(Still running a few days behind ~~ writing about 12/18 here) After we left Tzvat on Monday afternoon, we drove to the Golan Heights. A disconcerting length of the drive was within sight of Lebanon, clearly visible across a forbidding and impregnable border. When we got to the village where we were having dinner with…
And now, Israel. ~~ December 18, 2017
Five days into our Israeli trip already. I am snug in bed in the Golan Heights, trying to assemble the last few days in my mind. I’ll just throw out the highlights, to bring us to now. We left Beirut on the 14th. Easy travel through Amman, no grilling by immigration on our entrance to…
Bye Bye, Beirut ~~ December 16, 2017
We woke up in Nazareth this morning, in an old mansion, once owned by a prosperous Christian, now converted to a guest house for tourists and pilgrims. The last few days have been tightly packed and I was trying to finish a textbook chapter, so that was where all my writing efforts went. No time…
Food, Food, Food ~~December 11, 2017
And more food. Yesterday was a walking food tour of Beirut. We ate ourselves silly and learned a ton about Beirut and Lebanon from Iffat, our truly amazing, warm and wonderful guide from Taste Lebanon. She spent the day with us, from 10:30 am to 8:30 pm (when we even got a peek at the…
Dinner by the sea ~~ Babel Bay ~~ December 10, 2017
I’ve eaten a lot of meals sitting by, or even floating on, the Mediterranean. Wonderful meals, kissed by salty sea breezes in France, in Spain, in Greece, in Croatia, in Turkey, in Italy, in Israel. Today I added a country I was never quite sure I would get to. Lebanon. In Beirut’s Babel Bay we…
I’m here! ~~ December 9, 2017
All my life, Lebanon has just been an idea, a place out of reach, birthplace of my grandfather, and source of the truly amazing food, at once exotic and familiar, that my grandmother cooked. I’ve tried to get here several times, but war shut the country down. You can see the scars on the buildings….
Evolution of a marriage ~ and of a wedding ring ~~ August 5, 2017
When I was a little girl I had a silver friendship ring that had belonged to my mom when she was young. I still have a letter Mom wrote me when I was about 11 and away from home for the first time, visiting a friend in the Virginia neighborhood we had left to move…
Wanted: Family Doctor ~~ July 16, 2017
The family doctor is something of an endangered species these days, something that doesn’t get a lot of attention in all the healthcare hullabaloo out there. You can’t hardly read a newspaper or blog post or listen to a podcast these days without hearing about health care. It’s a gigantic national issue because Obamacare, for…
A vacation, well done ~~ July 10, 2017
This has been the vacation I badly needed. Body healing, spirit renewing, mind clearing. At the beginning I wanted it to go on forever. I felt like I could not get enough of wallowing in luxurious nothing. I felt like that for at least a week. But a funny thing has happened to me…
and away she goes.... 