi, which is an improvement over refusing to eat sushi at all (they both reject fish in any form).

We spent three nights this week watching movies: two nights watching The Last Waltz on Netflix, while last night (Thursday), we went on a family outing to the cinema, for only the second time since coming to the US. We saw Inside Out, which deserves its rave reception. I won't go into the plot, so as not to spoil anything, but it was a complex and original story, with really fantastic animation and artwork. I thought that all the sweaters worn by the characters had really been knitted. Surprisingly, the traditional Pixar short before the main feature was terrible, in my opinion, by any standards, but especially considering how excellent Inside Out was.

Today M and D came over for supper - part of the campaign to finish everything in the pantry. As a result, we served meatballs, brown rice/wild rice/barley and succotash, with challah to start and brownies and biscotti to finish. We finished a bottle of wine (opened that evening) and a bottle of port (opened several weeks ago). M and D are such nice people; D is excellent with the boys, the kind of cool uncle Y was before he had kids of his own :). We made tentative plans for them to come over to watch the Fourth of July fireworks, which apparently are across the road from us, at the middle school field, and help us drink another bottle of wine, as well as taking everything we won't be able to donate to a food bank, like open bags of flour and jars of jam.

My own week was productive: I edited two articles and reviewed another. The article I reviewed was for Journal of Ethnopharmacology, and I am not sure I am really competent to review there. In this case, however, I thought the methodology sound and the information useful, but the English was so bad (the authors were Turkish) that the article was almost unreadable. I sent it back with an "Accept pending major revision / revise and resubmit", but ADC told me I should have rejected it. I'm not sure about that: the topic was certainly suited to the journal and really my only problem was with the language. I don't think the authors should be penalised totally for spending more time on their research than on their language skills.

I also started sewing another pair of shorts, which I intended to finish today but was attacked by a bout of lethargy/want to read all the fics instead of anything else.

eumelia had her 30th birthday yesterday. It was a very funfilled and busy day, in which I was barely in front of a screen, unless I was actively working at something else, hence the lateness of today's post.

Yesterday began with two meetings at TAU, with MS (my co-editor of a special issue on Islamic medicine), which greatly calmed my mind as to how three people would edit a volume together, and my best friend KA; of course we didn't have enough time together, but it was good to see her. I then continued to

eumelia's place, which is very her, and we had lunch together in a very pleassant neighbourhood café. Once we got back to KS, she took the three boys to see Avengers: Age of Ultron and I did a bit of shopping. The day almost ended with a lovely family meal. It completely ended with an e-mail from Amtrak saying that the Philadelphia-Washington leg of the journey home had been cancelled. That sent me into a complete tizzy, and I spent a lot of today sorting that out (or at least thinking about it).

Let me begin, of course, by saying that I hope I am not completely selfish and my first reaction when I heard about the terrible crash on the Northeast Regional - the only Amtrak route I've ever travelled, I think - was sorrow and concern for the families of the dead and wounded. My impression, until last night, was that I might have to take a convoluted route to Philly, but from there it would be OK. Obviously, this was now not the case. Long story short (and half an hour on the phone to United in the US), we will fly back from Newark to Baltimore and ADC will collect us from there.

Just finished Skypeing with ADC - tomorrow he leaves for Arizona, so I'll speak to him again only on Saturday, just before we go back. Both of us had relatively relaxed days.

Mummy woke us up at ten, so that A and S could go to have their haircuts. I sorted out the phone situation, with the result that I now have a temporary stupid phone for calls and my US phone (locked to the US, it turns out) for Whatsapp and e-mail/internet when there is wifi. And my laptop, of course - I'll be taking all three to Jerusalem tomorrow.

Y and N, ADC's brother and his wife, came over this evening. They were very happy with the maple syrup and their children, R and Z, were very happy with the Playmobil. After the left, my friend T came over, and we discussed, among other things, how The Imitation Game had played fast and loose with military history, cryptography, computing and Alan Turing's personal life. I pointed out that people with any kind of deep understanding in these fields were not necessarily the target audience, but agreed that the dumbing down had been excessive.

This is almost the first moment I have sat in front of a computer today (can't compose a whole post on my phone). Today began with Skype conversations with both sets of families back in Israel, continued to Free Comic Book Day in Silver Spring, then while ADC made zucchini salad and onion bread for the departmental picnic, I completed the second sleeve of my cardigan. The departmental picnic was followed by a Mozart concert at Strathmore. I'm exhausted!

I can't believe that the spring break has been over for nearly two weeks already ... when we set out for West Virginia on the 6th, it was still wintry: very few trees had any kind of buds on them, and it was definitely cold. Since then, spring has sprung: I'm sitting outside to write this on our deck in a t-shirt and barefoot.

Our plan for the spring break was to return to Breath of Heaven B&B, which we had fled in a snowstorm, as you may remember, and to explore West Virginia in better weather. On the way there, we stopped at Antietam National Battlefield, the site of the bloodiest one day battle in US history. The battle took place in fields surrounding farmhouses, many of which are still the homes of the same families today. There is a self-guided drive around the battlefield, and we spent most of the day there, driving from site to site, going up an observation tower, and viewing the sycamore that also witnessed the Burnside's Bridge stage of the battle. For the first time, we also made use of A's GPS and looked for geocaches - finding one right next to the visitor centre. That turned out to be the only geocache we actually removed and replaced - all the other ones we found were on hiking trails and inaccessible.

Our hosts at the B&B greeted us very happily, and asked if French toast casserole would be a good breakfast next morning. As we were not planning on proper lunches, and we were not sure what we would find in the vicinity for supper, breakfast was a vital part of the day, and French toast casserole sounded excellent (I would have liked to have observed Pesach a bit more, but recognise that it is almost impossible to do so away from home). We started Tuesday with a visit to Blackwater Falls, which we had thought was a tributary of the north fork of the south branch of the Potomac (had gadya, had gadya...), but it actually on the other side of the watershed and drains into the Ohio, which joins the Mississippi and eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico. The water is dark-coloured from the sediment it picks up along the way, and the falls were beautiful. A particularly impressive sight just by the waterfall was a sheet of ice along the canyon wall, slowly melting and dripping away. Had we come a week earlier, no doubt all the way would have been covered in ice. We had a very pleasant hike along a cross-country skiing path, where the ground was squishy beneath our feet, but it was not really muddy. At this point, everything was still hibernating, so we saw very few birds and no flowers that day.

We then continued to Canaan Valley Wildlife Refuge, where we hoped to see beaver lodges (this excited A very much. He has an unexplained obsession with beavers). Unfortunately, it had rained heavily in the previous few days, and the paths assumed that everyone was driving a 4x4 or pickup - that is, at the point where we decided that we could no longer go forward, there were other cars coming towards us. We tried our luck at another entrance and eventually were third time lucky: the rain which had begun, stopped, and we found a boardwalk with an interpretive trail, whose leaflet S was very happy to read with much drama and pathos. The leaflet was actually extremely informative (although meant more for later in the year), and I was particularly pleased to have the different kinds of moss pointed out. We don't have a guide to mosses and lichens (because birds, butterflies and flowers is our limit), so it always frustrates me to see them and not know what I am seeing.

Next day was our major hiking day, starting at Seneca Rocks. As we drove there, we were very surprised to see a long line of wind turbines, which had been completely invisible in the whiteout of our previous trip, although obviously the were there all along. We were still slightly off-season, so the visitor centre was closed, but as we were not planning mountaineering, there was in fact only one path to the top, which had us all taking off outer layers. I need hiking shorts! Once I finish sewing the skirt I am making at the moment (4 hours work so far, and no sewing, as I had to print and glue the PDF pattern from 30-odd A4 pages, and then cut out the pattern pieces and the fabric), I will try my hand at a longer version of the pyjama shorts. But I digress ... Seneca Rocks was really lovely, although it was amusing to read the signs about tree stumps that had long since rotted away. There was a geocache there, too, but it seemed that you needed to rappel to it, so we left it alone.

Seneca Rocks' outdated signs were better than those at Spruce Knob, where we drove to the top of the highest mountain in West Virginia, to an observation tower, and walked along another interpretative trail - but this time there was no leaflet, and actually no signs! We reached the peak and looked across rolling hills in every direction, and had no real idea of what we were seeing, beyond Pennsylvania on one side and the Shenandoah on the other. We also saw rainclouds coming closer, and decided not to continue to Spruce Knob Lake, but to take a scenic route back to Petersburg and eat at an Italian restaurant for a change. On the way down one mountainside and up another, between Ross Road and Judy Road, I saw a sign indicating "Road Not Taken". Spruce Knob is so called for the large number of balsam spruces, which are endemic to West Virginia, that grow there. We saw balsam spruces at Canaan Valley, too, where there is a program to preserve and re-introduce them.

Thursday morning continued rainy, so our plans to hike at Dolly Sods had to be cancelled. Instead, we went to Lost River State Park, which turned out to be an out-of-season holiday camp with a fitness trail - rather like a Keren Kayemet forest in Israel, up to and including the pine trees. It felt a bit post-apocalyptic in the light drizzle, being the only people around. I would have liked to have seen the Lee House, a summerhouse built by Lighthorse Harry, father of Robert E. Lee, but of course that was closed, too. I should back track a bit here to report one of the highlights of the trip: as we were leaving Breath of Heaven, A saw a bird's nest with eggs in it just at the edge of the driveway and warned ADC to be careful. As the car began to roll slowly forward, the mother bird (a killdeer) burst into the driveway and tried to distract the predator, going so far as to lie down and play dead in the missile of the road. Unfortunately, this is a tactic more likely to get her killed than anything else ...

On our hosts' recommendation, we continued to Winchester, where we started at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. The Museum has three components: a museum proper, with exhibitions about the social and cultural history of the Shenandoah Valley; an early-twentieth century millionaire's mansion, Glen Burnie, and the gardens of the house. The museum also holds a collection of miniature houses and rooms collected by Julian Wood Glass, who bequeathed Glen Burnie and its garden to the museum. We had not been expecting anything as interesting as what we found there. The miniature houses were amazingly detailed and lovely, and included a scale model of Tara, with portraits of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. The house had a very beautiful exhibition of contemporary botanical drawings, which I personally found fascinating, and a good segue into the gardens. They were not at the best, of course, but the Chinese garden and the war garden were already charming. We still had some time before we needed to get to Joe's Steakhouse in Front Royal, so we went into Winchester historic centre, where we wandered around for a bit, and found an olive oil and balsamic vinegar emporium. We spent quite a bit of time tasting the different oils and vinegars, eventually buying three to take home. That kept us going until we reached the steakhouse where, as A said, "I had the best steak of my life last time I was here, and this time it was even better!"

As we drove east from West Virginia and came down from the mountains, we saw that spring had begun in Maryland, and on Saturday we went to see the cherry blossoms in the Tidal Basin, together with several thousands of other people. It felt like the Old City during Passover week (and this was without going to see the parade). The cherry blossoms are truly glorious. I hadn't realised that there were a number of varieties - with more added as the older trees die - and the different colours, shapes and scents came together in a very beautiful display. I got pollen on my nose smelling the blossoms; despite the similarity, they are far less scented than almond and apple blossoms. As we were already at the Mall, we also went to see the Vietnam War memorial, which we had missed on our previous visit, in the autumn. I remember reading a National Geographic article about it, so knew that the names were in chronological order, but I hadn't realised that the list began an ended in the middle of the monument, forming a loop. ADC took a picture of one of the names for a little old lady, as neither she nor her friends were tall enough to hold their phone in the right place.

The rest of the weekend was very musical: On Saturday we heard Bach's St John Passion at Strathmore Music Centre (where we saw the Chieftains), performed by the National Philharmonic and Chorale. Rather ridiculously, it reminded me of Jesus Christ Superstar (while of course the inspiration is the other way around). The program notes very earnestly discussed the anti-Semitism of the text. My feeling is that if your libretto is the Gospel according to John - which was written after the destruction of the Temple and Roman conquest of Judea - there is no way you can accuse the Romans of anything and of course the Jews will be blamed. I must say that following along (we were provided with the full German text with English translation), I was, on the one hand, very impressed that the Evangelist (narrator) knew his part well enough to not have any music at all in front of him, and on the other hand, even more confused about the timeline of the Passion. I had always thought that the Last Supper was a Seder, but from the wording, it appears that it was the day before the Seder? Anyway, clearly I am more interested in words than in music and I'm sure C would be horrified that this is how I am responding.

Sunday was of course the Battle of the Bands, in which ADC got to play bass live on stage in an Irish pub. ADC has been playing bass for about a year and a half now, partly self-taught, and when we arrived in DC he looked for a group to play with (bass players are always in demand). He plays every couple of weeks with DC Rockers, which is a fairly loose group of people who meet occasionally in varying combinations to play pre-agreed songs together. The group includes over 50 people, and there are anything between 5 and 10 people who show up for each session. A couple of months ago, the organizers of DC Rockers announced that we were going to have a live “Battle of the Bands” event at a local pub. Members of the group were invited to form ad-hoc bands, rehearse a set-list and then play live in front of their fellow rockers (and friends and families). Here is the link to his set. If you want to hear what the other bands sounded like (and have two hours to spare), you can click on the DC Rockers channel link there. I'll just say that I had a lot of fun, and my ears were ringing when we came out! A funny thing happened: when I was checking the bill, I saw that the waitressed had not charged me for the hot chocolate with Bailey's I had drunk. When I pointed this out to her, she was so impressed that she charged me only for a regular hot chocolate. I think this is a case of honesty being its own reward.

On Monday life went back to normal. The children received their third-quarter report cards on Tuesday, and happily these were as boringly good as usual. I started work on the material I had begun receiving during the break and ignored: I have two book manuscripts, an article and a grant proposal to edit before coming to Israel (this is why this letter has been delayed), with another article and a PhD dissertation in the pipeline. Today was a relatively quiet day: I stayed home and sewed (now I feel like a character in a nursery rhyme) while ADC went with the children to celebrate Record Store Day (they went to the comics shop, and also S had an eye test). In the afternoon we watched Some Like It Hot, which was enjoyed very much by all. The line about losing ponies playing water polo has been repeated ad nauseum by now, and the closing scene has lost nothing in the 56 years since it was first screened.

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!

This post is bracketed by snow: The first serious snowfall of the season occurred almost immediately after we returned from the south. While ADC was enjoying Florida, the boys had a snow day after one day back at school. The day before yesterday (January 27), as I set off for Princeton, they had another one. My talk at Rutgers has been postponed to March, due to the storm - which in the event didn't affect places south of New York as much as was forecast. Still, it would have been difficult to get to Rutgers (even leaving in the afternoon, it took longer than usual to get to Princeton, as the commuter rail was far less frequent. I ended up taking a bus from Trenton, where I was the only passenger most of the time, and the only non-person of color all of the time.

Going back, on January 9 I spent the morning with my cousins SG and her sister JG, who was visiting from London. We visited Kreeger House, formerly the home of David and Carmen Kreeger, that was specifically designed to set off their collection of art, which ranges from the Impressionists onwards. There were some very lovely pieces there, and I was sorry that it was too cold too see the sculpture garden properly: the grounds were covered with snow, making many of the sculptures inaccessible. It was nice spending time with JG, who I hadn't seen since we lived in Cambridge, and she brought Smarties for the children, which they are taste-testing in comparison with M&Ms.

Last weekend was Martin Luther King Day, and the boys had a day off school for teacher training. With a four-day weekend, we decided to set off for New York. We stayed in a mid-town hotel, the Grand Union, that suited our needs perfectly. Unfortunately for us, it is about to be renovated and will probably be priced above our means when it reopens (We were told this by a lady we met in the lift, who has been staying their for decades whenever she visits New York. She also identified the neck warmers that were all wearing as having been home knitted, and complimented me on my work!). But in the meantime, it was very pleasant, and had really excellent croissants at breakfast.

We arrived in New York on Saturday afternoon, and almost immediately went off to the High Line park, before it got dark. We were expecting a place where you could see views of New York from above, and were severely underwhelmed by what we found. Ignoring the fact that it was freezing there, the view was completely blocked by a variety of high rise buildings going up. I think that even if we had gone at a warmer time of year, this is a place that New Yorkers appreciate, rather than visitors. After recovering with large bowls of hot chocolate, we took the subway to the Guggenheim, which has semi-free entry on Saturday evenings. We stood in a fast-moving line for a while, and had a restorative experience once we got inside. Only part of the museum was open, because they were between exhibitions, but there was just the right amount of art for us to look at. We saw an exhibition of early Kandinsky, another of the Justin Tannhauser collection (some really lovely Impressionists), and of a modern Indian painter, Gaitonde. Interestingly, even before looking at the labels, it was clear that this was Indian-influenced art. We then returned to the hotel and ate at a neighbourhood Korean restaurant, which specialized in dumplings. We had fried and boiled vegetarian dumplings as starters, and I liked them better than most Chinese dim sum I've had. In fact, after this trip, I have come to the conclusion that Chinese is my least-favourite Asian cuisine. It's simply the worst option for vegetarians, it seems to me.

