Shana Tova

. .

A happy, healthy, peaceful New Year to all.

.

.

After a festive holiday meal tonight (Monday) surrounded by dear friends we consider our "Israel family" we're off in the morning to ring in the New Year with a Rosh Hashana camping trip. The weather's finally cooling off a bit and it's time to inaugurate the tent that (nearly) ate Tel Aviv. When we were in the States we finally got ourselves a tent big enough for all of us and all our gear. We put it up in the living just to see how it all worked and it literally filled the room. It's tall enough to stand up in (hurray, no more squatting down to change!).
.

Don't believe me? See for yourselves.

.

.

This monster even has a "pet hatch". Luckily, we've got a cute pet to stick in there. He does tend to drool a bit though with that tongue hanging out.

.

.

Spokes

.
Carmi's theme for this week's Thematic Photographic is "angles". I messed around with it a bit this morning but nothing really came together for me until I got this one. I like the way the lighting and the spokes combine to suggest a post-industrialist type sunset. (Does anyone else see that or am I venturing too far off into lala land?)
.
.

TT - 13 Bizarre Bad Day Holidays

Where do they come up with this stuff*...

1. Have a Bad Day Day--November 19 (do they give out frown face buttons or something?)
2. Humiliation Day--January 4 (remind me to hide all pictures of me from the 70's!)
3. Peculiar People Day--January 10 (could work for most of us)
4. Be Late for Something Day--September 5 (heck, I do this every day)
5. Blame Someone Else Day--January 13 (fun!)
6. Blame Someone Else Day--August 13 (yes, again)
7. Blame Somebody Else Day--April 13 (they really liked this one, didn't they?)
8. International Twit Award Month--February 1-28 (I could get behind this one)
9. International Twit Award Month--April 1-30 (are twits so worthy that they need two whole months?)
10. National Procrastination Week--March 1-7 (now this one I like)
11. Be Nasty Day--March 8 (ooh, this could be fun)
12. Panic Day--March 9 (aaaaaaahhh!)

and finally

13. International Panic Day--June 18 (for those for whom ordinary local panic isn't widespread enough)

* The answer is right here.

WW - Neighborhood market, just before the Sabbath

.

.
.

Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what other people aren't saying

Giant Ant

.

A ruby red sculpture in Portsmouth, New Hampshire's Market Square. Mary had suggested that we go for just a little bit of red for this week's Ruby Tuesday. You decide, is this "a little bit" of red or a whole lot? Either way, I liked the sculpture. Sort of an odd choice for street art, but then again Portsmouth had a pretty great edginess and counterculture undertone to it, so it does actually fit in in its own way against the background of the historic square.

.
.

Beauty among the wreckage

.
Despite my small city's fairly urban character it still retains vestiges of its village roots. In the center of the city is a small commercial street, a remnant of days gone by. It looks a bit rundown, as many these days do. Too many stores lie empty, unable to compete with the big new mall just a mile away, but enough remain viable that it still retains its neighborhood feel. I can still buy groceries, or new sheets and towels, or art supplies, or fresh-baked pastries; I can fill prescriptions, or stock up on fresh-roasted cashews, or by clothes for my kids, or even buy a new friend for my fish without ever getting into my car.
.

Between the small family-run businesses which continue on unchanged year after year are those buildings which time forgot. Old sheds which should have been condemned years ago. Nature has a way of reclaiming her own though, even in the middle of the city.

.

Around one of these old structures wraps the most magnificent bougainvillea bush imaginable, it's fuschia flowers shining brighter than the sun against the fading white paint of the shed. Each year it bursts into bloom, begging me to come photograph its fleeting beauty. Each year I tell it that I will, and each year I do not.

.

Until this year. Yesterday I finally made the time to answer the unspoken invitation, and another surprising spoken one.

.
.

Nature has claimed a bigger stake with each passing year. First it was the shed

.

.
And then the telephone pole

.

.

And then the date palm nearby

.

.

(Do you see the dates growing high above?)

.
.

And all the while I was being watched. Mordechai lives across the street from the bougainvillea, in the modest old home best known for being the one that sets out a tray of wet bread scraps for the pigeons each day (I'd often wondered who did that). Each day he sits on an old plastic chair in the shade of the tree, watching the world go by. He watched silently as I took pictures. When he saw that I had finished he quietly asked what I'd been doing. When I explained, he asked to have his picture taken with the tree too.

.

Here it is. Mordechai. And yes, I do believe that he was sitting outside in his boxer shorts, but we shall ignore that and leave him with his dignity intact.

.

.