Fixing a leak

Around lunchtime, Regina called from the village office to ask if I’d tried to do anything about that leak that she’d told me about a week or two ago. “It shows 20 cubic meters for yesterday”, she said “haval – that’ll cost you a lot of money!”

The meters are connected to the water company’s computers through the internet and Regina gets an alert if somebody’s meter is reporting a leak.

Well, I did look around the last time she called but couldn’t find anything. I had thought it was maybe a one-time thing.

But 20 cubic meters of water – and who knows how much previously, sounds like we are going to receive a phenomenal water bill!

I started my detective work first by pruning all the bushes that were preventing me from viewing the water meter, and then indeed, I saw the little cog wheel inside whizzing around like crazy, indicating a heavy flow, while all the taps were closed.

I circumambulated the property several times, turning off faucets here and there, but could discover nothing. So I decided to call the plumber – yes, he could come tomorrow morning. Fine. He suggested in the meantime I close off the water except when we need it.

Then, trying one more time to turn off one of the outdoor faucets leading into the house, it snapped completely. It was all rusty. Huge flow of water. I had to turn off everything immediately, further down the line.

Broken tap

Next thing was to go and buy some parts, which I did. Came home. Decided it was easier to make an emergency temporary repair that would provide water to half of the house. Did that.

But then something else happened. I saw a patch of muddy ground. Along where a plastic pipe runs underground parallel to the patio. Started to dig. Yes! The plastic pipe was cracked. That was a comparatively easy fix, though by now it was evening.

I cleared up, then showered my muddy self. Unfortunately it was a cold shower because I’d forgotten to open the hot water pipe. But it still felt great.

So tomorrow Samir, the plumber, will come and fix the broken tap and maybe some other rusty pipes.

Samir’s a great guy, from the Palestinian part of Jerusalem. He lists himself as Samir Ezra, which at first I didn’t understand – because Samir is an Arab name, while Ezra is a Jewish name.

But the Ezra in the name is for Ezra Nawi, the Jewish plumber he was partnered with. Nawi, besides being a plumber, was one of Israel’s best known peace activists and human rights defenders, a colourful, wonderfully controversial character. There’s a ream of information on Wikipedia, that reads like a chronicle of this country’s human rights movement, with people like Uri Avneri, Amira Hass, Noam Chomsky, David Shulman all crossing paths with or intervening on behalf of Ezra Nawi at some point.

Even the front runner for the Irish presidency had to drop out of the race as a result of an intervention on behalf of Ezra Nawi.

Samir partnered with Ezra in the plumbing business, but unlike Ezra, who was known to charge exorbitant fees in order to fund his peace work, Samir’s prices are very reasonable. Last time he came, he asked me to pay whatever I like – but I hadn’t a clue what it ought to be. It took about 20 minutes for him to make up his mind, while squinting and scratching his head.

Links

What Stops Millions of Americans From Going Green: Their Landlords

A good citizen; hamsin; musical performance

airport shuttle bus, view from window of the airport

Being a good citizen

Being a good citizen of the 21st century requires knowledge and awareness so that we can make good decisions on an individual level, about what products to buy, what to do and what not to do.

On the other hand, our individual solutions have very little effect, compared to those of the big companies and climate criminals. What Greta Thunberg points out in her book is that despite the relative insignificance of small individual decisions, when they join together to form a mass movement, such as a mass boycott, they count for more – so we need to be public about them.

But being public about anything reminds me of past instances of moral hypocrisy. So, when someone tells me they are flying to Prague or Paris for three days for a “short getaway”, it’s hard for me to say I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do during a climate crisis. And I can’t say I’m going to set a good example by flying less, or not at all, because that’s not something I can be sure I’ll do, in a country where the only way to reach Europe or the rest of Asia is by flying. So I keep quiet and don’t say anything, which means again, that whatever I do has virtually no effect.

Ein Kerem, showing Brasserie restaurant, Mary's Well.

Hamsin

The hamsin is supposed to let up by this evening or tomorrow. It’s currently 41°C outside. A hamsin is actually a kind of sirocco, which Bedouin colourfully describe as issuing from the mouth of hell. Yesterday afternoon, we were sitting on the balcony of La Brasserie by Mary’s Well in Ein Kerem when a sudden blast of wind surged up the valley, felling huge, stone-mounting umbrellas, which in turn gave one of the diners a nasty blow to the head and toppled her to the floor. She was OK. The restaurant owner apologized profusely and offered the couple a meal on the house. He said he’d been there for 11 years and this was the first time it had ever happened.

Screenshot from SoundCloud page of Marwan Halabi

Musical performance, Marwan Halabi

On Thursday evening Magdalena organized a musical performance at her photo studio in a nearby village. There was only room for about 20 people but we all squeezed in, to hear Marwan Halabi, a young Druze singer-songwriter with a sublime, amazing voice. Accompanying himself, just with a guitar, he sang some of his own compositions; some were traditional sufi songs, and one or two Egyptian. Most were in classical or spoken Arabic, with a couple in Hebrew. He can be found on Spotify and SoundCloud – I include a SoundCloud link because that’s the service I usually prefer – worth a listen!

Links

16 year-old girl murdered in Delhi street; no one even bothered to call the police

There were so many people when the murder took place, but no one helped the girl. Even if they would have shouted, maybe the girl could have survived”

Tags: music thoughts

Sumud

Old City, Jerusalem, houses occupied by Jewish settlers, Israeli flag

The Palestinians have a word, sumud that encapsulates their practical philosophy with regard to their dealing with adversity, particularly the adversity of the Occupation. It roughly means resilience. It can take the form of various forms of resistance: violent or non-violent. But it comes from a mindset or historical consciousness of clinging to the land and outwaiting every new conqueror – be it the Jews, or the British, or the Ottomans or the Crusadors, or whoever boisterously asserts their claim to be the new power in the land. Sumud is a powerful force in the face of opposition: a “we will prevail, just like we have always done” statement. Invaders will come and go: the Jews will eventually go back to their countries, with their tail between their legs, just like the Crusaders did before them.

The Jews too have a form of sumud, which is integral to Zionism. According to their narrative, they do not come to Israel as did the early colonials (or as does every new hopeful immigrant) to the Americas. They return to Israel. They come back home. In their conception, they are not colonizers. Wherever else they have attempted to live in the world, they have been reviled, despised, oppressed, enslaved, kicked-out or gassed. Now they are coming home to their own country. Of course, there are other people living here, just as when they previously returned from Egypt in the Biblical period. It is they who are the true encroachers, who don’t belong here. The Arabs have 40 countries where they can live just as well. Let them go there instead.

This is the long-term goal that has guided the Zionist enterprise since Jews began to arrive in the 19th century. You obtain a little land, then another bit, and gradually you build a country. It just requires long-term, patient determination. That’s the policy now in the West Bank. You use a combination of tricks; confiscate land for military purposes, then re-zone it for settlement. Claim prior ownership by Jews. Take advantage of inadequate legal claims, such as that no-one registered the land, but just happened to live there; claim that an existing settlement requires additional land for “natural expansion”; take advantage of loopholes in Mandatory or Ottoman law, or the loose provisions of the Oslo agreements. If you are a settler, make it hard for Palestinian farmers to harvest their olives – or simply steal the crops, or uproot, burn or poison them. Make it hard for their children to go to school, use every creative tactic you can think of. Eventually “we will prevail” – we will get them out from what was ours to begin with.

So which sumud, and whose resilience will prevail here? What happens when an irresistable force meets an unmovable object?

Historically, what happened to a large degree was that the people living on and working the land maintained their position by gradual assimilation. They could change their customs, religions and languages to match those of the conqueror. The Palestinians of today, are to some extent, the Jews of yesterday. Under the Byzantines they became Christian, under the Arabs and Turks they became Muslim. And who is to say the Jews of yore were not for the most part Jebusites or Canaanites? Even the Biblical narrative shows intermarriage and assimilation. And, at the same time, the Jews who “came back” to establish modern-day Israel look suspiciously like the peoples in the lands from which they came: like Russians, Germans, Moroccans, Iraqis, Indians, Africans or Chinese.

People are first people and then something else; human beings with various accretions of religious, social, linguistic or tribal identity. Why is it so hard to see that we are all essentially the same?

What human beings have in common is that they do best under conditions of peace. Palestinian villagers just want to be left alone to live their lives. Jewish immigrants want a place to settle, educate their children, and make a living.

Peace is never a stable quality or level to be attained and then done with; it’s fragile and always something you need to work at. But the best way to establish peace is to allow the historical pattern of gradual assimilation to assert itself once again. Not to fight, but to integrate. Rather than trying to “liberate” the land from those who were there first, allow them the opportunity to become members or citizens in the new structure. Eventually you won’t need to get rid of them because they will become just like you. And you will also assimilate some of their qualities too; that cannot be avoided. In fact, that’s already happening too. Resistance to cultural assimilation is useless. Geography and climate are determining factors in themselves.

This is an unpopular story that hardly anybody; whether Jew or Palestinian, wants to hear, but given a hundred years, or a thousand, it’s the one that is likely to win, even if never acknowledged. And then, this being the Levant, before we know it, the next conquering hero will arrive to supplant the previous one, and the cycle will begin anew.

Jerusalem – Ramparts Walk

view of the old city - churches, house visible

While out on my morning walk, I had a spontaneous decision to take the bus to Jerusalem. So I walked down and got coffee at the Latroun petrol station. I then took the new minibus service bus 430 from the junction to its end stop at the National Insurance Agency.

man reading document outside the main post office

I walked from West Jerusalem through the Nachlaot area and down Jaffa Road to Jaffa Gate, the entrance to the old city. At the gate I noticed a sign “Ramparts Walk”, so I paid 12 sheqels for a ticket and walked all the way around the walls to Lions’ Gate, where the walkway ends.

Muslim worshippers walking along old city street

So I descended and took the via Dolorosa back towards Jaffa Gate; I more or less know how to negotiate the maze of streets by now, so that wasn’t too hard. On the way I sat down for a pizza; quite a good one, in a tiny restaurant that reminded me a little of the Blue Lassi place in Varanasi.

Once back on Jaffa Road I took the tram, or light rail back to the bus station, returned to Latroun and walked back up the hill towards home.

I was not overly tired, but had a shower and a good rest. Thanks to D for hanging my laundry – I had dropped it into the machine before deciding on the day’s adventure. All along the way I was taking pictures – a couple have been included. The rest are here.
Links of the Day
Jewish settlers erect religious school in evacuated West Bank outpost after Israel repeals ban
Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank said Monday they erected a religious school in a dismantled outpost after Israel’s government lifted a ban on settlements in several evacuated areas in the northern part of the territory.
Government members praised the new construction. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key government member and a settler himself, said it was “an exciting historic moment.”
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The fediverse in Hebrew: a good explanation, with important links and servers: digitalwords.net/tech/fediverse

Lazy day at home

Went for an early morning walk with my new barefoot-like sandals: crossing through the pinewoods, descending the path that leads down to the vineyards in the valley, then back up through the woods towards home. Surprised that despite the stony paths around here, there was no discomfort in these sandals, except once when I was looking at my phone and banged my toes into a rock lying on the path. That’s the thing about walking without adequate foot protection: you have to be mindful.

While walking I listened to another chapter of The Dawn of Everything, then some beautiful hang-drum and flute music by the Nadishana Trio, and similar tracks on Sound Cloud.

After breakfast, I watched a Frederick Wiseman documentary, High School.

H, a friend of D came to visit, bringing with her a dessert she had made for the holiday known as Layali Beirut (“Nights of Beirut”), which I enjoyed with a cup of English breakfast tea. It’s a kind of firm pudding, made from semolina, cream, orange blossom syrup, sprinkled with pistachio nuts.

In the evening I took some photos of the sunset, from the village entrance (above – more at my photoblog).

Links of the day

‘Farming good, factory bad’, we think. When it comes to the global food crisis, it isn’t so simple – George Monbiot

Real solutions to our global food crises are neither beautiful nor comforting. They inevitably involve factories, and we all hate factories, don’t we? In reality, almost everything we eat has passed through at least one factory (probably several) on its way to our plates. We are in deep denial about this, which is why, in the US, where 95% of the population eats meat, a survey found that 47% wanted to ban slaughterhouses.

The answer is not more fields, which means destroying even more wild ecosystems. It is partly better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories. Among the best options, horror of horrors, is a shift from farming multicellular organisms (plants and animals) to farming unicellular creatures (microbes), which allows us to do far more with far less.

I have put Monbiot’s book Regenesis on my reading list.

Shavuot holiday

Shavuot holiday

It’s the Shavuot Jewish holiday today, so an excuse for a family meal.

I don’t know much about this holiday, other than that it’s somehow connected with Pentecost, which I think is known as Whitsuntide (“white-Sunday-time”) in the UK; except that it’s not a Sunday. It seems to be one of those seasonal holidays, based on the agricultural calendar.

Although lots of milk products are consumed on this holiday, our meal was completely vegan and planet-friendly.

New sandals

Because I’m young and foolish, I purchased a pair of Xero sandals (thin-soled high-priced hipster huaraches) with the thought that when I do another long Camino like hike, I want to have those in the side pockets of my backpack rather than the usual flip-flops. More useful at the end of the day or, at the beginning of the day, I could actually hike in them, if the spirit moves me, or my socks didn’t dry. They look flimsy, but come with a 5,000 mile guarantee, so we’ll see.

Links of the Day

screenshot of youtube movie with Lina Qasem-Hassan

What’s the Story? Dr. Lina Qasem-Hassan on Israeli medical apartheid (link is through Invidious) This 7 minute video is testimony by a person at the head of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an important HR organization operating in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. I think it could be more informative: obviously you can’t expect too much of such a short video, but what’s there overly relies on anecdotal evidence. If you want to challenge a truism, such as that “the Israeli medical system is an island of equality/peace in a situation of conflict”, you need to present hard facts, and maybe even those facts that support the accepted narrative if you wish to discount it.

My own experience of Israeli hospitals is seeing Palestinian and Jewish hospitals working together, and of mixed wards or rooms where there will be religious and secular Jews together with Palestinian patients. Does this apparent integration obscure other factors? Do Palestinian doctors enjoy equivalent professional advancement as their Jewish colleagues? Do Palestinian patients feel satisfied with their treatment at the same levels of Jewish patients?

The film points out that you can’t have health equality where there is wealth disparity and infrastructure inequality. But this affects the society as a whole. In a society where every fourth or fifth person is below the poverty line, there are underprivileged Israeli Jews who also suffer from these disparities: equally or differently? That would be important to know.

Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza can sometimes access treatment in Israeli hospitals: it’s one of the fields in which PHR is active. But there have been stories in the news media about the ways in which Israel uses this apparently “good” policy for propaganda purposes and for gaining leaverage over Palestinians under occupation in various ways, such as rewarding or encouraging informants. In conclusion, this short video, though interesting, offers only a glimpse at a complex reality, and we cannot hope to learn from it “what the story” is, and gives a taste for more.

UK study of 1948 Israeli massacre of Palestinian village reveals mass grave sites Researchers analysed cartographic data and aerial photos to identify three possible locations in former fishing village Tantura. I have visited this holiday resort – at the time, I was not aware that it was the site of Tantura. Until the past is acknowledged and understood, we cannot hope for a better world. This is the same everywhere. See Wikipedia article on Tantura.

