Sine Curve Takes a Deep Dive....

W's cutie pie cat, Emma, went to the emergency hospital last night as when we returned from work yesterday, she was "listing" to one side -- ataxia. We thought it might be related to a blood clot in her brain, an aneurysm, or brain lesion/tumor.  Turns out it was her little, sweet heart--she'd been diagnosed with a murmur 5 years ago and had no symptoms--until yesterday.  Today, while having a CT scan, she joined the kitty angels.  Apparently, she'd had a heart attack. Shocking, even though she was 5 days from her 15th birthday.  And we leave Tel Aviv in less than 2 weeks.  Some of you may recall that W's cat Manon died 48 hours after their arrival in Israel in 2008.  Kira is now an only cat....

Sine Curve Edging Up....Slowly

We haven't done much posting on this blog this year so far, and here's why....


A horrific accident in January involving three of W's dearest cousins, Kelli, Sage and Mylo, was part of a difficult several months W had this year, along with three family deaths in W's family (two aunts and stepfather of 30 years) and last June’s huge loss of Kelli’s father. It’s no wonder why we have been distracted.... Events like these strongly reaffirm the importance of family and friends–which is one of the many reasons why W and C are looking forward to returning to Washington.  

We've just returned from our first REAL vacation since last May--the Madrid Tennis Open. More pictures of the tennis will be posted soon...we hope. In the meantime, below are links to two videos of interviews with W's cousin Kelli and her family– one was done at the Today Show in New York last week and the other at home in San Juan Capistrano, CA. 

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1) Mom recalls rescue from car dangling off bridge


In a daring rescue, emergency personnel in Southern Calif. pulled Kelli Groves and her two young daughters from their car, which had been hit by a truck and was dangling off a bridge. NBC's™ Kristen Dahlgren reports and TODAY's™ Matt Lauer speaks with Groves about the terrifying ordeal. TODAY Show Video

2) CBS at San Juan Capistrano, CA

(will need to wait for short ads to end before videos start)

The Smurf Tournament!

More later....a preview....

Jerusalem, the Golden....

Today, we visited the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and had a privileged look inside both.... W loves looking at the Golden Dome..... For a vicarious tour, click here.  Enjoy!!!

4-Legged Victory!

 

United Decides to Extend the Military Pet Transport "Waiver" to Members of the Foreign Service!  

This is a victory and provides recognition to the Foreign Service and those who serve abroad.  AFSA will continue to work to ensure we have the option to transport pets as accompanied baggage checked in at the passenger terminal and delivered with baggage and hope to work with United to make PetSafe viable globally and truly safe for pets.  

AFSA 's request for a meeting with United's CEO Jeff Smisek or with an appropriate Vice President resulted in a call today from Hershel Kamen, United’s Senior Vice President for Alliances, Regulatory Affairs, and Policy.  Mr. Kamen told us that United Airlines has decided to extend its military pet travel policy waiver to members of the U.S. Foreign Service who are traveling on official change-of-station orders. This will include USG employees traveling to take up assignments in our embassies and missions abroad from all agencies.

Foreign Service Officers peeved over new United pet policy

We have two cats...

April 13th, 2012 | State | Posted by Sean Reilly, Federal Times Daily

 

The union that represents Foreign Service Officers naturally does its best to be diplomatic, but the strain is evident in a standoff with United Airlines over a recently adopted pet transportation policy. The new policy, which follows United’s merger with Continental Airlines, requires most pets to be shipped as cargo, instead of permitting them to travel with their owners as baggage. The fur, at least, has been flying ever since.

“Many of our members are greatly distressed by this development because of the sharply increased costs involved,” Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, wrote in a letter last month to United CEO Jeff Smisek. In addition, Johnson said, some countries are “simply not equipped to deal with pets as cargo.”

The change could increase the cost of shipping a 14-pound cat from $250 to $1,200, Johnson added in a follow-up interview. United has already exempted military service members traveling on “change of station” orders from the pet policy. Now, AFSA is seeking the same waiver for federal civilian employees flying to and from permanent assignments abroad, Johnson said. An AFSA “call to action” generated almost 3,000 emailed letters to United; the association has also set up a Facebook page titled “Fabulous Foreign Service Pets.”

So far, however, United isn’t budging. While the airline respects the work that Foreign Service Officers do, it has no plans to make other exceptions for them, spokeswoman Mary Ryan said. On its web site, United touts the new policy’s benefits, such as confirmed booking before departure and a 24-hour live animal help desk.

As one of the world’s largest carriers, United can be hard to avoid, although the State Department last month sought to give employees more options for discretion when pet transportation comes into play.
For Rachel Schneller, a Foreign Service Officer now stationed in Washington, the thought of heading to a posting in France this summer without her two cats is, well, unthinkable.

“They’re irreplaceable, they’re priceless,” Schneller said of Oscar and Tivka, rescued from a garbage can in Macedonia a decade ago. “In theory, I could try to find homes for them, but it would break my heart.”
For Sadie Dworak, a Foreign Service Officer currently stationed in Saudi Arabia, the perils were poignantly illustrated two years ago when she shipped her shih tzu, Hattie, as cargo from Frankfurt, Germany to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

After 20 hours in a stifling terminal, Dworak said in a phone interview, Hattie was dead.
Dworak has since gotten two cats. When her Saudi assignment ends this summer, she said the United policy could mean shipping cost of more than  $2,500, compared to about $600 under the old policy. While the State Department provides some help with“miscellaneous” moving costs, that assistance probably won’t cover even half the bill, Dworak said.

“Should we have to pay those costs every single time when we’re serving our country?,” she asked.

Still Wet, Stormy, Wintry Israel....Sigh.

New winter front makes its way to Israel

Another bout of stormy weather raises hopes of snow for Mount Hermon, the Galilee, and possibly Jerusalem.

By Zafrir Rinat 

Another spate of cold, rainy weather is on the way. Snow is forecast for Wednesday night for Mount Hermon and peaks in the Galilee, and possibly for high elevations in central Israel, including Jerusalem. The wintry conditions will persist until Saturday. 

Meteo-Tech meteorologic service says strong winds from Sinai will bring haze and sandstorms to southern Israel Tuesday. Rain will begin falling in the north this afternoon, spreading to the center tonight.

Snow blanketing Israel's Mount Hermon, January 22, 2012. Photo by: Kfir Banin

The rain will continue in the north and center of the country Wednesday, accompanied by a drop in temperature of between 5 and 10 degrees Celsius.

The cold snap, which comes to us from Russia, is expected to bring snow late Wednesday night. In addition to Mount Hermon other high-altitude areas in the Golan Heights, and also in the Galilee, will see some accumulation. Mountains in the center of the country, including Jerusalem, could also get precipitation of the white kind.

The cold spell will peak on Thursday. Snow will continue to fall on Mount Hermon and the northern Golan Heights, with a chance of snow in the center of the country.

Earlier this month, Israelis flocked to the north to see the snow on Mount Meron and other Galilee peaks. The snowfall in the northern Golan caused the temporary closure of some area roads and gave some children there a one-day vacation from school.

The precipitations brought a significant, 16-centimeter rise in the level of Lake Kinneret.

However, Jerusalemites' hopes for their share of the white stuff were washed away in nothing more than heavy rain and a bit of hail.

Not Quite Spring....It's Peep Time!!!

Who knew that bunny-shaped Peep marshmallow treats would inspire such quirky creativity? A favorite is copied/pasted below.  Washington on the brain, we know!! 

 Click here for:The winners/finalists from five years of The Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest

Aelia Capitolina is.....Jerusalem!

Archaeologists bringing Jerusalem's ancient Roman city back to life

Excavations of the Roman city Aelia Capitolina, built on the ruins of Second Temple-period Jerusalem, have unearthed a few surprises.

By Nir Hasson

 

If you look at a map of the Old City of Jerusalem, you'll notice something odd. While the vast majority of the Old City's streets form a crowded casbah of winding alleyways, there are a few straight-as-a-ruler streets that bisect the city from north to south and east to west.

The best known of these straight roads are Beit Chabad and Hagai streets, exiting through the Damascus Gate; David Street, exiting the Jaffa Gate; and the Via Dolorosa.

Like the rest of the Old City's streets, these straight roads are narrow but, unlike the others, they preserve a historical skeleton of sorts that forms the basis of the Old City we know today. This skeleton was created, most archaeologists agree, not during Jewish, Christian or Muslim rule, but during the Roman period, when the city of Aelia Capitolina was built on the ruins of Jerusalem following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. 

Ironically, it is actually the streets of this imperial and pagan city - which supposedly left behind no cultural or spiritual heritage for modern Jerusalem - that have bequeathed to the city the skeleton structure that has survived to this day. 

In the history of Jewish Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina is the very embodiment of defeat and destruction - a reminder of the humiliation of the Second Temple's destruction, which erected a pagan temple in its place. This image has distanced Aelia Capitolina from the fathers of Israeli archaeology, who were naturally drawn to the ornate, Jewish city that preceded it. "No one concealed Aelia Capitolina, but we wanted to talk about the Second Temple," says Dr. Ofer Sion, of the Antiquities Authority. "Aelia Capitolina was an accursed city, a city from which we were banished. It was more idealistic to excavate the Second Temple." 

Almost all of the archaeologists who study Aelia Capitolina call it "an elusive city." As opposed to the Jerusalem of Second Temple times that preceded it, Aelia Capitolina has not been entirely unearthed during the many excavations that have been performed in the city since 1967. The residents of Aelia Capitolina did not leave written texts like the works of Flavius Josephus during the Second Temple era or of Christian travelers in the following period. 

It is known that the Roman city was established by Emperor Hadrian between 130 and 140 AD. After the Bar Kochba revolt of 135, Jews were forbidden to enter the city. Its most important inhabitants were the soldiers of the 10th Legion, who would remain encamped in Jerusalem for 200 years. 

Salvage operations 

Following the latest wave of excavations, which began in the mid-1990s, more and more archaeologists have become convinced that Aelia Capitolina was a much larger and more important city than was once thought, and its influence on the later development of modern Jerusalem was dramatic. 

Aelia Capitolina has sprung to life in a significant way through no less than four extensive excavations that have taken place in the Old City area, and in a number of other digs in other parts of Jerusalem. Most of these digs have been rescue excavations by the Antiquities Authority, salvage digs carried out before new construction and development goes ahead. In a few more years, Aelia Capitolina could again be covered over by new buildings.

In the rear section of the Western Wall plaza, in the spot where the Western Wall Heritage Foundation intends to erect a large building that it calls "the Core House," Antiquities Authority researcher Shlomit Wexler-Bedolah discovered an ornate and broad Roman street, complete with shops on each side. This is the eastern cardo, along whose path Hagai Street would later be paved. 

Three hundred meters to the south, another Antiquities Authority researcher, Dr. Doron Ben-Ami, discovered the place where the Roman street apparently ended. The corner of the street is adjacent to the Givati parking lot at the top of the Silwan valley - the spot where the Elad organization intends to build a large visitors center. In a large rescue excavation at this location in recent years, Ben-Ami exposed a large, fancy Roman villa unlike any other structure from its time in the entire country. He estimates that the villa he uncovered was the home of the regional governor or some other central authority. 

In another excavation, in the tunnel under the Western Wall, Wexler-Bedolah and archaeologist Alexander Onn re-estimated the dating of a large bridge leading to the Temple Mount. As with other ancient monuments this too turned out to be of Roman origin and not from the Second Temple period. Another example is the Roman bathhouse and swimming pool discovered by Sion a year and a half ago. "It's a tremendous spa, a country club," Sion says, comparing the bathhouse to similar facilities found in other parts of the Roman Empire. 

This increasing number of Roman-era discoveries strengthens the notion that the Temple Mount, even after its destruction, did not lie totally barren, but was used for pagan worship rites.

But not only the Old City and its immediate surroundings have turned up new findings from Aelia Capitolina. Excavations made a few years ago in the area near the Binyanei Ha'uma international convention center, carried out in preparation for the expansion of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, uncovered a large pottery-workers village that served as the legion's central clayware manufacturing plant. Along the route of Jerusalem's new light-rail, remains of a large water facility serving the legionnaires were discovered, and in the area of Shuafat, a Jewish settlement from the same period was discovered.

The latest excavations give archaeologists much greater insight into Aelia Capitolina than was possible even a decade earlier. Experts agree the city was planned extraordinarily well, based as it was on designs of other cities in the empire and according to orders that came directly from the emperor. It included broad streets, numerous and magnificent entrance gates, temples and infrastructure, and it even housed a new elite of army officers and free soldiers who turned Aelia Capitolina into a thriving city.

"When I began to study the history of the Roman city, it was a barren field," says Prof. Yoram Zafrir, one of Israel's most veteran archaeologists. "Today, it is clear that the basic structure of Jerusalem is that of Aelia Capitolina." Zafrir describes the process by which, after the Roman period, beasts of burden replaced wagons, the central government became weak and streets became "privatized." This process led to the city that we know today.

"Similarly to the British Mandate, which lasted just 31 years but had a significant impact on modern Jerusalem, from the perspective of architecture, the Roman period established a whole new, imperial language that still holds sway today," archaeologist Dr. Guy Stiebel concludes. Stiebel even notes the irony of history: "Aelia Capitolina effectively saved Jerusalem. It raised her once again onto the stage of history. She returned like a phoenix from the ashes."