Water and Guide Disagreement

Saturday's walking tour, thought mostly concerned with outdoor murals ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/fooled-my-eye.html ), paused at Micha Ullman's work "Water," the half of it in Kikar Tsion(http://jerusamelblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/handprint.html ).

This year's guide, a Bezalel grad, said the sculpture represents the union of the sewer systems in East and West Jerusalem, while the 2007 guide mentioned the unity of the water systems. Web sources quote Ullman on the common need for water.

Copyright 2014 Jane S. Fox

Water

The feeling of virtue from using solar power to heat the water for my shower is washed out by the amount of water that must run until what comes from the tap is hot.

I fill the kettle and a pan to boil an egg, but the water's still running cold.

The washing machine, built on the European model, is filled from the cold water tap. The machine then heats the water to the temperature you indicate. True much laundry is washed in cold water, but there ought to be a way to fill the machine from the cold water in the hot-water pipe.

A note: if you rent a flat, ask whether there's a solar water heater, but don't say "solar," which means diesel fuel in Hebrew. Ask if there is a "dood shemesh." If there is, don't turn on the supplementary water heater on any day that has four hours or more of sunshine, or you'll get water that's way too hot and waste electricity as well as water.

Unfortunately this winter far too many days have hours and hours of sunshine. That rain is needed. Water is scarce. I do hate running that tap till the water flows hot.

Copyright 2009 Jane S. Fox

Rain

• October brings the early rains (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/solar-water-heater.html ).
• Each summer day newspapers reported how many centimeters the surface of the Kinneret (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Kinneret ) had dropped. Now the level begins to rise. Though much of the water comes from artesian springs (http://home.att.net/~d.q.hall/tell_dan.htm ) fed thousands of years ago, rain has an immediate effect on the level of the world's lowest fresh-water lake. (Plus rain replenishes the groundwater for the future.)
• Jerusalem's water comes from springs tapping even older water, but we all bless these first rains.
• After downpours, drizzle, then sunshine. Clouds mass in glorious mounds from hill to hill. Light blazes through a gap, turning grey to gold-edged purple. Clouds disperse. The laundry dries. The first days of November are sunny and cloudless (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/beit-ticho.html), cool in the shade but hot after a long walk up Azza (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-down.html in the opposite direction) in the sun. At the first lookout on the Sherover Promenade, I take off my sweater.
• Six days later, rain again. Soon enough, Jerusalemites will forget agriculture, ecology, and the water cycle and hope for sunny days (though Jews who pray formally will continue prayes for rain until April, when the prescribe formula switches to a plea for dew).
• Today it is too warm for a waterproof coat. Rain drips and mists and drips again, fresh on my face like an imagined English May.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

August Sun

• In May, June, and July the sun is high above our building. Light floods the livingroom. A little after noon, rays reach the west-facing door to the large balcony, and I lower the shutter. Four hours later, the sun is far enough to the northwest, that we can sit on that balcony, drinking ice café.
• By late August, the noonday sun starts coming in through south windows. I draw the curtains on those shutterless windows and must keep the balcony shutter down until six. All windows are closed, all shutters down. To cool the rooms I squeegee clear water on stone-tile floors. (Each gram of water that turns to vapor takes 597 calories of heat from the air. See http://daphne.palomar.edu/jthorngren/latent.htm .)
• Though lower in the sky, the sun is fierce.
• By six, shadow pools on the balcony, the air cools, and the outside is once more welcome in. Air regains its sparkle. Light pops on along hillside streets and in the sky.
• To think cool in a dry climate see alslo http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water-on-jerusalem-day.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water.html http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/fountains.html

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Fountains

• Like everyone respectful of dry air, I carry a water bottle. ( See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water-on-jerusalem-day.html ) I’ve learned the location of drinking fountains where I can refill it: the playground at Kikar Magnes, the small plaza at the corner of Ussishkin (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/jerusalem-street-poetry.html ) and Narkis, the shaded park on HaGdud HaIvri, the landscaped expanse between the King David and the Lion Fountain.
• The Lion Fountain itself is dry. A guide said that a taxpayer sued the city, complaining that water in that fountan, across from the Bell Park and the Scottish Church, was being used improperly for laundry. He took it to the Supreme Court. And won.
• Children used to splash in its beauty. Now it is just undistinguished sculpture.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Sharav

