Close Your Windows

For over a week, temperatures hovering above 60 fahrenheit. Most days have been sunny. Winds light. Now a dust storm is predicted followed by rain and "temperatures lower than is usual for the season."

The weather service advises, "Close your windows."

On the one hand it is indeed strange that we've had our windows open in mid-January. On the other it seems strange that anyone would think we needed to be told to close the windows in a dust storm, rain, or cold weather.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Dust storm

The Environment Ministry says the entire country is experiencing the worst air pollution in five years.

You don't need instruments to know the air is full of dust. I feel dust in my nose and mouth. The sky would be mostly blue if it weren't a brownish grey. The wind is sharp and cold. In parts of the city built 100 or more years ago, walking isn't bad, but in wider areas gusts threaten to throw me off balance.

Copyright 2015 Jane S. Fox

Wild Flowers

On the hills and in the valleys outside the city, and here and there within, wild flowers are blooming -- red, purple, yellow and white.

Copyright Jane S. Fox

Snow Arrives

• Yesterday afternoon the heavy rain turned to wet snow (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/snow.html ).
• By 7, the police blocked the twisty roads into Jerusalem. The city grew muffled. Wet white covered cars and trees, streets and sidewalks. Kids stayed up late to play in the snow. If it snows when you are in Jersualem, go outside, even if your shoes are not waterproof. Enjoy the atmosphere, and stuff crumpled newspaper in your shoes when you return to your hotel. (http://www.jerusalemshots.com/Jerusalem_en2-417.html )
• At night, all precipitation stopped. By 8 AM liquid water once more coursed down the streets, this time from melting snow.
• In the shade, walked-on slush makes sidewalks look threatening. The sun is warm, the breeze light.
• Clothed by LandsEnd from throat to wrists and ankles, I am warm. If traveling to Israel in winter, remember that a set or two of silk long underwear takes up almost no space.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox.

Snow

• Snow is predicted for Jerusalem. It depends, says the meteorologist, on seven tenths of a degree (celsius) temperature drop tomorrow afternoon.
• Already the excitement is building. The education department has set up an information center. The municipality has checked its emergency plans.
• At the little store around the corner (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/charity.html ) Shlomi says he'll sleep in town tonight. He lives in Mvaseret, a suburb down a long hill from here and up another. "With the first flake they'll be lined up to buy bread and milk," he says.
• "And will the bread and milk arrive?"
• "Of course. Bread, milk, and newspapers are aways here before I am."
• The snow will not be on the ground for more than a day. By Thursday afternoon it will all be gone.
• Hmm. If they close the Tnuva dairy in Jerusalem, will there be milk in the stores on the day of next year's snow?

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Lights

• All along the street, oil lamps flicker in glass enclosures. Some buildings have a glass-doored niche built into the wall along the sidewalk. Elsewhere families put the lights on a kitchen chair or small table beside their gate.
• If you are in Jerusalem during Hanuka (minimalist spelling), go out between 5:30 and 6 and stroll around a neighborhood where people put their hanukiot outside.
• Ha'Shla St. in the Sha'arei Khesed neighborhood is a good place to start. See eMap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp) for directions. Keep turning corners to see more and more of the lights, tiny but lovely.
• In windows, candles burn in greeting-card "menorahs."
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/soufganiot-and-krembo.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/all-together-now.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Sidewalk Cafes

• We want rain. By now, even people who hate grey skies want rain (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/rain.html ). Without rain in the north, the Kineret (Sea of Galilee) will soon become a skateboard park. Without rain here, the aquifers will become more and more depleted as the water board pumps and pumps to keep faucets flowing.
• In October and November, we had two or three days of rain. Since then, unfulfilled promises.
• During the day, it is shirtsleeve-warm in the sun. Towards evening, restaurants with tables on patios or on the sidewalk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mint.html ) spread awnings and to them attach waterproof walls, clear on the street side. When it is truly cold (in Mediterranean terms) tall braziers will heat the space.
• I sit out on my balcony. This may be the last sunny day to enjoy. I hope.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Sunset

• Hotels may charge more for a room with a view of the Old City.
• In complete contrast to history and architecture are the beauties of a Jerusalem sunset.
• From almost anywhere you can glimpse hills between buildings, and in many places the view west is unobstructed.
• Except in spring and summer, Israel is on daylight losing time, far to the east of its time zone. The sun rises and sets early. During the day, the sun is hot. At four, the rays can no longer warm after their long trip through the atmosphere.
• The dry air holds no heat, but soon the edge of the sky begins to glow. From our livingroom I see the horizon far, hill-mounded, rose-banded.
• The landlords want to sell the apartment. I think no apartment selling for a mllion dollars and more in Jerusalem's strange real-estate market has a better view or location (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ). The grow lingers, fades. In the darkening sky stars blink, one, two three, a sky full.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Green Grass

• In the Moon Forest the grass under the trees is green from the early rains(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/rain.html ).
• In parks and gardens, drip irrigation (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html ), is turned off until late spring.
• The unbuilt valleys ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/gazelles.html ), the distant hillsides (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/view.html ), turn from brown and grey to green.
• Grey comes to the winter skies to bring the green.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Crembo

• To Israelis of a certain age, crembo means cooling weather, rain, and going to the macolet by yourself to buy a foil-wrapped ball of chocolate-covered fluff.
• In the summer, pocket money went for artikim (ice cream on a stick) or kartiv (popsicles) or, if you had a little extra change, cassata.
• Before widespread air conditioning, crembo had to wait for winter, or be transported in rare refrigerated trucks. On the counter of the local grocery store, the chocolate coating would melt. Even today, once out of the air conditioned supermarket or candy store, the chocolate would quickly squish over fingers. What do crembo factories make in the summer?
• The internal fluff now comes in strawberry, chocolate, and mocha as well as the original white, but crembo still waits for November and grows scarce towards the end of February, when hamentashen appear.
• From November through December, crembo shares counter space with soufganiot (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/soufganiot.html ), trucked in from bakeries and displayed open to the air beside the foil-wrapped winter treats.

Copyright 2006 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

Soufganiot

• A soufgania is not exactly a jelly donut.
• The season's first appeared about a week ago.
• They are best bought hot from the oil at a bakery that makes its own.
• Can Crembo be far behind?

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox