Wall Carvings in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

During our visit to Jerusalem's Old City with our houseguest last week we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Originally built by the mother of Emperor Constantine in 330 A.D., the Church commemorates the hill of crucifixion and the tomb of Christ's burial.
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It is also a marvelous place to photograph, with something different around every corner as each of Christianity's major streams jockeys for position. The primary custodians are the Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Roman Catholic Churches, with the Greek Orthodox Church having the lion's share. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox acquired lesser responsibilities, which include shrines and other structures within and around the building. Times and places of worship for each community are strictly regulated in common areas and altercations have been known to occur when one group is perceived as having overstepped its bounds (see the section entitled "Status Quo").
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I've got some wonderful images from inside the Church which I will be sharing in the days to come, but since those are better viewed as full-color images I've chosen this bit of "graffiti" to share with you as my Monochrome Monday offering. These crosses were carved into a wall in a stairway between different sections of the building. There was no explanation, so I have no idea how long they've been there or who took the time to carve them, or for that matter whether there might have been a particular message they were meant to convey in that out of the way corner.
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I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped make today's inaugural edition of Summer Stock Sunday such a terrific success. I had a great time visiting everyone and seeing what summer means to you, and look forward to seeing what you come up with next. The current linkie will be up all week, so if you want to join us come by and link your post anytime - the more the merrier.

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Welcome to Summer Stock Sunday!

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Welcome to the brand spanking new Summer Stock Sunday. Each week, beginning at midnight Saturday night Israel time, 5pm EST, we'll be sharing our quintessential summertime photos. So what says summer to you? Is it the pool? The beach? A backyard barbecue? A comfy old pair of flip-flops? Whatever summertime looks like in your corner of the world this is the place to come share it - put up your post and then come add your link to Mr. Linky. Visiting other participants is encouraged, after all, sharing is what blogging is all about.
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Summertime here in Israel means blue skies, aqua water, and days spent outside enjoying it all without fear of cold or rain. Imagine my delight yesterday when I found a way to combine all of these for my inaugural Summer Stock Sunday post during our visit to Apollonia, the ruins of a Crusader fort and city on the Mediterranean coast just north of Tel Aviv. Apollonia has been home to 2,500 years of settlement, and was the site of the decisive battle which established 100 years of Crusader rule over the region in 1191. You can read more about its history in the link above.
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Click any of the photos for a full-size view

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We were walking along the cliffside path to the site when to our surprise we saw a paraglider whoosh by overhead, and then a few seconds later another one. The real surprise though awaited us on the far side of the ruins. I've never seen so many paragliders up at once, it was really a sight to see. The bathers on the beach down below were looking up at them too.
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This guy flew close enough for me to see him grin as he sailed by.

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Here he is just a few seconds later.

It was amazing how quickly these guys moved through the sky.

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This one came so close to the cliff's edge my breath caught in my throat -

I really didn't think he'd clear it.

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I hope you enjoyed this first Summer Stock Sunday peak at a summer day here in Israel. If you did, put up a post of your own and come join in the fun. I can't wait to see what summer looks like to all of you.

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Across the Neighbor's Patio

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This is what I saw the other evening as I looked across from my patio to my neighbor's. Shame their pergola was in the way but still pretty dramatic.
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We've got a houseguest from abroad and a full schedule of plans this weekend. Hopefully we'll make it here, and possibly here. Wherever we end up I know I'll be on the lookout for that perfect Summer Stock Sunday shot for the inaugural edition on Sunday.
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Visit Skywatch Friday for hundreds of other skies around the world.
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Old City Window

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Taken in Jerusalem's Old City, just inside the Jaffa Gate.

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You know you're a blogger when you see something like this and the very first thing that passes through your mind is "hey, that's PERFECT for Mary's Window Views meme!"

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Remember, Summer Stock Sundays starts THIS Sunday, 31 May, right here at Around the Island.

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The Western Wall

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The Western Wall, or Kotel, in Jerusalem's Old City is the holiest spot in the Jewish religion. Above it, on the site of the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, stands the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam's holiest sights. When you add in Christianity as well is it any wonder that this tiny piece of land is one of the most hotly contested in the world?

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Visit Wordless Wednesday to see other images that speak for themselves, and remember, Summer Stock Sundays starts THIS Sunday, 31 May, right here at Around the Island.

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Old City of Jerusalem - Arab Market

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Or at least the red bits of it. I rarely shop in the market, it's a bit of a tourist trap and the quality isn't high, but I do love photographing this wonderfully vibrant, colorful place. It's definitely aimed at the tourists though - you can see shop names in Arabic, Hebrew, English, French, Greek and even Russian.

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Pictures of the Jewish and Christian quarters will follow later in the week. Each equally photogenic but completely different in character, both from the Muslim Quarter shown in this and the previous two posts and from each other.

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Remember, Summer Stock Sundays starts THIS Sunday, 31st May, right here at Around the Island!

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Jerusalem - Old City Rooftops

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This was taken yesterday from a rooftop cafe in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Amidst all of the history and the religion and the antiquities these rooftops that caught my eye. (Don't worry, there will be plenty of pictures of antiquities and religious sites and history for you all in the days to come, not to mention more intensely colorful shots of the Arab market, but you'll have to wait until Monochrome Monday is finished for those.)
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And remember, Summer Stock Sundays begins next Sunday, 31st May!
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Jerusalem's Arab Market - Sneak Peak

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The case of the vanishing blogger

Busy with a houseguest from overseas, a major home improvement project, a short person's case of the itchy-scratchies (ick) and a slightly less short person's existential crisis (over his relative placement for swimming lessons, no less).

Back in a day or two, hopefully with pictures from tomorrow's trip to Jerusalem and the scoop on our latest endeavors.

Tulip Fields

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This is actually my mother's photograph from my parents' recent trip to Holland, but oh how I wish it was mine and that I'd been there to see it with my own eyes. I usually post my own work here but this was too beautiful not to share.

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Visit Wordless Wednesday for more pictures that speak for themselves.

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Flowering Tree and Paint

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A real quickie from me this week - I'm literally in the middle of painting the security bars on one of my bedroom windows (which open out onto the rooftop patio). I'm throwing this post up quickly while the first coat dries. I just scrubbed a bunch of super-duper rust-covering paint off of my arm, which now burns like hell from the turpentine and I'm really not looking forward to going out there to do the second coat. It does look a whole lot better though I must admit. Hopefully that will encourage me to come back this weekend to paint the other window's bars as well as the matching railing along a lower bench-like section of the roof wall. I wouldn't have started this window all by itself at 9 o'clock at night except that we may be doing a bit of work on the roof which will make it difficult to access later, so it was pretty much now or never.

Duty is calling, in the form of a little white paint can. Onward into the abyss and all that.
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Repeating to self: it will look a lot better, it will look a lot better, it will look a lot better...
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Oh yeah. The photograph. No, I have no idea what it is. It caught my eye at the festival so I grabbed it, and it was red, so it's this week's Ruby Tuesday shot. Pretty straightforward.
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A time thankfully gone by

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This eyesore of a shack around the corner from me burned to the ground last week.
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I can't say I'm sorry.
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Visit Aileni for more monochrome meanderings.
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Galilee Sunset

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This was the view from our festival campsite last weekend. Camping on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and this gorgeous sunset over the hills are just two of the things that makes Jacob's Ladder a truly unique experience. Add in the great music and it's no wonder people keep coming back year after year after year.
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I'd also like to extend a special invitation to all those here from Skywatch Friday to participate in Summer Stock Sundays - a new photo project which will run here at Around the Island. Summer Stock Sundays will begin on 31 May. Share your barbecues, your beaches, your cannonballing kids, that island sunset, an old pair of flip flops, anything that says summer to you.

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We'll be playing each week all summer long - the linkie will go up each Saturday night at midnight Israel time (5pm EST) so keep those cameras handy and see you on the 31st.

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Through the tarp

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This peekaboo look at the sky through two contrasting tarps really appeals to me. Sort of like a sneaky little window to the sky.
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Taken while sitting out on the grass last Friday listening to some great acoustic rock.

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And now for an important announcement:

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*drumroll please*

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I'm delighted to announce the upcoming launch of

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Each Sunday, beginning 31 May, Around the Island will be hosting a brand new summer photo project and you're invited!

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Share your barbecues, your beaches, your cannonballing kids, that island sunset, an old pair of flip flops, anything that says summer to you.

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We'll be playing each week all summer long - the linkie will go up each Saturday night at midnight Israel time (5pm EST) so keep those cameras handy and start grabbing those quintessential summer shots.

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See you on the 31st for

Summer Stock Sunday!

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Ultralight Glider Casting Off and Upcoming Summer Stock Photo Project

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Click to enlarge

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And now for an important announcement:

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*drumroll please*

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I'm delighted to announce the upcoming launch of

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Each Sunday, beginning 31 May, Around the Island will be hosting a brand new summer photo project

and you're invited!

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Share your barbecues, your beaches, your cannonballing kids, that island sunset, an old pair of flip flops, anything that says summer to you.

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We'll be playing each week all summer long - the linkie will go up each Saturday night at midnight Israel time (5pm EST) so keep those cameras handy and start grabbing those quintessential summer shots.

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See you on the 31st for

Summer Stock Sunday!

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Bonfire of the Vanities

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No, not that kind. This kind.

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No self-respecting kid in Israel would settle for the piddly little teepee-style campfire we used to build to make s'mores or grill hot dogs on sticks. (Of course these poor deprived souls don't actually know what a s'more is, not having graham crackers here. Perhaps if they did they'd build more manageable bonfires.) To prepare for the annual Lag B'Omer bonfires (see the link above to learn more about one of Israel's stranger holidays) Israeli children spend weeks hauling wood, pallets, discarded wooden furniture, and just about anything else that will burn around town in "borrowed" grocery carts, hiding their stash somewhere their rivals won't find it.

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Then, come Lag B'Omer eve, all hell breaks loose.

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Every single vacant lot in the country is suddenly filled with two, three, four, five, even six different bonfires, with every group vying for the biggest and the best. Lest you think I'm exaggerating, I've seen teens with bonfires four, yes FOUR, stories tall. Thankfully my kids are still young enough that we require them to have adult supervision, keeping things down to the size of a small housefire or so. A few kids in Itai's class are allowed out unsupervised but his mean rotten mother told him tonight in no uncertain terms that he is not allowed to visit their fire (or anyone else's) until his father comes home to take him. I'm picky that way, I prefer my children lightly seared, not charbroiled.

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His class had their official bonfire last night (in a lot which contained four other bonfires one right next to the other). Itai is the one in the red shirt, watching their fire with a few friends. The other fires you see in the background are other classes from other schools. Vacant lots are in short supply in the city.

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Here's their bonfire as it was just getting started.

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I'd show you pictures of the main event this evening but I'm home hiding, house closed up tight and all laundry safely taken in. My long-suffering husband is out with the kids - two of mine and one other who's sleeping over so they can watch a big soccer match on tv later - with grill (because the fires are too big to actually cook over), chairs, corn on the cob, drinks and assorted salads in tow. (I forgot to buy more hotdogs. Somehow I suspect they'll manage, since in typical Israeli fashion each family is likely to bring enough food for an army.) It's not even completely dark yet and there's already a red glow in the sky and the air is filled with wood smoke. By tomorrow the entire country will smell like a four-alarm fire.

It's grand, isn't it?

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Visit Ruby Tuesday for more red shots, hopefully of things that are less of a fire hazard and which don't send this asthma-suffering blogger into hiding.
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Festival roundup

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We're back after another great festival weekend. The music was great, and now that the kids are getting older we're able to actually sit and listen to more and more of it, even the weather mainly cooperated. It was a lot cooler than it's been most years, which was great during the day (even if it did mean that a quick ten minute dip in the pool was more than enough). Nights got a bit, umm, brisk, which would have been fine if I'd been dressed appropriately, but after so many hot years it didn't occur to me to throw in a few extra warm clothes. The kids were fine but I froze my ass off. Oops. Especially at an outdoor bluegrass jam that went on until 3am until Jay took pity on me and brought out a sleeping bag for me to wrap myself up in. (One of the headlining bands was apparently still jetlagged after flying in from Canada, not to mention apparently quite sloshed after finishing their official set, which led to all sorts of late night hilarity, not to mention some really amazing bluegrass licks.)

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Yes, we did stay up until all hours for lots of late night jamming. Both nights. And yes, between the tent and the kids we did have to get up way too early. Both mornings. I think I got a grand total of 8.5 hours sleep all weekend, but it was worth it. (And no, the children didn't stay up that late. As they do every year they fell asleep in their sleeping bags on the lawn and were then carried back to the tent later. Dang they're getting heavy though. The second night we made Itai walk so that Jay could carry Maya after I nearly crippled myself carrying her all the way back the night before. I think next year she'll be walking back as well.

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Home sweet home

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A look around the neighborhood

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No, even Israeli camping isn't usually this crowded - the festival is held on the grounds of a hotel. Some people do stay in the hotel (not us now that both kids are old enough to warrant exhorbitant additional costs - we're back to camping for the foreseeable future) but most camp - everywhere. It's a bit like a tent city, but it's an amazingly calm and happy tent city with a fabulous vibe and hundreds of your nearest and dearest friends around. Of course it helps that we know enough people there that I can always scam a hot shower from someone staying in the hotel. That doesn't hurt at all.

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It's such an amazingly vibrant and colorful event, but I was too busy enjoying the music (and going to all the various children's activities with my kids, well really with my daughter, my son is old enough to go off on his own with his friends) to do much shooting. I'd considered leaving my camera home this year but since I felt queasy every time I thought about not having it I did end up bringing it, only to leave it in the tent most of the time. I think next year it's time to concede to the inevitable and just leave it home and enjoy the festival.

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Heading for the hills

It's festival time again. We're off this (Thursday) afternoon, back Saturday night.

Have a great weekend everyone. May your skies be blue, may your air mattresses not leak (oh wait, that's my wish), and may your music always be in tune.

Spring, posterized

Because it's nicer than the actual view of my roof after yesterday's excitement.

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Why I'd rather have been at the circus

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I had a picture all lined up for this week's Ruby Tuesday post - see it up there? My mom took it when she and my dad brought the kids to the circus over Passover. Looks cool doesn't it? Impressive acrobatics, glitzy costumes, and definitely very, very red. Good choice for today's post? I thought so too.

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I'd much rather have been imagining a trip to a circus than dealing with what I had to deal with today:

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The wind did that. All of that. The white you see in the sky isn't fog - it's dust. Thick, choking, dust. And the wind? It's HOT.

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That bent metal rod? We'd put it in the shed doors to try and keep them from blowing open.
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It didn't work. The wind blew so hard it BENT the metal and left the doors open anyway.

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We had the mother of all wind and dust storms today.

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Holy crap was it loud. And scary. And did I mention loud? And HOT too - the house is getting really stuffy with all the windows closed but I don't want to turn on the A/C because I'm afraid of clogging the filters with the dust! I was up and down all night from the noise, and from worrying about something important blowing off the roof to kingdom come. So much for a decent night's sleep.

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This was a major one. Besides knocking over my big potted palm tree, again, it ripped off part of my pergola top and worse it ripped a water hose right out of my hot water tank and flooded mine and my neighbor's roofs. I spent half the day locating a plumber who could get here immediately to fix it. Thank god I did too, because he said the tank had leaked and was completely empty and about to go sailing nine stories down to the ground! While he was up there fixing it he also saw that another neighbor has lost her a/c unit - it was lying on its side pouring out gas all over the floor!

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Several homes in nearby towns caught fire when power lines came down, our electricity went in and out a few times, and the sky is so white you'd swear you were in the middle of a whiteout blizzard. Very freaky and end of world-ish. It's nearly 7:30pm and only now is the storm showing early signs of breaking.

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All told, I'd rather have been at the circus.

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Yet another odd-looking cactus

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It's been terribly gray here the past few days, and right on time for Aileni's Monochrome Maniacs, too. Hopefully the sun will reappear sometime soon and I'll be able to get back to shooting the lovely bright colors of spring. In the meantime, it's either quite a lot of black and white or repeated trips back into the archives to see what pops up.
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I should have saved yesterday's mono shot for today, just to give you all a break from the "strange unidentified cactus-type plant converted into black and white" that I seem to keep doing lately. I do seem to have a fair amount of them and cactuses just seem to lend themselves very well to monochrome, and goodness knows it isn't hard to find a cactus in this part of the world.
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This particular one is growing at the Tel Megiddo archeological site, which you may know better by its Christian name - Armageddon. (Follow that link for more pictures from our recent visit to Tel Megiddo.)
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Firewood anyone?

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This week's theme for Thematic Photographic over at Carmi's place is musical. While I have dozens of shots of musicians performing, including some I really love, I don't publish photographs of others without their express permission so they will have to continue to languish away in my archives in silence. (Not exactly. In fact I've uploaded most of them to some private online albums available to the performers and members of our folk music community here in Israel, but I don't feel right publishing them indiscriminately on my blog.)
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Disclaimer aside, that left me with a few shots of either members of my own family, or else instruments set down on the sidelines. The original shot of these banjos was too golden for my taste thanks to some weird lighting inside the performance tent, and the highlights were a bit blown, so I started playing around and ended up with the stylized shot (enlarge to get the full effect) you see above. I kind of like it, it's got a sort of gritty feel that appeals to me.
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If you're wondering about the title, I should be commended for not sharing any of the 4,762 banjo jokes which immediately sprang to mind when I pulled up this shot...
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Let there be light

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Jay installed our new living room light fixture last weekend and it looks fabulous! I'm so pleased with how it turned out and how well it suits the room. As an added bonus, it actually lights up said room so we're no longer living in perpetual twilight. In fact, it lights up the room so well that the first order of business was to put in a dimmer switch!

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Here it is off, on low, and turned way up high. I love the way light makes the porcelain cubes glow when it's on.

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And one last one just because I like the effect.