Today I was supposed to become a tourist in earnest. My cousin Mickey and I were supposed to go to Sde Boker and see Ben Gurion's "hut," the place he and his wife lived in at that kubbutz when it was a lonely outpost in the Negev. And then were going to see his burial place and were going to check out a touristy spot surrounding a gigantic hole in the ground, an earthquake crater called Maktesh Ramon.
My guidebook tells me that this cavity is 300m deep, 8 km wide, and 40 km long, and has sandstone formations much like those in Grand Canyon.
But because the sky was again so cloudy or foggy or filled with sand, there seemed little point in going to see it, as we wouldn't see much. So I satisfied myself with taking pictures of the ibexes, wild mountain goats, near the tomb, and headed back to the car, where my cousin in any case was having a spell of high blood pressure we found quite worrying.
After unearthing a pill from the bottom of her purse, we went on to visit a friend of hers, Jeannie (originally from LA, I think), who has a lovely home in what seems to be the center of Ben Gurion University, close by, filled up with art she and her remarkable family have made.
We spent the afternoon eating salad, talking, and then I read some of my poems to the assembled group.
Later in the afternoon, the sky cleared a little, so we walked out into Jeannie's backyard, where a portion of the gigantic hole in the ground could be seen.
It was indeed spectacular, with the dry river bed, Tzinn Wadi, winding in a serpentine green path down below.
I took some pictures of that, of the group, of the houses off in the distance. The houses in Israel, as befits a desert place, are frequently square and adobe-ish. They do not resemble homes in most other parts of the world, with pointy roofs (though I have seen some places in southern California that are sort of similar). They are like ivory or cream colored boulders, close to the ground, and fit very well into the rest of the landscape. But the picture I took of them in this spot with my little tablet computer doesn't do justice to this impression. I suppose one has to be there to perceive this.
Tomorrow perhaps we will go to the Ethiopian craft store or to a Bedouin village, Lakiya, where weaving is done by women who will use the proceeds to support their families and community. It is one of those enterprises where women become a means of strengthening the economy.
Sorry I can't put any of my pictures in here yet because I don't have wireless to connect to the Internet with my tablet, but I hope eventually to put these in.
Later we went to one of Mickey's other relatives who lives down the street. That relative's father had died, and he had played an important role in Mickey's childhood life. We talked for a couple of hours and pored through family albums that went back at least 3 and possibly four generations, a very rare thing for Jewish families, who had been so caught up in historical catastrophes and mass exoduses. But this was a supremely orderly affair, with lots of text (albeit in Hebrew). Everyone knew who every single person in the pictures was, as was never the case in my mother's family albums, which were mostly lost anyway when I had to empty out their home in Philadelphia to sell it.
Goodnight. I should take myself and my cough to bed now. I am worn out from a long day of interesting experiences.
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