Slideshow: Inside Shatila

The BBC has a slide show of pictures from Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. You might have to keep pausing it to both read the text and get a good look at the pictures, but it is definitely worth a look.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7398071.stm

valley views

My no frills, point-and-shoot camera can hold 11 pictures in it's memory at its best resolution, so each time I take a walk, I am limiteds to 11 pictures. It's so frustrating. So here are the 8 best for today. On the other side of that hill is Jerusalem.
I would love to be able to look at this view every day. But it is a heck of a walk up the hill. Until we get a car, I will stick to living in the ugly, built up valley where the public transportation is.
This house is all tumbled down on one side, but the other side is newer, and lived in. I guess they can't bare to tear down the house their grandfathers built.I love the rock walls and the old trees.
A few last wildflowers bloomed along this wall.I am seriously too tired to think of any more captions....
and I think I went too far with the sharpening on this next one. It looks weird somehow, doesn't it?Good night, and Happy (American) Mothers day to my Mom and all the other mothers out there!

Sour

Spring is the time for sour foods in Palestine. Everyone seems to love sour stuff. Many people around here have almond trees, but no one seems to leave them on the trees to mature. They are eaten when they are fuzzy and green. Now "karas" are in season. They are crunchy, unripe cherries. My kids love to dip them in salt like they do with the green almonds. My youngest will even spend his pocket change at the vegetable store to snack on them like candy. Unfortunately, we don't have a karas tree.
They will eat the unripe plums in the same way. Remember the blossoms from a few months ago? Now they are getting big.
When the clover was in bloom, I used to see many children in the neighborhood eating the flower stems, which are tart. Sometimes we put the leaves in salads, but generally I prefer to look at my flowers!Now they all break off the curly little tendrals of the grape vines to munch on. These askadinia (loquats) are the first fruit in our yard to ripen (except for lemons, which are ripening year round).
They are sour even when ripe and juicy.
While I was out taking pictures of the askadinia, I saw part of the air show the Israelis were doing to celebrate their 60th year. They kept flying over low and loud.
Sixty years to celebrate for them, 60 years of broken dreams and mourning for us.

The embroidery in the background in 2 of the pictures above is from a traditional Palestinian thob, worn by many women here for both special occasions and every day dress. This particular one had been worn so much that the embroidery was fraying and the owner wanted to throw it out. I rescued it, for I don't know what. I just couldn't see throwing something that had that much work in it away.

Still Crying And Shooting After All These Years

Lawrence of Cyberia has yet another good post I want to recommend. It is about the Israeli policies that lead to so many Palestinian children's deaths. I wish I wrote well researched and useful articles like this. Fair warning though, if you are like me, you may want to avoid looking at the pictures. Definitely not the kind of pictures I put on my blog.....

Can't get the blues

I don't mean me, I get the blues all the time. When I do, I like to wonder around in my yard taking pictures of flowers. But my camera seems to have a hard time with blue flowers. This is a blue wildflower.No matter what I do, I can't get the color right. It is supposed to be a light blue. I tried changing the white balance on the camera, and a dozen other things on the computer, but this is the best I could do. It's not right.Most of the wild flowers are finished now, and they end up as ugly dried up weeds that I have to pull up. Some go out with a flourish though. These are bigger than your fist.
At the very front of our yard, where I rarely go, there is this big patch of what look like wild morning glories. Most are small.But a few are about 2 inches across.In the summer, the few wildflowers still around will be thorny.Lovely, but not fun to pull up.(That was taken another year. The daisies are all finished because of the hot weather we had.)

the queen of procrastination

I am the queen of procrastination. I have so many ideas to blog about, but I never get it done. I plan the post in my mind as I am going through my boring day, take the pictures and prepare them to post, but then I stop. I read my favorite blogs, I follow link after link, I look and look at other people's creativity, I OD on news, but I postpone doing my own writing. I was like this in school too. I loved doing research, and I usually got very good grades on my writing, but it was torture to get my self to sit down and do the actual writing. My husband would say that writing this blog is just my way of procrastinating when I ought to be doing the laundry, dishes, scrubbing floors or one of the million other dull duties that bore me to death. So I am actually procrastinating at my procrastination!

Time just seems to rush by me, and I am always wondering how did it get this late and how did I get so old already. When the first wildflowers bloomed this year, my youngest would occasionally bring me home little bouquets he picked as he walked through he fields on his way from school. My kids all know how much I love these flowers, and they all used to bring me hands full. I used to have a collection of tiny vases I saved for them. But now it is only my youngest who sees a flower and thinks he has to bring it for Mama. I wonder if he will next year? He just turned 12 in March. I planned to post a picture of the cake I made for him then, but it has been sitting, waiting on my hard drive for over a month. I tried to make it special, since it was the last little kid birthday. He will be a teenager next year. No more babies, they are all young men and women. My baby is going to be a teenager, my oldest should graduate from college next year, my older daughter is getting married in the fall, and my younger daughter is about to graduate from high school, INSHAALLAH.

Last month a friend of mine came for a visit to the West Bank. Holly and I met online years ago, and in person once about 8 years ago. This was the first time I had seen her and her son since then. MashaAllah, he is a little older than my youngest son, but it was a shock to see that he was a young man now with a deeper voice and a big thick novel to read, instead of the hyper little boy of 8 years ago. We sat in the Star's and Buck's cafe in Ramallah, and talked over all the ways our lives differed. I loved it, and hope it won't be another 8 years before we see each other again. I should have taken a picture or two of that cafe, it really was a nice place. We sat by a window overlooking the manara, the central "square" in Ramallah. (It's always called Manara square, but it's a circle!) I took one picture of the manara out the window, because it looked so nice and clean. Not only had they finally taken the Christmas decorations down (which I am sure were still up at the end of February), but someone had scrubbed off the election posters the had been slapped all over it almost two years ago. I guess I am not the only one who takes a while to get around to doing things.

"Gaza 'ala bali - Gaza on my mind"

Pomegranates

And it is He who sends down rain from the sky, and We produce thereby the growth of all things. We produce from it greenery from which We produce grains arranged in layers. And from the palm trees - of its emerging fruit are clusters hanging low. And [We produce] gardens of grapevines and olives and pomegranates, similar yet varied. Look at [each of] its fruit when it yields and [at] its ripening. Indeed in that are signs for a people who believe. Al-Anaam 6:99
The pomegranate trees in my yard are blooming. Since I grew up in Pennsylvania, I always thought of pomegranates as a strange and exotic fruit, and they have a strange and exotic flower too.
The buds open into a hard base for the flower, as hard as cardboard or wood, and the petals look like bright orange crepe paper.Pomegranates are mentioned 3 times in the Qur'an. Surah ar-Rahman says they are one of the fruits in the gardens of paradise.When the flower is finished, the petals fall off, and the base begins to swell, growing into the fruit.And He it is who causes gardens to grow, [both] trellised and untrellised, and palm trees and crops of different [kinds of] food and olives and pomegranates, similar and dissimilar. Eat of [each of] its fruit when it yields and give its due [zakah] on the day of its harvest. And be not excessive. Indeed, He does not like those who commit excess. Al-Anaam 6:141