Fediverse

New Hubzilla server

Yesterday I signed up for yet another server, this time KNThost, because they have a managed service for Hubzilla (also Streams). At this stage I really think I need to have some help with running Hubzilla instances. The one that I hosted on an unmanaged VPS has gone bad, and no longer shares posts. It’s a one way hub, with a growing queue and database problem.

So, on KNThost, for a small monthly fee, they install and offer assistance with the service. It’s a bit like Mastohost in that way, and the subscription is cheaper than my other VPS. The only thing I don’t like about it is the US server location but, these days, it’s a bit hard to decide on a good location in any case. The EU is beefing up its internet laws and privacy is threatened there. Israel, where my current servers are located, is also a questionable location. I think that if one posts to, or uses the web in 2023, one must automatically assume that there is surveillance.

I find myself scratching my head with regard to where to post my content. From my Epicyon Activity Pub server I am doubtful that the posts actually reach anywhere, since I rarely get a response. On Hubzilla, I no longer subscribe to anyone on Mastodon (or Pleroma or Akkoma, etc.). Perhaps this was a mistake? It may also have been a mistake to remove myself from Fe.disroot, from the point of view of reach. If you want to be a first class citizen of the Fediverse, it’s best to be on a large instance like mastodon.social. But, from the perspective of what’s good for the Fediverse, small instances are better; individual instances are best.

POSSE

Rather than focusing on social media to publish my posts, and favouring one place over another, I am thinking to embrace more fully the POSSE system (see below).

POSSE is a term invented by the IndieWeb people

POSSE is an abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, the practice of posting content on your own site first, then publishing copies or sharing links to third parties (like social media silos) with original post links to provide viewers a path to directly interacting with your content.. Why. Let your friends read your posts, their way.

In my case, I will be publishing some individual items first on epicyon and my hubzilla channel, and then collating these back into a daily blog post that contains all the significant items, reflections and links from the same day. This itself can be posted and,if I like, be sent further, such as Tumblr. I’ve done this before, and found it to be a satisfying practice. It is similar to the practice adopted by Cory Doctorow in his Pluralistic blog.

Ultimately, everything is ephemeral. What matters is our current interactions, rather than trying to preserve everything for eternity. But it’s also important to be in control of the medium, to the degree possible.

Epicyon search

A friend asked in Epicyon’s Matrix room about search, since he is interested in finding his old posts and interactions. It turns out that Epicyon has quite a good search mechanism built in.

Today’s links

As a columnist I have learned that honesty is timeless and self-importance gets you nowhere

I really liked this article by a Guardian columnist. It seems to be relevant for any kind of public writing, including social network / blog posts.

Against the future

This person has various strategies to rebel against the AI onslaught

Diary

I didn’t decide yet whether to travel anywhere, but should make up my mind soon, if I want to get away before the high season starts; I’m also not sure how much I may be needed at home during the summer months.

So, when I went on a long walk in the woods today, I decided to leave my mind free, rather than listen to a podcast or music, in case insight came.

None did, which is typical. When I’m walking in the woods, it’s hard to think about plans, or arrive at practical decisions. What I was thinking about, if anything, was that I’m quite happy to be doing what I’m doing. So is it actually necessary to go anywhere during this period? A time will come when I feel a pressing need, no doubt.

I thought also about my conception of the universe and the place we occupy in it. Today I was in three bookshops looking for a Hebrew translation of the Tao Te Ching, as D wanted to give it as a gift to someone. It seems to be a popular book here: all the sales assistants I spoke to knew it, and the first two shops had run out of copies. The second shop sent me to another branch of their chain, where she discovered that two copies remained. “It’s wonderful,” said the shop assistant.

The shops also carried a translation of the complete writings of Ramana Maharshi and D asked me to get that too, so I got it. On the cover, it has the Sanskrit word “Aham” (I).

So on my walk I also thought a little about Ramana. I have never felt drawn much to his method of self-inquiry. I’m probably more attracted to “affirmation”, the way of the mahavaykas. But it isn’t exactly that. My practice is more one of attempting to integrate the realisation of the error in our perception. Ahankara makes us conceive of ourselves as separated and limited, whereas in truth we are of the same substance as the universe, which expresses itself through us, as it does in every other being/element (sarvani bhutani). This oneness, this unity-verse, is worthy of devotion: not that of the individual + an object of worship. Devotion is a bhava, a state. The state of existence is itself wrapped up with the innate inclination to be worshipful. Bhakti, which is love, is the glue that holds everything together. That’s my approach, basically.

I did not find a proper guide in it, and sometimes I wish there would be one. Maybe I am myself the best guide, but so far I’m not impressed wtih the results.

Diary

In the morning picked up one of my grandchildren from the railway station in Modi’in (one of two such drives today, because in the evening I had to pick up son). I had a meeting with the accounts department people at the office, then spent the morning doing some cleaning and laundry (but then, forgot to hang the machine till about midnight, discovering it only on my room and lights out check.)

When D came home, she arrived with the negatives scanner I had ordered from China a couple of months ago. I was sure it was lost in the mail, and couldn’t do much about it because I had accidentally indicated that I’d received it. So that was a big surprise. With these orders from China, you never know whether it will arrive in a matter of weeks, or of months, or who will deliver it, or to where. The scanner is mainly for the archival work on old film at the office, but it can be useful for scanning personal film as well. I already tried it, and am quite happy with the results: the challenge is to keep dust away from the negatives, because the slightest speck of dust creates a white spot on the negative.

In the afternoon we visited our neighbours, where we said bye to R who is going back to the UK, where she and her husband are spending a year. In our neighbours’ yard, I found a good specimen of Lantana, a flower I’ve been wanting to photograph (above).

I was telling our neighbour about the interesting novel, “A Life of Holes”, which was narrated to Paul Bowles by Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, a poor and illiterate Moroccan, if Bowles can be believed. I think B would like it.

Travel plans?

I talked with D today about the possibility of continuing the Chemin Le Puy in France, from the point that I had left off in 2021, in Moissac. If I want to do that, it’s either now or in September-October. But we might want to go somewhere else at that time, such as India. I discovered that there are cheap flights to Barcelona, from where it is possible to take a train or a bus.

So it’s a possibility. I’m not sure I actually want to get away just now, because I’m enjoying being at home, but it could be nice. D might join me for part of the way.

Search

My default #search engine is SearX. But what’s the story with DuckDuckGo and Firefox? It used to be there as one of the options. When it disappeared, I installed the DDG extension; however this didn’t actually do anything. It did not include DDG as a search option and (fortunately) did not succeed to make DDG the default engine. Next I tried to include DDG in what should be the standard way: using FF’s OpenSearch option, but it seems that DDG does not play nicely with OpenSearch either. Further, its API no longer works with SearX, so it is not possible to receive DDG’s results in SearX. I no longer trust DDG – I also just read about the deal they made (though last year rescinded) with Microsoft.

Photos

I purchased an e-book, “X series Unlimited” by Dan Bailey and spent a few hours reading that today. I didn’t learn a lot from it so far, maybe because my particular X series Fujifilm Camera is one of the oldest and simplest among them. But I did learn a couple of things, all the same. On my afternoon walk I made some new experiments with settings, and I think I got some slightly better results.

Here are a few of the photos (the rest are in my photoblog).

I’m fascinated how some plants send out leaves that are initially red, and only later change colour.

I took a few like the above while playing with the settings for enriching shadows and increasing the exposure, while staying with an f11 aperture setting for good depth of field.

The above is a nest of the pine processionary caterpillar – characteristically in a young Canary pine.

I slightly edited all of the above in LightZone – a free open source photo editing program. I am beginning to like this program. One thing I notice is that, unlike in Darktable, the styles or presets are arranged in a logical order, and it’s also possible to modify the style’s effect on an image manually. It is simpler to use and it is easier to create a workflow. Of course, it is by no means as powerful as Darktable.