“That’s the question my father often asks me on our way home from the airport in Texas. ‘So what do people think about what’s going on…..about Prime Minister Netanyahu…..about the revolution in Egypt?'”
Humor with bite from Benji Lovitt in Jerusalem.
My friend, Snoopy-the-Goon, for one, says many Israelis have given up on the idea of peace ever happening. Even though his own backyard bomb shelter is full of junk and its door rusted open, the hinges unyielding to WD-40.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Israel, Scribbles, Texana, The War, Troops
Tagged Benji Lovitt, Israel, Jerusalem bombing, terrorism, Texas
Picture two aging men, both fairly fearful of heights, nervously making their way along the narrow stone ramparts of Jerusalem’s old fortress walls. This picture is of the easy part. It didn’t last.
The inner wall (left) was soon replaced by a short iron railing between us and a 100-foot drop to the streets below. That was when progress got a lot slower and, after beginning at the Jaffa Gate on the west side, we gratefully descended at the Dung Gate on the south. Whose idea was it? Who else? Mine.
Comments Off on Jerusalem’s ramparts
Tagged Israel, Jerusalem's ramparts
It finally struck on the flight home from Israel. Approximately over Berlin, as it happened. Historically appropriate, you may say, though I assume they have toilet holding tanks on those planes. Although at 35,000 feet (the outside temperature was well below zero), anything released would be flash frozen before it landed.
Fortunately for me, the toilets on the plane were available when I needed one and it was soon over. This was after a week of enjoying uninterrupted Israeli fare, particularly the chicken and salads (heavy on the humus) that seem to be the national meal. Great trip, very memorable, thanks to my pal Snoopy the Goon and his charming wife, whom I hope to entice to visit Texas before too much longer.
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Posted in Israel, Rancho Roly Poly
Everything this guy touches, or endorses, turns to you-know-what. For instance? The Libyan rebels.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The War
Tagged Obamalot, The Obama Curse
Leaving tomorrow morning from Ben Gurion Airport after an interesting, if exhausting, ten days of traveling all over in Israel. Today we did the Armored Corps memorial in Latrun, on the road to Jerusalem, one of the world’s largest displays of main battle tanks and other armored vehicles—as well as the names (and digital pictures) of the thousands of young tankers killed in Israel’s forced wars.
Then we went to the memorial for my host’s branch of the IDF, the Combat Engineers. It’s conveniently placed on the road they cut to Jerusalem (to bypass a Jordanian blockade of the main road) in the 1948 War of Independence. Their list of dead is much shorter, because contrary to civilian opinion it’s a lot safer to be in the open than cooped up inside a tank. If you’re interested in where else I’ve been, from Ben-Gurion’s desert home the afternoon of the day I arrived to yesterday’s passage of the rabbit warren streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, go here.
Comments Off on Last night in Israel
Posted in Israel, The War, Troops
Tagged IDF, IDF Combat Engineers, Israel, Israel Armored Corps
That’s how many misspellings, typos and left-out words I found in The Longest Nights: General John D. Imboden & The Confederate Retreat From Gettysburg.
It’s a modest piece of short journalism, obviously written to snag some sales during the Civil War Sesquicentennial. It mainly joins lengthy quotes from Imboden’s post-war magazine articles, and quotes from other participants, presumably from their memoirs and diaries, though the brief bibliography doesn’t identify the sources.
The author, Heather K. Michon, is a freelance writer who says at the end of her 27 KB effort for the Kindle that she “is a writer on a mission to prove that history need not be boring.” The price, like so much indie work these days, is 99 cents.
Still, even history that’s not boring needs editing and proofreading to rise above the stereotype of self-published work. Without them, the reader stumbles along, not so much enlightened about a relatively unexamined and interesting incident of the Civil War as he is annoyed, his disbelief firmly grounded.
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Posted in Civil War, Library, Scribbles
Tagged Confederate Retreat From Gettysburg, Gen. John Imboden, Heather Michon
Danica, from the gallery of Oleg Volk.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles
Tagged Danica, girl with guns, girls with guns, Oleg Volk
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 