On Sunday we experienced possibly the worst weather so far: freezing, driving rain. We went to Queens, to see the street in Rego Park where my parents-in-law grew up, and were thoroughly soaked. Even the best coat has a limit - and we also walked through slippery slush, which was quite scary since I felt that my boots were not really up to the job ... Had the weather been better, we might have considered knocking on the door and seeing if we could see the inside of the houses, but we felt that we could not drip over the furniture of complete strangers. We then continued to the Museum of the Moving Image, where we tried to meet up with another cousin, OC, and her family. Unfortunately, museums are not really a good place to meet up unless your children are exactly the same age. We did manage to talk a bit, when the children were all involved in activities, but most of the time we were going though the exhibitions at different speeds. S was in heaven, and we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We spent over 5 hours in the museum, first at a special exhibition on Chuck Jones, who directed most of the Looney Tunes cartoons, and then at the permanent exhibition, which described the development of all aspects of movies and television, from actors, scripts and costumes, through special effects, make-up and merchandise, to different kinds of cameras and screens. The children experimented with stop-motion animation and played Pacman on an arcade machine. ADC and I particularly enjoyed two collages of famous scenes and famous words from the movies, trying to identify as many as possible. Just watching all the movies in those collages would be an education in classic film. We tentatively agreed to meet OC after supper (they left the museum much earlier than we did), and we even ate at an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side - not the one they recommended, though - but by the time we finished, we were too exhausted to be sociable, and went home without seeing them again. I hope we will be able to find another occasion, but if not, we are all going back to Israel in the summer, and apparently they are considering moving to somewhere in the Jerusalem hills.

On Monday the weather was much better, and we spent the day on the Lower East Side. We began by taking the Staten Island Ferry back and forth to see the Statue of Liberty. ADC and I had been to the Ellis Island Museum when ww visited New York in 1996, and we decided that the Tenement Museum would be more enjoyable for the children. We booked two tours - a walking tour, at 2 p.m., and a house tour, at 4:45. Before the tours, we met ADC's cousin (we have so much family here it's unbelievable) LS, who took us to a Chinese place for lunch (which was where I came to the conclusion above. It was't that the food was bad, it was just boring. There were about 3 vegetarian options in a list of lunch specials that ran to close to 30, one of which was plain steamed vegetables.) Anyway, it was very nice to see LS again, she seemed to be enjoying her life. The Tenement Museum tours were for me the highlight of our trip (thank you, Daddy, for suggesting it). The walking tour was led by a woman originally from the Netherlands, who had come to New York to study American history, and the group was multi-ethnic. We saw many different styles of buildings, three synagogues (one still working - the Romaniote Kehillat Kodesh Janina, one that is now Seventh-Day Adventist church, and one - the Erster Varsha - that is now a sculptor's studio. I wonder which alternative the founders of the congregations would have considered worse), a Chinese temple to the god of wealth and business, and walked through a few different parks, of which the largest was the Sarah D. Roosevelt park, named after FDR's mother, parts of which have been taken over by the community, in one case for a community garden like we have in Beit Hakerem, and in another case by Chinese men who bring their birds to socialise in a specific spot. The tour ended up at the Essex Street Market, but unfortunately for us, many of the food places were already closed. We had some time between the two tours,so we backtracked to a cupcake bakery I had spotted, and had amazingly good cupcakes and hot chocolate, before going to learn about life in garment production in the Lower East Side. The Tenement Museum offers a number of building tours, we took the Sweatshop Workers ("Pay a visit to the Levine family's garment workshop and the Rogarshevskys' Sabbath table at the turn of the 20th century, when the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place in the world. Explore how immigrants balanced work, family and religion at a time of great change.") This time, the guide and all the participants were clearly Jewish, and had ancestors who had lived in similar tenements. We saw a census from 1900, and all the names there were from ADC's family album. There was even a brother and sister called Fanny and Abraham, just like his grandmother and her brother. The census was fascinating in and of itself: the difference between children who had been born in the old country and had gone to work on arrival contrasted with the American-born siblings, who were in school or college; the men all spoke English and could read and write, while this was not true of all the women. We were there in the late afternoon, and the Levines' back room which served as a sweat shop was already quite gloomy. I was very impressed by the weight of the coal press - no wonder a man was employed to press the garments! I would have liked more time to wander around the other rooms, especially the Rogarshevsky family's other rooms, which we got to see only quite briefly. We did see, however, a special additional prayer that women would say while lighting candles, in which they hoped that their family would be able to earn a living while being able to observe Shabbat - as people moved from backroom sweatshops where the owner knew you and was most likely Jewish himself, to factories that had to abide by New York state blue laws forbidding work on sundays, it became more difficult to keep Shabbat, and for many people this was a serious problem. The last thing we did there was hear an oral history, taken from an elderly lady who had lived in the building, Josephine Baldizzi (her family's story is the subject of a different tour). She described how she would be called to light lamps on Saturdays, and how proud she was that she was able to help by doing that. All in all, it was very moving, and I'm glad the boys are old enough to have enjoyed it, too.

Our last day in New York was spent at the American Museum of Natural History. One of the perks of ADC's job is having friends at all the major natural history museums, and not only were we able to get in for free, we saw an IMAX show and a special exhibition for free, too, thanks to the curator of invertebrate zoology. We didn't have enough time at the Museum. We saw the dinosaur exhibition, which is very up to date, and which was a must because the Smithsonian's dinosaur hall is being refurbished, then hurried to the IMAX. I felt that we could have done without this, in retrospect, but S really wanted to see it: "Tiny Giants" was a heavily anthropomorphised story of the challenges facing chipmunks and grasshopper mice, which I found a bit too cutesy. After that we went to the special exhibition on natural disasters, Nature's Fury, which was really quite scary. I am very glad I don't live in the tornado corridor of the central USA. By the time we were done there, we had to start counting down to catching the train home and we went to see the dioramas of American nature. I think I saw a (stuffed) real road runner for the first time, and I was surprised at how different they were from the Beep-Beeps we had seen on Sunday. We nearly missed the train home, since for the first time we approached Penn Station from street level, rather from within the subway system, and we had difficulty finding the right entrance. Luckily, with a burst of speed we made it, and we even managed to sit together.

ADC stayed on in New York to give talks at the AMNH and at NYU, and by the weekend, we were all exhausted - besides, it was supposed to snow then, too. We spent a peaceful weekend, without leaving the house. On Saturday KM and his family came to visit from Baltimore. The plan was to eat cholent and then go to a museum, but by the time we finished lunch (this involved a 45 minute break while vanilla soufflé was prepared and baked), the four boys were resistant to going anywhere and they spent the afternoon playing board games in the basement, joined at one point by their fathers, while AM and I talked and played with baby CM.

On Sunday, the main thing we did was watch The Sound of Music, which was surprisingly long, and very enjoyable. S has been singing bits and pieces of "The hills are alive" and the Do-Re-Mi Song ever since. Both boys had fun pointing out the tropes while we were watching. I completed the back of GB's vest over this weekend, and I will finish it - seaming and neck/armhole bands - after I get back from Princeton. [In the meantime, the vest has been completed and sent to Tel Aviv.]

Princeton was really fun. Sabine Schmidtke picked me up from the bus stop and I slept over in her enormous house - where she lives alone most of the time, as her partner works for the World Bank and spends Monday to Friday in Washington. I had lunch with Patricia Crone!! I still can't get over it, it was so thrilling to actually meet someone whose books have blown my mind. When I was practically learning some of them by heart for my MA exam, I never thought that someday I would actually meet the author. She was delighted to hear that ADC and his father had read and enjoyed her book Pre-industrial societies. the talk itself went well, I thought. Heinrich von Staden, a classicist who specialises in Galen, came too, and I nearly had a panic attack. But he was very kind about my lack of Greek, and thought that I was doing interesting work, so that was great. He had to leave before the end of the session, and after he left, the others asked questions more focused on the Arabic texts I was using, and I came away withholds of ideas for going forward.

It took a long time to get home. The train from Trenton to Washington was half an hour late, and I think went more slowly than usual so that I arrived home a good hour later than I had expected. I got a lot of knitting done, though. Luckily I brought it along, as I finished my book while still at Trenton. No more travelling for me for the next month or so - I'll be glad for some weekends at home.