• Hamsin is a dry wind from the desert. By five in the afternoon, as the shadows lengthen, the day’s heat should radiate out through the cloudless sky and shade should be cool with the promise of evening. And so it is through most of Jerusalem’s spring, summer, and fall. But not when a hamsin blows. When hamsin blows Americans, especially from places where summer means humidity, laugh, "It’s a dry heat," but older Israelis say, "Hamsin, hamsin" and young ones, "sharav."
• Hamsin blows hot day and night. They say it blows for fifty days. Fortunately these are not consecutive but spread throughout the year. Fifty straight days of hamsin would drive us all crazy.
• On my way from the bookstore in the afternoon, I break my walk to tuck myself under a tree in a tiny, dusty park, waiting for the drip irrigation system to go on. The small holes in narrow hoses among the shrubs minimize evaporation; the air gets no cooler but even the faint sound of water is welcome. People walk by from early morning and into the night. When the day’s heat leaves, parents or older sisters will bring little kids to play here.
• High-school students get off the bus, a group of girls, chattering, graceful in long slim skirts. Long hair in braids or sleekly caught at the nape wih a large barette swings past the back of their white, long sleeved blouses. They’re from a religious high school, maybe Evelina de Rothschild School for girls.
• Back in the apartment I wash the floors.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Water

• Some preparedness official announced last week that we should have three liters per person on hand in case of an earthquake. I thought, "So after the earthquake we dig through the rubble to find our water bottles?" Eventually my slow brain figured out that we’re to store water in case an earthquake breaks the water mains. (See http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water-on-jerusalem-day.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/fountains.html )
• "Water mains" includes the large pipes that bring water from the Kinneret (Sea of Gallilee) and from the desalination plant, built with typical bureaucratic idiocy in the wrong place. Its water is pumped south, but it lies south of the population centers and the pipes and pumps are not configured to move the water north. The builders knew that but figured the water would be used for agriculture. Unfortunately, desalinated water is not good for agriculture. I think it is like distilled water (maybe it is distilled water) and lacks minerals crops need. Don't people need them, too? Yes, but if the plant had been properly placed, water from it could have gone into the system with very hard water from other sources, ending up with water that was good for plants and humans both. It could also have been situated where its water could be mixed with purified sewage water to be used for agriculture. Or ... well, there were probably lots of other choices, but they didn't get picked.
• I now have juice and soda bottles full of water in the refrigerator. In the summer, three liters each would last us for about a day . And Jerusalem's not like Madison where you could take your Brita filter down to a lake! Ah well, what are the odds there'll be an earthquake?
• (Brackish water is good for crops like tomatoes, but I guess that if they added sea water to the system they'd have to separate the agricultural water system from what goes to people's houses.)

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Water on Jerusalem Day

• Men in their seventies will tell you that when they were in the army, they learned how to manage with very little water. It was a matter of discipline. They were, I suppose, all too dehydrated to notice that as their throats dried, their thoughts slowed. Finally someone did observe that, however heroic the spirit, bodies need water. Noncoms started insisting that their men drink. And again. And again. A friend's husband, cabdriver in civilian life, told me his job in reserves in the sixties and seventies was driving a water truck, a job without prestige but essential.
• On the day Jerusalem Day was celebrated, a radio DJ mentioned that Betsalel and King George Streets would soon be closed off because of the parade. First I heard of that parade. I walked over to see it. An ambulance pulled up on the plaza outside the Mashbir at the top of Ben Yehuda. Volunteers got out gave volunteer vests to others who’d arrived on their own. There were a lot of metal barriers lined up on the sidewalk but traffic was still flowing.
• Gradually clumps of police collected and clumps of soldiers. A soldier went from group to group saying, "There’s water over there." She pointed. "Go get some." A policeman went over to the cops. "Go get water over there," he said. Men and women sauntered over to get water and ambled back. Then they put up the barriers to redirect traffic.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox